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AnnArbor, MI48106 ---------- - -------- _.- TOWARD A TECHNOLOGICAL IMAGINATION: AVANT-GARDE, TECHNOLOGY, AND THE CREATION OF AN AMERICAN A.~T A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE DIVISION OF THE ~. UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN AMERICAN STUDIES DECEMBER 1990 By Hye-Sun Yang Dissertation committee: David Stannard, Chairperson David Bertelson­ Reuel Denney Floyd Matson Wimal Dissanayake To my parents, Yun-Hwa Yanq and Yonq-Ah Kim iii ACUOWLBDGEHBN'l'S For the completion of the present work and, in fact, for my entire graduate work, lowe so much to so many people--my family, my friends, and my teachers, all very dear to me. I am quite frustrated at my inability to express properly my gratitude to them for all their support and love. I would like to thank East-West center in Honolulu, Hawaii for the grant which made my graduate work possible. Yet, most of all, I am grateful to the Center for the world and the people it has brought to me. The value of my experience at the Center is priceless and will last forever. For the preliminary research for the present work, I am most thankful to the staff at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale university for their help and hospitality. My special gratitude is to Ann Maru for her high spirit and warm heart. without the constant support and compassionate understanding from my teachers, it would have been extremely difficult for me to complete the present work. I am eternally grateful to the members of my dissertation committee--Profs. David stannard, David Bertelson, Wimal Dissanayake, Reuel Denney, and Floyd Matson--for their guidance and encouragement throughout the whole period of iv "dissertating." My special thanks is to Prof. Bertelson for his analytical reading and editorial help, not to mention his moral support. My indebtedness to Prof. stannard, my advisor, is simply immeasurable. His brilliance and humanity have always made things much brighter. There are those who came along into my life one day and have stood by me since then. I call them "friends." I am grateful for the constancy of their presence that I can count on. My deepest gratitude for their support and love goes to Nancy Hilson, Jamuna Ramakrishna, Caroline Sinavaiana, Alyssa Miller, Matt McGranaghan, craig Mulling, Doris and Ave Ramos, Gale Awaya, and Hobey Hanna. If I have achieved anything through the completion of the present work, it would have been impossible without the love of my family. However small the achievement, it is all theirs, a token of my love for them. v .- - ----------- ABSTRACT The present work examines the debate among post­ World War I American artists and writers concerning the creation of an indigenous American art in the age of machine technology and their opposing ideas on the relationship between art and the reality of mechanical mass production. The debate on the high art tradition which had dichotomized art and life and the subsequent avant-garde attempt to reintegrate the two realms goes beyond specific American conditions to involve the general ideology of the historical avant-garde movement. The present study focuses on Dada, which had a vital influence on the post-World War I American avant-garde as Americans strove to construct their own indigenous art, which would be viable in the highly technologized environment of modern American mass. society• As European Dadaists launched an anti-art rebellion against the tradition of high art and culture, which they found excessively restrictive and self-isolating from life itself, they turned to the American scene of machine technology to find the materials for constructing an alternative culture which would bring art and life together. In this context, the present work examines how Americans themselves, more specifically, those who formed vi two opposing groups in the pages of Broom and Secession, responded to the Dadaists' craze for American modernity in their own debate surrounding the creation of viable American culture. The present work examines the main debate between Broom and Secession groups as an ideological confrontation of avant-garde and modernism on the nature of art in the age of machine technology. Furthermore, it employs the antithetic ideologies of Theodor W. Adorno and Walter Benjamin on art and technology and thus attempts to place the American debate in a larger socio­ cultural framework of opposing ideologies of post-world War I avant-garde and modernism. vii TABLB OJ' CONTDrrS Acknowledgements .•••••...••..•...•••................ i v Abstract vi Introduction 1 Chapter I Walter Benjamin: Art and Mechanical Reproduction ....... 24 Chapter II Theodor A. Adorno: Art and the Culture Industry .......... 53 Chapter III The Benjamin-Adorno Debate .............. 86 Chapter IV High Art versus Mass Culture: on the Historical Avant-Garde ......... 106 Chapter V Dada .................................... 131 Chapter VI New York Dada painting versus Straight Photography •. 155 Primitivism and American Technology ••. 164 Francis Picabia and Machine Paintings•• 174 Marcel Duchamp and Readymades.••••••••• 182 Chapter VII The Broom-Secession Debate From the Red Man to Skyscraper Primitives 198 The Emergence of the Debate 205 The Creation of an American Art . 224 "An Imaginary Conversation" 237 Conclusion .......................................... 253 Bibliography 270 viii INTRODUCTION The present study examines the debate among post­ World War I American artists and writers concerning the creation of an indigenous American art in the age of machine technology and their opposing ideas on the relationship between art and the reality of mechanical mass production. While the creation of an American art independent of European tradition has been historically a deep-rooted major cultural concern for Americans, the debate on the high art tradition which had dichotomized art and life and the sUbsequent avant-garde attempt to reintegrate the two realms goes beyond specific American conditions to involve the general ideolo3Y of the historical avant-garde movement. 1 The various movements which come under the categor.y of the historical avant-garde share fundamentally anti­ aesthetic ideologies with one another. In the present study I focus on Dada, which had a significant influence on the post-World War I American avant-garde as Americans strove to construct their own indigenous art, which would be viable in the highly technologized environment of modern American mass society. As European Dadaists launched an anti-art rebellion against the tradition of high art and cUlture, which they found excessively restrictive and self-isolating from 1 life itself, they turned to the American scene of machine technology to find the materials for constructing an alternative culture which would bring art and life together. In this context, I aim to examine how Americans themselves, more specifically, those who formed two opposing groups in their modernist versus avant-garde ideas on art and technology, responded to the Dadaists' craze for American modernity in their own debate surrounding the creation of a viable American culture. After examining Dada's anti-aesthetic ideology in general and the nature of post-World War I American avant-garde activities which were closely related to Dada, I follow in detail the American debate surrounding machine aesthetics in the pages of Broom and Secession, the two main opposing voices in the matter. The anti­ aesthetic stance of Broom follows the line of historical avant-garde ideology, while Secession expresses the traditional modernist insistence upon tne separation of art from daily life. The Secession group saw machine technology mainly as on instrumentality for material production.