MECHANOMORPHIC STUDENT COMPETITION

Wynwood Project and the University of Michigan invite you to submit your work to this juried student competition. (A flyer is posted in the lab (CL145) and also available for downloading on server #8 in Dr. Hanger's Course Files.) Artists are asked to submit works that confront or interpret the notion of the world's mechanical/human connection and the environmentally minded man/machine.

Submissions are due to Milly Cardoso, Gallery Director of the UM Dept. of Art & Art History on or before Nov. 17, 2010. Forsubmission guidelines see the flyer. (Submitted images require a description that includes title, medium, size of work and your name. Submit on CD or DVD. All media encouraged: multimedia, digital, photo, painting, sculpture, ceramics, graphic design, printmaking, and/or performance art.)

Submit or contact for more information:Milly Cardos, Gallery DirectorUM Art Dept.1540 Lavante Ave305-284-2542

COURSE OPTION: If you would like to work on a piece of artwork for this competition in class, you may substitute it for the first Illustrator Assignment (#5) and then switch both the due date (to Nov. 10) and the points earned to 10 (vs. 5). This illustration can be a raster image exploring some of the non-pen-tool features of illustrator and/or using Photoshop to create it. 

mech·a·no·mor·phism   [mek-uh-noh-mawr-fiz-uhm]

noun Philosophy.

the doctrine that the universe is fully explicable in mechanisticterms.

Caroline Jones

Profile  

Caroline Jones

Director, History, Theory and Criticism Section and Professor of Art History

Room: 3-303Telephone: 617 253-5932Send e-mail

 

  

 

  Caroline Jones studies modern and contemporary art, with a particular focus on its technological modes of production, distribution, and reception. Trained in visual studies and art history at Harvard, she did graduate work at the Institute of Fine Arts in New York before completing her PhD at Stanford University in 1992. Previous to completing her art history degree, she worked in museum administration and exhibition curation, holding positions at The Museum of Modern Art in New York (1977-83) and the Harvard University Art Museums (1983-85), and completed two documentary films. In addition to these institutions, her exhibitions and/or films have been shown at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington DC, the Hara Museum Tokyo, and the Boston University Art Gallery, among other venues. She is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation (among others), and has been honored by fellowships at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin and the Max Planck Institüt (2001-02), the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton (1994-95), and the Stanford Humanities Center (1986-87). Her books include Machine in the Studio: Constructing the Postwar American Artist, (1996/98, winner of the Charles Eldredge Prize from the Smithsonian Institution); Bay Area Figurative Art, 1950-1965, (1990, awarded the silver medal from San Francisco's Commonwealth Club); and Modern Art at Harvard (1985). She co-edited Picturing Science, Producing Art (1998), and has published on subjects ranging from Francis Picabia to John Cage to new media art in journals such as Critical Inquiry, Res, Science in Context, caareviews online, and Cahiers du Musée national d'art moderne. Currently finishing a manuscript on the mid-20th century art writer Clement Greenberg (forthcoming in 2004), Jones's ongoing research

interests include globalism and new media arIn May 2007,  The University of Miami announced the launching of a new gallery space in the Wynwood Arts District. 

UM’s Project Space was conceived to showcase exhibitions by local artists as part of the monthly Second Saturday Wynwood Gallery Walk.

 Current exhibits at the University of Miami's Wynwood Project Space during Art Basel Miami Beach are Ricardo Zulueta's "Domesticated Homosapiens in Traditional Costume Circa 21st Century," -November 24 to December 15 and "Mechanomorphic: The Environmentally Minded Man/Machine," -November 29 to December 27, 2010 mechanomorphic works of art consider the notion that the machine has aided man in undermining our (lived) environment and the spread of urbanization, and yet, man must now turn to the machine in order to re/solve these issues.

The gallery is located at 2200 N.W. 2nd Avenue, Miami, FL

mech·a·no·mor·phic adj

Definition of MECHANOMORPHIC

: having the form or qualities of a machine : described inmechanical terms <a mechanomorphic God> <thismechanomorphic world, the City of Destruction from which we must all flee — Saturday Rev.>

Origin of MECHANOMORPHIC

mechan- + -morphic

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291 (magazine)291

Editor Marius de Zayas, Paul Haviland, Agnes Ernest Meyer, Alfred

Stieglitz

Frequency Monthly

Publisher Stieglitz

First issue 1915

Final issue 1916

Country United States

Language English

ISSN None

The arts and literary magazine 291 was published from 1915-1916 in New York City. It was created and

published by a group of four individuals: photographer/modern art promoter Alfred Stieglitz, artist Marius de

Zayas, art collector/socialite/poet Agnes Ernest Meyer and photographer/critic/arts patron Paul Haviland.

