BASE MATERIALISM

A term coined by the French writer and intellectual Georges Bataille to refer to a mode of thought that attempts to subvert all forms of ABSTRACTION and idealism by emphasising that which is low, denigrated or reviled. Other forms of materialism, Bataille argues, cannot help but elevate matter onto a rarefied metaphysical plane – even the ‘dialectical materialism’ of MARXISM had Hegelian idealism as its starting point. Insisting that ‘base matter’ resists such recuperation, Bataille at times associates the term with the most abject forms of matter: rotting flesh, excreta or the literally ‘low’ parts of the body – parts like the big toe, the ignominious basis of homo sapiens’ erect, dignified stance. Elsewhere, however, he rejects the idea that base matter is simply reducible to brute physical substance, ‘the thing-initself’ or the ‘dead matter’ of scientific investigation. Instead, he finds inspiration in the Gnostic conception of matter as an ‘active principle having its own eternal autonomous existence’ as ‘darkness’ and as ‘evil’ – the latter understood not as ‘the absence of good’ but as a ‘creative action’.

READING

Bataille, Georges (1985) Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927–1939, ed. Allan Stoekl, trans. Allan Stoekl with Carl R. Lovitt and Donald M. Leslie Jr. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Noys, Benjamin (1998) ‘Georges Bataille's Base Materialism’, Cultural Values, 2 (4): 499–517.

BAUHAUS

The Bauhaus was an art school that spread the ideas of modern, CONSTRUCTIVIST design among the young generation of Western Europe. The school had three different directors: Walter Gropius (1919–28), Hannes Meyer (1928–30) and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1930–3). It went through three different phases in three German cities: Weimar (1919–25), Dessau (1925–32) and Berlin (1932–3). In the fourteen years of its existence, the Bauhaus taught some 1,250 students, many of whom made major contributions to artistic developments in the twentieth century.

The school was founded in March 1919 by a group of like-minded artists and craftsmen, as a bold EXPERIMENT that united the former Grand-Ducal School of Arts and Craft in Weimar (which had been closed during World WAR I) with the Saxon Academy of Art. Their aim was to reform art education by bringing together different artistic disciplines and to overcome the divide that traditionally separated the arts from the crafts (see ARTS AND CRAFTS).

DADA

Dada was a literary and artistic movement that emerged during the First World WAR and came to an end around 1922–3. It originated in neutral Switzerland, where a considerable number of writers and artists from various nationalities found refuge and banded together in loosely knit groups, usually centred on a LITTLE MAGAZINE, a cafe, a gallery or a theatre venue. One such venue was the Cabaret Voltaire, which opened on 5 February 1916 and gave local artists opportunities for presenting their music and poetry. The nightspot was located in a small room of the bar ‘Holländische Meierei’ and had some fifteen to twenty tables, offering seating for no more than fifty guests per night. Performances were given daily except Fridays, and instead of an entrance fee a slightly raised cloakroom fee was charged.

The audience consisted mainly of young people, often students, who had spent a raunchy night in other amusement venues and dropped in to have a late night drink. There was always a motley crew of emigré artists, writers, dancers and musicians who felt attracted to the CABARET because of its international ambience. Occasionally, members of the petty-bourgeoisie or ‘visitors in evening dress who seem to have descended to the lower depths after a classy dinner’, as Kurt Guggenheim described them, showed up, felt scandalised by the performances and helped to establish the venue's reputation as an outré anti-art venue.

The cabaret had been founded by Hugo Ball, a man with considerable theatre experience, and Emmy Hennings, a singer and entertainer. They were joined by Tristan Tzara, a young poet from Romania, the painters Marcel Janco and Hans Arp, and Ball's old friend Richard Huelsenbeck. Initially, the performances were quite tame and very much in the tradition of German literary cabaret. A new note was introduced by Huelsenbeck when he recited his own poems accompanied by a big drum. In March 1916, they presented some short futurist plays and FUTURIST noise music, and on 30 March 1916, during a DANCE soirée, Huelsenbeck, Tzara and Janco performed the simultaneous poem, L’amiral cherche une maison à louer [The Admiral Looks for a House to Rent], which is generally considered to have been the first DADA EVENT.