Scenography and Art History: Performance Design and Visual Culture 9781350204447, 9781350204478, 9781350204454

Table of contents :
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
Illustrations
Contributors
Foreword: The stage of writing and drawing art’s histories
Foreword: At the borders of scenography
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1: Introduction: Re-imagining scenography in relation to art history
Chapter 2: Black goats and broomsticks: Feminism and the figure of the witch in Leonor Fini’s designs for Le Sabbat
Chapter 3: Scenographing the dance archive – keep crawling!
Chapter 4: Michael Chapman’s Rauschenberg: Mise en scène and scenography in Taxi Driver
Chapter 5: A dynamic bipolarity: The Royal Holloway Chapel project, scenography and art history
Chapter 6: Killed by drones: Embodying live performance scenography
Chapter 7: Evocations of the ‘sonore et voilé’: The scenographic world of Der Ring in the art of Henri Fantin-Latour
Chapter 8: Visual couture: Costume agency in the advertising campaign Opera Papier
Chapter 9: ‘Re-dressing the part’: The ‘scenographic strategies’ of Ellen Terry (1847–1928)
Chapter 10: Scenographing festival books: Towards a multisensory archive
Chapter 11: Scenographic events: Interfacing with digital fashion stories
Chapter 12: Beyond change: Archaeology of a spook play
Index

Citation preview

Scenography and Art History

Praise for Scenography and Art History: Performance Design and Visual Culture ‘This book challenges easy boundaries between disciplines whilst forging new methodologies for thinking with and through scenographic agency. This is vital at a time when reconceiving the material and imaginative encounters between times, spaces and bodies has never been more urgent and necessary.’ Marsha Meskimmon, Professor of Transnational Art & Feminism and Director of the Institute of Advanced Studies, Loughborough University, UK

‘A book devoted to the interfaces of scenography and art history is long overdue for numerous reasons ... The marriage of these subjects is a welcome and exciting addition to the growing library of scenography scholarship and its many possible futures beyond theatre.’ Rachel Hann, Senior Lecturer in Performance & Design, Northumbria University, UK

‘This important study shifts our understanding of what scenography is. It shows us how agential modes of creative practice can lead towards new theoretical frameworks and how these can help us forge new realities within and outside the world of art history.’ Alda Terracciano, Participatory Design Consultant at The Sloane Lab (AHRC TaNC Programme), UCL Department of Information Studies, UK

‘A thrillingly multifaceted and innovative collection of cross-disciplinary case studies that unlocks the potentials of scenography as an overlooked sphere, concept and phenomenon in relation to art history as well as to other aesthetic disciplines.’ Andrea Kollnitz, Associate Professor in Art History, Department of Culture and Aesthetics, Stockholm University, Sweden

‘A very important contribution to current discussions on multisensory art historical and contemporary events, which proposes scenography both as a theoretical concept and as a practical exercise in the field of art history and related disciplines.’ Andrea Sommer-Mathis, Former Senior Research Associate at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Austria

‘This collection illuminates the primacy of the physical body and the spatial and material allure it evinces on stage and in visual artistry. Contributions from diverse scholars, sometimes working in direct collaboration, illuminate the many ways in which the performative operates both in real time and in allusive visual form.’ Sarah R Cohen, Professor & Chair, Department of Art and Art History, University at Albany, SUNY, USA

Scenography and Art History Performance Design and Visual Culture Edited by Astrid von Rosen and Viveka Kjellmer

BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2021 This paperback edition published 2023 Selection and editorial matter © Astrid von Rosen and Viveka Kjellmer, 2023 Individual chapters © their authors, 2023 Astrid von Rosen and Viveka Kjellmer have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editors of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. xx constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover Image: Rena Narumi, Dancer, The Royal Swedish Ballet (2014) © Karolina Henke/Skarp. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Rosen, Astrid von, editor. | Kjellmer, Viveka, editor. Title: Scenography and art history : performance design and visual culture / edited by Astrid von Rosen and Viveka Kjellmer. Description: [New York] : Bloomsbury Visual Arts, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020046773 (print) | LCCN 2020046774 (ebook) | ISBN 9781350204447 (hardback) | ISBN 9781350204485 (paperback) | ISBN 9781350204454 (pdf) | ISBN 9781350204461 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Art–Historiography. | Theaters–Stage-setting and scenery. Classification: LCC N7480 .S34 2021 (print) | LCC N7480 (ebook) | DDC 709–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020046773 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020046774 ISBN: HB: 978-1-3502-0444-7 PB: 978-1-3502-0448-5 ePDF: 978-1-3502-0445-4 eBook: 978-1-3502-0446-1 Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India ​ ​ To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

Contents List of illustrations List of contributors Foreword: The stage of writing and drawing art’s histories  Marsha Meskimmon Foreword: At the borders of scenography  Rachel Hann Acknowledgements

vi ix xiii xvi xx

  1 Introduction: Re-imagining scenography in relation to art history  Astrid von Rosen and Viveka Kjellmer 1   2 Black goats and broomsticks: Feminism and the figure of the witch in Leonor Fini’s designs for Le Sabbat  Rachael Grew 13   3 Scenographing the dance archive – keep crawling!  Astrid von Rosen 29   4 Michael Chapman’s Rauschenberg: Mise en scène and scenography in Taxi Driver  Gillian McIver 47   5 A dynamic bipolarity: The Royal Holloway Chapel project, scenography and art history  Greer Crawley and Harriet O’Neill 65   6 Killed by drones: Embodying live performance scenography  Olga Nikolaeva 85   7 Evocations of the ‘sonore et voilé’: The scenographic world of Der Ring in the art of Henri Fantin-Latour  Corrinne Chong 101   8 Visual couture: Costume agency in the advertising campaign Opera Papier  Viveka Kjellmer 123   9 ‘Re-dressing the part’: The ‘scenographic strategies’ of Ellen Terry (1847–1928)  Veronica Isaac 141 10 Scenographing festival books: Towards a multisensory archive  Carmen González-Román 165 11 Scenographic events: Interfacing with digital fashion stories  Christine Sjöberg 183 12 Beyond change: Archaeology of a spook play  Tamas Szalczer and Eszter Szalczer 199 Index

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Illustrations Plates   1 Leonor Fini, Witches Cavern, set design for Le Sabbat, 1972   2 Leonor Fini, Costume design for a witch, Le Sabbat, c. 1972   3 Leonor Fini, Design for the black goats, Le Sabbat, c. 1972   4 Leonor Fini, Costume design for a dancer, Le Sabbat, c. 1972   5 Rubicon – the City Dancers, Götaplatsens trappor, 1986   6 Rubicon – the City Dancers, Götaplatsens trappor, 1986   7 Screenshot from Taxi Driver   8 Screenshot from Taxi Driver   9 Robert Rauschenberg, Untitled (Red Painting), c. 1953. 10 Chapel Interior, Royal Holloway, University of London 11 Empty Niches, Chapel, Royal Holloway, University of London 12 Muse, The Handler, 2016 13 Muse, The Handler, 2016 14 Muse, The Globalist, 2016 15 Muse, The Globalist, 2016 16 Muse, The Globalist, 2016 17 Fantin-Latour, Les Filles du Rhin, 1876 18 Rena Narumi, Dancer, The Royal Swedish Ballet, 2014 19 Anna Danielsson, Soprano, The Royal Swedish Opera, 2014 20 Emma Vetter, Soprano, The Royal Swedish Opera, 2014 21 Emilie Hörnlund & Ayman Al Fakir, Musicians, The Royal Swedish Opera, 2014 22 Gina Tse, Dancer, The Royal Swedish Opera, 2014 23 Clyde Archer, Dancer, The Royal Swedish Opera, 2014 24 John Singer Sargent, Portrait of Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth, 1889 25 Isabel Solís-Alcudia y Victoria Soto-Caba. Virtual polychromy of the Arco de los Ingleses (Royal Entry of Philip III in Lisbon, 1619) 26 ‘Cut-outs’ (part of working material)

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27 Image from the fashion story Terrene, Contributor Magazine, 25 September 2018 28 Image from the fashion story Dreams in Colour, Contributor Magazine, 22 August 2018 29 Living Theatre’s Spook Sonata, contact sheet 1 showing images 1–12 30 Living Theatre’s Spook Sonata, contact sheet 2 showing images 13–20 31 Living Theatre’s Spook Sonata, The Cook, enlargement of contact sheet image #8

Figures 3.1 Rubicon – The City Dancers, poster for Götaplatsens trappor, 1986 3.2 Rubicon – The City Dancers, Götaplatsens trappor, 1986 5.1 Confucius, external wall of the chapel, Royal Holloway, University of London 5.2 The Apse, Royal Holloway Chapel, University of London 5.3 Alternative model for the Apse, Royal Holloway Chapel, University of London 5.4 William Crossland, Chapel Interior, 1879 5.5 1:1 scale replica of a niche 5.6 Anastasia Crossley sketchbook page 5.7 A page in Sophie Mercer’s research sketchbook showing some of her preliminary experiments 5.8 Woman wearing a stefane ornamented with a third eye. Portal of Royal Holloway Chapel, University of London 7.1 Fantin-Latour, Scéne première du Rheingold, 1876 7.2 Unknown artist, postcard (depicting the sunken orchestra in Bayreuth) sent from Antoine Lascoux to Fantin-Latour, 17 August 1894 7.3 Götterdämmerung: Siegfried et les filles du Rhin, 1897 7.4 Fantin-Latour, Finale du Rheingold, 1877 7.5 Fantin-Latour, Finale du Walküre, 1879 7.6 Fantin-Latour, Évocation d’Erda (Siegfried Act III), 1876 8.1 Pompe Hedengren, Sketch for the Opera Papier Campaign, 2014 9.1 Ellen Terry as Ellaline in The Amber Heart, 1887

35 37 73 73 75 75 78 79 80 81 102

104 109 110 111 111 126 152

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10.1 Mnemosyne, panel 32 10.2 Screenshot of the video in which the four elements enter the great exterior ‘theatre’ on triumphal chariots, in the order described by Francesco Sbarra 10.3 Screenshot of the video in which the emperor’s entry is announced from the staging that represented the Temple of Eternity 10.4 Annotations on a photocopy of the Guerreiro’s accounts, reflecting descriptions of the Arch of the German Merchants (left) and a hypothetical 3D model and drawings of the structure of the Arch of German Merchants, Lisbon, based on textual sources 10.5 Urban study on the topography of early modern Lisbon before the natural disaster of 1755 11.1 Snapshot of working collage

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177 178 187

Contributors Corrinne Chong is assistant curator at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. Prior to this appointment, she was a research consultant for the 2021 Barnes exhibition Suzanne Valadon: Model, Painter, Rebel, and a key member of the curatorial team for the Early Rubens exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto. She holds degrees in education and art history with a doctorate from the University of Edinburgh. Her publications and research focus on the dialogue between 19th-century art, music and opera scenography. Greer Crawley is a visiting lecturer in Scenography and Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Theatre, Drama and Dance at Royal Holloway University of London. Her research interests are in the application of scenographic practices in interdisciplinary collaborations across arts, sciences and exhibition. Publications include: co-author with Emma Critchley and Mariele Neudecker, ‘Imaginaries: Art, Film, and the Scenography of Oceanic Worlds’ in The Routledge Handbook of Ocean Space (2022); co-editor, Staged: Scenographic Strategies in Contemporary Exhibition Design Special double issue, Theatre and Performance Design (2022); ‘The Generous Deceit’ in Every Landscape is A State of Mind, Dulwich Picture Gallery (2019); ‘The Scenographer as Camoufleur’ in War and Theatrical Innovation (2017); co-author with Donatella Barbieri, ‘Dress, Time and Space: Expanding the field through exhibition making’ in The Handbook of Fashion Studies (2013). Carmen González-Román is a senior lecturer in Art History at the University of Málaga, Spain. González-Román has been the principal investigator of a research project funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, Appropriations and Hybridizations between Visual Arts and Performing Arts in the Early Modern Period (2015–2019). She has published studies on Visual Culture and Performing Arts. Recent publications include “Teatralidad y performatividad: perspectivas conceptuales y metodológicas para el análisis de las artes visuales y escénicas de los siglos XVI-XVIII” in the Bulletin of Spanish Visual Studies, 3 (2019). Her current research concerns scenographic cultures in the Hispanic world and the relations between temporary architecture, festivals and the multisensory dimension.

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Rachael Grew is a lecturer in Art History and Visual Culture at Loughborough University, UK, specializing in concepts of gender and identity within French and British art and design c. 1850–1950, with a particular focus on women Surrealists. She obtained her PhD in 2010 from the University of Glasgow. Rachael has published on gender debates within Surrealist art, and her current projects focus on issues of identity in Surrealist costume and theatrical design. A recent article is ‘Monstrous bodies: Theatrical designs by Salvador Dali and Leonor Fini’, Studies in Costume and Performance, Vol. 4.1 (2019). Rachel Hann is a cultural scenographer and senior lecturer in Performance and Design based at Northumbria University, Newcastle, UK. She is author of Beyond Scenography (Routledge 2019), which was shortlisted for the Prague Quadrennial 2019 Publication Prize. In 2013, Rachel co-founded the research network Critical Costume and in 2014 co-edited a special issue of Scene (Intellect) on costume. Her work in the formation of this network was shortlisted for the Theatre and Performance Research Association (TaPRA). Early Career Prize 2017 for ‘leadership in costume and practice research’. Rachel holds a PhD in theatre architecture from the University of Leeds and BA in Drama from the University of Hull. Veronica Isaac is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Brighton. A specialist in late-nineteenth- and earlytwentieth-century dress and theatre costume, Isaac’s interdisciplinary, objectbased approach to research has been shaped by her academic training and work with museum collections. In her recently completed doctoral thesis, she carried out a close analysis of the personal and theatrical dress of the leading nineteenth-century actress Ellen Terry (1847–1928). Terry provided a case study through which to present new methodology for the analysis and investigation of historic theatre costume. Viveka Kjellmer is Associate Professor of Art History and Visual Studies at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Kjellmer has published studies about the visual language of advertising, focusing on the image of scent, and has also written about fashion exhibitions and visual consumption. Her current research concerns fashion, costume, body and identity, as well as the relations between olfaction, scenography and commercial space. Recent publications include ‘Indra’s Daughter and the Modernist Body: Costume and the fashioned body as scenography in A Dream Play 1915–18’, Studies in Costume and Performance

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(2019) and ‘Scented scenographics and olfactory art: Making sense of scent in the museum’, Journal of Art History (2021). Gillian McIver is the author of  Art History for Filmmakers  (2016). Drawing on evidence from filmmakers, as well as film theory and art history, her work demonstrates how paintings are used by filmmakers in innovative ways. McIver received her PhD from the University of Roehampton (UK) with a thesis on the representation of history in cinema and painting. A graduate in history at the University of Toronto, she studied filmmaking at the University of Westminster. She has curated numerous international exhibitions and ran an East London studio-gallery and screening room. She is based in London, UK. Marsha Meskimmon is professor of Transnational Art and Feminism, and the director of the Institute of Advanced Studies at Loughborough University (UK). Her research makes connections between transdisciplinary feminisms and contemporary art, with a particular focus on the important cultural contribution of women and other marginal subjects. She has published a number of books and articles in the field, including The Art of Reflection: Women Artists’ Self-Portraiture in the Twentieth Century (1996), Women Making Art: History, Subjectivity, Aesthetics (2003), Contemporary Art and the Cosmopolitan Imagination (2010), and is currently writing a trilogy, Transnational Feminism and the Arts for Routledge, the first volume of which has just been published: Transnational Feminisms, Transversal Politics and Art: Entanglements and Intersections (2020). Olga Nikolaeva  holds a PhD  in Art History and Visual Studies from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. She has a specialist’s degree (five years) in Art History from Russian State University for the Humanities (Moscow, Russian Federation) as well as a master’s degree in Visual Culture from Lund University (Lund, Sweden). Her research interest lies in the field of performance art, live music performances, contemporary theatre and scenography. She recently completed her doctoral thesis Audiovisual Constructions: Material Interrelations in Live Rock Performances  (2019) and is now working on her postdoctoral project with focus on scenography of trauma in works of women practitioners in contemporary Russian theatre.  Harriet O’Neill is assistant director for the Humanities and Social Sciences at the British School at Rome and Honorary Research Associate of the School

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of Modern Languages at Royal Holloway, University of London. Prior to this, she held curatorial positions at the National Gallery, London and Royal Holloway. Her research focuses on frames and framing in the literal and the abstract, the collection, treatment and display of Italian Renaissance paintings in the nineteenth century and contemporary pedagogical practice in museums and galleries, including the use of scenography as an interpretative tool in heritage environments. Astrid von Rosen is associate professor in Art History and Visual Studies at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and specializes in scenography and performing arts historiography. She is the principal investigator of the research project Expansion and Diversity (2019–21) funded by the Swedish Research Council. She has published on participatory approaches to dance archives and scenographing as a research methodology. Publications include Dream-Playing across Borders (editor and contributor, 2016), ‘Costume in the Dance Archive’ in Studies in Costume and Performance (2020) and ‘Scenographing Resistance’ in Nordic Theatre Studies (2020). Christine Sjöberg is a PhD candidate in Art History and Visual Studies at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. She holds a MA in Aesthetic Disciplines with Specialization in Fashion Studies, a BFA in Photography and has a complementary MA1 in Artistic Research with focus on photographic archive materials. She was one of the co-editors for, and contributors to, Handpicked – On Excursions in the Visual Archive nominated for the Swedish Photo Book Award 2013. Her main interests are in photography, visual culture and fashion theory, and her current research concerns how, and by what means, fashion photographs come to affect us. Eszter Szalczer is a theatre historian and modern drama scholar, and a professor at the University at Albany, State University of New York, United States. Her books include Writing Daughters: August Strindberg’s Other Voices (2008) and August Strindberg (2011). Her writings have also appeared in many journals and scholarly anthologies including The Cambridge Companion to August Strindberg (2009), The International Strindberg (2012) and Scandinavian Studies. Tamas Szalczer is an artist and freelance architect, trained as a sculptor at the Academy of Fine Arts, Budapest, Hungary, and as an architect at the Cooper Union in New York.

Foreword The stage of writing and drawing art’s histories As the editors of this volume note in their Introduction, the term ‘scenography’ has an obscure history. Its etymology points to the stage and to writing – a ‘scenic writing’ – but, with the suffix ‘graph’ implicating drawing as well as writing, the visual and the material begin to emerge from the shadows. What happens if the scene of drawing and writing is re-staged? Can scenography be both noun and verb, object and process, at once? Playful etymologies sometimes help us to work our way towards new forms of thinking about familiar phenomena. Conventional understandings of scenography lend themselves well to such critical revision, and to foregrounding scenography as active, rather than leaving it in the background, passive. Drawing scenography to the stage of writing to explore its agency raises significant questions around methodology and discipline. These are the self-same questions that have been asked about art and art’s histories, theories and practices and the implications are profound in both cases. The chapters collected in the present volume shift the conversation with scenography away from definitions, and this opens terminology – scenography, scenographics – but also theoretical parameters. If we are not exploring scenography as a defined category of objects, we are able to explore its meaning and its matter(ing). The parallels with the art historical turn from representation to articulation/materialization are significant. Art can, of course, represent subjects and objects, concepts and worlds. But more than that, art can make subjects and objects, concepts and worlds. Its visual, spatial and material agency go beyond the logic of representation, where that implies that art is a mute mirror onto the world. Rather, art is one of the forms through which the world emerges, becomes meaningful, in the flux of intra-activity at the interstices of times, spaces and bodies. Understanding scenography beyond representation brings its body, its times and spaces, back into the stage of mattering and meaning. If art was haunted by the representational/mirror model that rendered it mute, then scenography’s haunting came in the form of the naturalized logic of context as background.

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Scenography has struggled to move from the background, as a context to a foregrounded text. It has fallen into the easy logic of binary opposition, where the ‘second term’ can never acquire its own voice. The present anthology seeks to give scenography its voice and in so doing challenges easy boundaries between disciplines and forges new methodologies for thinking with and through scenographic agency. Some of these challenges are immediate; rethinking scenography means facilitating dialogues beyond theatre and performance studies with cognate fields such as art history, literary criticism, film studies and architectural theory, as well as further afield with cultural geography, feminism, gender studies and new media technologies. These are seen here as ‘good neighbours’, a phrase designed to suggest the easy conversations that emerge in fellowship, rather than through assimilation. Bringing interdisciplinary perspectives to scenography is not a process of colonization, or of ‘translating’ scenography into the languages of the other fields of interest, but of dialogues in and through difference. These dialogues are rich, varied and multiple: scenography’s emergent voice is a chorus. Methodologically, reconceiving the stage of writing and drawing through new scenographic agencies points to another link with art’s histories, theories and practices, namely, the turn from the primacy of the visual. Just as art retains a representational mode, so the visual still holds a key place within the experience and the interpretation of art. Yet it would be difficult to argue any longer that the visual is of singular or sole significance as a mode of analysis within art history and theory. Multisensory explorations of ethics and aesthetics, of art and epistemology, of affect, imagination and phenomenological engagements with art, have unravelled the ‘ocularcentrism’ of modernist art histories, and with this, have exposed too, their Eurocentric, masculine-normative and cis-gendered biases. There is no turning back from these decolonizing, feminist and queer explorations of art and its histories, and for my own part, I would not wish to return, even if this were possible. Understanding the visual as imbricated within a fully corporeal and sensate field of meaning production is not disempowering, but enabling and responsible. Multisensory and new materialist approaches to the agency of scenography cannot but take it from the background to the fore as a corporeal space of encounter rather than a decorative terra nullius. This has aesthetic, disciplinary and political ramifications. The scene of writing and drawing operates at the nexus of spaces, times and bodies, entangling human and non-human actors within emergent worlds. Scenography is worlding not mute, a possibilizing

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space replete with meaning, not empty. As this anthology opens its dialogue with art and its histories, it does so at a time when reconceiving the material and imaginative encounters between times, spaces and bodies has never been more urgent and necessary. To continue with the logic of the same is to repeat the mistakes of the past. Seeking to create different spaces of encounter, this volume looks, instead, to the future. Marsha Meskimmon

Foreword At the borders of scenography I always feel that scenography works best at a border. If you arrive to this book as an art historian, border thinking is one key for unlocking its potential for art history. Indeed, I encourage you to think of scenography as the crafting of borders. Whether in terms of disciplines or materialities, scenography weaves border feelings by highlighting the intersection of distinct stagecrafts, media and ontological spillages between the politically contrived and ‘the real’. In doing so, it leans on a cross-disciplinary range of subjects, techniques and processes that exceed the institutional contexts of theatre. Historically, scenographic practice has been conceptualized as a lesser form of architecture, akin to a potemkin village or painted backdrop, that serves only to communicate a pre-existing message. Contemporary approaches to scenography embrace a more holistic account of how the combination of materiality, light, scent or even temperature evoke feelings of place. The interface of scenography and art history provides an apt context from which to re-map and re-think the underlying borders and anti-theatrical biases that frame scenographic cultures. Whether the critical possibilities of a stage set or the multisensory experiences of gardens, I encourage you to consider how scenographic techniques are present in a range of staged material cultures that intervene, irritate or complicated normative flows of space and place. To aid the navigation of scenography’s various expansions for those new to the subject, I offer three provocations to keep in mind when reading this book. First, scenography is never one ‘thing’. Scenography is a combination of distinct stagecrafts (such as light, sound, costume and set design) often involving the labours of numerous designers and technicians, along with directors and performers. Anyone involved in the crafting of stage places. This reading of scenography transgresses and re-thinks the, I would argue, clumsy translation from ancient Greek as ‘scene painting’ or ‘scenic writing’. I personally prefer to imagine the labour of the skēnē in Greek theatre as a material intervention into the normative ‘flatness’ of the orchestra, which, in turn, re-imagined theatrical place. Rather than a descriptive object, the skēnē was a radical place-orientating

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device that materialized on- and offstage worlds, re-ordered theatrical spatial politics and presented ‘space’ as an integral medium of theatricality. Moreover, skēnē in the original Greek denoted a ‘tent or hut’: a temporary structure. My usage of scenography stresses this temporality and I urge you to consider scenography as an act of ‘tenting’ when reading the chapters in this book. Yet, these are tents that can be made from light or sound, as well as wood or fabric. If the act of tenting is in some way formative of scenography, the envelopes of feeling or interventions with place that feature in this book become all the more accessible. Beyond a focus on scene painting, scenography as tenting exceeds its historical descriptive function to embrace a potential for proclaiming, irrupting and highlighting orders of place more generally. Second, scholars of scenography have in the last decade transgressed a focus on definitions (what is) to focus upon what scenography does: how it affects, channels and shapes stages. I propose to you that this has challenged the determinist assumption that stages precede scenography or, more directly, there are no stages without scenography. For instance, stages can be as technologically complex as the Royal Albert Hall or a square painted on the pavement. Both of these examples evoke latent potentiality for action, attention or reflection of stages that, crucially, are crafted through means of scenography (raised platforms, lighting rigs, lines on concrete, imaginative frames). Whether in a theatre, a public square or in your own living room, stages are enacted through techniques or frames of technologies, materialities and imaginations. I summarize these techniques and frames as being scenographic in form and execution. Some may read this statement as all-inclusive, where scenography now relates to anything and everything. I navigate this critical distinction by arguing that whereas all scenography is scenographic, not all that is scenographic is scenography. I condense this position into the idea of ‘scenographics’, which as a collection of place othering traits exceed a crafting of scenography (in theatres and as a profession) to include the orientating traits of scenographic cultures. Indeed, I stress the plurality of crafts, orientations and imaginaries that frame scenographic traits with the addition of an ‘s’. My proposal for scenographics, which frames some of the debates in this book, seeks to account for the multisensory and multimedia assemblages that promote, enact or reveal feelings of place: whether in a play, a gallery or the interiors of your home. While these are most directly evident within politically contrived interventions (from Christmas trees to visual merchanting), I propose that scenographics point towards a methodology for investigating the placeorientating techniques and political narratives that culturally position bodies

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and peoples within a spatial imaginary of world. To study scenographics is to study how world imaginaries are encountered through material cultures. From encounters with maps to media representations, scenographics account for the often seductive techniques for cultivating feelings of belonging, of country, of border and ultimately of world. Essentially, scenographics afford a timely lens for art historians to investigate how world feelings are engineered, affirmed or enacted through art practices and everyday life. Third, scenography exceeds strict definitions or expectations regarding its relationship to theatre making. Undoubtedly, scenography is integral to the art of crafting theatre stages. Scene changes in a production often present the greatest challenge to a design team. The transition from scene to scene – through a combination of lighting shifts, sound design and even costume changes or stage mechanics – affords an insight into the multiplicities of sensory and worldly experiences more broadly. Yet the integral role of scenography and scenographics in theatre making has been often at odds with how performances are analysed. Oddly, scenography is still an emerging area of scholarship in theatre and performance. At the turn of the millennium, scenography was at best labelled ‘theory for theatre designers’, and therefore only relevant to this defined group, or at worst dismissed as being ‘merely background’ to the core subjects of dramaturgy and acting. In this regard, a book devoted to the interfaces of scenography and art history is long overdue for numerous reasons. I suspect for many theatre and performance scholars there was an assumption that the design labours of scenographers would be an easy fit with the analytical forms of art history. Nevertheless, as the authors featured in the pages that follow deftly argue, art history has been as ready to dismiss scenography on the same grounds that, until recently, allowed theatre and performance scholars to brush it off as purely decorative (as a practice) or vocational (as a form of thinking). The marriage of these subjects is, consequently, a welcome and exciting addition to the growing library of scenography scholarship and its many possible futures beyond theatre. Given the context mentioned earlier, there is something of a fighting spirit to scenography that is willing to open itself out to new ideas, methods and techniques that transgress the limiting frames placed upon it historically. The authors featured in this book offer a series of positions on how this affirmative willingness to disciplinary crossing ideas might afford art historians. In that regard, scenography is always multiple and, in this border of flux, resists straightforward definitions of authorship and genre. Indeed, if you read this book through the lens of scenography as a crafting of stages, this may lead you

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to questions such as: What if scenography is an art of crafting borders? What are the agents, techniques and practices of feeling borders? How do stages act like borders and what does this have to offer art history? In asking these types of questions, you gain insight into the willingness of scenography to reach beyond the regulated spaces of theatre and open out to other horizons inclusive of art history and beyond. Rachel Hann

Acknowledgements As proud editors of Scenography and Art History, we wholeheartedly thank the numerous people in the international and cross-disciplinary research community who have shared their knowledge with us over the years and allowed us to make our contributions public. These people include conference organizers, publishers, reviewers, all sorts of participants, colleagues, students, friends and family members. You know who you are – thank you! A special thanks goes to Lisa Goodrum at I. B. Tauris for being the first to encourage us to produce this book, and to the board members for promptly accepting our initial proposal, before Bloomsbury took over the project. At Bloomsbury, we thank Frances Arnold and James Thompson for their support, and April Peake for helpful advice and guidance, as well as Anita Iannacchione, Yvonne Thouroude and Joseph Gautham for editorial assistance. Thanks also to Everett Thiele and Elizabeth Bodin for editing work on the manuscripts. We much appreciated the important and helpful feedback contributed by the anonymous reviewer, which helped to make Scenography and Art History much more accessible. We are profoundly grateful to the two globally acknowledged scholars Marsha Meskimmon and Rachel Hann for supporting our project and producing a preface each. The authors and contributors to this book further thank the following people and institutions for their assistance with permission to reproduce images: Leonor Fini Archive, Collection of the Weinstein Gallery San Francisco, CFM Gallery New York, Atalante, 3:e Våningens arkiv, Royal Holloway Image Library, University of London, Royal Holloway Archives, Art Institute of Chicago, Fondation Custodia Collection Frits Lugt, Collection UCLA Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Musée d’Orsay, Tate Britain London, National Trust Collections, Edizioni Engramma, Wien Theatre Museum, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, Moment Factory and Houghton Library Harvard University. We thank Pompe Hedengren, Karolina Henke, Rena Narumi, Anna Danielsson, Emma Vetter, Emilie Hörnlund, Ayman Al Fakir, Gina Tse, Clyde Archer, Anastasia Crossley, Sophie Mercer, Greer Crawley, Laura FernándezGonzález, Gillian McIver, Isabel Solís-Alcudia, Victoria Soto-Caba, Shayna

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Fontana and Francesco Brigida for generously allowing use of their designs, drawings or photographs. We also acknowledge the support from the Swedish foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences, Wilhelm and Martina Lundgren’s Science Fund, The Royal Society of Arts and Sciences in Gothenburg, the Department of Cultural Sciences, and the Centre for Critical Heritage Studies at the University of Gothenburg. We would also like to thank the Nordic Culture Fund. Their support enabled us to create our research network Nordic Scenography, where we develop ideas and share information about our activities and findings within the fields of Art History and Scenography.

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Introduction Re-imagining scenography in relation to art history Astrid von Rosen and Viveka Kjellmer

In recent decades, cross-disciplinary scenography studies have emerged as a thriving academic as well as creative domain. Not only has the concept of scenography moved beyond more traditional theatrical settings to potentially include all environments, it has also been intensely debated and theoretically honed. Its expansion and theorization has borne fruit in performance studies and practice-based/artistic research; however, apart from a few stimulating exceptions, it has not attracted the same level of attention within art history and related disciplines. In response to the lack of attention, this book examines recent developments in order to reimagine scenography as a critical concept for art history. We, the editors of Scenography and Art History, propose that such an endeavour can pave the way for new, innovative and critical approaches to a wide range of visual and multisensory topics and objects of study. Looking briefly at the etymology of ‘scenography’, the Greek word skenographia combines skēnē, referring to a small stage building, and graphia, meaning to write, or perhaps to make or metaphorically to paint. Although skenographia is often translated as scenic writing, the term has remained obscure, as it is still difficult or impossible to determine what it actually meant (Aronson 2017: 7). It is not only its obscure Greek origins but also its diverse historiography depending on location and context that render scenography a complicated concept, one that we have seen scholars avoid rather than affirm. Therefore, the main ambition of this book is to aid art historians and other scholars as they navigate and position themselves in relation to recent scenographic debates and developments, rather than to go over older writings on the topic. In this Introduction, we observe scenography through the lens of three particularly noteworthy theoretical shifts that are foundational to this book.

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First, the concept has expanded beyond the theatre, which means that a great variety of settings and situations can be considered scenographic (McKinney and Palmer 2017). These can include presentations and interventions in galleries, museums and heritage spaces, for example (den Oudsten 2011). Second, the mise en scène process and scenography as a holistic and durational event have, to an increasing extent, been theoretically separated. As a consequence, and perhaps provocatively, practitioners working with set design, costumes, lighting, sound, smell, video-technology and so forth are understood as contributing to scenography as an event, but are not seen as creators of the holistic occurrence that happens in time and place (Hann 2019). A third and central concern of this book covers what we call ‘the end of the visual’. We argue that when scenography is conceptualized as a holistic event, it goes from being a primarily visual and distanced phenomenon to being a multisensory, situated experience, involving all participants in the co-creation of a durational occurrence. This anthology is a result of scenography research undertaken at the Department of Cultural Sciences at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. In the interdisciplinary project Dream-Playing across Borders (von Rosen 2016), a holistic and cross-disciplinary understanding of scenography was employed to explore costumes, music, set design, lighting and bodies in a pioneering German production of A Dream Play. The initial ideas were further developed as a result of scenography sessions at the Association of Art Historians (AAH) conference in Loughborough (2017), the Critical Costume conference in Surrey (2018), the NORDIK conference in Copenhagen (2018) and the AAH in London (2018).1 We would also like to mention that our Nordic Scenography Network, also established in 2018, has become a platform for promoting international exchange and inviting scholars, practitioners and others to take part in developing the field.2 With this said, we will now move on to more closely explaining the recent understandings of scenography that invigorate the contributions to this book.

Scenography has expanded . . . One of the most important and liberating components of the ongoing theorization is the shift from wanting to understand what scenography is to being interested in what it does, as an active co-creator of performance within and outside the theatre. This idea is wonderfully expressed (and worth quoting at length) by two pioneers of the conceptual expansion of scenography, former artistic director of

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the Prague Quadrennial Sodja Zupank Lotker and performance scholar Richard Gough: We perform scenographies and they perform us. Our roles change with these scenographies. Environments conspire and collude to construct scenographies for our actions, and sites, places and locations are subverted, co-opted, occupied, translated and mutated for the needs of our performances. Everything we do and almost everything comprehend scenic formation – landscape, site and setting – but also a way of constructing the physical, perceptual and emotional environment of/for the event. (Lotker and Gough 2013: 3)

In the anthology Scenography Expanded: An Introduction to Contemporary Performance Design (2017), edited by scenography scholars Joslin McKinney and Scott Palmer, this expanded scenography theory is firmly established. Drawing on affect, relational aesthetics, post-humanist and new materialist theories, the editors emphasize the emotionally charged, relational and material character of scenography. They argue that ‘scenography facilitates spaces of encounter; that may be in the form of encounters between spectators and performers in ways that are conventionally familiar, but it might also encompass encounters with other spectators, spaces, sites and objects’ (McKinney and Palmer 2017: 8). McKinney and Palmer moreover suggest that ‘the ways in which scenography engages the attention of spectators – through the organization and transformation of space, through the selection and manipulation of images and through the action of the scenographic materials themselves – are often indirect and oblique; an experience or a set of potentialities rather than a singular message’ (McKinney and Palmer 2017: 10). In recognition of this, Scenography and Art History stresses that it is the mobilization of familiar and unfamiliar resources, rather than the promotion or unpacking of a singular message, that is paramount to understanding scenography as a durational and reciprocal relationship between people, environments and contexts. Arguably, this situated, embodied and affective understanding of scenography has social and political implications. Several of the contributors to this book appreciatively explore sensations as powerful and transformative aspects of scenographic occurrences.

. . . and been theoretically honed As exemplified earlier, expanded scenography emerges as a complex landscape filled with celebratory approaches, a critical impetus and fruitful

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innovations. However, while the expansion may be enticing and inspiring, if it means that anything and everything can be considered scenography, the concept risks becoming unclear. This can be compared to how the notion of a performative artwork has become redundant, because all art does something; all art is performative (von Hantelmann 2010: 17–18). As suggested by scenography scholar Rachel Hann in Beyond Scenography (2019), works of art, be they sculptures, installations or light art, ‘evoke methods of placing and orientation that are scenographic in conception and execution’. Hann further proposes that if performativity has become redundant, ‘scenographics afford a useful counterpoint when articulating an artwork’s affinity to staging’ (Hann 2019: 30). Moving on from performativity, Scenography and Art History proposes that scenography theory is a useful tool for addressing the complex, affectively charged interplay between artworks, environments and bodies. As a helpful response to the seemingly unavoidable conceptual unclarity that arises when a concept expands, Hann sets out on a double quest. Wishing both to clarify scenography’s roots in theatre methods and to account for its critical capacities beyond the theatre, she constructs two entangled yet different concepts: scenography and scenographics. Scenography, a concept of and for the theatre, is understood as ‘place orientation’, and refers to the crafting capacities of the theatrical devices of light, costume, set, sound and video. Scenographics, on the other hand, refers to extra-daily features ‘which orientate interventional acts of worlding’ (Hann 2019: 17) and which need not involve theatre methods proper. Worlding, a concept Hann borrows from Kathleen Stewart (2014), is a way to address how scenographic encounters can make worlds appear, to better define them, and to unsettle and expose the ideologies and normativities at play. Combining new materialism, affect and assemblage theory, and queer phenomenology, Hann urges us to focus on ecologies, or ‘felt relational interdependencies of material circumstances within and beyond the theatre’ (von Rosen 2020b: 76). Hann’s manifesto aptly summarizes much of what is at stake for new scenography theory: Scenographics irritate the disciplined orders of world. Skenographia has many legacies. Scenography has exceeded the scenographer. Scenography is not set; scenography happens. There are no stages without scenographics. While all scenography is scenographic, not all that is scenographic is scenography.

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Whereas slow architecture pertains to monumentality, fast architecture is scenographic. Scenographics score acts of worlding. (Hann 2019: unnumbered pages)

Several of the contributions to this book bring Hann’s scenography theory into the realm of art and theatre historiography. Scenography and Art History thereby contributes exemplary case studies of how recent scenography theory reinvigorates analyses of historical topics ranging from medieval festival books to postmodern dance interventions at an art museum. The book also demonstrates the usefulness of scenography theory for studies that focus on practitioners (e.g. scenographer-artists or costume designers), archival traces of practice (such as designs), the mise en scène process, and explorations of live events.

The end of the visual Scenography and Art History argues that when scenography is conceptualized as a holistic event, it goes from being a primarily visual and distanced phenomenon to being a multisensory experience. This means that all participants, or agents (human, non-human and hybrid), are involved in the co-creation of durational, situated, past, present or even future occurrences. Scholars of visual culture have repeatedly argued that the term ‘visual’ does not only refer to seeing but also encompasses other sensory modalities such as touching or hearing (see, for example, Mirzoeff 1999, 2002; Mitchell 2005). This book suggests that scenography is a useful term for addressing multisensory dimensions of ‘visual’ culture. Scenography theory, we suggest, usefully avoids creating hierarchies between the senses and opens up for innovative and critical approaches to a great variety of historical and current topics. Recent scenography theory, then, testifies to what playfully can be termed ‘the end of the visual’.3 Even if the visual will always be there, and will always have important functions, the scenography theory presented here is more interested in multisensory potentialities and affective mobilization of resources than in the communication and effects of defined messages. Indeed, as theatre scholar James Thompson argues, affect can be understood as ‘the bodily sensation that is sustained and provoked particularly by aesthetic experiences’ and that forms a ‘precondition for critical engagement with the world’ (Thompson 2009: 135). For example, when affect is manifested as intense or subtle feelings of joy, sadness, fear, pleasure or irritation, then scenographic thinking can help

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connect multisensory experiences with ideologies and with the societal and political realms. Addressing widely different research problems, several of the contributors to this book challenge distant visual interpretations by involving themselves in first-person, bodily situated experiences and analyses. Scenography and Art History proposes that ‘the end of the visual’ will trigger thinking about and with multisensory and holistic scenography theory to improve analytical precision as well as academic and practice-based creativity.

Chapters as good neighbours Scenography and Art History is a pioneering book, being the first to demonstrate the importance and usefulness of updated scenographic approaches for art historians and scholars in related fields. Each contributor to this book adds an important facet to this thrilling and sprawling endeavour. They purposefully do so with their own tone of voice, choice of topic and understanding of scenography. Therefore, depending on the reader’s taste and areas of interest, the chapters can be read in any order. We hope readers will find both what they know they are looking for and what they are not yet aware they can find useful and enjoyable. Differently expressed, Scenography and Art History is structured by the policy of the good neighbour. As editors, we believe it can be wonderfully surprising and enlivening to dive into foreign, neighbouring chapters. In this spirit, we have juxtaposed vastly different chapters to sustain the foundational ideas of openness, plurality and respect that are so significant for the crossdisciplinary domain of scenography studies. As indicated earlier, several of the contributions to this book explore how traces of events and layers of memory can become ‘active agents’ (Cook 2001: 29) in a critical reshaping of art and performance history. Indeed, designs and other remains in the scenographic archive are understood as underexplored resources, possessing an intriguing potential for challenging hierarchies that devalue craft and design, and the bodies wearing and experiencing their products. This is the reason for opening the series of individual contributions with a chapter that mobilizes designs, one of the most common traces in the performance archive. In Chapter 2, British visual culture historian Rachael Grew turns to feminism and the witch figure in artist-scenographer Leonor Fini’s never-realized designs. Grew demonstrates how previously neglected or downplayed traces of the mise en scène process can provide valuable knowledge about artistic practices that

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challenge oppressive societal structures. Applying the scenographic approach to the performance archive, her contribution questions and sets in motion traditional art historical witch iconography to reveal powerful elements that cast Fini as knowledgeable, powerful and autonomous. Swedish art and scenography historian Astrid von Rosen also engages with the performance archive in Chapter 3. She employs Hann’s holistic scenographic framework to explore an outdoor performance by Rubicon, a dance group excluded from academic history. In doing so, she demonstrates how paying attention to scenographic features such as sound, noise, smell, light and costume helps build legitimacy for body- and place-oriented works where dance, art and architecture coalesce. Emphasizing the multisensory responses of the (researcher’s) situated body as a useful research tool when exploring the archive, von Rosen develops a sensory method for accessing echoes of past affective atmospheres. Through her concept of ‘scenographing’, she accounts for active researcher involvement in exploratory processes, an important theme of this book that resonates in other chapters as well (see also von Rosen 2020a). The fruitfulness of attending to scenography within the realm of visual culture is demonstrated in Chapter 4 by Canadian-British film and art historian Gillian McIver. She examines how the art of Robert Rauschenberg came to be a profound artistic influence on the film  Taxi Driver, through the way that it inspired cinematographer Michael Chapman. McIver uncovers how artistic traditions of composition, colour, tone and gesture take on striking scenographic qualities in the viewer’s experience of the film’s legendary scenes of bloodshed. Not only does she depict the encounter with the film screen as a multisensory – and rather gory – experience, but she also mobilizes her own practice as a scholarly tool to attempt to restore some of the original colour balance of the archival remains. As becomes pertinent in other studies in this book as well, the turn towards practice helps make new connections between scholarly endeavours and artistic knowledge. In Chapter 5, the productive potential of scenographic practice is further explored. Scenographer and curator Greer Crawley and art historian and curator Harriet O’Neill mobilize practical scenographic research performed by students to bridge the gap between art history and architecture history in a physical, critical and creative space. By bringing together artworks from different places and times, the academically forgotten monumental setting of the Royal Holloway chapel is reimagined as a vivid scenographic realm for creative and critical thinking and making. It is through such innovative approaches to scenography that a new field of cross-border study emerges, calling upon scholars from a

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broad range of subject areas to revisit their traditional study objects or find new ones to engage with. In Chapter 6, Russian–Swedish art historian Olga Nikolaeva becomes a part of the scenography when attending a live performance by the British rock band Muse. Discussing a contemporary live music performance, she mobilizes expanded scenography theory to explore how the multisensory and often overwhelming impact of such events can be analytically addressed. Nikolaeva invites the reader to follow her embodied investigation into the affective and meaning-making potentials of the live event. By attending to how the soundscape, human and non-human bodies, and material environment craft an audiovisual experience, she demonstrates the pivotal role of often-ignored features of performance. Her first-hand experience and analytic exploration testifies to the ‘end of the visual’ in favour of the multisensory approach advanced in Scenography and Art History. As demonstrated by  Canadian art historian  and curator Corrinne Chong in Chapter 7, the artist Henri Fantin-Latour’s lithographic adaptations of Wagner’s Der Ring evoke his sensory experiences of a scenographic encounter that included real-time immersion in sights and sounds. While material traces of past performances, such as elements of the set, are seldom preserved, can be difficult to discern and are not always compelling, it is argued that scenography theory opens up a fruitful interpretative realm. By focusing on Fantin’s lithographic adaptations, Chong contributes a rewarding exploration into the multisensory, felt, material and elusive realm of past scenographic events that is featured in this book. In Chapter 8, Swedish art historian and scholar of visual studies Viveka Kjellmer uncovers multisensory potentialities in the advertisement campaign Opera Papier, which features opera singers, dancers and musicians in stunning paper costumes. By combining visual theory with an understanding of costume as ‘co-author’ of performance (Barbieri 2017: xxii–xxv), Kjellmer demonstrates how the joint crafting of costume, photography and artistic work such as singing, playing music or dancing is a central force in the campaign. As a result, Kjellmer introduces the craft-sensitive and thus ethically important concept of visual couture into the realm where scenography, costume and visual studies coalesce. British dress historian Veronica Isaac explores in Chapter 9 the role of Ellen Terry as an artist wholeheartedly taking part in the design and crafting of her costumes to forge her role in society. By considering the role of dress as a scenographic means for self-fashioning and identity-staging, Isaac demonstrates that paying attention to the clad body is also a critical historiographical act

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of re-imagining how performance and expanded art histories can better be remembered. In particular, the chapter shows how the agency of Terry’s costumed body went beyond the scenographic stories on stage to take on the role of an expanded scenography impacting on cultural values to challenge and change them. As such, Isaac’s chapter epitomizes the critical and transformative scenographic forces advanced by recent scenography theory. In Chapter 10, Spanish art historian Carmen González-Román demonstrates the fruitfulness of scenographic thinking in relation to the traditional art history topic of festival books. Moving beyond previous iconographic studies emphasizing the symbolic value of the images, González-Román opens up festival books for critical and creative reassessment. In particular, she demonstrates that when investigating digital stagings of early-modern festival books from a scenographic perspective, a new realm emerges where previously inaccessible and silent visuals are transformed into multisensory events reaching a newer and broader public in today’s society. Swedish art historian, scholar of visual studies and photographer Christine Sjöberg stages a ‘digital wandering’ in Chapter 11 to explore her multisensory and critical exchange with digital fashion photographs. Through this methodology, she develops a scenographic conception of photography, referring to the examined photographs as neither static nor purely semiotic, but parts of a far more complex phenomenon. This methodology arguably equips and empowers the scholar to understand, enjoy, as well as challenge the often extremely seductive sites of digital fashion photography or related areas of study. In conclusion, Sjöberg suggests that the scenographic realm can be understood as a form of multidimensional interface – a meeting place where the orientations making something felt are possible to conceptualize. Scenography and Art History concludes with a return to the performance archive. In Chapter 12, Hungarian–American artist and architect Tamas Szalczer and theatre historian and modern drama scholar Eszter Szalczer explore the opening night of The Spook Sonata performed by the legendary Living Theatre. They carefully describe, analyse and interpret recently discovered contact sheets to evoke the multisensory scenography of the past mise en scène process and performance. Combining practical scenographic and artistic skills, creative writing and art historical contexts, the Szalczers produce a stunningly rich experience of a bygone performance that challenged capitalist structures in 1950s New York. This serves as yet another example of the main argument advanced in this book, namely the productiveness of expanding visual methodologies into multisensory scenographic approaches.

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Celebrating cross-border dialogue With its cross-disciplinary frame, Scenography and Art History implicitly and explicitly considers the roles of both scenography and art in society. We think it is fair to say that the realm of scenography theory can provide useful apparatuses for art historians and scholars in related branches of study interested in evoking and exploring holistic, multisensory, relational encounters between places, bodies and environments in a broad range of topics. The chapters in this book suggest that, when applied to art history and visual culture, scenography theory helps scholars think in new ways about the agency and meaning of both pictures and body–place interactions. For example, costume in photographs not only comes across as a visual statement, but also forms part of a multisensory dialogue with the body wearing it, the body seeing and experiencing it, the environment within the picture (involving layers of crafting) and the environment where it is staged (be it paper, a digital platform or a museum setting). The international contributions and case studies brought together in Scenography and Art History provide clear, diverse and accessible examples of why scenography theory is a vital asset for working in these areas. Together, the contributors to the book challenge the orthodox disciplinary divisions between scenography and art history, and in doing so not only broaden the parameters of each respective field but also facilitate new and constructive dialogues between the two. In the words of art historian Marsha Meskimmon, ‘bridging differences through transversal dialogues (rather than assimilating them within a monologue)’ (Meskimmon 2020: 18) is a central concern of this book, as doing so links together a range of scenography-oriented initiatives. Taken together, the contributions in the book open up a territory for critical development at the intersections and contact zones between scenography, art history, performance design and visual culture. The various chapters thereby challenge the reader to consider a wider application of scenographic approaches to an expanded art history. Attention to scenography can arguably help scholars and students alike to become more aware of the relational interplay between all sorts of bodies and complex multisensory settings.

Notes 1 ‘Re-imagining Scenography in relation to Art History: Contact zones and crossroads’, convened by Astrid von Rosen and Viveka Kjellmer, Association of Art

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Historians (AAH) conference at Loughborough University, Loughborough, UK, 6–8 April 2017. ‘Untitled Spaces: Scenography and Nordic Art History’, convened by Astrid von Rosen and Viveka Kjellmer at the NORDIK [no title] conference in Copenhagen, 2018. ‘Aural Affects and Effects: Explicit and implicit sounds, rhythms and movements in contemporary visual media’, convened by Olga Nikolaeva and Christine Sjöberg, the AAH conference, Courtauld Institute of Art & King’s College London, 5–7 April 2018, London, UK. Critical Costume 2018 on ‘Costume Ethics’, 12–14 September 2018, Guildford, UK, University of Surrey, Guildford School of Acting. Convened by Dr Rachel Hann, Ele Slade and Meg Cunningham, and with von Rosen and Kjellmer presenting individual papers. 2 Accessible here: https​:/​/no​​rdic-​​sceno​​graph​​y​-net​​work-​​for​-a​​rchiv​​es​-an​​d​-res​​earch​​​ .webn​​ode​.s​​e/# (Accessed 18 June 2019). 3 We have been inspired by James Thompson’s phrase ‘the end of effect’ when writing about ‘the end of the visual’. See Thompson (2009: 5).

References Aronson, A. (2017), ‘Introduction: Scenography or Design?’, in Arnold Aronson (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Scenography, 1–15, London and New York: Routledge. DOI: https​:/​/do​​i​-org​​.ezpr​​oxy​.u​​b​.gu.​​se​/10​​.4324​​/97​81​​31742​​2266 (accessed 24 July 2020). Barbieri, D. (2017), Costume in Performance: Materiality, Culture and the Body, London and New York: Bloomsbury. Cook, T. (2001), ‘Fashionable Nonsense or Professional Rebirth: Postmodernism and the Practice of Archives’, Archivaria, 51, 14–35. Hann, R. (2019), Beyond Scenography, Abingdon, Oxon and New York: Routledge. von Hantelmann, D. (2010), How to Do Things with Art, Dijon: JRP Ringier/Les Presses du Réel. Lotker, S. and Gough, R. (2013), ‘On Scenography: Editorial’, Performance Research: A Journal of the Performing Arts, 18 (3), 3–6. DOI: 10.1080/13528165.2013.818306 (accessed 24 July 2020). McKinney, J. and Palmer, S. (2017), Scenography Expanded: Introduction to Contemporary Performance Design, London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama. Meskimmon, M. (2020), Transnational Feminisms, Transversal Politics and Art: Entanglements and Intersections, London and New York: Routledge. Mirzoeff, N. (1999), An Introduction to Visual Culture, London and New York: Routledge. Mirzoeff, N. (2002), ‘The Subject of Visual Culture’, in N. Mirzoeff (ed.), The Visual Culture Reader, 2nd edn, 3–23, London and New York: Routledge. Mitchell, W. J. T. (2005), ‘There Are No Visual Media’, Journal of Visual Culture, 4 (2), 257–66. Issue published: 1 August 2005. DOI: 10.1177/1470412905054673 (accessed 24 July 2020).

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den Oudsten, F. (2011), Space.Time.Narrative: The Exhibition as Post-Spectacular Stage, Farnham: Ashgate. von Rosen, A., ed. (2016), Dream-Playing across Borders: Accessing the Non-texts of Strindberg’s A Dream Play in Düsseldorf 1915–18 and Beyond, Gothenburg and Stockholm: Makadam. Available online: https://gupea​.ub​.gu​.se​/handle​/2077​/55175 (accessed 24 July 2020). von Rosen, A. (2020a), ‘On the Wire: Scenographing Affect at Sillgateteatern in Gothenburg around 1800’, in Randi M. Selvik, Svein Gladsø and Anne M. Fiskvik (eds), Performing Arts in Changing Societies: Opera, Dance and Theatre in European and Nordic Countries around 1800, 204–17, London and New York: Routledge. von Rosen, A. (2020b), ‘Scenographing Resistance: Remembering Ride This Night’, Nordic Theatre Studies, special issue Memory Wars, 31 (2), 73–88. Available online: https​:/​/ti​​dsskr​​ift​.d​​k​/nts​​/issu​​e​/v​ie​​w​/872​4 (accessed 24 July 2020). Stewart, K. (2014), ‘Tactile Composition’, in P. Harvey and E. Casella (eds), Objects and Materials, 775–810, London and New York: Routledge. Thompson, J. (2009), Performance Affects: Applied Theatre and the End of Effect, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

2

Black goats and broomsticks Feminism and the figure of the witch in Leonor Fini’s designs for Le Sabbat Rachael Grew

Fini and the witch ‘Laying on her great sofa, surrounded by cats [Leonor Fini] drew a series of witches (each with her own devil and death’s head). As she drew, she emitted raucous and piercing cries’ (Gauthier 1979: 118). I think Leonor Fini (1907– 1996) would have liked to have been a witch. Her oeuvre is full of powerful women engaged in strange activities that hint at forbidden knowledge; and more than one self-referential figure in her paintings bears the traditional hallmarks of the witch. This chapter explores how Fini’s designs for the ballet Le Sabbat (The Sabbat), 1972, align with feminist thought on the figure of the witch. It is important to note that these designs were never realized, and the ballet was never performed. The designs are significant as they document Fini’s evocation and staging of the powerful woman/witch; stage performance is not required to give agency to design. As Astrid von Rosen has remarked, when considering unrealized stage designs ‘[a] more fruitful historiographic approach would be – when appropriate – to steer away from too narrow a focus on the event proper, and thus creatively rethink non-staged . . . sketches as valuable sources’ (von Rosen 2016: 311). That the designs have not previously been subject to significant analysis is evident in the confusion over their dating. There are a number of designs featured in a CFM gallery catalogue (Zukerman 1992) that are dated c. 1950s and are attributed to an unrealized production entitled Les Sorcières (The Witches).1 However, the fact that aspects of Witches Cavern set design (definitively dated to 1972 and linked with Roland Petit by the Weinstein Gallery) are shown in more

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detail in the designs held by the CFM gallery suggests that either Fini very closely reproduced designs from the 1950s or that the designs in the CFM collection should be dated c. 1972. Of these two possibilities, the latter seems more likely as there is no mention of an unrealized ballet entitled Les Sorcières in the extensive list of Fini’s theatrical projects compiled by Richard Overstreet, Fini’s executor and director of her Archive.2 As such, I am referring to the designs previously identified as being made for Les Sorcières as designs for Le Sabbat and dating them accordingly. In examining the parallels between Fini’s designs and feminism, I draw on a range of sources from Fini’s oeuvre – not just the Sabbat designs but also examples of her painting and illustration as well as other theatrical projects. This is because there is a great deal of iconographic overlap between the different areas of Fini’s work and using this variety of source material creates a more holistic analysis that traverses and defies traditional categories of art and design. This mirrors both a feminist challenge to the patriarchal hierarchies of art and design and Fini’s refusal of limiting definitions (Webb 2009: 72), which I will return to shortly. In addition to these visual sources, I also draw upon Fini’s writings – published and unpublished – the latter coming from the Fini Archive in Paris. Fini’s capacity to stage herself is well known. Her public image, appearances and receptions in her studio were carefully crafted to the extent that one could argue she created her own theatrical environment; one that was centred around herself, and the same is potentially true of her writing. The documents that chart the development and eventual withdrawal of Le Sabbat are written from Fini’s perspective. However, this is not necessarily a negative factor, as the lack of easy categorization resulting from this stage craft echoes Fini’s dislike of being labelled, the ambiguity of her witches and the fluidity of identity championed by feminist thought. Despite Fini’s disavowal of labels and categories, she is most frequently identified as a Surrealist artist. Though she never defined herself as such or officially joined the group, she held common interests in the uncanny and the dream-like, and often exhibited with the other Surrealists. Equally, Fini was not just a painter but also a designer, producing illustrations and designs for commercial products and furniture as well as theatrical designs. This latter area accounts for a significant aspect of her output from 1944 to 1972, during which time she produced set and/or costume designs for twelve ballets, thirtyfive theatrical productions, five operas and nine film/television productions. Hybridity, ambiguity and transformation are constant themes in all areas of her work, and we also see these in her Sabbat designs.

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As you might now expect, Fini’s witches are difficult to categorize along traditional lines. Rather than falling into the trope of either the ‘wicked’ or ‘good’ witch, Fini’s witches sometimes seem to simultaneously enchant and protect those around them. Many use typical witch iconography but project a positive image of a powerful woman. The witch is a constant motif throughout the different areas of Fini’s work, marking it out as a significant image. Like some of her Surrealist peers, Fini was familiar with both Grillot de Givry’s 1929 text Witchcraft, Magic, and Alchemy and Jules Michelet’s 1939 volume The Sorceress (Webb 2009: 49; Fini 1975: 44). Givry provides a detailed account of sorcery, outlining magical practices, persecution and punishment, with an entire section on the Sabbat. Michelet laments the role of the church in demonizing and persecuting women for witchcraft and rhapsodizes the pagan eras when women visionaries, teachers and healers held power (Givry [1929] 1971: 50–204; Michelet [1939] 2008: 9–19). It is likely therefore that Fini was well versed in the typical iconography surrounding depictions of witches, as well as the concept the witch as a powerful but oppressed woman. The witch also became significant to feminists. Indeed, both Diane Purkiss (1996: 10) and Justyna Sempruch (2008: 1) note that the witch acts as a cipher for feminist identity across multiple waves of feminism. However, this essay will focus on second wave feminist attitudes to the witch, as they are contemporaneous with the designs under discussion. Though Fini features in feminist reassessments of Surrealism and her paintings have even been viewed as ‘nothing less than a revolutionary vision of woman’ (Lauter 1984: 128), she refused a feminist identity, stating: ‘I hate being claimed as a feminist . . . . I am a painter, not a woman painter. I am independent’ (Webb 2009: 273). She likely found the early feminist emphasis on lionizing women and raising them out of their context in order to shine a spotlight on them to be reductive (a view shared by later feminist scholars), and this may have soured her perspective on feminism as a whole. In 1977 she wrote to the editor of a volume of the literary journal Obliques that was dedicated to ‘the Surrealist woman’, saying: The idea of consecrating an issue of your review to women surrealists implies a sort of harem. You would not have considered doing the same for the ‘men of Surrealism’ would you? (Webb 2009: 274)

Let me emphasize, I am not trying to give Fini a feminist voice, but am using the disruptive, empowering, feminist assessment of the witch to frame Fini’s designs and create a nuanced narrative.

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In exploring this topic, I wish to address three questions: If Fini wished to eschew a feminist identity, then what is the role of her witches? Do they share similar concerns as those revealed by feminist discourse? And what do they convey about female identity and the body?

Fini’s Le Sabbat This chapter uses Fini’s Le Sabbat, 1972, as its core case study, but also references other designs, illustrations and paintings that potentially influenced its development. Le Sabbat was an unrealized ballet that was intended to form one of the acts in Roland Petit’s musical revue Zizi je t’aime (Zizi, I love you), which opened on 20 February 1972 at the Casino de Paris, with Petit’s partner Zizi (Renée) Jeanmarie in the starring role. Zizi je t’aime was one of two revues starring Jeanmarie, both directed by Petit, who owned and directed the Casino de Paris at the time (Oxford Reference 2010). There was no specific narrative, but rather a series of twenty song and dance numbers. These pieces variously evoked a sense of the erotic (such as the fourth piece – The Garden of Delights – featuring the Casino chorus girls and nude dancers), the exotic (as in the fourteenth piece: The Sultan’s awakening) or glamorous popular culture, this latter particularly evident in the seventeenth piece, which seems to have been an extended set featuring 1930s American dance hall classics by the likes of Irving Berlin and Cole Porter (Fiette 2007: 251–69). While Fini’s proposed subject matter might seem at odds with the rest of the review, the sheer spectacle of her piece would have sat well with the sequin-soaked extravagance of the show, which continually featured elaborate, glittering, feathered costumes created by haute couture designers such as Yves Saint-Laurent and Érte (Fiette 2007: 257). It seems likely that Fini was brought onto the project partially because she had already collaborated with Petit on a number of other projects, including Les Demoiselles de la Nuit (The Ladies of the Night) of 1948, but also perhaps because of her reputation as a designer and finally, according to Petit, because the show was so large it swept up everyone working in the Parisian theatre industry at the time. He later told a BBC documentary that ‘All Paris was working for us . . . all the people working for theatre in Paris were working for the Casino de Paris’ (BBC 1998). The original designs for the ballet called for a multi-tiered charcoal grotto (Plate 1), inhabited by two golden guardians, described as ‘half-hydras, halfbishops’, as well as three enormous black goats, plus owls, cats and demons, the

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latter of whom would give flying lessons to a young female witch (Fini, n.d. a.: 1).3 According to Fini’s notes, she and Petit feared that the original grotto design would be badly executed and changed it. The new design retained the guardians and the goats but replaced the grotto with a large tree ‘built fairly flat but in three dimensions’, in which the young witch plus six or seven others perch before the tree opens, the sky turns red, and the witches fly ‘joyously’ across it (Fini, n.d. a: 1–2).4 Having proposed these ideas in June of 1971, Petit and the set designer ‘J. Bertin’, came to see Fini in September, saying that the number of flights was to be reduced from six or seven to four because of a lack of space. In January the flights were reduced to two and then removed entirely, as was the idea of the tree – again, due to space (Fini, n.d. a: 2). Though she was unhappy with the maquette that had been made of her designs, at the end of January 1972 the set was mounted in the Casino, to an extremely negative reception from Petit. Luckily, the chance use of a red spotlight had an immediate effect on the set, making it ‘strange and beautiful’, and Petit and Fini agreed on a re-worked version of her initial idea (Fini, n.d. a: 3). Fini finally states that, though she had received positive reports of the new design that was made for rehearsals from the costumier Paule Sandoval, Petit contacted her to say that the set was ‘always hideous’ and he was thus obliged to cancel – first the use of the set and then, later that day, the entire ballet (Fini, n.d. a: 4). The story of the ballet is thus intriguing in itself, but my specific interest lies in the way that the descriptions of the costumes and set design paint an interesting relationship with the feminist reclamation of the witch, which will be examined in relation to three key elements of Fini’s designs: flight, the rebellious nature of the Sabbat and the monstrous body.