Initially intended as a way to bring attention to Stieglitz's gallery of the same name (291), it soon became a

work of art in itself. The magazine published original art work, essays, poems and commentaries by Francis

Picabia, John Marin, Max Jacob, Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes, de Zayas, Stieglitz and other avant-

garde artists and writers of the time, and it is credited with being the publication that introduced visual

poetry to the United States.

Background

Alfred Stieglitz was one of the most active arts promoters in the world in the early 1910s. He was already

famous for his own photography, he published the well-known magazine Camera Work and he ran the

progressive art gallery 291 in New York. After the Armory Show in 1913, a trio of artists and supporters (de

Zayas, Meyer and Haviland) gathered around Stieglitz at his gallery, encouraged by his recent interest in

promoting other art forms in addition to photography. In January 1915 they proposed the idea of starting a

new magazine that would showcase the most avant-garde art of Europe and the U.S., and at the same

time bring attention to Stieglitz's gallery. They named the new magazine after the gallery, and with

Stieglitz's blessing the four of them began working on the first issue.[1]

Compared with his other publications, Stieglitz was fairly detached from the project. He later said, "I was

more or less an onlooker, a conscious one, wishing to see what they would do so far as policy was

concerned if left to themselves."[2] Nonetheless, Stieglitz was not one to sit idly aside while something went

on around him. He helped set the tone and direction of the magazine, beginning with its design and

production.

Wanting to live up to the high standards set in Camera Work, Stieglitz and his colleagues decided to

publish two editions of the magazine: a standard subscription printed on heavy white paper and a deluxe

edition, limited to 100 copies, printed on Japanese vellum. Both were published in a large folio format (20" x

12"/50.8 cm x 30.5 cm).[1]

Each issue contained just four to six pages, sometimes hinged together to provide a fold-out spread, and

there were no advertisements. Due to its size and cutting edge presentation, it had the look and feel of a

work of art itself, not a magazine about art. It has been called a "proto-Dadaist statement" [3] in part because

much of the content was in the form of visual poetry, a literary and design format attributed to Picabia's

friend the French surrealist Guillaume Apollinaire. The design and layout was inspired by the second series

of the magazine Les Soirées de Paris, edited in France by Apollinaire, and it was de Zayas who brought

the concepts from the French magazine and put them into place in the new magazine. Because of these

influences art historian William Innes Homer has said "In design and content, there was no periodical in

America more advanced than 291.[4]

A regular subscription initially cost ten cents per issue or one dollar a year; the deluxe edition cost five

times as much. Little attempt was made to attract subscribers, and no more than one hundred signed up for

the regular edition. There were only eight known subscribers to the deluxe edition. [1]

Stieglitz had 500 extra copies printed of Issue No. 7-8, which featured his photograph The Steerage.

Because it had recently been published for the first time and attracted very positive comments, he

anticipated a huge demand for the image. The demand did not materialize, and none of the additional

copies was sold.

Only twelve numbers of 291 were published, but three of them were double numbers so just nine actual

issues were printed. It never attracted a wide audience, and the high costs of production became too much

to sustain. Stieglitz had hundreds of unsold copies at his gallery when he closed it in 1917; he sold all of

them to a rag picker for $5.80.[1]

All issues are highly valued now, and a complete set of the original issues is very rare. One of the complete

sets is in the collection of the U.S. Library of Congress in Washington, DC (LC Control No 00204566). A

bound reprint edition was published by the Arno Press in 1972 (ISSN 1054-7193) and may be found in

large university and public libraries.

