Let's Blog: Passivity vs. Activity
So I had this question that I forgot to ask last week and it has been grating on my mind ever since. On page xvi of Hal Foster's "Compulsive Beauty", there is a quote by Pierre Naville, and a subsequent discussion about it. And although this may be a topic for later discussion, I was really wondering if anyone had greater perspective on how the Surrealists viewed the concepts of Passivity vs. Activity.
The passages point towards the fact that photography was a more "surrealist" art form than was painting. And although I get that the photograph is a representation of the "event" or the "situation" (not sure if I get this either), I view it as decidedly passive ( the ça a été nature of the photograph).
I don't know whether the "conformist" art of the time (wasn't this around the time of cubism?) seemed to premeditated to Naville or what, but he seems to reject painting as unimaginative (or does he say that they cannot possibly represent the feelings of fantasy and dream, and that is why they are not-surrealist)?
Confused.