Introduction: 3
Part I: The poet 7
The
Surrealist Revolution 7
His
place within contemporary thinking
16
Artaud today
18
Conclusion: 20
Introduction:
Antonin Artaud was a poet, a play writer, an actor, a director, a
theorist, an aesthete, a mad man, and an illuminated or enlightened man; there
are many aspects of him, sometimes opposed, sometimes even contradictory. There
are chronologically two different Artaud: Antonin Artaud, the young and
beautiful actor and poet, whose sensibility and sensitivity were already
tearing apart, stealing his words and even his thoughts:
Je souffre d'une effroyable maladie de l'esprit. Ma pensée m'abandonne à tous les degrés. Depuis le fait simple de la pensée jusqu'au fait extérieur de sa matérialisation dans les mots. Mots, formes de phrases, directions intérieures de la pensée, réactions simples de l'esprit, je suis à la poursuite constante de mon être intellectuel. Lors donc que je peux saisir une forme, si imparfaite soit-elle, je la fixe, dans la
crainte de perdre toute la
pensée. Je suis au-dessous de moi-même, je le sais, j'en souffre, mais j'y
consens dans la peur de ne pas mourir
tout à fait.[1]
And there is also Antonin Artaud
after the nine years of madness, looking old and scary after the numerous
electroshocks treatments he had been through, Artaud the man who was comparing
theatre to the plague, literature to excrements, Artaud who doesn’t try to be
accepted as a writer anymore as when he was writing to Jacques Riviere, Artaud
the ‘antisocial’ man who made strange noises, who was hammering a piece of wood
as he was writing, going out during a certain period, always with his dagger
and his ‘magical cane’ that he thought to belong to St Patrick first, and then,
after his trip to the Arran Islands, he thought his cane belonged even to the
Christ…
But if one looks closer, all the facets of his personality were always
within him, he didn’t actually change his mentality or his theories, he even
seemed to have applied what he discovered concerning his mind to a new form of
theatre: both his mind and his theatre had to get rid of the domination exerted
by speech, text, and try to express themselves no longer with words, but to go
beyond language. Like Paul Valery who was writing that a piece of art
should always teach us that we did not see what we saw, Artaud wants his
theatre to work upon the spectators, upon their ways of perception as much as
their thoughts and their consciousness, make them different, make them feel different.
But he went beyond Paul Valery in that he wanted his theatre to be more
sensory, and affect through perception of sensations, rather than reduced to
the passive act of listening to a text interpreted by some actors. Antonin
Artaud wanted to create an artistic revolution by making theatre more alive,
more metaphysical; he wanted to ‘close the gap between life and art’. The
theatre of Cruelty served this purpose, and the fact that Artaud was hesitating
to call it the ‘Alchemist Theatre’ or the Metaphysical Theatre, or the Theatre
of the Absolute, reinforces this new orientation of theatre as a mystic, esoteric
theatre of transformation.
What is left today of Antonin Artaud? Why is Artaud relevant within the
context of critical theory and all theories concerning the concepts of art and
perception? Not only his vocabulary and ideas are to be found in the texts of
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari (particularly the notion of ‘body without
organs’ in the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia), not only
have his theories been examined by writers like Jacques Derrida, Susan Sontag,
or Jean-Francois Lyotard, but it seems that actually his revolutionary ideas
are to be studied today more than ever: one could wonder what Antonin Artaud
could have produced if he had lived at the beginning of the twenty-first
century…
Today, not only would he probably have been less marginalized as a
person, since the concepts of normality/sanity have been somewhat revised and
extended since the 1930’s, maybe Antonin
Artaud would also not have been considered to be as much of a mad man within today’s
society. Perhaps more importantly one could question wether he would have had
to suffer nine years of internment in mental hospitals. Possibly with the
technological progress that has been achieved today, he may even have found new
means to realise his theatre. Artaud was fighting against the absolute reign of
the text in theatre, he was criticising what can be called logocentrism, which
reduced theatre to a representation of the thoughts of the writer; nothing like
that which Artaud conceived as a total art, a total representation where not
only language but also gestures, mime, music, colours, lighting and movement
all participated in making the spectacle
a unique experience, not a mere representation.
