Merzbow's _Tauromachine_ explained
sean and james quirk
Otto-Freidrich University of Bamberg_ (Vol. 40 [1] - 1998)
_Ritual Transgression Between Primitivism and Surrealism: _Tauromachia_
and the Ethnographic Imagination_
by Hans-Peter Kopping
Abstract:
"From the turn of the century, European artists have taken 'tribal art'
pieces, in particular African sculptures, as inspiration to
revolutionize those stylistic conventions that they perceived as
obsolete. The whole movement of 'primitivism' focussed on the exotic
forms of tribal art, which were taken out of their context in creation
and usage as well as meaning and imputed with values considered lacking
in Western civilization. Exotic art production was perceived as being
close to the origins of human creativity and a direct expression of
emotive and psychic states. Pieces which were usually used in their
indigenous context in religion and ritual were now re-interpreted
according to European aesthetic needs.
"In 1937, however, Michel Leiris, who followed most of the European
artistic innovations, approached the _corrida_ of Spain, one of the
surviving 'primitive' mass spectacles of Europe, in an anthropological
spirit. While imbuing it with his own notions of eroticism, he developed
in his _Tauromachia_ a genuinely innovative theory of ritual which found
strong resonance in the ideas of other members of the surrealist
movement around the unorthodox 'college de sociolgie,' such as Georges
Bataille [author of _The Impossible_] and Roger Caillois. All three
concentrated on the idea of ritual as transgressive mode in relation to
the normative social order. Through his analysis of the _corrida_ as a
transgressive ritual that in his opinion combines notions of death and
the erotic, Leiris also developed a particular notion of the aesthetic
as being inherently and necessarily connected to the presence of a
'blemish,' a transgressive rupture, an idea which, as this essay argues,
has affinities with the artistic understanding of Picasso as expressed
in a number of productions which culminate in the 'Guernica' of the same
year (1937). The essay closes with a tentative connection between the
European search for re-invigorating artistic expressions through a
return to the 'imagined primitive' and Leiris' attempt at ethnographic
work that puts the researcher's self in focus."
Passionist
sean and james quirk assures us: