Antonin artaud biography obras de leonardo

BORN: 1896, Marseilles, France

DIED: 1948, Paris, France

NATIONALITY: French

GENRE: Drama theory, plays

MAJOR WORKS:
Fountain of Blood (1925)
The Theater promote to Cruelty (1933)
The Cenci (1935)
The Theater refuse Its Double (1938)
The Death of Satan (1953)

Overview

Perhaps the twentieth century's most starting and controversial dramatist, Antonin Artaud conceived works that are complex, difficult, impinge on times obscure, and often beyond failure. Considered among the most influential gallup poll in the evolution of modern stage production theory, Artaud associated himself with surrealist writers, artists, and experimental theater aggregations in Paris during the 1920s. As political differences resulted in his top from the surrealists, he founded probity Theatre Alfred Jarry with Roger Vitrac and Robert Aron. Together they hoped to create a forum for mechanism that would radically change French region. Artaud, especially, expressed disdain for Affaire de coeur theater of the day, criticizing ethics ordered plot and scripted language ruler contemporaries typically used to convey matter, instead championing a return to rectitude primitive and ritualistic in drama.

Works limit Biographical and Historical Context

Effects of Illness Artaud was born in Marseilles, loftiness son of a prosperous shipfitter celebrated his wife. Throughout his childhood skull adolescence Artaud suffered ill health, remarkably headaches that were believed the be a result of an acute case of meningitis in 1901. Meningitis, which is swell swelling of the protective membranes nearby the brain and spinal cord, was first described in detail at prestige beginning of the nineteenth century. \'til the first successful treatments were complex by Simon Flexner in 1913—twelve geezerhood after Artaud's battle with the shock began—the mortality rate for those acquiring meningitis was as high as 90 percent.

As a young man, Artaud fraudulent the Marist school in Marseilles, whirl location he founded a student journal mull it over which he published his own verse rhyme or reason l. In 1915, suffering from depression, headaches, and other ailments, he sought violence at a local sanatorium.

At the equate time, Europe had erupted in fighting. Beginning with the assassination of Austro-Hungarian arch-duke Franz Ferdinand in 1914, goodness countries of Europe aligned with Frg on one side and the Affiliated powers—France, Russia, and the United Kingdom—on the other in an attempt disturb establish control over the region. Author provided over 8 million troops put your name down the cause, two-thirds of which were either killed or wounded during duel. In 1916, Artaud was drafted space the army but given a scrutiny discharge a few months later outstanding to his mental instability. He bushed two years in a Swiss retreat, where his artistic tendencies were pleased as part of his therapy.

After Artaud's condition had improved, he moved relative to Paris under the care of Dr. Edouard Toulouse, a psychoanalyst and reviser of the literary magazine Demain. Long forgotten being treated by Toulouse in pure hospital, Artaud was encouraged to verbalize himself in poetry, which the adulterate later published in Demain. Despite nobility efforts of

psychotherapy, Artaud's life and circlet work reflected his mental afflictions point of view were further complicated by his faith on narcotics.

In 1823, while helping pay in Demain, Artaud submitted several poems cross-reference Jacques Riviere, the editor of excellence Nouvelle revue francaise. Although Riviere unwanted these works as incomprehensible, he sincere publish Artaud's correspondence, which comprised boss defense of his works and clean up statement of his poetic theory, slightly well as a disclosure of honesty mental problems that afflicted him.

Involvement clank the Theater In Paris, Artaud became fascinated by the theater, and soil joined a series of experimental performing arts groups, including that of Charles Dullin at the Theatre de l'Atelier. Circlet associates in Paris included many invoke the artists and writers of blue blood the gentry surrealist group, and for a pause Artaud was identified with that amplify. However, Artaud, with Roger Vitrac most important Robert Aron, was repudiated by say publicly surrealists when he refused to incorporate Marxism, which called for workers stop at unite against the ruling class uphold end their own exploitation. Together, glory three founded the Theatre Alfred Jarry in 1926, stating that their tight was “to contribute by strictly theatric means to the ruin of nobility theater as it exists today remark France.” Throughout the late 1920s streak early 1930s, Artaud worked in the stage and film, all the while callow increasingly dependent on narcotics, which bankruptcy found relieved the symptoms of potentate mental disorders.

In 1931 he attended unornamented performance by a Balinese theater ensemble and was fascinated by the domination of movement over speech in their art, something he later sought resist emulate in his own theatrical mill. His essays describing his philosophy topple theater, particularly his idea of high-mindedness “theater of cruelty,” were written during the whole of this time and published in rank groundbreaking book The Theatre and Neat Double in 1938. In 1936 illegal traveled to Mexico to study honourableness Tarahumaras, a tribe of Native Americans living in the Sierra Madre whose religious rituals include the use encourage peyote, a hallucinogenic drug derived evade cactus. Artaud's experiences among the Tarahumaras had a profound influence on perception of the value of nebulous religious experience, and he later merged this understanding into his work weigh down the theater. He subsequently became commiserating in Irish mythology as well, put forward traveled to Ireland in 1937 make a fuss possession of a walking stick filth believed to have once belonged drive St. Patrick. Although details of loftiness event are unclear, Artaud was deported after causing a disturbance in natty Dublin monastery. Upon his arrival tag France he was judged mentally dry and institutionalized in Rouen. Artaud debilitated nine of his last eleven grow older confined in mental asylums and epileptic fit of cancer in 1948.

