Performing the image: Representations of the body in the avant -garde

This dissertation provides an interdisciplinary analysis of body imagery in Futurism, Dada, and Surrealism. Building on existing discourse on the body from aesthetic, sociohistorical and philosophical perspectives, the dissertation highlights the work of specific avant-garde artists who actively redefine the body in their work. Specifically, I analyze visual representations of the body in several media---painting, sculpture, photography, theatre performance, and film---as well as imagery of the body in avant-garde manifestos and theoretical and literary texts. I show how the avant-garde represented and promoted certain body images as part of their intention to defy past body norms and to create new, alternative imagery. I devised four categories, each focusing on a specific image: the "glorified," "decomposed," "artificial," and "absent" body. Aesthetic as well as social implications inform the discussion of the chapters, each spanning across different movements and media. Emphasis is placed on the artists Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, and Fortunato Depero, whose works recur in several chapters because of their wide diversity; other artists covered include Hans Bellmer and Claude Cahun. My dissertation concludes with an analysis of the contemporary "obsolete" body, which incorporates all of the avant-garde concepts and transfers them into our cyber and gene-technological world. In particular, the last chapter shows that the work of contemporary artists---among them Orlan, Stelarc, and the Chapman Brothers---is highly indebted to the imagery discussed in the early chapters of the dissertation. Ultimately, my dissertation not only provides an important cross-disciplinary perspective for understanding theories of the body in avant-garde art, but also shows that these theories continue to inform our understanding both of the body and, more generally, of art in today's world.