Film-Philosophy
Journal | Salon | Portal (ISSN 1466-4615)
Vol. 5 No. 14, May 2001
Douglas Hunter
Understanding the American Avant-Garde
James Peterson _Dreams of Chaos, Visions of
Order_ Detroit, Michigan: Wayne State
University Press, 1994 ISBN 0-8143-2456-8 212 pp. Far too little ink is spilled in the
name of the analysis, history, and criticism of America's
most challenging, beautiful, and sophisticated film making.
For this reason my sympathies always lie with authors
willing to expend their time and effort taking on the
challenges of the avant-garde, despite the likelihood that
their work will be received by only the smallest of
audiences. This being said I think that James Peterson's
book is well positioned to be more broadly received due to
the fact that he has quite rightly spent a considerable
amount of time discussing the relation between avant-garde
film and the other visual arts of the time. Peterson's
contribution to writings on the avant-garde is often
enjoyable and historically enlightening for those of us who
are latecomers to the world of avant-garde film, and for
this we should be grateful. However, as I will explain
further on, Peterson's theoretical work often lacks the
rigor necessary for significant aspects of his arguments to
be convincing. In the introduction Peterson lets the
reader know that his book has two aims. The first being to
offer an explanation of how viewers understand avant-garde
cinema. The second being to serve as an introduction to the
avant-garde. In Peterson's words he hopes that his book will
'show viewers how to understand the often puzzling films of
the American avant-garde cinema' (ix). To these ends _Dreams of Chaos,
Visions of Order_ is organized by types of films, or
'strains' of cinematic practice within the avant-garde, with
chapters dedicated to the poetic, minimal, and assemblage
strains. To anyone familiar with the avant-garde it will be
no surprise that film makers such as Brakhage, Frampton,
Warhol, and Conner, among others, figure prominently in this
book. Their work is treated in significant detail, as is the
historical context of the work's initial reception, and even
its relation to other visual arts. It is this historical
effort and the discussion of the larger context of the
visual arts that I found to be the most rewarding aspect of
the book. Peterson's most specific and detailed
analyses of cinema and the visual arts are found in his
chapters on Brakhage and Warhol. In the case of Brakhage he
revisits the link between Brakhage and the abstract
expressionists that has become such a large part of the
mythology surrounding Brakhage and his films. By doing this
he provides an important service. Despite the wide
acceptance of the linking of Brakhage with abstract
expressionism there are significant shortcomings in this
linkage that are frequently overlooked. Peterson examines
the claim made by Sitney, in his authoritative work
_Visionary Film_, that Brakhage's cinematic space is
abstract expressionist. A claim that, while it may serve as
a metaphor describing certain aspects of Brakhage's work,
ignores profound formal differences not only between the
works in question but the mediums as well. Peterson examines
an important critical issue when he points out that the
flattened picture plane celebrated in Clement Greenberg's
analysis of abstract expressionism is completely different
from the methods of tinting, painting, and scratching that
Brakhage uses to created the impression of a surface, or
multiple surfaces, laid over photographic images in films
such as in _Thigh Line Lyre Triangular_. In the case of Andy Warhol Peterson
also provides a welcome examination of how the work was
received when it was made. Peterson guides the reader
through the changes occurring within art critical practice
at the time that informed the surprisingly wide range of
critical responses to Warhol's work. To this extent Peterson
achieves exactly what he set out to do. The reader new to
the work of Warhol will come away from this book with a
significant understanding of the historical background and
the critical work surrounding it. Not only is this
informative but it is enjoyable reading that can capture the
imagination of the reader, especially younger readers in
their twenties or thirties (such as myself) who were not
around during this important time in the history of American
film. Where _Dreams of Chaos, Visions of
Order_ becomes problematic is in its discussions of
cognitive theory and of postmodernism. A significant part of
the book sets out to offer a theory of spectatorship based
on various fields of cognitive research. For those keeping
track of critical debates within cinema studies there are
many of us who groan when cognitive theory is mentioned. Not
because it is an invalid form of research (surely it has
much to offer) but because of the hostility and
condescension on the part of its most outspoken advocates.
