Beckett’s writing and the ‘absurd’

I wrote this years and years ago, which is why it doesn't really go into too much detail

‘We are alone. We cannot know and cannot be known. Man is the creature that cannot come forth from himself…’[1]

Samuel Beckett along with playwrights Jean Genet, Arthur Adamov, and Eugene Ionesco are thought to be the four defining figures in the movement known as the ‘Theatre of the Absurd’. The term was coined by Martin Esslin to account for the works of writers whose subject matter dealt with themes of humanities sense of scepticism and confusion regarding the purpose of their existence, the futility of language to express meaning, and the disintegration of societies valued concepts of faith, truth, and empirical knowledge. These feelings of disillusionment can be attributed to Modernism at the beginning and middle twentieth century, which saw the end of Romanticism, the outbreaks of World War One and Two, technological advancements, philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s claim that God was dead, increased secularism in Western societies and failed revolutions.  The ‘absurd’ is a term first applied in the work of the French existentialist Albert Camus who observes that the absurd emerges in ‘that odd state of soul in which the void becomes eloquent, in which the chain of daily gestures is broken, in which the heart vainly seeks the link that will connect it again’.[2] The theatre of the absurd deviated enormously from Realist theatre and the well made plays of Shaw and Ibsen. Beckett, (along with the writers mentioned) disliked being affiliated with any type of umbrella group, he simply wished to express his vision of the world as he saw it, yet similarities can be drawn within his work and that of the other ‘absurdist’s’. Beckett does flirt with ideas of French existentialism and symbolism, and these aspects of his work will be explored further. Esslin the introduction to his nineteen eighty-six book, writes that the theatre of the absurd must be understood as ‘a kind of intellectual shorthand for a complex pattern of similarities, approach, method, and convention, of shared philosophical and artistic premises, whether conscious or subconscious, and of influences from a common store of tradition’.[3]

Albert Camus

The ‘theatre of the absurd’ confronts it’s audiences with questions concerning man’s position within the world which then opens up other questions regarding the nature of the world. It is not concerned with supplying answers to these queries or the dilemmas of its characters; rather it just serves to present the authors subjective vision of the world into which his characters are placed. The absurd is found in the works of Beckett. It is presented through alienated characters that are often presented as grotesque or disembodied psyches, trapped in repetitive circular existences, through ambiguous philosophical queries regarding the purpose or purposelessness of living and the subversion of language and simple plot lines which serve to confuse audiences and deny catharsis. These are trademark fixtures in Beckett who has produced some of the most enduring visual theatre images, and reintroduced new possibilities within dramatic convention. Beckett’s characters find (or condemn) themselves to an inner reality from which meaningful outside contact with the world is denied. This will be emphasised in the play Endgame but it is also a current theme in Beckett’s other works. In Play we are presented with the enduring image of three protagonists, who are viewed in three large urns, their heads only visible. They are condemned to repeat themselves and their banalities for infinity, forever under interrogation by an omnipotent searchlight. In Not I, only a mouth is visible as it spits out a manic frenzied babble. The surrealism of the situations that the protagonists find themselves within further serves to emphasise the problem of trying to understand the nature of the world. Ruby Cohn notes that Beckett characters are ‘seeking sense and sensibility in an indifferent cosmos, reflecting the Absurdity of the Macrocosm in the absurd details of his microcosm, the Beckett hero cries out in the frustration of his humanity, which is our own’.[4]

Endgame

Bertolt Brecht in his plays used alienation affects to force his audiences into contemplating issues concerning their own personal and social environments. He broke down the fourth wall and allowed the ‘mechanics’ of the stage to be seen so that the audience is fully aware they are watching a play.[5] Beckett contemporises the alienation affect which still results in the confusion of his audiences. This philosophical confusion serves to mirror the confusing realities of the subject close to Beckett’s heart; the confrontation of man with his existence, what it means to be human and alive when death is always impending. In Play and Not I the monologue of each character is set to a very fast rhythm, often completely incoherent. It is difficult to follow every word that is being said. The idea behind this was that the content of the dialogue was not important. For Richard Begam, Beckett constructs a ‘universe of pure linguistic aesthesis…his sentences arrange themselves into shapely but increasingly meaningless patterns’.[6]  As language is a fundamental part of the process of theatre, the breakdown in the verbal structure comes as a surprise and confuses the audiences attending his plays. Beckett once told the actress Jessica Tandy who would be playing Mouth in Not I that ‘I am not unduly concerned with intelligibility. I hope the piece may work on the nerves of its audiences, not its intellect’.[7] The repetitiveness of the dialogue involving Mouth, the two W’s, and M, in Play perpetuates a perplexity involving the fact that nothing can ever be resolved within the characters minds. Self knowledge and peace are never attained because of the refusal of the characters to engage in or attempt understanding either their other selves (as in Mouths case) or each other (as in W1, W2, and M’s case). The characters are obsessed with their own states of mind.

