Chapter 29
Modernism 1900 to 1945 – Part 1
The Development of Modernist Art
1900-1940
Key Ideas
• Early modern art flourished at a time of
immense p
political unrest and social upheaval
p
• Modern artists and architects were quick to
embrace new technologies in the creation of
their
h works
k
• Avant-garde patrons cultivated cutting-edge
artist,
ti t allowing
ll i them
th
to
t fl
flourish.
i h
• The Armory Show introduced modern art to
America and Gallery 291 exhibited photographs
America,
besides paintings as works of art.
• Modern art takes on a more international flavor
than ever
Vocabulary
• Abstract: works of art that may have form, but
have little or no attempt at pictorial
representation.
• Collage: A composition made by pasting
together different items onto a flat surface.
• Ready-made:
y
A commonplace
p
object
j
selected
and exhibited as a work of art.
Fauvism ((Wild Beast)) -1905 to
1908
• A movement that debuted in 1905 in the Salon
d’Automne in Paris
•Named
N
d ffrom an art critic,
i i Louis
L i Vauxcelles,
V
ll thought
h
h the
h
paintings looked as if they were created by “Wild Beasts”
p
by
y Post-Impressionist
p
like Gauguin
g
and Van
•Inspired
Gogh that stressed a painterly surface with broad flat areas
of violently contrasting color
•brilliant
brilliant, bold colors
•intense color juxtapositions
•rich surface textures
•lively
li l linear
li
patterns
tt
Green Stripe, (Madame Matisse)
™Conventional composition
™Violent contrast of color
™Energetic painterly
brushwork
™Exhibited at the 1905 Salon
d’Automne in Paris
™Matisse’s wife
Henri Matisse, A Woman with a Hat, 1905
The Joy of Life (Le Joie de vivre)
The Open Window
Red Room ((Harmonyy in Red),
),
Henri Matisse
Andre Derain
Th Dance
The
D
London Bridge.
The Turning Road,
L'Estaque
Maurice de Vlaminck
www.artlex.com/ArtLex/f/fauvism.html
artLex
www.geocities.com/.../2933/fauves/fvplayers.htm
Expressionism
p
–
• Inspired by the Fauve movement
• Emphasis on expressing inner feelings
• Die Bruke (The Bridge) 1905 – group of German
artists in Dresden gathered around Kirchner and saw
themselves as a bridge from traditional to modern
painting
• Der Blue Reiter (The Blue Rider) - formed in
Munich in 1911. The group named because of the
affection for the color blue. Theyy began
g to forsake
representation art and more toward abstraction. Highly
intellectual, and filled with theories of artistic
representation.
▫ A
Artist
ti t like
lik K
Kandinsky
di k and
d march
h saw abstraction
b t ti as a way
of conceiving the natural world
▫ Wassily Kandinsky: credited with painting the 1st
“abstract”
abstract painting, 1910
German Expressionism:
Die Brucke (The Bridge)
•
•
•
•
•
dissonance
seeming lack of finesse
harsh colors
aggressively brushed paint
distorted forms
Street, Dresden, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
™Uncomfortable close
encounter with women
on a Dresden Street
™Colors are
nonrepresentational, but
symbolic and chosen to
provide a jarring impact
™Expressive
™E
i quality
lit off horrified
h ifi d facial
f i l features
f t
andd grim
i surroundings
di
™Titled perspective moves things closer to the picture plane
Saint Mary of Egypt among Sinners,
Emil Nolde
Last Supper
Dance Around the
Golden Calf
Masken II
www.avire.ca/.../interpretation.html
www.groningermuseum.nl/index.php?id=795
Gardner’s Art Through the Ages
German Expressionism:
Der Blaue Reiter
((Blue Rider))
• Captured feelings in visual form
• expression of innermost feelings by orchestrating
color form
color,
form, line and space
• elicits intense response from viewer
Small Worlds III
Vassily Kandinsky
Composition VIII
Improvisation 13.
