Q: Kaleidoscopic is not the metaphor I would've used. I though your idea of grid in kind of like systematic and…

EB: Yeah, yeah. A kaleidoscope is like grid and system of kaleidoscope, so it's both of them. It’s just like more colorful than the simple black and white grid. No, I think you are right. I think we wanted it was also the way to present and make clear that the modernity is not something written in continuous voice and continuous manner. And they are kind of discontinuities and disruptions that cannot be surprising. So is Adrian mentioned this, I did not realize this, actually, this kind of slight resemblance between the 1916 photography entry and 1917 entry of Mondrian but it's kind of the thing that kind of strange conjunction that kind of appears from discontinuous structure and it's in the way that it is a kind of attempt to have something that what is the structure of modernity within embedded in the narrative fragments of the book. You are right. But, I don't think we thought about it. That is like natural way of doing it.

AF: There is a way in which even minimal system imposes the randomness, if you'd like. I think also says Rosalind two chapters in 1924 and 1930 were suddenly, in a way, it’s normally in complex very complex than burst discussion the difference between, the huge difference between Batille and Breton spring to life. In a way that prefigures the conflict between structuralism and psychoanalysis and deconstruction later on. So in a sense fragmentally form is disclosed something which is not quite yet happened. So, the informe verses kind of Freudian caricature in a way. Just within a few pages in each others. But with very, very different things in between. In fact, creates structure, as Yve-Alain just said, the discontinuity is a modern lessons, modernity and norm identifiably of it. It suddenly throw into light, throw into light which also poses questions of structuralism and post-structuralism which is at the beginning of the book and then later on in the book. That is more like a kaleidoscope than a grid. I think.

RK: I would have to say the pedagogical energy of the book was very, very strong and we really want it to have it sort of open about whether someone wants to teach or through histories of the medium, painting, sculpture, photography, for instance. They were mediums that we really felt in confident to deal with and also the book would've just be too huge if we'd have to deal with the men, we don't talk abut film and we don't talk about architecture. But anyway...

EB: Except that there was a direct relationship to the author to painting culture.

RK: Right. So there was this notion that you could either teach through a connection of various entries that would bring out the history of medium or you could teach monographically and through entries that would be all devoted to the same artist or the same movement. So the elegance of the grid had to do with just simply a series of very open possibilities for instruction.

Q: In my view, a good pedagogy is largely a matter of creativity, the same as art or any other creative act in writing. And when you talked a lot about you did this intentionally to teach, if you'd like, I would like to know what you learned when you were writing. What was the big surprise? What's the excitement of the thing you produced? In content, I'm talking the content. What happened to you?

RK: It's hard for me to answer that. Because I really wrote about the things I've already written about. And, so I would have to say I didn't learn that much. Yve-Alain did. See. Well, he wrote about something he didn't know anything about. (01:00:00)
YB: I would be definitely in fear you. There wasn't referring about something which I mentioned, which is I learnt a lot about Trotsky. Did I speak about it? I don't know if I... It's confusing time. The one entry... All of us had some dreary entry to write, the thing we didn’t want to do. But we have decided that they need to be there, so one of them has to do. This was very, very early on. I don’t know exactly why this had so early on in there, in the configuration of the theme of the content. That could be an entry, let’s say, on the “de-Marxization” of the New York avant-garde. You know, the way in which all the painters will become abstract expressionist, we were all communist in 30's and became this completely political animal in the late 40's something must have happened. And off course, Meyer Schapiro, all kind of nucleus, at some point the entry can appear but the point is we didn't find any way to Gorky in a sense. Anyway, we have it has entries in which, off course, I don't know, and for what particular reason I did write in part I think the issue is fairly well addressed by several people and I don't know. For whatever reasons I felt huh... But reading some article or dissertation, probably I learned a lot from students.

And about particular role that he played for the all segment of the American intelligenzia. He was the only political socialist reader at time that could safe for them communism. That's why Partisan review published his manifest with written by him and Breton and Rivera signed it but he didn't do anything for it. It was very important for them, just after the Moscow trial, just at the same time running the Moscow trial, and to have some kind of socialist thinker that could still look upon to and off course he was assassinated not too long later, so that was the end of it. But, you know, it was very important for me to realize this utopian moment of the Russian avant-garde, it's kind of after life, as late as late 30's. The intellectuals of Partisan review at this investment, I learnt a lot about it. It was very enjoyable.

(00:65:00)
AR: At the same time, did you realized that 1930's would have ended in London, with Ben Nicolson. Is there something you, in a sense, learned about the way you could construct 1930s? It would end there or rather than back in New York or...

EB: Yeah, it could have end, the entries on Trotsky was end in, I forgot, in 42. But in 38. It was a little bit arbitrary there, could be 38 because it was a visit of Breton to Trotsky. No, it was not conscious either. I think it has to do with equilibrium of decade were not two fact and...