Flight While Fini’s designs contain many of the elements of the traditional iconography of the witch that feminists would denounce as part of a patriarchal narrative that denigrates the powerful woman, the designs for Le Sabbat also raise some intriguing parallels with feminist readings of the witch’s flight. This liminal position, oscillating between tradition and rebellion, is supported by Fini’s depictions of witches elsewhere in her work as we will see, and which perhaps influence her designs for Le Sabbat. Such a position is perhaps unsurprising given that Fini had much sympathy for the feminist aim of emancipation for all women and its emphasis on the powerful woman but was less enamoured of its placing women on a separate pedestal to men (Fini, n.d. b: 7).5 Nevertheless,

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there are certain other connections between feminist thought and Fini’s designs, even if she was not aware of them. In the notes she produced to account for the rift that developed between her and Petit, Fini emphatically states that the flights of the witches were the definitive aspect of the piece (Fini, n.d. a: 2).6 Justyna Sempruch (2008) has argued that flight is particularly important as a symbol of the witch’s otherness and thus her use as a feminist symbol of the culturally subjugated and marginalized woman, a mythic female ‘original’, or the castrating femme fatale. Fini echoes the connection between the witch and a mythic ‘other’ outside of culture: ‘The signs of the witch are scattered, like those of a constellation . . . it [the witch] is the rallying point of women who claim they do not have equality with men but a more free femininity, more intuitive, less socialised’ (Fini, n.d. c: 1). This distance from social influence and connection with intuition chimes with Julia Kristeva’s (1981) postulation of an Original Woman – a femininity predating the repressive dictates of patriarchal culture; an origin that women should aim to return to. If flight is symbolic of this Original, and flight was an integral part of Le Sabbat, then the use of flight in Le Sabbat forms an important part of our analysis. This is not just relevant for the actual flights of the ballet; there is a web of connections surrounding the motif of flight that informs and expands its significance. In discussing the history of the witch, Andrea Dworkin notes that, having slathered their bodies in belladonna and aconite in preparation for flying to the Sabbat, witches then experienced hallucinations and the sensation of flight. She continues that the use of a broom in this activity, as a symbol of womanhood and domesticity, subverts normative connotations of femininity through its repurposing by witchcraft (Sempruch 2008: 28). Similarly, in her writings Fini also links the witch with the dream; a state akin to hallucination: ‘In our century, many free women, while sleeping in the fantastical, recognise themselves in the figure of the witch’ (Fini, n.d. c: 1).7 By locating the witch within the dream of ‘every woman’ Fini seems to follow 1970s feminists such as Dworkin in viewing the witch as a symbol of woman. Indeed, Fini (n.d. c: 1) writes: ‘it is the witch who looks like me, rather than I [who] resemble her.’8 Significantly, the original set design for Le Sabbat also evokes a dream world or a hallucination with its inclusion of large cats, owls and other creatures. This is also akin to an earlier ballet created by Fini, Le Rêve de Leonor (Leonor’s Dream), 1949, which featured an array of similar creatures. The connection between the hallucinogenic dream and flight is underscored in Le Sabbat, as the moments of flight occur after strange, dream-like events: instruction in flying from a green

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demon with faces all over his body, and the opening up of a tree into two halves which then spread out across the stage. The flights were later removed and merely suggested by placing the witches on swings. Fini’s role in this change is unclear, but it seems likely that she made the suggestion of using swings when the possibility of stage flight was ruled out, as swings feature in a number of her paintings from this period. In two of these paintings (Swing I and Swing II, both of 1970), we look upwards at a nude or semi-nude girl standing on a swing, their pubescent genitals clearly on display. This is highly evocative of awakening sexual awareness, which we can again link to the witch. Sempruch (2008: 28) links Cixous’s argument that flying acts as a ‘female’ gesture with Irigaray’s view that female emancipation comes from self-knowledge gained through touch. In other words, flight = gesture = self-touching = selfknowledge = emancipation. Kathryn Rountree (1997: 224) has also noted the link between patriarchal attitudes to witchcraft and fear of female sexuality; suggesting that reclaiming the witch also includes the reclamation of female sexuality. However, Fini perhaps goes further than this in that she is not just concerned with adult female sexuality, but also that of young girls, as suggested by her swing paintings and that the principal dancer of Le Sabbat is described as a young female witch. In their discussion of the witch-hysteric, which I will explore in more detail later on, Clement and Cixous (1986: 21) link childhood games of swinging with the pagan Greek festival: the Aiora, in which young girls swung from trees on bars of wood. The purpose of the festival was ‘to neutralise the madness of the young women who were going to hang themselves [following the suicide of Icarus’ daughter Eriogne], celebrating [. . .] the virgin’s swing’ (Atsma, c. 2007–17). In this sense, Fini’s swings are not innocent childhood games, nor are they signifiers of virginity, but in fact the very opposite – these witches are breaking with canonical norms of femininity, again emphasizing otherness and reiterating a feminist view of the witch as anti-patriarchal rebel; an Other seeking to return to a pre-cultural Matriarchal domain. Thus, in the context of Le Sabbat’s use of flight, Fini’s witches echo, unconsciously or otherwise, feminist views on the witch.

Destabilizing patriarchy: The Sabbat The link between flight, swinging and self-knowledge further ties into the feminist reclamation of the witch as a primal original given that Fini specifically

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links the witch to ancient knowledge in her writings. She states: ‘Witches inherit the most ancient knowledge, they can change the century and the age’ (Fini, n.d. d: 1).9 This ancient, pre-patriarchal knowledge is a central strand of some feminist interpretations of the witch as it is used to represent a rebellion against male-dominated institutions of knowledge: science and religion. Diane Purkiss (1996) criticizes the feminist alignment between the witch and ‘alternative’ feminine knowledge at the very outset of her text on the witch. She argues that the standard story of the witch as a healer and midwife who angered doctors and men of religion with her skill, sensuality and independence is part of the myth of the Burning Times perpetuated by ‘radical feminists’, when in actual fact she asserts that ‘[t]here is little to no evidence that the majority of those accused were healers and midwives’, and that herbal lore formed part of standard domestic skills. Likewise, there is little evidence that those accused were sexually liberated or lesbian; many were married with children, while accusations of witchcraft were often made by women rather than misogynistic men alone (Purkiss 1996: 7–8). Is Fini guilty in propagating this myth? Fini does not suggest that the knowledge the witches possess is specifically linked to medicine or midwifery, though the way they can ‘change the . . . age’ places witches in a position of power that seems to supplant, or attempt to supplant, traditionally male systems. This is also obliquely referenced through costume design. One design for a witch’s costume depicts her riding a curved broomstick in a highly eroticized manner and wearing a large hat (Plate 2). This latter item is significant as Fini used such hats to symbolize religious and secular emblems of power: the flame, the halo and the crown (Fini 1975: 143). The witch therefore upends the roles of spiritually enlightened saint, lit with the fire of the Holy Ghost, as well as that of the temporal ruler. Not only does she ‘feminize’ patriarchal systems of religion and government but, by associating (sexually?) with devils and demons and accessing supernatural sources of power, she inverts these systems. Fini uses the traditional tropes of the broom-riding, sex-mad witch, but makes her a positive figure to be emulated rather than censored and feared. The eroticism displayed by her witches suggest sexual liberation, but this is perhaps less about reclaiming female sensuality and more about reflecting a rebellion against patriarchal conventions around female sexual roles. Such rebellion is embodied by Fini herself as she refused the conventional routes of marriage and monogamy. The characteristics of the patriarchal ‘slander’ of witches (their ugliness, their activities at the Sabbat) are celebrated by Fini. The most overt example of this is the enormous black goats that feature in Le Sabbat. While Fini’s notes on Le

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Sabbat do not give any indication that the black goats (later reduced to a single goat) were anything other than impressive but static pieces of the set, one design in particular depicts dancers joyfully leaping out from the folds of the goats’ cloaks (Plate 3). Thus, far from representing the spectre of patriarchal law as suggested by Clement and Cixous (1986: 12), Fini’s black goat enables jubilant celebration. This approach avoids the trap of the Burning Times myth, which Purkiss (1996: 17) views as deeply unhelpful to feminism due to the way in which it ‘portrays women as nothing but the helpless victims of patriarchy, and the female body as nothing but a site of torture and death’. In Fini’s depictions of witches the presence of patriarchy is missing or completely passive, enabling the witches to have both autonomy and agency, again reflecting qualities that are important to Fini herself. Clement and Cixous associate the anti-establishment character of the witch with the hysteric: This feminine role, the role of the sorceress, of hysteric, is ambiguous, antiestablishment and conservative at the same time. Anti-establishment because the symptoms – the attacks – revolt and shake up the public [. . .] These roles are conservative because every sorceress ends up being destroyed. (Clement and Cixous 1986: 5)

This positioning of the witch-hysteric also resonates with Surrealism; the aesthetic movement that Fini is most often and most closely aligned with. The Surrealists were aware of theories of hysteria put forward by Dr Jean-Martin Charcot, who was renowned for his work with hysteria patients at the hospital of Salpêtrière, and, later, the psychiatrist Pierre Janet, whom André Breton, the founder of Surrealism, studied as a young medical student in the army corps (Aberth 2004: 48). Charcot and Janet’s research into ‘hysterical’ women patients formed the basis for Breton’s view that woman could be identified with sexual ecstasy (and madness). Furthermore, Janet titled the ecstatic states of his female hysteric l’amour fou (mad love), directly feeding into Breton’s notion of convulsive beauty; that woman was specifically identified with the erotic, irrational, transformative power of the ecstatic state (Aberth 2004: 48; Lomas 2000). However, given Fini’s dislike of Breton, and her rejection of the position of female muse, it seems unlikely that Fini would have embraced the witch-hysteric parallel, setting her at a distance from this aspect of the feminist reclamation of the witch. Instead, it may be more fruitful to consider the disruptive potential of the collective of witches – the Sabbat itself and its link to the carnivalesque: particularly the up-ending of hierarchical structures and the return to the

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profane, expressed through the ‘reproductive power of the earth and the body’ (Bakhtin [1963] 1998: 251). The rebellion against patriarchal systems that is embodied by the witch is also expressed through the Sabbat itself: a topsy-turvy imitation of Christian ritual. The Sabbat is an important event for Fini. Not only does she use it as the setting for her 1972 ballet, but most of her depictions of witches show them travelling to or performing at the Sabbat. In the context of the ballet, we also find costume designs that require the dancers to stand on their heads, causing their skirts to fall down and reveal faces painting on their abdomen or lower back and buttocks (Plate 4), reiterating the upside-down nature of the carnival, turning everyday hierarchical structures quite literally on its head. Here we have a series of connections to tease out and consider their relation to feminist thinking. Fini’s designs for witches at a carnivalesque Sabbat, where law, order and social norms are turned upside-down, produce bodies which have additional faces in places they shouldn’t be, thus subverting the ‘natural’ order. These designs transgress the normative boundaries of the body, fragmenting and doubling it. Moreover, these faces are located in places linked to abject processes and fluids – the abdomen is allied with the womb, childbirth and menstruation, and the buttocks with faeces, reflecting Bakhtin’s connection of the carnivalesque with the bodily expression of the profane. Cixous and Clement specifically link these abject substances to the witch, particularly at the Sabbat: In the witch’s case, contagion spreads through bits of bodily waste and through odours Wastes: nail clippings, menstrual blood, excrement . . . . She is mixed up in dirty things As long as the sorceress is still free, at the Sabbat, in the forest, she is a sensitivity that is completely exposed – all open skin, natural, animal, odorous, and deliciously dirty. (Clement and Cixous 1986: 35–36, 39)

Kristeva’s (1982) definition of the abject (that which symbolizes social disorder and the transgression of boundaries, the ambiguous and composite) is echoed in Patricia MacCormack’s (2012) definition of the monstrous body, and both can be applied to these costume designs by Fini, as they create ambiguous, composite bodies that transgress bodily norms in their appearance, and social norms in the carnivalesque behaviour. Fini’s use of these monstrous, transgressive bodies was probably also informed by her interest in human–animal hybrids (notably the sphinx which recurs throughout her work), and her own disobedience towards social dictates.

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Nevertheless, in addition to her own intentions, Fini’s designs certainly align with feminist discourse around the nature of the witch’s body.

Monstrous bodies In Le Sabbat, the monstrous (ambiguous and composite) body also appears through the combination of crone and youthful initiate. From Fini’s notes it seems that Zizi was cast in the role of the young witch and was to be costumed in ‘madragore green’ (Fini, n.d. a: 5). ‘Mandragore’ is the French term for ‘mandrake’, traditionally viewed as an anthropomorphic root with magical and medical properties. The bulbous shape of the mandrake root suggests an ugly, monstrously deformed body and so linking it with the young witch blurs the boundaries between the ugly witch-crone and the young initiate; both standard archetypes in traditional depictions of witches. In such images the youthful witch embodies a pre-maternal figure: a woman who uses her sensuality for her own gratification, rather than channelling it along the ‘correct’ routes of marriage and motherhood (Breuer 2009: 111). By participating in the Sabbat, the young witch falls into an even more depraved version of this latter role. The elderly crone represents the knowledgeable woman beyond child-bearing age; one who wears the experience of sexuality in contrast to the pure, youthful female, and is between states: one who does not have a role in the social spectrum. As such she is dangerously ambiguous and disruptive (Frueh 1994: 280–2). While some feminists tried to reclaim terms such as ‘crone’ as words of power, this does not translate into wider culture, especially as we are conditioned to see the face of the older woman as ugly (Frueh 1994: 266, 269). However, Fini seems to celebrate this, giving ugly facial features to a number of her witch figures, such as the bald and/or fanged women that populate her 1959 painting The Witches. Equally, the decision to cast Zizi as the young witch confuses the border between youth and age. While still a beautiful woman and a highly accomplished dancer, at forty-eight years old Zizi no longer fitted the typical social parameters of ‘young’, though she was certainly not an aged crone either, mixing bodily archetypes of the witch. For Fini it is the ambiguity of the witch that is key; the liminal state of the crone and the young girl at a sexual crossroads. This ambiguity defies the categories created by patriarchal (and indeed some feminist) norms and sets such ambiguous bodies as abject – as monstrous, as they dissolve boundaries and invite chaos. We have already seen an example of this in Zizi’s costume,

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which conflates the character of the young witch with a deformed plant body, transgressing boundaries not only between the female archetypes of girl / crone, but also between human and plant. In fact, the costume pushes these monstrous boundaries even further. Fini writes that it was to be covered all over in sequins, giving the appearance of scales and metamorphosing the very material of the human body to something more reptilian. This is a technique used by Fini in other set and costume designs for ballet, which often incorporate hybrid creatures that lend themselves to such human/animal blurrings, such as the fish–human hybrid nymphs that she created for the opening ballet of a 1963 performance of Tannhäuser. Other key examples of this are the hairy creatures and bird–human hybrids that appear in Fini and Petit’s 1949 ballet Le Rêve de Leonor which also featured Zizi in the main role. The transgression of bodily borders connects Fini with Cixous, Irigaray and Butler, all of whom argue that the limits of the body are not merely made of biological matter but are also signified by anticipated taboos and transgressions (Sempruch 2008: 25). Fini’s witches do not just dissolve material bodily boundaries, but also transgress the borders between species. We see this elsewhere in Fini’s work through her illustrations for Jacques Audiberti’s The Sabbat Resuscitated. Here we find, for example, one witch whose skin has the same texture as a cactus, while new shoots emerge from bulbous growths on her arms. Another witch displays her bottom through a hole in the seat of her pantaloons, though on closer inspection we see that her buttocks actually take the shape of an owl. Yet another has an additional face on each of her breasts and eyes scattered over her abdomen and legs. This multi-headed body is reprised in the 1972 Sabbat designs through the multi-faced demon, who muddles bodily borders through multiplying and displacing the face. At one point in the evolution of the set design for Le Sabbat, Petit suggested to Fini that she create an enlarged version of one of her paintings for the backdrop, but she refused, saying it was too difficult to copy (Fini, n.d. a: 3).10 It seems likely that he was referring to her 1961 painting Evening Chimaera, in which an unformed figure emerges from a highly textured and bright background. Though the mythical chimera combines lion, goat and snake, Fini’s chimera has a human face, and the rest of the body suggests wings and a clawed foot – more like a harpy. Fini has used this bird–human combination in Self-portrait with a Chimera, 1939, in which the chimera is a winged sphinx and Fini’s torso is covered in feathers while wings sprout from her hips. Bird–human hybrids also feature repeatedly in Fini’s oeuvre and in this context, they take us back to the importance of flight, which, as we have seen, acts as a metaphor for self- and

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sexual awareness. Whether Petit appreciated this quality in Fini’s witches and chose the painting accordingly is unclear, but if Fini had decided to enlarge the work as a backdrop, it would not only underscore the use of flight but also the monstrous body, as it emphatically denotes a body in the very moment of flux between different species and different shapes.

Conclusion Despite Fini’s reluctance to be categorized as a feminist (to be categorized as anything really), and her moves against perpetuating the feminist myth of the Burning Times, there are aspects of her witchy designs that chime with certain feminist concepts. She uses the witch as a signifier of the mythic, original Woman beyond patriarchal culture; she notes the connection between the witch and female sexuality; and depicts the abject body of the witch through blurring bodily borders. However, for Fini at least, the shape-shifting witches that enable this abject transgression of boundaries is a cause for celebration rather than alarm. She believed in her own multiplicity of self, and enjoyed the changeability afforded by costume (Fini 1975: 32, 41). Similarly, a posthuman reading of Fini’s witches perhaps advances them beyond the binary approach of 1970s feminist discourse on the witch, to preempt much later feminist discussion by Butler, Braidotti and Irigaray in which the witch is a borderline figure, oscillating between positions (Sempruch 2008: 5). This is particularly evident in Fini’s use of traditional iconography drawn from ‘patriarchal’ visions of the witch, combined with elements that cast her as knowledgeable, powerful and autonomous. Ultimately, Fini’s witches craft a malleable and transgressive female identity, expressed through a changeable posthuman body that defies normative categories.

Notes 1 The CFM gallery, New York is one of the major dealers in Fini’s work. The catalogue features examples of her theatrical and commercial design. 2 For a detailed list of these productions see Richard Overstreet ‘Biographical and bibliographical references’ in Webb, Sphinx, pp. 290–2, and is also available on www​.leonor​-fini​.com, a website hosted by Galerie Minsky – another of the major galleries that commercially represents Fini.

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3 ‘Il s’agissait d’une grotte charbonneuse de plusiers étages, sorte de “centrale” de sorcières. Deux personnages couleur or, mi-hydres mi-évêques, veillaient sur les deux côtés. Trois Boucs noirs enormes, immobiles, se tenaient à differents niveaux sur des espèces de rochers. Des chats énormes, des hibous, des figures diaboliques bougeaient à des rythmes differentes. Un demon vert à visages multiples sur tout le corps donnait des leçons de vol à une petite fille – jeune sorcière – un autre demon ailé, or-orange lui apprenait un autre “type” de vols.’ Fini’s emphasis. All translations are the authors. 4 ‘Un ceil noir d’où petit à petit on voyait apparaître un arbre (construit assez plat mais en 3 dimensions), [. . .] C’est là que la petite sorcière, 6 ou 7 autres sorcières auraient été niches dans les branches: chuchotantes, murmurantes. A un moment donné, l’arbre devait s’ouvrir et s’écarter des deux côtés. Le ceil devenait rouge et on voyait les 6 ou 7 sorcières voler sur le ciel joyeusement.’ Fini’s emphasis. 5 ‘Les femmes doivent évoluer; ells ont été esclaves pendant des millénaires, d’où leurs difficultés.’ 6 ‘Cette idée-là fut definitive.’ Fini’s emphasis. 7 ‘Au cours de notre siècle, beaucoup de femmes liber, s’endorment dans l’imaginaire, se sont reconnues dans le figure de la sorcière.’ 8 ‘c’est la sorcière que m’a resemble, plutôt que je me lui ai.’ 9 ‘Les sorcières ont hérité le plus ancient savoir, ells peuvent changer de siècle et d’âge.’ 10 ‘J’étais très mécontente et ils me proposérant d’agrandir une de mes toiles comme fond (la toile s’appelle la Chimère . . .). Il me semblait impossible de copier cette toile trés difficile.’ Fini’s emphasis.

References Aberth, S. (2004), Leonora Carrington: Surrealism, Alchemy, and Art, Aldershot and Burlington: Lund Humphries. Anon. (2010), ‘Petit, Roland’, in D. Craine and J. Mackrell (eds), The Oxford Dictionary of Dance, 2nd edn, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Available online: http:​/​/www​​ .oxfo​​rdref​​erenc​​e​.com​​/view​​/10​.1​​093​/a​​cref/​​97801​​99563​​449​.0​​01​.00​​01​/ac​​ref​-9​​78019​​ 95634​​49​-e-​​1847?​​​rskey​​=c62Z​​T8​&re​​sult=​​1901 (accessed 13 February 2019). Atsma, A. J. (c. 2007–2017), ‘Dionysos Favour’. Available online: http:​/​/www​​.theo​​i​.com​​/ Olym​​pios/​​Diony​​sosFa​​vour.​​htm​l#​​Ikari​​os (accessed 28 March 2018). Bakhtin, M. ([1963] 1998), ‘Carnival and the Carnivalesque’, in J. Storey (ed.), Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: A Reader, 2nd edn, 250–9, London: Prentice Hall. BBC (1998), Omnibus. Available online: https​:/​/ww​​w​.you​​tube.​​com​/w​​atch?​​v​=feT​​​jtXxO​​ B04 (accessed 13 February 2019). Breuer, H. (2009), Crafting the Witch: Gendering Magic in Medieval and Early-Modern England, New York: Routledge.

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Clement, C. and Cixous, H. (1986), The Newly Born Woman, trans. Betsy Wing, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Fiette, A., ed. (2007), Zizi Jeanmarie, Rolan Petit. Un patrimoine pour la danse, Geneva: Musée d’Art et d’Histoire; Paris: Somogy éditions d’art. Fini, L. (n.d. a), ‘Ballet: “Le Sabbat” (Péripéties)’, Type-Written Document, Paris: Leonor Fini Archive. Fini, L. (n.d. b.), Untitled Type-Script (Interview with ‘M. R.’), Paris: Leonor Fini Archive. Fini, L. (n.d. c.), Untitled Hand-Written Manuscript, Paris: Leonor Fini Archive. Fini, L. (n.d. d.), Untitled Type-Script, Paris: Leonor Fini Archive. Fini, L. (1975), Le Livre de Leonor Fini, Lausanne: La Guilde du Livre et Les Éditions Clairefontaine; Paris: Vilo. Frueh, J. (1994), ‘Visible Difference: Women Artists and Ageing’, in J. Frueh, C. L. Langer and A. Raven (eds), New Feminist Criticism: Art, Identity, and Action, 264–88, New York: Harper Collins. Gauthier, X. (1979), Leonor Fini, Paris: Le Musée de Poche. Givry, G. de ([1929] 1971), Witchcraft, Magic, and Alchemy, trans. J. Courtenay Locke, New York: Dover. Kristeva, J. (1981), Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art, Oxford: Blackwell. Kristeva, J. (1982), Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, New York: Columbia University Press. Lauter, E. (1984), Women as Mythmakers: Poetry and Visual Art by Twentieth-Century Women, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Lomas, D. (2000), The Haunted Self: Surrealism, Psychoanalysis, Subjectivity, New Haven and London: Yale University Press. MacCormack, P. (2012), Posthuman Ethics: Embodiment and Cultural Theory, Farnham: Ashgate. Michelet, J. ([1939] 2008), La Sorcière, trans. Alfred Richard Allinson, Charleston: BiblioBazaar. Purkiss, D. (1996), The Witch in History: Early Modern and 20th-Century Representations, London and New York: Routledge. Von Rosen, A. (2016), ‘The Billposter as Alchemist: A Dream Play in Düsseldorf 1915–1918’, in M. Cairavolo (ed.), Strindberg Across Borders, 305–26, Rome: Istituto Italiano Studi Germanici. Rountree, K. (1997), ‘The New Witch of the West: Feminists Reclaim the Crone’, Journal of Popular Culture, 30(4), 211–29. Sempruch, J. (2008), Fantasies of Gender and the Witch in Feminist Theory and Literature, West Lafayette: Purdue University Press. Webb, P. (2009), Sphinx: The Life and Art of Leonor Fini, New York: Vendome Press. Zukerman, N. (1992), Leonor Fini: The Artist as Designer, New York: CFM Gallery.

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Scenographing the dance archive – keep crawling! Astrid von Rosen

Prologue: Dancers crawling outside the art museum It is February 2019, and I am working with the archival materials about the independent Swedish dance group Rubicon. Seated in front of the computer screen in my office, I watch a double video projection of Götaplatsens trappor (the Göta Square Stairs), a performance that took place on the stairs outside the art museum in Gothenburg on 22 November 1986.1 One film was shot from a distance with a set camera, the other from the side, with a portable camera. Bearing traces of the VHS-technology of the time, the twenty-two-minute double projection provides a stunning experience of how Rubicon took over a central location in the city with dance. I experience how performers, clad in yellow rainwear, crouch, touch, run, halt, look, crawl – individually and in group patterns – all over the stairs, and how the intense honking of a car horn and live percussion music pervade the space. Water on the stairs indicates that it has recently rained. Warmly clad spectators have gathered in groups at and around the square below the stairs. Across time and space, I engage with multisensory ‘echoes’ of dancers breathing cold air while moving with, on, and against the stairs and the wider environment.2 It is as if the material practices make the entire museum building transform from a static monument to a playful and transformative piece of dance-architecture. To me, the crafted body – place or place – encounters I witness via the mediated dance archive come across as intensely scenographic.

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Introduction: Attention to scenographic echoes What does it mean to treat a past dance performance as ‘intensely scenographic’? In her recent research, scenography scholar Rachel Hann proposes that ‘material practices’ that ‘sustain interventional place orientations’ are ‘scenographic in conception and execution’ (Hann 2019: 122). Applying this idea to the performance described earlier, the interaction between the yellow-clad dancing bodies and the environment consists of material practices, such as crawling down the steps, that are capable of place-orientation, transforming Götaplatsen into something quite different. The dancers’ crawling would, in Hann’s terminology, be interventional in that the action irritates both the normativity of walking properly on public stairs and ideologies that materialize the museum as a temple of high art (Hann 2019: 123). While the performance as such is long gone, I suggest that the material practices that once oriented a sense of place form multisensory scenographic echoes that can be mobilized through archival engagement ‘to enact the affective force of the performance event again’ (Phelan 1997: 12). In this chapter I will employ Rubicon’s outdoor dance performance Götaplatsens trappor as a case study to explore the following research question: How can a scenographic approach to multisensory echoes in the dance archive help us access and account for the affective forces of body–place-oriented work? My exploration responds to art historian and performer Amelia Jones’s call for interpretive models that can actively ‘unframe’ and be open to the ‘messy’ interrelatedness between bodies, objects and what she terms ‘spaces’ (Jones 2013: 56). Recent developments within scenography theory afford, I believe, particularly useful tools for engaging seriously with affectively charged and potentially critically transformative interrelations between art and society. As an art and scenography historian, and former dancer, I draw on research at the University of Gothenburg (2013–present) relating to and conducted in collaboration with Rubicon and the local dance community (von Rosen 2018, 2019; von Rosen, Meskimmon and Sand 2018). I am particularly interested in what a scenographic approach can contribute to the local art scene in dialogue with the broader field of performance and archive studies (Bleeker 2017a; Borggreen and Gade 2013). Importantly, while I am not conducting a dance analysis (Hammergren 2017), I hope that my findings can provide an impetus for cross-border collaboration, something I believe is necessary in building legitimacy for body–place oriented – and often excluded or downplayed in historiography – works such as Götaplatsens trappor.

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In the following paragraphs I first introduce Hann’s scenography theory and discuss how an activistic approach to the dance archive and its records (any preserved traces of activity) are crucial to experiencing multisensory echoes of past performances. Second, I situate Rubicon in its dance context, to substantiate why I have chosen to understand Götaplatsens trappor as scenographic in scope and execution. Third, I employ the activity of scenographing as a method to mobilize and be with the echoes of multisensory encounters with and interventional enactments of place, which were crafted during Götaplatsens trappor. Finally, I discuss what a scenographic approach can offer to the history of body–place-oriented work, its archives and legacies. The notion and physical activity of crawling is used to emphasize how the act of scenographing invites us (me, you the reader and other persons) to actively engage in acquiring multisensory knowledge with and from the performance archive.

Scenography theory and archival activism In tandem with the establishment of ‘practised research’, the concept of scenography has expanded to involve potentially any setting in and beyond the theatre (McKinney and Palmer 2017). It is in response to this expansion that Hann has developed a quite complex theoretical framework that can account both for scenography’s profound relation to theatre methods and for scenographic operations in contexts outside the theatre. Hann’s framework draws on, and further develops, a set of theoretical approaches that help with scrutinizing as well as celebrating scenography’s potential as a holistic, bodycentric ecology of shared multisensory undertakings, as opposed to a distanced visual-spatial approach (Hann 2019: 133–6). In the following I will briefly unpack Hann’s framework for the reader not familiar with new materialism, affect and atmosphere theory, ideas of worlding (worldly encounters that craft worlds) and the interventional capacities of queer phenomenology. The theoretical approaches mobilized by Hann are useful as they offer ways of being precise in a realm that easily becomes inaccessible because of its complexity. First, with its focus on the agential capacities of matter and all bodies (human and non-human) Jane Bennett’s (2009) new materialism is vital for understanding scenography’s relational, place-orienting capacities. New materialism enables a heightened awareness that we (everybody) are not distanced viewers of performances, but rather integral parts of multisensory durational encounters. In recognition of this, orientation, for Hann, draws attention to the body-

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centric, ‘holistic systems of sensory encounter’ (Hann 2019: 37). In order to link orientation with the capacity of scenographic traits to expose, challenge or alter orders and expressions of normativity, Hann has borrowed the concept of othering from Sara Ahmed’s (2006) queer phenomenology. Central to the crafting of orientation and othering is the conceptualization of material encounters as holistic, relational systems constituting affective atmospheres. To substantiate this concept, Hann combines Gilles Deleuze’s (2006) assemblage theory with Ben Anderson (2009) and Gernot Böhme’s (2013) notion of affective atmospheres. According to Hann, affective atmospheres account for the ephemeral and felt qualities, or forces, fundamental to the scenographic ecology, and consequently ‘a scenography of orientation is a scenography of feeling’ (Hann 2019: 18, 20–1). The purpose of the framework, then, is ‘to argue why the intangible affective qualities, or “affects”, of scenography are formative to all contemporary theatre-making to consider how scenographies move spectators and performers emotionally as well as physically’ (Hann 2019: 5). To isolate how the affective qualities operate, Hann proposes the interrelated concepts of scenography as ‘place orientation’ and scenographics as ‘worldly othering’ (Hann 2019: 37). She states that ‘the othering context of scenographics focuses on how place is oriented through systems of crafted materiality inclusive of scent and temperature as well as terrain and objects’ (Hann 2019: 37). Scenography on the other hand, is ‘an act of composing’ the multisensory stimuli of crafted materiality, ‘or being intentionally aware of their affects, with a distinct focus on how a constellation of these methods becomes manifest as an affective atmosphere’ (Hann 2019: 37). In this chapter I will test how Hann’s holistic, multisensory approach can be helpful in archival explorations of past body–place-oriented performance. When activating and exploring the archival material from Götaplatsens trappor, Hann’s scenographic framework directs attention to crafted orientations and feelings pertaining to such things as smell, sound and noise, in relation to bodily interactions with the environment. The purpose of what I term scenographing is to mobilize the relationship between the dance actions, and ‘material proximities and the felt orders of othering – whether in terms of strategies of orientation (spatial arrangement, intimacy etc.), location (belonging, scale etc.) or period (historical signifiers, tempo etc.)’ (Hann 2019: 34). Moreover, when exploring the remains of Rubicon, I draw on an understanding of ‘records as active and ever-evolving agents themselves in the formation of human and organizational memory [. . .]’ (Cook 2001: 29). In addition to records such as films and photographs, I consider places (Ketelaar 2017) and bodies (Lepecki

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2010) as archives, or valuable repositories of memories. The body, for example, can archive years of dance training, including inscriptions of its ideologies. More specifically, I focus on how methods of scenography ‘orientate an experience of an affective atmosphere, whether in terms of lighting, soundscapes, costume or spatial configuration’ (Hann 2019: 32) at the intersection of digital archives, bodily activism and historical inquiry. As pointed out by theatre and media scholar Maaike Bleeker, digitization and new information technologies have changed the functional logic of the archive from one ‘based on storage to a logic of continuous (re)generation’, crafted and enacted in our increasingly digital world. This draws attention to ‘dance’s resistance to fixation and how this inspires alternative approaches to knowledge transmission’ (Bleeker 2017b: xxii). Of course, the digitized videos, introduced at the beginning of this chapter, or photographs and other materials, provide distorted and cropped versions of the past live performance. From a scenographic perspective, however, I suggest they can be actively unframed and combined into highly useful assemblages witnessing to the entanglements of moving, costumed bodies, sound and the further multisensory environment (see also Szalczer and Szalczer’s Chapter 12). This might mean leaving the indoors archive in order to feel rain on your face, and considering this experience a valuable component of multisensory scenographic knowledge. With this said, I will now move on to exploring the ways in which Rubicon’s outdoor work can be fruitfully explored from a scenographic perspective.

Rubicon and Götaplatsens trappor The independent dance group Rubicon was founded in 1978 by four pioneering female choreographers: Eva Ingemarsson, Gunnel Johansson (who left in the mid1980s), Gun Lund and Gunilla Witt.3 For a woman coming from the independent dance world, it was a new and brave move to step forward as a choreographer. The name Rubicon was chosen because it sounded good, and because the group wanted to risk everything to try something new. Initially Rubicon created dance theatre for children and toured intensely in the region. Already from its inception the group received small-scale, but important, support from the Swedish Arts Council (von Rosen 2018). In the early 1980s, Rubicon became part of what, in the Swedish context, is described as a postmodern ‘dance boom’ (Sörenson 2007: 394). This resonated with international movements where performers left traditional institutions to occupy new places with their art, combining artistic

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genres to challenge performance orthodoxies and the constraints of traditional dance techniques. After spending a year in a studio using everyday movements such as walking to explore what dance could be for them, the members of Rubicon began occupying public spaces in the city with dance. In light of the fact that the group did not have a venue of its own, the outdoor performances also bear witness to a profound practised and intellectual interest in body–place interaction. With the aim of leaving behind the demand that ‘what happens on stage must be comprehensible’, Rubicon’s outdoor work could be described as ‘abstract’. However, the choreographers argued that ‘abstract is a strange word’ and that ‘some abstract dances are so boring that you simply die’ (Ekstrand 1987: 32).4 Instead they started collaborating with the environment, exploring and exposing multiple ‘shapes, lines and tensions between shapes’ (Ekstrand 1987: 32). It is precisely this intense and transformative relationship between performers and places that I argue makes favourable a scenographic approach to Götaplatsens trappor. Premièred at 2.00 pm on Saturday, 22 November 1986, and performed again the next day, Götaplatsens trappor stands out as one of Rubicon’s earliest and most powerful occupations of a major public place.5 Götaplatsen was chosen as it had a charge that felt attractive to the group and to others (Ekstrand 1987: 32). The choreography (the composition of body movement) was done by Ingemarsson, Lund and Witt, together with the dancers Joachim Berntsson, Ingvar Jönsson and Lee Kum-ah Nathansen. The music for Götaplatsens trappor was performed live by the musicians Jean-Louis Huhta, Zbigniev Karkowski and Johan Söderberg, all members of Gothenburg’s avant-garde music scene. In a 1987 interview in the magazine Ord&Bild, Rubicon collectively describe the ideas underpinning Götaplatsens trappor: These particular stairs are so big and hard and heavy. We wanted to make them easy-going and playful, bring out some rounder shapes in them. By being made the main protagonist, the stairs were no longer merely a distance to cross up and down to get to the Art Museum. (Ekstrand 1987: 31)

Rubicon wanted to alter the feeling of heaviness, loneliness and observedness caused by the stairs and the museum architecture. To achieve this, they approached the stairs playfully, striving to shift scale, alter pre-scribed ways of walking, and fill out as well as counter the formal dimensions. Into this fed the ambition to ‘share the space with the audience members’ and make them perceive it differently and more freely (Ekstrand 1987: 32). Employing

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Hann’s terminology, I suggest that Rubicon set out to craft alternative affective assemblages. In particular, the statements ‘we killed the solemnity’ of the place, and ‘[w]e conquered it, it is our stairway now’ (Ekstrand 1987: 32) witness to an awareness of what today can be theorized as the othering capacities of scenographics. A poster (Figure 3.1) in the dance archive shows that Rubicon added ‘the City Dancers’ to its name in tandem with the production of Götaplatsens trappor.6 Above a stylized drawing of the museum building, the text ‘rubicon – the city dancers’ (in lowercase letters) has been montaged in a distinctly othering manner; instead of the name of a famous artist or the title of an exhibition, dance symbolically occupies an art institution that normally does not acknowledge its work. Copies were put up in various locations in the city, and the poster became part of the crafting of an emerging affective atmosphere to be further manifested during the performance. Expanding the web of relations even more, the poster also connected Rubicon with the broader postmodern dance context, signified by performances in non-traditional settings. There is, I suggest, an affective quality worth acknowledging in how Rubicon sought alliances beyond their local context.

Figure 3.1 Rubicon – The City Dancers, poster for Götaplatsens trappor, 1986. Courtesy of Atalante.

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In marketing materials from autumn 1986, Rubicon claimed to be ‘nomads’, thus linking up with the postmodern theory à la mode at the time.7 For them, the nomadic approach ‘was essentially about a different way of moving to evoke something unknown in familiar environments’ (Nyström 2018). On a poster they stated ‘The city is also a desert’, claimed that ‘Platforms & Stairs & Bridges are also places’ and highlighted the importance of ‘Surface. Distance. Direction’ (rubicon – stadens dansare 1986/1987). It is important here to move beyond reductive understandings of place as ‘finite, descriptive, figurative’ (Hann 2019: 22) to emphasize its agentic qualities. It is precisely these material, multisensory and thus scenographic dimensions of place that I propose were of central interest to Rubicon. Now it is time to scenograph the dance archive in order to produce knowledge that keeps dance and art history in motion across time, place and media.

Scenographing Götaplatsens trappor To become an integral part of multisensory echoes of past performance, I strongly believe it is not enough to sit still and watch a video or write about photographs (von Rosen 2020). Therefore, I challenge (or perhaps irritate) you not only to read my text, look at the included images and follow the links to additional resources, but also to physically try out and situate (in situ or by proxy) some of the multisensory, scenographic body–place encounters from Götaplatsens trappor.

Enter: Scenographic irritation The performance begins with Rubicon’s six yellow-clad dancers crouching on the art museum stairs while the intense honking of a car horn cleaves the air in, above and around Götaplatsen (Plate 5). With the help of the videos and a black-and-white photograph (Figure 3.2), probably taken during a rehearsal, it is possible to try out the dancers’ positions and movements. While immersed in noise, one can crouch, touch the stairs (Rubicon wore white gloves), lift an arm or two, look down or out over the city.8 When this was tested in a workshop, people cried out loud and laughed, while stating that they were ‘the birds of Gothenburg’ (von Rosen 2019: 7). The association with birds resonates with a 1987 account of the performance comparing the dancers to ‘six yellowhammers pecking birdseed’ (Ekstrand 1987: 31) as well as Lund’s memory of the dancers

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Figure 3.2  Rubicon – The City Dancers, Götaplatsens trappor, 1986. Dancers from left to right: Eva Ingemarsson, Gun Lund, Joachim Berntsson, Gunilla Witt. Photo Elisabeth Ohlson Wallin. Courtesy of 3:e Våningens arkiv.

being ‘ravens from Norse mythology’ (Lund 2019). Interestingly, these attempts to put words on experience point to feelings of both playfulness and power. What do you experience when working through the crouching sequence? You can also embody various audience roles and positions, be a child, a grownup or one of the people walking up and down the stairs during the performance. Breathe the chilly November air and ponder the risk of more rain. On the stairs, Rubicon has positioned lit cressets, which contrast with the gloomy daylight and signal a ritualistic dimension of the performance. Already here an affective atmosphere of performance and difference is crafted, as the everyday normativity of the place is disturbed by the car horn that resonates with the quite odd – or even provocative – positions and movements of the dancers. Noise becomes a material, vibrating agent, filling space, bouncing off walls, penetrating human ears and bodies and producing all sorts of feelings (see also Nikolaeva’s Chapter 6). Berntsson remembers, for example, that his mother was very annoyed with the honking because she thought that it was an attempt by people to sabotage the performance (Berntsson 2018). By crafting a tangible friction in the affective atmosphere or, as Hann would express it, ‘irritation’, the honking serves to other the assemblage by being neither a melodious, mainstream choice of music, nor the everyday city noise. It is as if the

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performers forcefully state ‘this is a takeover’. The sound of the horn, I suggest, becomes an affirmative component evoking for example the idea from the 1968 student revolution that ‘art should be in the streets’, which had influenced Rubicon (Persson 2013). Thinking through historical signifiers, the honking also comes across as a distorted version of heraldic trumpet blasts, announcing the arrival of independent dance, boldly claiming a central, highly prestigious, public space. Notably, Witt experienced a ‘wonderful feeling of power’ when performing Götaplatsens trappor and looking out over the cityscape (Witt 2016). When I try crouching and looking out over the city, like Witt in the black-and-white photograph (Figure 3.2), my body turns into a sphinx (human and winged lion) or a griffin (lion and eagle), both mythical and legendary creatures signifying power and strength, going beyond the association with yellowhammers and moving closer to Lund’s ravens. While there is no singular interpretation here, what matters is the emerging experience of an affective atmosphere, and the accompanying words that subsequently craft a web of bodily archived insights that produce scenographic knowledge about and with Rubicon. Exploring the spatial configuration, Götaplatsen can be described as the cultural centre of Gothenburg. In addition to the art museum, inaugurated in 1925, the central square is flanked by an exhibition hall, the City Theatre and the Concert House, and further down the street the City Library is situated. It is worth noting that there is no institution dedicated to dance at Götaplatsen. Built in early twentieth-century classicist style, the art museum stands as the monumental endpoint of the nineteenth-century boulevard Kungsportsavenyn (in short ‘the Avenue’). When Witt looks out over the city the normativity of the Avenue traversing central Gothenburg is penetrated by the gaze of independent dance. The female sculpture behind the dancer is drawn into the atmosphere, its nude, passive classicism exposed by the othering capacities of scenographics. Although these scenographic traits are long gone, I argue that the archival activism makes them happen in the present, not as reconstructions, but as emergent materializations of affective assemblages (see Meskimmon’s Foreword). The museum’s façade, with its seven large arches – jokingly called ‘the seven yawns’ – and an arcade, renders the building a landmark, clearly visible from a distance. A characteristic trait of Gothenburg’s architecture, the yellowish brick making up its façade, connects it with other buildings in the city. Terraces and stairs constructed in natural stone reinforce the monumentality and bear witness to nineteenth-century ideology, scripting visitors to solemnly strive

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upwards to reach the temple of high art. In 1996 the entrance was moved to a lower level, marking a shift in the museum-visitor ideology. Thus, the stairs where Rubicon performed shifted from being an often-used transitional place to a less active area. Nevertheless, I suggest the current place, as archive, can evoke multisensory echoes of Rubicon. The first time I visited Götaplatsen, understood as an expanded dance archive, the place felt like a cold desert; the freezing wind and monumental scale of the place made me feel small and vulnerable. These crafted feelings paved the way for understanding the enormous effort made by Rubicon to challenge and more or less temporarily change the place. When taking part in a collective workshop, physically exploring the artistic capacities of the place, I gathered embodied knowledge about its multisensory and holistic qualities (von Rosen, Meskimmon and Sand 2018; von Rosen 2019). For example, using my voice to interact with the façade transformed it from an overpowering visual landmark into a sound-making scenographic device. These experiences were in turn stored in my ‘body as archive’ (Lepecki 2010) and I draw on them again and again when scenographing Götaplatsens trappor.

Vibrating soundscape Returning to Rubicon’s performance: after a couple of minutes of honking, a piercing wolf whistle of sorts enters the soundscape, soon to be accompanied by a rhythmic hammering that further increases the insistent quality of the crafted atmosphere. Into this feeds the durational force of the dancers occupying the dark grey steps beneath the façade, turning the place into a kind of dancebeacon on a monumental scale. As the music becomes more intense, the dance movements expand to bring out or counter more or less visible material and spatial directions and forces. An encounter – a vibrating relationship, speaking with Bennett – is crafted between the honking yellow car, the dancers’ yellow rainwear and the museum’s yellow brick façade. Notably, it is the first time the dancers appear in the yellow rainwear that was to become their signature, used in many interventions into public space between 1986 and 1992 (von Rosen 2018). During the performance, the musicians, clad in blue worker overalls, were positioned in the middle of one of the façade’s classicist arches. As can be experienced when engaging with the videos, the musicians created ‘a rather raw, but minimalist music, often repetitive and performative in character, using percussion instruments, “things” amplified with microphones and electronics’ (Rydén 2018). According to composer Niclas Rydén, who was involved in

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documenting Götaplatsens trappor, the music had ‘a lot of energy and dynamics’ that did not ‘prescribe’ any particular movement and thus allowed the dancers a lot of freedom (Rydén 2018). In scenographic terms, the soundscape forms an important part of the ‘crafting of place orientation that occurs in time’ (Hann 2019: 47). It is worth mentioning that it is only recently that soundscapes have begun to be included in the holistic multisensory understanding of scenography, thus transgressing the ideology ‘that reduces experiences into quantifiable images’ (Hann 2019: 47). My activity of scenographing seeks to include precisely the crafting capacities of sound in the affective atmosphere. Following dance scholar Susan Foster, I suggest that the forcible merging of dance, percussion music and place disturbs gendered stereotypes that often associate music with masculine rationality and dance with ‘feminine ephemerality and bodiliness’ (Foster 2002: 30). In the following I will look further into how the othering tactics of scenographics destabilize what dance scholar Danielle Goldman terms ‘power relations, entrenched institutional biases, and historical circumstances’ (Goldman 2007: 124). What is at stake in the case of Rubicon is that their significant work, which had a lasting impact on the dance scene in Gothenburg, is almost completely invisible in Swedish theatre history (which is supposed to include dance) and in art history, for example concerning the legacy of the art museum (Arvidsson and Werner 2010). It is frustrating to note that when scholars produced the museum’s history for the expanded art field of the 1980s, they turned to (mostly) male musicians performing indoors in small dark clubs (Nilsson 2010: 9–10). In recognition of this, I contend that a scenographic approach is particularly useful for remembering body–place-oriented works, such as Götaplatsens trappor, that tend to fall between scholarly chairs.

‘Yelling’ body-costume Rubicon’s yellow rainclothes are visual and material features that, according to scenographer and scholar Donatella Barbieri, function as powerful ‘co-authors’ of performance (Barbieri 2017: xxii–xxv). To access this authorship, we (if you wish to join me) can follow the mobile video camera, to liaise with the experiential uniting of costume and bodies, on hard, uneven ground, in chilly November. I perceive an intimate rustling of moving body parts and fabric, feeding into the soundscape, together with the visceral sounds of breathing and heartbeats. The unisex rainwear is far removed from the overtly gendered tights and tutus of classical ballet or the body conscious leotards associated with

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modern dance performances. In fact, Rubicon used the same type of yellow rainwear as the workers maintaining public spaces in Gothenburg. According to theatre scholar Aoife Monks, ‘clothing anchors and produces the social body, and embeds that body within a web of social and economic relations’ (Monks 2010: 10). Thus, when performing outdoors, the dancers, via costumes as active agents, became relationally connected with a larger group of workers known to the local audience. In the Swedish culture-political context of the 1980s, Rubicon’s intervention emphasizes the struggle of hard-working independent choreographers and dancers to be symbolically acknowledged, as well as properly paid. Thinking through the expanded notion of the archive, yellow rainclothes can be understood as records of experience and of practical and aesthetic decision-making, as well as traces of Rubicon’s financial limitations. Wearing rainclothes obviously helped the dancers physically and intimately engage with the environment without being hindered by dirt and water. But the costumes also made the dancers highly visible in the outdoor environment. This aesthetic component ties into scenographic traits involving scale, space and composition. When observing the stairs from a distance Rubicon’s choreographers had noted that people in brightly coloured clothes – such as yellow – stood out against the background. It was even argued that the best position for the audience was quite far away from the stairs, for example outside the City Library (Ekstrand 1987: 31). As noted earlier, Rubicon also wanted the audience members to be free to come and go as they pleased, which they also did, as is demonstrated in the videos. In English, the word ‘yellow’ resonates with ‘yelling’ or ‘screaming’, and yellow is notably one of the most efficient signalling and warning colours. To employ a metaphor, the yellow costumes helped the dancers physically and visually ‘yell’ or craft an affective atmosphere that could be felt by the audience, rather than only seen. Hence the costume-body assemblages, in resonance with the soundscape, orientate a sense of place in a durational, multisensory, spatial and material ecology, rather than simply being visual agents in a distanced picture. There is also a gendered dimension of attention to costume. As noted by Monks, costumes (and thus scenography) are still often overlooked in historical analyses of performance. She suggests that this is because costume is associated with femininity and therefore cannot be included in a so-called serious, masculinecoded analysis (Monks 2010: 10). Attention to the scenographing body in costume, then, is also a critical historiographical act of re-imagining how performance and expanded art histories can be remembered (von Rosen 2020).

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Dancing architecture As the soundscape continues to craft the larger performance area into a vibrating atmosphere, the dancers, in irregular order, expand and speed up their movements into intense rhythmic conversations with the material surfaces and the space. When the dancers push against the façade or hectically jump up and down in place in tandem with the insistent music, it is as if the entire museum building is sliding. In my experience the monumental façade is scenographed into a trembling, gigantic agent or non-human dancer. I get a feeling of the brick wall dissolving into smaller parts. In Hann’s terminology, ‘the slow’ monumental architecture of the art museum has been coupled with ‘fast architecture’ (Hann 2019: 120–5), crafted by the othering scenographics of Rubicon’s performance. About ten minutes into the performance, a movement sequence features a walk lengthwise along the steps combining leg and arm pendula. The sequence fills in and reveals visible and invisible lines, while at the same time creating new patterns. Ingemarsson remembers the playful quality of doing something that was not normally done on or with the stairs: ‘The pendulum was the most important thing, each dancer would have a different feeling, and the motion in the leg captures that feeling’ (Ingemarsson 2017). Following Ingemarsson, the pendula sequence crafts a playful and affirmative othering of the place, disturbing the feeling of a forcible takeover crafted in the affective atmosphere. In a particularly striking sequence, the dancers gather in two groups, look up towards the façade and, as if overpowered by it, redirect their force, falling forward and then crawling down the steps (Plate 6). Ingemarsson remembered that the everyday movement of looking up was imported from a choreographic exploration of the city’s main train station, and the observation of people looking up at timetables (Ingemarsson 2019). Thus, the looking crafts a web of relations between people, places and activities in the city. Focusing on the crawling – with its strongly kinaesthetic, body mirroring, quality – can make the audience member or archival explorer feel physically engaged. Especially when directly and physically tested, the crawling effectively others the hierarchical museum architecture and its accompanying high-art ideology. I suggest that the falling and crawling dancers craft an assemblage that disturbs Western culture’s ‘striving towards verticality, linearity and steadfast uprightness with all its moral underpinnings’ (Claid and Allsopp 2013: 1). Towards the end of the performance, the dancers turn around, spread out, run and then abruptly halt, form diagonal lines and regroup in circular formations that weave across the horizontal and vertical lines pervading the

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place. Experienced from a distance an intangible affective weave is crafted, transforming the stairs into an open-ended playground. Finally the dancers reach upwards with both arms, turn and then each runs to occupy a niche under an arch. Here, arms and arches coalesce in semi-circular movements, and the yellow brick building can now affirmatively be experienced as an integral part of an intensely body–place-oriented dance performance. When the dancers and musicians come forward to take their bow, there is applause and some cheering. One of the cameras has also registered distinct booing, an audience intervention critiquing the independent dance world that has temporarily taken over the place. When I asked Ingemarsson about the booing she did not recall hearing it, but explained that there was a small group of people who tried to sabotage Rubicon’s performances, a group that ‘was outnumbered by the supporters’ (Ingemarsson 2018). The booing is a multisensory example of friction that feeds into the affectively charged atmosphere crafted during Götaplatsens trappor. Moreover, the booing, or the sound of devaluation, comes through as an irritant that resonates with the silencing of Rubicon in Swedish theatre and dance historiography. I argue that multisensory scenography theory, by its capacity to help accessing and articulating the vital forces of past and present body–place interventions, is particularly suitable for countering such silences.

Scenographing – a crawling conclusion In this chapter I have used Rachel Hann’s scenographic framework to explore multisensory echoes of a 1987 outdoor dance performance by the Swedish dance group Rubicon. In particular, her framework helped me activate archival remains, to access and analyse multisensory dimensions of the past performance. By doing so, I could help building historiographical legitimacy for a body–place-oriented work, situated between dance, art and architecture. Looking at the methodology, I have sought to demonstrate how my concept of ‘scenographing’ usefully can account for active, multisensory and bodily, involvement in exploratory processes of past cross-border performances. My exploration has demonstrated that the activity of scenographing isolates, crafts and mobilizes potentialities, that enables ways of knowing with body–place-oriented performances rather than only about or on them. Importantly, this process is always in becoming. Consequently, new explorers are always welcomed to sensuously, holistically and intimately engage with archival remains and add their experiences to the scenographic assemblage. Keep crawling!

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Notes 1 The videos from Götaplatsens trappor can be accessed here: https://vimeo​.com​ /204798674 (06 April 2019). 2 I am indebted to musicologist Maarten Walraven (2013) who drew my attention to the notion of ‘echo’ as a way of accounting for a past acoustic and multisensory context. 3 The previous research on Rubicon that I partly draw on in this section is quite extensive and can be accessed here: https​:/​/no​​rdic-​​sceno​​graph​​y​-net​​work-​​for​-a​​rchiv​​ es​-an​​d​-res​​earch​​.webn​​ode​.s​​e​​/our​​-publ​​icati​​ons/ (06 April 2019). 4 The following translations from Swedish to English were done by the author. 5 Götaplatsens trappor was performed a couple of more times between 1987 and 1992. 6 The poster for Götaplatsens trappor can be accessed here: http:​/​/www​​.scen​​arkiv​​et​.se​​ /medi​​a​/ann​​an​/go​​​tapla​​tsens​(poster).jpg (06 April 2019). In this text I consistently write Rubicon, not the longer Rubicon – the City Dancers. 7 The poster for ‘rubicon – stadens dansare’ can be accessed here: http:​/​/www​​.scen​​ arkiv​​et​.se​​/medi​​a​/ann​​an​/St​​ade​ns​​_dans​​are(poster).jpg 8 The photograph can be accessed here: http:​/​/www​​.scen​​arkiv​​et​.se​​/upps​​attni​​ng​/45​​2​/ got​​aplat​​sens-​​tr​app​​or​/fo​​to/. (6 April 2019).

References Ahmed, S. (2006), Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others, Durham and London: Duke University Press. Anderson, B. (2009), ‘Affective Atmospheres’, Emotion, Space and Society, 2 (2), 77–81. Arvidsson, K. and Werner, J., eds (2010), Skiascope 3. Omskakad spelplan: konsten i Göteborg under 1980- och 1990-talet [A disarranged playing board: art in Gothenburg during the 1980s and 1990s], Göteborgs konstmuseums skriftserie – Skiascope, Gothenburg: Göteborgs konstmuseum. Barbieri, D. (2017), Costume in Performance: Materiality, Culture and the Body, London: Berg Publishers. Bennett, J. (2009), Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things, Durham and London: Duke University Press. Berntsson, J. (2018), Conversation with the author, Gothenburg, 9 January. Bleeker, M., ed. (2017a), Transmission in Motion: The Technologizing of Dance, London and New York: Routledge. Bleeker, M. (2017b), ‘Introduction’, in M. Bleeker (ed.), Transmission in Motion: The Technologizing of Dance, xviii–xxiii, London and New York: Routledge. Böhme, G. (2013), ‘The Art of the Stage Set as a Paradigm for an Aesthetics of Atmospheres’, Ambiances: International Journal of Sensory Environment, Architecture

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and Urban Space, [En ligne], Redécouvertes, mis en ligne le 10 février 2013, consulté le 09 mars 2019. Available online: http:​/​/jou​​rnals​​.open​​editi​​on​.or​​g​/amb​​​iance​​s​/31 (accessed 3 August 2020). Borggreen, G. and Gade, R., eds (2013), Performing Archives/Archives of Performance, Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press. Claid, E. and Allsopp, R. (2013), ‘Editorial: On falling’, Performance Research, 18 (4), 1–3. DOI: 10.1080/13528165.2013.814331 (accessed 3 August 2020). Cook, T. (2001), ‘Fashionable Nonsense or Professional Rebirth: Postmodernism and the Practice of Archives’, Archivaria, 51 (Spring), 14–35. Deleuze, G. (2006), Two Regimes of Madness: Texts and Interviews 1975–1995, ed. D. Lapoujade, trans. A. Hodges and M. Taormina, New York and Los Angeles: Semiotext(e). Ekstrand, L. (1987), ‘Att dansa staden: Samtal med dansgruppen Rubicon’, Ord&Bild, 1, 31–3. Foster, S. L. (2002), Dances that Describe Themselves: The Improvised Choreography of Richard Bull, Middletown: Wesleyan University Press. Goldman, D. (2007), ‘Sound Gestures’, Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory, 17 (2), 123–38. DOI: 10.1080/07407700701387291 (accessed 3 August 2020). Hammergren, L. (2017), ‘Dansens språklighet systematiserad: modeller för dansanalys’, in B. Sandström (ed.), Språket och dansen, 195–211, Stockholm: Carlssons. Hann, R. (2019), Beyond Scenography, Abingdon, Oxon and New York: Routledge. Ingemarsson, E. (2017), Conversation with the author, Gothenburg, 23 October. Ingemarsson, E. (2018), Conversation in email with the author, Gothenburg, 16 February. Ingemarsson, E. (2019), Conversation with the author, Gothenburg, 11 February. Jones, A. (2013), ‘Unpredictable Temporalities: The Body and Performance in (Art) History’, in Gunhild Borggreen and Rune Gade (eds), Performing Archives/Archives of Performance, 53–72, Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press. Ketelaar, E. (2017), ‘Archival Turns and Returns’, in A. Gilliland, S. McKemmish and A. J. Lau (eds), Research in the Archival Multiverse, 228–68, Clayton Victoria: Monash University Publishing. Lepecki, A. (2010), ‘The Body as Archive: Will to Re-Enact and the Afterlives of Dances’, Dance Research Journal, 42 (2), 28–48. Lund, G. (2019), Conversation with the author, Gothenburg, 15 March. McKinney, J. and Palmer, S. (2017), Scenography Expanded: Introduction to Contemporary Performance Design, London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama. Monks, A. (2010), The Actor in Costume, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Nilsson, I. (2010), ‘Foreword’, in Kristoffer Arvidsson and Jeff Werner (eds), A Disarranged Playing Board: Art In Gothenburg During the 1980s and 1990s, 8–11, Göteborg: Skiascope 3, Göteborgs konstmuseum. Nyström, M. (2018), e-mail to the author, 19 March.

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Persson, L. (2013), ‘Personal Presentation’, Dance as Critical Heritage: Archives, Access, Action, Symposium 28–29 October, Gothenburg: Critical Heritage Studies, University of Gothenburg, Video recording. Phelan, P. (1997), Mourning Sex: Performing Public Memories, London and New York: Routledge. von Rosen, A. (2018), ‘Dansgruppen Rubicon och den fria dansens genombrott i Göteborg’, Arche, 64–5, 186–97. Available online: http:​/​/www​​.freu​​dians​​ka​.or​​g​/tid​​ skrif​​t​/64_​​65​/Av​​R​-Rub​​icon-​​​Arche​​-64​-6​​5​.pdf​ (accessed 3 August 2020). von Rosen, A. (2019), ‘Kroppsligt kunskapande i dansarkivet: sinnliga, scenografiska och transformativa forskningspraktiker’, Special issue Bodily learning. På Spissen forskning / Dance Articulated , 1, 1–18. DOI: 10.18862/ps.2019.501.2 (accessed 3 August 2020). von Rosen, A. (2020), ‘Costume in the Dance Archive: Towards a Records-Centred Ethics of Care’, Studies in Costume and Performance, 5 (1), 33–52. DOI: 10.1386/ scp_00012_1 (accessed 3 August 2020). von Rosen, A., Meskimmon, M. and Sand, M. (2018), ‘Transversal Dances across Time and Space: Feminist Strategies for a Critical Heritage Studies’, in W. Grahn and R. Wilson (eds), Gender and Heritage: Performance, Place and Politics: Key Issues in Cultural Heritage, 169–84, London and New York: Routledge. rubicon – stadens dansare (1986/1987), Gothenburg: Rubicon. Rydén, N. (2018), Atalantes historia 1987–2016, preliminary version shared with the author. Gothenburg: Atalante. Sörenson, M. (2007), ‘Danskonsten på egna ben’, in T. Forser and S. Å. Hed (eds), Ny svensk teaterhistoria, del 3, 1900-talets teater, 379–402, Hedemora: Gidlunds. Walraven, M. (2013), ‘History and Its Acoustic Context: Silence, Resonance, Echo, and Where to Find Them in the Archive’, Sonic Studies, 4 (1). Not paginated. Available online: https​:/​/ww​​w​.res​​earch​​catal​​ogue.​​net​/v​​iew​/2​​90​291​​/2902​​92 (accessed 3 August 2020). Witt, G. (2016), Conversation with the author, Gothenburg, 16 May.