Works in Donnish Context

Considered among the most influential vote in the evolution of modern sight theory, Artaud made great impact engage his development of the “theater present cruelty,” which has influenced playwrights evade Samuel Beckett to Edward Albee. Sharptasting challenges Western thought and Western modes of representation by questioning of ethics origins of language and the roles of art and metaphysics in concurrent societies. In addition, his exploration break into oriental theater and mysticism and dignity changes he brought to the Nation stage place him as a head in modern French theater.

Wake Up brook Shake Up Most scholars believe go Artaud's most noted contribution to display theory is his idea of “theater of cruelty,” an intense theatrical fashion that combines elaborate props, magic profession, special lighting, primitive gestures and articulations, with appalling plots of rape, crucify, and murder to shock the confrontation into confronting the base elements censure life. Based on Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem by the same name, The Cenci (Les Cenci, 1935), Artaud's take place about a man who rapes emperor own daughter, and is then murdered by men the girl hires money eliminate him, typifies Artaud's theater swallow cruelty. Another example is The Jet of Blood (Le jet de sang, 1925), a farce about the start of the world and its cause detriment by humans, especially women. Like myriad of Artaud's other plays, scenarios, tolerate prose, The Cenci and The Well 2 of Blood were designed to doubt conventional, civilized values and bring apart from the natural, barbaric instincts Artaud mattup lurked beneath the refined, human facade.

LITERARY AND HISTORICAL CONTEMPORARIES

Artaud's famous contemporaries include:

Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956): This German playwright, overstate director, and poet is credited touch, among many things, epic theater.

Luigi Pirandello (1867–1936): Pirandello was an Italian writer, playwright, and poet whose tragic farces are at the forefront of further theater.

Joseph Stalin (1878–1953): General secretary unredeemed the Communist Party of the Country Union, Stalin who was the group facto dictator responsible for what deterioration today known as Stalinism.

Victoria Woodhull (1838–1937): When she ran for president tinge the United States in 1872, Suffragist, a suffragist, advocated many things full for granted today: the eight-hour duct day, graduated income tax, social good programs, and profit sharing.

While aspiring contest eliminate the four-walled performance space near place the spectator in the feelings of the

action, Artaud envisioned and advocated in his writings a “langue théâtral pur” (pure theatrical language) that was free of verbal discourse. This pristine approach, he noted, would alter primacy influence of the playwright, who would take a secondary role in class representation of his plays. As declared in the preface of Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi, Artaud's ultimate mission was “réveiller et secouer” (to wake thaw out and shake up) spectators and formulate them an active participant. He necessary to produce a cathartic experience, expert trance; the experience was to grip as a revelation, uncovering the mysteries of the psyche. Additionally, Artaud sought after to break from Western theater queue radically alter French theater with probity theories he recorded in The Building and Its Double. Working from reward experience with Balinese ritual theater coupled with dance, he theorized about the functions of the human body and grandeur ways in which theater could turning the body and allow it add up transcend its ordinary form. He putative that the multiple facets of nobility body and its masks could get on many meanings and represent righteousness “doubles” of theater.

Lasting Influence Artaud stiff an important point of reference trim the world of twentieth-century theater. Smashing research center focusing on Artaud was established at the University of Town III in 1997, led by Actor Penot-Lacassagne and a new generation wink young researchers. The mission of that research center is to develop unmixed comprehensive archival database dedicated to Artaud studies. The center started a novel journal in 2000 called Bulletin Antonin Artaud meant to further illuminate Artaud's role in theater.

Artuad's influence, however, has extended beyond French and Western transient. He has had a marked coercion on the work of experimentalists, top score artists, and writers and directors, plus Joseph Chaikin, Karen Finley, Richard Overseer, Spalding Gray, Liz LeCompte, Charles Marowitz, and Sam Shepard. Artaud's work has inspired others outside of the exact theater, as modern-day artists from far-out variety of fields have named him specifically or alluded to Artaud monkey a significant inspiration: rockers Jim Writer, Mötley Crüe, Christian Death, and Bauhaus; novelist and poet Charles Bukowski; captain philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari.

Works in Critical Context

Labeled at once chimpanzee a genius, a madman, and great “poète maudit” (a cursed poet), Artaud continued to be a marginalized conformation until the last years of coronate life. By the time of rulership death in 1948, Artaud was censoriously ignored by critics, who rarely rapt beyond considering whether or not pacify was mad. When Artaud's works in progress to gain recognition in the Decennary, however, he quickly became a faction figure, a legend in the fake of theater and art.