Happy Days

Throughout Beckett’s writings are characters drowning under the burden of consciousness, out of which the self desperately tries to escape but cannot. “God the bastard, doesn’t exist’ and so cannot help end the suffering, the anguish continues without hope of an ending as time seems always to be ‘zero’ and so it is a game of waiting for the end which is never in sight.[8] This can be observed in Endgame and Happy Days. Endgame’s Hamm, (who cannot stand) and Clov (who cannot sit) are trapped within a room which separates them from the exterior hell of the other side. Endgame’s tragedy lies in the presence of an inescapable interiority. Time stands still, ‘What time is it? The same as usual’.[9]    The structure of the action is circular. From the opening lines of the play when Clov announces ‘it’s finished, nearly finished it must be nearly finished,’ we are aware that from the beginning there is a sense of ending.[10] The only journey Hamm makes is a circular one within the interior of the dark room that binds all characters. Clov repeatedly wishes to leave but cannot, Hamm  which rhymes with man, ignores the existentialist idea that man needs to find meaning in something to justify living. He repeatedly wishes to end it all but cannot, so instead of action he focuses upon his soliloquies and maintaining some aspect of control over Clov, ‘I’ll give you nothing more to eat. I’ll give you just enough to keep you from dying’.[11]  The threat of continuation is represented in sightings of a boy outside the window, the flea and a rat in the kitchen. This knowledge upsets Clov as they represent life, and new being beyond his own. This is the central predicament of the play, a stagnant waiting around to die, instead of trying to mean something, waiting for the day to end, a denial of life, a yearning to ‘be all gone’ which never comes.[12] Even at the end of the play Hamm assumes the position he held at the beginning placing the blood stained cloth over his face. Critics such as Vivian Mercer and Theodore Adorno have interpreted the outside of the room as post nuclear devastation or a war ravaged Normandy. I prefer Hugh Kenner’s interpretation that the setting represents a mentality. The room is the interior of a skull. [13] The two windows are the eyes, Hamm is the unmoving paralysed brain and Clov represents emotion. Whatever the interpretation, all can be related to nothingness, the refusal of the mentalities of characters to acknowledge anything outside the concerns preoccupying their own interiority, ‘to hell with the universe’.[14] The world beyond the window places emphasis on the emptiness of the inner.

The minimalist, bleak, ideas of alienation, suffering and death are also found in Happy Days.  The protagonist Winnie is one of the most cheerful optimistic characters in a Beckett play, despite her burial in a scorched mound of earth. The cheerfulness in her voice only distracts momentarily from the reality of her situation. Winnie in contrast to the compressed stagnant dialogue in Endgame talks incessantly because she needs to fill the void that surrounds her. She is dependant on her husband Willie as she needs to be seen and heard as a way of confirming her existence. She fears the day when ‘like all the others’ Willie will leave and the dialogue will change to a monologue.[15] Her obsessive meaningless routines of brushing hair and teeth are the response to the emptiness of her existence, and this emptiness is seen in the barren landscape that surrounds her. The presence of a revolver suggests that suicide has been considered an option although, as Clov cannot end Hamm’s life, neither is Winnie able to end her own, a symptom of humanities instinct for self-preservation perhaps? Like Hamm, Winnie is attached to a dying body in an empty universe waiting for the ‘happy day to come when flesh melts at so many degrees and the night of the moon has so many hundred hours’.[16]

