How Edvard Munch and August Strindberg Contracted Protoplasmania: Memory, Synesthesia, and the Vibratory Organism in Fin-de-Siècle Europe

Brain, Robert

doi:10.1179/030801810x12628670445383

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 28 publications

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“…This change had many variations, including the emotionally intense chromatic expressionism of Kokoschka's oils, the transformation of matter into energy and vice versa in works by the Futurist Buccioni (Henderson, 2002;Rousseau, 2015), and the ominous representations of a purported vibratory protoplasm in the work of Munch and Strindberg (the latter an important painter besides a trailblazing writer) (Brain, 2010). The pull away from a sharp distinction between the subjective and the objective had diverse causes.…”

Section: The Dissolution Of Matter and The Subjective/objective Distimentioning

confidence: 99%

Depicting the Ethereal, Part I: Visual Art and Psi

Cardeña¹

2020

JoP

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The turn from figurative art to the depiction of internal experiences opened the door for artists to represent anomalous experiences and ostensible psi phenomena. Various studies have described how Abstract art was influenced by Occultism, but there were other important influences. They include scientific theories of the ether and hypergeometric dimensions, the development of technological advances showing the reality of unseen electromagnetic waves and wireless communication at a distance, Spiritualism, and the inception of psychical research. This paper focuses on how psi phenomena, research, and theory, o en in conjunction with the other influences, have been an important topic and source of inspiration in various modern and contemporary movements including Surrealism and Abstract and Conceptual art.

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Section: The Dissolution Of Matter and The Subjective/objective Distimentioning

confidence: 99%

Depicting the Ethereal, Part I: Visual Art and Psi

Cardeña¹

2020

JoP

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Seeing Things: The Dilemma of Visual Subjectivity at the Dawn of the Bacteriological Age in Strindberg’s The Father

Nixon¹

2016

con

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This essay presents a new reading of Strindberg’s The Father in the light of developing lens technology during the late nineteenth century. By situating this play within the late-nineteenth-century material culture of microscopes and alongside Strindberg’s own writings about his encounters with microscopic experimentation, the essay exposes the play as darkly comedic, upending its traditional reading as a tragedy. Recasting the play in this light concomitantly allows for further awareness of its wholesale rejection of the notion that knowledge of objective truth is possible, with science or any other epistemological system. Contextualizing the scientific influences on Strindberg’s often very spiritual dramas, then, cyclically allows for even greater awareness of the contemporary scientific rhetoric—often vicious critiques of it—packaged into his dramatic cosmology, expanding the ways in which he must be understood as one of the first Modernist playwrights.

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Monist Dramaturgy in Strindberg’sThe Black Glove

Balkin¹

2017

Modern Drama

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During his Inferno period (1894–97), August Strindberg studied Ernst Haeckel’s monism, which sought to bring the divine back into Darwinist natural science and proclaimed the unity of all matter. Monism influenced a range of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century artistic, social, and political movements, including art nouveau, the historical avant-garde, spiritualism and the occult revival, the early women’s and homosexual rights movements, and eugenics. Strindberg’s study of Haeckel’s monism coincided with his alchemical investigations into the transformability of matter. These occult studies altered Strindberg’s dramaturgical approach to human and non-human stage matter, particularly the affective relations among characters, settings, and props. This article tracks Strindberg’s engagement with Haeckel’s ideas and posits nineteenth-century monism as an inverse predecessor to present-day new materialisms.

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How Edvard Munch and August Strindberg Contracted Protoplasmania: Memory, Synesthesia, and the Vibratory Organism in Fin-de-Siècle Europe

Cited by 3 publications

References 28 publications

Depicting the Ethereal, Part I: Visual Art and Psi

Depicting the Ethereal, Part I: Visual Art and Psi

Seeing Things: The Dilemma of Visual Subjectivity at the Dawn of the Bacteriological Age in Strindberg’s The Father

Monist Dramaturgy in Strindberg’sThe Black Glove

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