The most famous example being the editors of the volume
_Post-Theory_ (to which Peterson is a contributor) who play
a brash and self righteous David to what they see as
psychoanalytic film theory's Goliath. Much to his credit
Peterson's approach is far removed from these harsh
writings. Frankly, anyone wanting an introduction to
cognitive theory should read _Dreams of Chaos, Visions of
Order_ before reading the better known but more tiresome
_Post-Theory_. This being said I think it is worth
taking a critical look at Peterson's cognitive approach. I
want to state out right that it is not cognitive theory per
se that I object to -- nor is it the research that Peterson
draws from to formulate his ideas. Rather, I question this
speculative use of cognitive research that Peterson engages
in, as well as the intentionally narrow range of questions
Peterson addresses in order to keep his theory under
control. If we agree with Peterson that
watching an avant-garde film is a challenging undertaking,
one would think that the cognitive methods he uses to
understand films and the process of watching them would be
formed around defining what types of challenges viewers face
at all levels of the viewing experience, then analyzing the
cognitive process viewers use to engage these challenges.
This turns out to only be partly the case. For Peterson
states outright that he is not interested in doing new
clinical research. This being the case, Peterson's study is
limited to speculating about how existing research may be
used to describe how viewers engage avant-garde films. What
makes this such a disappointment is that Peterson's
hypotheses are testable, and so remain unnecessarily
speculative. Further, a large part of the excitement
surrounding the use of cognitive methods in cinema studies
is over its claim to scientific rigor. The argument goes
that aesthetic and psychoanalytic methodologies are wildly
speculative and so offer very little concrete knowledge
about the cinema, or the experience of watching a film.
Surely Peterson and many other advocates of the use of
cognitive science are unnecessarily repeating the exact
error that psychoanalysis is so often accused of. In truth I suspect that most readers
will find Peterson's cognitive work to be little more than
an a la carte sampling of existing theories that might apply
to the spectatorship of avant-garde films. To make things
worse, Peterson is very selective about how he defines the
challenge of watching an avant-garde film, and he is willing
to ask a stiflingly limited range of questions about the
problems posed by an avant-garde film. Here is Peterson at
length: 'As a first approximation of the
avant-garde film viewer's goal, let us follow theories of
normal discourse comprehension and assume that the viewer of
the avant-garde film begins with a general goal not unlike
that of any other film viewer: To make sense of the film. .
. Avant-garde films might also be said to stimulate
something other than active sense making with images of
great power of beauty that supposedly defy interpretation. I
agree completely: the avant-garde cinema is filled with
images whose sensuous appeal apparently outstrips what they
contribute to the films structure and meaning . . .
Nevertheless, it might still be possible to analyze such
imagery along the problem solving lines suggested by
constructivist theories of perception . . . These studies
aim to show how even the comprehension of abstract art can
be explained as a search for structures that match the
details of the art work . . . Visually stunning images are
generally woven into structures that do call for analysis.'
(20-21) What this passage contains is an
opposition that places 'sensuous appeal' -- the aesthetic
experience of the cinema -- outside the realm of structure
and meaning, and therefore beyond the reach of cognitive
analysis. Of course we should be suspicious of his claim
that 'the avant-garde cinema is filled with images whose
sensuous appeal apparently outstrips what they contribute to
the films structure and meaning' -- certainly there are
other types of film theory that would find it impossible to
make such a questionable distinction between a films
aesthetic value and its meaning. Peterson's displacement is
not only a great disappointment, but it is also strange, in
that one would think that a cognitive theory of cinematic
spectatorship would find beauty and abstraction (or more
generally 'sensuous appeal') a challenging and rich area of
investigation on its own terms, without necessitating
inclusion within additional structures. Would it not be both
rewarding and possible to examine cognitive aspects of
aesthetic reception? To me the answer is an obvious yes, for
it is not a matter of the unruly sensuous appeal of imagery
being contained within a structure that is rational,
analyzable. I believe that a more generous viewer of any
film will ask what structures do the images create (not what
structures are they contained in) on the philosophical,
thematic, formal, aesthetic (etc.) levels, and use a variety
of methods to attempt to understand them. Without such a
method how can we even begin to account for the complexities
of those moments in the cinema when we are inspired, taken