 The situations of the previously mentioned characters have nurtured their denial of reality and retreat into repetitive self contained consciousnesses, fleeing from their place (if any) within a chaotic universe. The causes of torment for the characters in Endgame and Happy Days and Beckett’s other works are never apparent, just as the absurdist’s belief that the world is beyond rational comprehension, and chaotic. In order to mean something man must commit himself to something to make life significant. The lack of a final reconciliation in the plays contributes to making Endgame and Happy Days ‘absurd’ plays, and it ties up with the ‘universalising pessimism, the nihilistic strand in the whole of Becketts work’.[17]

The characters are on a journey from nothing to nothing.  In life there is nothing, hence Hamm’s cries to ‘mean something!’ and that is what makes living and the task of self-actualization so pointless so why go on living?[18] Each character fails to answer this question so they simply retreat from the physical world into the inner recesses of the mind, from which there is no way out. This conflict leads to the feelings of Absurdity and to fundamental existential questions about the meaning of human life in a world where man lives confused. Beckett’s plays are firmly grounded in the category of the ‘absurd’, due to their attempts to examine the metaphysical questions regarding the attempt to find meaning within the chaos of existence.

[1] Eric P. Levy, Trapped in Thought: A Study of the Beckettian Mentality. (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2007) p.167.

[2] David Sprintzen, Camus: A critical Examination, ( Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988 )p.52

[3] Martin Esslin, The Theatre of the Absurd. (London:  Penguin Books, 1986) p. 3

[4] Ruby Cohn, Samuel Beckett: the comic gamut, (New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1962) p.290.

[5] Bertolt Brecht, ‘From Alienation Effects in Chinese Acting 1936’, pp.303-305, Richard Drain, Ed, Twentieth-Century Theatre. (London: Routledge, 1995

[6] Levy. p.1.

[7] Sinead Mooney, Samuel Beckett. (Travistock: Northcote House Publishers, 2006) p.69.

[8] Samuel Beckett, The Complete Dramatic Works. (London: Faber and Faber, 2006)  pp.119, 94.

[9] Ibid. p.94.

[10] Ibid. p.93.

[11] Ibid. pp. 94-95.

[12] Ibid. p. 107.

[13] Levy. pp. 165-166

[14] Beckett. p. 114.

[15] Ibid. p. 139.

[16] Ibid. p. 152.

[17] Andrew K. Kennedy, Samuel Beckett. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989) p.63.

[18] Beckett, p. 108.

Bibliography

• Acheson, James, Samuel Beckett’s Artistic Theory and Practice, (London: Macmillan 1997)
• Beckett, Samuel, The Complete Dramatic Works, ()
• Bloom, Harold, ed, Modern Critical Interpretations: Samuel Beckett’s Endgame, (New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1988)
• Brater, Enoch, ‘The Absurd Actor in the Theatre of Samuel Beckett’, Educational Theatre Journal, Vol 23, No. 2, (May 1975) pp.197-207
• Cohn, Ruby, Samuel Beckett: the Comic Gamut, (New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1962)
• Davis, Robin J, Butler, Lance St J, ed, Make Sense Who May: Essays on Samuel Beckett’s Later Works, (Buckinghamshire: Colin Smythe 1990)
• Drain, Richard, ed, Twentieth-Century Theatre, (London: Routledge 1995)
• Esslin, Martin, The Theatre of the Absurd, (London: Penguin Books, 1963)
• Kennedy, Andrew, Samuel Beckett, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989)
• Levy, Eric P, Trapped in Thought: A Study of the Beckettian Mentality, (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2007)
• Mooney, Sinead, Samuel Beckett, (Travistock: Northcote House Publishers, 2006)
• Sprintzen, David, Camus: A Critical Study, (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988)

Solipsist

SOLIPSIST is a three part psychedelic fantasy short film about otherworldly beings whose minds and bodies converge into one entity.  Filled with elaborate costumes, stunning visual effects, and underwater puppets, the film is a non-narrative purely visual/audio experience designed to transport viewers through a hypnotic, dream-like experience.   It consists of three parts, each featuring visually fantastic characters and creatures that converge with each other in surreal ways.  The film concludes by featuring all three segments combine into a colorful, psychedelic finale.

Sometimes trawling the internet is good for something.

