Jésus-Christ Rastaquouère: Francis Picabia’s anti-art Anti-Christ
Jésus-Christ Rastaquouère: Francis Picabia’s anti-art Anti-Christ
This article analyses the imprint of Nietzschean philosophy on Picabia's negotiation of embodiment, art and religion in Jésus-Christ Rastaquouère (1920). Presenting this text as a critically neglected masterwork of avant-garde literature, this article demonstrates how Picabia enlisted Dadaist suspicion of organized religion as the vehicle for his disavowal of the official art world. Picabia and Nietzsche were united in their scorn for Christ and the disembodying pieties of Christian morality. However, whereas Nietzsche proffers art as redemptive antithesis to religion, Picabia launches an all-out attack on the sanctity of art and, with it, on the notion of the artist as redeemer. Via close textual and comparative analysis, this innovative reading of Jésus-Christ Rastaquouère exposes its significance as a philosophical treatise which exists in formal and conceptual dialogue with a constellation of Dadaist artworks. It uncovers how Picabia co-opts and, ultimately, exceeds Nietzsche's Anti-Christ rhetoric in his idiosyncratic prose modelling of Dada's Anti-Art revolution.
41-67
Hayden, Sarah
cf6b5dc1-acda-4983-83e6-ad2d96e73764
19 December 2013
Hayden, Sarah
cf6b5dc1-acda-4983-83e6-ad2d96e73764
Hayden, Sarah
(2013)
Jésus-Christ Rastaquouère: Francis Picabia’s anti-art Anti-Christ.
Irish Journal of French Studies, 13, .
(doi:10.7173/164913313809455701).
Abstract
This article analyses the imprint of Nietzschean philosophy on Picabia's negotiation of embodiment, art and religion in Jésus-Christ Rastaquouère (1920). Presenting this text as a critically neglected masterwork of avant-garde literature, this article demonstrates how Picabia enlisted Dadaist suspicion of organized religion as the vehicle for his disavowal of the official art world. Picabia and Nietzsche were united in their scorn for Christ and the disembodying pieties of Christian morality. However, whereas Nietzsche proffers art as redemptive antithesis to religion, Picabia launches an all-out attack on the sanctity of art and, with it, on the notion of the artist as redeemer. Via close textual and comparative analysis, this innovative reading of Jésus-Christ Rastaquouère exposes its significance as a philosophical treatise which exists in formal and conceptual dialogue with a constellation of Dadaist artworks. It uncovers how Picabia co-opts and, ultimately, exceeds Nietzsche's Anti-Christ rhetoric in his idiosyncratic prose modelling of Dada's Anti-Art revolution.
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Published date: 19 December 2013
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English
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Local EPrints ID: 400112
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/400112
ISSN: 1649-1335
PURE UUID: 4e06bf81-9a70-4144-b96d-e034a7744632
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Date deposited: 16 Sep 2016 12:16
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 02:09
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