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Verfremdung is usually translated as alienation.It's a translation of Russian prijom ostranenie 'making strange'. The Russian Formalist Shklovskij coined the term, and Brecht adopted it for theatre as Verfremdungseffekt 'alienation device'. [Addendum: I'd forgotten it's also called a distancing effect ( link).]
Last edited by zmjezhd; 09/29/08 09:12 PM.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Philosophers may claim postmodernism (thePook) as their sublime invention, however chaotic it all may be.
Artist claim it as their invention, it's just nothing new. No it's just equivocal language. The terms Modern and Post Modern mean different things in different disciplines. The 'Modern' in Modern Art is not the same as that in 'Modern' Philosophy. Post Modern Art is not Post Modern philosophy (though they share certain philosophical underpinnings). But what is certain is that Art grows out of world view (which includes religion and philosophy), not the other way round. And I am an artist, by the way, not a philosopher. The tyranny of 'New!' and the label 'New!' just overrules the fact that hardly anything presented as such is any more than a variation on an old theme. If the variation is interesting and
passionating to see or hear or read ... then what more do you want? "Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises. The wind blows to the south and turns to the north; round and round it goes, ever returning on its course. All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full. To the place the streams come from, there they return again. All things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing. What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one can say, “Look! This is something new”? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time." - Ecclesiastes (1:1-10), several centuries BC. Interestingly, the book of Ecclesiastes is largely about this feeling of Verfremdung you mention, or something akin to it.
Last edited by The Pook; 09/30/08 05:15 AM.
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I know the term has a different meaning depending on the context;
philosophy, sociology, science, art. Yes, we are both artist and
personally I do not claim a word that is so useless, because if ever it was clear it's a totally worn out word.
As for what came before what: I always like think of early mankind. Our twofooted stone-age ancestors.
Would the first circle drawn in the sand be the result of stone-age man wanting to copy the sun or the moon or would he have incidently have drawn a circle and to his astonishment regocnized a sun or a full moon form.
Would the animal paintings in the caves of Altamira and Lascaux origin in the consious idea of the hunter to draw that animal, or would, as a result of torchlights lighting the uneven walls of the caves, some hunters have discovered animal forms to follow with charcoal, ochres etc.?
I like to think the latter: the idea came with or after the creative act. Art and philosophy always went close together and
influenced eachother both ways.
Last edited by BranShea; 09/30/08 11:06 AM.
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Would the animal paintings in the caves of Altamira and Lascaux origin in the consious idea of the hunter to draw that animal This is what seems logical to me. Could you explain why you think it's the other way?
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One would expect an example of a painting formed around the natural markings in the cave. As far as I know, there aren't any. But what do I know?
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Must admit I am not sure about this, whether it is a standing theory or whether it is a supposition of my own or maybe I just dreamed it. Cave I'm not presuming that all the prehistoric drawings in the caves are made on natural marking places. I'm just thinking about the origin: the very first drawings. When you look at the linked cave you see animals drawn, painted. But in between the actual drawings, just with a little bit of imagination you can see more animals just by means of the light striking the unevennesses of the surface. Those people were hunters. The shapes of animals must have been stored very clearly in their minds. Living in those caves, using torches drained in animal fat , the light must have played constantly over the natural markings in those caves. And more mysteriously then today's light beams.They must have seen the shapes of animals maybe before they started the very first drawing . (hum, I have to look into this again and I will, but that will take some time) The inspiration behind these paintings certainly was a mixture of magic and reverence, roots of religion. ( some say the caves were special worship places.)The little fertility statuettes are older than the drawings as far as I remember. If I'm wrong surely someone will correct me. A site for those who are really interested in the subject: Cap Blanc
Last edited by BranShea; 10/01/08 01:05 PM.
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You mean, like the same way the constellations were seen and named? Yes, that's very interesting...and with your explanation and picture, I can certainly put more credence in your theory. I have never before seen a close-up of the drawings: I had always imagined the walls as being, if not flat, then at least relatively smooth.
