part of my reading for today:
She was bathed in the brightness of the sun and the miracle that replaces tradition. She is full of inventiveness, whimsy, and caprice. She danced to the "Song of the Flying Fish and Sea Horses," an onomatopoeic lament. It was a dance full of flashes and edges, full of dazzling light and penetrating intensity. The lines of her body broke up, each gesture decomposed into a hundred precise, angular, and sharp movements. The buffoonery of the perspective, the lighting, and the atmosphere is a pretext used by a hypersensitive nervous system for witty and ironic fun. The figures of her dance are at the same time mysterious, grotesque, and ecstatic.
-Hugo Ball's essay "Occultism and Other Fine and Rare Things"
The above is a description of Sophie Taeuber, she was a dancer in Zurich from 1916-1920; but was well-known for the involvement in dada with artist Jean Arp.
Readings like these prove that art history isnt just about the critiquing of a painting on a pristine gallery wall... its about a woman, a shape, an essence, or even an everyday setting. There must be an embracing of beauty, whatever that interpretation might be to a person.
Love,
Jen
VIII
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