4

Michael Chapman’s Rauschenberg Mise en scène and scenography in Taxi Driver Gillian McIver

Prologue As I observe the film screen, I see a small candle-lit room with a narrow bed made up with a white coverlet and a sofa. I’m looking at the scene from above, as if I’m on the ceiling, which feels strange. A man sits on the sofa looking exhausted, with his head tilted back and his eyes closed, holding a gun. Slowly the image on the screen moves and reveals two bloodied bodies in the frame. Because of the flattening effect of the overhead angle, an orange lampshade on the right creates a large luminous disc that encroaches on the white rectangle of the coverlet – two shapes that, in conjunction with each other, recall constructivist painting. Still, the image keeps moving, revealing an expanse of spattered gore. Two police officers stand still in the doorway, holding their guns out in front of them. All the figures in the room are motionless; unsettling, atonal soundtrack music accompanies the picture, which, as it continues to move, backs out of the room and into the blood-splattered hallway. I begin to understand that trickery is involved in making the picture; the artifice is revealed: there is no ceiling in the rooms. Instead, a moving camera – which provides my privy point of view – is capturing this tableau vivant from above. Inexorably, the picture keeps moving along the hall and down the stairs and then – via a crossfade – after lingering on the bloody walls and stairs, the guns strewn on the floor and the final body, I am at last released onto the streets of Manhattan, on a hot summer evening in the mid-1970s.

This remarkable film sequence is the penultimate section of Martin Scorsese’s 1976 film Taxi Driver. Immediately before this slow-motion tracking shot, the viewer has witnessed a shockingly brutal orgy of violence and slaughter, played out in a decaying Lower East Side tenement. In this chapter, I discuss the scenographic aspects – that is, the crafting of place orientation together with the creation of the ‘world’ of atmospheres and values in the film – of the penultimate scene described earlier in Taxi Driver, directed by Scorsese and shot

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by cinematographer Michael Chapman with Charles Rosen as the art director. On the surface of it, Taxi Driver is a work of social realism, shot on the streets of New York’s Manhattan Downtown. The story follows a young, mentally unstable veteran (Robert De Niro) working as a night-time taxi driver. What is distinctive and memorable about this film is the way that the protagonist’s rage and frustration erupts into a crescendo of violence. Taking as my model Jacques Aumont’s ‘toolbox’ approach to film analysis, ‘taking what I can use wherever I can find it’ (Fairfax 2017) I am using several methodologies to address a combined mise en scène (here equalling visual dramaturgy) and scenography approach in my analysis of the film, and particularly this sequence. In addressing the relationship between visual art and cinema I am following Angela Dalle Vacche’s method in Cinema and Painting (1996) which she describes as an ‘intertextual’ approach, ‘a broad category of analysis with overtones that range from narrative to stylistic detail’ enabling ‘thematic contrasts iconographic similarities and historiographic commentaries’ (Dalle Vacche 1996: 3). While Vacche’s approach involves ‘reading between the lines’ in bringing in art historical references that the films themselves, ‘regardless of the director’s expressed intentions seem to integrate into the textual space’ my approach is slightly different. I am going to look at the neglected ‘craft’ role of the film’s cinematographer Michael Chapman, and the way that he deliberately invoked Robert Rauschenberg’s art work in the staging of this climactic scene, in order to present to the audience three propositions, taken from Chapman’s own words: that the film ‘is realistic’; that the film ‘is theatrical’ (i.e. contrived) and that the film ‘is art’ (Chapman 2004). What does Chapman mean by these propositions, and how are they activated in the film? Employing visual rhetoric analysis, as posited by J. Anthony Blair (2004) as a methodological tool will allow me to address the rhetorical (persuasive) power of the images crafted by both Rauschenberg and the film team. Finally, I will employ the term ‘painterliness’ in a way which is more precise and critical than the way it is commonly used when discussing films. In my usage here I do not mean that the film (or shot) simply ‘looks like a painting’. Painterliness in a film happens when elements from painting find their way onto the film’s visual aspect, in a way that moves the film away from realism, offering a multisensory and intertextual dynamic that may or may not be recognized by the viewer (McIver 2016: 145). In my analysis, borrowing from Hava Aldouby’s work on Fellini, I do not view painting as cinema’s ‘other’ but instead as a conduit, an agent of communication (Aldouby 2013: 26). I also see the notion of ‘painterly’

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as being embedded in the materiality of mise en scène, in the techniques used and decisions made by those that craft the imagery.

‘The film is realistic’: Taxi Driver and scenographing realism Chapman says that Taxi Driver was largely shot in a ‘documentary style’ by which he means the use of real streets, locations and lighting (Chapman 2004: esp. 22). Because of this, critics have often described the film as realism (Hinton 2007; Schickel 1976: 86). It is necessary to draw a distinction between ‘realistic’ (simulating what verifiably exists in life, via a prop, a set, a costume) and ‘realism’, which is a more totalizing artistic approach to representation (Aumont 1997: 74–5). The French film director René Clair pointed out that film scenery in the drama film – which may include mattes, backdrops, built sets – tends to look ‘real’, that is the same way as the thing – for example, a restaurant – would look in reality; but, Clair says, we do need to clarify what we mean by ‘reality’ (Barsacq 1976: vii). The subject of realism in art is an ongoing and constantly unfolding discussion. Classical film theorists mostly felt that one of the main differences between film and painting is that film is wholly dependent upon the camera, upon filming ‘reality’ – that is, what is in front of the camera lens – whereas a painting is the product of the artist’s imagination (Andrew 1976: 103–5). Since film is as much a construction as a painting, René Clair refers to film realism as ‘imitated reality’ – more specifically, realism interposed by style. Clair maintains that good style should give the illusion of reality but not be it (Barsacq 1976: vii). Christian Metz also points out that ‘realism is not reality’ (Metz 1974: 21). In short, though there is ‘realism’ in films, it is expressed in a wide variety of ways and made by a vast array of methods. There is no movie ‘reality’ – every film always constructs its own ‘reality’ – and there are many kinds of film realism. Nevertheless, there have periodically been movements or tendencies in film, various ‘new waves’ which seek to achieve a kind of social authenticity: a more realistic realism, as it were.1 This kind of film realism involves movies being constructed in such a way that they seem to be giving a true picture of the world ‘as it is’. Typically, all these tendencies avoid the excessive stylization associated with classic Hollywood or ‘National’ Cinemas. They usually employ real locations, such as streets and functional buildings, instead of studio sets. Sometimes the roles are played by nonprofessional actors or even non-actors. Finally, in many cases, these films do not just expose the grimy side of life, they actively embrace it.

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New Hollywood director Martin Scorsese started his career with a series of films in this vein, openly acknowledging his debt to Italian neorealism. In three of his earliest successful films (1973–6) Mean Streets, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore and Taxi Driver, Scorsese sought to combine the street-level naturalism of Italians such as Roberto Rossellini (Rome, Open City, 1945) and the early Pier Paolo Pasolini (Accatone (1961), Mamma Roma (1962) and Federico Fellini (Il Vitelloni, 1953) with the dramatic sense (including violence) established by Hollywood. Considering Scorsese’s key influences, one thing known about Pasolini is that as well as being a writer he also studied aesthetics and art history. One of Pasolini’s most influential teachers was Roberto Longhi the great modern Italian art critic, whose groundbreaking work on Caravaggio introduced the painter to a broader audience. Although there’s no record of what Longhi may have said to Pasolini, the Caravaggist influence is manifest in Pasolini’s films. Scorsese has often remarked how influenced he is by Caravaggio, and in many interviews has detailed how he specifically uses Caravaggio’s lighting, colour or compositions to set up shots in Mean Streets, Goodfellas, Casino and other films (Scorsese on Caravaggio 2004). Although nobody has yet done such a study in depth, it would be possible to map Caravaggio’s influences onto many of Scorsese’s films. One of the peculiar things about cinema studies is that while cinema is a team effort, overseen by the director but using the insights, skills and knowledge of a range of other people, the study of films often focuses on the director. Therefore, it has become almost a cliché to say that Martin Scorsese is influenced by Caravaggio and his films betray Caravaggesque qualities. But it is rare for anybody to ask the cinematographer or the production designer what went into their preparation for the film. It is also important to note how the scenographic methods and practices combine to affect the film’s audience, including scholars. In this discussion, I move between the ‘designer’ perspective (which involves the material work of making) and a scenographic (holistic, multisensory, involving the spectator) perspective; both are necessary.

Mise en scène and film making From the outset it is important to distinguish film scenography from theatre scenography. Though film scenography emerges out of theatre scenography (Mayer 1994: 94), it is different in many ways, not least of which is that it

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involves cinematography, and the means of perception are largely different (while acknowledging the role of film in contemporary theatrical production, which I cannot address here). Rachel Hann explains that ‘the scenographics of filmmaking are captured within the critical and experiential contexts of cinematography – which is inclusive of light balance and camera lens as well as editing methods – as well as production design’ (Hann 2019: 134). When the ‘scenography’ of a film is mentioned, the term mise en scène is often employed. Like ‘scenography’, mise en scène is cinema’s ‘grand undefined term’ (Henderson 1976: 315). I will use the term to refer to whatever can be perceived within the film frame, the ‘expressive totality of what you see in a single film image’ including the photography (Sikov 2011: 5). Adrian Martin in Mise en Scène and Film Style exhorts the viewer to pay attention to materiality which, he says, ‘works on the double register of textuality (concrete properties of the constructed, composed works) and the spectator’s emotions (the effects that film creates in us, the experiences we have of them)’ (Martin 2014: xvii). In short, mise en scène is an agent of communication, constituted from many elements, but perceived as a whole, as what ‘the camera’ reveals. Because of this, there is no such person as a ‘scenographer’ in film. Film design is a multiplicity of activities: it can include lighting, art direction, set design and decorating, costume design, production design, cinematography, storyboarding, CGI and scene painting – among other things. Hann’s notion of ‘scenographics’ is useful here, which she describes as activities and processes which are not scenography in the usual sense, but which explicitly employ ‘methods of scenography to orientate an experience of an affective atmosphere, whether in terms of lighting, soundscape, costume or spatial configuration’ (Hann 2019: 32). These scenographics are assembled and configured by the camera. One of the problems with exploring scenography in film research is that while it is necessary to do analysis of the film itself, one must also determine how the different elements, usually contributed by different people, fit together. Kaveh Askari points out that, for much of the history of film theory, the so-called craft elements of filmmaking – the cinematography or the contribution of a designer – are little mentioned. Askari notes that the influential Frankfurt School generally placed cinema above craft, and this general bias away from craft became established early; Siegfried Kracauer refers disparagingly to ‘the artsy-crafty’ (Askari 2014: 70). The controversy over the 2019 Academy Awards, which proposed to break with tradition and no longer live-televise the awards for ‘craft’ categories Best Cinematography and Best Production Design, seems to validate Askari’s point about the relative discomfort film has with craft.

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The difficulty then is that information about these processes can be hard to obtain. As Léon Barsacq (one of the great set designers in French cinema) has written, it is much ‘easier’ to analyse the film’s plot or theme or abilities of the actors than it is to analyse the visual design of the film (Barsacq 1976). Barsaq is being arch: it is not difficult to analyse a film’s visual design, but auteur theory and simple convention have long meant that films are attributed almost entirely to the director. Add to that the history of film criticism and film research being rooted in literary criticism rather than visual art critique, and it is clear that film design has been somewhat neglected, particularly in recording the ideas and thoughts of the people occupying craft roles. Through the use of interviews, for example in ‘making of ’ DVDs or published in magazines such as American Cinematographer, it is possible – though difficult – to piece together a richer picture of how visual design and scenography operate within film, help drive the narrative and develop character.

Scenography and place orientation How do the scenographics in a film establish and manipulate a sense of place orientation for the viewer? In the case of Taxi Driver, the place of viewer orientation is a very particular version of downtown Manhattan, simultaneously a real place with a verifiable real-life existence, a fictive place constructed by the camera and a sense of place comprised of a set of impressions – in this case, mostly grimy, hectic, sleazy and unpleasant. Taxi Driver’s New York City is not a ‘made-up’ city, but scenographics navigate the viewer through a specific version of New York that is the world of the film. There is a long scenographic history of New York on screen. Cinema has created a scenography of New York City which although it bears little relationship with the actuality of New York, is instantly recognizable. Rachel Hann refers to scenography as ‘a crafting of atmospheres’ (Hann 2019: 21) and Taxi Driver establishes a haunting, immersive urban atmosphere. The bright lights of the city at night reveal a seedy, decaying metropolis, awash in its own filth. This is realistic: New York really was in decay in the mid-1970s, nearly bankrupt and full of condemned buildings and uncollected garbage. Even by day, the thronging streets outside the campaign office where Betsy (Cybill Shepherd) works are full of human flotsam and jetsam. Yet the film brings into synergy the real and the not-real, the concrete and the impressionistic. As Tim Pelan has written, ‘The city we see through Travis’ eyes is not the city of bright lights and endless

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possibilities, instead it glides past in slow motion, dreamlike, rain-slicked and disturbing. It is not the real city, rather it reflects Travis’ paranoid, pathological experience’ (Pelan n.d.). Place orientation in film is highly constructible, mobile and unlimited. Nevertheless, the challenge to create the realistic imposes boundaries and restrictions in the social drama. Taxi Driver may not be strictly a social realist drama in the same sense as a Ken Loach film is, but it shares many social realist characteristics, and manipulates the audiences into feeling that it is social realism, even if it does eventually erupt into a Grand Guignol bloodbath.

Cinematography and scenography The setting for Taxi Driver’s penultimate scene, one of the most famous and compelling scenes in the film, is the apartment of the child-prostitute Iris (Jodie Foster). It was, like some of the other sets, built inside a condemned building at 89th St and Columbus Ave (the exterior was filmed elsewhere on the Lower East Side). The decaying building offered the opportunity for highly textured realism through the authenticity of the real apartment building’s textures of lived-inness. The film team cut through the ceiling of the flat above and built tracks for the camera to move along, creating the remarkable overhead shot. Scorsese, who storyboarded the whole film with precision, was clear about what he wanted, but it was up to Charles Rosen, as art director, and Michael Chapman, as the cinematographer, to realize it, and each brought their ideas and influences to the scene. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find any recorded or published interview with Rosen. In the documentary Making Taxi Driver (1999) Michael Chapman speaks extensively about his work shooting the film. What was interesting is a statement that Chapman makes when discussing the scene, which unusually has no action other than the camera’s movement; it is purely an arrangement of forms and colour, accompanied by Bernard Hermann’s score (which begins 2.47 seconds into the sequence, as the police arrive and the action freezes). Chapman states clearly here that his explicit aim for the lighting, composition and colour of the shot was that it should ‘look like a Rauschenberg. I intended that it should look like a Rauschenberg.’ This struck me immediately as a surprising conception and I began to look for the connections between Chapman and Rauschenberg, to try and understand how this infamous shot may have been conceived through an engagement with Rauschenberg. In 1976 it was unusual for a mainstream

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film to show this level of gore and violence. Taxi Driver is a serious, social commentary film, not a grindhouse horror or even a rebooting of a gangster pic à la Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde. But it is very, very violent. Despite the film winning the Palme d’Or, Tennessee Williams, head of the Cannes jury in 1976, was appalled, calling the violence ‘a brutalizing experience for the spectator’, and the audience heckled the film (Dowd 2014). How then could I understand the connection between this orgy of violence and the work of acclaimed fine artist Robert Rauschenberg? As the cinematographer explains in Web of Stories, Chapman went to Andover Prep School in the late 1940s with painter Frank Stella and sculptor Carl Andre, all three on scholarships.2 Later, when Chapman was studying at Columbia, they hung out together in Greenwich Village while Chapman and Andre worked in the rail yards. Stella and Andre lived with experimental filmmaker Hollis Frampton – who was also at Andover. This brings Chapman and the artistic avant-garde together at a formative stage. Chapman says that he ‘fell into the arty-party world of New York City’ (Chapman 2004: segment 2). Possibly, during the Greenwich Village years, Chapman knew of Rauschenberg, who was working at 61 Fulton Street in Lower Manhattan. Perhaps he saw the early Combines and Red Paintings at the Egan Gallery in December 1954, or maybe he just heard about them.

Why would Rauschenberg, who is not a representational painter, influence a cinematographer? On one level, one could say that Rauschenberg is a deeply realist painter, in that his works are arrangements and reconfigurations of the real: including the materials, forms, photographs and iconography of everyday life. Rauschenberg’s paintings often included materials such as textile, wood and printed matter collaged onto the canvas with paint. He also made ‘Combines’, a term he invented to describe three-dimensional works that combine painting and sculpture. This tactile aspect of his work (and the fact that many of his materials were sourced from discarded urban flotsam) is a link to the realism of the film – a realism made up of real things configured into an imaginative recombination. However, it is probably the artist’s use of colour that has been so strongly influential upon Chapman’s Taxi Driver. Léon Barsacq writes about what happens ‘when colour stops being colouring and takes on a dramatic role’ (Barsacq 1976: 157). This is as true of painting as it is of cinema. Rauschenberg’s colours involve

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repeated, symbolic, eye catching use of red, a difficult colour – as his teacher Josef Albers noted (Albers 1935). Clearly, Chapman noticed Rauschenberg’s use of red. In Untitled: Hotel Bilbao (1952) there is a fringe of red textile cutting through two-thirds of the composition; then Yoicks (1954) where the lines of red paint drip down the canvas, testifying to their liquidity and viscosity.3 The Combine Bed (1955) collages real bedding onto canvas: red is a smear on the bedcover, a reminder that it is not unusual for beds – as sites of all kinds of intimacy – to end up with smears of blood. Another red drip appears in Rebus (1955), and a slash of dripping red appears in the diptych Factum I and II from 1957. Even when the red is not viscous and dripping, it can be striking and dominating as in Allegory (1959–60). So, in many of Rauschenberg’s most important paintings, the splashy, dripping, almost shocking red is immediately apparent. Red appears again in several the silkscreens notably in Choke 1964, where it seems to take on bloody overtones, as a pool of blood in the bottom right-hand corner. Rauschenberg’s red was not deliberately meant as a colour of violence. However, the use of strong dripping reds in the Combines, the Red Paintings and many later screen prints, can feel violent or at least visceral. Many of Rauschenberg’s most striking works feature red – as drip, slash, smear and gouge. Writing about the Red Paintings, Catherine Craft observes that since red is commonly identified with ‘such visceral feelings his rage and passion . . . in making red paintings Rauschenberg set himself the task of challenging these emotional associations’. Moreover, she goes on to say, the Red Paintings were the works that ‘cemented his reputation as the art world enfant terrible’ (Craft 2013: 28). In this respect, I would conjecture that when Chapman said he wanted the penultimate scene in Taxi Driver to ‘look like a Rauschenberg’, he had these works in mind. For Chapman, it does not matter whether Rauschenberg intended these dripping reds to be bloody, though Craft suggests that he may have. Chapman uses these Rauschenberg reds as blood. Through the camera’s viewfinder, the cinematographer composed a Rauschenberg-like mise en scène dominated by applications of red at key points in the composition, in the same way that red instances dominate Rauchenberg’s pictures. In other words, through the camera’s ability to compose the scene, Chapman uses Rauschenberg’s painting and the red splash gash or a gouge rhetorically. The splash of blood on the wall of the apartment building. The gashes of red on Travis’s face, and the drips of blood on his hand. The gouges of red on the prone body on the floor, the white shirt soaked in gore.

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‘The film is theatrical’: Taxi Driver and the scenography of theatricality So how does this scenographic rhetoric work? Why does it persuade the audience? I am arguing that it is precisely this splashing, gouging, slashing, dripping red that Chapman takes from art and puts it into film, so that film can become art. What I am saying is that because Chapman is thinking about colour and composition in terms of Rauschenberg, he is not thinking about colour and composition in terms of the established genres where gore is prevalent: horror or gangster movies. Paradoxically, by invoking a nonrepresentational fine artwork, Chapman is persuading the audience that what they see before them is more real, that is it does not look like a genre movie. Moreover, this is deliberate. The film team were very aware that they were not after any kind of strict realism in this scene. Paul Schrader said that Taxi Driver ‘only pretends to be a realistic film’ (Schapiro 2013: 192). Chapman says that the film ‘pretends to be documentary but in fact, it is quite theatrical, it’s not realistic at all’. The film, he says, is a documentary of the characters’ emotions, not of their lives. He points out that all cinema exists in the space between the documentary and the theatre – as does painting – between the naturalistic impulse and the theatrical impulse (Chapman 2004: segment 11). The documentary impulse wants to depict what is ‘really there’ and reproduce reality. The theatrical impulse wants to transform reality – Chapman gives as an example the ‘beam of light, from heaven’ that falls upon and illuminates the subject. Yet no film is ever purely one or the other, reality or imagination. And being able to ‘record real life’ on film or video is not the same as making a movie (Chapman 2004: segment 11). Moreover, the camera orientates the viewer where the film wants them to be, forcing then to see the events onscreen in a particular way. As Lev Manovich observes, with film ‘the viewer is situated at the optimum viewpoint to the shot. The viewer is present inside a space which does not really exist. A fake space’ (Manovich 1995: 4). This fake space is multidimensional. In Taxi Driver, the fake spaces include the reconfigured New York streetscape, where space and distance are compressed by the camera; the building that is simultaneously at 89th and Columbus and somewhere in the Lower East Side; and the mental space inside the head of Travis Bickle. This ability of film to show the real and the not real simultaneously is, according to philosopher of aesthetics Martin Seel, one of the ontological aspects of film. Seel challenges what he calls ‘the false alternative between realism and anti-realism’. He points out that the strength of films ‘lies in their capacity to

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let the imagination of reality and the reality of their imagination play with each other in the awareness of the viewer in such a way that they carry or interrupt each other, that they penetrate each other, that the one dominates the other, or that a delicate balance is created’ (Seel 2008: 172–3; italics in the original). Seel’s assertion that film ‘breaks through every clearly delineated alternative between realism, illusionism and anti-realism’ (Seel 2008: 174) means that it is less useful to talk about ‘the realism of a film’ itself, and instead address the modes of realism that may be employed at any given moment in a film (as well as the modes of illusionism and anti-realism that may also occur). This becomes particularly interesting when considering the sense of place in a film scene. In Taxi Driver, the shock of the violence distracts the viewer momentarily from an appreciation of the materiality of place. From the moment Travis Bickle shoots off his opponent’s hand, the edit cuts to a montage of corridors and doors, creating a strong sense of place but also of containment and claustrophobia. The sequence ends with Travis sitting on the sofa letting his head fall backwards and closing his eyes. The rhythm of this burst of violence, followed by the montage, then relaxing into Travis’s stillness on the sofa, brings together the sense of realism in the material ‘look’ of the mise en scène, but also non-realism in the montage, which offers us Travis’s eye-view as he searches for Iris’s apartment in the tenement: space and time are compressed as a succession of doors and corridors. Within this space of perception lie many opportunities to play with composition. The unusual composition of the penultimate scene is one of these, a strikingly innovative scene created inside a real apartment building. By cutting through the ceiling and filming the room from above, the team was able to emphasize the composition of the elements differently than is usual in a ‘realist’ film composition which, like the rest of the film, is usually rendered at eye level. This scene in Taxi Driver, then, is a painterly composition that is strongly suggestive of the composition of Rauschenberg’s works of the 1950s, when his painting begins to emerge from its two-dimensionality, as the artist uses the textures of everyday life in addition to oil paint. In Untitled, 1954, several shades of red join oil, fabric, wood, stained glass and electric light – reminiscent of an old, cluttered New York City apartment, with fusty layers of textile and spilt ‘stuff ’ building up slowly over the years. De Niro and Foster’s performances in Taxi Driver are truly memorable, but so is the scenography. Geraint d’Arcy points out that because the actors ‘carry the weight of the action in the narrative in film, it is often assumed that the décor must be just for setting and have no narrative impact’ but ‘sets too are the

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photographed subjects of the discourse and their contribution to the narrative also takes the burden of the narrative’ (D’Arcy 2019: 122). Léon Barsacq said that we should consider set design as a dramatic element, a character and be aware of its decisive role in the creation of ambience or atmosphere (Barsacq 1976: 1). In the drama film, the set must ‘succeed in re-creating a framework equivalent to reality’ (Barsacq 1976: 4). But while using real interiors offers ‘the absolute authenticity’ compared to a studio set, they are very difficult to use. Taxi Driver overcame some of these problems because they were able to modify a real location. Charles Tashiro, writing briefly about Taxi Driver and other realist 1970s films such as The French Connection, claims that the realism of these films and the use of location shooting made it ‘even less likely than usual that there would be much scenic stylization’ (Tashiro 2015: 102). I disagree with this, and Taxi Driver can stand as evidence of a specific kind of scenic stylization. The complex sets of Travis and Iris’s apartments and Senator Palantine’s campaign office are clearly designed and decorated to convey meaning as well as realistic effect. Comparing them, Iris’s apartment is feminine and full of frayed, tawdry luxury, while Travis’s is sparse, brutally lacking in comforts. Each is lit differently: Iris’s is softly lit by faded silk lampshades and Travis’s is a stark, harsh bare-light bulb affair. The penultimate scene is rigorously styled, before and after the explosions of blood around the space. Tashiro’s assertion that ‘Charles Rosen had to do little but select appropriate spaces and allow the decayed settings to speak for themselves’ is belied by the effort made to create the overhead shot. This took three months to do and was achieved by cutting through the floor from the apartment above, and treating the blood-spattered walls in the hallway and stairs so that Chapman could shoot them effectively (given the tightness of the space, it was a challenge) (Making Taxi Driver 1999).

Analysing the penultimate scene of Taxi Driver The penultimate scene, the aftermath of the eruption of violence, is when the viewer actually sees all the results of Travis’s violent fantasies brought to life. Screenwriter Paul Schrader wrote the scene as ‘almost past realism’ (Making Taxi Driver 1999). Chapman’s invocation of Rauschenberg’s compositions is part of this ‘beyond-realism’ aspect. Within a gritty urban setting, the explosive violence is followed by eerie calm and a slow tracking camera.4 Nothing moves except the camera, not even the police who stand frozen in the doorway. The stillness of

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the scene is completely painterly, the camera scans the room like the eye scans a painting, taking in every detail as well as the effect of the whole canvas. Comparing the final film to the photographs by the set photographer Steven Schapiro, the painterliness of the scene is apparent in both Chapman and Schapiro’s renderings (Schapiro 2013). Rosen decorated the set and Chapman lit the shot with very strong colours, a true Rauschenberg palette: bright whites and deep browns, rich yellows and a plethora of what Paul Schrader refers to as ‘candy coloured’ red (Schapiro 2013: 19). Chapman has stated that as ‘colour’ is a quality of light: colour looks different depending on the light used to illuminate it (Chapman 2004: segment 9). But when the producers of Taxi Driver saw the film, they insisted upon Scorsese degrading the lighting on the film strip, making the image darker and destroying its luminescence in order to bring down the red, which they felt was terrifyingly violent and would ensure an X-rated certificate (Heron 2011). This was done, and so the released film looks very different from the one Chapman shot, which is perhaps one reason why the Rauschenberg connection seemed strange at first. Chapman has said that he found the alteration and its rationale ‘very sad’ because the desaturation ruined the Rauschenbergian ‘incredibly vibrant’ colours (Making Taxi Driver 1999). Schrader also agrees that ‘this hurt the film’ (Schapiro 2013: 19). Unfortunately, the original footage is lost. The colour was chemically removed from the master film, and no other copies have been found. Re-colouring the film while ‘preserving the realism’ would be too difficult, according to Sony Pictures restoration expert Grover Crisp, ‘You can’t really successfully pump a colour into a film that isn’t there’ (Heron 2011). Thanks to digital technology, I have been able to make a crude attempt at restoring some of the original colour balance, as indicated by the stills (Plates 7 and 8). In these mockups of the original lighting and colour, the red and white are very dominant, allowing the viewer to focus on the polarities and symbolism of red and white. Seeing the shots brightened also brings into focus on key visual motifs of the film and how they relate to the film’s theme. The bed, pristine and white, dominates the shot. The bed is never used in the film, despite being the prostitute’s bed. It is the site of sex, but no sex takes place. Travis haunts the pornographic theatres of the city, and fails to make meaningful contact with Betsy, the woman he desires and refers to as an ‘angel’. Travis seeks to reverse the archetypal Madonna-Whore complex; he wants to make Betsy a whore (by taking her to see a pornographic film) and restore the prostitute to a state of virginal innocence. The untouched white bed is a testament to this fantasy. In this scene, violence is everywhere – enacted with guns and knives – but sex is

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tauntingly still absent, the bed remains unsullied. Heightening the effect, the orange-shaded lamp that illuminates the bed (much more strongly than a lamp could in real life – film lights actually light the bed) makes a hot, garish and even grotesque colour in this composition.

‘The film is art’: Taxi Driver and scenographing ‘art’ Finally, the third point of persuasion that is achieved in this shot is the one that is most important for the film as a whole: that the film is art. Although Chapman mentions that during the making of the film neither he, nor Scorsese nor Paul Schrader nor anybody else refers to what they were doing as art, he concludes that Taxi Driver is an artwork, as well as the greatest film of his career (Chapman 2004: segment 10). His desire to make the scene ‘look like a Rauschenberg’ (Plate 9) is key here. Again, this scene comes after the violence has been committed. In a sense, it wasn’t necessary to show the aftermath, most films wouldn’t. But by composing the aftermath ‘like a Rauschenberg’ Chapman is insisting that this film is not a genre picture, it is art and should be taken as art, taken seriously as art. And that’s exactly what happened. Although people didn’t like the violence, they could accept it as necessary, and the film won the Palme d’Or. Chapman’s vision of ‘like a Rauschenberg’ transforms the scene and thereby the whole film. Chapman says not all films are art, and most films are not-art, because film is a medium and art is not (Chapman 2004: segment 30). But he believes that ‘Taxi Driver is something like art’ (Chapman 2004: segment 24). The idea that Taxi Driver (or any film) can be considered art does not mean that it belongs in a museum, but that – regardless of film style or whether or not it is painterly at all – it is equivalent in complexity and durability to the kind of works that deserve to hang in the museum. This is not something that Chapman or Scorsese could have anticipated. The complexity that was invoked when Chapman turned to Rauschenberg for ideas about film composition is part of the film’s lasting value.

Conclusion: Art history, scenographics and cinema This example of Michael Chapman’s Rauschenberg has served to greatly enhance my understanding of how fine art can intersect with film. It demonstrates how the visual storytelling of Taxi Driver can be structured by both Robert Rauschenberg

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and Caravaggio. Another great cinematographer, Vilmos Zsygmond, has noted that ‘Cinematographers are hired for their taste, and taste is cultivated through their experiences in life and knowledge and understanding of film, music, art, literature, photography – everything that helps to define and create a unique point of view’ (Zsygmond n.d.). The problem with researching film scenography, and also with practicing it, is that it is considered a ‘craft’ and has been largely disregarded in (both academic and popular) film discourse. It should be clear by now that no precise proofs nor conclusions can be the result of my research into one film, but it is possible to identify some directions that help to develop understanding of scenography and mise en scène in film and their relationship to art history. There are many possibilities for further exploration into the crafting of multimodal worlds in film. A deeper investigation of the ideas and influences of the ‘craft’ – cinematographers, art director and production designers – may continue to yield useful insights. Another point to consider is the need to further develop theoretical clarifications within film, particularly (though not exclusively) through new approaches to intertextuality with art history, to open the way for better understanding of the multisensory happenings of scenography and scenographics. It is useful to consider what kind of art history can be of use to the theory and practice of scenography. There is more work to be done on the notion of ‘painterly’ in film, through a combined mise en scène and scenography approach, and an engagement with art history can serve this endeavour. The connection between fine art and cinema is a fine web of correspondences, influences, inclinations and shared concerns. Discovering them, and all their complexity, offers a deeper understanding of film and art, and the cultural significance of images.

Notes 1 For example, Italian Neorealism, nouvelle vague, British Social Realism, New Hollywood, Dogme 95 and most recently Noul val românesc (Romanian New Wave). In general, ‘New Hollywood’ films like Taxi Driver differ from their Italian and French influences, in that they are much more dramatic and less overtly intellectual. 2 Web of Stories (https://www​.webofstories​.com/) is an online archive of autobiographical video-stories by renowned scientists, authors, film makers, artists and others 3 All the Rauschenberg works are available on www​.rau​sche​nber​gfou​ndation​.org.

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4 The scene described here as ‘penultimate’ follows the climactic violence and in a sense is the true ending of the film, but there is an epilogue in which Travis – clearly unrehabilitated and still highly disturbed – is hailed as a hero for saving the childprostitute Iris.

References Albers, J. (1935) On Abstract Art. [Online] Josef and Anni Albers Foundation. Available from : http:​/​/www​​.albe​​rsfou​​ndati​​on​.or​​g​/tea​​ching​​/jose​​f​-alb​​e​rs​/l​​ectur​​es/ (accessed 10 August 2018). Aldouby, H. (2013), Federico Fellini: Painting in Film, Painting on Film, Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Andrew, J. D. (1976), The Major Film Theories, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Askari, K. (2014), Making Movies into Art: Picture Craft from the Magic Lantern to Early Hollywood, Basingstoke: British Film Institute. Aumont, J. (1997), The Image, London: British Film Institute. Barsacq, L. (1976), Caligari’s Cabinet and Other Grand Illusions: A History of Film Design, Boston: New York Graphic Society. Blair, J. A. (2004), ‘The Rhetoric of Visual Arguments’, in C. A. Hill and M. Helmers (eds), Defining Visual Rhetorics, 41–62. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Chapman, M. (2004), Michael Chapman - Web of Stories. [Online] Web of Stories. Available from: https​:/​/ww​​w​.web​​ofsto​​ries.​​com​/p​​lay​/m​​ichae​​l​​.cha​​pman/​2 (accessed 10 August 2018). Craft, C. (2013), Robert Rauschenberg, London: Phaidon Focus. Dalle Vacche, A. (1996), Cinema And Painting: How Art Is Used in Film, Austin: University of Texas Press. D’Arcy, G. (2019), Critical Approaches to TV and Film Set Design, New York: Routledge. Dowd, A. A. (2014), ‘Taxi Driver Remains One of the Best (and most troubling) of Palme Winners’. [Online] The A.V. Club. Available from: https​:/​/fi​​lm​.av​​club.​​com​ /t​​axi​-d​​river​​-rema​​ins​-o​​ne​-of​​-the-​​best-​​and​-m​​ost​-t​​​roubl​​ing​-1​​79826​​5454 (accessed 08 August 2018). Fairfax, D. (2017), ‘The Experience of a Gaze Held in Time: Interview with Jacques Aumont’. [Online] Senses of Cinema. Available from: http:​/​/sen​​sesof​​cinem​​a​.com​​ /2017​​/film​​-stud​​ies​/j​​acque​​s​-aum​​o​nt​-i​​nterv​​iew/ (accessed 21 June 2018). Hann, R. (2019), Beyond Scenography, New York and Oxford: Routledge. Henderson, B. (1976), ‘The Long Take’, in B. Nichols (ed.), Movies and Methods: An Anthology, Berkeley: University of California Press. Heron, A. (2011) ‘Revisiting Taxi Driver’. [Online] Film Detail. Available from : http:​/​/ www​​.film​​detai​​l​.com​​/2011​​/04​/1​​3​/rev​​isiti​​ng​-ta​​xi​-dr​​iver-​​res​to​​red​-s​​corse​​se/ (accessed 11 August 2018).

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Hinton, E. (2007), ‘Grotesque Neo-Realism: Discussing Martin Scorsese’s Confounding Style’. [Online] PopMatters. Available from: https​:/​/ww​​w​.pop​​matte​​rs​.co​​m​/gro​​tesqu​​ e​-neo​​-real​​ism​-d​​iscus​​sing-​​marti​​n​-sco​​rsese​​s​-con​​found​​ing​​-s​​tyle-​​24962​​48188​​.html​ (accessed 25 April 2019). Making Taxi Driver. (1999), Directed by Bouzereau, L. Columbia TriStar Home Video. Manovich, L. (1995), ‘To Lie and to Act: Potemkin’s Villages, Cinema and Telepresence’. Ars Electronica (Linz 1995) Catalog. [Online] Available from: http:​/​/man​​ovich​​.net/​​ conte​​nt​/04​​-proj​​ects/​​010​-t​​o​-lie​​-and-​​to​-ac​​t​-pot​​emkin​​-s​-vi​​llage​​s​-cin​​ema​-a​​nd​-te​​lepre​​​ sence​​/08​_a​​rticl​​e​_199​​5​.pdf​ (accessed 26 April 2019). Martin, A. (2014), Mise en scène and Film Style: From Classical Hollywood to New Media Art, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Mayer, D. (1994), Playing Out the Empire: Ben-Hur and Other Toga Plays and Films, 1883–1908: A Critical Anthology, Oxford: Clarendon Press. McIver, G. (2016), Art History for Filmmakers, London: Bloomsbury. Metz, C. (1974), Film Language: A Semiotics of the Cinema, New York and London: Oxford University Press. Pelan, T. (n.d.), Approaching Menace: The American Pathology of Martin Scorsese’s ‘Taxi Driver’. [Online] Cinephilia & Beyond. Available from : https​:/​/ci​​nephi​​liabe​​yond.​​ org​/a​​pproa​​ching​​-mena​​ce​-th​​e​-ame​​rican​​-path​​ology​​-of​-m​​artin​​-scor​​​seses​​-taxi​​-driv​​er/ (accessed 17 February 19). Schapiro, S. (2013), Taxi Driver/Photographs by Steve Schapiro, Köln : Taschen. Schickel, R. (1976), ‘Potholes (Review of Taxi Driver)’, TIME Magazine, 107 (7), 86. Scorsese on Caravaggio. (2004), Episode 11, BBC The Culture Show. [Segment] BBC. 2005 2004. Seel, M. (2008), ‘Realism and Anti-Realism in Film Theory’, Critical Horizons, 9 (2), 157–76. Sikov, E. (2011), Film Studies: An Introduction, New York, Chichester and West Sussex: Columbia University Press. Tashiro, C. (2015) ‘The Auteur Renaissance 1968-1980’, in L. Rose Fischer (ed.), Art Direction and Production Design, 97–117, London: I B Tauris.

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A dynamic bipolarity The Royal Holloway Chapel project, scenography and art history Greer Crawley and Harriet O’Neill

‘Every discipline that contributes to the Gesamtwerk of scenography has two anchor points: a fixed one in the domain of familiarity, and a floating one in the unfamiliar domain of what is “other.” This dynamic bipolarity, which lends contrast to the gaze and creates a shifting parallex, is a precondition for every intelligent scenography’ (den Oudsten 2011: 35–6). The term ‘scenography’ is being increasingly employed to describe temporary and permanent presentations and interventions in museum, gallery and heritage spaces. The designer Frank den Oudsten in his book space​.time​.narrat​ive outlines some of the precedents for the recognition of a scenographic approach to exhibition. Among these was Martin Roth’s introduction of the term ‘Szenographie’ at Expo 2000 in Hanover when he was project manager and the director of Thematic Exhibitions. Roth was to go on to become director general of the Dresden State Art Collections and in 2011 the director of the Victoria and Albert Museum where he encouraged their scenographic approach to exhibitions. Oudsten also suggests that by the time of the Swiss exhibition Expo.02, the title Szenograf was being adopted by most exhibition designers and the concept of the arteplage became the prototype for a ‘new encompassing stage for the theatre, the exhibition, performance and installation’ (Oudsten 2011: 5). It is significant that in the same year, 2002, an English version of Nicolas Bourriaud’s Relational Aesthetics was published. Joslin McKinney and Scott Palmer in Scenography Expanded cite the importance of Bourriaud’s relational aesthetics to ‘a revisioning of scenography’. Bourriaud had introduced the term in 1995, in a text for the catalogue of the exhibition Traffic at the CAPC contemporary art museum, Bordeaux. From 1999 to 2006, he was to put his ideas

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into practice further as codirector of the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. Bourriad’s relational aesthetics placed the emphasis on interdisciplinary practices and the relationship of the visitor in the creation of the work. The idea of an autonomous artwork was replaced by a ‘relational object whose operation is founded on a network of relationships “between individuals and groups, between the artists and the world” and “between the beholder and the world”’ (Bourriad 2002: 26 in McKinney and Palmer 2017: 9). In this chapter, we consider how the adoption of a deliberately scenographic approach, specifically in sacred environments can be used as both a research tool and a means of creating interpretative apparati which enable visitors of all faiths and non-believers to explore these complex, layered and often alien spaces. Central to the argument is the belief that meaning is co-produced, and that scenographic methods are especially useful in bringing together creative productions from different temporal periods and spatial contexts. These hybrid productions can, in their making and reception, provide a valuable means of exploring heritage spaces, particularly when there is a lack of documentation con­ cerning their history. The main focus of our discussion will be a teaching project initiated by the writers of this chapter, Greer Crawley, lecturer in scenography at Royal Holloway, University of London and Harriet O’Neill, previously College and Exhibitions Curator at the same institution. The ‘Chapel Project’ concentrated attention on the University’s rich and puzzling late-nineteenthcentury chapel and challenged scenography students to create interventions in the space which examined its often perplexing and certainly hidden histories. Our arguments are contextualized through reference to and comparisons with traditional interpretation in sacred spaces, the immersive installation in Santa Maria Antiqua, Rome, Bill Viola’s Ocean without a shore (Chiesa di San Gallo, 52nd International Art Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia 2007) and The Holy See Pavilion Vatican Chapels at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale. These examples reflect the authors’ interests in the contemporary engagement with sacred space at the Venice Biennales and Roman Church art and architecture. Underpinning our analysis is a consideration of how scenographic projects can bridge a gap between art and architectural history in real, physical space. This question grew out of the specific circumstances in which the chapter was written. It began as a paper given in response to the question posed at the NORDIK XII Conference for Art Historians 2018: ‘In what ways can various applications and understandings of scenography revitalize art history as a tradition and a discipline in transition?’ Through reference to the ‘Chapel Project’, the authors decided to take issue with the paradoxical presupposition that art history

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required rescuing before it became ossified and yet was not so moribund as a discipline that it showed no signs of development. It should be stressed that the original intention of the project was not to reinvigorate art historical practice using scenography or indeed to complicate subject or disciplinary boundaries. Instead art historical research was needed to make appropriate interventions in the space and in so doing we saw how scenographic practice could reveal the previously concealed relationships between art, architecture and theology at work in the chapel. The conference panel provided a valuable context in which to interrogate the theoretical aspects and implications of the chapel project. We thought it was particularly important to consider the question raised by the cultural historian Jonathan Koestlé-Cate when in his book Art and the Church A Fractious Embrace: Rethinking Ecclesiastical Encounters with Contemporary Art he asks ‘to what extent should a concept of encounter, as opposed to recognition [. . .] determine the conditions of possibility for contemporary art within ecclesiastical spaces? (Koestlé-Cate 2016: 13). Koestlé-Cate referring to the Deleuzian difference between encounter and recognition points out that although encounter can bring forth the unexpected and ‘forces us to think’ (Deleuze 1997: 139), there is also a case to be made to ‘for the creative thought stimulated by familiarity, for the importance of an artistic link to the past and a continuing conversation with artistic tradition’ (Koestlé-Cate 2016: 13). Both encounter and recognition are important aspects of a scenographic methodology. McKinney and Palmer describe the scenographic process as ‘a mode of encounter and exchange founded on spatial and material relations between bodies, objects and environments’ (McKinney and Palmer 2017: 2). It is scenography’s research methodology ‘to understand complex interactions of elements and to be open to the experiential’ and can, as has been noted by McKinney and Iball ‘usefully draw on and extend the methods of artists, theatre designers, theatre theoreticians and historians’ (McKinney and Iball 2011: 114–5).

Sacred space and interpretation For many of us the interpretative label on display in the della Rovere Chapel in Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome, is typical of a general type found in art galleries and museums. The label informs visitors that the altarpiece was painted by Pinturicchio and his School between 1488 and 1490 for Cardinal Domenico della Rovere and that it represents the Nativity with Saint Jerome. The architecture of

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the chapel is also discussed alongside its remodelling in the mid-seventeenth century. This content is typical of an art historical approach which is concerned with authorship, patronage and subject matter and despite the highly charged atmosphere generated by tourists and worshippers in the church, the tone of the label is dispassionate. Significantly the visitor is not allowed to enter the space but must look on from the balustrade which becomes a distancing device both physically and for some, emotionally. This experience is very different from visiting Santa Maria Antiqua also in Rome which reopened to the public in 2016 having been closed for thirty years. Arguably this is unsurprising given that it is managed not as a living church but as a heritage attraction within the Roman Forum. Rediscovered in 1900, Santa Maria Antiqua, a fifth-century church has, as one would expect, suffered from loss and damage, rebuilding and restoration. The immersive display undertaken by Katatexilux seeks to engage with this history and recreate something of the first decorative scheme. Indeed the company promises ‘a theatrical and historically accurate journey’ (Katatexilux 2016). On entering, the temperature immediately drops because the church is encased within a protective shelter. Sacred music plays and the written signage is largely positioned at floor level encouraging the visitor to focus on what some describe as a ‘light show’ (tripadvisor 2018). In the side chapels flanking the sanctuary another layer of music is introduced, images of now lost frescoes are projected onto the walls where they would have been and short sentences (also in the form of projections) narrate what they depict and their iconographical significance. Combined, these interpretative apparati cast the plight of the early Christians as dramatic as well underlining that the space was built for worship and spiritual contemplation. Reviews left on tripadvisor suggest that visitors to the church feel that they have entered a different temporal moment. One states ‘you feel as if you have entered a church in the 7th or 8th century’ (tripadvisor 2018). This response and the dozens like it left on the website demonstrate that a scenographic approach to display which engages with the visitors’ senses is particularly effective. This finding tallies with what Gernot Böhme might refer to as an ‘atmosphere’ which facilitates looking (Böhme 2013: 1–8) and as an approach it can be clearly connected to Donald Preziosi’s description of the chief task of art history as ‘making the visible legible’ (Preziosi 1989: 56). However further reflection reveals that much of what is rendered legible in this instance was in fact at risk of becoming invisible owing to damage. Arguably it is this observation that alerts us to the major strength of the scenographic approach, that is its ability to communicate what might otherwise remain invisible or unknown, as we will demonstrate later.

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The Venice Biennale can also provide artists with opportunities to engage with sacred space through temporary interventions. Thus, and unlike at Santa Maria Antiqua, the historic space provides the ‘atmosphere’ for the new artwork. Bill Viola’s Ocean without Shore was installed in the fifteenth-century San Gallo chapel, Venice, as part of the 2007 Biennale. The work took the form of three video screens inserted inside the chapel’s architectural all’antica or tabernacle frames which showed images of the dead attempting to re-enter our world through (real) cascading water (Baker 2014).  Viola’s subject matter seemed highly suitable. Renaissance altarpieces often made allusions to the resurrection of Christ in keeping with the content of the Mass celebrated on the altar in front (Nethersole 2011). Moreover the physical frame of an altarpiece worked to mediate the divisions between fictive and real space for the worshipper, a liminality which Viola was exploiting in this work. Ocean without Shore could then be viewed as a scenographic intervention which animated both art historical and theological narratives. The animation of a theological narrative was also the motivation for The Vatican Pavilion at the 16th Venice Architecture Biennale. The Holy See which represents the Catholic Church commissioned eleven small chapels for a woodland area on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore. The brief for the chapels that was given to artists from Europe, Asia, Latin America, the United States and Australia was free from any liturgical constraints other than the need to contain two fundamental liturgical elements a pulpit or lectern, to represent the proclamation of the Word and an altar to denote the celebration of the Eucharistic Supper (Hitchin 2018). An additional eleventh pavilion was a reconstruction of a ‘Woodland chapel’ that had been built by Swedish architect Gunnar Asplund in Stockholm in 1920 and was the inspiration and model for the project. Curated by architectural historian Francesco Dal Co, the project explored ways that the chapel could be freed from the attachments of specific religions or religious sites. In a curatorial statement, he observed that In our culture we are accustomed to seeing the chapel as a space created for different reasons and aims [. . .] The practice behind this perception has produced many models that share the factor of taking form in and belonging to an ‘other’ space, a space of worship, a cathedral, a church, or more simply a place identified for having hosted an unusual occurrence, selected as being a recognized destination. (Frearson 2018)

Cardinal Gianfranco Ravesi, Head of the Pontifical Council for Culture in the catalogue that accompanied the exhibition states that although there is now a

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desire for ‘encounters between art and faith’ it is a ‘path of encounter that is certainly hard and complex and feeds on mutual suspicion and hesitation’ (Dal Co 2018: 23). However, he believes: ‘The authentic sacred is not fundamentalistically isolated; it enters into the profane, not to annihilate it but to meet it, to make it fecund and dialogue with it’ (Dal Co 2018: 21). Both Ravesi and Dal Co came in for criticism from a number of quarters both secular and ecclesiastical. An architectural historian writing a review of the chapels in the Catholic Herald referred to a ‘deracinated Catholic culture’ and said: The curator was an avowed non-believer, as were most of the exhibitors. What does this tell us about the culture of the church under Pope Francis? Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, has spent €400,000 (£350,000) on this exhibition. He has also supported the disquieting Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination blockbuster exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. (O’Donnell 2018)

One of those exhibitors who the reviewer would probably consider a ‘nonbeliever’ was the Australian architect Sean Godsell. However, in the website description of his chapel project it is evident that Godsell who had a Jesuit education but says he is not religious, has given much thought about what a sacred space should be in the twenty-first century: it ‘must be a peaceful, safe place, a multi-generational place, an engaging place for contemplation, selfreflection and meditation and all of these before a space for liturgy, prayer, mass, hymn, dogma and ritual’ (Godsell 2018). These criteria informed his design which was also the most interesting chapel scenographically. In what became a performative event space, the audience/congregation were seated in ‘pews’ that surrounded a zinc clad tower on four sides. As they watch in ‘contemplation’ the lower panels of the tower were raised by hydraulic lifts to reveal the altar and the views of the water beyond became visible through the frame of the tower. Godsell has said it was intended it to be ‘highly theatrical [. . .] to emulate the drama of the start of the liturgy’. He described how as people approached the altar they would become aware of a golden light emanating from the open light well above the altar and looking up they would see that the light creates the visual effect of ‘a luminous cross’ (Edgar 2018). Another cross formed by the open panels of the chapel alluded to the French Jesuit philosopher and scientist Teillhard de Chardin’s radical teachings on the evolutionary nature of the world and the cosmos (Godsell 2018).

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Through a scenographic and iconographic interpretation, Godsell’s architecture became an encounter and place of recognition. It is Godsell’s contention that ‘Architecture exists at that moment where we identify the metaphysical in the artistic and logical arrangement of structure and materials. This recognition occurs when these elements are assembled in such a way that we see beyond their physicality and into our own spirituality’ (Dal Co 2018: 243). These four very different examples prompt the question of what exactly is at stake when one enters a sacred space. The physical qualities of a chapel or church might be more easily described than the metaphysical operations perceived to be activated during its ceremonies. Sacred space is then difficult to analyse being no one thing all of the time and indeed dependent on participation by congregation and clergy.

The inherent scenographic qualities of the chapel space Chapels are inherently performative spaces and the altar where the Mass or Eucharist is celebrated lies at the heart of this. In many instances, frescoes, paintings and sculpture convey visually the narratives communicated in the Bible readings which prepare the congregation for the Eucharistic celebration. Whether read as symbolic or actual there is, for the faithful, a moment of communion with the divine on taking the body of Christ in the form of bread and potentially blood, through the wine. The dramatic element is strengthened through set-responses in the liturgy, music, lighting and moments of seeing (the priest preparing the sacrament in front of worshippers) and others which remain private, such a prayer and declaration of sins. Taken as a whole these combinations foster the revelation of an omnipresent and omniscience God, the most important facet of the spiritual encounter. This observation resonates with Peter Brook’s construction of holy theatre as a place where the invisible is rendered visible. ‘I am calling it the Holy Theatre for short, but it could be called The Theatre of the Invisible – Made – Visible: the notion that the stage is a place where the invisible can appear has a deep hold on our thoughts’ (Brook 1968: 47). The projects outlined later employed scenographic methods to highlight far more than the mysterious nature of God. They draw out what had previously being considered hidden, adding to the layers within space and offering a means of narrating the history of the chapel. As such they adhere to Preziosi’s argument that art objects can be interrogated so that they ‘may speak to us’ is pertinent

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here especially as nothing can remain hermetically sealed in the period in which it was made (Preziosi 1989: 70).

The Royal Holloway Chapel and the research problem Royal Holloway was founded by the wealthy philanthropist, Thomas Holloway as a College for middle-class women seeking an education beyond that provided by school or a governess (Harrison-Babet 1990: 48). The building which opened in 1886 was based on the Chateau Chambord in the Loire valley and built by William Henry Crossland, pupil of Sir George Gilbert Scott in the NeoRenaissance style (Harrison-Babet 1990: 48). The chapel occupies a central position on both a physical and conceptual level within the (now) University. Together with the Picture Gallery it forms the main entrance to the North Quad of Founders Building which is a Grade 2 listed building. Despite the historical and theological importance of the building and its interiors, Royal Holloway has attracted curiously little scholarly attention from either art or architectural historians and the chapel is no exception. This lacuna might be the result of a number of causes – first, the university context means its art and architecture are excluded from museums and heritage collections literature. Second, being located in Egham, it is dwarfed by its neighbour, Windsor with its castle and collections and third and perhaps most convincingly, evidence for the history of the building is sparse and in relation to the chapel, not only incomplete but puzzling. The chapel’s external walls are ornamented with four portrait busts. From the inscriptions above each one we know that they represent Girolamo Savonarola (1452–1498), Pope Julius II (1443–1513), Muhammad (70 CE–8 June 632 CE) and Confucius (551–479 BC) (Figure 5.1). The entrance way or portal into the chapel appears to have a bust of Moses (who can be identified by his horns) on it and by extension the two statues flanking him must be Aaron and Hur. Within, there are finely carved Neo-Renaissance liturgical furniture, gilded wallpapers, stained glass windows and an altar ornamented with a cross (Plate 10). These are situated within and contextualized by a complex decorative scheme executed by the Italian artist Ceccardo Fucigna (1834–1884) in different media in the apse and nave (Harrison-Babet 1990: 48). In the apse, the creation of Eve (which is indebted to Michelangelo’s Sistine chapel fresco of the Creation of Adam) is set within a landscape which features a very prominent hare and a tortoise, while prophets and saints are depicted on both sides of the nave (Figure 5.2). In stark

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Figure 5.1 Confucius, external wall of the chapel, Royal Holloway, University of London (Royal Holloway Image Library).

Figure 5.2  The Apse, Royal Holloway Chapel, University of London (Royal Holloway Image Library).

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contrast to this ornamental richness, eight empty niches with Saints names above them punctuate the nave. Despite being empty they seemed full of potential (Plate 11). It became the students’ task to release and realize this potential by designing proposals that would offer innovative forms of scenographic engagement with the chapel and its niches. But what evidence was there to do this? The chapel was constituted under the 1878 Private Chapels Act, a statement which tells us that its chief audience was the body of female students within the College but does not clarify any of the complexity and confusion surrounding its ornament. A major source of evidence for understanding the chapel and its role within the institution is the Deed of Foundation (Deed). It was written by Thomas Holloway himself and sets out the governing principles of the institution. Thomas Holloway’s approach to religion and faith is described as unquestioning and Christian, ‘during the whole of his life, [he] has witnessed the hand of God in all things’ (Holloway 1883). Of key importance was the fact that the College’s founder did not specify a denomination for the chapel. The document reads: it is his earnest desire that the religious teaching of the College, though free from any sectarian influence, shall be such as to inspire most forcibly in the minds of the students their individual responsibility, and their duty to God . . . . It is the Founder’s desire that the life of the College should be that of an orderly Christian household, and with this view he directs that the lady principal shall, every morning during the College sessions, conduct in the presence of the students a simple religious service consisting of a psalm or hymn, and reading a portion of the Holy Scripture. (Holloway 1883)

As a result there could be no regular celebration of the Eucharist as Chaplains regardless of denomination were forbidden. In light of this it is surprising that the ‘look and feel’ of the chapel is Catholic. This is an important observation when considered alongside the material in the College’s administrative archive which shows that the chapel and its administration were included in debates between Anglicans and non-conformists throughout the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A number of complaints were made by prominent non-conformists when Sir Henry Ponsonby (1825–1895), Private Secretary to Queen Victoria and Edward White Benson, Archbishop of Canterbury between 1883 and 1896 tried to secure an Anglican board of Governors for the College (Chapel correspondence 1887–1942). Beyond the Deed and written documentation we also have the limited visual material housed in the College Archive, most importantly a print showing the chapel during the opening of the College in which there is a baldacchino

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over the altar, a maquette of an alternative design for the apse with God the Father in Glory surrounded by angels (Figure 5.3) and another print of the chapel in which the niches are filled with statues of Saints (Figure 5.4). This body of evidence is important because it hints at changes and alterations to the ornamentation of the chapel and in so doing introduces gaps and spaces which

Figure 5.3  Alternative model for the Apse, Royal Holloway Chapel, University of London (John Dickson).

Figure 5.4  William Crossland, Chapel Interior, 1879 (Royal Holloway Archives, RHC RF/146/1).

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the students could fill, conceptually and physically, the most obvious being the eight niches described earlier. The desire to fill came from the premise (which appeared to be supported by the print) that the original intention was to have a statue of the appropriate Saint within each niche. Significantly, it was shown that the niche puzzle connected with the wider decoration and theology of the chapel and in addressing it led to a better understanding of how the space operated and continues to operate as a whole. Indeed all of the research exercises that were set for the students had been devised in order to prevent them from seeing the niches in isolation from the other elements of the chapel or frozen in time. It was also important that they recognize Koestlé-Cate warning about filling empty niches without a considered rationale and methodology for doing so. He cautions that ‘for every effective work of art, experience has shown that others detract rather than add to the experience of the space’ (Koestlé-Cate 2016: 16). Through the combination of research on theatre, visual art and sacred space and applied scenographic practice, the intention of this project for the secondyear scenography students was for them to bring to the fore, new understandings of the political instrumentality and the inherent ‘otherness’ of this architecturally and theologically important space. The idea to create a scenographic response to the niches in the chapel was given further shape by Ralph Yarrow’s definition of sacred in the book Sacred Theatre as something which opens us to the other (Yarrow 2007: 10). For Yarrow, it is ‘an incitement to a shift of frame [. . .] and a potential renewal’ (Yarrow 2007: 201). To challenge the perceptions of sacred space and the sacred object within the context of contemporary culture and to show how the chapel could be reimagined through the use of scenographic methods, the students had to be mindful of the different uses of the space. It is now used for multi faith worship, as well as for mindfulness sessions, graduations and special lectures. The combination of sacred and secular activity in a non-denominational university space introduced a further level of complexity to the project and reinforced how challenging ornamenting a non-sectarian chapel must have been for Fucigina. The students needed to be aware of the ‘fundamental tension for the church between the desire to impose the securities of recognition, familiarity and tradition and the possibilities offered by unexpected encounters with whatever disrupts thought and experience’ (Koestlé-Cate 2016: 12). However, from his research KoestléCate has evidence that If art once up held the practices and teaching of the church according to certain established aesthetic and theological principles, it has been increasingly replaced

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by an art willing to question those principles, to reframe both its form and content according to other media and other agendas, or that seeks a dialogue with the church through the lens of the surrounding culture. (Koestlé-Cate 2016: 13–14)

Initially, the students worked collectively to examine the character of the chapel and its link to liturgy, ritual, iconography and material forms of representation. In addition, they were asked to investigate the distribution and hierarchy of this space, its historical evolution, its relationship with the academic and larger social environment, the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion. The students’ task was to get beyond the surface to explain or reveal or allow the creation of something else, which is hidden in the mythological and symbolic compositions painted on the chapel walls and ceilings, memorial plaques to distinguished alumni and the busts of canonical historical figures on the chapel’s facade. After this first stage of enquiry each student was to develop an individual proposal for one of the niches or series of niches. The objective was to get people to revisit and re-experience the chapel through the intermediary of the work they had created. They were to consider how the spatial and experiential aspects of their proposals could be framed and controlled scenographically and how their scenographic strategies could reveal the dramaturgy of the space. Workshops with studio tutorials and seminars laid the groundwork for this independent project. They were given short exercises as analytical tools such as small convex mirrors to reflect aspects of the chapel that might not be immediately apparent and asked to select one of the characters in the artwork of the chapel, and consider who or what they are, how they might act and sound what they might have sounded like. They also analysed the symbolic decorative elements in the chapel’s architecture through discussions with Father John Dickson and the authors and investigated the aforementioned material in the Holloway archives particularly the maquette of the chapel apse, the original design drawings and published articles about the chapel. The archive trip resulted in a group discussion that challenged and questioned theories about the original plans for the empty niches. In addition to the archival research, the students were encouraged to look at the work by contemporary artists in sacred spaces. The Estates Health and Safety Officer, Matthew Dickson, assisted the students in taking laser measurements of one of the niche in order for them to build a 1:1 scale replica (Figure 5.5) under the direction of the Theatre design technician Nicola Hewitt-George. They were then given further advice on their installation proposals by Rebecca England, the Exhibitions Manager from the

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Figure 5.5  1:1 scale replica of a niche (Greer Crawley).