Personally, when I read his poems (L’Ombilic des Limbes, suivi de Le
Pèse-Nerfs et autres textes), I was seventeen and something strange was
happening to me: not only could I recognize my own feelings within some of
Artaud’s letters to Jacques Riviere, but, when I started reading his poems, it
seemed to me that he was almost stealing my words, and expressing the
sensations I myself had felt at that time, before I could formulate them. But
out of respect for Antonin Artaud, and through the fact that I trust in the
absolute reality of his sickness, I realise it is something that I may not share.
Indeed, as he wrote to Jacques Rivière,
no one else other than him can experience a similar pain. So why did I feel
his texts, why did it seem so real as if it had happened to me? Today I would
say that he had definitely created an interactivity of feelings within me, an
interactivity that affected my consciousness.
Whatever progress computation achieved,
and however highly developed today’s means for attaining interactivity
become, one part the computer cannot touch still is our consciousness. Antonin
Artaud did act upon my consciousness, and although some say he never actually
managed to materialise his theories in his work, I believe that at least in his
poetry, he did manage to achieve art as a ‘shock treatment’, affecting
consciousness: for his theatre (he believed theatre was the only art that could
be a total art) he wanted the public to ‘go to the theatre as you go to the
surgeon or the dentist’. Today, certain things that can still affect our
consciousness physically are electroshocks and drugs, both of which were well
known to Antonin Artaud, as they were part of various attempts to cure him.
Interactivity concerns communication or physical bodies: only language and
physical material things, it is impossible yet with today’s technology to affect
one’s consciousness. Today, the audience is still as passive as before, whether
it is the passive spectator of theatre, television, or even the passive
computer user. One can response that arts, and all the other interfaces with
which we are confronted in our daily life (people, weather, luck…), do affect
our consciousness in some ways (through feelings brought on by a book, a
painting, a spectacle, or just through simple interactions such as
communication or the vision of a landscape or a smell), yet they do not effect
as ‘directly’ as Artaud expected his theatre of cruelty to.
Part I: The poet
Antonin Artaud is mainly remembered as a man of theatre, known for his
book on theatre, Le Théâtre et son Double published in 1938, and the
poem written in 1947, Le Théâtre de la Cruauté. He was also first of all
a poet, and, in the 1920’s in France, he was a member of the Surrealist group
to which numerous writers at that time also belonged: André Breton, Paul
Eluard, Philippe Soupault, Louis Aragon; painters such as Salvador Dali, Pablo
Picasso, André Masson, Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, Joan Miro, Alberto
Giacometti, etc.; and other artists
including the photographer Man Ray and the film director Luis Bunuel.
The word ‘Surrealism’ was first used by Guillaume Apollinaire (Les
Mamelles de Tirésias 1917), but by the time the Surrealist group was
formed, Guillaume Apollinaire was dead and Tristan Tzara took the head of the
group of Dadaists, first with Breton, Eluard, Soupault and Aragon. In 1919,
Philippe Soupault and André Breton, published Les Champs Magnétiques, a
first example of automatic writing (writing without fixed determination but at
set speeds, in order to put down only automatic thought, unconscious
mechanisms). In 1922, the Dadaist group separated from Tristan Tzara, to become
the Surrealist movement with Robert Desnos, Roger Vitrac, Benjamin Péret, and
René Crevel. Consequently, the First Manifesto of Surrealism was written in
November 1924 by André Breton. Soon, they were joined by Michel Leiris, Jacques
Prévert and Antonin Artaud.
Inheriting the lineage of Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud (Illuminations
was published 1886), Lautréamont (Chants de Maldoror 1890), Mallarmé,
and all other symbolist writers at the end of the 19th century, the
surrealists shared the belief of a necessity to change everything, to make a
revolution, because they felt that they didn’t belong to the society they lived
in. Thus, an ideological revolution was needed to change the established order.
