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An anagram of ideas on art, form and film
The following passages are excerpts from this short but important treatise on film.
1c
“My extended analysis and criticism of the naturalistic method in art is inspired by my intimate awareness of how much the very nature of photography, more than any other art form, may seduce the artist (and spectator) into such an esthetic.
The most immediate distinction of film is the capacity of the camera to represent a given reality in its own terms, to the extent that it is accepted as a substitute proper for that reality. A photograph will serve as proof of the “truth” of some phenomenon where either a painting or a verbal testimony would fail to carry weight. In other art forms, the artist is the intermediary between reality and the instrument by which he creates his work of art. But in photography, the reality passes directly through the lens of the camera to be immediately recorded on film, and this relationship may, at times, dispense with all but the most manual services of a human being, and even, under certain conditions, produce film almost “untouched by human hands.” The position of the camera in reference to reality can be either a source of strength, as when the “realism” of photography is used to create an imaginative reality; or it can seduce the photographer into relying upon the mechanism itself to the extent that his conscious manipulations are reduced to a minimum.
…By some strange process of ambiguous association (which most photographers are only too willing to leave uncorrected) the perceptiveness and precision of a photograph is somehow understood to be an expression of the perceptiveness of the eyes of the photographer…
…
In the meantime…a concern with social reality had branched off as a specific field of film activity.
The first newsreels of important historical events…differ from the newsreels of today only in terms again of a refined technique, but from them came the documentary film, a curious amalgamation of scientific and social concerns. It is not a coincidence that Robert Flaherty, who is considered the father of the documentary film, was first an explorer, and that his motivation in carrying a camera with him was part anthropological, part social and part romantic. He had discovered a world which was beyond the horizon of most men. He was moved both by its pictorial and its human values; and his achievement consists of recording it with sympathetic, and relative accuracy. The documentary of discovery—whether it records a natural, a social, or a scientific phenomenon—can be of inestimable value. It can bring within the reach of even the most sedentary individual a wealth of experience which would otherwise come only to the curious, the painstaking and the heroic.
1c
“My extended analysis and criticism of the naturalistic method in art is inspired by my intimate awareness of how much the very nature of photography, more than any other art form, may seduce the artist (and spectator) into such an esthetic.
The most immediate distinction of film is the capacity of the camera to represent a given reality in its own terms, to the extent that it is accepted as a substitute proper for that reality. A photograph will serve as proof of the “truth” of some phenomenon where either a painting or a verbal testimony would fail to carry weight. In other art forms, the artist is the intermediary between reality and the instrument by which he creates his work of art. But in photography, the reality passes directly through the lens of the camera to be immediately recorded on film, and this relationship may, at times, dispense with all but the most manual services of a human being, and even, under certain conditions, produce film almost “untouched by human hands.” The position of the camera in reference to reality can be either a source of strength, as when the “realism” of photography is used to create an imaginative reality; or it can seduce the photographer into relying upon the mechanism itself to the extent that his conscious manipulations are reduced to a minimum.
…By some strange process of ambiguous association (which most photographers are only too willing to leave uncorrected) the perceptiveness and precision of a photograph is somehow understood to be an expression of the perceptiveness of the eyes of the photographer…
…
In the meantime…a concern with social reality had branched off as a specific field of film activity.
The first newsreels of important historical events…differ from the newsreels of today only in terms again of a refined technique, but from them came the documentary film, a curious amalgamation of scientific and social concerns. It is not a coincidence that Robert Flaherty, who is considered the father of the documentary film, was first an explorer, and that his motivation in carrying a camera with him was part anthropological, part social and part romantic. He had discovered a world which was beyond the horizon of most men. He was moved both by its pictorial and its human values; and his achievement consists of recording it with sympathetic, and relative accuracy. The documentary of discovery—whether it records a natural, a social, or a scientific phenomenon—can be of inestimable value. It can bring within the reach of even the most sedentary individual a wealth of experience which would otherwise come only to the curious, the painstaking and the heroic.
- GenresArtFilmNonfictionTheory
52 pages, Pamphlet
First published January 1, 1946
About the author
Maya Deren
21 books80 followers"Maya Deren (April 29, 1917, Kiev – October 13, 1961, New York City), born Eleanora Derenkowsky, was an American avant-garde filmmaker and film theorist of the 1940s and 1950s. Deren was also a choreographer, dancer, poet, writer and photographer."
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_Deren
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_Deren
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
August 24, 2023
Maya Deren is an absolute genius. Her ideas in the book aren't revolutionary, unlike her peers, but you get a sense of her macro perspective and extensive thinking that transcends all art forms and theories. Her critique of abstract art and film that one would presume to come from an emotional place is rather utterly logical and objective. She has a refreshing scientific approach to art theory that was a delight to read.