[edit]Issues and content

"Voyage" by Guillaume Apollinaire. Published in291, No 1 1915

[edit]No. 1, March 1915

Cover: 291 Throws Back Its Forelock by Marius de Zayas

Page 2: How Versus Why, essay by Agnes E. Meyer

Page 3: Voyage, calligram by Guillaume Apollinaire; One Hour's Sleep--Three Dreams, text by Alfred

Stieglitz

Page 4: 291, text by Paul B. Haviland

Page 5: Oil and Vinegar Castor, drawing by Picasso; *Simultanism, essay by Marius de Zayas

Back cover: What is Rotten in the State of Denmark, drawing by Edward Steichen

Issue No. 1 set the tone for the magazine through de Zayas' cover art, a semi-abstract, geometric

drawing of a human figure entitled "291 throws back its forelock". It suggests a personification of

Stieglitz's gallery while at the same time implying that the magazine was conceived by its editors

as both a work of art and of dedicated satire of art.[2]

The issue also introduced several terms that were central to the thinking that went into the concept

of the publication, including simultanism, sincerism, unilaterals, satirism and satyrism. In an

unsigned note entitled "Simultanism", de Zayas presented the following statement of meaning:

"The idea of Simultanism is expressed in painting by simultaneous representation of different

figure of a form seen from different points of view, as Picasso and Braque did some time ago; or

by the simultaneous representation of the figure of several forms as the Futurists are doing.

In literature the idea is expressed by the polyphony of simultaneous voices which say different

things. Of course, printing is not an adequate medium, for succession in the medium is

unavoidable and a photograph is more suitable.

That the idea of simultanism is essentially naturalistic is obvious; that the polyphony of interwoven

sounds and meaning has a decided effect upon our senses is unquestionable, and that we can get

at the spirit of things through this system is demonstrable."

This text served as the magazine's manifesto, and it paid homage to the artist who was the

primary influence in the design and presentation of the publication, Apollinaire. [5] As if to confirm

this influence, Apollinaire's calligram "Voyage" was included in the center of a triptych which

formed by opening the six hinged pages of the issue.

The terms "visual poetry" and "calligram" had not yet been coined, and de Zayas later referred to

the typographically designed writing in 291 as "Psychotypes", which he defined as "art which

consists in making the typographical characters participate in the expression of the thoughts and in

the painting of the state of the soul, no more a conventional symbols but as signs having

significance in themselves."[6] De Zayas is reported to have taken both the term and its definition

from an earlier work by Amédée Ozenfant.[7]

Below the poem is Stieglitz's account of three of his own dreams. This was the first and only article

in 291 to deal with the human subconscious, and as such it is a precursor to the surrealist

explorations that would begin several years later.[8]

"Mental Reactions", poem by Agnes Ernst Meyer Apollinaire; design by Marius de Zayas.

Published in 291, No 2 1915

[edit]No. 2, April 1915

Cover: New York, drawing by Francis Picabia

Page 2: Drawing, art work by Katharine Rhoades

Page 3: Mental Reactions, poem by Agnes E. Meyer; designed by Marius de

Zayas

Back Cover: Bellovées Fatales No. 12, music by Alberto Savinio

This issue is notable for the striking full-page visual poem written by Agnes Meyer and visually

interpreted by Marius de Zayas. This piece is generally recognized as the earliest example of

visual poetry done by artists in America.[9] It is also the first in a series of poems in 291 authored by

women and presented with what were then distinctly feminine viewpoints.[10] The significance of

this artwork lies in the integration of the visual and verbal elements. The words move down the

page roughly in two columns, but the geometric shapes intersect the words and create spatial

dislocation. This is the very embodiment of simultanism as defined by Zayas, since the somewhat

random nature of the thoughts are interpenetrated by an internal logic and rhythm.[2]

The cover features a black-and-white drawing of New York buildings by Picabia surrounded by a

seemingly random collection of "tiny articles"[8]about art, music, and news items. Small pieces like

these occur in several later issues, and it is clear they are intended to be artistic messages in the

same vein as the visual art work. The second page of this issue featured a stark geometric

drawing by Katherine Rhoades, while the back cover filled with Savinio's musical concept of

sincerism.

Poems by Katharine Rhoades and Agnes Ernst Meyer; design by Marius de Zayas.

Published in 291, No 3 1915

[edit]No. 3, May 1915

Cover: design by A. Walkowitz

Page 2: I Walked into a Moment of Greatness, poem by Katharine

Rhoades

Page 3: Woman, poem by Agnes E. Meyer design by Marius de Zayas

Page 4: Le Cog Gaulois, drawing by Edward Steichen; *A Bunch of

Keys, visual poem by J.B. Kerfoot; plus several short texts.

The cover for this issue is a dramatic black-and-white design by Abraham Walkowitz that

presaged Jackson Pollock's techniques of the 1940s. The magazine opens to a two-page spread

designed by de Zayas that incorporated poems by Rhoades and Meyer. It is one of the most

forceful designs of any issue, in part because the lower right diagonal of the spread is nothing but

black ink, but the interplay between the verbal and visual elements was not as compelling as in

"Mental Reactions".[2]

The back cover featured a simple drawing by Steichen; the visual poem A Bunch of Keys by

literary critic John Barrett Kerfoot; and several small articles similar to those found on the cover of

issue No 2.

