Materialism and intersubjectivity in Cobra
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Karen Kurczynski [1]
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[1] University of Massachusets
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- Localización: Art history: journal of the Association of Art Historians, ISSN 0141-6790, Vol. 39, Nº. 4, 2016 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Material imagination: Art in Europe, 1946-72), págs. 676-697
- Idioma: inglés
- Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
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Resumen
The Cobra movement, hailing from the northern European capitals of Copenhagen, Brussels, and Amsterdam, presented mythic and animalistic imagery through spontaneous and rudimentary processes as an attempt to open a dialogue with diverse audiences. Grounded in the theories of historical materialism, and the writings of Gaston Bachelard, Cobra’s particular approach to materialism was to foreground the process of materializing – and thus continually transforming – imaginative forms. Cobra artworks manifest Bachelard’s notion of the ‘material imagination’ by suggesting the continual physical and social evolution of images. This essay examines the ways that both individual and collective works materialize this particular approach to expression as intersubjective rather than subjective, a social rather than an individual process. Cobra’s significant contribution to the discussion of materialism was its understanding of creativity as an ever-evolving, and inherently political, dialogue between human subjects and materials.