In search of new forms of art no longer imitating nature, through a new form of
language, they believed in the value of the unconscious, in the existence of ‘a
superior reality’. Charles Baudelaire in his poem Correspondances,
described the phenomenon of ‘correspondances’, symbols linking our world, our
reality to another superior reality. Through his Fleurs du Mal,
Baudelaire brought forward the idea that ‘artificial paradises’ (alcohol,
drugs) could bring the individual closer to this Other reality. One spiritual
follower of Guillaume Apollinaire, Pierre Reverdy, who did not belong however
to the Surrealist movement wrote in his revue Nord-Sud:
Emotional power is associated here with poetic reality, and as esoteric
or mystical experience have always been associated with a search of Truth, the
idea that art can bring to this mystical Truth is part of the Surrealist
experience. Perception therefore has to be reoriented towards this Other
reality. Emotions, dreams, altered states of consciousness are part of our
unconscious, that is why they become the means to get to the Other mystic
reality. Unfortunately this change of attitude concretely turned into more of a
social revolution rather than a transformation of the Self: the Surrealists
joined the Communist Party. This became the main reason why Antonin Artaud left
the Surrealist movement, because he did not want a political revolution, but a
radical transformation of the Self.
Artaud alone, …
In 1926 and in 1927, Paul Eluard, Louis Aragon, André Breton and
Benjamin Péret joined the Communist party, and soon after, Philippe Soupault,
Roger Vitrac and Antonin Artaud were officially out of the group. Artaud was
however from the start a bit apart from the Surrealist movement: what they did
in a ludic manner was for him a vital gesture, or more an attitude inherent to
his personality. He was not really seeking for a new form of thought, but more
trying to find his place in the world, particularly in the literary world.
Antonin Artaud describes his condition very well in his letters to
Jacques Rivière (presented as a first part of L’Ombilic des Limbes). In
a very humble manner in some parts (and in others more arrogant when,
disappointed, he believes that Rivière misunderstands him), he tries through
these letters to get his poems published by the Nouvelle Revue Française. When
Rivière refuses to publish his poems, Artaud justifies his writing by
explaining his mental condition: physically unable to keep one thought, hence
unable to ‘materialise’ this thought into words, he accepts himself the forms
that he can grip, even imperfect, because they are the only productions of his
mind, they are the only ‘manifestations of his spiritual existence’:
C'est pourquoi par
égard pour le sentiment central qui me dicte
mes poèmes et pour les images ou tournures fortes que j'ai pu trouver, je
propose malgré tout ces poèmes à l'existence. Ces
tournures, ces expressions mal venues que vous
me reprochez, je les ai senties et acceptées. Rappelez-vous
: je ne les ai pas contestées. Elles proviennent de l'incertitude profonde de ma pensée. Bien heureux quand cette incertitude n'est pas remplacée par l'inexistence
absolue dont je souffre quelquefois. […]Il m'importe beaucoup que les quelques
manifestations d'existence spirituelle que j'ai pu me donner à moi-même ne soient pas considérées comme
inexistantes par la faute des taches et des expressions mal venues qui les constellent.
Il me semblait, en vous les présentant, que leurs défauts, leurs inégalités n'étaient pas assez
criantes pour détruire
l'impression d'ensemble de chaque poème.
[…] Car je ne puis
pas espérer que le temps ou le travail remédieront à ces obscurités ou à ces défaillances,
voilà pourquoi je réclame avec tant d'insistance et d'inquiétude, cette
existence même avortée. [3]
Despite the fact that what he expresses seems imperfect, clumsy, Artaud
has the right to exist, therefore he claims that his poems have the right to
exist literarily as well, i.e. to be published. The literary existence of his
poems becomes a condition of the acceptance of his mental existence (as he
suffered from a real mental problem), and of his ability to think; therefore he
perceives Jacques Rivière’s decision to publish his poems as a decision
concerning his own right to exist and think.
Part II: Life and Theatre
‘Aesthetics of life’ or Artaud’s
metaphysics
Already in his early correspondance with Rivière, Artaud’s artistic
vocation was more of a way of life, in the sense that he thought his poems had
as much of a right to exist as he himself did. From this point, and for the
rest of his life, Artaud had always considered himself in the same way as he
conceived his poetry, theatre and the arts in general: they all exist upon the
same level, follow the same lines, and are as essential as his own life.