Cover of 291, No. 4, 1915. Art by John Marin

No. 4, June 1915

Cover: design by John Marin

Page 2: Fille Née Sans Mère, drawing by Francis Picabia

Page 3: Flip-Flap, by Katherine Rhoades

Back cover: Dammi L'anatema, Cosa Lasciva, essay by Alberto Savinio

The cover for this issue is filled with one of Marin's New York skyscraper drawings, a "nervous

calligraphy, combined with a disintegration of forms", suggesting the artist's "romantic attitudes

toward an urban environment wrought by technology."[2] It is accented by a hand-colored blue

swash that both segments and connects the buildings and streets, as if to suggest a river of life

running through the geometric angles of the city. On page 2, the reverse of the cover, is Picabia's

black-and-white drawing that may be seen as the reverse dimension of Marin's cityscape. It has

been described as having "anti-art proportions"[2] because of its simple lines that play off of and

counteract the harder edges seen on the cover.

Katharine Rhodes' poem on page 3 "reveals both her distance from and her proximity to

Dada"[2] by being about laughter without provoking it. By placing the poem next to Picabia's

drawing the editors created this same tension by provoking an artistic response to the drawing

while denying a similar response in the poem.

The back cover was filled with Savinio's essay on music and art, in French.

Canter, Portrait d'une Jeune Fille Américaine dans l'État de Nudité, and J'ai Vu, drawings by Francis

Picabia. 291, No. 5-6, pp 2–4, 1915.

Nos. 5-6, July–August 1915

Cover: Ici, C'est Ici Stieglitz, Foi et Amour, drawing by Francis Picabia

Page 2: Canter, drawing by Francis Picabia

Page 3: Portrait d'une Jeune Fille Américaine dans l'État de Nudité, drawing by Francis

Picabia

Page 4: De Zayas! De Zayas!, drawing by Francis Picabia

Page 5: Voila Haviland, drawing by Francis Picabia

Page 6: New York n'a pas Vu D'abord, drawing by Marius de Zayas

This issue is a visual salute by Picabia to the protagonists of the magazine, beginning with a

"portrait" of Stieglitz as a camera/car on the cover. Inside are metaphorical depictions of Picabia,

de Zayas and Haviland, all seen as some form of automobile/machine. These four images flank a

centerpiece called Portrait d'une Jeune Fille Américaine dans l'État de Nudité (Portrait of a Young

American Girl in a State of Nudity), which is a relatively straightforward drawing of a spark

plug with the words "For-Ever" on its side. Unlike the other pieces there is no indication of whom

the artist intended to portray in this piece, although at least one critic believes it is a portrait of

Agnes Meyer and thus completes the team of "drivers" behind the magazine.[11]

Some critics have interpreted these images as filled with sexual and phallic imagery,[2][12][13] yet

others have seen in them "symbols extracted from mechanical devices", filled with "faith in its

divine power to reveal life, to spur action, to excite creative impulse…"[14]

Nos. 7-8, September–October 1915

Cover: Comments on The Steerage by Paul Haviland and Marius de Zayas

Interior insert The Steerage, photograph by Alfred Stieglitz

Back cover: the same comments on the cover, translated into French

This is the only issue in which a photograph was published, a single large gravure of

Stieglitz's The Steerage inserted inside. The image is introduced on the cover by brief rhetorical

commentaries by Haviland and de Zayas that continue Picabia's mechanistic imagery from the

previous issue in a verbal form. Haviland begins with:

"We are living the age of the machine.

Man made the machine in his own image. She has limbs which act; lungs which breather; a heart

which beats; a nervous system through runs electricity. The photograph is the image of his voice;

the camera the image of his eye. The machine is his 'daughter born without a mother.' That is why

he loves her. He has made the machine superior to himself. That is why he admires her. Having

made her superior to himself, he endows the superior beings which he conceives in his poetry and

in his plastique with the qualities of machines..Man gave her every qualification except thought.

She submits to his will but he must direct her activities. Without him she remains a wonderful

being, but without aim or anatomy. Through their mating they complete one another. She bring

forth according to his conceptions."

De Zayas continues this imagery with:

"A group on men in France has flooded our inner world with the light of a new plastic expression.