December 29, 2022
"Creativity consists in a logical, imaginative extension of a known reality" (16).
Maya Deren, who once famously said, “I make my pictures for what Hollywood spends on lipstick,” is one of my favorite filmmakers. Her bold and experimental work made her a pioneer of 1940s/1950s Surrealist film. It makes sense that her academic writing would be similarly captivating and layered.
Although comparatively brief, this anagram (a format she chose to be antithetical to manifesto) is an incredibly dense read. I was annotating furiously and felt like I was back at Wheaton. :')
Since film isn't my primary area of study, I'm sure there were references that escaped me, but I still thoroughly enjoyed Deren's framework for art and form and her allusions to kindredness between the economy of poetry and film. I love her penchant for dropping profound phrases and then just moving right along: "Slow-motion is the microscope of time" (47). For a booklet only fifty pages long, Deren is remarkably ambitious in scope. She details "horizontal memory" (vs. the vertical, immediate memory of animals) as able to deviate from chronological experience, a phenomenon that can be made evident in the space-time medium of film. She continues that "memory makes possible imagination" (13). And what is the purpose of art, the fecund result of such imagination? According to Deren, "art must at least comprehend the large facts of its total culture and, at best, extend them imaginatively" (16). "The distinction of art is that it is neither simply an expression of pain, for example, nor an impression of pain but is itself a form which creates pain" (17). In her mind, film isn't reproducing reality but "creating an illusion of reality" (35). Also, I can't stop thinking about her statement that literature has to "fail to make creative use of its verbal instrument... [to be] made into a good film" (41).
Overall, a thought-provoking read and insightful for approaching her filmography; towards the end, Deren even references time and space in her "film dance" and "At Land" projects outright. I didn't agree with every point shared, but this treatise acts as an interesting foil for Christian approaches to art-making, like those written by Simone Weil or Madeleine L'Engle. Also, Deren and Kafka are the ultimate Surrealist crossover of the twentieth century! I geeked out when Deren referenced "The Trial." I mustn't forget that she refers to Hollywood as "a Dantesque purgatory" (39). Iconic.
Maya Deren, who once famously said, “I make my pictures for what Hollywood spends on lipstick,” is one of my favorite filmmakers. Her bold and experimental work made her a pioneer of 1940s/1950s Surrealist film. It makes sense that her academic writing would be similarly captivating and layered.
Although comparatively brief, this anagram (a format she chose to be antithetical to manifesto) is an incredibly dense read. I was annotating furiously and felt like I was back at Wheaton. :')
Since film isn't my primary area of study, I'm sure there were references that escaped me, but I still thoroughly enjoyed Deren's framework for art and form and her allusions to kindredness between the economy of poetry and film. I love her penchant for dropping profound phrases and then just moving right along: "Slow-motion is the microscope of time" (47). For a booklet only fifty pages long, Deren is remarkably ambitious in scope. She details "horizontal memory" (vs. the vertical, immediate memory of animals) as able to deviate from chronological experience, a phenomenon that can be made evident in the space-time medium of film. She continues that "memory makes possible imagination" (13). And what is the purpose of art, the fecund result of such imagination? According to Deren, "art must at least comprehend the large facts of its total culture and, at best, extend them imaginatively" (16). "The distinction of art is that it is neither simply an expression of pain, for example, nor an impression of pain but is itself a form which creates pain" (17). In her mind, film isn't reproducing reality but "creating an illusion of reality" (35). Also, I can't stop thinking about her statement that literature has to "fail to make creative use of its verbal instrument... [to be] made into a good film" (41).
Overall, a thought-provoking read and insightful for approaching her filmography; towards the end, Deren even references time and space in her "film dance" and "At Land" projects outright. I didn't agree with every point shared, but this treatise acts as an interesting foil for Christian approaches to art-making, like those written by Simone Weil or Madeleine L'Engle. Also, Deren and Kafka are the ultimate Surrealist crossover of the twentieth century! I geeked out when Deren referenced "The Trial." I mustn't forget that she refers to Hollywood as "a Dantesque purgatory" (39). Iconic.
May 15, 2024
Ainda lidando com a dificuldade desse texto, que só parece repetir algumas ideias sobre arte e cinema bastante difundidas (em debates sobre especificidade do meio, depuração formal ou Gestalt). Em 1946, afinal, a escrita de Maya Deren está assombrada pela bomba atômica.
A bomba atômica: não a especificidade de cada meio como horizonte da experiência e da experimentação estética, mas uma espécie de meio absoluto, que, generalizando-se sobre tudo, aniquila toda variação de meios e homogeniza o que poderia haver de específico em cada um.
A bomba atômica: não a depuração formal da busca modernista pela essência das artes, mas a imposição da fixação definitiva de toda vida, todo mundo e todo o mundo em forma morta, pureza imponente da arte e da técnica quando reduzidas à condição de instrumentos.