back, or confused by what we see on the screen. What
Peterson provides us with is all the inspiration, beauty,
and confusion of the avant-garde cinema reduced to a search
for structure. A reduction, it should be pointed out, that
is not native to cognitive theory. The other weakness of the book occurs
in the Afterword, 'The Avant-Garde Cinema in the Age of
Postmodernism', the most troubling statement of this chapter
is when he claims that: 'the Postmodern text offers multiple,
sometimes contradictory subject positions, which are often
metaphorically described as 'schizophrenic'. Thus, a basic
Postmodern interpretive schema might be: interpret any
fragmentation, contradiction or disunity as a symbol for,
and a manifestation of, the schizophrenia of Postmodern
culture.' (180) Not only is this statement totalizing
and reductive, it also grossly misinterprets the critical
theory that gave us 'schizophrenia' as a metaphor of one
aspect of postmodern narrative art. Fredric Jameson was the
first to describe schizophrenia as an aspect of postmodern
art in 1982, but what he was attempting to describe was not
a fracturing, as in the popular misuse of the term
schizophrenia as synonymous with multiple personality
disorder. Jameson described the way in which 'the signifier
in isolation becomes even more material -- or better still,
literal -- even more vivid in sensory ways, whether the new
experience is attractive or terrifying'. [1] Jameson
warns against exactly the type of diagnostic use of the term
that Peterson suggests because he was describing schizo
experience, via Lacan, as one in which we no longer
experience a link between signifiers and signifieds. An
experience in which the material nature of the signifier
becomes not only predominant but opaque. This predominance is not experienced
as the fragmentation, contradiction, or disunity that
Peterson describes because in fact it is not a symbol or
symptom of postmodern culture -- it is a structural element
of the art work that, at least in Jameson's view, signals
that the unity of postmodern narrative texts is not
materially manifest in the same way that the unity of
modernist texts is. Unity has not vanished, it is manifest
elsewhere and can be difficult to track down due to the
opacity of the signifier. Peterson further misrepresents
postmodernism when he states that from a postmodern
perspective there are two ways of understanding the modern
avant-garde: either as 'a heroic period of courageous
experimentation and tireless opposition', or 'the remains of
an elitist clique, cut off from the very culture it
purported to change' (180). What is interesting is that
these two views of the avant-garde are both exactly
modernist. The first, being reflected in the critical
reception that celebrated the work of the avant-garde, such
as Greenberg's writings on abstract expressionism. The
second, being symptomatic of a communitarian critique of the
avant-garde that believed art was morally bound to serve a
public or some form of body political, such as in Bertolt
Brecht's communist denouncement of abstraction. Neither of
these views is unique to, or constitutive of a postmodern,
historical perspective. Postmodernism lacks the political
investment in modernism necessary to judge it in such ways.
Peterson errs again when he states that both the celebrants
and critics of the avant-garde 'appeal to the same view of
the avant-garde: it is defined by its rejection of the
practices and values of more widely accepted art' (183).
This was not the case for Brecht, who was critical of the
avant-garde abstractionists for endorsing the values of the
ruling classes, and by extension their artistic values.
Further, contemporary art history has put significant effort
into defining just how works of art that appear to break
from tradition structurally rely on aspects of the tradition
that they were purportedly breaking from.
[2] The criticisms sketched out above are
very real, but, to conclude, they are not presented as a
deterrent to reading this book. For despite its lack of
theoretical rigor this book does place cognitive theory
within a specific context which is valuable, and its
historical work will be welcomed by anyone interested in,
but not familiar with the American avant-garde. I think that
this book should be read but it must be done with an
awareness of its significant theoretical short
comings. Los Angeles, USA Footnotes 1. Fredric Jameson, 'Post Modernism
and Consumer Society', in Hal Foster, ed., _The
Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture_ (Seattle, WA:
Bay Press, 1983), p.120. 2. See, for example, Thomas Crow, 'The
Simple Life: Pastorialism and the Persistence of Genre in
Recent Art', _October_,
no. 63, Winter 1993. Copyright © _Film-Philosophy_
2001 Douglas Hunter, 'Understanding the
American Avant-Garde', _Film-Philosophy_, vol. 5 no. 14, May
2001
<http://www.film-philosophy.com/vol5-2001/n14hunter>.
Save as Plain Text Document...Print...Read...Recycle
Join the Film-Philosophy salon,
and receive the journal articles via email as they are published. here
Film-Philosophy (ISSN 1466-4615)
PO Box 26161, London SW8 4WD, England
Contact: editor@film-philosophy.com
Back to the Film-Philosophy homepage
