The source of the idea of art as an act of violence pervading cinema and theatre is the aesthetics of Futurism and of Surrealism; its principal texts are, for theatre, the writings of Artaud and, for cinema, two films of Luis Buñuel, L’Age d’Or and Un Chien Andalou. (More recent examples: the early plays of Ionesco, at least as conceived; the “cinema of cruelty” of Hitchcock, Clouzot, Franju, Robert Aldrich, Polanski; work by the Living Theatre; some of the neo-cinematic light shows in experimental theatres and discothèques; the sound of late Cage and LaMonte Young.) The relation of art to an
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