Fluffy, inertial, clumsy, and bearlike materialism (Bruno Schulz describes one version of the gesture in modern art)



"We openly admit: we shall not insist either on durability or solidity of workmanship; our creations will be temporary, to serve for a single occasion.  If they be human beings, we shall give them, for example, only one profile, one hand, one leg, the one limb needed for their role.  It would be pedantic to bother about the other, unnecessary, leg  Their backs can be made of canvas or simply whitewashed.  We shall have this proud slogan as our aim: a different actor for every gesture.  For each action, each word, we shall call to life a different human being.  Such is our whim, and the world will be run according to our pleasure.  The Demiurge was in love with consummate, superb, and complicated materials; we shall give priority to trash.  We are simply entranced and enchanted by the cheapness, shabbiness, and inferiority of material.
"Can you understand," asked my father, "the deep meaning of that weakness, that passion for colored tissue, for papier-mâché, for distemper, for oakum and sawdust?  This is," he continued with a pained smile," the proof of our love for matter as such, for its fluffiness or porosity, for its unique mystical consistency.  Demiurge, that great master and artist, made matter invisible, made it disappear under the surface of life.  We, on the contrary, love its creaking, its resistance, its clumsiness.  We like to see behind each gesture, behind each move, its inertia, its heavy effort, its bearlike awkwardness."
The girls sat motionless, with glazed eyes.

(Schulz, "Tailors' Dummies")

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