•Movement toward
abstraction; representational
objects suggested rather
than depicted
•Title derived from musical
compositions
•Strongly articulated use of
black lines
•Colors seem to shade
around line forms
Improvisation 28
Fate of the Animals, Franz Marc
The Lamb
The Tiger
Foxes
Woman with Dead Child, Kathe Kollwitz
Seated Youth, Wilhelm Lehmbruck
C bi
Cubism
• Born in the studio of Pablo Picasso, who in 1907 revealed
the first cubist painting,
painting Les Demoiselles d
d’Avignon
Avignon
• characterized by the reduction and fragmentation of
natural forms into abstract, often geometric structures
usually
ll rendered
d d as a sett off di
discrete
t planes.
l
• Analytical Cubism: 1907-1912
▫ highly experimental, showing jagged edges and sharp
multifaceted
l if
d li
lines
• Synthetic Cubism: 1912
▫ Initially inspired by collages and found objects and featured
flattened forms
• Curvilinear Cubism: 1930
▫ More flowing
g rounded responses
p
to the flattened and firm
edges of Synthetic
Primitivism & Cubism
•Breaking up of nature into geometric figures and planes
•Leading artists: Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque
Braq e
• Primitivism = influenced by African Art
• Cubism Characteristics:
•Distortion
•Flattened space
•Fragmentation
Fragmentation
•Restricted palette
•Grid/scaffold – black lines
Cubism: Definition
• “The art of painting original arrangements
composed of elements taken from conceived
rather than perceived reality.”
▫ --Guillaume
Guillaume Apollinaire, The Beginnings of
Cubism, 1912
Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, Pablo Picasso
Mbuya Mask
•1st Cubist work, influence by late
Cezanne, and African masks
•Represents five prostitutes in a bordello
on Avignon Street in Barcelona, each
posing for a customer
•Poses are not traditionally alluring but
awkward, expressionless, and uninviting
•No real depth
•Three on left more conservatively painted, two on right more radical; reflects a dichotomy
in Picasso
•Multiple views expressed at the same time
Influenced by
African masks
Gertrude Stein
Pablo Picasso
http://www.public.asu.edu/~usman/images/images-Africa/Ifebronze-mask.jpg
www.cartage.org.lb/.../AfricanTribalArt2.htm
Analytic Cubism
•separating and analyzing various forms
forms.
•extreme flattening of space, as well as violent shattering
of the subject and use of multiple perspectives painted
Georges Braque
The Portugese
Champs de Mars or The Red Tower
Robert Delaunay
Homage to Bleriot
The City of Paris
Sun, Tower, Aeroplane
Eifel Tower
www.artinthepicture.com/paintings/view.php?nr=374
www.paletaworld.org/artist.asp?id=2616
S th ti C
Synthetic
Cubism
bi
•more
more ornamental and the colors used played an
important role
•glued objects such as paper and cloth to canvas
( ll )
(collage)
Pablo
b o Picasso
c sso
Still Life with Chair-Caning,
"Still Life with
bowl and Fruit"
Fruit
Glass and Bottle
of Suze (1912)
Georges Braque
Bottle, Newspaper, Pipe and Glass
Glass, Carafe
Gl
C f
and Newspapers
Pablo Picasso, Guernica, 1937
•Painted for the Spanish pavilion of the 1937 Parisian World’s Fair
•A reaction to the Fascist bombing of the militarily insignificant town of Guernica in
northern Spain during the Spanish Civil War
•Done in black and white to imitate news photos
•Picasso usually not a symbolic painter but many symbols
•Pieta on left with stigmata on child’s hands
•Bull symbolized brutality and darkness; but could also symbolize Spain herself
•Fallen warrior at bottom left holds a broken sword, perhaps meant to evoke a fallen
war memorial
•Woman with torch is an allegory of Liberty
•Horse in panic tramples on everything and everyone
•Wounded figures on right rush in, seeking shelter
•Figures in perspective on bottom recall the dead figures in Uccello's Battle of San Romano
Maquette for Guitar
Pablo Picasso
Jacques Lipchitz
Guitar Player in
A
Armchair,
h i
Seated Man
with Clarinet
Head
Sculpture
Bather
Woman
Combing Her
Hair
Aleksandr
Archipenko
Woman
Combing
Her Hair
Julio
Gon ale
Gonzalez
Purism
•Le Corbusier was one of the most important modernist
architects but he was also a painter. He founded a movement
that was opposed to Synthetic Cubism on the grounds it was
decorative art and out of touch with the machine age.
