When, What, Who, Where, Why was Modernism?
(Modern Art, Modern Times, Modernity, Modernization)
Modernity is the transitory, the fugitive, the
contingent, the half of art, of which the other
half is the eternal and the immutable. . . .
Charles Baudelaire
One of the distinctive virtues of modernism is that
it leaves its questions echoing in the air long
after the questioners themselves, and their
answers, have left the scene.
Marshall Berman
(right) Claude Monet , The Gare St-Lazare, 1877, oil on canvas, 32 1/2" x 39 1/9”
(left) Raphael, The School of Athens, 1509–1510 Fresco, 500 × 770 cm, Vatican City, Apostolic Palace
Top: Joseph Paxton, The Crystal Palace, Hyde Park, London, 1851
Built in nine months
Bottom: A. W. N Pugin, Houses of Parliament, London, Gothic Revivalism, begun 1840
Crystal Palace by Joseph Paxton architect, Hyde Park, London, England, 1851,
moved to Sydenham in 1852, burned down in 1936
Build to house The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations
Joseph Paxton, Crystal Palace, 1851
Building the Crystal Palace with prefabricated truss
Building The Crystal Palace from prefabricated iron parts
Model of Crystal Palace construction
John Nash, Royal Pavilion, Brighton, England 1815-23
Orientalist
John Nash, Royal Pavilion at Brighton, interior, 1815-23
The Great Exhibition of 1851 drew 6 million visitors (1/3 the population of Great Britain)
and held 13,000 displays. Karl Marx saw it as emblematic of capitalist commodity
fetishism.
“Waiting for the Queen,” Orientalist décor of Crystal Palace,
Illustration by Joseph Nash for Dickinson's Comprehensive Pictures of
the Great Exhibition of 1851
Ornamental cover
for joints of girders
(disguising modernity)
Two Beefeaters on guard at the
entrance to the Crystal Palace,
Hyde Park
Silver table top sculpture shown in Great Exhibition of 1851 Victorian Orientalism.
Machine made decorative objects were anathema to William Morris and the Arts & Crafts
movement was largely a reaction to this kind of modern “progress” in art technologies.
Cartoon from Punch, British satirical magazine
Crystal Palace Science Exhibit:- Envelope Machine
Compare bed and new railroad cars exhibited at
Great Exhibition of 1851 (Crystal Palace)
William Holman Hunt, The Awakening Conscience, 1853-4
o/c, arched top, 30/22” Tate Britain
Pre- Raphaelite
William Morris, La Belle Iseult, o/c, 1858 o/c, 28 x 20,” Tate, London
The Golden Legend.
Hammersmith:
Kelmscott Press, 1892,
design by William
Morris
The battle between the
machine made and hand
made is one of the
defining debates of
modern art.
William Morris, Jasmine fabric design
William Morris, Seven Days of Creation, stained & leaded glass
Unknown, Joint Meeting of the Academies of Science and Fine Arts in the
Institute of France, Paris // August 19, 1839, engraving
• In August, 1839, the process is made public. Daguerre names the process, the
Daguerreotype.
• The ability to capture an image with no knowledge of drawing excites the public and
“Daguerromania” becomes the craze.
• Painters (“artists”) see “Photography” as a threat.
Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre, Still Life, 1837, Daguerreotype
Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre, Boulevard du Temple, Paris, c. 1838, Daguerreotype
Joseph Nicéphore Niépce (French 1765-1833), View from His Window at Le Gras
1826 -7, Heliograph. Considered the first successful photograph. Teamed up with
Daguerre in 1828 and died 4 years later.
William Henry Fox Talbot (British,1800-1877),The Open Door, 1843. salted paper print
from a calotype negative, plate IV, The Pencil of Nature, 1844-46
Talbot, Courtyard Scene,1844, Calotype
Oscar Gustav Rejlander (Swedish 1813-75) Two Ways of Life, 1857
albumen print, composite of 32 negatives
BEFORE PHOTOGRAPHY
Photography was not a bastard left by science
on the doorstep of art, but a legitimate child
of the Western pictorial tradition.
Peter Galassi
LINEAR PERSPECTIVE
“The ultimate origins of photography – both technical and aesthetic –
lie in the fifteenth-century invention of linear perspective.”
Pablo Picasso, Guitar with Sheet Music and Wine Glass, papier collé with drawing,1912
Modern art famously breaks the “laws” of optical perspective
that held in Western art for 5 centuries: response to photography?
Non-Western and Pre-Renaissance European Perspectival Systems
Perspective as a Symbolic Form – Irwin Panofsky
Hesire, 2723 BCE. In ancient Egyptian perspective
the primary value was that the entire body of the
(here a servant) who would attend the deceased I
n the afterlife is needed. “Half” eyes or foreshortened
limbs (as representedin optical perspective) would
not be functional in the afterlife.