Royal Academy of Arts who also spoke to them about the exhibition Bill Viola / Michelangelo Life Death Rebirth1which brought together video installations and drawings, with a focus on the sacred. The students responded imaginatively to the challenge set. Matthew Fry’s proposal was focused around Remembrance Day and the commemorations accompanying the end of the First World War. He began by exploring how other artists have created work for Remembrance Day in particular Jeremy Deller’s We’re here because we’re here. This project initially started out with only projections of the silhouettes of soldiers in the niches but it grew and became much more about the celebration, commemoration and the remembrance of the sacrifice all those involved in the war had made. The intention was that project would be accompanied by poetry readings or songs about the First World War. Anastasia Crossley chose to explore the imagery within the chapel particularly the representation of women. She focused on the stories of ten saints who had been omitted from the iconography within the chapel by connecting their lives to the symbolic qualities of an animal. She then created wire sculptures of these animals to 1:20 scale within scaled niches and experimented with lighting in the model. Of

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Figure 5.6  Anastasia Crossley sketchbook page (Greer Crawley).

particular concern was the relationship and positioning of her sculptures to the space and frame of the niche. She researched Baroque and Renaissance precedents of plane and recession for her rationale, ultimately deciding that her forms should break out from the niches and enter the viewer’s space (Figure 5.6). Sophie Mercer’s aim was to find a personal connection with the musical symbolism in the chapel and to create a design that responded to an element within the chapel that all (regardless of faith) could connect with. She undertook research into sound and music and the importance of the role of music within the Holloway chapel specifically. She experimented with a range of media such as; light, sound, images, sculpture, shadows and music before deciding the direction she would take in her design. It was Susan Broomhall’s description in Early Modern Emotions (2017: 19) of the importance of the organ within church architecture and in leading the congregation during the service that inspired the creation of a wired organ pipe to be presented inside the empty niche. She was keen for the coiled wire sculpture to represent music as well as an organ pipe. The wires symbolized the contrapuntal melodies and the points where the wires cross as the moments of harmony and unison within a piece of chapel music. During the process there were times of uncertainty as to whether a fullsized model of the wired sculpture would be achievable. However, after studying Antony Gormley’s wire sculptures of human forms, she was inspired to use

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different wire thicknesses and different tightness of the coils. She also researched the sculptural methods of George Rickey and Conrad Shawcross to solve the structural problems of creating a proposal that could be installed within the space of the niche without causing damage to the building (Figure 5.7). Through sketching, modelling and making visual and aural recordings, all three students worked collaboratively to explore the chapel’s dynamics, ambience and embedded histories and associations. The students’ process logs and sketchbooks recorded the evolution of their designs, the experiments, the changes in direction, the decisions and choices made in creating new insights into the chapel’s historic and current identity. These students have demonstrated how the adoption of a scenographic methodology that engages with the archive and the disciplines of visual art and architecture can create new possibilities and positionings both within and outside the niche. The student projects established an alternative understanding of how the ornament and decoration of the chapel developed. Hitherto it has been assumed that the chapel had been built according to a plan masterminded by Crossland and Fucigna. However, these responses showed that quite fundamental alterations were made during the building process. This conclusion was reached by examining the niches in relation to the alteration of the apse

Figure 5.7  Sophie Mercer sketchbook page (Greer Crawley).

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decoration. Although, in place, there is as we know, a representation of the creation of Eve, the alternative design with Christ enthroned in Glory with angels would make more sense if the two lines of Saints within niches had been realized. The hypothesis that the chapel ornament developed not according to planning but through gradual evolution tallies with anecdotal evidence that the baldacchino was added shorty before the opening of the College by Queen Victoria simply because she was known to favour them. The second discovery came from building a scale version of a niche in the workshop. The measurements taken demonstrated that the niches were extremely shallow and would barely have allowed for a statue at all. The sketch might then be regarded as a fictive or alternative vision of the chapel rather than one that was intended. If this is the case were the first cohort of women intended to engage with absence using the Saints’ names as a prompt? This might fit with the scattering of visual cues which point to the idea of vision beyond sight, such as the bracket in the entrance way which takes the form of an unnamed woman’s head wearing a stefane ornamented with a single eye, perhaps intended as a symbol of spiritual apprehension and enlightenment beyond seeing? (Figure 5.8). Moreover executed in bas-relief on the right-hand side of the nave are the evangelists, each of whom is shown with the first page of their Gospels written in Latin. Greek and Latin were fundamental aspects of the syllabus the

Figure 5.8  Woman wearing a stefane ornamented with a third eye. Portal of Royal Holloway Chapel, University of London (Royal Holloway Image Library).

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women followed, but in the chapel there is an additional focus on the connection between reading and revelation. If we are to follow this logic, the Saints’ names in being read might lead to some form of realization or revelation and conceptual filling of the void. Worship was thus active and personal in keeping with the non-sectarian character of the space.2 Regardless of which, if any, of the two options are considered more compelling, the scenographic projects cast the chapel as a deeply layered space, the individual elements occupying a difficult position, apparently paradoxical position between being in conflict and reconciliation with one another. The inability to adhere to a plan might in part be explained by consideration of how hard it was to build a chapel with ornament that was theologically speaking, neutral. In conclusion, it is possible to bring together disciplines to open up spaces for new forms of interpretation in heritage environments and in so doing combine creative and academic approaches to research. As den Oudsten has observed: ‘The interpenetration of disciplines produces a potential between different centres’ (den Oudsten 2011: 35–6). The projects, in very deliberately manipulating or experimenting with the idea of afterlives led to the realization that the chapel ornament even almost paradoxically its absence impacts on visitors and worshippers in the present. This facet of art history, perhaps better referred to as art present is to a degree addressed in reception studies, but rarely taken up to the present day nor thought through or experienced physically. Enabling art historians to work in and through space in conjunction with practitioners was perhaps the most important facet of the project alongside bringing their research to different publics.

Notes 1 Bill Viola / Michelangelo Life Death Rebirth at the Royal Academy, London 26 January–31 March 2019. 2 For a reading of the symbolism in the Royal Holloway chapel see Dickson and O’Neill (forthcoming).

References Baker, A. (2014), Bill Viola’s ‘Ocean without a Shore’, Art Bulletin of Victoria, 48. Böhme, G. (2013), ‘The Art of the Stage Set as a Paradigm for an Aesthetics of Atmospheres’, Ambiences, 1–8.

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Brook, P. (1968), The Empty Space, London: MacGibbon & Kee. Broomhall, S. (2017), Early Modern Emotions, Abingdon: Routledge. Dal Co, F., ed. (2018), Vatican Chapels, Milan: Electra Architecture. Deleuze, G. (1997), Difference and Repetition, London and New York: Continuum. Dickson J. and O’Neill, H. (forthcoming), ‘The Chapel at Royal Holloway: Visual Theology and Women’s Education’, in Sheona Beaumont and Madeleine Emerald Thiele (eds), Transforming Christian Thought in the Visual Arts: Theology, Aesthetics and Practice, Routledge Studies in Theology, Imagination and the Arts. Edgar, R. (2018), ‘Was this the Hand of God? A Surprise Moment Inside Sean Godsell’s Vatican Chapel’. Sydney Herald, 18 June. https​:/​/ww​​w​.smh​​.com.​​au​/en​​terta​​inmen​​t​/ art​​-and-​​desig​​n​/was​​-this​​-the-​​hand-​​of​-go​​d​-a​-s​​urpri​​se​-mo​​ment-​​insid​​e​-sea​​n​-god​​sells​​ -vati​​ca​n​-c​​hapel​​-2018​​0615-​​h11fk​​q​.htm​l (accessed 24 July 2019). Frearson, A. (2018), ‘Vatican City Presents Woodland Chapels Built by Architects Including Foster, Souto de Moura and Flores & Prats’. DEZEEN, 30 May. https​:/​/ww​​w​ .dez​​een​.c​​om​/20​​18​/05​​/30​/v​​atica​​n​-cit​​y​-woo​​dland​​-chap​​els​-v​​enice​​-arch​​itect​​ure​-b​​ienna​​ le​-fo​​ster-​​so​uto​​-de​-m​​oura-​​flore​​s​-pra​​ts/ (accessed 24 July 2019). Godsell, S. (2018), https​:/​/ww​​w​.sea​​ngods​​ell​.c​​om​/va​​tica​n​​-chap​​el (accessed 24 July 2019). Harrison-Barbet, A. (1990), Thomas Holloway, Victorian Philanthropist, Austell: Lyfrow Trelispen. Hitchen, P. (2018), ‘Vatican Presents Woodland Chapels at Venice Architecture Biennale’. Vatican News, 20 March. https​:/​/ww​​w​.vat​​icann​​ews​.v​​a​/en/​​vatic​​an​-ci​​ty​/ne​​ ws​/20​​18​-03​​/vati​​can​-v​​enice​​-arch​​it​ect​​ure​-b​​ienna​​le​.ht​​ml (accessed 24 July 2019). Holloway, T. (1883), Deed of Foundation, Royal Holloway Archive: RHC GB/102/1. Katatexilux (2016), ‘Santa Maria Antiqua’, Available online: https://www​.katatexilux​ .com​/storm (accessed 24 July 2019). Koestlé-Cate, J. (2016), Art and the Church: A Fractious Embrace – Ecclesiastical Encounters with Contemporary Art, Abingdon: Routledge. McKinney, J. and Iball, H. (2011), ‘Researching Scenography,’ in Baz Kershaw and Helen Nicholson (eds), Research Methods in Theatre and Performance, 111–36, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. McKinney, J. and Palmer, S., eds (2017), Scenography Expanded: An Introduction to Contemporary Performance Design, London and New York: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama. Nethersole, S. (2011), Devotion by Design: Italian Altarpieces, London: The National Gallery. O’Donnell, R. (2018), ‘An Island of Disappointing Chapels’. Catholic Herald, 31 May. https​:/​/ca​​tholi​​chera​​ld​.co​​.uk​/i​​ssues​​/june​​-1st-​​2018/​​islan​​d​-dis​​appoi​​nt​ing​​-chap​​els/. Available online: https​:/​/ca​​tholi​​chera​​ld​.co​​.uk​/i​​ssues​​/june​​-1st-​​2018/​​islan​​d​-dis​​appoi​​​ nting​​-chap​​els/ (accessed 24 July 2019). den Oudsten, F. (2011), Space, Time, Narrative: The Exhibition as Post-spectacular Stage, Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Company.

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Preziosi, D. (1989), Rethinking Art History: Meditations on a Coy Science, Yale: New Haven. RHC AR/148/1: Chapel correspondence 1887–1942. Tripadvisor (2018), ‘Santa Maria Antiqua’. Available online: https​:/​/ww​​w​.tri​​padvi​​sor​.c​​ om​/Sh​​owUse​​rRevi​​ews​-g​​18779​​1​-d10​​17466​​7​-r49​​01312​​73​-Ch​​iesa_​​Santa​​_Mari​​a​_​Ant​​ iqua-​​Rome_​​Lazio​​.html​ (accessed 24 July 2019). Yarrow, R., ed. (2007), Sacred Theatre, Bristol: Intellect.

6

Killed by drones Embodying live performance scenography Olga Nikolaeva

Prologue The light is blinding and the sound screeches agonizingly in my ears. I am pressed into someone else’s sweating body, and try, with an alarming mingling of excitement and irritation, to make sense of what is going on around me. Suddenly, it all stops. The crowd is cheering and I am relieved to be able to see what is around me and get back into sensing my own body. But after a short moment, the words of a doomed prophecy echo above the arena, accompanied by a beautiful piano tune which makes my skin prickle with goosebumps. In front of me, the light curtain of screens shows a devastatingly attractive view of the ruins of an unknown and yet familiar cityscape, lit up by a glorious sunrise. Fire is still raging on the ground when, in a halo of light, a female figure in a white robe appears on the screens, towering above the stage and the crowd. The look of anger on her face is replaced by the horrified realization of the destruction she caused. She is both an innocent angel and a machine of mass murder. Unable to handle the scene, the heroine bursts in a flash of light as she takes the remains of the city with her. Her light fades from the screen, while drones ascend above the crowd.

Introduction The paragraph given earlier describes my first-hand experience and perception of the final act of a live performance of the Drones World Tour by the British rock band Muse. The performance, created by lighting and visual designer Oli Metcalfe, video director Tom Kirk and multimedia director Bruno Ribeiro, and executed by the creative team Moment Factory, took place at Telenor Arena in Fornebu, a remote industrial district of Norway’s capital Oslo. My professional

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interest in live rock performances as scenographic spectacles, and my personal enjoyment of the band’s music, prompted me to join an audience of approximately 22,000 people who had gathered at the arena on 12 June 2016. I thus found myself as close to the stage as was physically possible, prepared to engage with the performance as a spectator and as an art history scholar, with my senses highly attuned to diverse aspects of the complex scenographic spectacle. Despite the obvious complexity of the subject, most of the discourse around live rock performances is generated by short articles and reviews. These sources mainly focus on the musicians’ personae, the music performed and technologies used, often combined with a brief overview of highlights and disappointments of a performance. Considered larger than life, bombastic and exaggerated, live rock performances are typically viewed through the prism of their commercial successes, rather than their possible aesthetic value. As a result, they often fall victim to what Joslin McKinney (2013: 63) rightly described as ‘the usual criticism of scenographic spectacle as pleasurable but empty’. In this chapter, I want to address the complexity of live rock performances by exploring affective and meaning-making potentials of the Drones. To do so, I propose to place live music performance at the interdisciplinary crossroads of art history and visual and performance studies, proceeding primarily from the notion of expanded scenography. This notion highlights a significant change in understanding of scenography from being a mere ‘technical and illustrative support’ to being ‘a construction in its own right’ (McKinney and Palmer 2017: 2–5), allowing it to become a cross-disciplinary subject with ‘its own logic, its own distinctive rules’ (Lotker and Gough 2013: 3). I further propose to explore this particular performance as a situation where ‘the relationship of the audience to the performance is not already pre-determined’ (McKinney and Palmer 2017: 5), approaching it from an understanding of scenography as ‘a crafting of place orientation’ (Hann 2019: 23). As Rachel Hann (2019: 19) explains: ‘[a] scenography of place orientation encompasses personal and social decisions, as well as the conditioning affects of physical environments that channel and direct action.’ She draws attention to ‘the intangible affective qualities’ which are crucial to how scenography influences spectators ‘emotionally as well as physically’ (Hann 2019: 5). Thus, following Hann, I approach different components of the Drones performance, from props to sound, as ‘discrete stimuli’ that, as Hann (2019: 3) emphasizes, are ‘connected through the act of scenography’ and ‘act upon performers and spectators as a part of a wider encounter of place orientation’. By tying together six specific songs that were played during the Drones performance, I explore how scenography crafts an encounter between the

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performance and the spectator, allowing for the construction, perception, apprehension and experience of the audio-visual narrative of the entire performance. Reflecting on my own experience as a co-creative participant in the performance’s scenography, I explore the idea of the perceiver’s encounter with the performance as a strategy of scenography in the performative situation of multisensory overload. Thus, in my analysis I understand my own body as simultaneously a perceiving body, towards which the meaning of the performance is directed, and an active participant that embodies scenography by means of emotional and empathic responses.

Staging the unscaled Underlying the audio-visual concept of the highly elaborated and technologically advanced performance is the narrative taken from Drones, Muse’s seventh studio album. The concept of this politically charged album uses the drone as a symbol of contemporary warfare and de-humanization of human beings (Greene 2015: unpaginated). Its main narrative is based on a person’s experience in a dystopian world of local and global conflicts, political oppression and brainwashing. According to the band’s lead singer Matt Bellamy (2015), the story follows a person who, having lost all hope and love, becomes transformed into a human drone by controlling forces, but eventually revolts against their oppression and rises up against the system. The narrative develops in the lyrics of the songs and their sequence on the record, and has continued to develop even after the release of the album, through its artwork and in interviews where the musicians explained their vision of the record, and repeatedly re-shaped the content of the narrative prior to the first live performance. An obstacle to realizing the concept of the album in the performance was the common expectation within the entertainment industry that bands should also perform songs from previous albums during live performances, to ensure commercial success among different groups of spectators. This meant that the latest album could not be performed from beginning to end to allow its plot structure to develop naturally over the course of the performance. The lyrics of the songs that were performed did not provide a sufficient foundation for creating a coherent narrative connection between parts of the performance; that would have required the audience to have a clear understanding of the language and even some prior knowledge. Both of these conditions are unreliable in the context of a live rock performance. Therefore, to be able to deliver the non-

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linear narrative of the record, the musicians and the group of artists had to find a different way to construct a sequential continuum between different parts of the performance, fully employing its scenographic potentials. This required them to structure the performance not only visually, by making the performed songs work together by means of screen visuals, musicians’ bodies and props, but also affectively, by creating the possibility of a scenographic encounter between the performance and the spectators. Muse employed a combination of stages that were strategically placed in the centre of the arena. They comprised a main in-the-round stage flanked by two bridges leading to two additional square stages. The location and form of the stage set permitted the audience all-round visual access to the performance. To keep the stage itself free of any heavy construction, all the complex technological equipment was placed on a platform that was set up above the stage. The drum set was positioned in the middle of the central circular stage on a retractable platform that allowed it to be removed when necessary. The imagery presentation unfolded on two main surfaces, namely, the heavy round LED screen, which was placed high above the central circular stage, and retractable voiles, installed above the bridges and around the perimeter of the central stage. The voiles made the onstage presentational space flexible, appearing and disappearing in accordance with the needs of the visual presentation, and filling in the space between the floor of the stage and the upper platform. The surface of the voiles did not diffuse or polarize light, which made it possible to see an equally sharp image on the both sides of the voiles and at the same time permitted a certain degree of transparency. Along with the flexible stage set, and the screens that created the illusion of three-dimensional images, the band used radio-controlled drones that flew above the arena during the performance.

Siting the spectator Prior to the start of the performance, the stage in the middle of the arena is the only focal point of my attention and spatial orientation. Without any other visible sights by which to navigate, I direct my body towards the stage as if following unwritten rules that control my behaviour, making me aware that this is where the performance will happen. The stage does not give any visual clue about the performance, and even the screens that I would expect to be present, judging by the size of the arena, are hidden from the audience. There is nothing specific to pay attention to, and yet the arena is filled with expectation and a certain vibe

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that radiates from the other bodies in the audience, the buzzing voices and the unrecognizable sound of background music. Arguably, the space in which a scenographic spectacle occurs exists prior to any presentation, and while it is never neutral, it is further activated and renegotiated the moment it is comprehended as the space in which the performance will take place. As Gay McAuley (1999: 41) emphasizes, the performance space is not ‘an empty container but an active agent’ that defines what takes place within it and is ‘itself affected’. In the conditioning of this particular space, scenography of place orientation allows for recognition of ‘the multiplicities of phenomena that situate bodies within and with place’ (Hann 2019: 19). Thus, scenography already starts crafting the encounter when my body confronts the space where the performance will happen, the other people who are also waiting for it to begin and the stage setup which serves as a vector for my attention. When the lights go out, indicating that the concert is about to start, there is an immediate response from the audience who turn their attention towards the stage while loud cheers roll through the arena. The light functions as a unifying signal that attunes the body of the spectator to the performance even before the sound comes. My attention, possibly like everyone else’s, is fully on the stage, expecting a big entrance of the musicians. Yet, there is no immediate gratification in the form of the multisensory visceral excitement that often arises when musicians enter the stage to signify the start of a performance. Instead, radio-controlled drones descend from above the arena, unexpectedly interfering with my physical reality. They fly slowly above the heads in the crowd, carrying searchlights that randomly illuminate people in the audience. Their descent is accompanied by ‘Drones’, the first song in the performance’s audio-visual narrative arc. The composition is pre-recorded and played through speakers before any of the musicians appear on stage. The place where the performance unfolds, in this case a defined architectural construction of the arena, is laden with atmospheres that are triggered and activated in the presence of a perceiver. It becomes a scenographically crafted interface of interrelations between the performance and the audience. Assessing affective atmospheres, Gernot Böhme (2013: 11) emphasizes that they do not manipulate material conditions per se, but make possible ‘the appearance of a phenomenon’ by establishing certain conditions within the subjective experience of the spectator. Furthermore, as Ben Anderson (2009: 79) underlines, it is ‘through an atmosphere that a represented object will be apprehended and will take on a certain meaning’. In the contemporary world it has become clear that no space can really be considered safe, especially public

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spaces. Live music performances, unfortunately, are no exception. Like many others, I carry this knowledge in my body, and when multisensory experience intensifies, as in the space filled with bodies, sound and light, I become even more vigilant. Scenography crafts the encounter, both from outside my subjective body and within it, utilizing my everyday experience which is carefully constructed beyond the immediate space of the performance. This situation creates a paradigm shift in my position as a spectator when ‘a scenography of orientation’ becomes also ‘a scenography of feeling’ (Hann 2019: 19). As a spectator, I understand the exact space where I stand as the audience space, as opposed to the stage space that frames the performance. It is my space, where I should have been separated from the spectacle by my invisibility, submerged in semi-darkness relative to the brightly lit stage. However, I encounter the performance’s audio-visuality, as the scenography triggers sensory modalities of my perception. My body becomes tense because, even if I am fully aware that this is staged, and that the space of the arena is as safe as can be, I still experience a clear sense of discomfort, realizing that I do not want a searchlight to pinpoint me. As Sara Ahmed (2010: 36) has rightly noted, anxiety is ‘sticky’ and ‘tends to pick up whatever comes near’, or rather, as she continues, it ‘gives us a certain kind of angle on what comes near’. In this situation, possibly more than anything else, sound is what situates my body in the encounter crafted by the performance’s scenography. McKinney and Palmer (2017: 13) write that ‘[i]n expanded scenography, the spectator is often in direct contact with materials, immersed in them or otherwise touched’. The affective qualities of sound, intensified by amplification, can be perceived at a distance and resonate with the spectator both physically and emotionally. Sound is able to travel unimpeded and the space it creates, as Böhme (2013: 13) emphasizes, is ‘no longer something perceived at a distance, but something within which one is enclosed’. It is one of the scenographic elements that is capable of touching, even if from a distance, generating, in the words of Tonino Griffero, ‘a deep and intimate felt-body resonance’ (Griffero, in McKinney 2019: 63). As Gerhard Daurer (2015: 329) underlines, the relation between sound and hearing can be understood as ‘totalizing and collectivizing since acoustic perception will largely coincide for several people in a room’. By means of sound, scenography crafts atmospherically ‘tuned’ spaces (Böhme 2013: 4) that I share with the other bodies that surround me. As a result, in such a tuned atmospheric space, each sound becomes haptic through my own body, guiding my affective and meaning-making engagement with the performance’s scenography.

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The narrative and the body My body – energized by the proximity of the spectacle and empathically attuned to the bodies around me – is now emotionally, physically and mentally connected with the performance. As a result, a desire arises in me to have some sort of control over what is happening, along with a wish to see the band on stage, as an indication that the performance is beginning and everything around me is just part of it. That is, I wish to connect to a human agent that should be in control of the spectacle. In her writing on empathy and ethical awareness in performance, performance artist Rose Parekh-Gaihede (2012: 179), relying on Bjarne Sode Funch’s study, emphasizes that ‘in the isolated setting of performance, the possibility for empathy is intensified, not least because we pay extraordinary attention to the things that happen around or in front of us’. The moment when the performer’s body enters the presentational space, it arrests the attention of the audience and is capable of setting the mood and marking the beginning of the action. As actors on stage, the bodies of the musicians make the performance space ‘meaningful’; that is, the participant will rely on them to make sense of the action (McAuley 1999: 90). In her discussion of kinaesthetic empathy, McKinney (2013: 65) explains that among other things it can show how the body of the spectator ‘operates in relation to scenographic spectacle with regard to other physically present bodies but also to scenic structures and objects’. In my desire to see the musicians, I create a relation between my own physical presence and the haptic materiality of the musicians’ bodies, centralizing them as a vector for my meaningmaking process. While the drones continue circling above my head, the sound of the marching boots moves closer, and I see the musicians being convoyed towards the stage by armed men. They pass close to the audience, walking in a corridor left open between the stage construction and the audience space. This perfectly choreographed moment places them at the same level as me, creating a possibility for empathic closeness and embodied experience in a shared moment of encounter in which ‘the presence of the performers and the atmosphere of the performance space provoke an immediate and emotional response’ (ParekhGaihede 2012: 190). This stage entrance visualizes the theme of control and oppression, so prominent in the concept of the narrative, placing me, along with the musicians, within the narrative of the presentation as someone who is being controlled.

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During ‘Dead Inside’, the second song of the narrative, which creates a bridge in the coherent construction of the story, the screen visuals occupying the space of the LED screen and voiles show an image of a young woman who is going through the process of being physically transformed from a human being into a cyborg. There is a certain attractive quality to the imagery that unfolds on the surface of the voiles. The transformation is not depicted as gruesome or dangerous, but rather as powerful, underlining the power of the machine over the human. The whole time the imagery dominates the stage space, diminishing the presence of the musicians’ bodies. In one of the interviews, Bellamy (2015) briefly explained that the protagonist of the narrative is likely to be a woman, whom he called Mary. Before seeing the performance live, I was already aware of the concept of the album and the context created around it by the musicians. As a result, the audio-visual construction of the performance finalized the shaping of my comprehension of the narrative, and Mary became the protagonist of the visual presentation. The next time the performance returns to the narrative is with the instrumental composition ‘Isolated System’. The visual presentation shows a set of graphic lines that slowly turn into schematic figures, building up rows of silhouettes that follow each other in the three-dimensional space of the voiles. The images are accompanied by echoing repetitions of the words ‘isolated’, ‘system’ and ‘entropy’. The composition is not played live, but instead a recording plays while the images succeed each other, creating a three-dimensional row of figures. The sound together with the imagery creates a steady audio-visual beat. It is both calm, as I and the crowd around me are just waiting for what happens next, and disturbing, as the meaning of the song comes through. In the context of the album’s concept and the performance’s narrative, ‘Isolated System’ refers to a system of state control and brainwashing, in which the individual becomes a metaphorical isolated system that burns its resources from within, setting a precedent for disorder and degradation. Entropy, in its turn, refers to an emotional state, in which a depletion of empathy creates a gap that can lead to the individual being transformed into a drone. At the end of ‘Isolated System’ and the start of the next song ‘The Handler’, an androgynous semi-human figure becomes the focus of the visuals (Plate 12). This song continues to develop the theme of oppression and domination, which is now visually crafted from the relation between the musicians’ bodies and the interactive screen visuals. The face of the figure, projected on the LED screen, turns into a mask with blue artificial lights instead of eyes, while the

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voiles display two gigantic hands controlling ropes attached to avatars of the musicians, who are performing in front of the screens. The lyrics of the song are once again the monologue of a victim who is controlled and manipulated (referring back to ‘Dead Inside’), and the protagonist of the song acknowledges that his heart has become ‘a cold and impassive machine’ (Muse 2015a). Like the other songs of the narrative, this one seems to carry an ambiguous meaning. It could be a monologue of Mary’s victim or it could refer to Mary herself, as someone who acknowledges her transformation and is trying to disassociate herself from her oppressor. Scenographically, ‘The Handler’ is crafted through the relational encounter between the complex technological process of visualization and the physical bodies of the musicians (Plate 13). The musicians’ bodies are transferred onto the space of the voiles by means of their avatars, creating a connection between the onstage and on-screen presentational spaces. To enable the content of the screen visuals – the puppeteer’s hands – to interact with the avatars, the musicians have to position their bodies in relation to the surface of the voiles. They choreograph their bodies both to ensure that the visual presentation is functioning and to create a link between the narrative and the meaning-making process. They steer my attention and emphasize an ontological difference between the physical reality of their bodies and the virtuality of the screen visuals. While the musicians’ role is almost only technical, and they are restricted in their movements, it is their bodies that create a link between the narrative continuum and me. They become a part of the handler’s reality by letting it control them like puppets. Through the connection established with the musicians’ bodies, I continue to make sense of the narrative development while being positioned in relation to another human being and opposed to the image on screen. The song culminates in a visible break of connection between the handler’s controlling hands and the musicians’ avatars, signifying the protagonist’s rebellion against the oppressive forces. The song ends with the handler’s hands falling down helplessly and the mask disappearing from the screen, emphasizing the victory of the oppressed protagonist. The next song of the narrative, ‘Uprising’, shifts back to Mary in a more recognizable human form. As the name suggests, this song depicts the heroine’s further rebellion against the forces of oppression. She is shown on the voiles among a group of people fighting in slow motion against the well-armed police. The setting resembles a violent street protest, thus referring to a very amateurish form of rebellion, calling on the people to ‘rise up and take the power back’ (Muse 2009). The lyrics and the imagery return to the recurring idea of

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someone controlling the people, while depriving them of any ability to think for themselves. As with ‘Isolated System’, I can think of myself as passive in relation to this particular song. I am not disturbed or triggered, but rather enjoy it while watching the attractive video projections. Yet, my body is never passive. Being present in the space of the live performance as a spectator means activating your own body and engaging with a range of cognitive and affective processes. As the scenography crafts the encounter between the performance and the spectator, the spectator is invited to open up her body to the sensory experience, engaging it in the empathic and affective processes that occupy the encompassing space of the performance. While any form of performance intends to induce emotional responses in the audience, not every performance gives the audience the freedom to express their reactions. In this case, scenography not only crafts emotional responses in the audience, but also encourages them to react, making their responses operate as building blocks of the performance. While the distance between the spectacle and the audience is clearly stated (one cannot, for instance, climb onto the stage and take part in the performance), the audience is encouraged to react to the spectacle with emotional outbursts, to sing along, scream, cheer or applaud. In other words, the audience is free to openly communicate their response by all available means. Open emotional engagement becomes an active part of scenographic place orientation.

Killed by drones: Sensory overload as a scenographic strategy The last song of the conceptual narrative, ‘The Globalist’, opens with beautiful visual scenery consisting of myriads of lights gathering in the space of the screens. It slowly reveals a new form of Mary’s transformation, as the lyrics of the song lament the loss of love and hope (Plate 14). Slowly, the lights on the surface of the voiles change into graphs and different geometrical forms, visually referring to the earlier performances of ‘Isolated System’ and ‘The Handler’. When the lyrics progress with suggestions that Mary can rise up like a god and ‘build a nuclear power’ (Muse 2015b), the geometrical shapes on the screens begin to take on the recognizable form of nuclear bombs. At this moment, Mary appears on the upper screen, first as a face with violently glowing red eyes, and then in full figure, shaking with rage in flashes of light and increasing density of sound. Susan Fast (2013: 25) notes that being a part of ‘the collective audience/fan body’ is an important part of the live rock performance experience. While part of a

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collective audience in the context of a live performance, I cannot help but become attuned to the experience of others through my empathic body. As McKinney (2015: 135) emphasizes, ‘[e]ven materials and energies which are not designed but are nonetheless part of conditions of each performance’ influence the presentation of the performance and the audience’s experience. Placed in close proximity to other participants, my body is being challenged as it goes through the physical labour of standing for a long time, of reacting and moving to the music, and of protecting myself from the actions of others in the crowd. My participating body becomes engaged in the action through the disturbance caused by others and by the spectacle, and my senses are involuntarily triggered by excitement mixed with my physical tiredness and discomfort. What seems to be a normal condition for a live rock concert becomes an intrinsic part of the scenography. At the culmination of the visual presentation, when Mary’s character is rising up against her oppressors, the multisensory overload becomes almost numbing for the perceiver. In such an intense environment, losing one’s ability to connect to the spectacle becomes a breaking point in the meaning-making process. By being overloaded, I lose my empathic attachment to the musicians’ bodies as well as to the contextual narrative produced by the audio-visual construction. All these conditions can potentially create a certain sense of distance and indifference to the performance, which diminishes my ability to make sense of it, introverting my attention onto my own body rather than keeping it open for the scenographic encounter. However, this changes with the sudden presence of a black bomber flying above my head, the arrival of which is disguised by exactly the same sensory overload. My body is triggered by the shocking closeness and materiality of the scenographic object and the disturbing sense of the uncontrollable. I am again being pulled back into the scenographic encounter. Unwillingly, my body becomes staged, and I become a target of Mary’s destructive powers. After an audio-visual crescendo, in which Mary unleashes her destructive forces in an intense combination of sound, images and light, ‘The Globalist’ ends with a disturbingly beautiful post-apocalyptic vision of the ruins of unknown cityscapes (Plate 15). Mary is shown floating above the ruins with an expression of horror on her face. She is not granted any salvation or redemption, but instead is punished for her actions. As if unable to deal with what she sees, Mary dissolves in a flash of light as the screens turn black (Plate 16). Although the lyrics of the song mention certain survivors, the visual presentation does not show anyone; even the band leaves the stage unnoticed. The music continues to play, but it gradually becomes clear that it is no longer being

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performed live but is pre-recorded. The bodies that I, as a participant, followed, those who navigated me through the audio-visual chaos, have disappeared. I no longer have a point of attachment, only the mediated, pre-recorded voice of which I can no longer find a physical source. This recorded voice creates a clash between my own physical body and the invisible bodies of the musicians, emphasizing my lingering presence in contrast to their disappearance. It is also emphasized by the drones that, echoing the opening of the performance, take off from above the stage and float above the audience, accompanied by the same version of ‘Drones’. Yet, unlike at the beginning of the performance, the drones no longer use their searchlights to detect any living human. The voiles, meanwhile, show myriads of lights floating around, taking the shape of Mary’s body once again, while the drones continue to fly silently above the crowd. The performance ends with Mary’s body dissolving into a swirl of stars and the word ‘amen’ echoing through the darkened arena. If, according to McAuley (1999: 105), the performer’s presence and movement is functioning ‘to structure the performance continuum’, then the lack of a performer leads to a break in the continuum. The scenographic crafting navigates this break, as part of the connective tissue linking me to the performance. The performance continues, and the disappearance of the physical bodies from the stage embodies the result of the destructive actions of the protagonist. My own physical presence therefore positions me in the narrative as a surviving witness. Throughout the performance, I am constantly challenged by its technologies. Due to its grand scale and conceptual presentation, Muse’s performance is highly dependent on technical support. Props, screens, amplification – all these advanced, complex technologies can potentially create a distance between the performance, performer and audience, and thereby dilute the affective quality of the performance. However, scenographic negotiation between the different elements of the performance allows the technologies to create a different kind of intensity. Scenography and technologies are functioning at the same time. The scenography creates control for the sake of the narrative; the technologies practise control to realize the performance as it unfolds.

Aftermath Muse’s live rock performances are big, loud and in all senses overwhelming. Yet, they are also carefully crafted by scenography. By means of place orientation, scenography crafts an encounter between the performance and the perceiver

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within affective atmospheres that are of a fluid nature, as they are constantly in motion, ‘forming and deforming, appearing and disappearing’ (Anderson 2009: 79). The performance equally moves, disturbs, challenges and affects me (Lotker and Gough 2013). It also attracts me and invites me to take part, allowing for my embodied experience of the performance, as I move beyond ‘the process of spectating’ (McKinney 2013: 70) towards the process of an active encounter. It engages my vision and hearing, accompanied by a tense feeling in my body, which arises from the visceral reaction triggered by my interaction with the scenographic elements. The suspense crafted by the scenography is transformed into an uncomfortable uneasiness that draws my body towards that point of encounter without my immediate conscious apprehension. Through my equally affective and cognitive body, activated along with the bodies of others, I become an active part of a crafted encounter. Kinaesthetic empathy becomes a navigational tool, guiding me through the processes of meaning making and relating my body to the bodies on stage and to the scenographic elements that I encounter during the performance. The empathic processes in my body allow me to equally engage with the audio-visual narrative and place me inside of it as the meaning of this narrative becomes a part of my bodily experience. As a result, the affordances of multisensory interaction between my participating body and the performance allow for renegotiation of the language-based structure of the narrative, making it possible to comprehend the non-linear narrative by means of encounters crafted by a scenography of place orientation, which are capable of reaching out to me as a spectator. The complexity of the scenographic crafting in the performance comes from its clearly defined limits, which are dependent on the audience’s spatial orientation during the performance. The body needs to be placed in the affective environment, which in many ways is limited. That is to say, the closer one is to the stage, the more strongly the experiential and meaning-making processes are provoked on the diverse affective and cognitive levels. For the spectacle to have an effect, it has to come closer to the skin, otherwise it runs the risk of becoming an image without any meaning, or the narrative may become too divided to have any clear structure. Scenography crafts a possibility of encounter between the performance and the spectator even over a distance. The stage is a flexible, vibrant environment, in which the sharp images and semi-transparent canvas of the voiles create a threedimensional effect and, along with the lighting, continue to expand beyond the confines of the physical frame of the stage set. Simultaneously, the all-round access given to the audience during the performance renegotiated the constraints

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of the stage space, allowing the performance’s scenography to incorporate the audience space and Muse to create an intense performance that redefined the frame of the performance space. This underlines the peculiar complexity of the scenography of a live performance and its ability to extend the experience towards the perceiver and for the perceiver to take part in it.

References Anderson, B. (2009), ‘Affective Atmospheres’, Emotion, Space and Society, 2, 77–81. Ahmed, S. (2010), ‘Happy Objects’, in M. Gregg and G. J. Seigworth (eds), The Affect Theory Reader, 29–51, Durham and London: Duke University Press. Bellamy, M. (2015), ‘Muse on their New Album Drones’, Interview from the radio programme Radio X, 10 June, 11. 45. http:​/​/www​​.radi​​ox​.co​​.uk​/a​​rtist​​s​/mus​​e​/alb​​ums​/ d​​rones​/​#1VD​​CWG​uK​​kWU10​​fYl​.97 (accessed 15 July 2020). Böhme, G. (2013), ‘The Art of the Stage Set as a Paradigm for an Aesthetics of Atmospheres’, International Journal of Sensory Environment, Architecture and Urban Space. Available online: https​:/​/jo​​urnal​​s​.ope​​nedit​​ion​.o​​rg​/am​​bi​anc​​es​/31​5 (accessed 14 April 2019). Daurer, G. (2015), ‘Audiovisual Perception’, in D. Daniels, S. Naumann and J. Thoben (eds), See This Sound: Audiovisuology: Compendium, 329–37, Köln: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther Koenig. Fast, S. (2013), ‘U2 3D: Concert Film and/as Live Performance’, in N. Cook (ed.), Taking It to the Bridge: Music as Performance, 20–36, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Greene, A. (2015), ‘Inside Muse’s “Drones” Strike: Matt Bellamy on High-Concept LP’, Rolling Stone, 8 May. Available online: https​:/​/ww​​w​.rol​​lings​​tone.​​com​/m​​usic/​​music​​ -feat​​ures/​​insid​​e​-mus​​es​-dr​​ones-​​strik​​e​-mat​​t​-bel​​lamy-​​on​-hi​​​gh​-co​​ncept​​-lp​-1​​59870​/ (accessed 7 February 2019). Hann, R. (2019), Beyond Scenography, Abingdon, Oxon and New York: Routledge. Lotker, S. and Gough, R. (2013), ‘On Scenography: Editorial’, A Journal of the Performing Arts: On Scenography, 18 (3), 3–6. McAuley, G. (1999), Space in Performance: Making Meaning in the Theatre, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. McKinney, J. (2013), ‘Scenography, Spectacle and the Body of the Spectator’, A Journal of the Performing Arts: On Scenography, 18 (3), 63–74. McKinney, J. (2015), ‘Vibrant Materials: The Agency of things in the Context of Scenography’, in M. Bleeker, J. F. Sherman and E. Nedelkopoulou (eds), Performance and Phenomenology: Traditions and Transformations, 121–39, London: Routledge. McKinney, J. (2019), ‘Scenographic Materiality: Agency and Intra-action in Katrin Brack’s Design’, in B. E. Wiens (ed.), Contemporary Scenography: Practices and

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Aesthetics in German Theatre, Arts and Design, 57–73, London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama. McKinney, J. and Palmer, S. (2017), ‘Introduction’, in J. McKinney and S. Palmer (eds), Scenography Expanded: An Introduction to Contemporary Performance Design, 1–20, London: Bloomsbury Press. Muse (2009), ‘Uprising’, Lyrics by Matt Bellamy, The Resistance, Warner Music UK Limited. Muse (2015a), ‘Dead Inside’, Lyrics by Matt Bellamy, Drones, Warner Music UK Limited. Muse (2015b), ‘The Globalist’, Lyrics by Matt Bellamy, Drones, Warner Music UK Limited. Parekh-Gaihede, R. (2012), ‘Breaking the Distance: Empathy and Ethical Awareness in Performance’, in D. Reynolds and M. Reason (eds), Kinesthetic Empathy in Creative and Cultural Practices, 177–92, Bristol: Intellect Ltd.

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Evocations of the ‘sonore et voilé’ The scenographic world of Der Ring in the art of Henri Fantin-Latour Corrinne Chong

In August of 1876, the French artist Henri Fantin-Latour (1836–1904) embarked on the pilgrimage to Bayreuth to witness what he would proclaim as ‘l’Art de l’Avenir, musique, situation dramatique, décors, mise en scène, costumes, effets féeriques parfois et même souvent, c’est complet’ (‘the Art of the future, music, dramatic situation, sets, mise en scène, music, costumes, sometimes and more often than not, fantastical special effects, it is complete’) (Fantin 1876a). Fantin attended the third inaugural performance of Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen and was entranced by the interplay of pervasive fogs, veiled lighting and otherworldly diffusion of sound arising from the invisible orchestra. As he had articulated in his effusive précis of the Rheingold prelude, the commingling of hazy scenic effects and the envelopment of sound jointly produced an overlapping sensory perception of the ‘sonore et voilé’ or ‘sonorous and veiled’ (Fantin 1876b). Altogether, what Fantin had experienced was an illusory world conjured by the amorphous optics of steam and mists synchronized with the aural effects of acousmatic sound: staples in phantasmagorical stagecraft. As underscored in his exhaustive stage directions and polemical speeches for the 1876 stage production of Der Ring, the composer-régisseur’s (Syer 2009: 9) overarching aim was to orchestrate a ‘sublime illusion’ (Wagner 1873) as credibly as possible. I propose that the holistic scenographic materialization of his vision was achieved through an aesthetic of vagueness that encompassed both sight and sound.1 More importantly, this aesthetic would come to define Fantin’s own pictorial idiom, giving voice to ‘le moi qui veut apparaître’ or ‘the me that wishes to appear’ (Fantin 1869). Upon his return to Paris, the ‘peintre-mélomane’ or ‘painter-music lover’ (Bouyer 1899: 68) would inaugurate his ambitious corpus of works with Scène

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Figure 7.1  Fantin-Latour, Scéne première du Rheingold, 1876. Lithograph, 512 × 335 mm (primary support); 69.7 × 49.8 cm (secondary support). Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago. 1927.2938.

première du Rheingold (Figure 7.1): the first in a series of lithographic adaptations of the tetralogy that would also inspire variations in other media (Plate 17). I contend that Fantin’s operatic tributes were not conceived as literal transcriptions of the libretto nor illustrations of the set designs but as atmospheric simulations of his real-time corporeal immersion in the ‘sonore et voilé’. To illuminate the catalytic impact of Wagner’s scenographic language on the crystallization of Fantin’s musical–visual style, this chapter will begin with an overview of the acoustical and architectural conditions that were unique to the Festspielhaus in Bayreuth. The focus will then shift to the artist’s compositional methods and technical innovations he developed for his Bayreuth cycle of lithographs. By Bayreuth cycle, I refer to the seven lithographs that were directly inspired by Fantin’s attendance at the performances of Der Ring and were executed closest to the year 1876.2 Finally, this chapter establishes the correspondence between the distinct vocabulary of vagueness that emerged in the critical discourse and Fantin’s vaporous visuals and allusive narratives.

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A sense of ‘sublime illusion’: Setting the stage In his foundation stone speech of 1872, Wagner declared that the optimal realization of Der Ring demanded the construction of special theatre: the Festspielhaus in Bayreuth. Architectural strategies (Williams 1994: 117–19) such as the auditorium’s amphitheatric form, the addition of a second proscenium, the use of side walls versus boxes and sensory controls (as simple as dimming the lights) channelled the audience’s attention exclusively to the ‘unapproachable world of dreams’ (Wagner 1872: 335) on stage. The most vital feature of his theatre’s design was the orchestra, which was to be heard but never to be seen: My demand that the orchestra be made invisible proved an inspiration to the famous architect [Gottfried Semper] whom I was initially privileged to consult on this matter, encouraging this man of genius to find a use for the empty space that arose in this way between the proscenium and the rows of seats in the auditorium: we called it the ‘mystic abyss’ because its function was to separate reality from ideality. (Wagner 1873: 334)

The concept of a depressed pit was not new. As early as the late eighteenth century, theatre architects, directors and composers had denounced the sight of the musicians as a visual disturbance to the dramatic performance. The solution was to submerge the orchestra below the stage – a feat that was not successfully realized until 1871 when the first fully sunken pit was built at the Varieties Theatre in New Orleans (Bowman 1966: 438). For Wagner, one of the prototypes for his own iteration was the unusually deep pit in the theatre in Riga where he acted as music director from 1837 to 1839 (Spotts 1994: 51). In his preface to his librettopoem of Der Ring des Nibelungen – published long before a site was selected for the Festspielhaus – he emphatically insisted on shielding the spectator’s eyes from the unsightly ‘mechanical processes’ of the musicians which must ‘remain almost as well concealed as the ropes, pulleys, struts and boards of the sets, the sight of which from the wings, notoriously destroy all trace of illusion’ (Wagner 1862: 276–7). Hence, the orchestra’s occultation not only fulfilled a practical purpose but was a means to attaining a consummate level of scenic illusionism (Figure 7.2). Invoking spatial metaphors, Wagner imagined that music, like fumes rising up spectrally from the ‘mystic abyss’ and as such resembling the vapours ascending from Gaia’s sacred primeval womb beneath the Pythia’s tripod, transports him [the spectator] to that inspired state of clairvoyance in which the scenic image that appears before him becomes the truest reflection of life itself. (Wagner 1873: 335)

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Figure 7.2  Unknown artist, postcard (depicting the sunken orchestra in Bayreuth) sent from Antoine Lascoux to Fantin-Latour, 17 August 1894. © Fondation Custodia, Collection Frits Lugt, Paris. a.436.

To note, Wagner’s raison d’être for an ‘invisible orchestra’ was also entwined with the idea of absolute music. While writing the poem and music for Der Ring, he discovered Schopenhauer’s theorization on non-programmatic music as the embodiment of the Will – an idea related to the Romantic exaltation of purely instrumental music as the most ineffably vague, abstract and hence, absolute of all the arts (Bonds 1997: 409). In this context, the masking of the means of musical production concealed the ‘mundane origins of transcendental music’ (Dalhaus 1989: 394). Poetics aside, the fixation on hiding the stage machinery and the labour behind it can also be aligned with phantasmagoria – a genre of mass theatrical entertainment popularized by the physicist, inventor and amateur magician Étienne-Gaspard Robert (1763–1837) in late-eighteenth-century Paris. His spectacles d’optiques immersed audiences into an uncanny darkness where they sat in collective horror of paranormal tableaux (Gunning 2004: 2–3). Magic lanterns, illusionistic painting techniques, shifting sheets of gauze, smoke,

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mirrors and light animated ghoulish apparitions while the unnerving wails of a glass harmonica emanated from a hidden locale. Robert’s refinements upon existing spectral technologies such as Daguerre’s dioramas, Langlois’s panoramas and Kircher’s magic lantern would influence opera scenography. Wagner, dazzled by the cutting-edge special effects and high-level illusionism at the Paris Opera, perhaps took special note of the demon chorus set sub-stage in Meyerbeer’s Robert et le Diable (1831) when he envisioned the invisible orchestra (Tresch 2012: 149). Back in his ‘veritable theatron’ (Wagner 1873: 335) the ethereal soundscape Wagner summoned was indebted to the ingenuity of acoustical engineering and also to its unforeseen flaws. For instance, the sounding board or hood above the orchestra pit caused the indirect transmission of sound and a notable loss in its upper frequencies, the fan-shaped auditorium extended the reverberation time and with this, decelerated the diminishment of sound, multiple projecting parallel and side cross-walls further diffused what was heard. At the same time, the low light levels magnified the apparent absence of the orchestra, resulting in the lost intermediary between the music and the listener. Aurally, these factors contributed to the effect of surround-sound, of musical envelopment. Subjectively, they suggested a remote mystical world: an impression that was in harmony with Wagner’s belief in the evocation of the supernatural through music.3 As one contemporary music critic reminisced: ‘the spatial sense of hearing is almost abolished. You can no longer localize the sounds . . . . The magic of such acoustics enchants and teases you’ (Berrsche 1955: n.p.). Fantin and his two travel companions were indeed bewitched and perhaps a bit bewildered: These gentlemen were enraptured, blown over by the orchestra and the musical feeling of the ensemble: a complete success, the invisible orchestra! Its absence created a great effect; the void, the mystical space is astonishing . . . . I cannot express how much I felt transported. (Fantin )4

As the intensifying volume of the cycle’s iconic undulating E-flat arpeggios rose from the drone of the double basses, Wagner’s ‘mystic abyss’ surged with sound – proving Pierre Schaeffer’s acousmatic thesis that when the ‘signal physique’ (‘physical signal’) is concealed, the ‘objet sonore’ (sonorous object) is amplified, becoming an entity in itself (Schaeffer 1966: 93).5 From a visual artist’s perspective, the expanse of disembodied sonic space – ‘la vide’– took on palpably pictorial properties. This momentary sensory overlap is articulated in Fantin’s rapturous account of the Rheingold prelude: Before the darkness, there is a half-light [. . .] one hears a military call in the distance, it is the King, but before one can see him, the signal is sounded. Night

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falls (almost). I assure you that this was intensely moving, next, comparable to droning, (sonorous and veiled) the orchestra speaks with a single voice, an immense organ! Oh, it is very beautiful, unique. Nothing is like it. It is a sensation that has never been explained before (1876b).6

While the ‘sonore’ aspect alludes to music’s auditory properties, the descriptor ‘voilé’ imparts a measure of tangibility necessary for the picturing of the illusory. His perception of the latter, however, was not metaphorical, for liberal amounts of steam were expelled from a labyrinthine network of pipes originating from a sub-stage repository connected to two outdoor locomotive boilers (Kreuzer 2018: 180).7 Designed by his chief machinist Carl Brandt (1828–1881) with the assistance of a railway mechanic, the steam technology at Bayreuth was lauded by the press as one of the theatre’s most innovative features. However, as Kreuzer underscores in her seminal study on ‘Wagnerian technologies’ (Kreuzer 2018: 108), the deployment of this mist in the mise en scène was not unprecedented. In mid-century France, steam in all its multifarious forms was a staple in opera production, particularly in a fantastical genre which Fantin knew well: l’opéra féerie. The nebulous quality of steam was ideally suited for the depiction of fire, meteorological phenomena and spectral presences. More importantly, it fulfilled Wagner’s illusionist intent. First, by virtue of obscuring rather than obliterating details in the scenic environment, semblances to the material world that appeared too grounded, too earthbound, were merely subdued. The infiltration of obstinate mists and fogs tempered the descriptive mimeticism in the scenic backdrops by Josef Hoffmann (1870–1956). Wagner, the nature-lover, had hired the professional landscape painter based on his work for the Vienna State Opera but as plans for the Der Ring progressed, it became evident that Hoffman’s elaborate designs, particularly his interior scenes, clashed with the composer’s ‘mythopoeic’ vision (Carnegy 2006: 148). While Wagner eschewed architectural settings that were fixed in an identifiable time and place, Hoffman embraced historical exactitude. The outcome, in the words of Wagner’s wife Cosima, was ‘the downgrading of the dramatic intention in favor of an elaboration of the scenery’ (Carnegy 2006: 148). In the end, Hoffman reluctantly revised his designs but his headstrong resistance would lead to his permanent dismissal. His plans were subsequently passed on to the stage designers from the court opera at Coburg: Gotthold and Max Bruckner. Second, Wagner’s brand of special effects blurred the demarcation between scenes. Hovering remnants of mist from one moment drifted into the next. Continuous tableaux complemented continuous melodies to sustain a real-time synchronization between the scenery, dramatic situation and music. For these reasons, the primacy of vagueness in Wagner’s

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scenographic realization of Der Ring was unmissable. To illustrate, in his stage directions for Das Rheingold prelude, ‘greenish twilight’, ‘swirling waters’, ‘fine damp mist’, ‘a train of clouds over the dusky bed’, ‘dense darkness’ and ‘watery depths’ were to fill the stage (Porter 1976: 3–4). Fantin was mesmerized as soon as the curtain rose: The curtain delicately rises and here, something without a name, vague, obscure, and greenish is illuminated little by little; not long afterwards, one glimpses rocks, then, just perceptibly, at the top, forms pass back and forth, the Rhine maidens; below, at the bottom of the rocks, Alberich. There is nothing in my memories that is as magical, as beautiful, as fully realized. (Fantin 1876b)8

Here, the protracted drawing of the split curtains and illumination of the stage highlight the temporality of Wagner’s scenographic idiom in the manner that it enhanced the inherent mobility of light and steam. To emphasize this point, it was the gradual intensification of the greenish glow, emergence of the Nibelung’s cavernous depths, unfolding trajectory of the Rhinemaidens and manifestation of Valhalla that dazzled Fantin with each passing minute. Second to Das Rheingold in its affective impact on the artist was the scene of Siegfried’s death in Die Götterdämmerung. As Wagner’s had sketched out in his directions: The moon breaks through the clouds and lights up the funeral procession ever more brightly as it reaches the heights. Then mists rise from the Rhine and gradually come forward to fill the whole stage, on which the funeral procession becomes invisible. During the musical interval, the stage is completely veiled. When the mists divide again, the hall of the Gibichungs, as in the first act is gradually revealed. Die Götterdämmerung, act 3, scene 2 (Porter 1976: 320)

Fantin’s recollection of this moment, emphasizes the interplay between pace and the stuff of vagueness: The march of the warriors carrying the corpse of Siegfried, dead in his armour, the cortege on each side, the illuminating effect of the moon, sometimes delicate clouds slowly descend over this cortege, veiling it momentarily before completely hiding it and we hear music alone which soon subsides, finally the theater is filled with it and we move on to another scene, it is superb, the pinnacle of the most profound emotion. (Fantin 1876a)9

As with the opening scene of Das Rheingold, Fantin’s account underlines his experienced cognizance of the spatial-temporal dimension in Wagner’s scenic representations. Active verbs such as ‘descendent’ ‘voilent’, ‘cachent’ and

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‘diminuant’ encapsulate the ephemeral and dynamic properties of Wagner’s vague optics. From an olfactory perspective, the composer’s exploitation of steam was so extreme that the auditorium reeked of a laundry mat according to the nose of George Bernard Shaw: ‘One of his devices was to envelop the stage in mists produced by what was called a steam curtain, which looked exactly like what it really was, and made the theatre smell like a laundry’(Shaw 1923: ix). Unequivocally, be it the subterranean depths of the Nibelheim or the flameengulfed halls of the Valhalla, ‘la vapeur joue un grand role’ (‘vapour plays a key role ’) to quote the composer Camille Saint Saëns (Saint-Saëns 1885: 96). From Fantin’s vantage point, as pervasive mists drifted over the invisible orchestra, suffusing the spectatorial space, and traversing the ‘fourth wall’, ‘le sonore et voilé’ coalesced.

From stage to print: Visualizing the ‘espace mystique’ Back in his studio in Paris, the peintre-mélomane sought to recreate a retrospectively desired space in his artworks. To do so, he embraced the medium of transfer lithography, for its unique properties enabled him to achieve the gauzy, gossamer effects he admired. Unlike the traditional sur pierre (on stone) method of printmaking, the sur papier (on paper) alternative begins with drawing the image onto a thin, translucent coated paper known as papier végétal which is subsequently transferred onto the stone and manipulated using tools such as the scraper, stump or roulette. Fantin was known to layer multiple techniques in a single work to create his diaphanous mille–feuille textures and broad spectrum of tints and shades. His integration of frottage using textured papers imparted a distinctly veiled quality to his work (Druick 1983: 283– 4). The final touch with a dabber was used to weave together a harmonizing enveloppe. To illustrate, his Scène première du Rheingold, displays marvellous modulations of light and shade that appear to echo the dynamics between the musical crescendo and diminuendo; oscillating lines animate the mercurial waters and the Rheinmaiden’s upward trajectory evoke the rising pitch and volume of the operatic tetralogy’s iconic wave leitmotif. The impression is a shrouded vision that recalls the ‘sustained softness’ and ‘totally unified effect’ in the orchestration of the Rheingold’s first scene (Porges 1876: 7–8). Elsewhere, billowing tufts of grey fill the amorphous landscape in his exquisite Götterdämmerung: Siegfried et les filles du Rhin (Figure 7.3) of 1884 and even more so in its reprise of 1897.

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Figure 7.3  Götterdämmerung: Siegfried et les filles du Rhin, 1897. Lithograph, 48.1 × 37.7 cm (image); 54.5 × 42.5 cm (sheet). © Collection UCLA Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Fred Grunwald 1956.5.80.

The shapeless, non-descript masses of improvisatory lines, dots and dabs, imbue the images with an ethereal aura but as much as these precariously veer towards abstraction, they are never completely divorced from reality. The retention of the representational ensured that the image remained formally decipherable and semantically legible. For instance, in the Finale de Rheingold 1876 (Figure 7.4) one ground may appear to seep into the other but Fantin’s facture is adjusted accordingly to indicate the presence of water, earth and sky. In other words, the l’espace mystique’ never fully dissolves into un espace abstrait because the intention was to conjure up a veiled vision, not an abstract one. This aesthetic would apply to all his ‘projets d’imagination’ or ‘imaginative works’ (Fantin 1873: 196): a genre of dreamy atmospheric images that encompassed mythology, allegory and music not only by Wagner but also by Berlioz, Schumann and Brahms. Fantin’s technical innovations were also driven by his intent to capture the pace at which Wagner’s scenes unfolded in time and space – after all, the majority of the transitional and conjuration moments from Der Ring emerge from darkness

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Figure 7.4 Fantin-Latour, Finale du Rheingold, 1877. Lithograph, 53.2 × 40.3 cm (image); 64.0 × 47.5 cm (sheet). Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. 78.121.

at a sustained slowness. Whether it was to mirror the unforgettable greenish glow or menacing storm clouds Fantin emulated a mezzotint technique called manière noire which was adopted by the sur pierre method of lithography. He admired its sfumato effect but due to the delicacy of papier vegetal, could only mimic its look in transfer lithography by employing a soft grease crayon to build up his surfaces while leaving traces of white untouched. In Début de la Walküre 1879 and Finale de la Walküre 1879 (Figure 7.5) black of the utmost saturation permeates the compositions, eclipsing much of the scenic and anecdotal details. Lit by the silvery moon, the silhouettes of Siegmund and Sieglinde are merely delineated by the slivers of white. In the sequel, Wotan’s facial features are almost obliterated by the glare of the white-hot flames while the black expanse evokes the remoteness of the mountains and the isolation of Brünnhilde’s abandonment. Most notably, Fantin’s Évocation d’Erda (Figure 7.6), the most predominately black-filled image in the series, demonstrates how a diminished visibility, can convey a sense of pace: by plunging the figure of the earth goddess into a shadowy void, her contours take time to materialize. In other words, Fantin’s

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Figure 7.5 Fantin-Latour, Finale du Walküre, 1879. Lithograph, 226 × 275 mm (image); 34.5 × 44. 7 cm (sheet). Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago. 1927.2945.

Figure 7.6 Fantin-Latour, Évocation d’Erda (Siegfried Act III), 1876. Lithograph, 28.1 × 36.9 cm (image); 48 × 59.1 cm (sheet). Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Gift of Theodore M. Lilienthal 1959-10-23.

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images entail the beholder’s absorbed attention to mentally complete the picture and by doing so, simulates the tempo of Wagner’s scenic representations and to an extent, his continuous melodies.