Consequently, his theatre, his poems’ existence, and his mind are correlated:
what he discovers or knows about his mind, is a discovery for his art. He wants
to ‘close the gap between life and art’, by making theatre as life, theatre the
double of life (and life the double of theatre).
The dysfunction of his expression, separating his thoughts from their
‘materialisation into words’, leads to Artaud’s desire for liberation from the
norms of discursive speech and from the domination of language existing in the
arts, in literature or theatre. Language is inadequate to express the totality
of our feelings, words even reduce our feelings through their ability to
express only that small, nominable part of our sensations. His writings about
himself echoe his notions of the artistic revolution: art liberated from the
domination of language, giving a place to all other forms of expression that
can be used for the purpose of a total art.
Artaud’s ideas were close to Gnosticism and most mystical traditions:
Gnosticism is centred upon the ways of gaining knowledge—knowledge being
Truth—and, mystical traditions in general, are based on a system of
dualities—the duality between the mind and the body amongst others—and share
the concept that salvation of the soul will occur when these dualities are
abolished, when the mind and the body will be reunited. From these beliefs,
Artaud understood that the salvation of the soul from the body would happen
through the body: transcendence of the body by the body itself. He wanted
consequently to liberate his mind from his body through his body, his ‘flesh’:
Both the obstacle to and the locus
of freedom, for Artaud, lie in the body. His attitude covers the familiar
Gnostic thematic range: the affirmation of the body. The revulsion from the
body, the wish to transcend the body, the quest for the redeemed body. “Nothing
touches me, nothing interests me,” he writes, “except what addresses itself directly
to my flesh.” […] Recoiling from the defiled body, he appeals to the redeemed
body in which thought and flesh will be unified: “It is through the skin that
metaphysics will be made to reenter our minds”; only the flesh can supply “a
definitive understanding of Life.”[4]
‘Metaphysics’ had to ‘reenter our minds’ through the flesh, so that
flesh and thought can be united. The evil is matter: a ‘world clogged with matter
(shit, blood, sperm)’[5],
it is the inclination to make thought into a material object that causes a
separation of thought from flesh. Language is the will to transform thought
into matter, into material words. Literature is dominated by words, by language,
therefore it is matter in itself, and literature is similar to ‘excrement’ and
theatre like the plague (both strangely designated by words concerning the
physical body). The demonic forces for Artaud are physical matter and the
natural necessity to transform everything into matter: ‘language is thought
turned into “matter”’ (just as ‘body is mind turned into “matter”’[6])
and that is why literature dominated by the reign of language can be
assimilated to the realm of excrement.
His sickness was principally to be unable to materialise his thoughts
into physical words, into matter, but thanks to this sickness he was to propose
an art not dominated by words: he turned his physical inability into an inhuman
or even superhuman clairvoyance, putting himself into the position of a
universal helper that seeks the good for society through a general
transformation of the self, as if he was suffering for the good of humanity. In
“Van Gogh ou le suicidé de la société” (published in September 1947)
Artaud recognises himself in Van Gogh: both had been interned in psychiatric
institutions because of their individuality (he saw an exhibition of Van Gogh
at the Orangerie in January 1947). The martyrdom of the artist is also a
Romantic theme (Baudelaire’s L’Albatros): the poet suffers for the
others and it is in his quality of a ‘poète maudit’ that he can help others to see
better, because through his martyrdom he can see the Other Reality, the mystic
reality. Again for Artaud this situation was extreme, not only he was suffering
for the sake of humanity but he thought at some point, that he was the Christ
himself persecuted by demonic forces, by the Anti-Christ.