Ancient Egyptian tomb painting: A painting at Abu Simbel shows Ramses II beating war
captives. Ramses’ exaggerated size has symbolic meaning signifying his god-like power
and heroic feats.
Tomb painting of the botanical garden of Nebamun, with
artificial fish pond, New Kingdom, Egypt, 1400 BCE
Conceptual rather than optical perspective
displays each object with equal visibility and
detail.
Ma Yuan, Landscape in Moonlight, ca. 1200 CE
Chinese hanging scroll, ink, and color on silk.
Anonymous, The Battles of Hogen and Heiji, Edo period, screen, 17th century Japan
Anonymous, The Persian Prince Humay meets the Chinese Princess Humayun in her
garden, c.1430-40, tempera on parchment.
Anonymous, Christ as Ruler of the Universe, the Virgin, and Child, and Saints, ca. 1190,
mosaic, Cathedral of Monreale, Sicily.
Anonymous, Madonna and Child on a Curved Throne, Italy, ca. 1280, tempera on wood
Giotto di Bondone, Frescoes, Arena Chapel, Padua, Italy,1305-06
Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Allegory of Good Government, ca. 1340, fresco.
Palazzo Publico, Siena.
Masaccio, Trinity (and right, scheme of
perspective) 1425-28, fresco, Santa Maria
Novella, Florence: considered first use of
scientific perspective
Masters of Illusion
Leon Battista Alberti published On Painting in 1435, dedicated to
Brunelleschi, describing laws of perspective
Drawing by Brunelleschi, The central nave of St. Lorenzo, Florence, Italy
Masters of Illusion
PERSPECTIVE MACHINES
Leonardo Da Vinci, Draughtsman Using a Transparent Plane to Draw an Armillary
Sphere, 1510
Illustration of Leonardo’s perspective grid
Illustration from the book The Practice of Perspective, by Jean
Dubreuil, 1642, showing an artist using a perspective glass
Albrecht Durer, Artist using a glass to take a portrait, 1525, woodcut.
Albrecht Durer, The painter studying the laws of foreshortening, 1525, woodcut.
Draughtsmen plotting points for the drawing of a lute in foreshortening.
THE CAMERA OBSCURA
•
CAMERA OBSCURA DEVELOPMENTS
•
Camera = Latin for “room”.
Obscura = Latin for “dark”
•
5th C. B.C. China References to pinholes in screens
revealing an understanding of image
formation
translated as “collecting place”, “locked
treasure room.”
Light travels in a straight line and when some of the rays reflected from a bright
subject pass through a small hole in thin material they do not scatter but cross
and reform as an upside down image on a flat surface held parallel to the hole.
Camera obscura room, 1752
• Camera obscura room, 1754.
Alexandre Saverien, Tent, Room, and Book Camera Obscuras, 1753, engraving.
Portable Camera Obscuras, 1685
A reflex camera obscura.
Camera obscura tent
Peter Gelassi, Before Photography
Photography relies on two scientific principles :
1) A principle of optics on which the Camera Obscura is based
2) Principle of chemistry, that certain combinations of elements, especially silver
halides, turn dark when exposed to light (rather than heat or exposure to air) was
demonstrated in 1717 by Johann Heinrich Schulze, professor of anatomy at the
University of Altdorf
Piero della Francesca. An Ideal Townscape, c. 1470. Panel, 23 ½” x 78 ¾”
(59.69 x 200.01 cm). Palazzo Ducale, Urbino, Italy.
Scientific single-point perspective
How might this be a symbolic form?
Emanuel de Witte. Protestant Church, 1669. Oil on panel 17” x 13 ½” (43.18 x 34.29
cm). Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.
Pieter Saenredam. The Grote Kerk, Haarlem, 1636-37. Oil on panel, 23 ½” x 32 ¼”
(59.5 x 81.7 cm). The Trustees of the National Gallery, London.
Paolo Uccello. The Hunt in the Forest, c. 1460. Tempera on wood panel, 25 ½” x 65”
(64.77 x 165.1 cm). Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.
Edgar Degas. The Racing Field: Amateur Jockeys near a Carriage, c. 1877-80. Oil on
canvas, 26” x 31 ¾” (66.04 x 80.65 cm). Musée du Louvre, Paris
Photographic Vision? How much did photography influence 19th century painting?
“A popular presumption today would have it that photographs, and especially fast
exposures after c. 1860, revealed a great deal that was new and unique: a revolutionary
new world of odd perspectives and viewpoints, peculiar compositional croppings, and
candid instantaneity.”
Kirk Varnadoe, “The Artifice of Candor”
Edgar Degas, The Rehersal, 1879
de Witte, Protestant Church, 1669