Having read the article by Barthes, the project is to annotate an artwork illustrating my thoughts on the following passage taken from Myth Today:
"The meaning is always there to present the form; the form is always there to outdistance the meaning"
Firstly we need to contextualise the statement The extract is from the part of Myth Today where Barthes contends that "myth is a double system" - the point of departure is constituted by the arrival of a meaning; there is a 'turnstile' between the meaning of a signifier and its form. Myth is a form of alibi.
To demonstrate this, I have selected a satirical 1930s montage by the Dadaist John Heartfield, Hurrah, the Butter's Finished.
The photomontage was published in the leftist weekly Worker's Illustrated Newspaper [Arbeiter Illustrierte Zeitung], a publication aimed at advancing the political education of workers (GHDI, undated). The title is a parody of a speech made by Hermann Göring, an excerpt of which is included at the foot of the photomontage and translates as:
“Ore has always made an empire strong, butter and lard have made a country fat at most.”
Göring wished to increase the productive capacity of the German war machine and used the comparison to exhort his fellow countrymen to eschew home comforts in favour of the country's rearmament process. The montage is of a 'typical' German family and is annotated here.
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| John Heartfield - Hurrah, the Butter's Finished, 1935 |
References:
GDHI (undated) Anti-Fascist Imagery: "Hurrah, the Butter is Gone!" (December 19, 1935)Available from http://ghdi.ghi-dc.org/sub_image.cfm?image_id=1929 Accessed on 26 April 2014
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