Invoking the language of the musically vague In looking at Fantin’s Bayreuth cycle of artworks and his adaptations of the composer’s other operas including Lohengrin, Der fliegende Holländer, Parsifal and Tristan und Isolde, he dispensed with the conventional stage props and scenic elements that typically crowded contemporaneous sheet music and programme illustrations. In a rare interview recorded in 1892, Fantin asserted that his operatic adaptations were not conceived as faithful copies of the textual programme and mise en scène but as artistic interpretations or ‘belles images’ (‘beautiful images’) (Alexandre 1895: 838). Furthermore, he revealed that a musical work was selected on the basis of its potential for re-interpretation in the language of his own métier and above all, its ‘poetic qualities’10 – the heart of Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk. Accordingly, the artist’s streamlined narration and iconographic license compelled writers in the critical reception to differentiate his art from the rigid illustrative style of his contemporaries. For instance, the journalist George Riat advised: But it would be pointless to look for the décor and other scenographic elements from the theatre . . . . Although many of his lithographs were executed to serve as illustrations the two monographs by Adolphe Julien, Wagner et Berlioz, they are not bound to them . . . . He [Fantin] does the work of a painter and he should only be appreciated as such. (Riat 1903: 224)11

Comparably, a critic for The Literary Supplement commended the artist’s Prélude du Lohengrin precisely because it ‘did not adhere to the Wagnerian setting of the piece’ (Anonymous-Times Literary Supplement 1904: 270).12 The musicologist Hugues Imbert applauded Fantin’s artistic license, exalting him as a musician’s painter: Passionate about the great masters, he borrows subjects from their compositions, all awhile eschewing a literal translation. Berlioz, Schumann, Brahms, Weber, find in him the painter of their dreams. (Imbert 1904: 607)13

To quote one of Fantin’s most ardent champions, the art historian and theatre critic Roger Marx, the composer’s musical themes were so liberally re-imagined by the artist that the latter ‘échapper à toute transcription matérielle’ (‘evades

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all material transcription’) (Marx 1884: 2) or in the words of another writer ‘traduction littérale’ (literal translation) (G. A. 1899: 239). The consensus was that Fantin’s process exemplified ‘la traduction pittoresque’ (‘pictorial translation’) – not ‘la traduction laborieuse’ (‘laborious translation’) (Michel 1892: 2). In the artist’s own words, his ‘petits tableaux sur Berlioz, sur Wagner’ (little paintings inspired by Berlioz and Wagner) embodied ‘la traduction d’un art par l’autre’ (‘the translation of one art form by another’) (Mauclair 1922: 157). But of all the terminology in the discourse surrounding the categorization of Fantin’s musical genre, ‘transposition’ was most frequently invoked. Implying a shift of one idea from one key to another key in musical terms or more generally, from one medium to another, ‘transposition’ underlines the perceived affinity between Fantin’s visual world and its musical sources.14 This process is implied in Téodor de Wyzewa’s 1887 homage to the artist in the Revue Wagnérienne: In the art of Wagner he had chosen the most precise of emotions, which he subsequently transposed in pictorial terms, perfectly indifferent to scenic exactitude, costume conventions or decor, entirely absorbed by the intimacy of the scene and returning to it. (de Wyzewa 1887: 26)15

Elsewhere in the critical reception, André Michel commended Fantin the ‘poète-musicien’ (‘poet-musician’) and notes ‘Il y a un peu de la magie des musiciens dans la transposition d’art où se complait M. Fantin-Latour’ ‘(There is a little of the musicians’ magic in the transposition of art in which Mr FantinLatour took much pleasure’) (Michel 1892: 2). Comparably, in Gustave Geffroy’s review of Fantin’s fourteen lithographs for Adolphe Jullien’s monograph (1886), the images were described as ‘des merveilles de compréhension, de poésie et de transposition musicales’ (‘marvels of understanding, poetry, and musical transpositions’) (Geffroy 1886: 2). In effect, ‘l’artiste a tenté l’union des beaux’ (‘the artist attempted the union of the sister arts’) and the result was ‘une étonnante transposition d’art’ (‘an astonishing transposition of art’) (Geffroy 1884: 2). More importantly, Geffroy perceptively localized the ineffable sense of musicality in Fantin’s ‘air mystérieux’: Some of his sketches give a musical impression that suffuses the mysterious atmosphere where feminine forms materialize and dissolve or where heroes rise. Dreamy figures appear in shadow and light, tremble, transform, dissipate like a musician’s languid phrases; they stand out against dazzling backgrounds and inducing one to dream to the call of fleeting notes. (Geffroy 1884: 2)16

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The music-loving Geffroy was one of the few critics who addressed the technical aspect of Fantin’s practice: ‘Le travail de l’artiste est simple; de grandes surfaces couvertes de hachures, avec des dégradations et des éclaircies; des transitions très douces entre des noirs transparents et des blancs purs’ (‘The work of the artist is simple; vast surfaces covered in hatching, with shading and highlights, nuanced transitions between transparent blacks and pure whites’) (Geffroy 1884).17 Although Fantin’s rendering of space is erroneously deemed ‘simple’, the link he observed between the ‘impression musicale’ and ‘l’air mystérieux’ could not be more observant. Moreover, Geffroy’s articulation of the ephemeral optics and envelopment of sound associated with Fantin’s indelible sensory impressions of the ‘sonore et voilé’ in 1876 was right on point. Correspondingly two distinct but intertwining strands in the vocabulary can be discerned: the musical and the pictorial. Regarding the first aspect, the attribution of auditory qualities to Fantin’s non-figurative expanses of aestheticized space accentuates the ‘sonore’ aspect of vision. References to musical elements such as rhythm, chords and harmony abound but of greater significance were the analogies to instrumental forms like the sonata, quartet and fugue. In the case of an anonymous writer for the Athenaeum: ‘The key to M. Fantin’s art, as revealed in these compositions, is the modern music – especially operatic music . . . . His art shares with the music which inspires it vague diffuseness, indefinite emotional content, and seductive charm’ (Harrison 1904: 279). Here, the stress on music alone alludes to the semantic vagueness inherent in purely instrumental forms and ‘its vague diffuseness’ consonant with the nineteenth century’s new emphasis on sonority, atmospheric textures and chromatic harmonies over clearly delineated forms (Ratner 1992: 2–14). Predictably, the most ubiquitous pictorial-musical analogue in the critical discourse was that of the symphony: the paradigmatic form of absolute music. By virtue of its non-programmatic agenda, the symphony epitomized the semantically vague: it does not communicate literally or discursively and thereby was extolled by formalist proponents as the most pure and transcendent embodiment of music. In the context of Fantin’s images, comparisons to the symphony reinforced their status as independent works of art in their own right rather than as slavish transcriptions of their original sources. For example, Prosper Dorbec observed: The ambiance in his painting corresponds musically to the symphony or to the orchestral theme in opera. The impressionistic work enhances the role of atmosphere by allowing it to almost entirely pervade the canvas with subtle modulations in tint and shades. (Dorbec 1903: 232)18

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The significance of this passage lies in its specific emphasis on the instrumental music and the localization of its formal qualities in Fantin’s treatment of space. Furthermore, ‘l’ambiance’, ‘atmosphere’, ‘des modulations subtiles’ and impressionistic ephemera draw attention to the atmospheric enveloppe which leads to the second leitmotif that appeared in the discourse: the ‘voilé’. A host of materially descriptive variants such as ‘vaporeuse’ (‘vaporous’), ‘voilée’ f(veiled) and ‘brouillée’ (foggy), as well as visual motifs like ‘nuages’ (‘clouds’), ‘ombres’ (‘shadows’) and ‘lune’ (moon) enabled writers to add greater definition to the elusive spatial and musical qualities that typified Fantin’s semi-abstract interpretations. For instance, in a review of the artist’s retrospective lithographic exhibition held at the Musée du Luxembourg in 1899, an anonymous writer lauded ‘le charme évocateur’ (‘evocative charm’) and ‘l’enveloppe vaporeuse et lyrique’ (‘vaporous ad lyrical atmosphere’) of his prints (Unknown author, Album des coupures: n.p.).19 The same exhibition inspired a critic for La Gravure to pen the following poetic ode: His work is a song, or rather music, where interlacing forms meld into vague spaces without offering any us nothing more for out gaze to hold onto except for the visions we dream of upon hearing a symphony. (Unknown author 1904, Album des coupures: n.p.)20

That Fantin’s works were musical in conception is implied by their comparison to ‘un chant’ or more specifically, ‘plutôt une musique’. Atmospheric space, though subject-less, is nevertheless replete with suggestive potential – much like a symphony. Comparably, a critic writing about Tannhäuser sensed that everything was bathed in ‘a tonalité vibrante et voile’ (‘a vibrant but veiled tonality’) or as Fantin had summarized in what would be the most condensed statement of his musical–visual aesthetic: dans le ‘sonore et voilé’. In a letter that Fantin penned to his friend in 1869, long before he had discovered an outlet for ‘le moi qui veut apparaître’, he poignantly asked: ‘comment représenter avec le plus de réalité possible ces rêves, ces choses qui passent au moment devant les yeux?’ (‘how does one represent with the most reality possible, these things that momentarily pass before eyes?’) (Fantin 1869). The answer literally lies within the vague. In describing Fantin’s lithograph Finale du vaisseau-fantôme, a writer remarked that the entire scene appeared as it was ‘emprisonné dans le vague. Jamais l’illusion de l’irréel ne fut rendue avec plus de réalité’ (‘imprisoned in vagueness. Never has the illusion of the unreal been rendered with so much reality’) (Unknown author, La Revue illustrée 1900: n.p.). This impression was inevitable given Fantin had spent four unforgettable

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evenings amid the mists of Wagner’s ‘espace mystique’: a bodily and aesthetic experience that would indelibly define his style. Through his suggestive facture and technical innovations in lithography, the artist transcended scenography and iconography to recapture his corporeal and emotional absorption in ‘le sonore et voilé’. His Bayreuth series represents the convergence between the site-specific and the sensation of sight and sound. In essence, Fantin developed a pictorial language of vagueness that can be construed as a counterpart to the composer’s own vague audio-visual effects. The outcome was a score of atmospherically lush and musically ambient works that oscillated between transparency and opacity, dissolution and resolution. To quote the Symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé, who had received dedicated impressions of Scène première du Rheingold and Tannhäuser: Venusberg from the artist himself: ‘on sent que tout cela est vu à travers la musique, et je ne sais quelle mobilité fondue et vibrante’ (‘it is as if everything is seen through music, through a hazy and resonant sense of movement that is present everywhere’) (Mallarmé 1877). To take it a step further, everything was simultaneously vu à travers la voile.

Notes * All French to English translations of the Fantin-Latour correspondence as well as the press reviews are my own unless indicated otherwise. The artist’s grammatical and stylistic errors have been left intact to reflect the spontaneity of his writing and the immediacy of the moment. 1 The formal and semantic vagueness in art and music was first explored by the author in a published chapter. See Chong (2011). This chapter was developed into a dissertation. See Chong (2015). 2 Note that some lithographs bear later dates but their preliminary sketches were completed much earlier. The seven lithographs are listed with their respective dates followed by Germain Hédiard’s catalogue numbers: Scène première du Rheingold 1876 (H.8), Évocation d’Erda 1876 (H.20), Finale du Rheingold 1877 (H.18), Début du Walküre 1879 (H.23), Finale du Walküre 1879 (H.24), and Götterdämmerung: Siegfried et les filles du Rhin c.1880 (H.31). I have retained the German spelling of Walküre and Götterdämmerung. 3 For example. Wagner once recalled in his diaries, ‘ghostlike’ violin fifths had once transported him to a ‘world of spirits’ and the overture to Der Freischütz (1822) to ‘the magic realm of terror’, Lippman (1990: 66–7). 4 ‘Ces messieurs [Antoine Lascoux and Jules Bordier] sont ravis, renversés par l’orchestre et le sentiment musical du tout, absolument réussi, l’Orchestre invisible!

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6

7 8

9

10 11

12 13

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Son absence fait un grand effet; le vide, l’espace mystique est étonnant. [. . .] Je ne peux exprimer combien je me sens transporté.’ Formulated during the 1940–1950s era of telecommunications and electroacoustic music, Schaeffer, the creator of ‘musique concrete’ argued that when the source of reference is visually divorced from sound, as when one listens to the radio, what stands in relief is the sonorous element. ‘Avant l’obscurité, il y a demi-lumière, on sent qu’il va se passer quelque chose de sérieux, on entend une sonnerie militaire à l’extérieur, c’est le Roi, mais avant qu’on puisse le voir, le signal se fait entendre. La nuit (presque) se fait. Je vous assure que cela remue très fort, puis comme des mugissements, (c’est sonore et voilé), l’orchestre fait d’une seule voix, orgue immense! Oh, c’est très beau, unique. Rien n’est comme cela. C’est une sensation pas encore éprouvée.’ For a condensed version of Gundula. Kreuzer’s 2018 book, see Kreuzer (2011, 179–218). ‘Le rideau s’écarte doucement et une chose sans nom, obscure, vague, petit à petit verdâtre, s’éclairant tout doucement, puis on aperçoit des roches, puis tout doucement des formes passent, repassent, les Filles du Rhin dans le haut, dans le bas Albérich, dans le fond des roches. Je n’ai rien dans mes souvenirs féeriques de plus beau, de plus réalisé.’ My emphasis. ‘La marche des guerriers portant le corps de Siegfried mort dans son bouclier, le cortège de chaque côté, l’effet de lune qui les éclaire, par moments de légers nuages descendent tout doucement sur ce cortège et le voilent par instant, puis enfin les cachent et alors on entend la musique seule qui va bientôt diminuant, enfin le théâtre en est rempli et on passe à une autre scène, c’est superbe, le sommet de l’émotion complète.’ Alexandre (1895, 828). ‘Mais il ne faut point y voir des projets de décor et de scène de théâtre . . . . Bien que beaucoup de ces lithographies aient été exécutées pour illustrer les deux volumes d’Adolphe Jullien, Wagner et Berlioz, elles ne forment point corps avec eux . . . . Il fait œuvre de peintre, et ne doit, ne peut même être apprécié que comme peintre.’ Anonymous (1904, 270). ‘Passionné des grands maîtres, il emprunte ses sujets à leurs œuvres, se gardant bien de les traduire littéralement. Les Berlioz, Wagner, Schumann, Brahms, Weber, trouvent en lui le peintre de leurs rêves.’ The use of ‘tranposition’ as an alternative to ‘transcription’ and ‘traduction’ might have been influenced by Théophile Gautier: one of the leading exemplars of ‘transposition d’art’ whose collection of poems entitled Émaux et camées (1852) was directly drawn from his experience of artworks. The reciprocal nature of the arts was a fundamental precept of the Parnassian movement of which the major tenets of Gautier’s art-forart’s sake philosophy (first introduced in Mademoiselle de Maupin of 1835) and his ideas concerning ‘transposition d’art’ formed the groundwork.

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15 ‘Et dans l’œuvre de Wagner il a choisi les émotions très précises, qu’ensuite il a transposées dans le langage pictural: insoucieux parfaitement de l’exactitude scénique, des traditions de costume ou de décors, tout occupé au sens intime de scènes, et le restituant.’ 16 ‘Certaines de ces esquisses donnent une impression musicale à qui pénètre dans l’air mystérieux où naissent et s’évaporent les formes féminines où surgissent les héros. Les figures de rêve apparaissent dans ces ombres et dans ces lumières; elles tremblent, se meuvent, s’effacent comme les phrases alanguies du musicien; elles se profilent sur des fonds éclatants et font alors songer aux appels des notes brèves.’ 17 Ibid., 2. 18 ‘L’ambiance est en effet dans un tableau ce qui correspond en musique à la symphonie ou, dans une thème scénique d’opéra, à la partie de l’orchestration. De même que l’œuvre wagnérienne venait d’accroître considérablement l’importance de cette partie, l’œuvre impressionniste augmenta le rôle de l’atmosphère en la laissant noyer presque toute la toile des modulations subtiles de ses teintes et de ses reflets.’ 19 The Album des coupures is an anthology of various reviews from journals, magazines, and newspapers collected by Fantin’s wife, Victoria Dubourg. Volume one includes clippings from 1858 to 1885, volume two: 1885 to 1900 and volume three: 1900 to 1905. Note that some of the authors and dates of the articles are unknown as these were cut off by Dubourg. 20 ‘S’on œuvre est un chant, ou plutôt une musique, où les formes enlacées s’en vont dans les vagues espaces sans offrir plus de prise à notre regard que les formes rêvées à l’audition d’une symphonie n’en laissent à notre imagination.’ Article from La Gravure with an unknown author and precise date, Album des coupures, 3: 43.

References Archival sources Album des coupures des presses: Critiques sur l’œuvre de Fantin-Latour, 3 vols, YB3-27468. Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Fantin-Latour, Henri, Copies de lettres de Fantin à ses parents et amis par Victoria Fantin-Latour, 4 fasc. (Grenoble: Manuscrits de Bibliothèque Municipale de Grenoble) R.8867. Correspondance Fantin-Latour. Paris: Fondation Custodia Collection Frits Lugt. 1997A.376/1020. Correspondance entre Henri Fantin-Latour et Otto Scholderer (1858–1902), ed. Thomas W. Gaehtgens, Mathilde Arnoux, and Anne Tempelaere-and mythical themes,

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recapture a musical moment in time through the medium of art was Panzni, Paris: Éditions de la maison des sciences de l’homme, 2011.

Primary sources Unknown author (1900), ‘Échos de Théâtre’, Revue illustrée, 15 June, 15 Unknown author (1904), ‘The Art of Fantin-Latour’, Times Literary Supplement, 2 September, 270. Alexandre A. (1895), ‘Fantin-Latour’, Le Monde moderne, December, 827–42. Bouyer, R. (1899), ‘L'Œuvre de M. Fantin-Latour’, Revue pour les jeunes filles, 266–70. Dorbec, P. (1903), ‘L’Œuvre de Fantin-Latour’, Les Maîtres artistes, 28 February, 231–2. Fantin (1864), Letter to parents, 23 August, Copies de lettres de Henri Fantin-Latour, cahier 1. Fantin (1869), Letter to Edwin Edwards, 21 March, in Copies de lettres de Henri FantinLatour, cahier 2. Fantin (1873), Letter to Otto Scholderer, 10 March 1873, in Correspondance entre Henri Fantin-Latour et Otto Scholderer (1858–1902), 196. Fantin (1876a), Letter to Otto Scholderer, 30 August 1876, in Correspondance entre Henri Fantin-Latour et Otto Scholderer (1858–1902), 251–2. Fantin (1876b), Letter to Edmond Maître 28 August 1876. Paris: Fondation Custodia, no.1997-A.414. *Subsequent references to this source will be abbreviated as follows: sender-recipient, date. FC: inventory number. G. A. (29 July 1899), ‘L’Exposition des lithographies de Fantin-Latour au Musée du Luxembourg,’ Chronique des arts et de la curisosité: supplement à la Gazette des beaux-arts, 239–40. Geffroy, G. (1884), ‘La Vie moderne: Salon de 1884’, La Justice, 28 June, 1–2. Geffroy, G. (1886), ‘L’Œuvre et la vie de Wagner’, La Justice, 12 December, 2. Germain H. (1906), Catalogue de l’œuvre lithographique du maître, Paris: Librairie de l’art ancien et modern. Harrison, E. (1904), ‘Van Wisselingh Gallery’, The Athenaeum, 27 February, 279. Imbert, H. (1904), ‘Un Peintre musicien’, Le Guide musical, 11 September, 606–9. Mallarmé, S. (1877), Letter to Fantin, 3 February 1877. FC: 1997-A.706. Marx, R. (1884), ‘Le Salon de 1884’, Le Voltaire, 1 May, 2. Mauclair, C. (1922), Servitude et grandeur littéraires: souvenirs d’arts et de lettres de 1890 à 1900, 2nd edn, Paris: Librairie Ollendorff. Michel, A. (1892), ‘Salons de 1892’, Journal des débats, 22 May, 1–2. Porges, H. (1876), Wagner Rehearsing the ‘Ring:’An Eye-Witness Account of the Stage Rehearsal of the First Bayreuth Festival (1983), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Riat, G. (1903), ‘Lithographies de M. Fantin-Latour’, Les Maîtres artistes, 23 February, 222–7.

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Saint-Saëns, C. (1885), Harmonie et mélodie, Paris: Calmann-Lévy. Wagner, R. (1862 [1966]), ‘Vorwort zur Herausgabe der Dichtung des Bühnenfestspieles “Der Ring des Nibelungen”’ [The Preface to the Publication of the Poem of the Stage Festival, Der Ring des Nibelungen], W. A. Ellis, trans, Richard Wagner’s Prose Works, 8 vols, 3: 276–7, New York: Broude Brothers. *Note that I have adapted Ellis’s outdated translations for greater clarity. Wagner, R. ([1872] 1966), ’Über Schauspieler und Sänger [Actors and Singers], W. A. Ellis, trans., Richard Wagner’s Prose Works, 8 vols, 3, 166, New York: Broude Brothers. Wagner, R. ([1873] 1966), ‘Das Bühnenfestspielhaus zu Bayreuth’ [The Stage Festival Theatre in Bayreuth], in W. A. Ellis, trans., Richard Wagner’s Prose Works, 8 vols, 5: 335, New York: Broude Brothers. Wagner, R. (1848–1874), Der Ring des Nibelungen, trans. Andrew Porter (1976), The Ring of the Nibelung, New York: Norton & Company. Wyzewa, T. (1887), ‘Les Lithographies de M. Fantin-Latour’, La Revue wagnérienne, 3 (15 February), 26–7.

Secondary sources Berrsche, A. (1955), ‘Conversations in Bayreuth’, in Ned A. Bowman (1966), ‘Investing a Theatrical Ideal: Wagner’s Bayreuth Festspielhaus’, Educational Theatre Journal, Special International Theatre Issue, 18 (4), 438. Bonds, M. E. (1997), ‘Idealism and the Aesthetics of Instrumental Music at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 50 (2/3), 387–420. Carnegy, P. (2006), Wagner and the Art of the Theatre, New Haven: Yale University Press. Chong, C. (2011), ‘Invoking the Language of the Musical Vague in the Art and Critical Reception of Henri Fantin-Latour’, in Charlotte de Mille (ed.), Music and Modernism, c.1840-1950, 119–57, Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Chong, C. (2015), ‘Invoking the Language of the Musical Vague in the Art and Critical Reception of Henri Fantin-Latour’, PhD diss., University of Edinburgh, Scotland. Dalhaus, C. (1989), Nineteenth-Century Music, Berkley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Druick, D. and Hoog, M. (1983), Fantin-Latour, Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada. Gunning, T. (2004), ‘Illusions Past and Future: The Phantasmagoria and Its Specters’. Available online: http:​/​/www​​.medi​​aarth​​istor​​y​.org​​/refr​​esh​/P​​rogra​​mmati​​c​%20k​​ey​%20​​ texts​​/pdfs​​​/Gunn​​ing​.p​​df. Jullien, A. (1886), Richard Wagner sa vie et ses œuvres; ouvrage orné de quatorze lithographies originales par M. Fantin-Latour, Paris: J. Rouam.

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Kreuzer, G. (2011), ‘Wagner-Dampf: Steam in Der Ring des Nibelungen and Operatic Production,’ The Opera Quarterly, 27 (2–3), 179–218. Kreuzer, G. (2018), Curtain, Gong, Steam: Wagnerian Technologies of NineteenthCentury Opera, Berkeley: University of California Press. Lippman, E. A. (1990), ‘Wagner’s Conception of the Dream’, The Journal of Musicology, 8 (1), 66–7. Ratner, L. G. (1992), Romantic Music: Sound and Syntax, New York: Schirmer Books. Schaeffer, P. (1966), Traité des objets musicaux, Paris: Édition du Seuil. Shaw, G. B. (1923), ‘Preface to the Fourth Edition’, in The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Nibelung’s Ring (1967), xii–vii, New York: Dover Publications. Spotts, F. (1994), A History of the Bayreuth Festival, New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Syer, K. R. (2009), ‘From Page to Stage: Wagner as Regisseur’, in T. S. Grey (ed.), Richard Wagner and His World, 3–26, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Tresch, J. (2012), The Romantic Machine, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Williams, S. (1994), Richard Wagner and Festival Theatre, Westport: Greenwood Press.

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Visual couture Costume agency in the advertising campaign Opera Papier Viveka Kjellmer

Prologue: Into an advertising campaign Challenged by the intense gaze of a young woman with sparkling brown eyes (Plate 18), I am mesmerized by the forceful pull of the image. Her head is framed by the costume, a circle of shoes, surrounding her face like a fan or a halo of flat, white paper brogues with laces tied neatly into bows. All the shoes point towards the woman’s face, making her the obvious centre of attention. It is almost impossible not to focus on her face, which is peeping out through the hole formed by the silhouettes of the surrounding paper shoes. Her pale, translucent complexion is slightly freckled and her cheeks are brightly coloured. Her pink and shiny, pouting mouth blows a kiss and her hair forms a stylish curl above the dark eyebrows, adding an element of asymmetry to the composition of the image. The shadow over her left cheek emphasizes the asymmetry and underlines the hollowness of her cheeks, sucked in to blow the kiss in a playful parody of the ‘duckface’ pose, so popular in countless selfies and social media updates. What I am engaging with here is one of the photographs for Opera Papier, a marketing campaign from the 2014/15 season at the Royal Swedish Opera in Stockholm. The photograph, presenting a whirling hole formed by the paper shoes and the theatrical gesture of the kiss, seems to epitomize visual culture theoretician W. J. T. Mitchell’s question: ‘what do images want?’ (Mitchell 2005a). Going further into the campaign – both as digital images online and in printed materials – photographs featuring paper costumes created by Swedish

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fashion designer Bea Szenfeld come across as eye-catching agents of a visual event incorporating both fashion and theatre. On a surface level, of course, the photographs are meant to persuade viewers to come to the Opera (and pay for it), but the paper costumes and the bodies wearing them seem to do much more. Therefore, in this chapter I aim to conceptualize what the paper costumes do and make in the advertising campaign, to develop a concept that can account for what could be understood as a costume performance in images. The emotional properties of images have long been known to art historians. In his seminal study ‘The Visual Image: Its Place in Communication’ E. H. Gombrich ([1972] 1982) argues that the strength of image communication lies in its ability to evoke emotions, a powerful but nebulous quality, compared to the precision of language. Nevertheless, while acknowledging that we are affected both mentally and bodily by images, scholars such as Gombrich focus more on communication than on the multisensory experiences and agentic capacities of recent costume theory. Therefore, I aim to bring an art historical sensibility together with costume theory, to arrive at a conceptualization of costume agency in visuals, such as photographs, that can potentially be useful to art history and visual studies scholars. As a scholar of art history and visual studies, I will start this exploration within my own tradition(s) to describe and discuss the photographic series of the advertising campaign as a ‘visual event’ (Mirzoeff 1999, 2002), where acts of communication and interaction are at play. I will then move on to provide some context for the campaign and its creative production by the communication bureau Stockholm Graphics, photographer Karolina Henke and designer Bea Szenfeld. In particular, the time-consuming craft, skill and materiality of Szenfeld’s work is of relevance for understanding the multisensory qualities that the costumes contribute to the campaign. To theoretically address the more or less oblique presence of the broader fashion and media context within the campaign, I draw on Marvin Carlson’s (2001) concept of ‘ghosting’ to convey how memories ‘haunt’ what we experience on stage, for example when actors’ previous roles influence how we view them in a current performance. After this I explore the photographs more closely, employing recent costume theory to address the ways in which the paper costumes interact with the performers’ bodies in the photographs. Drawing on the results of these exploratory sequences, I present arguments for adopting the concept of visual couture, which highlights the role of the crafted and performed costume within the visual event. What is developed here feeds into my previous work on this concept, aimed at highlighting costume as an active agent in visuals such as photographs, sketches

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or drawings (Kjellmer 2018). In so doing I hope to create useful connections between the visual culture tradition and recent developments within costume theory.

The Opera Papier campaign as a visual event From a visual culture perspective, following one of the field’s key proponents, Nicholas Mirzoeff, what we see can be defined as a visual event, ‘the interaction between the viewer and viewed’ (Mirzoeff 1999: 13) and later as ‘the effect of a network in which subjects operate and which in turn conditions their freedom of action’ (Mirzoeff 2002: 6). The operative words ‘interaction’, ‘subjects’ and ‘action’ suggest that both the viewer and the viewed are subjects, actively engaging in the meaning-making process of a visual event. This way of thinking allows for a broader definition of what we see as ‘image’ than does art history in the narrow sense, one that can include anything from so-called high art to digital images shared in social media, or basically any kind of visual expression. A visual event can include browsing a magazine, looking at a fashion show, going to the theatre or visiting a museum. Thus, experiencing a visual event means engaging actively with a visual subject, rather than an object, and creating meaning interactively. As suggested by Jonathan Schroeder (2002), all these activities, where we spend time looking at and experiencing visual events, can be considered as visual consumption in one way or another. Schroeder proposes a conception of consumption whereby it is measured in time rather than money. With time as currency, everything we spend time on becomes consumption, and considering the number of images and visual events we encounter on a daily basis, visual consumption could be just as important as monetary consumption. In addressing the photographs as visual events, I consider visual communication to be a two-way process where the viewer actively takes part in the making of meaning, together with the viewed. Opera Papier was part of the re-creation of the entire visual communication approach of the Royal Opera in Stockholm during 2012–15. The campaign was created by the communication bureau Stockholm Graphics in close collaboration with the Opera’s marketing director at the time, Ingela Roos. The overall idea of the project was to visually present Performing Arts in an entirely new way (Museum of Movement 2016: 1). This new visual identity was meant to ‘express the emotion that comes with every performance’ (Stockholm Graphics 2017). Pompe Hedengren, Stockholm Graphics’ creative director, explains the

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importance of making sure that everyone involved understands the marketing concept for the campaign, and how he initially works with mood boards and images, writes inspiration texts and draws sketches to generate ideas for all the photographs in the campaign. In the pencil sketch for Anna Danielsson’s costume (Figure 8.1), for example, he illustrates his idea for an image with a pleated collar unfolding around her head like a sunflower. The written text says ‘Bea new sunflower’ and indicates the shape and look of the collar needed for such an image. The sketch also shows a tentative cover for an Opera programme, with logo and year, indicating that this is a possible image for advertising and visual communication. The wideopen mouth of the opera singer, and the forceful, radiating sound coming from it, are clearly the centre of attention in this design. An attentive focus on the performers and their practice, so important for this campaign, is obvious already in the pencil drawing. The sketches are a starting point for the creative work with the photographs, but the ideas might change during the process, in collaboration with photographer, the models and the stylist. Hedengren stresses the importance

Figure 8.1  Pompe Hedengren, Sketch for the Opera Papier Campaign, 2014.

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of flexibility, being able to have a clear vision but also to improvise if the photo demands it (Hedengren 2018). Obviously, this apparatus of interpretation and construction shares many traits with theatrical productions. The collaboration proved successful, and in 2014 Stockholm Graphics and the Royal Opera won the Swedish publishing award in the ‘printed programme’ category (popkomse 2014). The photographs in the Opera Papier campaign were used in advertisements, on outdoor ad boards, in the printed programme and on the Opera website. The photographs in the Opera Papier campaign are portraits of performers at the Royal Opera in Stockholm but also depict their work. The shoes surrounding, and pointing at, dancer Rena Narumi’s face (Plate 18) are playfully referencing the importance of the shoe as a tool for a dancer. All these shoes are memories, traces of choreography and the endless movements of her feet. We are also, I suggest, visually reminded of traditional dance instructions in books, where drawings of outlined footprints show the sequence of dance steps, where and in what order to place your feet on the floor. Soprano Anna Danielsson (Plate 19, see also Figure 8.1) is portrayed wearing her music. Pleated sheets of music form a collar, framing her face with sound waves spreading from her open mouth. Shaped like the collar of a Harlequin, together with her white powdered face and the distinctive red spots of rouge on her cheeks, the theatricality of the costume and her pronounced facial expression firmly anchors her on stage, in a visual performance tradition. In the portraits of Emma Vetter (Plate 20) and Mikael Magnell, the distinctive shapes and pleats of the costumes are echoed in both opera singers’ strong facial expressions. Emma Vetter is clad in a cascading construction of shapes, rows of paper circles forming a heavy, organic form reminiscent of a fur stole made from fox tails. The shapes fall from her shoulders like swirling water. She wears one of the ‘tails’ on her head like a hat, its tip pointing down towards her open mouth. Mikael Magnell is entangled in a mass of folded paper shapes. His head rests on a pleated collar and he is wrapped in paper garlands that look like gigantic necklaces. These portraits also have strong multisensory qualities, focusing on sound and the power of the human voice. The sound waves, transformed into sheets of music, radiating from Danielsson’s mouth translate into to her voice spreading in all directions, filling the space around her. Vetter’s paper cape unfolds like heavy, running water around her body, as does her voice when released through her wide-open mouth. Magnell’s entanglement bespeaks the complexity of his vocal performance. They are performers with powerful voices, portrayed in bold and eye-catching designs.

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In another portrait, Ola Eliasson is covered in names, cut out from paper in a lace-like pattern. Donna Elvira, Zerlina and Donna Anna are endlessly written in paper over his body. In an obvious reference to Mozart’s opera, the costume covers Don Giovanni, inscribing his intended victims’ names on his body and capturing him in a cage of words and letters. The costume covers his mouth and arms, rendering him tied up and speechless. On a meta level, this costume shows how the intricate structures of text and music combine into something new. The costume graphically shows how the character being portrayed forms a see-through layer on the actor’s body, partly transforming it into something else, yet still very much dependant on the actor performing the role. Emilie Hörnlund and Ayman Al Fakir perform in a double costume (Plate 21). The two musicians peer out of the costume, trying desperately to play their instruments in this cloud of folded, geometrical paper balls. They struggle inside the origami-like structure of the costume. The double costume could also be understood as music, if we think of music as a cohesive whole, greater than the sum of its parts. Ballet dancer Gina Tse is portrayed in a costume gone wild, made from paper strips spreading out in all directions (Plate 22). They are not random, but elegantly curved and carefully placed to evoke choreography and movement, thus painting a picture of a ballet dancer’s daily routine. Her face is partly covered by a massive floral beard that flows over the front of the costume. The beard, made from delicate paper flowers, appears paradoxical: light and heavy, masculine and feminine at the same time. In one photograph, the boy Jonatan sits on the floor next to a giant paper gorilla. The child rests peacefully and the large, bulky shape of the gorilla is protecting the young dancer asleep in his arms. At the same time, the fragile body of the boy is mirrored in the fragility of the paper material. Studying this photograph, I am moved by the peace and stillness emerging from the resting couple. It comes across as a private moment. In stark contrast to the official show, this is a glimpse from backstage. Dancer Clyde Archer is stretching out his leg in one photograph, as a counterbalance to the heavy paper garlands he wears like a tunic (Plate 23). It is made from hundreds and hundreds of hand-cut paper circles threaded on string, and the garment flows like a waterfall around him. The paper costume in this photo is contradictory: a heavy garment made from lightweight and fragile paper. The dancer’s muscular leg, extended in the air, is a striking visual contrast to the heavy paper garlands that fall towards the ground. At first sight the campaign builds on dramatic contrasts such as white costumes against dark backgrounds; sharp paper edges and soft flesh; moving

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bodies and stiff material; and real performers in surreal costumes. Looking closely at the photographs, a more detailed picture emerges. The white costumes are made from different shades of white; there are stark white paper elements but also white with a pinkish shimmer, and a bluish white paper. The subtle colour palette gives depth and body to the garments, and helps to highlight the structure of the paper materials. Light and shadow mould the shapes and soften the contrasts. To summarize, the performers are strong, focused and own their costumes in the photographs. They seem at ease in the impossible garments and use them to create something powerful – working with, rather than against, the costumes. To me, this interplay between costumes and bodies opens up for a more contextual discussion of fashion, craft and memory – and what the costumes actually do in the photographs.

Fashion context, crafting and visual ghosting The Opera Papier campaign was photographed by Karolina Henke. She stresses the importance of involvement and concentration to creating an interesting photograph. Henke says: ‘I find it hard to see the costumes or the photographs as products. Rather, it is about the amount of energy that is packed into a photographic process. The images where I’ve put in the most time, concentration, energy, sweat and tears, are the ones that tend to fascinate people the most’ (Henke 2018). Johanna Strinnvik, producer at the Skarp Agency representing Karolina Henke, describes their long-term collaboration. Henke has been working with Skarp for twenty years, in numerous commercial and artistic projects. Henke works conceptually, and her photographs are the result of a long and thoughtout process. Strinnvik (2018) explains that Henke finds the title photographer limiting, and would rather work in multiple artistic domains. One example of Henke’s work is the photo series ‘Back to Nature’, where she portrays children in costumes made by hand from the scales of fir cones, moss, bark, leaves and feathers. The images give a first impression of dark fairy tales and magic, but carry a message about environmental concern and passing on the natural environment to our children. ‘Back to Nature’ was exhibited at Fotografiska museet (The Museum of Photography) in Stockholm in 2014, and subsequently at several other art museums in Sweden. Henke describes her hard work creating the costumes and staging the photographs in ‘Back to Nature’; for example she peeled the scales off hundreds of fir cones and glued them together by hand to build the scaly shield in one of the photographs (Henke 2018). ‘Back

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to Nature’ is slow art, art that takes time. Henke says: ‘I wanted to take valuable time to tell the story of something that is valuable’ (Sykes 2016). The concept of slow art, as described by Cilla Robach (2012), is a counter-movement to fast production and consumption of art and design, a movement where time is valued both during the production process and when enjoying the objects. It represents a way of thinking that celebrates time-consuming techniques and handmade quality in small-scale production series or unique objects. Slow art objects might be art, craft, design or something in between; they are not defined by their style. Rather, as stated by Robach, it is ‘about letting time become a meaningful factor in the artistic process’ (2012: 13). Karolina Henke’s work fits well with Bea Szenfeld’s aesthetics; both are fascinated by handmade and meticulously crafted objects and seemingly impossible creations. Henke talks about their sharing stories of paper cuts and long working hours creating complicated costumes or fashion objects (Henke 2018). This mutual understanding of craft, patience and the importance of slow art was a driving force behind the implementation of the creative vision of the Opera Papier campaign. All the costumes in Opera Papier were handmade by designer Bea Szenfeld. Some of the costumes were made specifically for this project and tailored for the performers, such as Anna Danielsson’s folded collar made of sheet music and dancer Rena Narumi’s headdress made of paper shoes. Other paper costumes come from her collection Haute Papier S/S14 (The Royal Swedish Opera 2014). Bea Szenfeld (b. 1972) is a Swedish fashion designer who has left the traditional fashion market to work with artistic projects where she explores paper and other non-traditional materials. Her work is about art and the boundaries of fashion, and she designs garments that challenge the understanding of the term ‘wearable’ and highlight the interaction between costume and body on stage. Paper Dolls from 2006 is Szenfeld’s first collection of paper dresses, all made from material of different qualities, colours and textures. These include tissue-paper garlands, paper bags, lace-patterned cake-paper, books and coffee filters. Szenfeld continued her work with paper in several collections. Neptune’s Daughter (2008) is a playful swimsuit collection made entirely out of paper. The nautical theme is used again in Sur la Plage, a collection from 2010, inspired by the ocean. It includes clothes and accessories, for example sequin dresses resembling fish scales and a hand-folded jacket that looks like a coral reef (Kjellmer 2018: 244–6). This jacket was worn by the singer Björk at the ceremony where she was awarded the Polar Music Prize in 2010 (Szenfeld 2010; Polar Music Prize 2010).

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The collection Haute Papier S/S14 was exhibited at the catwalk of MercedesBenz Fashion week in Stockholm, in September 2013 (Frez 2013). In this collection, Szenfeld examines the material properties of plain, white sheets of paper, sculpting garments out of layer after layer of sliced and folded paper. The costumes derive a tactile quality from the unexpected structures of folded and layered paper. They create an architectural landscape, interacting with the bodies wearing them. On the runway during the fashion show, the models’ bodies in their skin-coloured body suits provide structure, like supporting pillars. The costumes are creating an architectural scenography of their own, overshadowing the bodies of the wearers, stealing attention from the moving, human bodies. The entire collection was later used by pop icon Lady Gaga in a music video (Lady Gaga 2014). Her dancers wore paper costumes, creating a surreal and unexpected visual effect. Paper costumes are fragile; they easily get ripped and stained. Szenfeld describes how the costumes arrived in pieces when returned by Lady Gaga, and that she had to mend and restore them for months (Szenfeld 2014). This is also mentioned by Karolina Henke, who talks about how the paper costumes were shipped in protective cellular plastic packaging material from the United States, and how all the miniscule plastic balls clung to the garments, got stuck between the layers of paper and had to be removed by hand, one after the other (Henke 2018). Bea Szenfeld comments on the transience of fashion by choosing paper as working material (Kjellmer 2018). Her collections borrow their means of expression from the fashion world, but the garments are more art than fashion – wearable, but for visual consumption rather than daily use. They are couture, as in handmade, high-quality, one-of-a-kind garments, crafted in a timeconsuming process through endless cutting and stitching. They are art, as in artistic creations and visual objects for exhibition purposes. They are paradoxical – wearable unwearables – impossible to categorize and thus challenging to the viewer. When Björk wears one of Szenfeld’s paper jackets at an awards ceremony the boundaries between costume, art and wearable garments are called into question. This is even more the case when Lady Gaga borrows an entire paper collection to use as dance costumes in a music video. Worn by celebrities, the costumes are photographed, discussed and become celebrities themselves, evolving in various media and more or less seamlessly feeding into our visual memory. The already famous costumes in the Haute Papier S/S14 collection also played important roles during the Eurovision song contest in 2016. Reaching over 200 million viewers (Eurovision 2016), the show used the costumes in the opening act.

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Singers from all countries walked along a runway, followed by dancers in the paper costumes (Style me Parisian 2016). Images of the performers’ national flags were projected onto the white costumes, transforming them into key features of the scenography, moving on the stage. Szenfeld’s paper costumes have been exhibited in several fashion exhibitions, in Sweden and abroad. One example is the 2015 exhibition Utopian Bodies – Fashion Looks Forward at Liljevalchs Art museum in Stockholm, where Szenfeld exhibited several paper garments and objects (Liljevalchs 2015). Another example is Paper Stories at the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, Stockholm, where her experimental paper work fit well into the overall theme: the seemingly endless possibilities offered by paper as a material (Östasiatiska museet 2018a, b). Among the objects shown in both exhibitions was Very Ape, a heavy gorilla made of white paper, and intended to be carried on one’s hip like a giant baby. The same gorilla is portrayed in Jonatan, the photograph of the sleeping young dancer in the Opera Papier campaign. The gorilla has a small credit-card slot in its neck and has been described on several occasions by Szenfeld as a ‘Shut-up handbag’. Very Ape has become a signature piece for Szenfeld’s paper art, both in fashion shows where it is carried as an accessory and as an independent artwork. In the Opera Papier campaign, the previous media history of Szenfeld’s costumes is present as an important communicative component. Marvin Carlson’s discussion about ghosting and memory is, I think, helpful for understanding this. Carlson emphasizes how theatre is based on memory, building on references to past experiences. He refers to this phenomenon as ghosting, and shows how every theatrical performance on some level knowingly or unknowingly carries the traces of previous performances of the play and the actors’ roles in the past (Carlson 2001). But ghosting is not limited to theatrical memories; it is also about more general cultural references (Carlson 2001: 96–130). The concept of ghosting thus helps us understand how costumes can be used as visual references to position a character in a discourse already familiar to the viewer. When seeing Clyde Archer perform in the paper tunic, we might also remember seeing the same tunic in the Eurovision parade or in Lady Gaga’s music video. When Gina Tse struggles with the floral beard in an advertisement for the Royal Opera, we also see its former life on the runway or as a fashion object exhibited in a museum. We do not have to recognize the object itself; the style or execution of the object is enough to evoke ghosting. Rena Narumi’s halo of shoes, for example, was made specifically for the campaign, but is still crafted in Szenfeld’s distinctive style, so that anyone familiar with her work

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would recognize it as hers and ultimately link it to the collection and its history. Speaking with Carlson, the fame and previous history of the costumes featured in Opera Papier are ‘ghosting’ the photographs and add a layer of meaning to the entire ad campaign. They become more than just paper costumes; they turn into personalities, actors, couture and art at the same time. In the following I will look more closely into this costume agency and explore what the costumes do in the campaign.

Costume agency in visual events Szenfeld’s costumes clearly come across as co-creative actors in a visual performance featuring them both as fashion and art, but they also seem to have a career of their own. Could it be useful to analytically isolate them, to see them individually, separated from the body wearing them and the surrounding environment? Theatre scholar Aoife Monks (2010) argues that costume has a paradoxical quality. On stage, it is an inseparable part of the actor’s body. But a costume is also an outfit that can be removed and viewed separately, though it still remains linked to the character in the performance. She says: ‘Costume is a body that can be taken off ’ (2010: 11). Monks’ discussion of costume as a separate body clarifies how costumes are more than just dress in a performance or a visual event, and how they create a link between what we see and what we experience. In the case of Opera Papier, I would argue that Szenfeld’s costumes can be understood as separate bodies, co-acting with the performers wearing them. They act as co-creative agents in the visual event. When isolated in this way the costumes become bodies of their own, like sculptural or architectural elements, and as such they act as subjects rather than objects in the photographs, partaking in the meaning making and playing their own roles. Bodies and costumes visibly interact with each other in the images. The paper garlands in the tunic worn by Clyde Archer weigh him down, but also serve to show his artistic skill; when balancing on one leg, he overcomes the gravity of the heavy garment. The folded music sheets around Anna Danielsson’s face frame her, radiate from her open mouth and carry her voice far outside the picture. The double costume of Ayman Al Fakir and Emelie Hörnlund surrounds them, but also underlines the complexity and elegance of their music. It takes skill and determination to manage the French horn and the violin inside the paper cloud, and in collaboration with this costume, the effort is made both tangible and explicit.

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Woven into the costumes are the time and the meticulous handicraft, visible for everybody to see. The painstakingly slow process of hand-cutting the paper, folding it, piecing it together is staggering. Szenfeld explains that one garment might weigh 30–40 kilograms and take four to seven months to finish, and that every single paper detail is cut out by hand and has its own specific place in the garment (Stawreberg 2018). The costumes visibly show off the skill and craft it takes to produce them. Costume and body shape each other; interacting and reacting, they create a new whole. The body awakens the costume, gives it movement and life. The costume visually frames and accentuates the character portrayed, but it also contributes physically to producing the actors’ body on stage through its physical impact on the actor’s body. Bodily shape, posture and movement patterns are all affected by the materiality and physical impact of costuming. Rachel Hann and Sidsel Bech discuss the role of costumes in ‘Critical costume’, the introduction to a special issue on costume in the journal Scene. They write: For costume is both an act of revelation and concealment, as it shapes action while simultaneously disguising the body’s form and texture. While this includes the affect of fabric and the appearance politics of fashion, it is also intended to emphasize the reciprocal interactions that occur between performer and costume, spectator and action, fabric and movement. (Hann and Bech 2014: 4)

They highlight the multiple ways that costume has significance for the body on stage and the scenographic whole, and argue that the spectator is drawn into this exchange. Hence, the act of watching can no longer be regarded as passive, but rather as an active participatory act of co-creating the visual event. As pointed out by Donatella Barbieri, the relationship between costume, body and performance is so important that costume might possibly be considered to ‘co-author’ the performance (2017: xxii). Pointing out that costume makes meaning on many levels, she shows how costume links the audience to the performance. She writes: ‘Its ability to communicate metaphorically and viscerally provides a direct, visual, and embodied connection to the audience’ (2017: xxii). This line of thought is equally valid if we consider the Opera Papier campaign and the way Szenfeld’s paper costumes interact with the spectator metaphorically through ghosting and references to popular culture, and physically through the embodied experience of the paper material. Rachel Hann further emphasizes the active role of costume when she writes: ‘In designing costume, we are designing action, for the process of costuming is a situated bodily event that is composed in relation to the wider scenographic scheme and requirements of

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theatre. Costume choreographs action, while choreography activates costume’ (2019: 48). In this quote, she highlights the crucial interrelationship between body and costume, and also shows how bodies and costumes are shaping each other. Body and costume are producing meaning together, and could also be said to produce each other in mutual dependence. In the Opera Papier campaign, the costumes not only shape the bodies of the dancers and musicians, but are also choreographed into new shapes, compared to their former appearance in fashion shows and fashion exhibitions. They produce, but are also produced by, the bodies wearing them. For me, engaging with the campaign is a multisensory, emotional experience. Darkness and shadows create an ambiguous, baroque-like aesthetic in the photographs. Gina Tse in her floral beard, Emma Vetter in her voluminous fur-like paper-collar and matching hat. The impression they make is elegant but somewhat uncanny – looking at an image is obviously not an entirely visual experience. The sharp pleats of the folded paper are highly tactile, and as a spectator, the pain of a paper cut lingers close to the surface of my own skin. Laura Marks (2000) points to the embodied and multisensory experience of looking when using an empathic gaze, or ‘haptic visuality’, as opposed to straightforward observation or ‘optic visuality’. In short, this is a way to express how visual impressions might connect to memories of previous experiences and transform a visual encounter into an embodied sensation. Speaking with Marks’ terminology, employing haptic visuality, we feel what we see, and the interplay between the visual objects in the photographs might thus create multisensory embodied reactions. The multisensory qualities of images have also been highlighted by W. J. T. Mitchell (2005b) in ‘There are no visual media’, where he argues that ‘so-called visual media’ always involve other senses, and Nicholas Mirzoeff, who states: ‘Seeing is actually a system of sensory feedback from the whole body, not just the eyes’ (2016: 13). Clearly, the photographs convey strong multisensory qualities. Paper is a lightweight material, fragile and easy to tear apart, and yet heavy in large quantities. It signals materiality and tactility. When costumes change from artistic objects into costume, into wearable garments, bodies will activate them but also stain and mark them. The stiff paper on moving bodies will tear. The dry paper will be stained by sweat and dirt; traces of the bodies will mark them, age them. There are multiple examples of paper costumes being used in performance to point to the fragility of the body and of human life. One interesting example

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is their use by Ong Keng Sen in performance workshops for Search: Hamlet (2007) and their subsequent influence in later performances. Paper costumes were torn to shreds in an exercise where their vulnerability symbolized human nature (Barbieri 2017: 26–8). Barbieri writes: ‘Ultimately not included in the performance, the torn, rejected rehearsal costumes had nonetheless proposed a way of devising, by focusing on form, material performativity, light, and movement as channels for empathy in the making of the show’ (Barbieri 2017: 28). This example shows how the material and tactile properties of paper can convey meaning not only as finished costumes, but also as a working material in physical and embodied dialogue with the performers. I find unpleasantness in the photos as well: sharpness, messiness and surreal shapes taking over and choking the bodies wearing them. They are striking, beautiful, but also vaguely uncomfortable and disturbing. Described by Roland Barthes as ‘an element which rises from the scene, shoots out of it like an arrow, and pierces me’ (Barthes 1980: 26), punctum is created by these costumes in each and every photograph, at least for me. I suggest that this unease is also a part of what makes Opera Papier interesting, and is what captures our attention and can affect us and let the images get under our skin. One of the themes I find in the campaign revolves around belonging. The photos are about looking in and looking out, who belongs on stage, who is permitted backstage and, in a broader sense, who belongs at the Opera in general. When Rena Narumi blows us a kiss from the centre of the circle of shoes, she looks out from the inside, presumably at the audience. The photographs are literally staged at the Opera, and not only in the public areas. We are invited into the building, into the foyer, together with the performers. In full makeup, together with the white paper costumes, they create a spectacular show. But it doesn’t end there, one of the photographs is an invitation to come further in, backstage. The photograph of Jonatan asleep in the arms of the paper gorilla allows us, it seems, to enter the non-public areas of the Opera. Having occupied an outsider position, we are finally on the inside; we belong. The use of Szenfeld’s costumes, with their connection to popular culture, confirms that Opera can be accessible and enjoyable, that it can be for everyone.

Conclusion: Towards a concept of visual couture In Opera Papier, we meet bodies and costumes performing together in the visual event. The tactile and material properties of the paper costumes, and the

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visible time and skill necessary to the crafting process are conveyed in a delicate interplay when worn by the performing artists. These material and embodied qualities, as captured in Henke’s photographs, lead to my concluding idea, which is a way of looking at costumes as actors in the visual event, or what I would like to call visual couture. By combining a visual culture perspective with recent theoretical developments within costume research I have explored the ad campaign Opera Papier as a visual event to further develop the concept of visual couture. Visual couture, as I see it, focuses on garments that are made for visual consumption, but also actively contribute to the visual event, acting and doing rather than just being decorative or eye catching. In Opera Papier this refers to the role of the crafted and performed costumes and their contribution to the production of the visual event. What started as a visual-cultural analysis of an advertisement campaign, initially undertaken by the Royal Swedish Opera to communicate a new marketing concept, ended up as something else. As the analysis unfolded, the paper costumes and the bodies wearing them seemed to do much more than just communicate a message about the Opera. The costumes took on a more active role than just being decorative and eye-catching visual elements, and I came to view them as co-creators of the campaign, together with the performers wearing them and the creative team behind the staging and the marketing concept. Bea Szenfeld’s work is about experimenting and showcasing the possibilities of paper as material. She explores fashion as an expressive medium and re-negotiates the boundaries between body, costume and art. Even if her collections borrow their means of expression from the fashion world, the actual garments do more than just present themselves as spectacular fashion objects. They are wearable craft; they interact with the body, but the fragility of the paper material indicates that they are created for visual consumption rather than daily use. The fragility of the paper costumes makes them obvious examples of visual couture to my eye. This fragility, combined with the muscular bodies of the performers wearing them, contributes to the visual impact of the photographs. These paper costumes act both as separate bodies and as objects created for visual consumption. In the photographs, they shape the bodies wearing them, while communicating to the spectator an embodied materiality and a sensitivity to time, crafting skill and handmade couture. As visual couture, the costumes interact with the bodies wearing them, re-negotiating the boundaries between body and costume as co-authors of the truly multisensory performance in the Opera Papier campaign.

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References Barbieri, D. (2017), Costume in Performance: Materiality, Culture and the Body, London and New York: Bloomsbury. Barthes, R. (1980), Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, trans. R. Howard, New York: Hill & Wang. Carlson, M. (2001), The Haunted Stage: The Theatre as Memory Machine, Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. Everything You can Imagine Is Real (2016), Dansmuseet/Museum of movement, 27 May–25 September, Stockholm: Dansmuseet. Gombrich, E. H. ([1972] 1982), ‘The Visual Image: Its Place in Communication’, in E. H. Gombrich (ed.), The Image and the Eye: Further Studies in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation, 137–61, London: Phaidon Press. Hann, R. (2019), Beyond Scenography, Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Hann, R. and Bech, S. (2014), ‘Critical Costume’, Scene, 2 (1&2), 3–8. Kjellmer, V. (2018), ‘Fragile Fashion: The Paper Dress as Art and Visual Consumption’, in A. Peirson-Smith and J. H. Hancock II (eds), Transglobal Fashion Narratives: Written Clothing, Mediated Style Statements and Brand Storytelling, 237–52, Bristol and Chicago: Intellect. Marks, L. U. (2000), The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses, Durham and London: Duke University Press. Mirzoeff, N. (1999), An Introduction to Visual Culture, London: Routledge. Mirzoeff, N. (2002), ‘The Subject of Visual Culture’, in N. Mirzoeff (ed.), The Visual Culture Reader, 2d edn, 3–23, London and New York: Routledge. Mirzoeff, N. (2016), How to See the World, New York: Basic Books. Mitchell, W. J. T. (2005a), What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. Mitchell, W. J. T. (2005b), ‘There Are No Visual Media’, Journal of Visual Culture, 4 (2), 257–66. Monks, A. (2010), The Actor in Costume, Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Robach, C. (2012), SlowArt, Stockholm: National Museum. Schroeder, J. E. (2002), Visual Consumption, London: Routledge. Stawreberg, A. (2018), ‘Jag köper aldrig nya kläder’ [I never buy new clothes], ICAkuriren, 8 August 2018. Sykes, A. (2016), ‘Barn flyr till skogs i protest’ [Children run away into the woods in protest], Landets Fria, 23 November 2016.

[www] References Szenfeld, B. (2010), ‘Bea Szenfeld + Björk = True’. Available online: https​:/​/ww​​w​.sze​​nfeld​​ .com/​​bea​-s​​zenfe​​ld​-bj​​​ork​-t​​rue/ published 22 September 2010 (accessed 18 September 2016).

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Szenfeld, B. (2014), ‘Sommar i P1 med Bea Szenfeld’ [Summer in P1 with Bea Szenfeld]. Available online: Sveriges Radio (41,00): https​:/​/sv​​erige​​sradi​​o​.se/​​sida/​​avsni​​tt​/41​​ 2703?​​prog​r​​amid=​​2071 Published 7 August 2014, 1 pm (accessed 12 November 2018). Eurovision (2016), ‘Eurovision Song Contest attracts 204 million viewers!’. Available online: http:​/​/www​​.euro​​visio​​n​.tv/​​page/​​news?​​id​=eu​​rovis​​ion​_s​​ong​_c​​ontes​​t​_att​​racts​​ _20​4_​​milli​​on​_vi​​ewers​ Published 25 May 2016 (accessed 4 November 2016). Frez, T. (2013), ‘Bea Szenfeld Haute Papier at Mercedes Benz Fashion Show, photo: Tito Frez’. Available online: YouTube (3.24): https​:/​/ww​​w​.you​​tube.​​com​/w​​atch?​​v​=stp​​​ 53Me_​​nHQ Published 29 August 2013 (accessed 12 March 2017). Lady Gaga (2014), ‘Lady Gaga - G.U.Y. - an ARTPOP Film’. Available online: YouTube (11.46): https​:/​/ww​​w​.you​​tube.​​com​/w​​atch?​​v​=PNu​​_​-deV​​emE Published 22 March 2014 (accessed 25 September 2016). Liljevalchs Art Museum Stockholm (2015), ‘Utopian bodies. Fashion looks forward. Stockholm 25 September 2015–7 February 2016’. Available online: http:​/​/www​​ .lilj​​evalc​​hs​.se​​/utst​​allni​​ngar/​​utopi​​an​-bo​​dies-​​fashi​​on​-l​o​​oks​-f​​orwar​​d/ (accessed 4 February 2017). Östasiatiska museet/The Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities (2018a), ‘Bea Szenfeld: Paper Gallery, Paper Stories, Östasiatiska Museet [Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, Stockholm] 23 February–3 June 2018’. Available online: http:​/​/www​​.varl​​ dskul​​turmu​​seern​​a​.se/​​en​/os​​tasia​​tiska​​musee​​t​/exh​​ibiti​​ons​/c​​urren​​t​-exh​​ibiti​​on​/pa​​per​-s​​ torie​​s​/bea​​​-szen​​feld-​​paper​​-gall​​ery/ (accessed 25 February 2018). Östasiatiska museet/The Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities (2018b), ‘Paper Stories’. Available online: http:​/​/www​​.varl​​dskul​​turmu​​seern​​a​.se/​​en​/os​​tasia​​tiska​​ musee​​t​/exh​​ibiti​​ons​/c​​urren​​t​-exh​​ibiti​​on​/pa​​per​-s​​​torie​​s​/pap​​er​-st​​ories​/ (accessed 11 July 2018). Polar Music Prize (2010), ‘Björk. Laureate of the Polar Music Prize 2010’. Available online: http:​/​/www​​.pola​​rmusi​​cpriz​​e​.org​​/laur​​eates​​​/bjor​​k/ (accessed 18 September 2016). popkomse (2014), ‘Stockholm Graphics och Kungliga Operan vinner Svenska Publishing-priset 2014’ [Stockholm Graphics and the Swedish Royal Opera win the Swedish publishing award 2014]. Available online: YouTube (2.55): https​:/​/ww​​ w​.you​​tube.​​com​/w​​atch?​​v​=S​_​q​​LCmq1​​mng Published 141017 (accessed 7 October 2018). Stockholm Graphics (2017), ‘Kungliga Operan’ [The Royal Swedish Opera]. Available online: https://www​.stockholmgraphics​.com​/operan (Accessed 20 March 2017). Style me Parisian (2016), ‘Eurovision intro Parade, May 2016’. Available online: stylemeparisian (05.40): http:​/​/sty​​lemep​​arisi​​an​.co​​m​/eur​​ovisi​​on​-20​​16​-op​​en​ing​​-catw​​ alk/ (accessed 4 November 2016). The Royal Swedish Opera (2014), ‘Bea från Lady Gaga till Opera Papier’ [Bea from Lady Gaga to Opera Papier]. Available online: http:​/​/www​​.myne​​wsdes​​k​.com​​/se​/k​​ungli​​ ga​_op​​eran/​​press​​relea​​ses​/b​​ea​-fr​​aan​-l​​ady​-g​​aga​-t​​il​l​-o​​pera-​​papie​​r​-977​​358 Published 27 March 2014 (accessed 10 January 2017).

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Interviews Hedengren, P. (2018), Interview by Viveka Kjellmer with Pompe Hedengren, Creative Director, Stockholm Graphics, Stockholm 5 December 2018. Henke, K. (2018), Telephone interview by Viveka Kjellmer with Karolina Henke, Photographer, Stockholm 5 December 2018. Strinnvik, J. (2018), Interview by Viveka Kjellmer with Johanna Strinnvik, Producer, Skarp Agency, Stockholm 5 December 2018.

9

‘Re-dressing the part’ The ‘scenographic strategies’ of Ellen Terry (1847–1928) Veronica Isaac

Introduction Neither when I began nor yet later in my career have I ever played under a management where infinite pains were not given to every detail. I think that far from hampering the acting, a beautiful and congruous background and harmonious costumes, representing accurately the spirit of the time in which the play is supposed to move, ought to help and inspire the actor. (Terry 1908: 10)

A leading actress of the nineteenth century, Ellen Terry (1847–1928), is distinguished by the interest she took in the design and creation of her stage dress and, as importantly, the level of agency she was able to exercise over this process. Highly attuned to the significance of dress as an expression of identity, Terry consciously used her clothing, both on and off the stage, to fashion and sustain a position as a figurehead of the Aesthetic movement and an actress who understood the ‘art of dress’. Joslin McKinney and Scott Palmer argue that scenography is ‘not simply a by-product of theatre but [. . .] a mode of encounter and exchange founded on spatial and material relations between bodies, objects and environments’ (2017: 2–3). Similarly, Arnold Aronson suggests theatre scenography resides ‘within a much larger framework of art, architecture and social practice’ (2017: xiv). Building on the ‘expanded’ approach to scenography advocated by McKinney and Palmer, this chapter examines the ‘scenographic strategies’ Terry employed to manipulate the different ‘scenic environments’ within which she ‘performed’. Stephen Greenblatt’s contention that, ‘human identity’ can be ‘fashioned’ as part of a ‘manipulable, artful process’, offers further insights into the ‘scenographic

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strategies’ Terry employed to ‘fashion’ her public identity (1980: 2–3). Reflecting on the ‘set of possibilities’ available to women in nineteenth-century society, this chapter considers how Terry – an actress celebrated for her ‘womanliness’ and ‘charm’ – used her ‘scenographic agency’ to negotiate the ‘limitations and opportunities’ associated with this persona (Irwin 2017: 121). Focusing on Terry’s time as the leading lady of the Lyceum Theatre (1878– 1902), the discussion highlights the agency Terry exercised over a specific ‘scenographic element’ within Lyceum productions: her costume. Particular attention is paid to her costuming practices in The Amber Heart (1887) and Macbeth (1888): productions which illustrate the impact that Aestheticism had upon attitudes towards stage design and mark the pinnacle of Terry’s professional success. The analysis of the ‘scenographic strategies’ Terry employed in these roles reveals the crucial role Terry’s dress played in ‘co-authoring’ her performances (Barbieri 2017: n.p.).

‘The cult of beauty’ During the decades which mark the peak of Terry’s professional career (c. 1875– 95), the influence of the Aesthetic movement on British art, design and dress was at its height. Terry worked with, and was trained by, figures leading the concurrent, and related, reforms taking place in art and design both on, and off, the stage. Her relationships with the painter G. F. Watts and the architect and designer, E. W. Godwin, introduced her to the design principles advocated by the Aesthetic movement and, as importantly, the ‘scenographic strategies’ required to establish an ‘aesthetic identity’. Terry acknowledged the enduring influence of Watt’s training on her understanding of art and credited Godwin with initiating her ‘[. . .] interest in colour, texture, effects of light on colour, the meaning of dress, and a certain taste for beauty which [she] never lost’ (Terry 1911: 74). The daughter of two strolling players, Terry was immersed in the theatre from her birth in 1847. She made her stage debut in 1856, aged eight years old, performing the role of Mamillius in The Winter’s Tale, alongside actor/manager Charles Kean (1811–1868) as Leontes. Kean’s productions were distinguished by the importance attached to ‘historical authenticity’: offering audiences an experience in which ‘Archaeological findings and the Mediaeval Court could [. . .] come to life’ (Hughes 1981: 3, Davis and Emeljanow 2001: 197–9). Terry

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had vivid memories of the ‘little red-and-silver dress’ and ‘very pink [and baggy] tights’ she wore for the part and attached equal importance to her ‘beautiful “property”’ – a ‘go-cart’ which had been ‘made in the theatre’ and was ‘an exact copy of a child’s toy as depicted on a Greek vase’ (Terry 1908: 14–15). Playbills for the production stressed the extensive research undertaken by the designers. Kean published his own ‘book of the play’ with ‘historical and explanatory notes’ (Kean and Shakesphere1856: np). The production was set partly in ‘Sicilia [and] sometimes in Bithynia (Bohemia)’ and, as Terry recalled, the ‘designs of the dresses were purely classic’ (Playbill 1856, Terry 1908: 14).1 Indeed, though Terry admired Kean’s acting, she attached far greater importance to the manager’s legacy as ‘a stage reformer than as an actor’ and felt that, while the old happy-go-lucky way of staging plays, with its sublime indifference to correctness of detail and its utter disregard of archaeology, had received its first blow from [Charles] Kemble and [William] Macready [. . .] Charles Kean gave it much harder knocks and went further than either of them in the good work. (Terry 1908: 9)

Terry spent over three years as part of Kean’s company (1856–9) and her time there had a formative influence on her attitude to stage design, kindling her interest in the archaeology of dress and making her particularly receptive to the influence of figures such as Godwin, whose approach to design exhibited the same precise attention to historical details as Kean’s (Terry 1908: 21). It was in the early 1860s that Terry, then employed with a stock company in Bristol, first visited Godwin’s house. The impact of this encounter on Terry was immediate: This house, with its Persian rugs, beautiful furniture, [. . .] its sense of design in every detail, was a revelation to me, and the talk of its master and mistress made me think.[. . .] For the first time I began to appreciate beauty, to observe, to feel the splendour of things, to aspire! (Terry 1908: 45)

While, at this point in their lives, the relationship remained professional, this early meeting was significant. It awakened Terry’s burgeoning interest in set and costume design and introduced her to a figure who was ‘[. . .] already dreaming of using his unequalled knowledge of the manners and customs, dress, dwellings, and furniture of other times – all that is included in the term “archaeology,” in fact – in the service of the theatre’ (Terry 1911: 74). Already established as a theatre critic, Godwin demonstrated his flair for costume design, when, in 1863, he created a dress for Terry to wear as Titania in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at

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the Theatre Royal Bath. This was the first of several costumes on which the pair would collaborate and, as Terry recalled in her autobiography: we made it at his house in Bristol. He showed me how to damp it and ‘wring’ it while it was wet, tying up the material as the Orientals do in their ‘tie and dry’ process, so that when it was dry and untied, it was all crinkled and clinging. This was the first lovely dress that I ever wore, and I learned a great deal from it. (Terry 1908: 47)

A move from Bristol to an engagement at the Haymarket Theatre, London, gave well-intentioned friends the opportunity to introduce Terry, and her elder sister Kate, to the painter, G. F. Watts. The contrast she now perceived between the coarse conversation and company of ‘the stage’ and the refinement of ‘the studio’ in which Watts painted the two sisters, intensified Terry’s growing disillusionment with her professional life. As she later admitted, ‘I was just dreaming of and aspiring after another world, a world full of pictures and music and gentle, artistic people with quiet voices and elegant manners. The reality of such a world was Little Holland House, the home of Mr Watts’ (Terry 1908: 48). Her marriage to Watts, in 1864, therefore offered Terry the opportunity to enter an environment which, as Caroline Dakers has discussed, ‘presented an Aesthetic “wholeness”, in which pictures, furniture, colours and textures blended together, Nothing jarred’ (1999: 27). Though Terry’s admiration for this Aesthetic idyll endured, her marriage to Watts did not. Within a year the couple had separated, and Terry had to return to the stage and her parents. Terry hated coming home, her mother furnished a room for her, but to her to newly educated taste, the furniture seemed ‘hideous’ (Terry 1908: 61). Deeply unhappy and frustrated with her life, in 1868 she abandoned her family and her career, to live with the recently widowed Godwin.