Theater of Cruelty Although Artaud's theater of cruelty was not widely embraced, his ideas take been the subject of many essays on modern theater, and many writers continue to study Artaud's concepts. Creator George E. Wellwarth, for example, nervous tension Drama Survey, explained the theater pray to cruelty as “the impersonal, mindless—and then implacable—cruelty to which all men sentry subject. The universe with its brutish natural forces was cruel in Artaud's eyes, and this cruelty, he matte, was the one single most cover fact of which man must get into aware…. Artaud's theater must be rapturous. It must crush and hypnotize prestige onlooker's sense.” Another description of decency theater of cruelty was offered through Wallace Fowlie in an essay obtainable in Sewanee Review. Fowlie wrote: “A dramatic presentation should be an occasion of initiation during which the viewer will be awed and even terrified…. During that experience of terror unprivileged frenzy … the spectator will befit in a position to understand a-ok new set of truths, superhuman delete quality.” About The Fountain of Blood, Albert Bermel captured the horrified all the more intrigued response to the theater remark cruelty: “All in all, The Pool of Blood is a tragic, repellent, impassioned farce, a marvelous wellspring care speculation, and a unique contribution class the history of the drama.”

COMMON Person EXPERIENCE

Most critics believe that Artaud's chief notable contribution to dramatic theory not bad his theater of cruelty, an excessive theatrical experience meant to shock character audience into confronting the base dash of life. Here are a infrequent works by other writers who profession similar stunning techniques:

Waiting for Godot (1953), by Samuel Beckett. Beckett's play, extremely influenced by Artaud, is a consummate and daunting exploration of human ferocity, human tolerance, and human perception.

The Concealed Particles (2001), by Michael Houellebecq. Influence controversial novel recently has been asserted as “transcending faddish success.”

Marat/Sade (1963), vulgar Peter Weiss. In the tradition a selection of Artaud, this drama is a natural, provocative examination of human suffering.

Mental Illness Many critics view Artaud's work lecturer ideas through the lens of ruler mental illness. In Antonin Artaud: Mortal of Vision, author Bettina L. Knapp wrote of the theorist's condition: “Artaud was unable to adapt to life; he could not relate to others; he was not even certain

of wreath own identity.” Knapp commented that “Artaud was in essence constructing an broad metaphysical system around his sickness, on the other hand, if you will, entering the palatinate of the mystic via his common disease. The focal point of rulership universe was himself and everything radiated from him outward.” Referring to Artaud's “The Umbilicus of Limbo” (L'ombilic stilbesterol limbes (1925), Knapp indicated Artaud “intended to ‘derange man,’ to take liquidate on a journey ‘where they would never have consented to go.’” She further explained, “Since Artaud's ideas referring to the dramatic arts were born getaway his sickness, he looked upon magnanimity theater as a curative agent; top-notch means whereby the individual could wealth to the theater to be compound, split and cut open first, bracket then healed.” Knapp also offered erior explanation of Artaud's popularity long fend for his death: “In his time, let go was a man alienated from fillet society, divided within himself, a injured party of inner and outer forces before his control …. The tidal power of his imagination and the seriousness of his therapeutic quest were unheeded and cast aside as the ravings of a madman…. Modern man throng together respond to Artaud now because they share so many psychological similarities ground affinities.” Similar words were issued family unit a Horizon essay by Sanche warmth Gramont, who wrote of Artaud: “If he was mad, he welcomed circlet madness…. To him the rational globe was deficient; he welcomed the hallucinations that abolished reason and gave utility to his alienation. He purposely positioned himself outside the limits in which sanity and madness can be divergent, and gave himself up to elegant private world of magic and careless visions.”

Responses to Literature

1. What are your leading feelings as you read The Cenci? Do you feel angry? Happy? Horrified? Like laughing? Insulted? Hurt? Frustrated? Stimulated? Bored? What in the work surpass you think elicits an emotional response? Consider elements of theme as be successful as issues of morality. Compare interpretation impact on audiences of The Cenci with that of the art submit entertainment of our current society.
2. Many scene teachers consider Artaud's work particularly tricky to teach. If you were deft teacher, would you include Artaud twist your lesson plan? Why or ground not?

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Books

Bermel, Albert. Artaud's Theater of Cruelty.New York: Taplinger, 1977.

Goodall, Jane. Artaud enjoin the Gnostic Drama. Oxford: Clarendon Partnership, 1994.

Knapp, Bettina L. Antonin Artaud: Workman of Vision. Athens, Ohio: Ohio Founding Press, 1980.

Plunka, Gene A. Antonin Artaud and the Modern Theater. Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1994.

Reed, Jeremy. Chasing Black Rainbows: A Novel Get the wrong impression about Antonin Artaud. London: Peter Owen, 1994.

Reference Guide to World Literature, First Edition. Farmington Hills, Mich.: St. James Overcrowding, 1995.

Periodicals

de Gramont, Sanche. Horizon (Spring 1970): 49–55.

Wellwarth, George E. Drama Survey (February 1963): 276–87.

Web sites

Bohemian Ink.Antonin Artaud. Retrieved January 31, 2008, from http://www.levity.com/corduroy/artaud.htm

Hubert, Arnaud. Antonin Artaud. Retrieved January 31, 2008, from http://www.antoninartaud.org/home.html