In the previous blog, I quoted Rudolf Laban’s characterization of choreutics as “the art, or the science” of movement study. Our postmodern perspective draws a hard line between art and science. But this was not the case when Laban was coming of age at the turn-of-the-century.
Munich, Laban’s first port-of-call when he began to study visual art, is a case in point. Artists and scientists happily commingled here, and ideas drawn from science fertilized the theories and practices of artists, and vice versa.
Hermann Obrist, with whom both Laban and Kandinsky studied, is a case in point. One of the most visionary Art Nouveau artists, Obrist started his career as a botanist. Obrist’s protégé, August Endell, initially pursued a scholarly career, studying philosophy and psychology at the University of Munich. After turning to art, he became an eloquent advocate for new approaches to design.
Meanwhile, German experimental psychologists such as Wilhelm Wundt, Gustav Fechner, and Hermann Helmholtz were studying the psychological and physiological process underlying human perception. Aesthetic theories put forward by Obrist, Endell, and others drew upon these discoveries.
When Laban moved on to Paris to study art, he would have encountered more confluences between art and science. For example Eadweard Muybridge’s instantaneous photographs of human and animal motion were meant to be used as references for artists depicting movement. Muybridge’s photos inspired the French physiologist, Etienne-Jules Marey. Marey was concerned to chart and measure the movements of the “animal machine.” To do so, he developed his own photographic approach, known as “chronophotography.” In turn, Marey’s photographic images inspired artists ranging from the Italian futurists to Marcel Duchamp.
In keeping with the spirit of early modernism, Laban’s Choreutics does not represent the vision of an artist or a scientist. It presents the vision of someone who is both an artist and a scientist. Explore Laban’s dual vision more deeply in the Tetra course, “Decoding Laban’s Choreutics.” Find out more….