‘A sense of decorative effect’ As Aronson has observed ‘[. . .] the notion of performance extends well beyond traditional notions of theatre into a much broader range of human activity’ (2017: xv). Indeed, as Baz Kershaw asserts, ‘scenographic strategies’ are not restricted to the stage, playing an equally important part within the ‘performances’ which are an inherent part of social interaction: interior design turns homes into sets, fashion turns clothes into costumes [. . .] and, in a neat trick in the feedback loop of mediatization, communications turn social exchange into a self-dramatizing set of scenes and scenarios. (2001: 206)

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These ‘scenographic strategies’ are, as Hann notes, particularly evident in ‘how individuals relate to – and sculpt – their lived environments’ (2019: 99). They are certainly immediately apparent in the dress, décor and lifestyle which Terry adopted to advertise her allegiance to Aestheticism. When Terry first encountered Godwin, in the early 1860s, the ideals of Aestheticism were just beginning to gain attention within art and society. By the time they met again, in 1868, however, Aestheticism had secured its position as a movement promoting an ‘art’ which was ‘self-consciously absorbed in itself, aware of the past but created for the present age, and existing only in order to be beautiful’ (Prettejohn 2007: 5, Calloway 2011: 11). Godwin was among those at the forefront of this new movement in art and design and their relationship brought Terry into close association with key figures within the ‘Aesthetic world’. Terry spent six years living, unmarried, with Godwin (between c. 1868–74) and the pair had two children together: Edith Craig (1869–1947) and Edward Gordon Craig (1872–1966). During this period Terry, who, under the influence of Watts and his milieu, had already learnt to dress in softer styles, abandoned the stiff corsets, complex underpinnings and full skirts, which characterized fashionable dress in the mid- to late 1860s. With Godwin’s encouragement she began to adopt Aesthetic garments, wearing silk kimonos (imported from Japan) or loose dresses shaped with smocking and pleating and featuring the distinctive ‘Watteau back’ (or box pleats) – a style singled out for specific praise in handbooks on Aesthetic dress.2 Terry’s time with Godwin also influenced her taste in interior decoration. While Watts introduced her to the concept of a harmonious domestic environment, Godwin taught her to create such spaces for herself. The importance of cultivating ‘harmony’ between dress and décor was a central tenant of the Aesthetic movement and an account of a visit to their London house in 1874 offers an insight into the Aesthetic ‘harmony’ cultivated by the pair (Haweis 1883: 124). The actor and painter, Johnston Forbes-Robertson (1853–1937), recalled being shown into a drawing room where the ‘floor was covered with straw coloured matting’ and the white walls, divided by a dado ‘of the same material’, were decorated with hangings of ‘cretonne, with a fine Japanese pattern in delicate grey-blue’. The room was dominated by a ‘full sized cast of the Venus of Milo’ in front of which stood a pedestal and censer ‘from which rose, curling round the Venus, ribbons of blue smoke’. He also described Terry’s ‘floating’ entrance into the room, presenting her as a ‘vision of loveliness’ whose ‘blue kimono’ and ‘wonderful golden hair’ was so perfectly suited to the

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setting that ‘she seemed to melt into the surroundings and appeared almost intangible’ (1925: 66–7). Terry had been reluctant to recommence her stage career and her return to London had been prompted primarily by financial necessity (she and Godwin were in debt, with bailiffs at the door) (Terry 1908: 80). Though she soon began to achieve some professional success, her relationship with Godwin was breaking down and by 1875 the pair had parted completely. Terry was now the sole financial support for her family and entirely dependent on the money earned from her acting. The Bancroft’s 1875 production of The Merchant of Venice, in which she played Portia for the first time, signalled a crucial shift in her fortunes. With lavish sets and costumes, designed by Godwin and inspired by Paolo Veronese’s The Wedding Feast at Cana (1563), the production epitomized Aestheticism’s veneration for the past and its ‘true enthusiasm for anything beautiful’ (Terry 1908: 104–8). Although the play proved a commercial disaster, it was declared an artistic triumph. Terry’s performance as Portia, in a ‘china blue and white brocaded dress’ and stiff black robes, received particular critical acclaim and public attention (Comyns-Carr 1926: 31). By 1878, Terry was regarded as one of the foremost actresses in London. Her growing celebrity attracted the attention of the actor/manager Sir Henry Irving (1838–1905) who invited her to become the leading lady of his ‘Lyceum Company’. As Martin Meisel suggests, Terry ‘[. . .] brought Irving a great deal more than pictorial appeal, aesthetic credentials, and a following alert to decorative elegance’ (Meisel 1983: 403). Indeed, in accepting Irving’s offer, Terry was confident that she would be able to bring the actor/manager ‘help in pictorial matters’, declaring: Judgement about colours, clothes and lighting must be trained. I had learned from Mr. Watts, from Mr. Godwin, and from other artists, until a sense of decorative effect had become second nature to me. (Terry 1908: 150)

A position as Irving’s leading lady, offered Terry the opportunity to put these ‘scenographic strategies’ into practice.

Performing within a ‘Temple of Art’ During his time as manager of the Lyceum Theatre, Irving remained committed to establishing and sustaining its status as a ‘Temple of Art’ and

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‘theatre of beauty’ (Meisel 1983: 402–3). His anxiety for ‘complete accuracy in every particular detail’ of his productions, was such that he also carried out painstaking research into the historical period and country in which they were set (Comyns-Carr 1926: 149). As Terry observed, Irving was concerned with the overall ‘picture’ as well as the ‘scenic effects’ and ‘[. . .] would never accept anything that was not theatrically right as well as pictorially beautiful’ (Terry 1908: 172). To achieve this ‘harmony’, he was prepared to invest vast sums in scenery, costume and special effects, and the Lyceum Company became renowned for their large-scale and spectacular productions (Richards 2005: 5). What distinguished Irving’s approach to management, however, was the interest he took in all ‘scenographic elements’ of the production (music; lighting; costume; set; movement and the cast). ‘There was’, as Terry noted, ‘no detail too small for Henry Irving’s notice. He never missed anything that was cumulative – that would contribute to something in the whole effect’ (Terry 1908: 170). It is therefore particularly significant that, even with his desire for complete oversight and control, Irving felt that Terry could be trusted to meet his high standards. From the commencement of their partnership she was free to work with her own costume designer and, unlike the rest of the cast (whose outfits would generally be made-up by the in-house wardrobe), Terry often employed an external dressmaker to create her costumes, the most lavish of which cost in excess of 150 pounds (Boston 1897: 16).3 Their stage partnership lasted for over two decades, and its success rested on their mutual respect for, and trust in, each other’s professional ability and judgement – particularly in relation to the ‘scenographic strategies’ they employed on the stage. Meisel has argued that, ‘Irving, with his traditional stage wisdom and sense of scenic effect, assimilated Ellen Terry’s gifts and knowledge to an idea of a theater [sic] that bridged the widening gap between aesthete and philistine’ (Meisel 1983: 403). Yet, although Irving continued to decide upon the period in which the play was to be set and the tonal values of each scene, Terry retained control over her own costumes and was also consulted regarding those worn by other members of the cast (Cumming 1987: 70). Similarly Terry, recognizing that Irving ‘worked for progressive effect and an atmosphere that was appropriate to the whole’, came to appreciate that, although she ‘knew more of art and archaeology in dress than [Irving] did, he had a finer sense of what was right for the  scene’ (Meisel 1983: 406, Terry 1908: 157).

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‘Archaeologically correct and artistically appropriate’ The values promoted by the Aesthetic movement, specifically the emphasis its adherents placed on the beauty that results through ‘harmony’, and the inspiration which can be drawn from the past, fuelled a wider desire for theatre costumes which were ‘archaeologically correct and artistically appropriate’ (Wilde 1891: np).4 This interest in researching and documenting an accurate ‘archaeology of dress’ increased throughout Terry’s career (Taylor 2004: 36–7). In his 1891 article, The Truth of Masks, Oscar Wilde (1854–1900), reflected upon the ‘desire for archaeological accuracy in dress’ which, he claimed, ‘has distinguished the great actors of our age’ (Wilde 1891: np). Archaeology was not, Wilde explained, ‘a pedantic method, but a method of artistic illusion’ in which ‘costume is a means of displaying character without description, and of producing dramatic situations and dramatic effects’ (Wilde 1891: np). His writing demonstrated a keen understanding of theatrical practice during this period and stressed the need for same harmony between set and costume on the stage as one would demand in a room, or picture. Wilde’s emphasis on the beauty which results through ‘harmony’, stemmed primarily from the quest for synaesthesia, or the unity of all the senses, promoted by the Aesthetic movement – an approach to design resembling Richard Wagner’s (1813–1883) concept of the ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’ and with a comparable influence on stage practice. Significantly, the Lyceum Theatre was among the venues which Wilde credited with exemplifying successful harmonious and archaeologically correct stage costume. Terry clearly respected Wilde’s judgement, praising and quoting from this earlier article in pieces she herself wrote on ‘Stage Decoration’ in 1911 (1911: 90). Similarly, her autobiography records how she always discussed designs with the scene painters, consulting them ‘about the colour, so that I should not look wrong in their scenes, nor their scenes wrong with my dresses’ (Terry 1908: 69). Working with Kean and living with Watts and Godwin had taught Terry the importance of adapting her dress to match her ‘scenic environment’. She took an active interest in the design and creation of her theatrical costumes throughout her time at the Lyceum and was, as her friend, the couturier Lucile (Lady Duff Gordon 1863–1935) declared, ‘intensely particular’ about her ‘theatre clothes’ (1932: 33–4). She was especially conscious of the impact of lighting and colour on the success, or otherwise, of costumes and set, arguing that both the form and the colour of all stage dresses must be governed by the individual actor’s appearance, by the general scheme of colour in each scene (this

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again being governed by the dramatic situation), and by the relative importance of colours, and then the limelight men may take the best-laid scheme ‘gang aft agley’. (Terry 1911: 88)

Appreciating the practical and artistic considerations which shaped the design process, Terry sought to balance her individual taste in dress with the Aesthetic demands of the stage, even, on occasion, sacrificing personal comfort for visual and dramatic effect (Terry 1911: 88). Her privileged position at the Lyceum Theatre provided the opportunity to capitalize on her ‘scenographic training’. Within this ‘scenic environment’ she could create costumes that not only fulfilled their dramatic purpose, (reinforcing and expressing the characters being represented), but which also realized their artistic goal: achieving the ‘harmony’ between set and costume valued by the Aesthetic movement (Auerbach 1987: 171). During Terry’s first decade at the Lyceum Theatre, Patience Harris (1857– 1901) had primary responsibility for the design of her costumes.5 From 1882, however, Harris was assisted by Alice Comyns-Carr (1850–1927). Like Terry, Comyns-Carr was a committed advocate of Aesthetic dress and both her personal dress, and many of the costumes she designed for Terry, reflect the influence of the Movement (Comyns-Carr 1926: 26). Comyns-Carr initially worked alongside Harris, but the collaboration was not a success. ComynsCarr attributes much of the disharmony between herself and Harris to the fact that, ‘Patience was always in favour of elaborate and pretentious gowns and had but little use for the simple designs I suggested’ (1926: 79, 84–5). Though their working relationship seems to have been tense, it endured until 1887, at which point Harris left the Lyceum and Comyns-Carr was given primary responsibility for Terry’s costumes. Terry continued to work closely with Comyns-Carr for nearly twenty years; their partnership ending only when Terry left the Lyceum Company in 1902. At five foot ten inches, Terry was unusually tall for a woman.6 Self-conscious and awkward during her teenage years, Terry learnt to control her ‘long and gaunt’ limbs, achieving a reputation for graceful and gliding movement on the stage (Terry 1908: 37). She continued to attach great importance to being able to move gracefully and appropriately in her costumes throughout her career (Terry 1908: 20–1). As Comyns-Carr, observed, Terry, though possessing ‘a fine sense’ of historical dress, would ‘jib at fashions that she fancied might interfere with her movement while acting’ (1926: 215–6). She therefore encouraged designers to consider the physical body of the performer when creating their costumes. Declaring:

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It is no use putting the right dress on the wrong actor or actress. The physical appearance of the person who is going to wear the dress must be borne in mind; so must the dramatic situation in which it is to be worn. Besides realising the character of the period to which they belong, the dresses must be appropriate to the emotions of the play, and must have a beauty relative to each other as well as an individual excellence. (Terry 1911: 75)

This observation encapsulates Terry’s appreciation of the relational nature of scenography (McKinney and Palmer 2017: 13). For this reason, while her partnership with Comyns-Carr frequently allowed her to appear in the ‘sinuous, flowing garments’ she preferred, Terry ensured that such costumes were only worn when they functioned as ‘a natural extension of her art, not a superimposition upon it’ (Cumming 1987: 73).

The Amber Heart (1887): Constructing an ‘Aesthetic self ’ Though Terry continued to ally herself with Aestheticism throughout her professional career, she was not simply following, or being ‘fashioned’ by, the movement. The 1887 production of The Amber Heart, illustrates how she actively exploited and embraced her association with Aestheticism to ‘form [a very specific] self ’ (Greenblatt 1980: 2–3). Written by Alfred Calmour (fl.1887–1900), the play centred on the fate of Ellaline, a woman protected from the pain of heartbreak by a charmed ‘Amber Heart’, but thereby doomed never to know true love. The narrative takes place within, and around, a castle. This ‘medieval’ setting accorded with the contemporary interest in reviving the art, furnishing and textiles of this era: exemplified in the popularity of the ‘Arts and Crafts’ style interiors promoted by Morris & Co and re-imagined in the paintings of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (Barringer et al. 2012; Parry et al. 2013). The ‘romantic vision of medieval simplicity of style’ is apparent in the costumes Terry wore for this production (Wilson 1984 [2001]: 209). Close stylistic links can, for instance, be identified between her primary costume and the pale silver blue gowns with their soft pleats and raised waistline depicted in Burne-Jones’s 1880 painting, The Golden Stairs.7 While the success of Terry’s costume did not depend on a familiarity with these visual references, they would have been apparent to followers of Aestheticism (who were advised to seek inspiration for their ‘artistic’ dress, in art galleries, cathedrals and books about period costume) (Ehrman 2011: 207; Haweis 1879: 76).

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Nearly a decade into her partnership with Irving, Terry was confident in her judgement about, and knowledge of, costume design, and, as crucially, in the agency which she could exercise over this process. This was the first production in which Terry acted without Irving, and she had a clear concept for the design of her costumes from the outset. In order to realize this vision, Terry dismissed her previous costume designer, Harris, and promoted Comyns-Carr to the role. Comyns-Carr’s innovative approach to design, signalled an immediate change in the style of Terry’s costumes, with a shift away from the stiff, ornate dresses favoured by Harris, towards softer, flowing garments, more closely aligned to Terry’s personal taste in dress. The costume Comyns-Carr created for this production was particularly unorthodox, the soft pleats shaping the dress, achieved by twisting the fabric of the dress ‘up into a ball and boil[ing] it in a potato steamer’ (Comyns-Carr 1926: 79). A version of the original gown survives in the collection at Smallhythe Place.8 It is made from very fine, softly pleated, translucent silk through which the inner tunic, made from a pale yellow silk and fitting slightly closer to the body than the loose outer dress, is visible. Bands of fabric, edged with metallic gold braid and embellished with spangles and cut glass discs, have been added at the low round neckline, at the cuffs of the wide, hanging sleeves, and at the hem. While the construction of the garment is based around a comparatively simple T-shape, weights added at the centre front bodice and at the interior hem of the inner tunic, have been used to control the fall of the garment, allowing it to skim, but not envelop, the body. It is a costume which achieves a clever balance between Terry’s personal taste, the practical demands of the production, and the styles popularized in handbooks on Aesthetic dress. The cut and fit of the dress exemplifies the Aesthetic predilection for garments which defied fashion, and drew inspiration from the past to create styles celebrating ‘the natural form’ and suited to the individual (Haweis 1879: 32). The wide hanging sleeves reference depictions of medieval dress, while the loose, flowing swathes of pale fabric echo classical robes, and are softly shaped using pleats and weights, rather than corsetry. The light silk and loose cut of the costume also facilitated the freedom of movement, so important within Aestheticism, and to Terry herself. Reviews of The Amber Heart focused on Terry’s ability to convey the sorrow and heartbreak of the heroine, but they also recognized the artistic references: We have seen Ellen Terry before, gliding under lilac trees, reposing in sunlight on gorgeous cushions, clasping her knees and standing before us a living

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embodiment of the best bits of pictures by Alma Tadema and Albert Moore. But seldom before – not even as Camma – has she so touched her audience with her acute wail of womanly grief [. . .] The accent of sorrow went straight to the heart, and the audience did not require one moment to consider: it was convinced.9

‘Costume is’, as Michele Liu Carriger, observes, ‘the element of the theatre that integrates the performer into the scenography’ (2017: 42). Terry’s successful ‘integration’ into the ‘scenic world’ of this production is apparent in reviews for both the original production, and subsequent revivals. These praise the ‘Scenery, costumes, and artistic grouping’ which ‘rejoice[d] the eye with perfect and refined pictures’.10 The photographs produced to promote the production echoed the mood of the play, and reinforced Terry’s allegiance to Aestheticism. Figure 9.1, for instance, shows her positioned alongside a lily, which, like the sunflower, and Terry herself, had been adopted as an icon of the Aesthetic movement (Gere and Hoskins 2000: 12, 13, 26).11 For Terry, this production offered an opportunity to assert her personal commitment to the artistic principals of the Aestheticism: independent of

Figure 9.1  Ellen Terry as Ellaline in The Amber Heart, 1887. Photograph. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Museum Number: S.133:407-2007.

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Irving, and, to an extent, the Lyceum Theatre. By presenting herself as an icon of a movement which venerated ‘art’ and ‘the artist’, Terry was establishing her identity as an ‘artist’ rather than simply an ‘actress’. There were limitations to Terry’s independence, however, and while she had achieved agency over her visual image, the control she exercised over the type of role she performed remained limited. As surviving reviews demonstrate, the popularity of the play owed much to Terry’s willingness to reprise her ‘womanly’ persona and provide audiences with the ‘grace and feminine charm’ which they had come to expect from the actress (Scott 1897: 356).

Macbeth (1888): Subverting femininity and ‘womanliness’ In spite of the controversial nature of her private life, Terry’s celebrity was founded, at least in part, on, what Sos Eltis termed, her position as ‘an icon of traditional feminine tenderness and virtue’ (Eltis 2013: 179). The frustration Terry felt regarding this characterization and the restrictions it placed on her professional ambitions are apparent in her private and published writings; specifically her declaration that critics were too ready to ‘Give a dog a bad name and hang him’ – the bad name in my case being ‘a womanly woman’! (Terry 1908: 328–9). The 1888 production of Macbeth therefore marked an important turning point in Terry’s career: heralding the moment at which she decided to show that there was ‘more to [her] acting than charm’ (Terry 1932: 13). Sodja Lotker and Richard Gough have touched on the degree to which certain ‘scenographies’ can provide opportunities for subversion and co-option, and the ‘scenographic strategies’ Terry enacted in the role of Lady Macbeth lend weight to their theories (Lotker and Gough 2013: 3). While audiences had eagerly anticipated Terry’s appearance as the beautiful ‘living poem’, Ellaline, the announcement that she was to play Shakespeare’s ambitious murderess, Lady Macbeth, provoked immediate controversy. Many felt that Terry’s ‘gentle womanliness’ would make it ‘impossible to for her to utter convincingly such a speech as that hideous invocation to “thick night” and the Spirits of Evil’, and that representing Lady Macbeth’s ‘diabolical and fiendish’ qualities was ‘beyond the wide scope of Miss Terry’s genius, great as it unquestionably is’.12 Undeterred, Terry remained determined to present her own, carefully researched, interpretation of the role. Her personal papers, and published writings testify to her conviction that Lady Macbeth was ‘A woman (all over a woman)’ who ‘was  not  a fiend, and  did  love her husband’ (Terry 1908:

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307).13 In a letter sent to her daughter in 1888, Terry stressed that, despite the criticism provoked by her feminine interpretation of the role, she had resolved ‘not [to] budge an inch in the reading of it, for that I know is right’. She was therefore prepared to ‘what is vulgarly called “sweat at it,” each night’ in order to counter any critics who claimed she wanted to ‘make [Lady Macbeth] a “gentle, lovable woman”’, for, ‘She was nothing of the sort’ (Terry 1908: 307). Terry’s costumes played a crucial part in her portrayal of Lady Macbeth: providing an immediate statement of her reading of the character. This is particularly evident in the dress she wore for her first appearance. The costume was deliberately designed to reproduce the effect of ‘chain mail’, an impression heightened by the serpentine gleam of the blue green beetle wing cases and metal tinsel which covered its surface (Comyns-Carr 1926: 211–12). It provided Terry with a form of ‘armour’ which conveyed her Lady Macbeth’s majesty and power and yet retained sufficient signs of femininity and beauty to placate even the harshest of critics. Terry engaged closely in the creation of her costumes throughout her career and Macbeth was no exception. As Emma Slocombe discovered, annotations filling both reference books and the copy of Terry’s script for the production, record the painstaking research which inspired this ‘beetlewing dress’ (2011: 4–11). An eleventh-century setting was chosen for the Lyceum Production (their research having had revealed that ‘Macbeth was slain by Macduff on December 5, 1056’) (Slocombe 2011: 10).14 Engravings from this period have been marked with distinct ‘crosses’ in Terry’s personal copy of Planché’s History of British Costume, and her dress was cut to a comparable pattern, discovered by Comyns-Carr in ‘the wonderful costume book’ produced by the architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc (1814–1879). The costume was constructed from panels of a fine yarn, purchased by Terry’s costume maker, Ada Nettleship (1856–1932) in Bohemia, and which had ‘a twist of soft green silk and blue tinsel’ running through it (Comyns-Carr 1926: 211–12). The iridescent glitter of the ‘beetlewings’, which cover the surface of the dress (then often used to decorate fashionable evening dress), proved ideally suited to ‘thick softness of gaslight with the lovely speaks and motes in it’ (Terry 1908: 173).15 With the further addition of ‘a narrow border in Celtic designs, worked out in rubies and diamonds’ at the hem and sleeve cuffs the costume was finally complete (Comyns-Carr 1926: 211–12). The visual impact of the costumes worn by Terry is Macbeth is apparent in contemporary reviews, which remarked upon ‘the marvellous costumes

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designed by Mrs Comyns-Carr’ and declared Terry’s performance to be ‘a continual feast to the eye’.16 Indeed, the ‘beauty’ and ‘picturesque’ qualities of the scenery and costumes encouraged many reviewers to soften their criticism of Terry’s performance. As one commentator acknowledged: difficult to deal with is the Lady Macbeth of Miss Ellen Terry. That it is convincing few will maintain. It is, however, divinely beautiful. The woman who, in a quaint and indescribably beautiful costume, read by the light of the fire the letter of her husband [. . .] might have stood in the Court at Camelot, and gained the wondering homage and obeisance of Sir Galahad, as well as Sir Lancelot.17

One of the most striking aspects of Comyns-Carr’s designs, is the contrast between the lavishness of Terry’s garments and the simpler, more subdued, tones of the costumes of other performers, Irving included. Though critics were generally willing to forgive this discrepancy, it did not pass unremarked, and Wilde observed that: while ‘Lady Macbeth seems to be an economical housekeeper and evidently patronises local industries for her husband’s clothes and servant’s liveries’, ‘[. . .] she takes care to do all her own shopping in Byzantium.’18 As Irving’s surviving garments confirm, most of his costumes, with the crucial exception of the lavish robes he wore for the banqueting scene, were drawn from an earthy colour palette of deep purples and browns.19 Neither Terry nor Comyns-Carr discuss the contrast between Terry’s costumes and those worn by the rest of the cast in their respective biographies. One explanation could, however, lie in the public interest attached to Terry’s performance as Lady Macbeth. Audiences had already seen and formed their judgement of Irving’s characterization of Macbeth in 1875. For Terry, however, this production marked her debut in the role of Lady Macbeth, and, a dramatic departure from the ‘gentle’ ‘womanly’ characters with which she was popularly associated. Surviving reviews, whether criticizing or praising her interpretation, attest to the visual impact of the production and the important role Terry’s costumes played in heightening the effect of her performance. The ‘picturesqueness’ of Terry’s ‘rendering’ of the role, specifically the deliberate foregrounding of her figure, and departure from her established ‘harmonious costumes’, though not placating all critics, did prompt one to acknowledge that although it is not the Lady Macbeth of Mrs. Siddons we know. It is scarcely a Lady Macbeth we realise. It is perhaps, one of which we have dreamed. [. . .] This is Miss Terry’s Lady Macbeth.20

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While, nineteenth-century audiences were entranced by the visual spectacle of Terry’s performance, few would have identified Lady Macbeth as her seminal role. A factor which has contributed to Terry’s association with this part, and, indeed, the continued fame of ‘the beetlewing dress’, is the portrait John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) painted of Terry as Lady Macbeth in 188821 (Plate 24). Sargent was among the spectators present at the opening night of the production. Indeed, Comyns-Carr claimed that it was witnessing Terry’s striking entrance, together with the moment in the next scene, when she re-appeared with a heather velvet cloak embroidered with fiery griffins and swept out of the castle keep to greet the old king, that inspired Sargent to create the portrait (1926: 299–300). It is a portrait that captures elements of the costume missing from the photographs which, as Terry stated in a letter to her daughter, ‘give no idea of it at all, for it is in colour that it is so splendid’. Although the finished painting lacks the movement and pace present in Sargent’s preparatory sketches, and in fact depicts a scene which never appeared in the play, it does record ‘the dark red hair . . . [and] Rossetti-rich stained-glass effects’ which Terry loved. Most significantly for Terry, the finished portrait suggested ‘all that [she] should like to have conveyed in [her] performance of Lady Macbeth’ (1908: 293– 4). In this image, Sargent has provided Terry with a scenographic ‘world’ within which she realized, and continues to present, the performance of Lady Macbeth to which she had aspired (Hann 2019: 2–4).22 Examined in the light of the theatrical traditions and social preconceptions that shaped her performance, Terry’s ‘Lady Macbeth’ represents a carefully judged compromise between her personal interpretation of the character and the expectations of her audience. Recognizing the limitations imposed on her by her reputation for femininity and charm, Terry was obliged to present a Lady Macbeth which would maintain this established ‘public identity’, and yet fulfil her ambition to play an assertive and commanding figure. Her portrayal of Lady Macbeth, as a woman whose actions were motivated by passionate love for her husband, enabled Terry to emphasize the feminine qualities within the character, and thereby sustain her reputation for ‘womanliness’. This interpretation of the role simultaneously enabled Terry to create a ‘new Lady Macbeth’ and to subvert the established association of femininity with weakness and fragility. For Terry, Lady Macbeth’s feminine qualities provided a source of strength, and the means through which she was able to manipulate her male counterparts and satisfy her craving for absolute power.

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Conclusion Clothing of all kinds, but particularly ‘Bohemian’ or ‘Counter-Cultural’ dress is, as Elizabeth Wilson argues, ‘fraught with meaning’ which ‘might be symbolic, might be theatrical, or deeply authentic’ (Wilson 2000: 161). As this discussion has established, Terry was an actress who was highly attuned to the ‘meanings’ conveyed by her garments, for whom dress provided a means through which to exercise ‘scenographic agency’ over her public identity. Expected to perform on both the public and private ‘stage’, Terry transformed her clothing into ‘portable scenography’ through which she advertised and cemented her status as an icon of Aestheticism (Carriger 2017: 43). Aestheticism allowed, and actively encouraged, its followers to adopt varied styles which were as diverse as history and art would allow. By aligning herself with its values, Terry was freed from the dictates of fashion and able to draw upon a wide variety of sources to create garments which reflected her ‘individuality’ (Haweis 1879: 10–15, Wilson 2000: 161). Her privileged status within the Lyceum Theatre, and her collaboration with designers and makers who shared her views on design, enabled her to create and wear garments which embodied the ideals of the Aesthetic movement: visually, and metaphorically her costumes became ‘works of art’. The ‘off stage’ influence of Terry’s costumed body is apparent in surviving photographs and paintings – including Singer Sargent’s 1889 portrait of Terry as Lady Macbeth. It can also be identified in newspaper articles, periodicals and other literature of the period. By 1878, her prominence within the Aesthetic movement provoked the writer Henry James (1843–1916) to declare that ‘Miss Ellen Terry is “aesthetic”; not only her garments but her features themselves bear the stamp of the new enthusiasm’ (James 1878). Terry also inspired fashions and, as Wahl shows, her profile and ‘visual power’ was such that her ‘very name’ could be used as a reference point which evoked ‘a whole set of associations’. In 1880, for example, an edition of society publication, The Queen, included an image of a ‘cream-coloured’ Aesthetic bridal gown. ‘Bordered with plaitings and lace’, and with the full skirt ‘caught up on one side’ this Aesthetic gown was, the author explained, ‘like the dress worn by Ellen Terry [in the role of] Portia’ (Wahl 2013: 110–11). By 1888 Terry’s personal style was sufficiently recognizable to provide inspiration for a feature in the journal Woman’s World. Entitled ‘Shopping in London’, the article included a drawing of the type of woman to found exploring ‘the chosen resort of the artistic shopper’ (the Department Store, Liberty’s) which, as Newton suggests, was ‘based on the young Ellen Terry’ (Wahl 2013:

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137; Newton 1974: 120). Further evidence of Terry’s cultural resonance can be found in George Du Maurier’s 1894 novel Trilby. At a key moment in the narrative Du Maurier makes a direct comparison between the heroine’s costume and general appearance, and Terry’s 1881 portrayal of ‘the priestess of Artemis in the late laureate’s play, The Cup’ (Du Maurier 2009: 209). Du Maurier’s confidence that his reference to a play staged thirteen years earlier would be understood by readers, indicates the enduring presence of this production – and Terry’s performance – within public consciousness. As has been established, dress played a crucial part in securing, and sustaining, Terry’s celebrity. The level of ‘scenographic agency’ she exercised over her costumes was unusual for an actor: whether in the nineteenth century or today. As the leading lady of a theatre which positioned itself as a ‘Temple of Art’ and an actress trained by prominent figures in the Aesthetic movement, Terry possessed the autonomy, and knowledge, required to express specific sartorial identities through her stage dress. As her career progressed, her costuming practices, both on and off the stage, became increasingly sophisticated. The ‘scenographic strategies’ Terry employed in the production of Macbeth, for instance, exemplify her appreciation of the communicative power of dress, and her confidence that she could employ this medium not simply to reaffirm, but to actively challenge and subvert, her public identity as a ‘womanly woman’ (Strasdin 2013: 181; Barbieri 2017: xxii). The fact that she worked closely with female designers and makers to create her costumes is also significant, not least because it transformed her dressed body into what Barbieri described as a ‘testament to the creative autonomy of women’ (Barbieri 2017: 192). This focused study of a specific moment in theatre history has illuminated the extent to which scenography reflects, responds to and contributes to the artistic and theatrical context within which it is being practiced (Aronson 2017). The interrelationship between costume design and wider movements in art discussed here is not unique to the nineteenth century and fruitful investigations could, for instance, be carried out into the influence that Neo-Classicism had upon the costumes worn in the late eighteenth century, or, the use of ‘contemporary dress’ and simple, monotone costumes for productions staged in the wake of PostModernism. Similarly, Terry’s surviving costumes need to be recognized as hybrid garments: clearly drawing inspiration from the cut, colours and modes of dress promoted by the Aesthetic movement, but equally representative of the evolutions in the actress’s own personal style. Comparable parallels can be also identified between the off and onstage dress of more contemporary performers.

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There were, for instance, clear similarities between the offstage dress of Judi Dench, and the style of many of the costumes she wore when playing Cleopatra at the National Theatre in 1987 and the visual references Aoife Monks identified between the costumes and offstage garments worn by Anna Friel during the run of Uncle Vanya in 2012 are of equal interest (2010: 1–4). Such costuming practices exemplify the ability of dress to provide a vehicle for staging identity and the importance of considering the ‘expanded scenography’ within which such garments operate. Carriger asserts, and Terry’s ‘scenographic strategies’ attest, that while costumes generally function as one element within the scenography of a production, they also have the power ‘to constitute the entire mise en scène’ and the ability to transform ‘an ordinary public space into a performance space’ (2017: 42–3). The cultural impact of Terry’s dressed body highlights the importance and value of the expanded definition of scenography advocated by scholars such as McKinney and Palmer, and Hahn: specifically their recognition that stages and ‘staging’ should be expanded to encompasses ‘bodies, objects and environments’ beyond the confines of the theatre (McKinney and Palmer 2017: 2–3, Hann 2019: 32). As this detailed analysis of Terry’s costuming practices has shown, stage costumes are dynamic objects that embody, both physically and visually, the socio-cultural values of the audiences for which they were created. It has also drawn attention to the frequency with which the boundaries between the costumes and personal dress worn by performers are unconsciously or deliberately blurred, and gestured towards the wider implications of this overlap. A wider appreciation of the power of dress as mode of communication and its role in fashioning identity has a significant part to play in an expanded, interdisciplinary, study of scenography. Not least because, as Terry recognized and demonstrates, the significance of costume and the costumed body, outlasts, and extends beyond, their original performance.

Notes 1 Playbill, Monday 2 June 1856, Production Box, Princess Theatre, 1856, Victoria and Albert Museum. 2 For a fuller discussion of this movement, see Newton (1974) and Wahl (2013). 3 Boston Evening Transcript, January 16 1897: 16. 4 For a fuller exploration of the Aesthetic movement, see Prettejohn (2007); Gere (2010); Calloway, Orr and Whittaker (2011).

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5 Harris was the sister of Sir Augustus Glossop Harris (1852–1896), manager of the Drury Lane Theatre between 1879 and 1896, and daughter of actor and theatre manager Augustus Frederick Glossop Harris (1826–1873). 6 Terry’s adult height was recorded on a passenger list for a journey she made to New York in 1907. n.a. ‘Passenger list for the SS Philadelphia leaving Southampton Jan 12th 1907–arriving Port of New York Jan 19th 1907’, National Archives, Washington DC, Microform Serial T715, 1897–1957, Microfilm Roll 0821, line 1, p. 2.  7 This painting is now held in the Tate Britain, London, Museum Number N04005. 8 Ellen Terry, Ellaline, Amber Heart, SMA.TC.160, a,b,c [1118885]. The condition of this gown indicates the level of damage which occurred through wear, and it is very likely that this version is a re-make of the original costume as the play remained in the Lyceum Company repertoire from 1887 to 1902. 9 Unidentified periodical, 11 June 1887. Production Box, Lyceum Theatre, 1887. Department of Theatre and Performance, Victoria and Albert Museum. 10 n.a. Extract from ‘Our Play Box’, July 2 1888, 33. File MM/REF/TH/LO/LYC/23. University of Bristol Theatre Collection. 11 Oscar Wilde was among the figures credited with establishing the lily and sunflower as symbols of the movement (Gere and Hoskins 2000: 12, 13, 26). 12 ‘The Real Macbeth’, Unidentified periodical, c. December 1888, Press Cutting, mounted in Percy Fitzgerald Albums, Volume V: 311, Garrick Collection, London. 13 Terry, handwritten annotation on her copy of Joseph Comyns-Carr’s Macbeth and Lady Macbeth: An Essay, 28. 14 The book is part of Terry’s library, National Trust Inventory Number – 3052813. 15 Gaslight was still used in the Lyceum Company productions, even after electric lights were developed for the stage and installed in many theatres (Terry 1908: 173). 16 Pall Mall Gazette, 31 December 1888: 4. Press cutting mounted in Percy Fitzgerald Album, Volume V: 330, Garrick Club, London. 17 Morning Post, 31 December 1888, Press cutting, Lyceum Theatre, Production Box, Macbeth, 1888, Victoria and Albert Museum, London. 18 Wilde’s statement was recalled and quoted by Robertson (1931: 151). 19 This ensemble (which includes red velvet slippers and an under-doublet formed from cloth-of-gold style silk brocade, trimmed with gold braid and imitation ‘ruby’ glass jewels), together with other costumes worn by Irving in the production, is held at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Museum Numbers: S.2722:1 to 6-2010; S.2723:1 to 3-2010; S.2724:1 to 6-2010 and S.2750-2010. 20 Dramatic Notes, 29 December 1888, Press cutting, Production File, Lyceum Theatre, Macbeth, 1888. Victoria and Albert Museum; ‘Lyceum Theatre’, 31 December 1888. Press Cutting mounted in Percy Fitzgerald Album, Volume V, 331, Garrick Club, London. 21 Now in the collection of Tate Britain, Museum Number N02053, this portrait was originally exhibited at The New Gallery in 1888.

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22 The idea of ‘worlding’ and specifically the concept of ‘scenographic worlding’ (shaped by use of costume, stage, geography, light and sound) has been developed by Rachel Hann in Beyond Scenography (2019: 2–4, 80–98)

References ‘A London Woman’. Boston Evening Transcript, 16 January 1897, 16. Google News. Web. 20 August 2014. http://news​.google​.com​/newspapers Aronson, A. (2017), ‘Foreword’, in Scenography Expanded: An Introduction to Contemporary Performance Design, ed. Joslin McKinney and Scott Palmer, London: Bloomsbury. Auerbach, N. (1987), Player in Her Time, London: Phoenix House. Barbieri, D. (2017), Costume in Performance: Materiality, Culture and the Body, London: Bloomsbury. Barringer, T. J., Rosenfeld, J. and Smith, A. (2012), Pre-raphaelites: Victorian Avant Garde, London: Tate. Bratton, J. (2011), The Making of the West End Stage: Marriage, Management and the Mapping of Gender in London, 1830–1870, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Calloway, S., Orr, L. F. and Whittaker, E. (2011), The Cult of Beauty: The Aesthetic Movement, 1860–1900, London: V&A Publications. Carriger, M. L. (2017), ‘Costume’, in The Routledge Companion to Scenography, ed. Arnold Aronson, London: Routledge. Comyns–Carr, A. (1926), Mrs. J. Comyns Carr’s Reminiscences, London: Hutchinson & Co. Ltd. Cumming, V. (1987), ‘Ellen Terry: An Aesthetic Actress and Her Costumes’, Costume, 21, 67–74. Dakers, C. (1999), The Holland Park Circle: Artists and Victorian Society, New Haven: Yale University Press. Davis, J. and Emeljanow, V. (2001), Reflecting the Audience: London Theatregoing, 1840–1880, Iowa City: University of Iowa Press. Du Maurier, G. (2009), Trilby, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Duff, Gordon L. (1932), Discretions and Indiscretions, London: Jarolds Ltd. Ehrman, E. (2011), ‘Women’s Dress’, in S. Calloway, L. F. Orr and E. Whittaker (eds), The Cult of Beauty: The Aesthetic Movement, 1860–1900, London: V&A Publications. Eltis, S. (2013), Acts of Desire: Women and Sex on Stage, 1800–1930, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Forbes Robertson, J. (1925), A Player Under Three Reigns, London: Fisher Unwin. Gere, C. (2010), Aesthetic Circles, Design & Decoration in the Aesthetic Movement, London: V&A Publications.

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Gere, C. and Hoskins, L. (2000), The House Beautiful: Oscar Wilde and the Aesthetic Interior, London: Lund Humphries. Godwin, E. W., Soros, S. W. and Arbuthnott, C. (1999), E.W. Godwin: Aesthetic Movement Architect and Designer, New Haven: Yale University Press published for the Bard Graduate Center Studies in the Decorative Arts, New York. Greenblatt, S. (1980), Renaissance Self-fashioning: From More to Shakespeare, London: University of Chicago Press. Hann, R. (2019), Beyond Scenography, London: Routledge. Haweis, M. E. (1879), Art of Dress, London: Chatto&Windus. Haweis, M. E. (1883), ‘The Two D’s; or Decoration and Dress’, Temple Bar, 67. Hughes, A. (1981), Henry Irving, Shakespearean, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Irwin, K. (2017), ‘Scenographic Agency: A Showing-doing and a Responsibility for Showing-doing’, in J. McKinney and S. Palmer (eds), Scenography Expanded: An introduction to Contemporary Performance Design, London: Bloomsbury. James, H. (1878), Nation, 13 June 1878, New York: J. H. Richards. Kean, C. and Shakespeare, W. (1856), Shakespeare’s Play of The Winter’s Tale, Arranged for Representation at the Princess’s Theatre, with Historical and Explanatory Notes, London: John K. Chapman and Co. Kershaw, B. (2001), ‘Dramas of the Performative Society: Theatre at the End of Its Tether’, New Theatre Quarterly, 17 (3): 203–11. Lotker, S. and Gough, R. (2013), ‘Editorial’, Performance Research: Expanded Scenography, 18 (3), 3–6. McKinney, J. and Palmer, S. (2017), Scenography Expanded: An Introduction to Contemporary Performance Design, London: Bloomsbury. Meisel, M. (1983), Realisations: Narrative, Pictorial, and Theatrical Arts in NineteenthCentury England, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Monks, A. (2010), The Actor in Costume, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Newton, S. M. (1974), Health Art and Reason: Dress Reformers of the 19th Century, London: Murray. Parry, L. R. Davis, Morris, W. and Robins, P. (2013), William Morris Textiles, London: V & A Publishing. Prettejohn, E. (2007), Art for Art’s Sake: Aestheticism in Victorian Painting, New Haven: Yale University Press. Richards, J. (2005), Sir Henry Irving: A Victorian Actor and His World, London: Hambledon and London. Robertson, W. G. (1931), Time Was: The Reminiscences of W. Graham Robertson, London: Hamish Hamilton. Scott, C. (1897), From the Bells to King Arthur, London: John Macqueen [Print]. Slocombe, E. (2011), ‘Lady Macbeth at the Lyceum’, in National Trust Historic Houses and Collections Annual 2011, 4–11, London: National Trust in association with Apollo.

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Strasdin, K. (2013), ‘Fashioning Alexandra: A Royal Approach to Style 1863–1910)’, Costume, 47 (2), 180–97. Taylor, L. (2004), Establishing Dress History, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Terry, E. (1908), The Story of My Life, London: Hutchinson. Terry, E. (1911), ‘Stage Decoration’. The Windsor Magazine. Copyright by S. S. McClure Company in the United State of America, 71–90. Terry, E. (1932), (Edited and with an introduction by C. St John), Four Lectures on Shakespeare, London: Martin Hopkinson Ltd. Wahl, K. (2013), Dressed As in a Painting: Women and British Aestheticism in an Age of Reform, Durham: University of New Hampshire Press. Wilde, O. (1891), ‘Truth and Masks’, Intentions: The Decay of Lying. Pen, Pencil, and Poison, The Critic As Artist, The Truth of Masks, London: Osgood [Online edition, Project Gutenburg, Transcribed from the 8th edition published by Methuen and Co. in 1913]. Wilson, E. (1984 [Revised edition 2011]), Adorned in Dreams: Fashion and Modernity, London: I. B. Tauris. Wilson, E. (2000), Bohemians: The Glamorous Outcasts, London: I. B. Tauris Publishers.

Unpublished material Department of Theatre and Performance, Victoria & Albert Museum, London Playbill, The Winter’s Tale, Monday 2 June 1856, Production Box, Princess Theatre, The Winter’s Tale, 1856, Department of Theatre and Performance, Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Unidentified periodical, 11 June 1887. Production Box, Lyceum Theatre, The Amber Heart, 1887. Department of Theatre and Performance, Victoria and Albert Museum. Morning Post, 31 December 1888, Press cutting, Lyceum Theatre, Production Box, Macbeth, 1888, Victoria and Albert Museum.

Garrick Club Archive, London Dramatic Notes, 29 December 1888, Press cutting, Production File, Lyceum Theatre, Macbeth, 1888. Victoria & Albert Museum; ‘Lyceum Theatre’, 31 December 1888. Press Cutting mounted in Percy Fitzgerald Album, Volume V, 331, Garrick Club, London. Pall Mall Gazette, 31 December 1888: 4. Press cutting mounted in Percy Fitzgerald Album, Volume V: 330, Garrick Club, London. ‘The Real Macbeth’, Unidentified periodical, c. December 1888, Press Cutting, mounted in Percy Fitzgerald Albums, Volume V: 311, Garrick Collection, London.

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University of Bristol, Theatre Collection Illustrated London News, 5 February 1881, 124. Press Clipping in file MM/REF/TH/LO/ LYC/21. University of Bristol Theatre Collection.

National archives ‘Passenger list for the SS Philadelphia leaving Southampton Jan 12th 1907 – arriving Port of New York Jan 19th 1907’, National Archives, Washington DC, Microform Serial T715, 1897–1957, Microfilm Roll 0821, line 1, p. 2. 

10

Scenographing festival books Towards a multisensory archive Carmen González-Román

Introduction: Symbolic images or multisensory events? For decades, engravings in festival books have attracted the interest of art historians, particularly within iconographic studies, a methodological perspective focusing mainly on the symbolic value of images. Recently, however, what has been termed the ‘performative’ dimension of engravings found in those books – for example, of ballets, parades, processions and ceremonies – has come to the fore as a vital research topic.1 As a Spanish art historian working at the intersection of Early Modern Studies and Digital Humanities, between 2016 and 2019 I led the project Appropriations and Hybridizations between Visual Arts and Performing Arts, which aimed at more readily linking engravings in festival books to performance dimensions of festivals.2 While the project’s results – digital animations and 3D reconstructions based on engravings and other archival resources – were much appreciated by both scholars and external audiences, I contend that the capacity of engravings to convey Early Modern festive cultures remains obscure or under-theorized. Recent developments within scenography studies have, I suggest, opened up new possibilities for understanding and theorizing the performative dimension of festival books. Therefore, in this chapter, I will explore how multisensory scenography theory can help us better understand and theorize performative dimensions of digital engagement with festival books. To do this, I will employ scenography scholar Rachel Hann’s concept of scenographic cultures. In doing so, the aim of this exploration is to contribute to a new understanding of festival books as vital parts of what I term scenographic archives, which focus on multisensory experiences and exploratory processes, within and beyond the

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scholarly field. By looking at digital stagings of Early Modern festival books from a scenographic perspective, this chapter contributes to developing a new field, where previously inaccessible and silent visuals are transformed into multisensory events reaching a new and broader public. The purpose of this chapter is to explore the relationship between architecture as a co-creative scenographic agent, actions and material proximities, in digital stagings employing archival traces of festivals. More specifically, I focus on how a scenographic – that is holistic and multisensory – archive could contribute to the recovery of historical ‘fast architecture’ (Hann 2019: 120–30), gestures and movements, and multisensory experiences related to the theatrical and performative events from the Early Modern period. In order to do this, I employ ‘scenographing’, a sensory method for attending to multisensory features of past performance (see von Rosen’s Chapter 3). To start chiselling out my argument for a scenographic archive, I first present a personal and situated way of accessing Hann’s concepts of ‘fast architecture’ and ‘scenographic cultures’. This opens up for problematizing the art history field, where festival books have been studied as iconological objects. Moving on, I discuss how art and culture historian Aby Warburg’s (1866–1929) montage theory resonates with recent theoretical developments within scenography studies. This opens up for analysing examples from recent digital projects employing festival books, in order to develop the scenographic archive. To conclude, I argue that moving from symbolic images to multisensory events not only challenges art historical orthodoxies but also makes important cultural heritage accessible to young audiences and a broader public.

Fast architecture and multisensory scenographic cultures It is a spring morning in 2019, and taking advantage of Easter break I walk through the streets of the old town in my city. There are platforms in the main squares where the processions will take place in the afternoon. At noon, when the processions have not yet begun, the platforms create a scenographic space in the streets with their surrounding architecture. When passing through the Cathedral I decide to visit the so-called Monument, an ephemeral construction installed in one of its chapels every Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. A red velvet canopy with silverwork overlay frames the tabernacle. On the edge of the altar there is a frieze of grapes, and its entire front side is covered with natural flowers whose aroma I can clearly perceive. Interspersed between two striking white flower vases are silver trays

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placed in an upright position. A red carpet on the staircase leading up to the chapel emphasizes the temporary character and the orientating qualities of the place. I observe people praying in front of the Monument. I note that while this scenario is not a theatre in an institutional sense, it could be described as scenographic. In the first place, the Monument’s placement in one of the chapels indicates an act of staging; consideration has clearly been given to how people stand in front of the monument and remain before it. Secondly, candles, flowers and fruit accentuate the multisensory dimension of space. Finally, apart from the symbolic value of this ephemeral arrangement that commemorates the passion and death of Jesus Christ, I realize that it is not exactly a monument in the strict sense that the cathedral is, for example. Both the platforms located on the street and the structure mounted in the chapel come across as interventional and affective. Next, I will explore how Hann’s concepts of ‘scenographic culture’ and ‘fast architecture’ can be helpful in archival explorations of festival books. I will discuss how Hann’s scenographic approach opens up a new way of confronting traditional analysis of ‘ephemeral architecture’ in Early Modern Studies. In Spanish art historiography, the tradition where I have been formed (Bonet Correa 1990, 1993), so-called ephemeral architecture is generally included within the scope of festivities. However, within this approach, the emphasis has mainly been on describing these structures and interpreting their iconographic programmes. I suggest that the adoption of a scenographic viewpoint has opened up a new possibility for understanding and theorizing the performative dimension of festival books. From this new perspective, staging and multisensory events can, for example, be studied in relation to the creation of an atmosphere. Gernot Böhme, who has developed an aesthetics of atmospheres in relation to architecture and stage sets, states that ‘stage design has always made use of, not only objects, walls, and solids, but also of light, sound, color, and host of other conventional means: symbols, pictures, texts’ (Böhme 2006: 406). In contrast to the emphasis placed on ideological aspects of the concept of monumentality in studies of Early Modern ephemeral architecture, the concept of ‘fast architecture’ allows for a new interpretation. I argue here for a reassessment of the role of a scenographic perspective within ephemeral architecture analysis by adopting the view, following Hann, that ‘scenographics is ontologically agnostic’ (Hann 2019: 16). The monumentality that is usually associated with the ‘ephemeral architecture’ mentioned earlier generates in itself a contradiction, since a monument, regardless of how it can be read ideologically, is something that lasts over time. Hann relates the monumental nature of the architecture to what she calls ‘slow architecture’ and states: ‘Whereas slow architecture pertains

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to sustained monumentality, fast architecture evokes scenographic modes of orientation and scores the ongoing processes of worlding’ (Hann 2019: 121). The constructions built with temporary materials for the celebrations of the Church or the monarchy underwent an extraordinary development during the Renaissance and Baroque periods. In many cases methods and ideas were tested that were then adopted and implemented within the design and execution of slow architecture. In this respect Hann affirms that ‘these material practices sustain interventional place orientations and, consequently, are scenographic in conception and execution’ (Hann 2019: 122). Returning to my experience of Maundy Thursday morning, I suggest, drawing on Hann, that scenography happens at the intersection between the persistence of slow architecture (the streets, the Cathedral) and the situational and material interventions (such as platforms in the city, or the flowers, fruit, fabrics, lighting, etc. in the chapel). The platforms around the old town and the Monument in the chapel are, correspondingly, both interventional. The whole atmospheric encounter, especially with the Monument, and its capacity to persuade or convince through an all-encompassing atmosphere of orientations, can be considered scenographic in formation and effect. These practices, generated centuries ago, still sustain interventional place orientations alongside and with slow architecture.

Scenographic archive and digital staging Could a scenographic archive contribute to the recovery of historical fast architecture, gestures and movements, and multisensory experiences related to the theatrical and performative events from the Early Modern period? To undertake the task of creating a scenographic archive based on a digital staging of historical theatrical and festive events, we should begin by renouncing the evolutionary and teleological scheme of a traditional and/or positivist history of art. In its place, I will return to Warburg’s more performative way of doing art history, in order to analyse the scenographic traits of images in motion in festival books. Looking at digital stagings from a scenographic perspective, I will argue for a new approach, in which previously immobile and silent visuals are transformed into multisensory events. In the following, I will explore the connection between digital stagings of the images and their scenographic capacities. During the last years of his life, Warburg worked on a predominantly visual project called the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne (1924–9), consisting of knowledge

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montages (von Rosen 2016: 137–87). The influence exerted by the exhibition design of this atlas has extended far beyond the sphere of art history. Thus, the scenographic arrangement of the famous panels has inspired curatorial projects such as the one carried out by curator and exhibition-maker Judith Clark and psychoanalyst Adam Phillips in Blythe House (2010), with garments from the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum. In fact, Judith Clark explains how one of the installations that make up the mentioned exhibition on dresses, specifically the staging dedicated to Essentials, makes literal reference to the Mnemosyne Atlas (Clark and Phillips 2010: 112). In his firm commitment to connect image with reality, which opened the way for cultural and anthropological analysis in art history, Warburg highlighted the enigmatic function of the representation of movement, ‘the manifestation of a body irreducible to meaning’ (Michaud 2007: 80). The particular sequentiality and arrangement of the images he used in the Mnemosyne Atlas has been found to use a process very similar to cinematographic techniques. According to art historian and scenography scholar Astrid von Rosen, ‘these panels reveal the performative openness and movability inherent in his epistemology of images’ (von Rosen 2016: 4). Pondering Warburg’s life and scholarship, art historian Philippe-Alain Michaud suggests that a history of art that is directed towards cinema is the most pertinent way of understanding the temporality of images. In addition, philosopher and art historian Georges Didi-Huberman asserts: ‘From now on [. . .] we shall have to imagine what art history might become, with Warburg, in the age of its reproduction in motion’ (Didi-Huberman 2007: 12). This is a suggestive point in relation to the digital staging, and one to which I will return. Concerning festival books, it is important not to forget the collection of such books that Warburg accumulated in his library. The performative nature of the engravings contained in these books undoubtedly captured his attention, but he went further and compiled visual records that, in his opinion, would constitute a continuation of the festive activity of the elites within ‘low culture’. In his essay on the costumes of the intermezzi of 1589, Warburg notes how the registers of the profane and the sacred, the aristocratic and the popular, were mixed in festivals, and uses images in motion to connect the two festive atmospheres. To this end, Panel 32 of the Mnemosyne Atlas is dedicated to the theme of caricature, giving particular attention to festivals and popular traditions that are reflected in prints and other productions alien to ‘high culture’ (Figure 10.1). Warburg’s interest in corporeality and gesture led him to discover what I term a scenographic dimension in the last paintings and drawings of Botticelli.

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Figure 10.1 Mnemosyne, panel 32. Moorish dance with woman at the centre, grotesques with monkeys, dance of the ‘fight for the trousers’, an allegorical battle between Carnival and Lent. Courtesy of @Edizioni Engramma | ‘La Rivista di Engramma’, section Mnemosyne Atlas http:​/​/www​​.engr​​amma.​​it​/eO​​S​/cor​​e​/fro​​ntend​​/ eos_​​atlas​​_inde​​x​.php​​?i​d​_t​​avola​​=1032​# (accessed: 8 January 2020).

But it is also important to note that, for Warburg, the traditional iconographic discourse ‘need not be reduced to the simple transposition of literary and visual elements but should open itself up to the idea of the transformation of bodies into images and images into bodies’ (Michaud 2007: 148). Accordingly, Warburg assumed that it was the world of Medici festivities that allowed Botticelli to observe the figures under a physical aspect as participants in a truly moving life (Checa 2016: 71). It can be suggested that those drawn or painted figures are, in themselves, scenographic in origin.

Scenographing gestures and movements The movement and action of all the agents involved in a festive event of the Early Modern period were developed in a spatial and material context that can now be digitally re-staged from the preserved sources, especially those that include engravings, drawings or paintings. I will analyse some case studies later on. At the moment, I suggest that new multimedia formats on one hand allow us to give

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multisensory life to old Renaissance or Baroque engravings, and on the other hand arouse interest in forms of theatre and festivals unknown to the majority of the current public or users who actively participate in a shared scenographic experience. Regarding this, I suggest that the concept of multimedia can serve as a feasible model of the scenographic format of the extraordinary performative culture of the Early Modern period (González-Román 2019b). Among the questions that have been formulated by art historians and theatre scholars interested in recovering the multisensory reality of festival books are the following. How can we capture the ephemeral nature and dynamism of the great festivals of yesteryear that lie behind the immobile lines of the copper engravings? How can we understand the particularity of these images, which seek to exalt, within their visual code, the illusion of something that, in reality, does not exist? (Sommer-Mathis and Risatti 2019). From a creative point of view, the idea of capturing the ephemeral nature and dynamism latent in engravings and converting them into a digital format can be interpreted as staging. Consequently, multimedia formats of great festivals of the past can contribute to a new scenographic field.

The affective When turning to Warburg’s thinking, it is important not to forget that his pioneering interpretation of the moving image called for active participation by the viewer: ‘it is necessary to reawaken in oneself a series of experienced images following one from the other – not a single image: a loss of calm contemplation’ (Michaud 2007: 83). From a digital scenographic viewpoint, I consider it is necessary nowadays to take into account not only the active but also the co-creative participation of the viewer. An important aspect, in my view, is the potential for multisensory digital stagings of great festivals to affect the viewer. As has been highlighted by von Rosen, in Warburg’s aesthetic theory of movement, as in his own research activity, the affective plays a remarkably important role (von Rosen 2017). Movement and affect go hand in hand when he describes his atlas as ‘Mnemosyne: A Series of Images for the Investigation of the Function of previously defined Expressive Values in the Representation of Life in Motion in European Art of Renaissance’ (von Rosen 2016: 5). When analysing other Warburgian methodological notions, von Rosen reflects on the concept of Nachleben (afterlife). She argues, for example, that in the analysis of sequential art, the concept of Nachleben can help in exploring a great variety of affectively charged connections to popular culture and common visuals (von Rosen 2016:

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5). In a similar manner, ‘fast architecture’ and the multisensory nature of the great festivals teased out of festival books and staged in a digital format could resonate with external and contextual dimensions. Following von Rosen, viewed as ‘scenographic events, the repetition and transformation of cultural memory, or “ghosting”, to use Marvin Carlson’s term, will take on both internal and external dimensions’ (von Rosen 2016: 5). I suggest that this conception is useful for interpreting how the affective works in the new scenographic field of digital staging of historical performative events.

Festival books: From digitization to scenographic virtuality The application of a digital research perspective to festival books in Early Modern Europe has, to date, mainly consisted of the digitization of important collections. The Renaissance Festival Book Project of the British Library was an important contribution in this field. This site includes 253 Early Modern festival books, digitized in full or in part, each of which is annotated and supplied with an introduction. These digitized books are available on the website of the British Library under the name Treasures in Full, Renaissance Festival Books. In addition, the University of London has digitized the important collection of festival books of the Warburg Institute, which also includes a series of printed pamphlets on the occasion of Henri III’s various royal entries in Italy. To the catalogues of digitized festival books that are mentioned we must add the important database Early Modern Festival Books Database (Oxford University), which provides links to the digitized versions of the festival books, wherever such a version exists. These projects have contributed to the dissemination of an extraordinary cultural legacy from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries, while at the same time facilitating the development of research in different areas. However, the possibilities afforded by digital technology today allow us to further advance the multisensory knowledge of festivals and shows of those centuries. As several scholars have pointed out, the digital revolution has fundamentally changed the way in which cultural heritage is created, documented, analysed and preserved. Some questions being asked are as follows: How should museums and archives address the challenges of digitally generated cultures, and how does the digital revolution influence the collection of traditional objects, research and education? How do digital technologies, art and culture affect our interaction with images? (Grau, Coones and Rühse, 2017). In relation to scenography studies, I find it particularly interesting how new information technologies have

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contributed to shifting archival logic from one ‘based on storage to a logic of continuous (re)generation’ (Bleeker 2017: xxii and von Rosen in Chapter 3). I suggest that the scenographic – multisensory, situated and holistic – dimension of Early Modern festival books could be mobilized through virtual engagement to re-enact ‘the affective force’ of a past performance (Phelan 1997: 12 and von Rosen in Chapter 3). Virtual animation or 3D reconstruction accordingly facilitates a new interventional and scenographic experience. Applying cultural materialist analysis to the issue, researchers such as Gilly BushBailey and Jacky Bratton propose the use of the concept of ‘revival’ as a different way of understanding the recovery of the material culture of the past. In their view, reconstructing past performance ‘axiomatically carries the assumption that the first, or original, state can be rebuilt’ (David, Bush-Bailey and Bratton 2011: 106). They hold that, ‘whereas reconstruction ignores the present in seeking to rebuild from the past, “revival” acknowledges the present and works to reawaken that which can be brought into use again’ (David, Bush-Bailey and Bratton 2011: 107). From a scenographic point of view, the concept of ‘revival’ is useful because it allows for engaging the virtual to re-enact affective dimensions of a past performance. All in all, we must assume that records (text, image, sound) contained in festival books do not always provide identical versions of historical live performances. However, from a scenographic perspective, I suggest that such records can be very useful for ‘reviving’ materiality, sound and atmosphere in a multisensory environment. In addition to this, as previously mentioned, from a creative point of view the idea of capturing the ephemeral qualities and dynamism that are latent in engravings and converting them into a digital format can be interpreted as staging and contribute to a new scenographic sphere. Nevertheless, before addressing the case studies, I would like to further address the methods and objectives that, in the field of digital humanities, involve what is often termed reconstruction. For example, a number of conclusions have been collected in a recent issue of the International Journal for Digital Art History, which deals with the debate on the techniques of so-called virtual reconstruction that are being used in art history (Münster, Friedrichs and Hegel 2018: 40–1). In any case, when it comes to using digital technology to recover the multisensory qualities of festivals and spectacles in the Early Modern period, it is important to keep another concept in mind, one that is of special significance on both an ontological and an ethical level, namely re-creation. The recommendations outlined in The London Charter (2009) and The Seville Principles (2011) for the digital visualization of historical urban environments foster the application of conservation theory and practice in

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digital heritage. In the last document, the difference between reconstruction and virtual re-creation is established based on the existence or lack of physical evidence (González-Román 2019a: 103–18). With that said, from a scenographic viewpoint, digital stagings of historical festive events need to take into account not only the objects or the original spatial and material context, but also other aspects such as the atmosphere, the soundscape or the interaction with the audience in the event. Let us explore some examples of scenographic virtual staging.