A ‘re-Orientation’ of theatre
Another theme found in Artaud’s theories, is the necessity to turn
towards the Other. With the rise of Romanticism at the end of the 19th
century, the taste for exoticism was introduced: Romantic writers turned
towards the East, the Orient. It is also in non-Western philosophy that are
found mystic traditions stating the existence of another reality. Artaud was
very interested in Oriental philosophy (such as Buddhism or Yoga), rejecting in
this way the coldness of Western philosophy and logic. He had twice seen
representations of Asian arts: firstly, at the Colonial Exhibition in
These non-Western traditions (Artaud was also interested in
Zoroastrianism, Mithraism, Manichaeism, Tantric Buddhism, Shamanism, the
Cabbala, tarot, etc.) brought forward the idea that theatre is not only a play
but can be a ritual, and opened the way to the conception of the artistic
mission as an ordeal; and also, of the necessity of suffering in order to have
a total transformation of the self. Theatre, for Artaud, had to have an
esoteric value, theatre had the task of being the means to salvation, theatre
as a ritual. In mystic philosophies, the soul and the body go through various
stages before one can reach salvation, and the experience of pain is often
considered as a step forward towards salvation: exorcising the inner self
through suffering. That is why theatre had to be cruel in order to have an
effect on the audience, to transform the audience.
Alchemical philosophy is based on the transformation of the self through
different stages into some kind of superior being, a total man, one of the
stages being the ingestion of metals (alchemy is also first of all the science
which transforms base metals into gold or silver). Artaud wanted similarily the
theatrical representation to transform the public, to affect directly the
audience, and to be just as ‘going to the dentist or the surgeon’, a physical
interaction. Theatre has to affect the senses and all the senses have to be
involved. The body can be reached through physical sensations, therefore
theatre has to be more sensory and has to aim to reach the body, but theatre is
also the only art according to Artaud, in which other arts merge, and that can
achieve a necessary transformation of the souls in order to save them.
Part III: How relevant is Artaud today?
His place within contemporary thinking
His theories about theatre were revolutionary, and deeply marked the
history of modern theatre. He believed that since the Antiquity, theatre hadn’t
changed, the main problem being the domination of speech and language, which
made the play a mere representation of the writer’s thoughts. He thought that a
‘theatre of dialogue’ belonged to the books:
How does it happen that in the
theatre, at least in the theatre as we know it in
Artaud is now studied in the line of Descartes, Nietzsche, or Plato,
because his theories were as revolutionary as theirs. As a Descartes he has a
dual vision of reality, but Artaud compromises the limits of Cartesian logic by
stating that his non-thinking is still art and proof of his existence, it is
not because he doesn’t possess a thought that his thought doesn’t exist, in
particular in the literary world: ‘Mais penser c’est pour moi autre chose que
n’être pas tout à fait mort[8]’.
As a Plato, he attacked the problem of perception, of how we see things: the
reality we see is like a cave or a theatre, but for Artaud this theatre is the
means for seeing reality as it is; theatre is a way to reach the truth. As a
Nietzsche, Artaud was against the reign of reason in theatre, and wanted to
re-orientate theatre towards something other, non-Western, because the cold
logic of Occidental or Socratic philosophy was paralysing theatre. For both of
them, there was also the necessity of a radical change in culture:
From the mid-nineteen twenties on,
Artaud’s work is animated by the idea of a radical change in culture. His
imagery implies a medical rather than a historical view of culture: society is
ailing. Like Nietzsche, Artaud conceived of himself as a physician to
culture—as well as its most painfully ill patient. The theater he planned is a
commando action against the established culture, an assault on the bourgeois
public; it would both show people that they are dead and wake them up from
their stupor. The man who was to be devastated by repeated electric-shock
treatments during the last three of nine consecutive years in mental hospitals
proposed theater to administer culture a kind of shock therapy. Artaud, who
often complained of feeling paralyzed, wanted theater to renew “the sense of
life.” […] Artaud’s argument in The Theater and Its Double is closely
related to that of the Nietzsche, who in The Birth of Tragedy lamented
the shrivelling of the full-blooded archaic theater of Athens by Socratic
philosophy—by the introduction of characters who reason. [9]
Artaud wanted theatre to ‘administer culture a kind of shock therapy’ so
that it could renew its sense of life, because he thought theatre and society
were ‘paralysed’, ‘petrified’, ‘inorganic’ (without organs) and needed a
radical transformation in order to open the eyes of the public through a shock
treatment. He wanted theatre to be cruel, violent and aggressive so that it
could affect his audience. But not only the violence of the action has an
effect on the public, for Artaud, the violence had to be physical and his
theatre had to have a physical effect on its audience in order to truly affect
them. It is only through the body that knowledge can enter him, and he believes
that ‘it is through the skin that metaphysics can reenter our minds’[10].