Purists maintained machinery
machinery’ss clean functional lines and
•Purists
the pure forms of its parts should direct artist’ experiments in
design, painting, and architecture.
•Uses machinery’s lines
lines, forms combined with Cubism
analysis of form
Table and Fruit,
Fernand Leger
The City
Woman with a Cat,
www.artlex.com/ArtLex/c/cubism.html
The Wedding, 1911
Futurism
•Just before WWI,
WWI a group of Italian artist came together to
celebrate the scientific and technological progress of the
modern world. The glory of the machine and a fascination
with speed - political movement
•Outgrowth of Cubism
•Sought
Sought to capture motion & the “beauty
beauty of speed
speed”,, (relate to
pictures like Muybridge’s that showed movement)
•Championed by Poet Filippo Marinetti in the “The Futurist
Manifesto”
•simultaneity of views
Giacomo Balla
Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash
The Hand of the Violinist,
Speed of a Motorcycle
Flight of the Swallows
•The Futurists’ interest in motion and the Cubists dissection of
form
•Achieved the effect of motion by repeating shapes such as the
dog’s legs and tail and swinging line of the leash
•Affected by the atmosphere around
it as it strides pridefully forward
•Provides the illusion of movement
•Abstract forms fly around the
armless figure
•Has a curious resemblance to the
Nike of Samothrace, the ancient
sculptor suggested motion only
th
through
h posture
t
andd agitated
it t d drapery
d
www.artinthepicture.com/.../view.php?nr=2319
Umberto Boccioni, Unique Forms
of Continuity in Space
Armored Train
Gino Severini
Red Cross Train Passing a Village
Dada a nonsense word that means
“hobby horse”
•Western Europe: artistic, literary movement from 1916 to
1923
•Disillusioned by the useless slaughter of WWI, they rejected
conventional methods of representation and conventional
manner in which they were exhibited. It was an “anti-art”
movement, political anarchy, irrational, intuitive
•Oil
Oil and canvas
can as were
ere abandoned
abandoned.
•The Dadaists accepted “ready-mades” as an art form and
did many of their works on glass
•state of mind, not identifiable style
•element of absurdity, whimsical, humor
disdain for convention or tradition
•disdain
•nothing taken seriously
Collage Arranged
According to the
Laws of Chance
Jean (Hans) Arp
•In
I this
hi collage,
ll
Arp
A
dropped torn paper and then
glued them where they fell.
•His reliance on chance in
composing this work was
part of the Dada movement
Bicycle Wheel Ready-made
Marcel Duchamp, Fountain, second version,1 950
•Ready-made sculpture, actually a
found object that deemed to be a work
of art
•Entered in an unjuried show, but the
work was refused
•Signed by the “artist” R. Mutt, a pun
on the Mutt and Jeff comic strip and
Mott Iron Works
•Title Fountain a pun; fountains spout
liquid a urinal is meant to collect it
liquid,
The Bride Stripped
Bare by Her
Bachelors
Marcel
ce Duchamp
uc
p
•Playful and serious
examination of humans as
machines
•The bride is a motor fueled
by “love gasoline”
•The bachelors appear as
uniformed
if
d male
l figures
fi
in
i the
th
lower half of the composition
•During the transportation of
an exhibition in 1927,, the
glass broke. Duchamp
painstaking pieced together
the glass fragments. He
declared the work completed
“by chance.”