An immersive scenographic virtuality A current example of re-creation of multisensory environment through the use of digital technology is the video of the equestrian ballet La contesa dell’aria e dell’aqua (Vienna 1667). This video, lasting eight minutes and thirty-five seconds, was part of the exhibition Spettacolo barocco! Triumph of the Theatres, held in Vienna at the Austrian Theatre Museum from 3 March to 30 March 2017. The curators, Daniela Franke, Rudi Risatti and Andrea Sommer-Mathis, used the abundant visual and textual material related to the wedding between Emperor Leopold I and Infanta Margarita Maria Teresa, the occasion that the festive event was celebrating. The main source was the printed text by Francesco Sbarra (Sbarra 1667), which is accompanied by illustrations designed by Nikolaus van Hoy (1631–1679) and recorded by F. Van der Steen (1625–1672), G. Bouttats (1640–1703) and Jan van Ossenbeck (1624–1674). The images show two broad views of the great ‘theatre’ outside, six triumphal chariots, and a series of different choreographic formations of feigned combat and equestrian ballet (Figure 10.2). The technical work was done by Barbara Schwertführer and Sanela Antic (Visual Media Department of the Kunsthistorisches Museum). The animation was done from a storyboard combining different textual and visual records, all of which contribute to the crafting of a scenographic atmosphere. The narrative was entrusted to explanatory texts and, on occasion, to speech balloons like those used in comics. This resource taken from sequential art, as mentioned earlier, resonates with external and contextual dimensions. Hence, by introducing a narrative resource from the world of comics into the virtual re-creation of this historical festive event, the creators contribute to the crafting of ‘an interventional act of worlding’ (Hann 2019: 14). To these visual

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Figure 10.2  Screenshot of the video in which the four elements enter the great exterior ‘theatre’ on triumphal chariots, in the order described by Francesco Sbarra. Courtesy of the curators at the Wien Theatre Museum.

Figure 10.3  Screenshot of the video in which the emperor’s entry is announced from the staging that represented the Temple of Eternity. Courtesy of curators at the Wien Theatre Museum.

and textual elements some sound effects were added: several pieces of music interpreted from the original score by Johann Heinrich Schmelzer and the sound of applause. Taken together, all of these elements craft a scenographic atmosphere. (Figure 10.3).

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In relation to the animation, the makers of the storyboard give us some explanations about how it was crafted: . . . digital horses and knights capable of moving their legs and limbs individually were not created (as is done in major contemporary animated films, which tend toward hyperrealism), but rather the different images were superimposed, obtaining a clear and dynamic result that corresponded to the succession of the engravings of the choreographic figures of the equestrian ballet, sometimes accompanied by extracts from the corresponding musical composition. (Sommer-Mathis and Risatti 2019)

This video enjoyed enormous success among both experts and the general public. It showed how this innovative multimedia format could not only give new life to old Baroque engravings but also awaken interest in forms of theatre and festivals unknown to the majority of the current public. At the same time, it is a feasible model of the immersive scenographic virtuality of the wide performative culture of the Early Modern period. I suggest that the move from visual static representations in a festival book to a scenographic – multisensory, situated and holistic – experience represents a paradigm shift. Shifting from distant visual analysis of symbolic images to holistic multisensory experience happening in the present marks a milestone. I assert that the idea of capturing the ephemeral nature and dynamism latent in engravings and converting them into a digital format can definitely be interpreted as staging and contributes to a new scenographic field.

Making scenographic cultures The different aspects involved in a festive event of Early Modern Europe were developed in a spatial and material context that could be re-created from the preserved sources, especially if they include engravings, drawings or paintings. Regarding the study of festival books, I would like to take this opportunity to show how festivals in the Hispanic world have been neglected in research carried out in the Anglophone environment, as Teófilo Ruiz warned about some years ago (2012: 16). Only a few recent contributions are exceptions, such as Ruiz’s research and the monograph published by Laura Fernández-González and Fernando Checa (2015), both of which, I wish to stress, were published in English. The use of English as a lingua franca in research prevents important articles, books or monographs published in different languages from becoming

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known. ‘This “pseudo-visibility” has helped to perpetuate some assumptions regarding the quality and, most importantly, the role that festival culture played in Spain, Portugal and their global empires in the period’ (Checa and FernándezGonzález 2015: 2). It is necessary to begin this section by making reference to Laura FernándezGonzález’s study on the entry of Philip II into Lisbon (1581). A pioneer in the use of 3D reconstruction in research on ephemeral architecture in Renaissance festivals, Fernández-González argues that the concept of re-creation seems more appropriate on those occasions when the textual descriptions in festival books do not provide enough details about such aspects as colour, measurements, position and so forth. (Figure 10.4) (Fernández-González 2019). I would add, from a scenographic point of view, that it is significant to take into account details about the audience, the soundscape, and even the smells, though always remaining aware of the limitations of the digital format when it comes to re-creating some of these aspects. Indeed, as observed by von Rosen, ‘it is worth mentioning that it is only recently that soundscapes have begun to be included in the holistic understanding of scenography’ (see von Rosen’s Chapter 3). Moreover, as emphasized by Hann, scenography thus transgresses the ideology ‘that reduces experiences into quantifiable images’ (Hann 2019: 47).

Figure 10.4 Annotations on a photocopy of the Guerreiro’s accounts, reflecting descriptions of the Arch of the German Merchants (left) and a hypothetical 3D model and drawings of the structure of the Arch of German Merchants, Lisbon, based on textual sources. Courtesy of Laura Fernández-González.

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Figure 10.5  Urban study on the topography of early modern Lisbon before the natural disaster of 1755. This still depicts the model at an early stage. Courtesy of Laura Fernández-González.

Importantly, neither the idea of ‘re-creating’ nor, as I mentioned earlier, ‘revival’ favours the possibility of carrying out a scenographic virtuality. Besides, virtual staging based on the accuracy, authenticity and transparency of the sources used facilitates in an attractive way dissemination among the public, expert or not, and especially among the younger public, of the scenographic culture of yesteryear (Jones 2014: 131–9). The digital visualization project of the 1581 Lisbon entry studied both the ephemeral structures and the long-lost urban space where the festival took place (Figure 10.5). However, preserved accounts of this entry festival do not contain graphic material. Of the two surviving accounts, Guerreiro’s, as FernándezGonzález states, is the most complete, but his descriptions of the architectural and artistic characteristics of the ephemeral structures are difficult to interpret, so Fernández-González chose to represent their architectural form graphically. For this, a 3D model was developed, using the open access software SketchUp (Fernández-González 2016). As Fernández-González explains: The first part of the project consisted of drawing architectural plans of the ephemeral structures that reflected the textual data provided in the accounts and then creating 3D models of the arches and façades. These models were

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subsequently superimposed onto a 3D model of the city. This work incorporates several pioneering features in that it is the first time an early modern festival has been re-created digitally and the resulting digital model is the first metricized version of the Baixa in 16th-century Lisbon. (Fernández-González 2019)

This means of crafting by combining textual materials, drawings and 3D models into a re-created landscape to scale constitutes a scenographic process and contributes to making scenographic cultures. Researching digital formats, Isabel Solís and Victoria Soto have specialized in recovering the colours of the ephemeral structures erected at different festive events of the Early Modern period. They state that their digital perspective provides a visual support to the academic analysis, and that this is essential to the understanding of the ephemeral architecture and ornaments (Solís-Alcudia and Soto-Caba 2017: 345–6). In one of their recent contributions, they made a virtual reconstruction of some of the arches erected on the occasion of Philip III’s entry into Lisbon (1619) (Plate 25), focusing especially on the polychromy of the ephemeral ornaments (Solís-Alcudia and Soto-Caba 2017: 345–6). They have based their work in this area on information about the colour of the arches contained in accounts of the celebration, especially the text and the prints of the copy of João Baptista Lavanha’s Viage de la Catholica Real Magestad del Rei D. Filipe III al Reino of Portugal y Relación del Solemne recebimiento (1622), as well as on a canvas contemporary with the event located in the German castle of Weilburg. In another of their projects, Soto and Solis formulated an interesting hypothesis concerning the original colour of the ornaments on the facades of certain buildings in Madrid (Solís-Alcudia and Soto-Caba 2018). In this case, they crafted the digital staging with prints and text contained in the Descripción de los ornatos públicos con que la corte de Madrid ha solemnizado la feliz exaltación al trono de los Reyes Nuestros Señores don Carlos IIII y Doña Luisa de Borbón (1789). In my view, the scenographic dimension of this digital staging can mobilize, through virtual engagement, the affective force of the original physical structures. Besides, by confronting the historical, coloured ‘fast architectures’ with the ‘slow architectures’, this virtual staging demonstrates how scenographic and interventional those fast architectures could and can be.

Conclusion In this chapter, I have tried to draw attention to two main issues: on one hand, the possibilities afforded by scenography studies for understanding and

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theorizing the performative dimension of festival books; and on the other hand, the scenographic dimension of festival books and the contribution that digital staging of multisensory events can make to developing a new field. I have discussed how ‘making scenographic cultures’ through an ‘immersive scenographic virtuality’ can be helpful in archival explorations of festival books. To do so I have used scenography scholar Rachel Hann’s concept of scenographic cultures. In relation to digital animations of performative events included in festival books, I have also discussed how Warburg’s montage theory resonates with recent theoretical developments within scenography studies. The case studies that I have focused on in this chapter confirm an ongoing shift from distant visual analysis to multisensory experiences within art history and visual culture. By doing so, I maintain that moving from symbolic images to multisensory events not only challenges art historical orthodoxies, but also makes important cultural heritage accessible to younger audiences and a broader public. In line with the objectives set by the editors of this book, I hope my analysis contributes to reimagining scenography as a critical concept for art history.

Notes 1 Cf. papers presented at the International Workshop Digital Perspectives. Relationships between Visual Arts and Performing Arts, C. González-Román, A. Sommer-Mathis and R. Risatti (coord.), Vienna, Theater Museum (27–28 September 2018). Available online: https​:/​/ar​​tes​.h​​ypoth​​eses.​​org​/p​​rogra​​mme​​-e​​nglis​h (accessed 22 February 2019) 2 Research Project ART-ES. Appropriations and Hybridizations between Visual Arts and Performing Arts in Early Modern period, HAR2015-70089P (MINECO/FEDER).

References Bleeker, M. (2017), ‘Introduction’, in M. Bleeker (ed.), Transmission in Motion: The Technologizing of Dance, xviii–xxiii, London and New York: Routledge. Böhme, G. (2006), ‘Atmosphere as the Subject Matter of Architecture’, in P. Ursprung (ed.), Herzog and Meuron: Natural History, 398–407, London: Lars Muller Publishers. Bonet, A. (1990), Fiesta, poder y arquitectura. Aproximación al Barroco español, Madrid: Akal.

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Bonet, A. (1993), ‘La arquitectura efímera del barroco en España’, Norba Revista de arte, 13, 23–70. Checa, F. (2016), ‘Fiestas imperiales. Una reflexión historiográfica’, in I. Rodríguez and V. Moya (eds), Visiones de un Imperio en Fiesta, 61–91, Madrid: Fundación Carlos de Amberes. Checa, F. and Fernández-González, L., eds (2015), Festival Culture in the World of the Spanish Habsburgs, Aldershot: Ashgate. Clark, J. and Phillips, A. (2010), The Concise Dictionary of Dress, London: Violette Editions. David, J., Normington, K., Bush-Bailey, G. and Bratton, J. (2011), ‘Researching Theatre History and Historiography’, in B. Kershaw and H. Nicholson (eds), Research Methods in Theatre and Performance, 86–110, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Didi-Huberman, G. (2007), ‘Knowledge: Movement (The Man Who spoke to Butterflies)’, in P. A. Michaud, Aby Warburg and the Image in Motion, 7–19, New York: Zone Books. Fernández-González, L. (2016), ‘Virtual Worlds: Visualizing Early Modern Festivals in the Iberian World’, ASPHS, Association for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies, 7, 6–13. Fernández-González, L. (2019), ‘Imagining the Past? Architecture and Public Rituals in Early Modern Lisbon and Madrid’, in C. González-Román and H. Macartney (eds), Teatralidad y performatividad de las artes: El contexto hispánico en la Europa de los siglos XVI–XVIII. Bulletin of Spanish Visual Studies, vol. 3, 323–38, London: Taylor & Francis. González-Román, C. (2019a), ‘Proyectos digitales para la re-creación/re-construcción de la cultura escenográfica y performativa en la Edad Moderna. Un estado de la cuestión’, in R. Romojaro (ed.), Humanidades y nuevas tecnologías, 103–18, Valencia: Tirant lo Blanc. González-Román, C. (2019b), ‘Teatralidad y performatividad. Perspectivas conceptuales-metodológicas para el análisis de las artes visuales y escénicas de los siglos XVI–XVIII’, in C. González-Román and H. Macartney (eds), Teatralidad y performatividad de las artes: El contexto hispánico en la Europa de los siglos XVI– XVIII, Bulletin of Spanish Visual Studies, vol. 3, 175–86, London: Taylor & Francis. Grau, O., Coones, W. and Rühse, V. (2017), Museum and Archive on the Move: Changing Cultural Institutions in the Digital Era, Berlin: De Gruyter. Hann, R. (2019), Beyond Scenography, Abingdon, Oxon and New York: Routledge. Jones, C. (2014), ‘Bringing the Past to Life? Exploring the Role of Authenticity in Developing Young People’s Historical Understanding’, in R. Gordon, E. Hermens and F. Lennard (eds), Authenticity and Replication: The ‘Real Thing’ in Art and Conservation, Proceedings of the International Conference Held at the University of Glasgow, 6–7 December 2012, 131–9, London: Archetype. Michaud, Ph. A. (2007), Aby Warburg and the Image in Motion, New York: Zone Books.

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Münster, S., Friedrichs, K. and Hegel, W. (2018), ‘3D Reconstruction Techniques as a Cultural Shift in Art History’, International Journal for Digital Art History, 3, 39–60. Available online: https​:/​/jo​​urnal​​s​.ub.​​uni​-h​​eidel​​berg.​​de​/in​​dex​.p​​hp​/da​​h​/art​​​icle/​​view/​​ 32473​(accessed 20 February 2019). Phelan, P. (1997), Mourning Sex: Performing Public Memories, London and New York: Routledge. von Rosen, A. (2016), ‘Scenographing Strindberg: Ström’s Alchemical Interpretation of a Dream Play 1915–18 in Düsseldorf ’, in A. von Rosen (ed.), Dream-playing across Borders: Accessing the Non-texts of Strindberg’s A Dream Play in Düsseldorf 1915– 1918 and Beyond, 137–87, Gothenburg and Stockholm: Makadam. Available online: https://gupea​.ub​.gu​.se​/handle​/2077​/55175. von Rosen, A. (2017), ‘Warburgian Vertigo: Devising an Activist Art Historical Methodology by Way of analysing the “Zine” Family Fun’, Journal of Art History, 83: 6–30. Ruiz, T. F. (2012), A King Travels: Festive Traditions in the Late Medieval and Early Modern Spain, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Sbarra, F. (1667), La contesa dell’Aria e dell’Acqua Festa à cavallo rappresentata nell’Augustissime Nozze delle Sacre, Cesaree, Reali M.M. dell’Imperatore Leopoldo e dell’/Infanta Margherita delle Spagne. Inventata, e descritta da Francesco Sbarra Consigliero di Sua Maestà Cesarea, Vienna: Matteo Cosmerovio. Solís-Alcudia, I. and Soto-Caba, V. (2017), ‘Adereçados y pintados de pinçel. Una recreación virtual: la policromía efímera en la Lisboa de 1619’, in N. Rodríguez (ed.), Humanidades Digitales Hispánicas, Proceeding of the International Conference Held at the University of Málaga 18–20 October 2017, 345–6. Available online: http:​/​/hdh​​ 2017.​​es​/wp​​-cont​​ent​/u​​pload​​s​/201​​7​/10/​​Actas​​​-HDH2​​017​.p​​df (accessed 12 September 2018). Solís-Alcudia, I. and Soto-Caba, V. (2018), ‘Temporary Polychrome: Colour digitization of the ornamentation for Carlos IV’s entry into Madrid, 1789’, in A. Gago, C. Bottaini et al. (coords.), Cities in the Digital Age. Exploring Past, Present and Future, 63–82, Porto: CITCEM. Sommer-Mathis, A. and Risatti, R. (2019), ‘Fuentes gráficas y animación virtual de un espectáculo barroco para una boda austro-hispánica: el ballet ecuestre La contesa dell’Aria e dell’Aqua (Viena, 1667)’, in Carmen González-Román and Hilary Macartney (eds), Teatralidad y performatividad de las artes: El contexto hispánico en Michaudla Europa de los siglos XVI–XVIII. Bulletin of Spanish Visual Studies, vol. 3, 303–21, London: Taylor & Francis.

11

Scenographic events Interfacing with digital fashion stories Christine Sjöberg

In Modefotografi: En genres anatomi (Fashion photography: The anatomy of a genre) (2006) scholar of Aesthetics and Culture Charlotte Andersen writes that ‘fashion can be seen as a playground where each day we practise living with the challenging fact that we and the world around us are in constant change’ (2006: 8).1 What Andersen highlights is how fashion deals not only with garments and different styles of clothing but also with everyday practices and existential struggles. The designer Henrik Vibskov (2013) states, in a video recording for the online Louisiana Channel, that fashion absorbs the world as well as mirroring its condition. Thus, fashion is not synonymous with garments and the subject matter of this chapter – digitally presented fashion stories on contributormagazine​.c​om – cannot be defined as something that showcases clothing. Instead the photographic series from Contributor cause the things, places and bodies they involve in their aesthetic universe to be experienced in a certain way. In so doing they establish a relation to their beholder that demands something, that asks for something which ‘exceeds its nameable content’ (Mitchell 2015: 69) and that affects what is taking place in the fashion photograph as well as outside of it. Art historian John Potvin maintains that ‘To be “in fashion” is both and at once sartorial and spatial’ (2009: 1), and he writes that fashion is not only a product of labour but a practice of ‘being-in-the-world’, a sensual activity (2009: 9). In the fashion stories analysed here, this practice or activity draws on the relations between recognizable settings, materials, objects and bodily elements as well as ‘extra-daily’ (Hann 2019) acts and components, perceived through how the photographic still image and its presentational medium (the screen) register and

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present them. In that way, the fashion photographs on the Contributor website can be seen as engaging in a practice that deals with, as well as triggers, a number of scenographic elements and generates a need for a ‘scenographic thinking’. Lecturer in scenography Rachel Hann and other scholars from various disciplines regard the photograph as either scenic (Hann 2019) or as an impenetrable coffin of what has been – a scene that the beholder cannot enter (see e.g. Sobchack 2004; Barker 2009).2 The effects of a photograph, however, are tied not only to the single still image but also to photography as a flow of images and photographic acts. If the photographic still image remained only ‘a point of view’ how could it then serve to entangle and affect bodies and practices? How could photography, so convincingly, offer ways to ‘see’ – and even ‘an ethics of seeing’ (Sontag [1977] 2008: 3) – if it did not engage the body by other means than a static and distant vision? Philosopher Richard Shusterman argues that it is important to draw a distinction ‘between photography and the photograph’ (2012: 68): Although the photograph (whether in hard-copy print or in digital display) is surely the standard end product of photography and conventionally recognized as the goal and work of photographic art, there is more to photography than the photograph. To appreciate this distinction and see that the photograph and its aesthetics perception are only part of a larger complex of elements that constitutes photography as an activity and as an art, we first need to examine these other elements. (2012: 68)

One way to address this larger ‘complex of elements’ when analysing photographic images is to activate the aforementioned need for ‘scenographic thinking’: to adopt an approach that does not consider the photographic image and its presented objects, bodies and settings as isolated represented items (that separately or together form a code or specific meaning). But instead perceives them as coming into being through material and spatial interrelations within the singular ‘site of the image’ (Rose 2012: 27), its interconnectivity with other photographic (image) sites and the phenomenological beholding and spatial situatedness of an active ‘seer’ (McKinney and Palmer 2017: 6–7). Together they create a relational zone that directs and orientates the beholder. Such a zone could be described as an activation of different ‘interfacings’ – between materials and techniques, technological as well as embodied, to perform and situate the (in this case) fashioned human body. Analyses conducted from such a perspective also have the potential to avoid addressing the pre-photographic setting of the photograph as a fixed mise en

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scène, approaching it instead as a ‘photographic situation’ (Shusterman 2012) that involves different actors, a spatiotemporal context as well as the active influence of the photographic equipment. The aim of this chapter is therefore to explore what a scenographic methodology can bring to the study of fashion photography and the digital fashion magazine by engaging with a multisensorial approach to photography that involves phenomenological experiences and embodied relations. Interfacing with the fashion stories on contributormagazine​.c​om is an encounter that frames, activates and positions the beholder (McKinney and Palmer 2017: 6), who is perceiving not only by means of a pair of detached eyes. Anthropologist Sarah Pink argues ‘that vision might not be an exclusive category of experience’ (Pink 2011: 265); that is the senses do not work in relation to each other, but rather work interconnectedly.3 Such a merged phenomenology of perception challenges our understanding of the limits of photography (2011: 266). With an emphasis on how scenographic elements such as setting, light, distance and material relations are related to the postures and gestures of the fashioned human body within and between the images on the Contributor website, I discuss how the fashion photograph image series – the fashion story – can be seen as partaking in a performance that is being staged and restaged in front of the camera, as well as in the beholder’s embodied relation to the photograph in a culture that embeds visual and photographic acts in everyday life.

contributormagazine​.c​om The fashion stories on contributormagazine​.c​om are not commissioned works. Instead, different actors within the fields of fashion and photography, young and upcoming as well as more well established, submit their work to a ‘creative team’ that selects what will be published on the site. The website also serves as a network where you can find different actors or potential collaborators. The site displays no advertisements; when magazines are dependent on advertising revenues, the advertisers can also come to affect the editorial work.4 Thus, contributormagazine​.c​om functions as a platform where it is possible to express a more subjective vision.5 Even so, many contributors are part of the fashion or creative industries and gain recognition by being displayed in the publication.6 Contributor was started in 2008 and – at the time of this writing – the magazine is produced digitally and in print by editor-in-chief Robert Rydberg

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(stylist), creative director Martin Sandberg, publishing editor Antonia Nessen (fashion journalist and writer), executive publisher Magnus Magnusson (fashion photographer) and fashion editor Hilda Sandström (stylist), along with editorial partners.7 In the print magazine, published twice a year in circa A3 format, well-known figures in foremost the fashion and culture scene contribute their work.8 More recent issues consist of a box in which the images/works are presented as prints in different sizes, and the publication has elaborated with the conventional format of a magazine.9 The visual material for this chapter is based on a six-month case study (1 June 2018 to 30 November 2018) of the material published on contributormagazine​.com​.

Digital wandering: Intuitive drifting and rational organization When one enters the Contributor website, the fashion stories are presented as automatically shifting multi-slide presentations against coloured backgrounds, posted in reverse chronological order in a blog-like manner, by date of publication. This creates an interconnectivity with other kinds of websites by means of a recognizable blog feature, but also infuses a notion of time and a feeling of ongoing daily activities: photographic stagings that are constantly staged, restaged and uploaded. If clicked on, the stories are shown as a number of still images ordered vertically. The images, both as slide presentations and if clicked on, are often presented as ‘double spreads’, resembling the layout of a paper magazine. But what in the analogue magazine is done by means of physical interaction – hand against paper – is here done by means of digital coding and interactions such as clicking and scrolling. Both the graphic blocks of background colour and how the image slides start to move (setting the still images in motion) draw my attention when entering the website.10 Even if the photographs are displayed long enough for the beholder to see what they present, the quick transitions in-between the images seem almost to send out brief flashes of light, adding a stuttering feel that emphasizes the backlight of the screen as well as of the interface itself. Thus, the interface and the photographs are integrated (Grundell 2016: 30), and the jumping from frame to frame creates ‘relations [that] are not static, but dynamic, and constituted as events’ (Drucker 2011: 10). Visual theorist Johanna Drucker (2011 and 2013) contends that the interface is not an object, but a ‘space’ of affordances and potentials structured for use. It is a space that cannot be given any persistent or stable location, and following Drucker, it could be seen as

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a set of structured relations that allow certain actions to take place or occur. Nevertheless, I find myself rather quickly and instinctively locating myself within the images by means of various visual elements to which my bodily attention is drawn: material surfaces, gestures, hands touching the body to which they belong or the surrounding surfaces. At times, what I come to see, or rather follow, are returning impressions of a colour (as if I have been affected by the initial effect of the graphic blocks) – as in a detail, garments, a striking object, shimmering eye shadow, a fading sky, but equally in the colour of place – the green hues of the forest, the greyish tones of a concrete wall – and the colour of light, both as a visual effect and as a visualization of an atmosphere changing the overall tone of the image. Thus, the digital interface imparts a notion of wandering structured by its layout and encoded movements, and the features of the photographic image equally affect this wandering.11 When I begin to wander with different salient or affective elements, they come to tie objects, bodies and parts of the image sites together. The visual elements are working both on their own, in relation to the rest of the components within the image site, and as amalgams or mobilizations of visual resources (often enhancing material aspects and relations of the fashioned body, objects and the setting) moving between different images and stories, such as comparable gestures in a similar colour tone (Figure 11.1 and Plates 26–28). These visual resources balance between ‘coded meaning and affective response that gives them their peculiar intensity’ (Shinkle 2008b: 216). Certain resources or amalgamations of resources linger in memory, binding together elements from different parts of the website. One of these wandering trails serves as a selection criterion for the image examples analysed. These

Figure 11.1  Snapshot of working collage. Photo: Christine Sjöberg.

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examples have been cut out of a flow of images, and are analysed as a still constellation; my aim, though, is to evoke aspects of the motion that have served as interconnective tissue when wandering with the material. As I wander, or rather go through the collected material as a researcher, this visually associative and affective choreography turns into a more pragmatic seeking of patterns. I make screenshots of all fashion stories published during the selected period of time, and for each photograph take note of the title and type of location, the gender of the model, whether one or several people are in the story, date of publication and possible time of year. I trace written and visual themes by how often they recur. I also document my routes of wandering, within and outside of the Contributor website, with both screenshots and QuickTime recordings. While doing so I also do ‘cut-outs’ (Plate 26 and part of Figure 11.1) – intuitive and fast screenshots – of what to me are salient parts of images to which I am drawn, parts of images that prick me (Barthes [1980] 2000), make me curious or irritate me (Hann 2019). These ‘cut-outs’ become a way to navigate through the material (or is it the material that directs me?) and to partake in the space of affordances (Drucker 2011) created by the interface.12 These two ways to ‘wander’ can also be seen, to use the words of Drucker, as expressing a tension between ‘a rational organization of content and the need to balance this with an intuitive way of using that content’ (2011: 10). This tension is an inherent quality of the interface itself, and as Drucker continues: ‘Interface is the space between these two – it is neither the transparent and self-evident map of content elements and their relations, nor is it simply a way to organize tasks’ (2011: 10).

Stillness, motion and what happens in between During my digital wanderings my body is almost still, except for small movements. I am driven by the ease of making another click or just watching encoded movements and shifts. The interface of contributormagazine​.c​om imparts both a drive and an unrelieved restlessness; the mind and the eyes get exhausted. A stiffness in the neck and an ache in the back of the hand make themselves felt after I have been scrolling for hours, and I can feel a slight swelling of the fingers. I am drifting but barely physically moving. I have visually passed though terrains and mapped my body onto other bodies (Shinkle 2008b: 222), while my own body is stiffly locked up in front of the screen.

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On the Contributor website I can follow the initially anonymous subjects in the fashion photographs as well the producers of the images, click on names with links or use their names as search words. I move out of the magazine site, trace their stagings of themselves and others: models, designers, photographers and stylists, sometimes a fashion or art student. This possibility to follow links – stalking – contextualizes the photographs differently than in the printed magazine. By erasing some aspects of anonymity, it causes the ones involved in the pre-photographic stagings to appear closer, not closer as in physical distance, but in terms of actual and existing physical bodies and places. The medial difference of presentation, compared to the paper magazine, and the kind of interfacing this difference implies, also embodies an important aspect of the fashion image in general: namely, the significance of what happens in between the images and the latent mental and felt movement of this in-betweenness. This movement does not, however, cancel the importance of the single image, as suggested by some scholars. In the following analyses, I accordingly pay attention to both the singular image site as well as its relationality to other image sites and series, focusing on scenographic elements and descriptions that emphasize and involve these elements from a phenomenological perspective. If attending to a merged phenomenology of perception when analysing photographs, it is necessary to include in one’s analysis, as Sarah Pink notes, ‘existing biographical experiences’ (2011: 266). In other words, I need to use prior physical involvements when analysing experiences that (by medium and mode) tend to get categorized into what can be known by seeing and what can be known by the other senses.

To ‘wear’ the image In a ‘spread’ from the fashion story Pink Jungle (28 July 2018) (photo by Grodskaya & Romankov), the model stands on a wooden floor against a white wall (part of Figure 11.1). On one side she is lit by what seems to be natural light and on the other by artificial magenta-coloured light, which also hits the wall behind her giving it a pinkish tint. A Monstera plant casts blue–grey shadows on the wall, contrasting with the colour of the artificial light. One of the model’s arms hangs by her side and the other one is bent, holding up a shiny gloved hand in a slightly theatrical pose. The scene is clearly staged, yet the seemingly natural light, the wooden floor, the way the model stands and the Monstera plant that pops in from the left edge of the image contribute an everyday feel.

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The image to the right in the ‘spread’ – a close-up of the area just behind the model – is more darkly exposed, which enhances the shades of blue and magenta and turns the shadowy pattern on the wall into a graphical painterly surface. If approached as a fantasy mise en scène, the surface can be read as an entrance to a dream landscape, perhaps a pink jungle as the title suggests. But to me it rather ‘reads’ as an atmospheric elsewhere, which is not only a place of fantasies and constructed desires, but also one anchored in an embodied notion of how the light hits the wall and remembrances of being struck by such a light – that is to say a light that has the potential to affect the site where one is located and make it feel like somewhere else and thereby engendering a bodily transference. The shadow on the wall recalls my own apartment, as do the wooden floors and the Monstera. Despite the artificial lighting the shadow has almost the same colour as shadows take on when the sun is about to set. The surface thus comes alive by means of connections to embodied memories (Casey 1987) – of everyday as well as extra-daily (Hann 2019) events, but also by connections to other photographic sites and situations (Plates 26–28).13 There is a clear-cut division between the two images in the spread; the rectangular image frame holds them apart. Yet, there is a sort of visual puzzle directed by the photographic framing and layout that leads me ‘into’ the shadowy wall, creating an aesthetic and seductive relation to a photographically defined place. In this orientation the motive of the wall is both a projected light image (by the screen) and a (visual) experience of a plant casting a graphic and painterly shadow in an atmospheric light. Photographic and scenographic methods conspire, orientate me as a beholder: both by offering me a photographic and technological seeing of an event (a plant casting a shadow) but equally by creating a scenographic situation, where the beholding of these (scenographic as well as photographic) elements of light and shadow take place and the beholder is situated. A tiny part of one of the leaves of the plant in the image to the left can also be seen in the image to the right, creating an interfacial element between the two images as well as between the room where the model is placed and the close-up of the shadow on the wall. These elements (the room and its objects and surfaces) contribute to the ‘space of affordances’, in which I as a beholder also partakes and in which I can – mentally, emotionally and possibly even physically – be tinged with a magenta-coloured light. Thus, the light within the photograph does not simply symbolize, but rather configures that space, grounding a feeling of a physicality when interfacing with the scenographic elements of the (digital) fashion photograph.

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Rachel Hann (2019: 15) writes that ‘staged atmospheres and situations affect materials and bodies alike’. On the physical site, in front of the camera, the atmospheric light sooner or later goes away. In the photograph the light stays the same, thereby equally enhancing and concealing a friction between what I identify as recognizable materials and objects and the by means of photogenia (Barthes 1977: 23) photographically seductive.14 Hann argues that ‘scenographic seduction’ has to do with the use of ‘scenographics to manipulate the potential of an affective atmosphere to inform decision-making’ (2019: 108). In relation to the photographic as well as scenographic seduction of the fashion stories on contributormagazine​.com​, the decision-making is most often not about buying a specific product but rather if, instinctively and somewhat unconsciously, ‘buying’ into the image. And rather than constructing a conscious fantasy in which I become the protagonist, it feels as if I come to ‘wear’ the photograph; not the clothes presented in the photographic images as part of a fantasized future event, but the photograph itself – by incarnating the resources it provides.

Surface relations and the agency of materials In the story Terrene (25 September 2018) a number of elements from Pink Jungle return: natural light (here the primary light source), covered hands and the colour magenta. The dark green forest setting and the overall performance are different, and the natural light is falling from a cloudy but bright sky. Most of the images in the story have a slightly cyan cast, giving the impression that little or no postproduction has been done. This adds to the notion of a playful, yet seriously intentioned, pre-photographic performance contrasting strong colours and synthetic materials with the forest location. The last image of the story (if one clicks on the moving slide presentation letting the images be shown as a series of stills) covers a ‘double spread’ (Plate 27). The image’s frame crops the model’s head and legs, leaving nothing to be seen of the setting but the dark forest ground. The model is dressed in a magentacoloured nylon/lycra body suit, with a black lace dress on top. The body suit shields every inch of her skin, including her head and hands. The cropping creates a spatial tension between the evenly lit hands and what cannot fully be seen within the image frame – her head. This could be read, in line with what Roberta MacGrath (2003) argues in relation to Edward Weston’s images of ‘head cut women’, as a classic fetishist signification. Yet, the image frame enhances the perception of the magenta body suit as a both eroticizing and

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cocooning container. Because no skin is seen, the non-organic material surface of the body suit is what contours the body, contrasting it with the organic elements of the forest ground. The relation between the organic and non-organic engages both a sensual process and a scenographic agency of materials (McKinney and Palmer 2017: 17) that could be seen as equally challenging and enforcing the fetishized reading: the magenta body suit comes to highlight an awareness of the surface of the body as a battle between the revealing intimacy of that surface and the somewhat sublime feeling of the invisible flesh beneath it. Stylist and writer Emma Veronica Johansson describes fashion as the ‘often overlooked, just outside of the skin resting layer where human and universe meet and melt together’ (2017: 11),15 and in the last image from Terrene ‘fashion’ both as garment and as photograph come to highlight that ‘The reciprocal contact between us and objects or environments indeed occurs on the surface’ (Bruno 2014: 3).16 Rather than the image site creating a ‘room’ by means of framing, perspective and distances as in the left image from Pink Jungle, the photographic frame’s chopping of the body of the model here directs an idea or sensation of what continues outside of its straight lines. Semiotician Göran Sonesson writes that ‘an image does not only render a fictional space. It also organizes the space around itself ’ (1992: 19).17 And instead of being constrained to the image site, the ‘floating’ hands appear to come out of the screen approaching the image beholder. Art historian Magdalena Holdar (2005) argues in her dissertation that actions of the body can expand or affect the impact of the scenography in theatrical settings. In the relation to the scenographic situation created by interfacing with the fashion story Terrene the ‘action’ of the body is augmented by how the light from the overcast sky gives the hands (in the last) photograph an even sheen, further reinforced by the backlight of the screen. A number of material and interfacial relations are activated, bringing forth how interaction in the digital context, as also noted by Lev Manovich (2001: 57), does not only imply clicking on different links but also includes ‘tactile and haptic associations’ as well as ‘psychological processes’ (Shinkle 2013: 178).

A critical zone The fashion stories on contributormagazine​.c​om do not present clear-cut storylines.18 Instead they are associative – suggesting several instances of a plausible context or character. However, the majority of the models on the Contributor website do not seem to have been dropped into the scene as, for

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example, a woman dressed in crisp white clothing and high heels in the middle of the Sahara Desert. Instead a recurring notion of the ordinary, achieved by means of the choice of locations and use of natural light, comes to influence the apprehension of the fashion stories. This creates a relation between what is semantically coded as ‘fashioned’ and phenomenological experiences of the everyday objects and settings that participate as referents in such a coding. The fashion story Dreams in Colour (22 August 2018) does not present a specific location. It is photographed in a white room, maybe a daylight studio. The soft and even light comes from a large neutral source. One can see the reflection of a window in the models’ eyes. The fashion story presents close-ups of faces and hands, with the following elements filling the image frame: pale skin, dark brown eyes and brightly coloured make-up. The last image in the story is a shot of only one of the model’s hands (Plate 28). The hand is coloured with magenta purple eyeshadow with a slight shimmer. The window light and make-up bring out the skin texture. It is a recognizable light, similar to that falling on my hands as I write this. The resemblance of the light in the pre-photographic setting and the one where I, as a beholder, is located comes to emphasize a relational and material zone, in which the photograph itself is ‘an active interface between its referent (before) and the viewer’s space (after)’ (Arnould 2005: 14). To use Drucker’s words, such ‘An interface is not so much a “between” space as it is a mediating environment that makes the experience, a “critical zone that constitutes a user experience” ’ (2011: 10).19 That will say that the photograph and its constitutive elements both make possible as well as partake in an environment that transcends ‘the site of the image’ (Rose 2012: 27) and turns the beholding of the fashion story into a scenographic event. The tiny shimmering mica particles on the model’s hand are enhanced by the projecting backlight of the screen. Photographer Stephen Shore, interviewed in Purple Magazine (F/W 2015), stresses that ‘If the same picture was taken with film and considered too dull or too flat, on a backlit screen it will have a wonderful luminosity to it’. Thus, the light of the screen (as a scenographic element of the interface) also partakes in this ‘critical zone’, and adds an element of seduction, as it both shines through the shimmering hand and makes visible a threshold between different physical settings. A threshold that ‘reveals the screen as a material interface that both provokes and frustrates real contact’ (Jeong 2013: 16). Thus, the interfacial zone serves as a bridge, offering an ambivalent tactility. Professor of Media, Culture and Communication Alexander R. Galloway claims that the interface ‘is that moment where one significant material is understood as distinct from another significant material. In other words, an interface is not

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a thing, an interface is always an effect. It is always a process or a translation’ (2012: 33). My own hand held up in front of me does not recall the effect in the photograph. But even without tinting it with magenta blue shimmers, when I hold it up closer to the window and use my phone to photograph it, the way I perceive it – and come to experience it – changes. I start to bend my hand in relation to the light and how I see it by means of the camera. I notice the red-blue discoloration of my cold fingertips, and the dry skin flakes along the sides of the nails. I pay attention to things I did not recognize earlier (or did not bother or want to acknowledge). Professor of Visual and Environmental Studies Giuliana Bruno argues that the physicality of a thing ‘does not vanish with the disappearance of its material but can morph culturally, transmuting into another medium’ (2014: 7). While I can alter my gestures to make my hand appear according to the fashioned body’s repertoire, giving me a certain satisfaction, the performance of restaging also makes me aware of my own corporeality and how it appears when made into a still photographic image. Fashion is conceptually and in practice both commercial and corporeal (Warkander and Johansson 2017: 18) – creating a vulnerable interface between the individual subject’s material body and economic and ideological concerns. Reader in Photography Eugénie Shinkle highlights how modelling is ‘one of a spectrum of techniques [. . .] in which the body’s affective capacities become sites of capital investment’ (2011: 174–175). In the stuttering flow of images on the Contributor website, the slightly shimmering hand of the model comes to partake in an ongoing performance, and I can kinaesthetically perceive its affective features in my body, as well as observe its meaning-making potentials being set in motion: possibly cold, connotationally bruised, or a notion of posing one’s own hand in front of a camera. My own staged and performing hand becomes a part of these movements, tickling the ‘palpable tension between the real and the ideal’ (Shinkle 2011: 170), ascribing it to a flow of images and an economy not only of value but of emotion and affect (Ahmed 2004) in prolongation influencing both bodily and spatial politics.

Conclusion: A scenographic notion of photography The photographic image is dependent on a visual medium for its presentation, in this case the digital screen. This does not imply that the beholding of what the image and screen come to project must be bound to a ‘disembodied’ single

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sense mode of perception. Rather, what leads me through the material on the Contributor website is how the photographed fashioned body – adorned, moulded by light and in physical contact with what surrounds it – creates ‘relay points’ triggering what can be (or has been) bodily felt and experienced. These relay points and what happens in between them when being set in motion and interacted with activate the material surfaces within the site of the photograph but also, by extension, more ephemeral as well as existential phenomena such as being a situated and perceiving body. A body that is (in)formed by its surface relations and their kinaesthetic and affective responses, but also how these surface relations come about visually. The photographic stagings presented on contributormagazine​.c​om do not repeat themselves, and the performative effect has to enter and pass bodies that re-actualize the previous happenings in front of the camera. This is done partly conceptually, but also by means of bodily (re)actions, which necessarily also have to engage the photograph’s qualities of ordering things (distances, focus, handling of light, etc.). This ordering does not only function as a mastering gaze or a distant vision but also becomes part of an embodied response by a body that enacts seeing (Noë 2004). In that way, the fashion photographs on contributormagazine​.c​om can be seen as engaging in an interweave of material, affective and discursive elements that questions the notion that the photographs’ effects only are, or within the beholder remain, surface symptoms.20 As the analyses in this chapter bring forth, by attending the interfacing with the fashion stories on the Contributor website as scenographic events, a number of possibilities open up to engage with such an interweave both ‘pragmatically’ and as an interdisciplinary theoretical construct.

Notes 1 The translation from Danish to English was done by me, the author of the chapter. 2 I am well aware of that these arguments draw on well-established theory on the photographic still image and that this could be discussed much more in depth than what is done here. 3 Emphasis in original. 4 Contributor is, as expressed on their website, a nonprofit publication. 5 This is also one of the aims of the magazine, as stated on the website. 6 Eugénie Shinkle (2008a: 2) argues that if there is something which is ‘shared by all fashion photographs, [. . .] it is their simultaneous placement within the artistic and

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Scenography and Art History commercial realms.’ Yet, fashion photography draws on more than just the tension between commercial and artistic means and goals. For more information see contributormagazine​.com​/profil​e/, accessed 1 August 2020. The format of earlier issues is even a bit bigger than A3. The magazine also presents written works. In April 2019, the rather dark and saturated colours were replaced by a pastel colour palette. The use of the notion of wandering is inspired by how phenomenological methods make use of and discuss the notions of walking and walking with. But as ‘digital wandering’ is not about a physical move of the body of the beholder/researcher from one place to another, the use of the notion is equally influenced by the concept of mind-wandering (here defined as fluctuating attention on a certain topic or task, leading to an experience of thoughts and feelings that ‘wander off or away’) as well as contemporary photographer Wolfgang Tillmans and his preoccupation with what he calls ‘the wandering image’ (Evans 2010). This is an image the meaning of which changes depending on the constellations and institutional frames in which it is being shown. This does not imply, however, that digital wandering is disembodied, rather it is reliant on bodily experiences and the body as a site of affective activities. Digital interfacing offers methodological tools and becomes a way to frame and reframe. American professor of literary journalism Michael Lesy (2007) discusses how the researcher, when entering the photographic archive, takes photographs in the archive – like taking photographs of real-world events – by selecting images that were already once taken. What I here call photographic situations are not limited to actual photo shoots, but could also be likened to states (physical or emotional) that occur when by means of feeling, seeing or imagining we conceptualize a possible other and situate ourselves (physically or emotionally) as if becoming image-like. Barthes writes: ‘In photogenia the connoted message is the image itself, “embellished” [. . .] by techniques of lighting, exposure and printing (1977: 23)’. The translation from Swedish to English was done by me. Emphasis in original. The translation from Swedish to English was done by me. Fashion stories/editorials seldom do. A zone which could be likened to what Astrid von Rosen in a text from 2015 terms a ‘scenographic zone’. In the text von Rosen addresses the relation between a past phenomenological event and the ‘place’ in which a desiring beholder (in retrospect) can be touched by such an event. This formulation is inspired by Josephine Brain’s (2002) writings in an article critiquing ocular centric readings of the anorectic body in feminist theory.

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References Ahmed, S. (2004), ‘Affective Economies’, Social Text 79, 22 (2), 117–39. Andersen, C. (2006), Modefotografi: En genres anatomi, Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanums Forlag. Arnould, J. (2005), ‘Touching to See’, October, 114 (Autumn), 5–16. Barker, J. M. (2009), The Tactile Eye: Touch and the Cinematic Experience, Berkley: University of California Press. Barthes, R. (1977), Image, Music, Text, trans. S. Heath, New York: Hill and Wang. Barthes, R. ([1980] 2000), Camera Lucida, trans. R. Howard, London: Vintage Classics. Brain, J. (2002), ‘Unsettling “Body Image”: Anorexic Body Narratives and the Materialization of the “Body Imaginary”’, Feminist Theory, 3 (2), 151–68. Bruno, G. (2014), Surface: Matters of Aesthetics, Materiality, and Media, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Casey, E. S. (1987), Remembering: A Phenomenological Study, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Drucker, J. (2011), ‘Humanities Approaches to Interface Theory’, Culture Machine, 12, 1–20. https​:/​/cu​​lture​​machi​​ne​.ne​​t​/wp-​​conte​​nt​/up​​loads​​/2019​​/01​/3​​-Huma​​nitie​​s​-​434​​ -885-​​1​-PB.​​pdf (accessed 30 July 2020). Drucker, J. (2013), ‘Performative Materiality and Theoretical Approaches to Interface’, Digital Humanities Quarterly, 7 (1). http:​/​/www​​.digi​​talhu​​manit​​ies​.o​​rg​/dh​​q​/vol​​/7​/1/​​ 00014​​​3​/000​​143​.h​​tml (accessed 30 July 2020). Evans, D. (2010), ‘Wolfgang Tillmans and the Wandering Image’, Image & Narrative, 11 (4), 98–112. http:​/​/www​​.imag​​eandn​​arrat​​ive​.b​​e​/ind​​ex​.ph​​p​/ima​​genar​​rativ​​e​/art​​i​cle/​​ view/​​111​/8​4 (Accessed 30 July 2020). Galloway, A. R. (2012), The Interface Effect, Cambridge: Polity Press. Grundell, V. (2016), Flow and Friction: On the Tactical Potential of Interfacing with Glitch Art, PhD Thesis, Stockholm University, Stockholm. Hann, R. (2019), Beyond Scenography, Abingdon: Routledge. Holdar, M. (2005), Scenography in Action: Space, Time and Movement in Theatre Productions by Ingmar Bergman, PhD thesis, Stockholm, Stockholm University, Akademitryck, Eidos no 14. Jeong, S. H. (2013), Cinematic Interfaces: Film Theory After New Media, New York: Routledge. Johansson, E. V. and Warkander, P. (2017), Sista skriket: En bok om mode, erotik och död, Sollentuna: Constant Reader. Lesy, M. (2007), ‘Visual Literacy’, Journal of American History, 94 (1), 143–53. Manovich, L. (2001), The Language of New Media, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. McGrath, R. (2003), ‘Re-reading Edward Weston: Feminism, Photography and Psychoanalysis’, in L. Wells (ed.), The Photography Reader, 327–37, Abingdon: Routledge.

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McKinney, J. and Palmer, S. (2017), Scenography Expanded: An Introduction to Contemporary Performance Design, London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama. Mitchel, W. J. T. (2015), Image Science: Iconology, Visual Culture, and Media Aesthetics, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Noë, A. (2004), Action in Perception, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Pink, S. (2011), ‘Multimodality, Multisensoriality and Ethnographic Knowing: Social Semiotics and the Phenomenology of Perception’, Qualitative Research, 11 (3), 261–76. Potvin, J. (2009), ‘Introduction: Inserting Fashion Into Space’, in John Potvin (ed.), The Spaces and Places of Fashion, 1800‐2007, 1–15, New York: Routledge. Rose, G. (2012), Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to Researching with Visual Materials, 3rd edn, London: Sage Publications. von Rosen, A. (2015), ‘Scenografera Sillgateteatern: Ett spel mellan kropp, bild och språk’, in E. K. Gjervan, S. Gladsø and R. M. Selvik, Lidenskap och levebrød: Utøvende kunst i endring rundt 1800, 315–34, Bergen: Fagboksforlaget. Shinkle, E. (2008a), ‘Introduction’, in E. Shinkle (ed.), Fashion as Photograph: Viewing and Reviewing Images of Fashion, 1–14, London: I.B Tauris. Shinkle, E. (2008b), ‘The Line between the Wall and the Floor: Reality and Affect in Contemporary Fashion Photography’, in E. Shinkle (ed.), Fashion as Photograph: Viewing and Reviewing Images of Fashion, 214–26, London: I.B Tauris. Shinkle, E. (2011), ‘Playing for the Camera: Huizinga’s “Homo Ludens”, Technology, and the Playful Body in Fashion Photography’, in Æ. Sigurjónsdóttir, M. A. Langkjær and J. Turney (eds), Images in Time: Flashing Forward, Backward, In Front and Behind Photography in Fashion, Advertising and the Press, 165–82, Bath: Wunderkammer Press. Shinkle, E. (2013), ‘Fashion’s Digital Body: Seeing and Feeling in Fashion Interactives’, in D. Bartlett, S. Cole and A. Rocamora (ed.), Fashion Media: Past and Present, 175–83, London: Bloomsbury Academic. Shore, S. (2015), ‘On Photography vs Instagram’, interview by A. Dahan, Purple Magazine, F/W, issue 24. https​:/​/pu​​rple.​​fr​/ma​​gazin​​e​/fw-​​2015-​​issue​​-24​/s​​te​phe​​n​-sho​​ re/ (accessed 30 July 2020). Shusterman, R. (2012), ‘Photography as Performative Process’, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 70 (1), 67–77. Sobchack, V. (2004), Carnal Thoughts: Embodiment and Moving Image Culture, Berkley: University of California Press. Sonesson, G. (1992), Bildbetydelser: Inledning till bildsemiotiken som vetenskap, Lund: Studentlitteratur. Sontag, S. ([1977] 2008), On Photography, London: Penguin Modern Classics. Vibskov, H. (2013), ‘Fashion Is a Fast Reflection’ on LOUISIANA channel. http:​/​/cha​​ nnel.​​louis​​iana.​​dk​/vi​​deo​/h​​enrik​​-vibs​​kov​-f​​ashio​​n​-fa​s​​t​-ref​​l ecti​​on (accessed 30 July 2020). Warkander, P. and Johansson, E. V. (2017), Sista skriket: En bok om mode, erotik och död, Sollentuna: Constant Reader.

12

Beyond change Archaeology of a spook play Tamas Szalczer and Eszter Szalczer

3 June 1954, the Living Theatre Studio on the top floor of 2641 Broadway at 100th Street in Manhattan: opening night of The Spook Sonata by Swedish dramatist August Strindberg.1 An audience of the New York art world occupies rows of seats scavenged from the streets, facing a curtain that covers the small proscenium stage. The curtain, as recognized by many in the room, is a patchwork stitched together from the costumes of an earlier production, Ubu Roi, splattered with colourful paint. As lights dim, the curtain rises to reveal volumes of dense darkness. Slowly, tiny dots of light appear and begin to grow as shadowy figures are dispatched from the depth of the stage. What unfolds in this room over the course of the evening, and subsequent evenings throughout the month of June, is the subject of the present investigation. Due to the Living Theatre’s vehement opposition to commercial theatre, the production was not advertised and no critics were invited (Beck 1965: 20). No contemporary reviews or accounts of the event have come to light; no historical studies written. Our most substantial source comprises two blackand-white contact sheets made up of twenty prints taken of the performance by Alix Jeffry, a photographer documenting off-Broadway theatre in the 1950s (Jeffry 1954, Plates 29 and 30).2 But the images – photographic incisions into a long-vanished event – are dark and blurry; they conceal more than they reveal. It is these images we aim to unpack. The physical reality of the event is deeply buried under manifold strata bearing the distancing effect of time, fragments of memory, scattered production records and documents that mark the aesthetic and cultural contexts of the event. ‘Scenography’ throughout this text is a constantly evolving term, as it involves both the construction of a multisensory event by those who partook in it at the

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time of its occurrence and our attempt to penetrate, recapture, embody and share it through writing. To begin with, scenography is applied as a means to reach behind those accumulated layers in order to beckon and rescue the visibility and physicality of the event – to capture its experiential reality. We treat the contact sheets as an archaeological find, taking them into our laboratory where the images are interrogated and re-activated through observation, interpretation and translation. The images represent the performance as it unfolds in time, signifying the continuous change of the stage environment, including the shifting configurations of the actors’ bodies in space. Throughout this process, the craft and materiality of writing fuses with the craft and materiality of making: of creating the theatrical event.3 Scenography in this sense connotes the crafting of an event, where the artists and attendees in the past and the writers and readers in the present are ‘directly engaged with their bodies and their existential experiences’ (Pallasmaa 2005: 12). Our purpose is to invoke a tangible experience of an event that is no longer ‘there’ – whose ghosts haunt only in a series of black frames dotted with white-grey shapes. Our reflections emerge from shared readings by two voices, one from a theatre-history/dramaturgy perspective and the other with a background in crafts traditions, architecture and visual arts practice. But before we plunge into the scenographic terrain of the images, the artistic context of the Living Theatre and the textual parameters underlying the event must be mapped out.

The Living Theatre context The Living Theatre, founded in 1947 in New York by actor, director and author Judith Malina (1926–2015) and painter, poet and set designer Julian Beck (1925– 1985), is known for their pacifist anarchist vision and provocative performances for social change. During the 1960s they became known for their nomadic lifestyle while touring Europe with productions – such as Paradise Now! – that broke down barriers between performer and spectator. Less known is that in the early years of their existence the company staged a series of modern and contemporary poetic drama, including works by Picasso, Pirandello, Cocteau, T. S. Eliot, Gertrude Stein, William Carlos Williams, Dylan Thomas and Strindberg. It must be remembered that life in New York in the 1950s was traversed by recent and ongoing cataclysmic experiences, including those of the Second World War, the Cold War, the Korean War, the McCarthy hearings broadcast

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on television and the constant fear of a nuclear attack destroying the city – all of which were concerns that the young members of the Living Theatre needed to confront on an everyday basis. They considered flying from the city; they stayed, protested, resisted and frequently got arrested (Malina 1984: 118, 120, 134–5). What provides another important angle on The Spook Sonata production is that the Living Theatre Studio emerged as an embodiment of the New York avantgarde art scene in the 1950s: its members, audiences, friends and supporters belonging to and shaping that very scene. A ferment of mutual influences was already brewing during the war years when many artists of the European avantgarde – Piet Mondrian, Marcel Duchamp and others – relocated in New York and exhibitions showing the work of the Surrealists and Cubists, including a Picasso retrospective at MoMA in 1939–40, had a profound effect on the cultural life of the city (Fluegel 1980: 349). At the same time, distinctly American movements started to emerge, most forcefully the group of young artists that came to be called the New York School of Abstract Expressionism. Jackson Pollock, William Baziotes, Robert Motherwell and Mark Rothko moved in the same circles as the Living Theatre, and some of them even considered designing scenery for them (Malina 1984: 65–96). It is this symbiotic and reciprocal relationship between the stage and the audience that informs our phenomenological approach to scenography as ‘a field perceptually and materially oriented’ in terms of spectator and actor. Writing through this field we aim to redirect attention ‘from the world as it is conceived by the abstracting “scientific” gaze . . . to the world as it appears or discloses itself to the perceiving subject . . . [in order to] return perception to the fullness of its encounter with its environment’ (Garner 1994 2). The set of images on the contact sheets then draw us, writing this study, inside this reciprocal chain of environments.

Curtain-up But first we must enter. What would be a more fitting entry than through the curtain that spreads between the spectators and the stage – the enigmatic ‘Ubucurtain’ – shared by the audience, but unseen by Jeffry’s camera? As one entered the theatre, the curtain was the first indication of the world hidden behind it, a mask, an alluring screen of illusion stretched out as a boundary between the attendees and the world about to be revealed: a screen and a site of projections from both sides.

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It is a speaking curtain, coded with multiple narratives. One narrative inscribes the recent history of the Living Theatre. The curtain had been patched together from the costumes salvaged from the production of Ubu Roi at the Cherry Lane Theatre. That play was also directed by Malina with scenery and 152 costumes created by Beck. It opened with a preview on 3 August 1952 and closed ten days later when the Fire Department shut down the theatre and the company was evicted (Malina 1984: 236, 240–1). It was not until October 1953 that they found their new space, the loft uptown, which they immediately started to convert into a theatre, installing rows of black-lacquered chairs, building a proscenium stage, covering the walls with ‘brown wrapping-paper . . . like the Ubu Roi set . . . and [making] a curtain of patchwork Ubu costumes’ (Malina 1984: 296). The production of Ubu Roi, declared Malina during rehearsals, ‘promises to be wholeheartedly pataphysical’, signalling her interpretation of the play and the direction the Living Theatre aimed at (Malina 1984: 232). The term ‘pataphysics’ was coined by Ubu’s author Alfred Jarry, who defined it as ‘the science of imaginary solutions, which symbolically attributes the properties of objects, described by their virtuality, to their lineaments’ (Jarry 1965: 145). Pataphysics embraces anarchy, mocks reason and challenges the validity of objective science and factual knowledge. It extols the imagination, makes the impossible possible. It is inscribed in the curtain that became a permanent feature of the Living Theatre Studio space. On 5 August 1952 Malina describes in her diary Beck’s method of making costumes for Ubu by splattering them ‘with gaudy paint patterns born out of techniques discovered by Jackson Pollock’ (Malina 1984: 240). Although we don’t know what the costumes or the curtain looked like, one extant version of the Ubu production poster designed by Beck shows paint guttering in various directions on the surface of the image (Beck 2001: 23), which suggests an attempt to try out some aspects of Pollock’s complex innovations. Pollock was not only an acquaintance of the Becks, but by the mid-1940s he was also elevated to the status of the greatest living American painter, personifying abstract expressionism. His signature dripping technique, the ‘thick, fuliginous flatness’ (Greenberg 1986: 166) of his paintings, was familiar to the spectators facing the curtain – and perhaps even sought-after or emulated by some in the auditorium, as by Beck. This visual allusion to a known figure of interest marked the curtain as a meeting point between stage and auditorium. Spectators gazed at the curtain ‘looking back’. And finally, the story of the Ubu-curtain encapsulates the process of our writing/scenographing4 – an attempt to make felt something we cannot see by

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putting together pieces of a puzzle, a patchwork of recycled fragments thrown into a crucible, awaiting to be made anew.

The play script A brief synopsis of the play’s spatial settings and the characters’ positions within them is necessary for an understanding of the images and of the ways we engage with them. The play begins in a city street in front of an apartment house, where an apparition Milkmaid is seen by a fountain washing the eyes of a young Student. Next the Student and an Old Man in a wheelchair (named Hummel) are looking at the house façade where figures appear in windows and doorway, including the Colonel, the Young Lady, the Dead Man and the Mummy (an elderly lady whose statue as a young woman is seen in a window). Act 2 takes place in the round salon of the house, where first we meet the servants Johansson and Bengtsson, then witness a series of confrontations where characters ‘unmask’ one another, exposing secrets, until Hummel himself is unmasked and sent to his death behind a wallpapered door. At this point the Student is seen and heard in the next room reciting a poem (the so-called Sun Hymn adapted from The Edda) accompanied on harp by the Young Lady. Act 3 shifts to the Young Lady’s room, decorated with hyacinths and a Buddha statue, where we watch her and the Student in conversation until a monstrous Cook (described as a vampire) menacingly bursts in from the kitchen and poisons their innocence. Through another door the Colonel and the Mummy are seen sitting in an adjacent room. Under an unstoppable torrent of complaints by the Student, the Young Lady is slowly dying while a so-called death screen is placed before her. At the conclusion, the hyacinth room vanishes and the house interior is replaced by the image of Arnold Böcklin’s painting, The Isle of the Dead, while the Student sings the Sun Hymn again amid melancholy music heard from the island.

The contact sheets The twenty prints of the Living Theatre’s Spook Sonata production spread out on two contact sheets, sheet 1 showing images 1–12 (Plate 29), and sheet 2 images 13–20 (Plate 30). The images diverge from Strindberg’s script in that they show neither a recognizable exterior nor the interior of an apartment house. Instead, we are confronted with what looks like an outpost in a wasteland, its jagged

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wall-screen running along three sides of the stage surrounding the characters, with openings and hollow perforated wall fragments. The set remains the same throughout the three acts, and the passage of time is suggested by the changing stage properties and figure groupings. While the images on the sheets are not arranged in the order of the play’s progression, there are clearly distinguishable shots for each of the three acts, giving a sense of continuity of performance and that of the scenic environment. Our scenographing tools in the following pages evolve from the excavating process of writing, employed to foreground the material-perceptual nature of the event. We are also concerned with how parts of the stage can be construed from the varying viewpoints of Jeffry’s camera vs. the audience’s frontal perspective. While we strive to convey a multisensory world, our point of departure remains the visual clues in the photographs. With the aid of basic digital processing we were able to chart faded microstructures in the images. The following pages render four aspects of our work: the first focuses on constructing – the appearance and positioning of the set; the second on crafting – figure placement within the unfolding scenographic environment; the third on camera perspective in relation to audiences’ view; and the fourth on costume as a scenographic element.

