A Life in Nature-Karel Teige's Journey from Poetism to Surrealism

• Autores: Esther Levinger
• Localización: Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, ISSN 0044-2992, Vol. 67, Nº. 3, 2004, págs. 401-420
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • One must look beyond narrative and representation for an understanding of Karel Teige's photo collages. In these collages, quotes of works of architecture, landscapes, and cityscapes frame hybrids or fragments of female figures cut out of other artworks, often photographs, or illustrated magazines. While the similitude of reality in these works has lured some art historians into reading them in terms of traditional representation, on several points all such interpretations contradict the fundamentals of Teige's thought from the early years of Dev̌etsil to surrealism. Among other things, the ascription of traditional representation conflicts with Teige's refutation of a mechanical accord between object and sign. Reclaiming for the collages the lost reality of the referent, it denies Teige his subversive mode of picture making—hybridization, quotation, and doubling, all of which structure the simulacral quality of his work and inform its revolutionary value.