Heh--so, could we label these as Premodernism?
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Definitely ! Premodernism. But on my way to find more exactitude I came across this promising site and fell into the fantastic trap of what structuralist and poststructuralist philosophy and methods have saddled us up with: Now please, don't be intimidated; it's just a piece of language.  About the Prehistoric female and male statuettes , what we naïves used to call "fertility statues": " Drawing upon my proposed decipherment of UP geometric signs, I have proposed that the so-called 'Venus' figurines from Eurasian sites, as well as many other anthropomorphic figures, represent and encode a female and male spiritual transformation processes. These appear to parallel some of the shamanic trance postures identified by the anthropologist Felicitas Goodman."This is what you may call :"Postmodern research methods".Researching the Origins of Art. Religion, and Mind
Methods for the Prehistory of Religions"Reconstruct, decode and decipher the overall 'semiotic competence', i.e., the differential features and common medium that offers a structured capacity to articulate meaningful narrativity and discourse, including conceptual, thematic, semantic, pragmatic, syntactic and glyphic deep structure. At this point the method may draw upon structuralist grammar (N. Chomsky), structuralist semantics (A.J.-Greimas) and so on. This stage may be termed the ‘structuralist moment' of interpretation. Decipher ‘meaning’ or ‘message’ being communicated using differential features of the semiotic competence as employed in a particular subject-matter to generate and amplify a meaning 'for them' and a poetics of feeling-toned meaning 'for us.' Consider limits of interpretation within a hermeneutic method or exegetic procedure amplifying meaning 'for them' and 'for us' (e.g., Hans-Georg Gadamer, Wolfgang Iser, reader response theory). Explore amplification of archetypal symbols as thea/opoetics, (Hopper and Miller) that is as a poetic performative presencing of supernatural beings, spiritual principles, or divine powers. Attempt to systematically reconstruct, within the limits of residual artifacts and contextual factors, tentative prehistoric beliefs and thea/ologies, rituals or myths or their underlying structural themes, based on the decoding of the semiotic competence and decipherment of actual products of this competence 'Systematicity' criteria may include: Coherence, consistency and comprehensiveness of accounting for the semiotic evidence. A rigorous critical method, such as mythic group-theoretic structure (Levi-Strauss) or set-theoretic inclusion/exclusion dialectics (deconstruction and critical theories of privilege and marginalization). Check adequacy of the decoding to the processual archeological context--a check on validity of the decoding. (I have the site , but it said something about copyrighted, well uh.. I hope I'll survive)
Last edited by BranShea; 10/01/08 04:46 PM.
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Sheesh--somebody should decode that.
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There was a TV series about the origins of Art recently that featured this shamanistic explanation. The first cave drawings were apparently made by the first acid-heads recording their trips on psychotropic drugs. The hypothesis is that the shamans were painting their 'death' experiences in trances, where they entered the spirit world, etc. It was an interesting idea, but in the end I don't think there is much real evidence for it, and the most plausible explanation remains that ancient people drew the animals either as a record of their hunting victories or (more likely) in some kind of totemistic attempt to procure suffessful hunting. But everything is sheer speculation since we don't have the artists to ask. The only answer that makes any sense is "we don't know" (why they drew them).
One misconception that continues to appear, however, is that the people who drew these things were "cavemen." There is no such thing really. They did not live in the caves. It's not like Fred Flinstone. They didn't draw pretty pictures on the wall of their lounge room. The caves in which these pictures (and most others like them) occur are extremely hard places to get into. In some cases they are in the farthest possible recesses, or on high ceilings hard to reach. They were not made in everyday places for common consumption. They were special, which probably indicates a religious significance. This accords with known examples from historical times, such as the rock art of southern african tribes and Australian aboriginal peoples. The location is secret and only special members of society are allowed to view them, let alone make them.
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