The Powerful Antonin Artaud - 1617 Words

Antonin Artaud was an artist who was cursed physically, tormented emotionally, and was constantly walking in the shadow of his childhood ailments. Though his illnesses set him back in many ways, Artaud was ever persistent and dedicated to expressing himself artistically, even if it meant he had to work twice as hard as anyone else to be heard and understood. As such, Artaud’s work in the theater gives us a sense that anything is possible. His writing, directing and conceptualizing are evidence of his inability to be bound or limited in any sort of artistic way. Artaud’s theater is one full of possibilities and unexplored territories. As Artaud himself said, â€Å"If there is still one hellish, truly accursed thing in our time, it is our artistic dallying with forms, instead of being like victims burnt at the stake, signaling through the flames.†1 Artaud’s childhood bout with a severe case of meningitis affected him for the rest of his life. He suffered fro m nervousness, an irritable temperament, neuralgia, stammering, and severe bouts of clinical depression.2 As a result, Artaud spent much of his adolescence in and out of sanatoriums-- it was there that he first became addicted to opiates when they were prescribed to him for his pain, which resulted in a lifelong addiction.3 When Artaud was finally able to escape the sanatoriums, he began a life as both a poet and an actor in Paris. As a writer, Artaud struggled due to the physical repercussions from his youth:Show MoreRelatedTheatre and Its Double2592 Words   |  11 Pagesson Double (The Theatre and Its Double)-Antonin Artaud The Theatre and Its Double was first published in French in 1938. It is a collection of essays, manifestos, and letters all written by the French artist and theatritician Antonin Artaud (1896-1948). Artaud spent much of his life in and out of asylums and addicted to laudanum and other opiates prescribed to help his so-called ‘madness’. During his ‘free’ times, he wrote, acted, and traveled. Artaud was profoundly moved by a Balinese danceRead MoreAre There Visions and Ghosts in Van Gogh Paintings?1142 Words   |  5 Pagesâ€Å"There are no ghosts in the paintings of Van Gogh, no visions, no hallucinations. This is the torrid truth of the sun at two o’clock in the afternoon.† This quote that Antonin Artraud, stated from, Van Gogh, the Man Suicided by Society, explains the way in which Van Gogh approached his artwork. He believed in the dry truth and as a result his work was remarkably straightforward in the messages that he portrayed. Wh ile visiting Paris, France this past April, I was fortunate enough to have visitedRead MoreThe Power Room By Clayton Eshleman1157 Words   |  5 Pagesthe poem is reflective of the type of in and out of consciousness which happens when one is introduced to new material. Eshleman’s frequent visits to the power room is a reflection of the room’s powerful aura. Within his review â€Å"Eshleman’s Caves†, Jay Murphy quotes Antonin Artaud, and writes, â€Å"In fact, Artaud writes, â€Å"no one knows †¦ what strange force is in process of being metamorphosed.†Ã¢â‚¬  (189) whereas this â€Å"strange force† is reflective of the force in the power room. Murphy also claims, â€Å"Eshleman’sRead More Kanes Blasted1583 Words   |  7 Pagesas blasted through its formed meaning and literal association is a term ‘expressing annoyance.’ (Oxford English Dictionary. 2006: 70). As stated by the British theatre critic Aleks Sierz , Kane’s Blasted is â€Å"a shocking play whose raw language and powerful images of rape, eye-gouging and cannibalism provoked critical outrage†¦Kane exploded theatrical convention.† (Sierz: 2000-2010). Kane’s work is categorised as part of the social relation of theatrical writers known as ‘in-yer-face,’ a termRead MoreThe Effects of World War One on French Theatre Essay3095 Words   |  13 Pagesno advancement in the war. With every gruesome letter written about the war, there is a pattern seen among the soldiers and their struggle to find the meaning in what they were doing. Ernst Junger, a 19 year old from Germany, wrote one of the most powerful letters recounting the trench warfare: For here some awful spirit has struck out all redundancy and created a background worth of tragedy that far exceeds the pitch of any poet. Hence man has no choice but to become a bit of nature, subjected toRead MoreArt Appreciation: Visual Art Expressions1874 Words   |  8 Pagesof the well known painters from surrealism are, Pablo Picasso, Joan Miro and Georges Braque. Films While theatre was the most common form of visual art expression for surrealism, surreal artists started to believe that film is going to be more powerful that theatre. The film consisted of more illusions giving the impact that reality is not actually what we see it to be but it is actually a little more than that. May surreal artists considered film as a portrayal of dreams. What was known to beRead More The State of Being ‘Human’ in Kanes Blasted1752 Words   |  8 Pagesas blasted through its formed meaning and literal association is a term ‘expressing annoyance.’ (Oxford English Dictionary. 2006: 70). As stated by the British theatre critic Aleks Sierz, Kane’s Blasted is â€Å"a shocking play whose raw language and powerful images of rape, eye-gouging and cannibalism provoked critical outrage†¦Kane exploded theatrical convention.† (Sierz: 2000-2010). Kane’s work is categorised as part of the social relation of theatrical writers known as ‘in-yer-face,’ a termRead MoreComparison Between Aristotle and Plato on Mimesis4881 Words   |  20 Pagesaltering our general emotional state. Catharsis would describe the proper result of the tragic plot. In a suggestive reworking of this reading, the twentieth-century French playwright Antonin Artaud reimagines theatre as a plague that brings forth ‘all the perverse possibilities of the mind’ (1958: 30). For Artaud, the aim of catharsis is metaphorically to sicken the audience, not to cure it. These disputes over the meaning of catharsis are unlikely to be answered in any definitive way. But this