Stieglitz, in America through photography, has shown us, as far as possible, the objectivity of our

outer world.

I speak of that photography in which the genius of man leaves to the machine its full power of

expression. For it is only thus that we can reach a comprehension of pure objectivity.

Objective truth takes precedence over Stieglitz in his work. By means of a machine he shows us

the outer life."

The back cover is a French translation of the front cover. There is nothing else in the issue.

"Femme (Elle)", by Marius de

Zayas; Voilà Elle, by Francis

Picabia. Published in 291, No 9

1915

[edit]No. 9, November 1915

Cover: Untitled (Still

Life), drawing by Braque

Page 2: Femme! (Elle),

typographic layout by

Marius de Zayas

Page 3: Voilà Elle,

drawing by Francis

Picabia

Back cover: Violin,

drawing by Picasso

The front and back covers were reproductions of art works that had been exhibited at the 291

gallery in January of that year. Both pieces are Cubist variations on a violin.

Inside was the visual poem Femme (Elle) by de Zayas and Picabia's machine drawing Voilà Elle,

starkly opposing and complimenting each other at the same time. Literature professor Dickran

Tashjian suggests that "the woman of the poem and the woman of the machine drawings are one

and the same…The juxtaposition of the poem and the drawing…leads the viewer into a

mechanistic universe where correspondences between the feminine ideal and the mindless

machine are overwhelming. Just as the machine ironically undercuts the ideal, the entire

mechanomorphic mythology derives its power from an inhuman eroticism. The circle is completed

as one feeds upon the other."[2]

A contemporary critic reported that "according to the artists' sworn word these works were portraits

of the same woman made at different times and in different places without collusion."[7] However, it

has been argued that if the two artists did not collaborate then de Zayas must have modeled his

composition on that of Picabia.[7]

[edit]Nos. 10-11, December 1915-January 1916

Cover:

untitled

collage by

Picasso

Page

2: Picasso,

drawing by

Marius de

Zayas

Page

3: Fantasi

e, drawing

by Francis

Picabia;

*Musique,

poem

by Georges

Ribemont-

Dessaigne

s

Back

cover: La

Vie

Artistique,

essay by

C. Max

Jacob

The inclusion of both Braque and Picasso in this issue signaled a "dispersion of 291 into non-Dada

avant-garde concerns."[2] By this time it was clear to the editors that 291 was not sustainable

financially, and they appeared to be running out of energy. While Picasso and Braque were still

controversial, the reproduction of their art was straightforward and lacking in any dynamic

connection to the rest of the contents. Picabia's drawing, subtitled "L'Homme créa Die à son

image" (Man created God in his own image), suggested Dadaist shock tactics in its Biblical

inversion of the phrase, but it's simple lines failed to create any similar visual encounter.

[edit]No. 12, February 1916

Cover:

photog

raph of

an

Ogoué

e-

Congo

Sculpt

ure

Page

2: Nar

cosis,

poem

by

Kathari

ne

Rhoad

es;

"Mode

rn

Art...N

egro

Art...",

essay

by

Marius

de

Zayas

Page

3: We

Live in

a

World..

.,

comm

entary

by

Picabi

a; Ten

nis

Player

—

Servin

g,

photog

raph of

a

sculptu

re by

Mrs. A.

Roose

velt

Back

cover: 

La Vie

Artistiq

ue,

essay

by C.

Max

Jacob

The twelfth and final issue of 291 either ended things on a fairly optimistic note or continued the

ironic expression of its Dadaist roots, depending upon how one chooses to read it. It is anchored

by two short essays by de Zayas and Picabia. The former discussed African art and its influences

on Picasso, while Picabia waxed poetic about the nature of art. He ended his short essay by

saying "I maintain…that the painting of today is the most truthful and purest expression of our

modern life." Critics are unresolved about his intent in this statement; some see it as simple

appreciation of his fellow artists, while others view it as yet another Dadaist comment deriding the

current artistic scene. Given that the cover of the issue was an African mask (shown at the "Negro

Art Exhibition" at 291 in 1914), it would have been in keeping with the editors' initial spirit for

Picabia's comment to have been an ironic statement viewed in juxtaposition to the "primitive" art of

the mask.[2]

Below Picabia's comments is a photo of a sculpture by Adelheid Lange Roosevelt, an American

Cubist artist. Roosevelt was an acquaintance of de Zayas, and he exhibited some of her works at

his gallery.