Photography was the ideal medium

Photography was the ideal medium for the project in its vision of a seamless reality because in photography "space does not present itself to us as successive in nature, like time, but as pure presence, present-all-atonce ... photography normally functions as a kind of declaration of the seamlessness of reality itself as well as in the form of photo into painting." Brassai, as his prolific publications in Minotaure demonstrate, was seen as a particularly seamless photographer. Although unlike Breton, Brassai did not consider himself quintessentially Surrealist, and therefore declined the opportunity to become an official member of the group, philosophically he shared some of their tenets, most specifically, the sense of some (greater) truth, of the existence of an "essence" to be percieved from a collection of its many individual parts. As he explained in a 1921 letter to his parents, Brassai hoped in his photography "to express the essence of things." By the time his works were produced in Minotaure, he felt confident enough to claim in a 1935 letter that "a perfect whole is slowly emerging from the pictures I develop day after day (light and shadow, front stairs and back stairs, the 500-franc banquet and the cesspit)." Thus, through an objective(?) balance of light and dark, inside and outside, rich and poor, Brassai saw his photographs as containing a range, a breadth, that expresses a "whole," a "truth."

We might make the claim that in his almost realist inclusion of such a democratic range--of people, cityscapes and objects, Brassai can be seen as photographing, albeit from an exteriorized subject position, a sense of community--commonality is based on nothing greater than general geographic nearness to Paris. Brassai quantified this wholeness, this essence in more specific terms, however. He insisted that "nature is the foundation of every starting point, the line of progress is constant simplification, a purer and purer emphasis of the essential."

Whether Brassai conceived of this natural essence as truly associated with nature--an instinctual traditional conception of the earth, or as man's natural state--that of the Surrealist unconscious, is unclear, but it seems likely that it is through this emphasis on the "natural" that Brassai turned to the figure of the nude woman. After all, nature is traditionally and consistently coded as feminine. It is thus that we have chthonic conquest terminology of despoiling virgin lands or ravaging Mother Nature, where woman is conceived as intimately connected to the earth. Indeed, it was this quality that allowed poster artists to link woman's body with the national body. On the other hand, for the Surrealists, women "were not grounded in what is 'natural,' but rather, were subject to fantasy and fabrication."

But even if Brassai's vision of "nature" had more to do with the Surrealist unconscious, Surrealism focused on 'woman' as 'other', as closer to the unconscious than men. Woman was idealized--which is certainly nothing short of traditional--but for different reasons than traditional ones: the Surrealists loved woman for her irrationality, her spontaneity, and especially her passion--for everything about her opposed traditional values of reason, practicality, and logic, and thereby brought her closer to a state of unconscious, convulsive beauty. One might make the claim that the Surrealists of the 1920s and 1930s, so frequently critiqued by feminists for their objectification of and even violence upon the body of woman, paradoxically have much in common with the feminists of the 1970s, (who have, of course, borne the brunt of their own share of critiques for their essentialism). But as Rosalind Krauss points out, the idea of revaluing the signifiers of the feminine--which was, she claims, at the heart of the Surrealist project, "could at least prefigure a next step, in which a reading is opened onto deconstruction. It is for this reason... that the frequent characterizations of surrealism as antifeminist seem to ... be mistaken." Woman, whether tied to nature for traditional reasons or because she is closer to the unconscious based on Surrealist reasoning, was a natural place for Brassai to begin.

And nothing could be more natural than the simple, unmanipulated straight photographs, the two 1932-1933 Nus (Figs. 3, 4) published in Minotaure. They are Surrealist only in their positioning, such that they defamiliarize through "a simple rotation and consequent disorientation of the body." There is no collage or montage work used. Rather, the clipped torsos are posed in strange, unusual positions, consistent with Surrealist practice. On the one hand, these images are yet another cliche example of male objectification of the female body, simultaneously dismembered and decapitated by the violent cropping of the photographic frame, while the figures are sexualized in their flattering attention to the feminine torso, a site of viewer desire. The cropping of photographs severs the continuous fabric of reality. The frame, as in most Surrealist photographs, makes itself known as a sign--"an empty sign, it is true, but an integer in the calculus of meaning nonetheless, a signifier of signification."

Historically the massive field

Historically the massive field that stretched from the east bank of the Tiber to the slopes of the Quirinal hill had been the principal staging ground for military exercises and the place where Roman men assembled for the census and voting. Its southern end, the Circus Flaminius, had been the site of massive displays of manubiae (battle spoils) and enormous triumphal monuments erected by victorious republican generals competing for the most impressive building (e.g., Pompey's theater, Metellus' earlier portico, and C. Octavius' portico). During the early imperial era, Augustus and members of the imperial circle replaced the fragmented, competitive identity of the region with a unified building plan whose structures complemented one another and presented a harmonious display of imperial power. Octavia's contribution to the agenda added a woman's hand to the family tree of buildings arising here. Indeed, Octavia's benefaction helped shift the character of the region from a staging ground for individual displays of power by men to a tableau of familial largesse.

Yet, perhaps due to the novelty of her unusual benefaction in a traditionally male-dominated world of architectural patronage, scholarly accounts of the portico have questioned Octavia's actual role. Modern studies often cite Augustus as author of the monument that bore his sister's name, pointing to literary sources that credit him with the erection of buildings to which he gave the names of female relatives. A passage in Augustus' Res Gestae, the autobiographical account of his life's accomplishments, has also provoked modern confusion. Here, Augustus describes his restoration of a portico called the porticus Octavia--that is, the Octavian portico, rather than the portico of Octavia--located along the Circus Flaminius. Though a seemingly innocuous difference, the implications for authorship are significant. An ancient source from the philologist Festus clarifies these ambiguities as he explains that there were two porticoes on the Circus Flaminius associated with the Octavian name: one was near the Theater of Marcellus and was built by Octavia, while the other stood near the Theater of Pompey and was built by an ancestor of Augustus, Cn. Octavius, and later rebuilt by the emperor (Festus, 188L).

Some scholars have resisted the attribution to Octavia, instead holding fast to the idea that Festus erred and that it is the later ancient authors who give the monument to Augustus--namely Suetonius and Cassius Dio--who are in fact correct. This position is problematic, for both Suetonius and Cassius Dio wrote their commentaries much later than the erection of the portico. Their attributions, then, should be used judiciously, and contemporary sources, like Festus, given greater weight. The Augustan poet Ovid provides further evidence for Octavia's patronage and adds further that she was joined by her son, Marcellus, in this effort (Ars Amatoria, 1.69-70). (32) If, as Ovid suggests, Marcellus participated in the benefaction, probably in its early years, then it is likely that he and Octavia first worked on the project jointly, but that she added the libraries and meeting hall after his premature death. In fact, evidence for comparable mother/son collaborations existed in some of the most notable benefactions by women in the Augustan era, such as Empress Livia's porticus Liviae in Rome carried out with her son Tiberius, or the famous colonnaded building in Pompeii paid for by the priestess Eumachia and dedicated in her own name and her son's. In both examples, scholars have interpreted the joint benefaction as a means by which a publicly prominent mother lent political support to her son. (34) Such was probably the case with Octavia, who was no doubt interested in promoting her son's future in the imperial lineup.