Constructing the set The stage set is a concept of curved relief construction frontally, and vertically flattened by a raised platform and the limitation of the ceiling height (18).5 The stage ramp is a stained, dark plywood podium about three steps high (13,15, 17–20). The proscenium frame is ‘made of black cloth stretched on wooden frames’ (Malina 1984: 313) tied to the stage, wall and ceiling. Two emblematic masks are hovering apart at second floor level just behind the proscenium centre (17–18) which might be the two bed pillows (described in the script) or ceiling supports to hide projectors and lighting – they stay through Act 2 (15–18). The walls are covered on all three sides of the stage with dark, hanging cloth, visible behind the open-work scenery (17–19). The set makes a B-A-B spacing pattern across the stage,6 caving in towards the middle. This is the scenic edge between the highly ambiguous inside and outside, marking the missing façade (15–18). ‘A’ is a narrow central opening with two steps up and a pair of drapes hangs loosely from a perforated and scarred door lintel. Warped, hollow uprights shield this entry as doorframes cut through by large random apertures; a deformed stumpy arm projects lower down from the left and is loosely tied up; added outgrowths extend out of the shell higher

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up towards the vault like rhizomes. These holes and projections on the jambs act as shadow casting devices during the play (8, 10, 11). At one moment a wall fragment looks like a gorgon head, a devouring monster, at another like a totempole or a gigantic version of Picasso’s Cubist Absinthe Glass (18, 19). A black plate is clipped into this gaping mouth piece on the left gate unit, as the street viewing special mirror (18) – replaced in Act 2 by the clock (15, 16). In the soft light a web of fine strings starts to evolve enveloping and binding the set, stretching holes, running back and forth up to walls and ceiling. ‘B’ spaces on left and right are wider, subdivided by distorted posts with further branches and protrusions luring the eye into the dark obscurities of the upstage. A cornice fragment on stage left is deceptively made of stretched twines. Long projectures multiply and weave the B-A-B scene-boundary in-andout – the set can be easily taken for a series of caverns with scars and erosions to which the fabrication process contributes an expressive texture. Although the surface treatment of the scenery posts gives the impression of an overall wood construction, the whole set was sculpted out of chicken wire then covered by papier-mâché washed dark and pigmented with lighter colour patches of violet, orange, green and gold (Malina 1984: 325, 326). An indication of the interior is noticeable by an assemblage of platforms made of boxes along B-A-B about one or two steps high, seen through the openings in the set walls (17–19). This is a continuous passage with alternating depth which forms the mysterious caverns looming with additional deformed shafts – a ‘palm grove’ on stage right and a metamorphosed ‘stove mantel’ on the left, seen clearly in Act 2 (1, 3, 16). The background curtain appears sometimes as a shadow screen for dramatic set-figuration, other times it dissolves into a dark unexplored air-mass (6–8, 11).

Crafting the scenographic environment Act 1, The Street: Hummel is on stage left in a wheelchair with the Student standing (17). A child’s wheelchair was used to favourably increase the scale of the small stage, its moving wheels set the entire scenic machine in motion. Behind Hummel is a sculpted upright cylinder topped with a found metal cone (a lamp cap?) suggesting outside, but also assuming other roles such as the advertising column or kiosk and the miniature phone booth – it looks like an improvised solitary sculpture. Nearby in the middle bay a flowered wreath is nailed to the dividing post below the cornice strings. Bed linen is spread on a line disappearing deeper ‘inside’ while light filtering in strikes the edges

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of a triangular glass fragment twined to a tall four-legged bricolage oriented perpendicularly to the scene – a gravity defying display (15–19, 4, 6, 9, 10). The Young Lady centre left turning towards the Student stage left (17). Behind her a flat female dummy in bright corset (in the script the marble statue of the Mummy as a young woman) standing higher on the platform recessed in the open scenery with left arm raised sideways towards the entry side. It is also at this niche where the apparition of the Milkmaid occurs pausing her spirit-body of white volume, hovering between the faint figure of the dummy and the fountain at far end downstage (13). The Dead Man’s physiognomy references dismal war-paint and casualty band from skull to chin. In full white cloak he stands two steps up in the entry gap revealing his figure and perforated surroundings with chicken wire wrapping as a photographic negative of a combat zone (19). Snake wire moves up and balances the extreme second bay shaft-to-shaft, carrying stems of hyacinths (17). As time permeates the scenes the stage unfolds more refined details. Flagpoles extrude stage right and left, bracketed and entwined with torn pieces of canvas and strings (15–18). These exposed segments at the upper termination points reinforce our sense that mental war fragments, shattered, frozen and allegorical, are being transposed in the fabrication processes. Such iconography was conveyed by media coverage, literary sources or devastatingly sublime visual allegories such as Picasso’s Guernica.7 Act 2, the Round Room (14,16, 1–4): A chandelier hung from the ceiling in front of the main entry and a broken clock set on a dark cloaked stand at the entry frame left. Five boxes spread out stage front to form a group of seats, which have one surviving design sketch, a diagram that shows a cube-like box in perspective view with a gestural mark which suggests shattered glass panes (Living Theatre 1945–1991). The boxes are stained in deep red and then gilded to give them their own ghostly silhouettes within (colour references in Malina’s directorial notes, Living Theatre 1945–91). These patterns interact with the shadow-controlling members of the set, devices such as twines, mantel-mirrors, death screen, harp and with sculpted fragments (1, 3, 4; on colour-staining of the set see Malina 1984: 325, 326). Technique and spontaneity in the process run through the overall construction and the details. Another performative outcome of these seats is like those of contemporary abstract painting, sculpture or even architecture in which it is indifferent which side of the object is up or down. Even when used as chairs by the actors, they force the body into a position of the rigid geometry of an insect (3). When not in use, they deny gravity and turn into insect pieces themselves with a scenographic twist of amplifying the space (1, 4). The boxes function as evocative-expressive sculptures as well as abstract

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compositional elements in relation to other objects and bodies within the frame. These object-to-object and object-to-subject combinations confirm the autonomy of stage craft embedded in the collaborative nature of the production. The scene follows with Hummel and Bengtsson upstage in subdued light, which seems a banal acting pattern unless we explore the reality that surrounds the diction between the two (4). The couple is encircled by three box-seats with Hummel’s self-stabilizing attempt to ground his willpower by firmly gripping a cane. The expressive out-growth has sunk at stage right in the unlit floor out of sight; only dark limbs emerge floating-lingering like palm leaves in the heavy opaque headroom. We follow three floor-seats as the men’s inscribed twin-silhouettes split, shattered and dispersed between the spider legs with crisp outlines that move clockwise around the plan of the Round Room. The surreal and dreamlike movement of the liquid mass above terminates by a side exit behind Bengtsson, where a ghost on horse legs with raised front left looks towards the audience through a mirror, halted by a patterned pole. The female dummy is down one step between the Mummy and a harp placed on a small black box (1, 3). A fragment of abstract space – a trope – emerges, framed by the curvilinear arms of the dummy and the harp, made out of twines, encapsulated in tentacle-like solid projections and stems of hyacinths sensually blurring the subject (1). The Mummy’s shrouded body, frozen in a hieratic gesture reflecting that of the dummy, is seen in the doorway two steps up; in front of her stands the house servant Bengtsson. This grouping – human, halfhuman and copy – is surrounded by an all upside-down world where time, space, gravity are momentarily suspended, evoking the mood of a de Chirico set. A similarly haunted duo is shown in a close-up shot of the confrontation between the Mummy and Hummel (2), recalling the composition of René Magritte’s The Lovers, staging the tension between veiled and exposed, hidden and visible. The Mummy’s mask is a patchwork of a patterned textile nose-piece, with its tip clipped and hung over the mouth; stained at eye-level and plain fabric covers the chin sewn together and stitched to a padded head-bend. Torn, fingerless light gloves bundle her arms and hands, collapsed and loose. Her left arm is raised and a sash ties her spooky cloak at waist level and falls to ground (1–2). Act 3, the Hyacinth Room: In the final act Hyacinth Room and Round Room merge and the main entry is transformed into a shrine (11). Wire threads stitching it over with hyacinth stems like musical notes. A Buddha statue sits on a dark draped high pedestal in the middle of the opening enclosed by the hollow gateshells on two sides. The entry curtain is partially pulled over behind the statue; the wall curtain vanishes in the dark. Stage right is a particularly articulated

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realm with black disfigured uprights – ‘palm grove’ in Act 2 – creating multiple leaning biomorphic supports (8; see also Plate 31). In close-up view the figure of the Cook fills an unlit crevice of the scenery (the ‘Kitchen’) in a crawling vampire posture ready to snatch her pray (7). A white tunic envelops her large body, stained with food, fat and blood. Her face covered with blotches, arms bruised. Her outfit is tied up at waist line with rope, underneath a darker skirt covers her knees, torn cloth falls over the left leg beneath her skirt – stockings, shoes, shoelaces, and hair are all over loose (8). This shot gives the most accurate insight into scale and fabrication details, and suggests how the figures are part of the scenographic whole, affording a skin-tight embodied experience. The Cook appears surrounded by scenery reminiscent of a folding screen. Here the panels are left open, just solid stems of trees, standing entangled left and right with a lyrical tone of hyacinths contorted with scents. Stage light floods the Young Lady and the Student and it brushes the scenic surfaces so that the full texture of the finish comes out – fresh, rough – with flickering internal micro-folds (compare 8 and 11). Apertures in the gate forward the light into the ‘other room’ (Round Room) that becomes the reflection of the duel between the couple downstage left (9–11). Light and shadow (in chiaroscuro) are part of the scenic affect. The posts within the set (A–B) in the narrow passage way are tar black, robust, muscular with flashes of light. The middle post shows geometric patterns throughout the shaft; while the fork-legged upside-down one against the wall curtain is a truncated, anthropomorphous statue. The Hyacinth Room and Round Room interpenetrate (11). In front of the upright members a short bench is placed covered with dark pleated cloth. The harp stands on a covered pedestal off centre (9–10), untouched, responding in silence to the intestinal look of the upstage scenery (7–8). The ‘Cook screen’ (8) and the ‘death-screen’ (12) are mutually constructed figural sequences. When the former closes in a blackout the latter opens stage-centre, where the Young Lady passes. The significance of the threefold structure as a standing device is tremendous, and clearly photo-constructed out of chemical and sensory affinities. It mimics the configuration of the stage set: corresponding with the façade-less residence the death screen is also an open frame contraption to expose deep-rooted anguish and desire. The crude wood frame creates a three-part lit chamber that receives bodies through an assembly-line with a bed unit. The structure is unfolded and axially aligned with the Buddha statuette. The Young Lady’s lower body falls outside the left wing of the frame, displayed as a lifeless lump. Her torso, cantilevering out of the bed, is bisected by the hinged frame elements. Hip, arm and belly are entrapped and

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flattened in the network of fine strings. Likewise, the middle screen shows her bust silhouette-like, within a denser stretch of twines, conveyed and processed. This formulation of the death screen as a body-processing device eliciting motorized sounds of death, brings to mind Duchamp’s ‘bachelor machine’ (Szeemann 1975), incarnating the modernist mechanization of urban life, and here, the intensifying war machine of the 1950s. Grinding noise and heat rises while the Student, in suspense, extending his neck in the pose of a Duchampian bachelor, inspects the chamber through the blank sheen of the third panel. In the rift between these positions a thread of hyacinths coils in the mist towards the faint statue of the Buddha and soft melody filters through the stage – blackout – and the massive outcrop of Böcklin’s Isle of the Dead appears projected on the ridges of the wall curtain.8

Scenographing with the camera It has been stated that the audience is positioned axially aligned with the stage. The dark proscenium flats tighten the stage-aperture and frame the stillness of the site with a harp in the centre (5, 9, 10, 12). With its simple geometry the harp denotes a scaling and visualizing apparatus that amplifies interior dimensionality and manipulates orientation, a frame within a frame that connects the audience and the stage (1, 12). Within this relationship we cannot avoid observing the changing position of the photographer, rotating and shifting her optical axis out of the frontality of the audience. This scrutinizing deployment of the camera lens inverts the drama into stills that the audience might have had passed unnoticed. The camera has balanced vantage points that structure and calibrate space, composition, mood and instances along traces of vectorial movements of spacetime passages (2–4, 11, 12). These out of sight image fragments are parallax projections similar to Cubist painterly practices from Braque to Mondrian. In Cubism the optical singularity of sight has been dissolved into a pictorial unfolding of multiple views. Cubism in general operates with expressive, abject or silent, geometric incisions. These incisions originally occur along contours of objects or shifting planes. Similarly, the sections cut by the camera angles reveal subliminal growth in between scene clearings or through islands of acting characters that the audience might not have experienced. Extensions of the unconscious production processes oozing out here and there are captured by the lens and rendered in the frozen images as tropes. These excesses of scenic stratification enable us to hear, breath and touch the emerging event to confirm its physicality (2–6, 8–12).

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In the forest-like grove in Act 3 (6) the Young Lady and the Student are just about to lose their steady ground, weight and earthliness – train of hyacinths coiling up towards the eye-sockets of an African mask. Across, behind the Student where glassy triangles point up and down, a steel pendulum flashes light and lets the two levitate almost vaporized. Glimmering spores of metallic substances are surrounded by the totalizing grid of charred pole patterns. The importance of this process is in the transformation of the stage space into representation where focus has shifted from the acting bodies’ interaction to the interplay of layered compositional elements. The drama is now localized in these dynamic relationships captured by the photographic eye that conveys the audience’s unsettled gaze towards a disfigured, weightless object beyond the characters. This installation segment injects a layered gap that might have seduced the audience to follow its direction. However, the photographer is able to act upon the impulse to leave the audience’s fixed position (as shown in prints 5, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12), and through a flexible range of motion move down stage left to advance and aim her lens towards the dim zone behind the gate wing. Beyond the theatrical production a glimpse of scenography has emerged.

Costume and scenography Malina records in her diary a conversation with Joseph Campbell, acclaimed scholar of comparative mythology, on the day he attended the performance. He ‘congratulated Julian on an explication of Strindberg’s choice of the hyacinth: the banks of the River Styx were clotted with them’ (Malina 1984: 332). While the hyacinth motif is part of the set most prominently in Acts 2 and 3, the contact sheets suggest its spreading over to the characters’ bodies as an enigmatic element of their costumes. Each character wears an emblematic flower on their dressed body, distinguished from their clothing by a different tone in the photographs, suggesting colour. Bengtsson has an unidentifiable appendage hooped into his pants’ side strip at his right ankle (1). The Colonel has a butterfly-like lily stitched to his left elbow on his tuxedo (3). The Milkmaid carries a blossom on her bell shaped, floor length skirt, spotted above its rim at front (13, 15). Hummel has the mark as a lighter attachment on his coat about the left shoulder (18–20). The Young Lady also wares floor length skirt and her ‘ID’ flowers rest at knee height at front right and additional double florets on her left side (6, 9–12). The Student has his own big blossom on his white waistcoat above his heart and a small one is sticking out from his left upper arm in the back of his white shirt (9–12), and even his black

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waistcoat in the first scene features a light double bloom at its left lower edge (17, 18). This costume feature seems a version of the hyacinth motif running through the play, identifying the bearer as spirit. But there is an odd tension between the surreal quality of the stage environment and the ordinariness of cheap Salvation Army costumes. The characters don’t seem to notice that they are marked by the flower of death, and go about their business as usual.

Ectoplasmic space As previously noted, the entire set is shot through with clusters and weaves of fine strings (1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 18, 19), which, combined with the pigmented surface markings within the construction bricolage, reinforces an abstract painterly expression. Let us now follow the lead of these threads crisscrossing the stage and explore a curious correlation between the contact prints and some written sources. Among Malina’s papers a handwritten list of stage properties contains an item for Act 3, called ‘ectoplasm string’. Another note lists typed-up instructions for actors to clear away and set up new props in between each scene (Living Theatre, 1945–91). While the former suggests the director’s thinking through the process early on, the latter is apparently a document from a later stage in the rehearsal process, with the set built and the props and blocking finalized. The ‘ectoplasm string’ note is missing from the typewritten document, which can be explained from the images: they show the strings no longer as props to be set up only for Act 3, but as a vital component throughout the production. ‘Ectoplasm’ is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as ‘A viscous substance which is supposed to emanate from the body of a spiritualistic medium, and to develop into a human form or face’. Making the web-like strings an accented feature of the set suggests the production’s concerns with the physical embodiment of mental structures. Even the choice of material for the set, layers of painted papier-mâché, creates a diaphragmatic membrane, felt on the rippling surfaces (8). ‘Ectoplasmic scenography’ is also observable in the details of the individual prints. In image 8 (Plate 31), for example, the Cook stands in front of a detailed niche, which is a palpable manifestation of menacing forces projecting from her figure. Her external attributes – the textured plasticity and looseness of her plain dress and even her bodily disposition – are grafted onto her environment, while the overall presence of strings is echoed by her immediate surroundings, like poisonous air-threads extending from her operating arms. Distinction between figure and ground disappears as the character’s ectoplasmic embodiment

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continues to be mobilized in the limbic shoots, the worm-like embryonic silhouettes of the gate hollows, or the plaque above her with the carved perforations framing her vampire face. This is but one example of how each scene – groupings or figures in dialogue – is placed within a particular milieu so that fragments of the scenery are activated – calling attention to the interplay of various elements and that of the director, designer and performers. By turn, each print repeats this exchange within their frame, with the ectoplasmic web indicating the constant presence of an underlying circulatory system.

Painter/scenographer How did Julian Beck acquire the creative and technical skills of theatre making that the stage environment reveals? Contrary to Malina, who gained formal training as a director and actor at the New School for Social Research, studying with German stage director Erwin Piscator, Beck was completely selftaught as a painter and scenic artist. Both at Yale and at the City College of New York he studied literature and languages and he attended no professional arts or crafts school at any time (Tytell 31–2). The Spook Sonata seems to be the first production that a professional photographer was invited to document in detail. The contact sheets offer insight on what was going on in the Living Theatre’s workshop during the formative years. They reflect both the evolution of stagecraft and its limitations due to the lack of resources, infrastructure and support system as they deliberately distanced themselves from mainstream commercial theatre. Beck’s skills seem to have evolved throughout the seven years of practice since the company’s foundation in 1947. He is likely to have learned the craft by doing; accumulating experience over the years as he laboured to overcome the challenges of each production. Whether at the Cherry Lane Theatre in Greenwich Village or in the Broadway loft uptown, the scale of space was relatively small and manageable, and each new production presented a range of specific practical tasks and concrete obstacles to overcome. There is for instance some indication of this evolution within the roughly two years between the production of Ubu Roi (1952) and The Spook Sonata (1954); the set of the former was made of wrapping paper the night before its opening (Malina 1984: 240), whereas the latter was made up of a visually complex performative environment combining a wider range of materials and production strategies. This development impacted even the work of Beck the painter; as Nadelson remarks, it was in 1955 that he began working with mixed media and with ‘the

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assemblage of abstract, figurative and trouvé elements’ (Nadelson 6). The skills, craft and evolving vision of the scenographer seem to have carried over to those of the painter, nurturing an increased sense of self-determination as an artist. As ‘a middle-class Manhattanite with access to the city’s great collections’ from childhood, Beck developed an interest in the visual arts early on. Between 1944 and 1958 he ‘produced 1505 works on paper and canvas’ (Nadelson 2001: 3, 4). But even more importantly, the Living Theatre’s production of The Spook Sonata was an event embedded in the contemporaneous cultural-political climate of New York City. The 1940s and 1950s came to signify an extraordinarily potent moment in art history as many of the European artists of the historical avant-garde relocated in the United States. As Pierre Biner notes, in 1945 ‘Julian encountered Peggy Guggenheim, around whom gravitated the members of the Atlantic Surrealists circle. He discovered Breton, Duchamp, . . . automatism’ (Biner 1972: 20), while at the same time he associated himself with the New York School of Abstract Expressionists. It is then no wonder that Beck’s set design reveals deep roots in several generations and directions of the contemporary visual arts. As Nadelson notes, in the early forties Beck ‘fell under the spell of non-objective art, particularly the works of Kandinsky and Mondrian’. As Beck himself wrote in his diary, he ‘wept when Kandinsky died and Judith and I visited with awe and giant respect the studio of Mondrian, opened to the public for a short while following his death, the masterful Victory Boogie-Woogie displayed there’ (Nadelson 2001: 4). The Spook Sonata scenography must be positioned within the artistic discourse of the day, of which Beck’s work as an artist was as much as the part of as that of his contemporaries. At the time of constructing the set, he was still an active painter, and it was only at the end of the 1950s that he gave up painting to devote himself completely to the work of the Living Theatre as ‘director, scenographer and dramaturge’ (Nadelson 2001: 3). On 3 July 1950 Malina records in her diary, ‘Julian is painting for the first time in months. The smell of linseed oil and turpentine enters the bedroom like incense. His . . . painting that had been white, and then yellow and black, is now tinged with lavender by a process called frottage’ (Malina 1984: 115). Malina’s comment gives a sense not only of her husband’s technique and process, but also of her experience of that process as a multisensory scenographic environment. Frottage was a Surrealist ‘automatic’ technique of creating a rubbing on a piece of paper placed on a rough, uneven surface. In addition, the remark sheds light on Beck borrowing contemporary avant-garde techniques and on his interest in surface texture, roughness and layering, both as painter and scenographer.

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Several sources describe Beck’s encounters with the New York School of Abstract Expressionism in the early 1940s both in the city and in Provincetown, Massachusetts (Nadelson 2001: 4, Tytell 1995: 19–27). Malina recalls that in 1945 ‘Julian’s painting was exhibited alongside the works of Motherwell, Baziotes, Rothko, Jackson Pollock and de Kooning’ at Peggy Guggenheim’s Autumn Salon at the Art of this Century Gallery (Malina 2012: 124–5). Beck’s early paintings explore ‘the non-referential depiction of a subjective, affective state’ in an attempt ‘to break through the limits of forms to attain a greater intensity of expression’, which would become an obsession for Beck in every medium and art form, including his scenography (Nadelson 2001: 6). Nadelson observes ‘heavy impasto’ in the paintings of the 1940s, which could be the result of deliberate ‘building of the surface’ or that of the ‘habit of repainting old canvases’ to cut expenditure on materials. In either case, it was a technique that accentuated ‘the visual tactility of the surface of the painting’ while ‘these textured fields [were] often punctuated or delimited by some calligraphic fragment of shapes from the unconscious’ (Nadelson 2001: 6–7). As in the paintings the scenographer’s perspective emerges, so in the set design the stance and techniques of the visual artist are striking. The expressive, gestural and visceral treatment of surfaces, structures and spatial assemblages, an urge towards abstraction and non-objective representation in the treatment of details, and the tendency of collapsing three-dimensional space into two-dimensional view, all reveal the presence of the artist – a painter in space.

Closure The exclusion of the commercial media, critics or other representatives of power from witnessing the production lent it a freedom against which the Living Theatre set out to define themselves as a community. This is reflected in the very choice of a play which even in its own time challenged, literally condemned to death, profiteers and figures of authority. Beyond documenting sequences of the performance, the contact sheets shed light on the fabrication process, revealing the implications of the choices that this sustained drive for freedom entailed. What gave us insight into the creative method underlying the production is the camera’s halting of this process into stills. The prints thus allow access to an artistic stance defined by spontaneity and action versus rigorous study and tradition.

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Traces in the prints indicate that contemporary art techniques, including those of Surrealism, Cubism and Abstract Expressionism, provided the background against which the Living Theatre’s Spook Sonata production is set. As we have seen, a pliable membrane underlies the construction of the scenery: a chicken wire framework with papier-mâché finish, which was then followed by the weaving, knotting, stretching of strings within the frames. All these layers and phases of fabrication can be compared to the automatic writing or drawing favoured by the Surrealists, in that the outcome seems to have depended as much on qualities inherent in the material processes as on conscious collaborative efforts. The microstructure within the individual prints, such as the relational connections between stage properties, or the actors’ bodies and their surroundings, reveals the dominance of abstract-expressive compositional principles over the mimetic-referential aspects of the stage environment. This is strengthened by the fragmentation caused by the string work and its optical receptivity, observable for instance in the ‘death-screen’ sequence in Act 3. The set can be experienced as a non-objective though viscerally expressive construction rather than a functional setting. A work, exploring what Mondrian described as a constitutive element of modern art, namely, ‘the dynamic rhythm of . . . inherent relationships, or . . . the mutual relations of forms’ (Mondrian 1964: 115). This results in what we earlier called the autonomy of stage craft, where the compositional impulse fuses with the dramatic interpretation. The lack of a house façade in the set – so prominent in Strindberg’s script – constitutes a strong statement right from the opening sequence: there is nothing to mask the corrupted, decaying interior. The testimony of the images is supported by descriptions of the set as ‘a burned-out forest’ (Tytell 1995: 106), a ‘black cavern . . . deep, dense, charred’ (Malina 1984: 325–6). The audience was confronted with a cataclysmic scenario, what was once a city street, had become a wasteland. Contemplating the set in the prints, we were suddenly struck by the recognition of its compositional similarity with the Isle of the Dead projected at the conclusion, with its jagged stone walls punctured by a row of entrances into an unseen realm of darkness. Although the set was mounted on a proscenium stage, it was not a perspective representation of limitless space, but rather, conjured a sense of labyrinth flattened onto the stage plane, delimiting and claustrophobic. As the set vanished to give way to the painting, all movement came to a stand-still, and after hours of being absorbed in a dynamic materialsensory experience, audiences faced a shocking finality. They were thrown from what appeared to be a fully engaging reality into the realm of a fixed image: the mental space of envisioning an idea that lies beyond change. And this is precisely

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how our excavating process compares to the experience of those witnessing the event in motion. Playing with solidified fragments captured by the camera’s eye, we offer our reimagined alternative to the Living Theatre’s Spook Sonata.

Notes 1 The playbill for The Spook Sonata credits Judith Malina with the direction, Julian Beck with the set design and Alan Hovhaness with composing the music. The cast included Henry Proach as the Dead Man, Joseph Leberman as Hummel, Lilly Bennett as the Milkmaid, Richard Edelman as the Student, Serafina Hovhaness as the Mummy, Frank Magurie as Bengtsson and Mungi Moskowitz as the Cook. Among Malina’s records there is also a Xerox copy of Elizabeth Sprigge’s translation of the play, titled The Ghost Sonata, where the word ‘Ghost’ is struck through and ‘Spook’ is pencilled in above it (Living Theatre 1945–91). Though modern translations opt for the title The Ghost Sonata, throughout this chapter we keep the title the Living Theatre that Malina consistently used. 2 Alix Jeffry (born Evelyn Fish, 1929–1993) moved to New York in 1952, where she worked for the Arts and Leisure section of the New York Times. During her career in New York she shot an estimated 40,000 photographs of off-Broadway productions, most of which is housed at the Houghton Library of Harvard University (Houghton Library n.d.: 3). The Spook Sonata photographs remained in her private archives and were never published in any news organ. 3 For an analysis of the relationship between theory/writing and its physical object, see Kippnis 1986: 96–98. 4 See Astrid von Rosen’s chapter in this book for a theorization of the concept of ‘scenographing’ and her earlier explorations of the term in von Rosen 2016: 121–9. 5 The figures within parentheses refer to the numbering of the individual black-andwhite prints in Alix Jeffry’s contact sheets (Jeffry 1954). References to colour and construction materials are based on other sources, as indicated. Hereafter, references to left and right indicate stage left and stage right. 6 ‘B-A-B’ indicates a symmetrical space distribution behind the seemingly chaotic appearance of the set. 7 This immensely influential painting was first exhibited in New York in 1939–40 at the Picasso Retrospective at MoMA (Fluegel 1980: 349). 8 Based on interviews with Malina and Beck, Pierre Biner describes the final moments of the production of which there is no visual evidence in the contact sheets: ‘The scenery vanished at the end, except for Böcklin’s “Isle of the Dead” on the wall at the back of the stage. The sweet-yet-sad music seemed to emanate from the isle in the painting itself . . . composed by Alan Hovhaness’ (Biner 1972: 36).

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References Beck, J. (1965), ‘Storming the Barricades’, in K. H. Brown (ed.), The Brig: A Concept for Theatre or Film, 3–35, New York: Hill and Wang. Beck, J. (2001), Julian Beck: Paintings and Drawings, 1944–1958, Exhibition Catalogue, New York: Ubu Gallery and Gat Gallery. Biner, P. (1972), The Living Theatre, New York: Horizon Press. Fluegel, J. (1980), ‘Chronology and Plates’, in W. S. Rubin (ed.), Pablo Picasso: A Retrospective, 13–458, New York: Museum of Modern Art. Garner, S. B., Jr. (1994), Bodied Spaces: Phenomenology and Performance in Contemporary Drama, Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Greenberg, C. (1986), The Collected Essays and Criticism: Volume 2. Arrogant Purpose, 1945–1949, ed. J. O’Brian, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Houghton Library, Harvard College Library (n.d.), ‘Jeffry, Alix. Alix Jeffry Additional Papers, 1935–1993: Guide’, Harvard Theatre Collection, MS Thr 416.1, https​:/​/ho​​llisa​​ rchiv​​es​.li​​b​.har​​vard.​​edu​/r​​eposi​​torie​​s​/24/​​​resou​​rces/​​1351 (accessed 10 October 2018). Jarry, A. (1965), Selected Works of Alfred Jarry, trans. R. Shattuck and S. W. Taylor, London: Methuen. Jeffry, A. (1954), ‘The Spook Sonata. Prints, contact sheets, 1954’, MS Thr 416 Drawer 5, Folder 21 (Rolloflex 1-32), Houghton Library, Harvard University. Kipnis, J. (1986), ‘Drawing a Conclusion’, Perspecta 22: The Journal of the Yale School of Architecture, 95–9, New York: Rizzoli. Living Theatre (1945–1991), ‘Living Theatre Records’, *T-Mss 1988-005, Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. Malina, J. (1984), The Diaries of Judith Malina, 1947–1957, New York: Grove Press. Malina, J. (2012), The Piscator Notebook, London and New York: Routledge. Mondrian, P. (1964), ‘Plastic Art & Pure Plastic Art’, in R. L. Herbert (ed.), Modern Artists on Art, 114–30, New York: Prentice Hall Press. Nadelson, A. (2001), ‘Julian Beck as Painter’, in Julian Beck: Painting and Drawings, 1944–1958, Exhibition Catalogue © 2001 by Ubu Gallery and Janos Gat Gallery, 3–8, New York: Ubu Gallery and Gat Gallery. Oxford English Dictionary, ‘Ectoplasm’. http:​/​/www​​.oed.​​com​.l​​ibpro​​xy​.al​​bany.​​edu​/v​​iew​/E​​ ntry/​​59446​​?redi​​recte​​dFro​m​​=ecto​​plasm​​#eid (accessed 3 May 2019). Pallasmaa, J. (2005), The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses, Chichester: Wiley. von Rosen, A. (2016), ‘Scenografisk sensualism: I fält med stadens dansare’, in Å. Arping, C. Ekholm and K. Leppänen (eds), Humanister i fält, 121–9, Lir Skrifter, Gothenburg: University of Gothenburg. Szeemann, H. (1975), ‘The Bachelor Machines’, in J. Clair and H. Szeemann (eds), Le Macchine Celibi/The Bachelor Machines, 5–12, New York: Rizzoli. Tytell, J. (1995), The Living Theatre: Art, Exile, and Outrage, New York: Grove Press.

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Index Absinthe Glass (Picasso)  205 absolute music  104, 114 abstraction  109, 114 Academy Awards  51 Accatone (Pasolini)  50 acoustics  105 aesthetic  109, 199 component  41 credentials  146 decision-making  41 demands  149 dress  149, 151 experience/s  5, 116 garments  145 gown  157 identity  142 music-visual  115 and seductive  190 theory of movement  171 of vagueness  101 value  86 wholeness  144 world  145 Aestheticism  142, 145, 150–2, 157 Aesthetic Movement  21, 141–9, 152, 157–8 aesthetics  130 and art history  50 of atmospheres  167 baroque-like  135 perceptions  184 philosopher of  56 relational  3, 65–6 universe  183 affective, see assemblage; atmosphere Ahmed, Sara  90 Aldouby, Hava  48 Al Fakir, Ayman  128, 133, Plate 21 Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (Scorsese)  50 all’antica  69 The Amber Heart (Calmour)  142, 150, 151

American Cinematographer  52 Andersen, Charlotte  183 Anderson, Ben  32, 89 Andover Prep School  54 Andre, Carl  54 Archer, Clyde  128, 132, 133, Plate 23 architecture  7, 38, 71, 206 art and  43, 66, 72, 141 chapel  67–77 church  79 dance-  29 ephemeral  167, 177, 179 fast  5, 42, 166–8, 172 history  7 museum  34–42 slow  5, 42, 168 visual art  26, 200 archive/s  14, 33, 77 administrative  74 body as  39 dance  29, 30–1, 35–6, 39 digital  33 expanded notion of the  41 museums and  172 performance  6, 7, 9, 31 scenographic  6, 165–70 studies  30 years of dance training  33 Army–McCarthy hearings  200 Aronson, Arnold  1, 141 art historian/s  1, 6, 30, 165 art history  40, 166–73 aesthetics and  50 and architecture  7 chief task of  68 critical concept for  180 crossroads of  86 dance and  36, 40 expanded  10 facet of  82 in motion  36 in the narrow sense  125 potent moment in  213

220 related disciplines  1 relationship to  61 revitalize  66 scenographics  60 traditional  9 and visual culture  10 and visual studies  124 artistic knowledge  7 Art of this Century Gallery  214 Asplund, Gunnar  69 assemblage/s  37, 42, 213 affective  35, 38, 40 costume-body  41 of platforms  205 scenographic  43 spatial  214 theory  4, 32 witnessing to the entanglements  33 atmosphere/s  68–9, 89, 91, 113–15, 147, 167 aesthetics of  167 affective  7, 32–3, 35, 37–8, 40–2, 89, 97 affectively charged  43, 68 all-encompassing  168 crafted/crafting of  39, 52 festive  169 -ic effect  113–15 in a multisensory environment  173 of performance and difference  37 scenographic  174–5 staged  191 theory  4 vibrating  42 visualization of an  187 world of  47 audience collective  94–5 felt by the  41 film’s  50 intervention  43 persuade the  56 position for the  41 roles  37 audio-visual construction  92, 95 experience  8 narrative  87, 89, 97 Aumont, Jacques  48 avatars  93

Index Back to Nature (Henke)  129–30 baldacchino  74, 81 The Bancroft’s  146 Barbieri, Donatella  40, 134, 136, 158 Barsaq, Leon  52, 54, 58 Barthes, Roland  136 bas-relief  81 Bayreuth  101–3, 106 Baziotes, William  201, 214 Bech, Sidsel  134 Beck, Julian  200, 202, 210, 212–14 Bennett, Jane  31, 39 Berlioz, Hector  109, 112–13 Berntsson, Joachim  34, 37 Bickle, Travis (character)  52, 53, 55–7, 59 Bilderatlas Mnemosyne  168, see also Mnemosyne Atlas Björk  130–1 Blackness and la manière noire  110 Bleeker, Maaike  33 Böcklin, Arnold  203, 209 bodily activism  33 and aesthetic  116 analysis  6 archetypes  23 archived insights  38 attention  187 borders  24–5 disposition  211 elements  183 experience/s  6, 97 expression  22 felt and experienced  195 by images  124 interactions  32 multisensory and  43 norms  22 (re)actions  135, 195 sensation  5 shape posture and movement  134 situated event  134 and spatial politics  194 transference  190 body/ies affective and cognitive  97 ambiguous  22–5 -centric  31–2 conscious  40

Index costume and  40 empathic  95 human and non-human  8 participating  95, 97 perceiving  87, 195 -place interaction  10, 34 -place oriented  7, 30–2, 40, 43 of the spectator  89, 91 subjective  90 transgressing  21–2, 24 wearing it  10 Böhme, Gernot  32, 68, 89, 90, 167 Bonnie and Clyde (Penn)  54 Bourriaud, Nicolas  65, 66 Brahms, Johannes  109, 112 Brandt, Carl  106 Braque, Georges  209 Breton, André  21, 213 Brook, Peter  71 Broomhall, Susan  78 Bruckner, Gotthold  106 Bruckner, Max  106 Bruno, Giuliana  194 Burne-Jones, Edward  150 Calmour, Alfred  150 Campbell, Joseph  210 Caravaggio  50, 61 Carlson, Marvin  124, 132–3, 172 Carriger, Michele Lui  152, 159 Casino (Scorsese)  50 Chapman, Michael  7, 48–9, 53–6, 58–60 de Chardin, Teillhard  70 Chateau Chambord  72 Chiesa di San Gallo  66, 69 Chong, Corrinne  8 choreographic  42, 174, 176 choreography  34, 127, 128, 135, 188 cinematography  51, 53 Cixous, Hélène  19, 21–2, 24 Clair, René  49 Clément, Catherine  19, 21–2 Cocteau, Jean  200 Combines (Rauschenberg)  54, 55 costume/s, see also bodily; body/ies as active agents  41 agency  124, 133–6, 157 bodily interaction  124, 134–7 as ‘co-author’ of performance  134, 137, 142

221

designer/s  5, 147, 151 design/s  14, 20, 22, 24, 51, 143, 151, 158 materiality  151, 154 multisensory qualities  124, 131, 135, 136–7 paper  8, 124, 127–9, 131, 135–7 performance  124, 136 in photographs  10 as a separate body  133, 137 Craft, Catherine  55 Craig, Edith  145 Crawley, Greer  7, 66 Crisp, Grover  59 cross-disciplinary  1, 2, 10, 86 Crossland, William Henry  72, 75, 80 Crossley, Anastasia  78, 79 Cubism  209, 215 Cubist/s  201, 205, 209 The Cup (Tennyson)  158 curator  7, 8, 66, 70, 169 curtain  85, 107–8, 199, 201–2, 207–9 Daguerre, Louis  105 Dakers, Caroline  144 Dal Co, Francesco  69, 70 Dalle Vacche, Angela  48 Danielsson, Anna  125, 127, 130, 133, Plate 19 D’Arcy, Geraint  57 Daurer, Gerhard  90 De Chirico, Giorgio  207 De Kooning, Willem  214 Deleuze, Gilles  32 Deller, Jeremy  78 Dench, Judi  159 De Niro, Robert  48, 57 Den Oudsten, Frank  65, 82 design, see costume design; lighting; performance design; scent; set design; sound; soundscape; video Dickson, Father John  75, 77 Dickson, Matthew  77 Didi-Huberman, Georges  169 digital  171, 172, 173, 176, 177, 179 animation  165 engagement  165 fashion photographs  9 (see also fashion photography) heritage  174

222

Index

projects  166 revolution  172 scenographic archive  165, 166, 168 scenographic viewpoint  171 staging/s  8, 166, 168, 169, 171, 172, 174, 179, 180 technologies  172, 173, 174 visualization  173, 178 wandering  9, 186, 187, 188 Digital Humanities  165, 173 digitally re-created  179 re-staged  170 documentary  16, 49, 53, 56 Don Giovanni  128 Drones World Tour (Muse)  85 Drucker, Johanna  186, 188, 193 Duchamp, Marcel  201, 209, 213 Duff Gordon, Lady (Lucile)  148 Early Modern ephemeral architecture  167 Europe  172, 176 festival  179 festival books  166, 172, 173 festive culture  165 performative culture  171 period  165–6, 168, 170, 173, 176, 179 ecology/ies body-centric  31 of felt relational interdependencies  4 material  41 scenographic  32 Egan Gallery  54 Eliasson, Ola  128 Eliot, T. S.  200 Eltis, Sos  153 empathic attachment  95 body  95 closeness  91 gaze  135 processes  94, 97 responses  87 empathy  91, 92, 136 kinaesthetic  91, 97 England, Rebecca  77 environment/s  10, 34 multisensory  33 espace mystique  109, 116 Eurovision Song Contest  131–2

experience embodied  91, 97 multisensory  90 of others  95 of the spectator  89 Expo 2000  65 Fantin-Latour, Henri  8, 101–21 Fashion  124, 129, 130, 131–2, 133, 135, 137, 141, 142, 151, 157, 183, 192, 194 -ed body  185, 187, 194, 195 image/photograph  189, 195 -ing identity  141–2, 159 object  130, 132, 137 photography  9, 184, 185 stories as scenographic events  193, 195 story  185, 186, 188, 192, 193 story and scenographic seduction  191 Fast, Susan  94 Fellini, Federico  48, 50 femininity  18, 19, 41, 153, 154, 156 feminism/s  6 challenging art history  14 and the witch  15, 17–21, 23, 25 festival books  9, 165–9, 171–3, 176–7, 180 festival/s  19, 165–6, 169, 171–3, 176–9 festive event/s  168, 170, 174, 176, 179 Festspielhaus  102–3 Fini, Leonor  6 and Surrealism  14–15, 21 and views on feminism  15, 17–18, 25 and the witch  15, 17–18, 20, 22–4 Der Fliegende Holländer (Wagner)  112 Forbes-Robertson, Johnston  145 Foster, Jodie  53 Foster, Susan  40 fourth wall  108 frame  69, 70 Frampton, Hollis  54 Frankfurt School  51 Friel, Anna  159 Fry, Matthew  78 Fucigna, Ceccardo  72, 80 Galloway, Alexander R  193–4 Geffroy, Gustave  113–14

Index Gesamtkunstwerk  112, 148 ghosting  124, 129, 132–4, 172 Godsell, Sean  70, 71 Godwin, E.W.  142–6, 148 Goldman, Danielle  40 Gombrich, E.H.  124 González-Román, Carmen  9 Goodfellas (Scorsese)  50 Gordon Craig, Edward  145 Götaplatsens trappor (Rubicon)  29–40, 43 Götterdämmerung (Wagner)  107, 108, 109 Gough, Richard  3, 153 Greenblatt, Stephen  141 Greenwich Village  54, 212 Grew, Rachael  6 Griffero, Tonino  90 Guernica (Picasso)  206 Guggenheim, Peggy  213 Hann, Rachel  4, 30, 51, 52, 86, 134, 184, 191 Harris, Patience  149, 151 Haute Papier (Szenfeld)  130–1 Hedengren, Pompe  125–7 Henke, Karolina  124, 129–31, 137 Hermann, Bernard  53 Hewitt-George, Nicola  77 historiography  1, 5, 30, 43, 167 Hoffmann, Josef  106 Holdar, Magdalena  192 holistic  173 analysis  14 body-centric ecology  31 event  2, 5 and multisensory  10, 32, 39, 40, 72, 166, 176 scenographic  7, 101 systems of sensory encounter  32 understanding  177 Holloway, Thomas  72, 74 The Holy See Pavilion Vatican Chapels  66, 69 Holy Theatre  71 Hörnlund, Emilie  128, 133, Plate 21 Huhta, Jean-Louis  34 Iball, Helen  67 iconographic studies  9, 165

223

iconography  7, 15, 17, 25, 54, 77–8, 116, 206 ideology/ies  4, 6, 30, 33, 40, 117 high-art  42 museum-visitor  39 nineteenth-century  38 illusionism  57, 103, 105 image/s  165, 166, 168, 169, 170, 171, 173, 174, 176, 177, 180, 181 emotional properties  124, 135 multisensory qualities  127–9, 135–7 Ingemarsson, Eva  33–4, 37, 42–3 instrumental music  104, 115 interdisciplinary  2, 66, 86, 159, 195 interface  9, 186–8, 193–4 interpretation/s  38, 155, 156, 167, 171, 202, see also practice apparatus of  127 artistic  112 dramatic  215 feminine  154 feminist  20 in heritage environments  72 iconographic  71 of the role  153 and sacred spaces  67 in sacred spaces  66 semi-abstract  115 and translation  200 visual  6 invisible orchestra  101, 104–5, 108 Irving, Henry  146 design/scenography  147, 151, 153 Macbeth  155 Isaac, Veronica  8 The Isle of the Dead (Böcklin)  203, 209, 215 Italian neorealism  50 James, Henry  157 Jarry, Alfred  202 Jeffry, Alix  199, 201, 204, 216 Johansson, Emma Veronica  192 Johansson, Gunnel  33 Jonatan (Henke)  128, 132, 136 Jones, Amelia  30 Jönsson, Ingvar  34 Karkowski, Zbigniev  34 Katatexilux  68

224 Kean, Charles  142, 143 Kershaw, Baz  144 kinaesthetic  42, 91, 97, 194–5 Kjellmer, Viveka  8 Koestlé-Cate, Jonathan  67, 76 Kracauer, Siegfried  51 Kreuzer, Gundula  106 Lady Gaga  131–2 leitmotif  108, 115 lighting  2, 6, 7, 51–2, 59, 71, 78, 85, 97, 101, 103, 105, 107, 146–8, 168, 190, 204 lithographic/y  102, 108, 110, 116 adaption  8, 10 exhibition  115 live event  5, 8 Living Theatre  9, 199–202, 206–11, 213–14 Loach, Ken  53 Lohengrin (Wagner)  112 Longhi, Roberto  50 Lotker, Sodja Zupank  3, 153 The Lovers (Magritte)  207 Lund, Gun  33–4, 36–7 Lyceum company  146 theatre  142, 146, 148, 149, 153 McAuley, Gay  89, 96 Macbeth (Shakespeare)  142, 153–8 McGrath, Roberta  191 McIver, Gillian  7 McKinney, Joslin  3, 65, 67, 86, 90–1, 95, 141, 159 Magnell, Mikael  127 Magritte, René  207 Making Taxi Driver (Bouzereau)  53 Malina, Judith  200, 202, 206, 210–11, 212–14 Mallarmé, Stéphane  116 Mamma Roma (Pasolini)  50 Manovich, Lev  56, 192 Marks, Laura  135 Martin, Adrian  51 materiality of costume/ing  124, 134, 135, 151, 154 crafted  32 embodied  137

Index haptic  91 of place  57 of scenographic object  95 Mean Streets (Scorsese)  50 Meisel, Martin  146–7 Mercer, Sophie  79, 80 Merchant of Venice (Shakespeare)  146 Meskimmon, Marsha  10, 38 Metz, Christian  49 Michaud, Philippe-Alain  169 Michel, André  113 Michelangelo Life Death Rebirth (Viola)  78 Mirzoeff, Nicholas  5, 125, 135 mise en scène  2, 5–6, 9, 48–51, 55, 57, 61, 101, 106, 112, 159, 184–5, 190 mist/s  101, 106–8, 116, 209, see also steam; vapour Mitchell, W. J. T  5, 123, 135 Mnemosyne Atlas  169–71 MoMA, New York  201 Mondrian, Piet  201, 209, 213, 215 Monks, Aoife  41, 133, 159 Motherwell, Robert  201, 214 multisensory  2, 9, 43 affective mobilization of resources  5 approach  8, 32 archive  165 dialogue  10 dimensions  5 echoes  29, 30, 31, 36 events  9, 166, 167, 168, 180 experience/s  5, 6, 90, 124, 135, 176 film screen as  7 interaction  97 knowledge  31 overload  87, 95 performance  137 potentialities  5, 8 qualities  124, 127, 135 scenography  9 scenography theory  6, 43 settings  10, 146–7 understanding  40 undertakings  31 Muse  8, 85, 87–8, 96, 98 Narumi, Rena  123, 127, 130, 132, 136, Plate 18 Nathansen, Lee Kum-ah  34

Index Neptune’s Daughter (Szenfeld)  130 Nettleship, Ada  154 new materialism/materialist theory/ies  3, 4, 31 New York School of Abstract Expressionism  201, 213–14 niche  43, 74–81, 206, 211 Nikolaeva, Olga  8, 37 normativity  38 expressions of  32 of the place  37 of walking properly  30 objet sonore  105 Ocean without a Shore (Viola)  66, 69 Ohlson Wallin, Elisabeth  37 olfactory perspective  108; see also scent; smell O’Neill, Harriet  7 Opera Papier campaign  8, 123, 125–9 costume designer  130–3 costumes  125–7, 133, 135–7 photographer  129–30 Ord&Bild  34 orientation  4, 31–2, see also placeorientation othering, see also scenographics capacities  35, 38 concept of  32 of the place  42 tactics  40 painterliness  48, 59, see also painterly painterly  48, 57, 59–61, 190, 209, 211, see also painterliness Palme d’Or  54, 60 Palmer, Scott  3, 65, 67, 90, 141, 159 Paper Dolls (Szenfeld)  130 Paper Stories, exhibition  132 Paradise Now! (Living Theatre)  200 Parekh-Gaihede, Rose  91 Pasolini, Pier Paolo  50 pataphysics  202 Pelan, Tim  52 Penn, Arthur  54 performance affective atmosphere of  37 archive  7 and the audience  89

225

body-place-oriented  43 design  3, 10 live rock  86–7, 94, 96 space  89, 91, 98 and the spectator  87, 94, 97 performative  165–9 art work  4 culture  171, 176 dimension  165, 167 environment  212 events  166, 168, 172, 180 outcome  206 situation  87 space  70–1 performativity  4 Petit, Roland  13, 16–18, 24–5 phantasmagoria/gorical  101, 104 photogenia  191 photographic acts  184 eye  210 framing  190 image  184, 187, 191, 194 incisions  199 process  129 situation  185 staging  186, 189, 195 photography  8, 9, 51, 61 fashion  185 as a flow of images  184 limits of  185 Picasso, Pablo  200–1, 205–6 Pink, Sarah  185, 189 Pinturicchio  67 Pirandello, Luigi  200 place, see also place-orientation oriented  7 place-orientation/orienting  30–2 Planché, J.R.  154 Pollock, Jackson  201–2, 214 post-humanist  3 Potvin, John  183 practice/d/s  69, 114, 126, 146, 173, 212 art historical  67 artistic  6 -based/artistic research  1 based creativity  6 bodies and  184 costuming  142, 158, 159 everyday  183

226 interdisciplinary  66 magical  15 material  20, 30, 168 painterly  209 research  31 scenographic  7, 67, 76 scenographic methods and material  50 of scenography  15 as scholarly tool  7 social  141 stage  148 theatrical  148 traces of  5 visual arts  200 practitioner/s  2, 5, 82 Prague Quadrennial (PQ)  3 presentation conceptual  96 imagery  88 visual  88, 92–3, 95 Preziosi, Donald  68, 71 Punctum  136 queer phenomenology  4, 31–2 Rauschenberg, Robert  7, 47–8, 53–60 Ravesi, Cardinal Gianfranco  69–70 realism  48–9, 53, 58–9 anti-  56–7 beyond-  58 neo-  50 non-  57 records as active and even evolving agents  32 dance archive and its  31 of experience  41 production  179 text, image, sound  173 visual  169, 174 Red Paintings (Rauschenberg)  54–5 relational aesthetics  3, 65, 66 Das Rheingold (Wagner)  101–2, 105, 107–10, 116 Riat, George  112 Der Ring (Wagner), see Der Ring des Nibelungen Der Ring des Nibelungen (Wagner)  8, 101–4, 106–7, 109 Robach, Cilla  130

Index Robert, Étienne-Gaspard  104–5 Rome, Open City (Rossellini)  50 Roos, Ingela  125 von Rosen, Astrid  7, 13, 166, 169, 171–2, 177 Rosen, Charles  48, 53, 58–9 Rossellini, Roberto  50 Roth, Martin  65 Rothko, Mark  201, 214 Rovere Chapel, Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome  67 Royal Holloway  7, 72–6 Royal Swedish Opera, the  123, 125, 127, 137 Rubicon  34–9, 41, 43 dancegroup  7, 29, 33 outdoor work  33 stadens dansare/city dancers  35, 36 Rydén, Niklas  39 Le Sabbat (Petit)  13, 16 occult  15, 18, 21–3 scenographic design  13–14, 16–19, 21, 23 sacred space/s  69, 70, 71 contemporary artists in  77 interpretation  66, 67 perceptions of  76 visual art and  76 Sacred Theatre (Yarrow)  76 Saint-Saëns, Camille  108 Santa Maria Antiqua, Rome  66, 68 scenographer/s  4, 18, 40, 51, 213, 214 artist-  6 -artists  5 and dramaturge  213 painter  212, 213 scenographic agency  142, 158, 166, 192 approach  7, 34, 40, 65 archive/s  6, 165, 166, 168–70 aspects  47 atmosphere  174, 175 (see also atmosphere) crafting  96–7 culture  165–7, 176, 178–9 debates  1 dimension/s  36, 169, 173, 179 echoes  30 ecology  32

Index elements  90, 97, 147, 184, 185, 189, 190 encounter/s  4, 8, 36, 88, 95 events  172, 195 experience  171, 173, 176 field  171, 172, 176 intervention  69 irritation  36 knowledge  38 materials  3 methodology  80, 185 methods  66 object  95 orientation  4 perspective  166, 167, 168, 173 potentials  88 practice  7, 67 process  67 qualities  78 rhetoric  56 settings  2 situation  190 space  166 spectacle  86, 89, 91 strategies  141–2, 144, 145, 146, 147, 158 thinking  5, 9, 184 traits  41 viewpoint  167, 171, 173, 177 virtuality  172, 174, 176, 178, 189 virtual staging  174 scenographics  4, 32, 47, 50, 51, 52, 56, 61 othering  42 othering capacities of  35, 38 othering tactics of  40 scenographing activity of  40, 43 act of  31 art  60 body in costume  41, 151, 154 with the camera  209 concept of  7, 43 the dance archive  29 festival books  165 gestures and movements  166 Götaplatsens trappor  36, 39 as a method  31 purpose of  32 realism  49 a sensory method  166 tools  204

227

scenography  10, 48, 50, 51, 52, 57, 58, 61 as/of place orientation  4, 32, 86, 89, 97, 149 methods of  33 portable  157 studies  1, 6 and technologies  96 theory  8, 10, 43 scent  32, see also olfactory perspective; smell Schaeffer, Pierre  105 Schapiro, Steven  59 Schopenhauer, Arthur  104 Schrader, Paul  56, 58–60 Schroeder, Jonathan  125 Schumann, Robert  109, 112 Scorsese, Martin  47, 50, 53, 59, 60 screen backlight of  192 computer  29, 188 death-  203, 206, 208, 215 digital  194 film  47 LED  88, 92 as material interface  193 visuals  88, 92–3 Seel, Martin  56–7 sensory, see also multisensory encounter  32 experience/s  8, 94 feedback  135 impressions  114 modalities  5, 90 overlap  105 overload  94–6 perception  101 set design  2, 5, 17, 18, 24, 51, 52, 58, 102, 200, 213, 214 -er  17, 52,  200 Shaw, George Bernard  108 Shepherd, Cybill  52 Shinkle, Eugénie  194 Shore, Stephen  193 Shusterman, Richard  184 Singer Sargent, John  156, 157 Sjöberg, Christine  9 Skarp Agency  129 skenographia  1, 4 Slocombe, Emma  154 slow art  130, 134

228

Index

smell/s  2, 7, 32, 108, 177, 213, see also olfactory perspective; scent Sonesson, Göran  192 sound/s  2, 4, 7, 32, 33, 38, 43, 79, 85, 86, 89, 90–2, 94–5, 101, 105, 114, 116, 126, 127, 167, 173, 175 -making  39 perception  101, 105 surround-  105 visceral  40 soundscape/s  8, 33, 39–42, 51, 105, 174, 177 space aestheticized  114 audience  90–1, 98 of the performance  90, 94 stage  90, 92, 98 special effects  101, 105–6, 147 spectator  86–7, 89–91, 94, 97 spectral technologies  105 Spook Sonata, the (Strindberg)  9, 199–216 stagecraft  101, 212 steam  101, 106–8, see also mist; vapour technology  106 Stein, Gertrude  200 Stella, Frank  54 Stewart, Kathleen  4 Stockholm Graphics  124–5, 127 Strindberg, August  199–200, 203, 210, 215 Strinnvik, Johanna  129 supernatural  20, 105 Sur la Plage (Szenfeld)  130 surrealism/-lists  14–15, 21, 201, 213, 215 Swedish Arts Council  33 symphony  114–15 synaesthesia  148, see also sensory overlap Szalczer, Eszter  9, 33 Szalczer, Tamas  9, 33 Szenfeld, Bea  124, 130–4, 136–7 Tashiro, Charles  58 Taxi Driver (Scorcese), 7, 47–50, 52–60 temporality  107, 169 Terry, Ellen  8 aestheticism  142, 144–6, 150, 152, 157 costume  144–50, 154–5

dress  143, 157 Lady Macbeth  153–7 movement  149 scenographic strategies  158 scenography agency  142, 157–8 subverting femininity  156 theatrical  56, 70, 157 costume/s  148 design/s  14 devices  4 entertainment  104 environment/context  14, 158 event/s  166, 168, 200 film  48 gesture  123 impulse  56 journey  68 performance  132 pose  189 practice  148 production/s  127, 210 project/s  14 settings  1, 192 traditions  156 Thomas, Dylan  200 Thompson, James  5 Traffic, exhibition  65 transcription/s  102, 112–14 translation  112–13, 194, 200 transposition  113 Trilby (Du Maurier)  158 Tristan und Isolde (Wagner)  112 Tse, Gina  128, 132, 135, Plate 22 Ubu Roi (Jarry)  199, 201–3, 212 Utopian Bodies, exhibition  132 vague  104, 107–8, 112, 114–15, see also vagueness vagueness  102, 106–7, 114–16, see also vague aesthetic of  101 semantic  114 vapour  103, 108, 115, see also mist; steam veiled  207 scenic effects  101, 106–9, 115–16 Venice Architecture Biennale 2018  66, 69 Venice Art Biennale 2007  66, 69 Very Ape (Szenfeld)  132 Vetter, Emma  127, 135, Plate 20

Index Vibskov, Henrik  183 Victory Boogie-Woogie (Mondrian)  213 video/s  4, 5, 36, 39, 41, 56, 174–6, 183 camera  40 digitized  33 director  85 installation  78 music  131, 132 projection/s  29, 94 screens  69 technology  2 Viola, Bill  66, 69, 78 virtuality  202, see also scenographic scenographic  172, 174, 176, 178, 189 of the screen visuals  93 visual agents  41 as co-author  8 communication  125 consumption  125, 137 culture  5, 7, 10 end of  5, 6, 8 event  124, 125, 136–7 identity  125, 137 interpretations  6 and material  40 methodologies  9 resources  187 -spatial  31 statement  10 studies  8 theory  8

229

visual couture  8, 124–5, 136–7 visuality audio-  90 ‘haptic’ and ‘optic’  135 Il Vitelloni (Fellini)  50 voilé  106, 115 voile/s  88, 92–4, 96–7, 116, see also veiled Wagner, Richard  8, 102–9, 112–13, 116, 148 Wahl, Kimberly  157 Die Walküre (Wagner)  110, 111 Warburg, Aby  166, 168–72, 180 Watt, G.F  142, 144, 145, 148 von Weber, Carl Maria  112 Web of Stories (Chapman)  54 Wilde, Oscar  148, 155 Williams, Tennessee  54 Williams, William Carlos  200 Wilson, Elizabeth  157 witch and hysteria  19–21 imagery of  16–17, 20, 23–4 and sexuality  19–20, 23 Witt, Gunilla  33, 34, 37, 38 worlding  4, 5, 31, 156, 168, 174 de Wyzewa, Téodor  113 Yarrow, Ralph  76 Zsygmond, Vilmos  61

230

Plate 1  Leonor Fini, Witches Cavern, set design for Le Sabbat, 1972 gouache and oil on paper, 12½ × 16½ inches, Image courtesy of the Weinstein Gallery, San Francisco. © Leonor Fini Estate, 2020.

Plate 2 Leonor Fini, Costume design for a witch, Le Sabbat, c. 1972, ink and watercolour on paper, 37 × 29cm, Leonor Fini Archive, © Leonor Fini Estate, 2020.

Plate 3  Leonor Fini, Design for the black goats, Le Sabbat, c. 1972, pen and ink, 13½ × 10½ inches, CFM Gallery, New York. Image courtesy of CFM Gallery, © Leonor Fini Estate, 2020.

Plate 4  Leonor Fini, Costume design for a dancer, Le Sabbat, c. 1972, watercolour, 13½ x 10½ inches, CFM Gallery, New York. Image courtesy of CFM Gallery, © Leonor Fini Estate, 2020.

Plate 5  Rubicon – the City Dancers, Götaplatsens trappor, 1986, screenshot from video. Courtesy of Atalante.

Plate 6  Rubicon – the City Dancers, Götaplatsens trappor, 1986. Screenshot from video. Courtesy of Atalante.

Plate 7  Screenshot from Taxi Driver. Image manipulated by author.

   

Plate 8  Screenshot from Taxi Driver. Image manipulated by author.

Plate 9  Robert Rauschenberg, Untitled Red Painting, c. 1953. ©Robert Rauschenberg Foundation.

Plate 10  Chapel Interior, Royal Holloway, University of London (Royal Holloway Image Library).

Plate 11 Empty Niches, Chapel, Royal Holloway, University of London (Royal Holloway Image Library).

Plate 12  Muse, The Handler, 2016. Courtesy Moment Factory.

 

Plate 13  Muse, The Handler, 2016. Courtesy Moment Factory.

 

       

Plate 14  Muse, The Globalist, 2016. Courtesy Moment Factory.

       

Plate 15  Muse, The Globalist, 2016. Courtesy Moment Factory.

Plate 16  Muse, The Globalist, 2016. Courtesy Moment Factory.

Plate 17  Fantin-Latour, Les Filles du Rhin, 1876, pastel on paper, 52.9 × 35.2 cm, Musée d’Orsay.

Plate 18 Rena Narumi, Dancer, The Royal Swedish Ballet, 2014. Photo: Karolina Henke/Skarp.

Plate 19  Anna Danielsson, Soprano, The Royal Swedish Opera, 2014. Photo: Karolina Henke/Skarp.

 

Plate 20  Emma Vetter, Soprano, The Royal Swedish Opera, 2014. Photo: Karolina Henke/Skarp.

Plate 21  Emilie Hörnlund & Ayman Al Fakir, Musicians, The Royal Swedish Opera, 2014. Photo: Karolina Henke/Skarp.

Plate 22  Gina Tse, Dancer, The Royal Swedish Opera, 2014. Photo: Karolina Henke/ Skarp.

Plate 23 Clyde Archer, Dancer, The Royal Swedish Opera, 2014. Photo: Karolina Henke/Skarp.

Plate 24  John Singer Sargent, Portrait of Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth, 1889. Oil on canvas, 221 × 114.3 cm. Tate Britain, London. Museum Number N02053.

Plate 25  Isabel Solís-Alcudia y Victoria Soto-Caba. Virtual polychromy of the Arco de los Ingleses (Royal Entry of Philip III into Lisbon, 1619). Courtesy of the authors.

Plate 26  ‘Cut-outs’ (part of working material). Photo: Christine Sjöberg.

Plate 27  Image from the fashion story Terrene, Contributor Magazine, 25 September 2018, photography by Shayna Fontana and fashion by Sabrina Dee.

Plate 28 Image from the fashion story  Dreams in Colour, Contributor Magazine, 22 August 2018, photography by Francesco Brigida.

Plate 29 Living Theatre’s Spook Sonata, contact sheet 1 showing images 1–12. Photograph by Alix Jeffry, 1954. MS Thr 416 Drawer 5, Folder 21 (Rolloflex 1–32), Houghton Library, Harvard University.

Plate 30 Living Theatre’s Spook Sonata, contact sheet 2 showing images 13–20. Photograph by Alix Jeffry, 1954. MS Thr 416 Drawer 5, Folder 21 (Rolloflex 1–32), Houghton Library, Harvard University.

Plate 31  Living Theatre’s Spook Sonata, The Cook, enlargement of contact sheet image #8. Photograph by Alix Jeffry, 1954. MS Thr 416 Drawer 5, Folder 21 (Rolloflex 1–32), Houghton Library, Harvard University.