At least it can be said that he administered theatre a kind of shock treatment
by transforming the role of the actor, of the director, but also introducing
lights, music, gestures, screamings. His theories on theatre are very
avantguarde and impregnated many of the concepts of modern theatre. He was also
the first artist to have made a Surrealist movie, in 1928, The Seashell and
the Clergyman, before Bunuel’s Un Chien Andalou and L’Age d’Or.
Artaud today
Primarily it is the person of Artaud which has probably most marked
contemporary writers. He made of his existential ordeal an artistic mission,
and his sickness became in this sense a way to salvation. His sickness
separated his thought from his mind, and the salvation would have been the
unification of the flesh and the mind. The sickness seemed to give Artaud a
very dualistic vision of life: body/mind, or thought/flesh, good/evil,
object/subject, because the sickness is what divided him, what separates his
thoughts from his mind, and from the words to express them.
Il y a donc un quelque chose qui détruit ma
pensée; […] qui me laisse en suspens. Un quelque chose de furtif qui m’enlève
les mots que j’ai trouvés, qui diminue ma tension mentale, qui détruit
au fur et à mesure dans sa substance la masse de ma pensée, qui m’enlève
jusqu’à la mémoire des tours par lesquels on s’exprime et qui traduisent avec
exactitude les modulations les plus inséparables, les plus localisées, les plus
existantes de la pensée.[11]
Through being persuaded that he was possessed by demonic powers, and
because of this paranoia, upon his return from
Today we seem better equipped to accept individuality and marginality;
cultural singularity is even commodified. Art today expresses more the
inexpressable, understanding or identication of a piece of art is no more
essential to the appreciation of this art. Artaud today would have probably
been very popular and would have been applauded as someone very profound
because he doesn’t make much sense to ordinary people.
Artaud’s struggle with logocentrism would have also been different if he
had lived today. The range of expressive possibilities have increased: it is
much easier to control lighting, music, etc. So maybe Artaud would have chosen
alternative means than theatre to create his cruel and cognitive transformation
of souls. With a computer, Artaud would have had the means to create his total
art. The means of expression given by video editing or a programme like Flash,
would have probably made Artaud into another sort of artist. The variety of
sensors that exist today in relation to air pressure, humidity, chemical
elements, temperature or noise can make the computer into a complete or a total
receptor for the various senses.
Artaud wanted the audience to feel a transformation through art, he
wanted to produce what can be called today an interactivity upon the audience,
a physical interactivity as well an interactivity upon thought. That is the
reason he wanted the theatre to be a total art: so that it could affect the
individual through many sensations. Although computers are capable of receiving
all sorts of sensory information, man has not further developed his capacities
of reception towards art, and is still as passive as he has ever been. He is still
confronted by a visual and auditive spectacle. No technology has truly reached
consciousness, that is why Artaud is still relevant. Touching consciousness is
still at the heart of the artistic vocation, and poetry still has the right to
exist because it is still a valid attempt to reach consciousness.
Conclusion:
‘To read Artaud through is nothing less than an ordeal. […] It demands a
special stamina, a special sensitivity, and a special tact to read Artaud
properly.[12]’It is
probably still hard to study Artaud, but it is because his writings bring in so
many diverse directions. His theories about art and the mind are complex and
many problematics are brought up. Problems of perception, consciousness,
creation, artistic inspiration and vocation, meaning of art, function of art,
are few among the numerous subjects Artaud examines. His theories of the self
are complemented by the experience of his theories on himself, he was the
living example of his philosophy.
He emerged from the Surrealist movement and believed in the existence of
another reality and in the powers of the unconscious (dreams, alcohol, drugs).