A bomba atômica: não a configuração da Gestalt da forma artística, que é maior do que a soma de suas partes, mas a operação da Gestalt do fogo inextinguível que (como o napalm a que se refere o filme homônimo de Harun Farocki) se projeta como forma aniquiladora de suas partes.
Talvez seja preciso traduzir, ler e reler, interrogar "Um anagrama de ideias sobre arte, forma e cinema", de Maya Deren, como uma alegoria filosófica da era atômica como época técnico-artística à qual insistentemente pertencemos, ainda que nem sempre nos lembremos disso.
Como ler, por exemplo, uma frase como "The history of art is the history of man and of his universe and of the moral relationship between them", no cap. 3c? Como tornar legível o que define, quando Maya Deren escreve esta frase, a relação entre "homem" e "universo"?
Se consideramos outros trechos do livro, é talvez com a assombração da energia nuclear, o espectro da aniquilação total e o fantasma da bomba atômica que será preciso relacionar tanto os problemas estéticos quanto os problemas morais que Deren discute e que, para ela, são inseparáveis.
Na primeira frase do cap. 1a, já estamos diante de uma suposta "inertia of the people towards the atom bomb", que Deren justifica como decorrente de uma aceitação da ciência, em geral: "The almost casual acceptance of the use of atomic energy is, if anything, testimony to man's complete adjustment to science".
Se a ciência está relacionada a uma "long series of achievements, some of which, like electricity and the radio, have had far more the quality of miracle", diante da energia e da bomba atômica, "the miracle-makers themselves, at this late date, seem to be attempting to reopen the first of all questions: to bite or not to bite of the forbidden fruit."
Reaberta, essa questão é também uma questão poética, isto é, a um tempo, segundo a perspectiva de Deren, estética e moral, e é significativo que, como ela escreve, "man might find poetic justice in an atomic bomb formed in the shape of an apple." No decorrer de todo o texto, Deren parece se inquietar diante da possibilidade de "justiça poética" associada a "uma bomba atômica formada com os contornos de uma maçã", perguntando: o que pode a arte? O que pode o cinema?
A resposta dela é longa, eventualmente limitada por preocupações puristas características de um certo modernismo, de que é uma das herdeiras mais inventivas no campo cinematográfico. Mas o que me parece mais interessante é que é uma resposta assombrada pela relação com a bomba atômica.
Deren conclui o cap. 1a com um reconhecimento da bomba atômica como uma espécie de realização estética: "That which the sur-realists labor and sweat to achieve, and end by only simulating, can be accomplished in full reality, by the atom bomb."
No restante do livro, talvez suas propostas possam ser (re)lidas como uma tentativa de descobrir e inventar (dois termos cruciais para sua agenda artística), na arte e no cinema, alguma capacidade de lidar com a bomba atômica (e com o horror da guerra, ao qual ela também se refere de forma bastante contundente).
A bomba atômica: não a especificidade de cada meio como horizonte da experiência e da experimentação estética, mas uma espécie de meio absoluto, que, generalizando-se sobre tudo, aniquila toda variação de meios e homogeniza o que poderia haver de específico em cada um.
A bomba atômica: não a depuração formal da busca modernista pela essência das artes, mas a imposição da fixação definitiva de toda vida, todo mundo e todo o mundo em forma morta, pureza imponente da arte e da técnica quando reduzidas à condição de instrumentos.
A bomba atômica: não a configuração da Gestalt da forma artística, que é maior do que a soma de suas partes, mas a operação da Gestalt do fogo inextinguível que (como o napalm a que se refere o filme homônimo de Harun Farocki) se projeta como forma aniquiladora de suas partes.
Talvez seja preciso traduzir, ler e reler, interrogar "Um anagrama de ideias sobre arte, forma e cinema", de Maya Deren, como uma alegoria filosófica da era atômica como época técnico-artística à qual insistentemente pertencemos, ainda que nem sempre nos lembremos disso.
Como ler, por exemplo, uma frase como "The history of art is the history of man and of his universe and of the moral relationship between them", no cap. 3c? Como tornar legível o que define, quando Maya Deren escreve esta frase, a relação entre "homem" e "universo"?
Se consideramos outros trechos do livro, é talvez com a assombração da energia nuclear, o espectro da aniquilação total e o fantasma da bomba atômica que será preciso relacionar tanto os problemas estéticos quanto os problemas morais que Deren discute e que, para ela, são inseparáveis.
Na primeira frase do cap. 1a, já estamos diante de uma suposta "inertia of the people towards the atom bomb", que Deren justifica como decorrente de uma aceitação da ciência, em geral: "The almost casual acceptance of the use of atomic energy is, if anything, testimony to man's complete adjustment to science".
