Deeptime: Breath and the Look of Non-Art
Deeptime: Breath and the Look of Non-Art
The first chapter charts a chronological parallel between Samuel Beckett’s piece Breath (1969), as a representative piece of minimalism in the theatre (one of the shortest stage pieces ever written and staged), and Fried’s writing in 1967 of “Art and Objecthood” in an attempt to formulate a basic framework for thinking about the intersection of critical discourses on theatricality in the visual arts and the theatre, specifically about the notion of anti-theatricalism in the theatre and the modernist anti-theatrical impulse in the visual arts. The chapter demonstrates these claims by juxtaposing Michael Fried's polemics of theatricality and Beckett's anti-theatrical strategies. Samuel Beckett is a playwright who attempted to formulate an art theory and Michael Fried is perceived as a modernist art critic, who has written about the theatre and has criticized theatricality. The focus of this chapter is on how the “Three Dialogues” can be applied to a work like Breath, so as to illuminate specific aspects of the playlet, principally, Beckett's decision to eradicate the text and the human figure, hence, the interest lies in the ways that Beckettian aesthetics translates into practice.
Keywords: Art, Objecthood, Michael Fried, Three Dialogues, anti-theatricality
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