This was the winner of the jury prize at the  2012 Slamdance Film Festival for Experimental Short. Slamdance, not to be confused with Sundance is an independent film makers festival held in Utah

Andrew Huang directed the video.  Based in L.A he is an experimental film maker and commercial and music. video director. the concept for the video is based on an alternative theory to Solipsism, a philosophical theory that maintains  that only one's own mind is sure to exist.  The external world  and other minds cannot be known, and might not exist outside the mind.

 "The isolation of this theory inspired me to imagine a counter-hypothesis – a world in which living beings are not constrained by a singular experience, rather, the characters in this film are constantly merging into one another, forming a collective consciousness through unison of their minds and bodies." Huang wrote on his kickstarter page "The visual style of the film is also an integral part of the film’s concept.  My goal is to create a film that is extremely colorful and playful in its materials with an emphasis on practical special effects, costumes and puppetry. "

How did he do it? Watch the making of here

The production and soundtrack are also gorgeous.

 andrewthomashuang.com

Paris, Je t'aime

Last year myself,  Emma, and Sarah arrived in Paris with a view to seeing as much art as possible in the few days that we had. 

No trip to Paris would be complete without a trip to the Eiffel Tower.

 

Monet overwhelmed me

What can critical writing contribute to Contemporary Art?

This is a question I struggled to find a definitive response to. Through my research it seems I am not the only one labouring to define a clear and concise model for the evaluation of critical writing in contemporary art. What has become apparent is a consideration, on the part of some, that the field of critical writing across the arts is in a troubled, unsteady, unregulated and undefined state. It also appears that discourse surrounding the merit of criticism is not a newly conceived debate.  One key aspect is that there has been a failure to define the role of criticism since its inception. Any attempt to close the field into a set of qualities is met with problematic outcomes. In trying to narrow and articulate a response to the aforementioned question, I will respond to some of the varying arguments set out in the publication The State of Art Criticism (The book presents an international conversation among art historians and critics that considers the relation between criticism and art history and poses the question of whether criticism may become a university subject.
Contributors include Dave Hickey, James Panero, Stephen Melville, Lynne Cook, Michael Newman, Whitney Davis, Irit Rogoff, Guy Brett and Boris Groys.)(Elkins, 2008).  I narrow my focus to the responses of two contributors in particular, James Elkins, art historian and art critic and Boris Groys, art critic,  media theorist, and philosopher. Elkins articulates exactly how problematic it might be to confine the practice of art criticism to a rigorous academic discipline or equally, to an ephemeral position dictated by time or context. He suggests that if a critic adopts a particular ‘stance’ or ‘position’ this might be inclusive, problematic and unhealthy for the discourse. Groys touches upon the impact the avant-garde had in scuppering the historical function of the critic. In the course of my response I will make continuous reference to an idea that arose in conversation with a musician friend of mine, which seemed to draw attention to the lack of a coherent critical convention across the field of the arts. I will build upon this idea, while questioning the authority of contemporary critical writing and the possible responsibility it must assume today. By restricting my response to the texts of the aforementioned authors, I seek to narrow my input to an open ended question, which continuously generates responses, articulations and suggestions that would be impossible to touch upon in such a short piece of writing.

In conversation, my colleague and I discussed the notion that perhaps critical writing in art and music can no longer hold the relevance or significance it once did, due to the sheer volume of writing that exists and the public’s ambivalence towards it. While everyone has always had an opinion on matters of taste, meaning, and value in cultural practices, today everybody can state their theories to a potentially infinite audience via the internet. The contemporary art writer does not have to be university trained or employed solely as a writer. The field has opened up and readers of critical writing are inundated with vast amounts of material available for consumption. It is on the basis of such an unregulated freedom that led my colleague to proclaim the death of the critic across all contemporary culture. I must say this declaration somewhat irked me. Open any weekend newspaper and there are still the same writers in residence reviewing albums, exhibitions, and new cinema releases.  Publications like Frieze and Artforum exist and remain popular on the basis of the collected contributions from widely regarded commentators. Popular online blog spots boast a healthy number of hits on a weekly basis, based on what the owners of such sites deem in fashion. I had to disagree with my colleague’s statement and found that Elkins (2008, p.72) sees that art criticism has is in fact flourishing, attracting large numbers of would-be professionals. At the same time, he does acknowledge that even with its large-scale distribution it remains largely ignored by academics and absent from contemporary debates. It is not taken as seriously as writings on aesthetics or art history. This, I hoped, accounted both for my colleagues’ statement and my objection. Elkins hones in on a key question; why is critical writing ignored or considered inconsequential, and if so, what purpose does it serve? Another way of interpreting the decline of the critic’s importance would be through John Kelsey’s statement that, possibly, it is not such a bad thing to herald the end of the critic if ‘he’s not up to the task of reinventing himself to meet the conditions he’s working under today’ (Kelsey 2008, p.66). In Groys’ writings we shall look further at the idea that the dictates of history and popular culture have had the most demonstrable impact on the ever-shifting role of the critic.

At its best, critical writing can serve as an admiration for and response to an artists’ work or an exhibition. It extends the life of the exhibition, generates a context for the viewer who might not otherwise see such work, and further contributes to practices in art theory and history debates. At its most cynical, contemporary critical writing can be nothing more than the rewriting of press releases and promotional texts to sell work.  Poorly written, entirely subjective, spat-out reviews that offer little in coherence or clarity regarding the work they are supposed to be engaging with; or alternatively - as the academic approach is routinely accused of being - overly theoretical, marginalised, nothing more than showboating for and between colleagues. The latter account seems a little harsh while the former feels a little overreaching. Oversimplifying is an obstacle to meaningful discourse, and so in his essay Elkins explores the accusations and reforms that have been pitched at art criticism. For Elkins, the indefinable and insecure are positive traits for criticism. As there is no thorough history of art criticism in the same vein as aesthetics, or art history, and no set academic practice of criticism, the critic must take advantage of the possibilities of such a freedom. Criticism does not concern itself with the historical but is more ‘akin to creative writing’. But he is quick to defend this practice stating [that] ‘just because a field has no academic platform does not mean that it is [any] less rigorous’. However, while criticism is afforded  luxuries  such as gathering influence from differing disciplines, this very freedom can also feed the idea that such unregulated practice can be for ‘[the] steady reader...stultifying’ (Elkins,2008, p.76). It from here on that Elkins thinks about the options art writing could assume. On one side there is the October ideal of what criticism should be; firmly theoretical and serious, encompassing a historical (re)view and producing aesthetic judgements. This call comes from academics such as Rosalind Krauss and Michael Fried. But Elkins sees a problem in this dogmatic reformation, sensing that these considerations might be built on ideas of a nostalgic longing for a prominence gone by, namely the age of Greenbergian method (or perhaps the celebrity of the figure of the art critic).  He suggests that to revive the language and methods of a time gone by will prove defunct in trying to explain and engage with contemporary art, ‘How is it possible to judge a work using criteria...that belong to another time? When concepts all belong to past writers, criticism becomes chronicle, and judgement becomes meditation on past judgement. The present is immersed in history...’(Elkins, 2008, p.86).

Elkins finds a critic of the academic ideal in Jerry Saltz, former art critic for The Village Voice. He believes that criticism should be ambitious but sensitive to changing art. One cannot ‘[Look] at art in narrow, academic, or "objective" ways... Art is a way of thinking, a way of knowing yourself. Opinions are tools for listening in on your thinking and expanding consciousness’ (Saltz, 2005, p.1).He accuses academic art theorists as, ‘[having] demonized and belittled art, insisting that its essentially a gratuitous, semi mystical, merely beautiful, formal entertainment, [forgetting] ‘the fact that art is, first and last, about experience, not about ideas’ (Saltz, 2003 cited Rubenstein, 2006, p. iv). According to Elkins, Saltz contradicts himself in the text he provided for Elkins when he states that he wants to provide clarity via context, explain artist’s progression by looking at their techniques, and make judgements that will become something more than just his opinion (Elkins, 2008, p.88). Here he is engaging in historical art information. Here he is appealing to the idea of building meaning from his assessment. This functions on a building-upon some version that has come before - a history of assessments. It is not just about the experience of an artwork first and last. All this implies that neither the theorist nor the non- theorist seem to satisfy a healthy, accurate account for a development in critical discourse.

Boris Groys acknowledges the social and historical implications leading to the divergence in critical writing. According to Groys, it germinated with the establishment of the avant-garde.  This is partly why criticism can no longer assume the authoritative role asserted at the beginning and middle of twentieth century Modernism. What was once the activity of society - to judge art - was now subverted by the work of the artists themselves. They did not seek favour or welcome from the public. They certainly did not seek interpretation. The movement presented art that critiqued society. By refusing to conform to a vision that art existed most importantly as the communication of ideas beyond our reach, of that ‘otherness’ that we ritually apply to artistic production, they succeeded in ‘introducing a rupture in society not reducible to any previously existing social differences’ (Groys, 2008, p.62) This left the critic, who traditionally functioned to judge and critique work on behalf of the public, in an awkward position.  Some writers during this period followed the avant-garde’s lead, standing with the artwork, advocating a critique aimed at society under the care of art. These ruptures in critical commentary asked questions as to where critic’s allegiances lay: with the artist and their vision of the world, or with the public and their vision of the world through and within art. ( I am considering here a ‘public’ that treats  art as the communication of that which cannot be grasped in an  alternative medium, the ‘other’ as it is referred to in Groys’ text.) Groys maintains it is this moment which has lead to uncertainty. ‘[T]he paradoxical task of judging art in the name of the public while criticizing society in the name of art opens a deep rift within the discourse of contemporary criticism and one can read today’s critical discourse as an attempt to bridge/conceal this divide’ (Groys, 2008, p.63).

While the influence of the critic has waned and become decentralised, it does not mean that critical writing is redundant. The role of the critic needs to remain confused, as this is a more accurate reflection of the complexity and confusion of a discipline grappling with itself in the postmodern, rudderless reality of the contemporary world. Relieving the critic of a ‘role’ altogether will, as Elkins and Groys agree, allow for ‘ the most diverse theories, intellectual takes, rhetorical strategies, stylistic props, scholarly knowledge and examples from all walks of life’ (Groys, 2008, p.67). The critic must exist for the sake of dialogue itself. While everyone can practice critical writing, the ones who have been successful enough to make a legitimate contribution to the discourse of art culture hold a responsibility to the reader, not to mystify the work but to offer clarity and coherence. By mystify here I refer not to what John Berger refers to as ‘the process of explaining away what might otherwise be evident’ (Berger, 1972, p.15). Audiences today are sophisticated enough to know when they are being fed meaningless jargon. But rather, a writer’s descriptive narrative plays an important role in helping a reader visualise the work; contextualising what we see is important for the work and for its location in the world. Ultimately, the pluralism of contemporary art necessitates an acknowledgement that no single position can be given precedence over another. Art criticism’s greatest strength lies in its ability not to anchor and bind movements, moments, and creations in a set of codified, historically bound concepts and frameworks, but to act, much like the art itself, as a fluctuating mirror of the endlessly shifting world we find ourselves in. I would like to end with a metaphor taken from Elkins text which I feel illustrates the dynamic nature of critical writing’s contribution today. ‘Art criticism is diaphanous: it’s like a veil, floating in the breeze of cultural conversations and never quite settling anywhere.’ (Elkins 2008, p.74)

Bibliography

·         Berger, J.  (1972). Ways of Seeing, London:  British Broadcasting Corporation and Penguin Books Ltd.

·         Elkins, J. (2003) ‘On the Absence of Judgement in Art Criticism’, in Elkins, J. and Newman, M,. eds. (2008). The State of Art Criticism. New York and London: Routledge

·         Groys, B. (1997) ‘Critical Reflections’, in Elkins, J. and Newman, M,. eds. (2008). The State of Art Criticism. New York and London: Routledge

·         Kelsey, J,. (2007) ‘The Hack’, in Birnbaum, D. and Graws, I,.eds. (2009). Careers and Canvases Today, New York Berlin: Sternberg

·         Rubenstein, R, ed. (2006). Critical Mess: Art Critics on the State of their Practice, Lenox MA: Hard Press

·         Saltz, J,. (2005). Seeing Out Loud, The Village Voice, New York. available at: http://www.villagevoice.com/2005-12-13/art/seeing-out-loud/ accessed (17 November 2011)