流動的現代性符號— 法蘭西．畢卡畢亞1913-1920年的機械作品

The Mobile Sign of Modernity— Francis Picabia’s Machine Works from 1913 to 1920

賴美杏(Mei-hsing Lai)

指導教授 ： 曾少千

國立中央大學/文學院/藝術學研究所/碩士(2007年)

摘要

對於20世紀初的現代藝術家而言，現代性的體驗成為藝術表現中的重要課題，而「機械」的主題也始終帶有無窮的吸引力。法籍藝術家法蘭西．畢卡畢亞在1913年至1920年間所創作的機械作品，便展現了現代藝術家對於動盪世紀初的獨特感知與意識。這些機械作品不僅展現了藝術家與現代性互動的獨特典範，機械作品中模擬兩可的性別意象與突出的現成物特質，更不斷地跨越機械與身體、男性與女性、藝術與非藝術之間的既定界分，促成了意義的流動。

機械作品對於既有分野的逾越，也使得這些機械型態體現了相當特殊的意象與現代議題，目前對於這些作品，學界已經有了不少的詮釋與解讀，主要鎖定在其中的性別意象、作品與現代藝術的關係上。本文將藉由「性別視野的擴展」與重新將作品置於「前衛主義藝術脈絡」，延伸這些面向的解讀。同時，作品的探討方式，也將依機械所構成的意象區分為三類，這三類分別為(一)機械肖像、(二)性別隱喻的機器、(三)達達機器。

在這三類作品中，第一類主要聚焦於美國現代社會與現代藝術圈對畢卡畢亞的刺激啟發，藉由當時美國現代藝術291圈所提倡的實驗與創新精神，探討畢卡畢亞發展出機械肖像創作的美國藝術圈脈絡。在第二類性別隱喻的機器中，這一類帶有兩性隱喻的機械則構成兩大主題：一為極度情欲化的非傳統女性形象；另一為存在具有強烈性幻想的世界中，由機器與性的結合誘發出荒誕氛圍的「自動愛情機器」(automatic love machine)。這兩類性別意象，顯示出性別界定逐漸鬆動而面臨轉變的狀態，而為了不使這個議題的探討成為「男性」與「女性」二分性別角色的鞏固，在第二類的作品中，我們將以「主體性」—藝術家自我定位與認同的視角，取代「男性」或「女性」的二分觀點，來看界線趨向模糊的現代性別意識。

最後，在第三類的達達機器，我們則試圖藉由機械的「現成物」特質，重新探討這些機械作品與達達精神的關聯。畢卡畢亞在這些作品中，重新將焦點鎖定在現代機器的異質性能為藝術形式帶來的革新，使得問題再度回到藝術的「再現形式」上。因而，在第三類的機械圖像中，我們將回到歐洲達達的脈絡，藉由畢卡畢亞運用現成物與蘇黎世達達運動操作語言符號的相似策略，關注達達破壞性的宣言與反藝術姿態背後的積極創造面向，並藉由美國記號學家普爾斯(Charles Sanders Peirce)的理論，重新框架其操作符號的手法，並藉此抽取出更寬廣而多面向的符號意涵。

關鍵字

現成物 ； 現代性 ； 機械肖像 ； 性意象 ； 達達

並列摘要

For an artist living in the early twentieth century, the subject matter of “machine” has become become an indispensable and attractive element to express the fleeting experience of modernity. Francis Picabia (1879-1953), the French and Cuban artist, produces a body of work that exemplifies a unique perception of the turmoil of his times. Between 1913 and 1920, Picabia had a dramatic change in his painting by turning from the extremely abstract orphic form to the figurative mechanomorphic theme. These machine works, while keeping transgressing the boundary between the human body and machine, the male and female, art and non-art, generate fluid and multiple meanings and mark an important phase of Picabia’s artistic life.

Studies about Picabia’s machine works have been developed since 1970s. The recent arguments and issues circle mainly around the erotic image the machine embodies and the modern art context where the machine works are created. In this thesis, I intend to extend these points of view by broadening the feminist reading of those eroticized machines and re-placing these works in the avant-garde context. Meanwhile, these works will also be discussed in three categories according to images they represent. They are respectively 1) machine portrait, 2) machine of sexual metaphors, 3) Dada machine.

In the first category, I try to focus on the stimulation America has given to Picabia. The experimental and innovative spirit pursued by the American artistic circle has been greatly neglected, but in fact plays a crucial part in forming Picabia’s machine style. I will reconstruct the importance of the American artistic circle “291” in the first place. In the second category, the machine of sexual metaphor constitutes two major themes : 1) the eroticized and radical female image, 2) the absurdly automatic love machine. In interpreting such sexual images, feminist scholars tend to see such expression as a metaphor of the male anxiety; however, I will approach this issue in a broader sense by recasting the question to be how the artist shapes his subjectivity and identity in the modern society. It will replace the dichotomous viewpoint of seeing the works either as female or male and represent a modern consciousness toward sex, whose definite boundary has been obliterated.

In the third category, I intend to discuss the relation between these works and the dada spirit since these machines have been frequently seen as “Readymade.” In these works, Picabia stresses on the idea of the machine’s being non-art and makes it as an issue revolving around the nature of Art, what and how Art represents. I try to contend that there is similarity between the way Zurich Dadaists destruct linguistic signs and how Picabia manipulates and juxtaposes pictorial and linguistic signs. Based on Charles Sanders Peirce’s theory, I will construct a semiotic frame and try to extract multiple readings from the diverse characteristics of the Dada machine.

With these three dimensions, the machine will finally be read as a mobile sign of modernity.

並列關鍵字

machine portrait ； sexual image ； Dada ； readymade ； modernity

參考文獻

《達達: 一部反叛的歷史》(Dada: Histoire d’une Subversion) 亨利．貝阿爾(Henri Behar)與米歇爾．卡拉蘇((Michel Carassou)著，陳聖生譯。 (桂林市: 廣西師範大學, 2003)

Hopps, Walter, Ulfe Linde, and Arturo Schwarz, Marcel Duchamp Ready Made, Etc. 1913-1964 (Milan and Paris, 1964)

Bohn, Willard, The Aesthetics of Visual Poetry, 1914-1928 (New York : Cambridge University Press, 1986)

Camfield, William, Francis Picabia his art, life, and times (N.J. : Princeton University Press, c1979)

Dickerman, Leah, Dada : Zurich, Berlin, Hannover, Cologne, New York, Paris, (Washington D.C.: National Gallery of Art in association with D.A.P., c2005)