He was probably the only one who had really lived a Surrealist life, but his
revolution was to be a total alchemical transformation of the self, neither a
political revolution, nor a game. His theatre was to be a serious and cruel
theatre, a theatre as the double of life, he wanted ‘to close the gap between
life and art’. What was discovered concerning himself, he used as his
conception of a form of total art, free from the domination of speech. His
theatre was also to be cognitive, bringing knowledge to the audience, a
knowledge about themselves that could save their souls. The salvation of the
body is of a mystical nature for Artaud, and it is when the body and the mind
are unified, that the soul becomes transcended through the body. The body and
the mind are both liberated and unified, in accordance with most dualistic
traditions. Artaud sees the evil in matter: ‘body is mind turned into matter and
language is thought turned into matter’, matter ‘pollutes’ everything
(literature, theatre, Artaud, etc.) Being confronted with the demonic powers,
suffering for the good of humanity, Artaud seemed to have taken a trip to
insanity to bring us back concepts about sanity and perception. He has
undertaken something similar to the shaman’s journey, and like the shaman he
wanted to help his public to see better, mainly through the fact they
can feel Artaud’s art, as it is a sensory art. Art,for Artaud, has the
task of being felt through body sensations and of becoming some kind of a
ritual transformation of the spectator’s soul, making him more total through a
physical experience. In this way art can save souls. Artaud’s heavily
soteriological position is probably the most unreachable part, today, of his
body of theories; every other notion he examined is still at the heart of the
problematics of contemporary critical theory. The problem of perception has
neither evolved much, nor has the position of the spectator. Artaud wanted art
to ‘affect minds directly’, yet still today it is an impossible mission.
Artaud’s notion of art is still relevant: even virtual reality does not require
a higher degree of activity from the spectator than the one required to watch television.
Practically, it is actually easier to passively watch television, rather than
attempting to read a poem from Artaud or a text from Deleuze.
Bancquart,
Marie-Claire
1996, La
poésie en France du surréalisme à nos jours
Collection
thèmes et études, Ellipses, Paris
Deleuze,
Gilles
1997, One
Less Manifesto
In
Mimesis, Masochism, & Mime, The Politics of Theatricality in
Contemporary French Thought
Edited
by Timothy Murray ,
Deleuze,
Gilles and Guattari, Félix
1972-73, Capitalisme
et Schizophrénie, L’ Anti-Oedipe
Collection ‘Critique”, Les Editions de Minuit, Paris
1980,
Capitalisme et Schizophrénie, Mille Plateaux
Collection Critique, Les Editions de Minuit, Paris
Derrida,
Jacques
1997,
The Theater of Cruelty and the Closure of Representation
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[1] Antonin Artaud, L’Ombilic des Limbes suivi de
Le Pèse-nerfs et autres textes, France, NRF, Gallimard Editions, 1968, p 20
[2] Pierre Reverdy quoted in Marie-Claire Bancquart, La
Poésie en France du surréalisme à nos jours, Paris, Collection Thèmes et
Etudes, Ellipses, 1996, p 10
[3] Antonin Artaud, Correspondances avec Jacques
Rivière, in L’Ombilic des Limbes, pp 20-21
[4] Susan Sontag, Antonin Artaud, Selected Writings, University
of
[5] Susan Sontag, Antonin Artaud, Selected Writings, University
of
[6] Susan Sontag, Antonin Artaud, Selected Writings, University
of
[7] Antonin Artaud quoted in Samuel Weber, The Greatest Thing of All, The Virtual Reality of Theatre, in 100 Years of Cruelty, Essays on Artaud, Edited by Edward Scheer, Sydney, Power Institute: Centre for Art & Visual Culture, and Artspace, 2000, p 20
[8] Antonin Artaud, L’Ombilic des Limbes suivi de
Le Pèse-nerfs et autres textes, France, NRF, Gallimard Editions, 1968, p 70
[9] Susan Sontag, Antonin Artaud, Selected Writings, University
of
[10] Susan Sontag, Antonin Artaud, Selected Writings, University
of
[11] Antonin Artaud, L’Ombilic des Limbes suivi de
Le Pèse-nerfs et autres textes, France, NRF, Gallimard Editions, 1968, pp
25-26
[12] Susan Sontag, Antonin Artaud, Selected Writings, University
of