Se a ciência está relacionada a uma "long series of achievements, some of which, like electricity and the radio, have had far more the quality of miracle", diante da energia e da bomba atômica, "the miracle-makers themselves, at this late date, seem to be attempting to reopen the first of all questions: to bite or not to bite of the forbidden fruit."
Reaberta, essa questão é também uma questão poética, isto é, a um tempo, segundo a perspectiva de Deren, estética e moral, e é significativo que, como ela escreve, "man might find poetic justice in an atomic bomb formed in the shape of an apple." No decorrer de todo o texto, Deren parece se inquietar diante da possibilidade de "justiça poética" associada a "uma bomba atômica formada com os contornos de uma maçã", perguntando: o que pode a arte? O que pode o cinema?
A resposta dela é longa, eventualmente limitada por preocupações puristas características de um certo modernismo, de que é uma das herdeiras mais inventivas no campo cinematográfico. Mas o que me parece mais interessante é que é uma resposta assombrada pela relação com a bomba atômica.
Deren conclui o cap. 1a com um reconhecimento da bomba atômica como uma espécie de realização estética: "That which the sur-realists labor and sweat to achieve, and end by only simulating, can be accomplished in full reality, by the atom bomb."
No restante do livro, talvez suas propostas possam ser (re)lidas como uma tentativa de descobrir e inventar (dois termos cruciais para sua agenda artística), na arte e no cinema, alguma capacidade de lidar com a bomba atômica (e com o horror da guerra, ao qual ela também se refere de forma bastante contundente).
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 22, 2023
Filmic reality and truth are slippery but Maya Deren was determined to hold onto her version of them, reaching for as close to pure expression of pure human experience as possible (the camera is always a separate entity) against “realism”. She spends a few pages decrying documentary as an overrated form that does not approximate truth any better than fictional/constructed films; here, she comically quotes Alexander Hammid in support of creative expression + ecstatic truth within good docs without acknowledging they were married. Her thoughts on the supposed ethics of war films suggest a kinship with Godard. Overall very cool even when I got lost in the metaphysics. No idea how you could possibly read this the first time out of order, as per Deren’s instructions and the confusing contents page, but that’s a rad idea.
Hilarious passage where she condemns corporate Hollywood product (though her class politics are today rather dated, solidarity with the unions): “As the film industry became secure and also subject to the scrutiny of French, British and German cultural criteria, it became culturally defensive, and interested in achieving ‘class’ on an intellectual level. In typical ‘nouveau-riche’ fashion, the studios began to buy some of the more ‘intellectual’ writers almost in the way that a piano, prominently displayed, is widely used to lend an aspect of refinement to a home. And just as piano lessons are rarely pursued to the point of any real musical accomplishment or understanding, so I doubt that there has ever been any real intention to make use of the real capacity of the best writers. The Hollywood writer cannot be blamed for a reluctance to recognise or admit the humiliating, decorative purpose for which he receives his irresistible salaries and so is angry and bewildered at being forced to function in films on a level far below that which ostensibly induced the original bargain. There are times when this situation creates an impression of Hollywood as no less than a Dantesque purgatory from which rise, incessantly, the hysterical protests of violated virgins.” She then immediately praises Buster Keaton. Maya Deren!
Hilarious passage where she condemns corporate Hollywood product (though her class politics are today rather dated, solidarity with the unions): “As the film industry became secure and also subject to the scrutiny of French, British and German cultural criteria, it became culturally defensive, and interested in achieving ‘class’ on an intellectual level. In typical ‘nouveau-riche’ fashion, the studios began to buy some of the more ‘intellectual’ writers almost in the way that a piano, prominently displayed, is widely used to lend an aspect of refinement to a home. And just as piano lessons are rarely pursued to the point of any real musical accomplishment or understanding, so I doubt that there has ever been any real intention to make use of the real capacity of the best writers. The Hollywood writer cannot be blamed for a reluctance to recognise or admit the humiliating, decorative purpose for which he receives his irresistible salaries and so is angry and bewildered at being forced to function in films on a level far below that which ostensibly induced the original bargain. There are times when this situation creates an impression of Hollywood as no less than a Dantesque purgatory from which rise, incessantly, the hysterical protests of violated virgins.” She then immediately praises Buster Keaton. Maya Deren!
March 21, 2024
maya deren was such a legendary figure
August 29, 2023
With "An Anagram of Ideas on Art, Form and Film" Deren not only writes her definitive take on the formal possibilities of film and the responsibilities of the filmmaker -- she writes a pretty thorough treatise on art and displacement in the twentieth century, and the unique role film can play in addressing the issues of our times.
Being Queen of the Amateur and Underground, she published this unbelievably significant work -- basically -- as a 'zine. All hail Maya.
Being Queen of the Amateur and Underground, she published this unbelievably significant work -- basically -- as a 'zine. All hail Maya.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews