"That each new phase of Modernist art should be hailed as the start of a whole
new epoch in art, marking a decisive break with all the customs and conventions of
the past." - Clement Greenberg ( http://www.sharecom.ca/ Accessed 26th April 2014)
Modernism is the cultural movement that swept across the world during the
late 19th century until the end of the 1970's. Modernism is linked to the
modernisation of the world coming into the 20th century, it was the "need for new and
different" (Weston, 1996, Introduction) that influenced the world in a time of social
and economic change. Modernism is not limited to one movement, in fact it
encompasses "Cubism to Constructivism , abstraction to atonality" ( Weston, 1996,
Introduction), the subject matter is indeed very broad. Modernism was not only
limited to the arts but included a vast range of practices such as literature and music.
However Modernisation did not just start at the end of the 19th century out of
the blue. We could say the change started to happen during the Renaissance. In
other words Renaissance was the first period of change. Renaissance ideas helped
the 19th century industrial societies to grow and develop, and they attempted to
"formulize and rationalize the natural world". (Crouch, 1999, Page 14- 15) Painters,
for example Giotto, started to experiment with perspective along with sculptors such
as Ghiberti. (http://www.sparknotes.com accessed 18th April 2014) These were
followed and improved on by artists such as Donatello. (http://www.sparknotes.com
accessed 18th April 2014) The Renaissance also explored a new kind of architecture
that looked at the "cultural sense of the rational". (Crouch, 1999, page 14)Geometry
that was seen mostly in the Roman era started to replace that of Gothic architecture
where structure was somewhat abandoned. (Crouch,1999, Page 14) There was also
of course the advancement of printing which enabled books to be printed, ideas to be
conveyed and it had a strong use to modernist typographers. (Crouch, 1999, Page
14)
The Renaissance period was closely followed by the Enlightenment period. This
began in the 17th century (Crouch, 1999, page 10) in Europe and is occasionally
known as the Age of Reason. (Crouch, 1999, page 15) The Enlightenment took place
throughout a range of fields such as science, politics, economics, astronomy,
medicine and philosophy. ( http://www.sparknotes.com accessed 17th April 2014)
Key players such as Descartes and Barach de Spinoza started off and added to the
idea that the world was separated into spiritual and material, this was after open
debate about the explanation of the law and ideology that has been shown in the
Bible. It started to change the way people saw and thought about life, John Locke
and Issac Newton revolutionised ideas in Europe with the rejection of the Cartesian
view and the discovery of gravity. (Crouch 1999, Page 16) The "unknown" ( Crouch
1999,Page 16) was now seen as the provider of a web of information . ( Crouch
1999,Page 16) "The World was now being investigated and objectified in a way
previously unthought of." (Crouch, 1999, Page 16) People had started to have ideas
and opinions on subjects and has started to have a voice. (
http://www.sparknotes.com accessed 17th April 2014) Effectively The Enlightenment
sparked the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.( http://www.sparknotes.com
accessed 17th April 2014)
The Industrial revolution was also a key player in the beginnings of Modernisation. It
marks the moment when all that was "manufacturing, transportation and technology"
(www.MoMa.org accessed 14th April 2014) started to grow and take shape "in
Western Europe, North America, and eventually the world." (www.MoMa.org
accessed 14th April 2014) These changes led to profound modifications in the social,
economic, and cultural conditions of life. (www.MoMa.org accessed 14th April 2014).
The Industrial Revolution was the provider of "New forms, materials and purposes for
the practitioners of the visual arts" (Crouch, 1999, Page 19) It made materials easily
and quickly manufacturable in large quantities, and the invention and production of
railways made them easily transportable. (Crouch, 1999, Page 21) The
Enlightenment changed the way in which people though and the Industrial Revolution
gave them the materials to do this.
As people viewed this time of change, they too started to change with it. Artists
begun experimenting with new materials and new techniques. Painters such as
Edouard Manet's Le Dejuner sur l'herbe (1863), were scandalised due to their subject
matter. (http://arthistoryresources.net accessed 14th April 2014)
Before the 19th century artists were mostly commissioned to make art by wealthy
patrons and important institutions. This art did not contain what the artist wanted to
depict in their work but included mostly religious or mythological scenes that would
influence and guide the viewer. However during the 19th century artist started to
make art about objects, items and people that interested them: what they had direct
experience of. This was enhanced by the publication of a piece by Sigmund Freud
called The Interpretation of Dreams (1899) that built the idea of the subconscious
mind, this led to artists exploring dreams and also symbolism. (www.MoMa.org
accessed 14th April 2014)
The 20th Century did see a lot of political, economic and cultural events, that would
highly influence the practice and ideology of artists. These included some horrific
events such as the wars, the holocaust, and the nuclear bombings but also some
advantageous ones such as the civil rights movements or the evolution of medicine,
film and technology. All of these factors, big or small, devastating or constructive
played a role in the progress and construction of the modernist era. The 20th century
also saw the introduction of Bauhaus in 1919. (http://www.metmuseum.org/ accessed
26th April 2014) The Bauhaus was a school of art and design in the city of Weimar
opened by Walter Gropius, a German Architect and fused together the practices of
art and design in many different fields. (http://www.metmuseum.org/ accessed 26th
April 2014) The aim was to help the students create objects that would be "useful and
beautiful" (http://www.metmuseum.org/ accessed 26th April 2014) and conform to the
new way of living. After several changes of director, the political system of Germany
began to take its toll and as a consequence of this and insecure finances, the
Bauhaus relocated to Berlin where it closed down in 1933. However the Bauhaus
produced several pioneers of the modernist movement including Vasily Kandinsky,
Paul Klee and Josef Albers. (http://www.metmuseum.org/ accessed 26th April 2014)
To better understand the era of modernism, I will study three works of art by three
different modernist artists.
The first piece of Modern art I will explore is Guitar by famous Spanish born artist
Pablo Picasso. Picasso was a pioneer of the movement Cubism which is the
rejection of the traditional way to show perspective. Cubists aim was to show many
sides of an object or landscape from various viewpoints and therefore perspectives.
They achieved this by creating series of geometric forms which they placed together
to create space. (http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/cube/hd_cube.htm accessed
1st May 2014) We could say the piece Guitar was also part of his work in this
movement. The artwork itself measures 77.5 x 35 x 19.3 cm in total and it is made
from new age industrial revolution materials : sheet metal and wire. (The Museum of
Modern Art, MoMa Highlights, 1999, The Museum of Modern Art: New York). He
completed this piece between 1912 and 1913 in Paris on the eve of the First World
War which would begin a year later.
Picasso's piece is in fact the same size and shape as a real guitar (The Museum of
Modern Art, MoMa Highlights, 1999, The Museum of Modern Art: New York) and it's
constructed of "a shallow arrangement of planes to be viewed from the front". (The
Museum of Modern Art, MoMa Highlights, 1999, The Museum of Modern Art: New
York) It is currently on exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York where it
was given as a gift of the artist.( http://www.moma.org accessed 15th April 2014)
Picasso did not conform with the kinds of sculptures that have come previously.
Before, sculpture had mainly been centred about the subject of nature
(https://www.khanacademy.org accessed 14th April 2014) and man and often
showed human form". (The Museum of Modern Art, MoMa Highlights, 1999, The
Museum of Modern Art: New York) We can take the example of the Venus de Milo
by Alexandros (http://global.britannica.com/ accessed 14th April 2014) currently on
exhibition at the Louvre in Paris which is a sculpture of Aphrodite made out of marble.
(www.louvre.fr accessed 14th April 2014) It not only depicts a personage but also has
a story. In Picasso's case he was clearly eager to try something new. Humans
themselves made guitars so there was no essential need to make a guitar sculpture,
(https://www.khanacademy.org accessed 14th April 2014) even when talking to
critique André Salmon about his whole collection of Guitar pieces, Picasso says "It's
Nothing, It's el Guitare". (http://arthistory.about.com accessed 14th April 2014)
Concerning Picasso's use of materials, he uses sheet metal and wire, this makes a
high contrast with materials mainly used in the past such as marble or bronze.
Before sculpture was mainly carving and modelling a solid, (The Museum of Modern
Art, MoMa Highlights, 1999, The Museum of Modern Art: New York.) Picasso
however put different pieces together instead of deducting from a material. ( Hilton,
1976, Page 115) He was the first person to do this and set a revolutionary step that
changed the "Nature of Sculpture" ( Hilton, 1976, Page 115) for the years that
followed. ( Hilton, 1976, Page 115) The materials of his choice were in fact used for
building materials or roofing materials in Paris around the early 20th century, these
metals were industrially produced at this time, (http://www.moma.org accessed 15th
April 2014)and we can assume they came from a factory. The metal has gained a
red/brown oxidation layer(http://www.moma.org accessed 15th April 2014) which has
been a consequence of the ageing process of these metals. However his use of
materials together gives this piece a feeling of cubism as we are shown all angles of
the guitar. In fact Picasso took inspiration from the tubular eyes of an African Grebo
mask to create a cylinder where on a guitar there is usually a void using this hole we
can see right through the sculpture, it is spacious and has no solid centre. (The
Museum of Modern Art, MoMa Highlights, 1999, The Museum of Modern Art: New
York) Picasso was the first to change the way sculpture was created for the modern
era ( Hilton, 1976, Page 115) he took new materials and a new way of thinking and
put it into practice. Even though we can still see elements of earlier work and his
influence and movement coming into play in this sculpture, he has very much created
a work that has changed the way people look and consider what sculpture actually is.
For him the idea was simple, yet to us it seems such a complex thought for an artist
who was primarily a cubist painter. Picasso seems to have taken not only sculpture
but cubism to a whole new level.
Although not one of his first "ready-mades", Fountain by French artist Marcel
Duchamp, is notably one of his most famous. When he created this piece, he
"created a defining moment in the history of Modern Art. (Munday, 2008, Page 24)
The piece was created in 1917 in the United States of America amidst a period of war
in Europe and is "widely seen as an icon of the 20th century." (http://www.tate.org.uk
accessed 15th April 2014) The object is a porcelain urinal in white and measures
although unconfirmed, 360 x 480 x 610 mm. (http://www.tate.org.uk accessed 15th
April 2014) The urinal itself is nothing that one would call out of the ordinary, the only
thing that would distinguish it from other urinals is the words R.Mutt on the side and
the year 1917. On display the urinal is laid flat, this was Duchamp's first idea for its
public display, (http://www.tate.org.uk accessed 15th April 2014) however due to the
loss of the original, (there are now fifteen replicas in existence that have been
authorised by Duchamp. ) (http://www.tate.org.uk accessed 15th April 2014) Fountain
is now displayed in an upright position at the Tate Modern in London
(http://www.tate.org.uk accessed 15th April 2014). It is part of Marcel Duchamp's
series of work called appropriately the Ready-mades.
A ready-made is an everyday manufactured object that is called a work of art by the
artist. (http://www.tate.org.uk accessed 15th April 2014) In this instance Duchamp
has taken a urinal and signed it R.Mutt. Duchamp's aim was to move away from
previous tradition approaches to painting in order that he would show the abstract
importance to a piece of art that would attract the viewers attention "through irony
and verbal witticisms" (http://www.metmuseum.org accessed 15th April 2014) unlike
the previous attraction of aesthetics and technical precision.
(http://www.metmuseum.org accessed 15th April 2014). He proved in some ways that
art did not have to be beautiful (http://www.moma.org accessed 15th April 2014)
Duchamp wanted to bring his art into a new era, he did not aim to please people but
to put forward a alternative view of art. In terms of pleasing people, although this was
not his aim it seemed this is what he had to do to enter the art world. He entered his
piece Fountain to be displayed at the Society of Independent Artists, however the
board directors who had an obligation to accept any piece by any of the board
members took it upon them not to accept the piece Fountain in their exhibition.
(http://www.tate.org.uk/ accessed 15th April 2014)This proves it has an element of a
piece of Modern art. The society board members were clearly looking for something
of aesthetic and something that encompassed previous tradition, we could say that
Fountain broke all of those boundaries and Duchamp has created something that
would revolutionise the art world. Duchamp wanted us to in fact question in a more
philosophical manner: what is art? (http://smarthistory.khanacademy.org accessed
15th April 2014) Duchamp chose the urinal and all the other objects in the ReadyMade collection because of their day to day, mass production element. This resulted
in him making sure that mass production items and materials would be a strong
resource in the field of art. (http://www.metmuseum.org) It has been said that
Duchamp had the most profound response to the development of new artistic
materials brought into play by the industrial age. ( Mink, 2000, Page 7)
Duchamp classified his work as sculpture (http://smarthistory.khanacademy.org
accessed 15th April 2014), but just as Picasso's Guitar this did not come under the
traditional definition of sculpture up to this point. We could also say that both
Duchamp's Fountain and Picasso's Guitar are made from the materials of the
manufacturing era : In Picasso's case Steel and Wire and in Duchamp's case he is
taking something being mass produced in a factory. These points again highlight the
modernity of both pieces.
Duchamp's piece really did revolutionise the way in which people categorized art. His
own unique proposal started to spark a still current question in the art world, what
actually is art. This question has been used again and again and now it seems that
just about anything can be classified as art. Fountain is a piece that in my opinion
started off a completely new liberty in the art world. Even today Fountain has a huge
impact on creators and designs and has really opened the mind of those touched by
it.
Another highlight of the modernist era was the movement of Surrealism. Surrealism
was the movement that followed Dada, it influenced artists to draw with their mind
and unconscious in order to create a different more modern work.
(http://dictionary.reference.com accessed 16th April 2014). In some cases that of
which they had direct experience, previously mentioned in my introduction to
modernism, taking their ideas from Sigmund Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams
(1899) that discussed the idea of subconscious mind and dream exploration.
(www.MoMa.org accessed 14th April 2014)
One of its main participants was Salvador Dali. In 1936, Dali created the piece
Lobster Telephone, this work was simply two completely unrelated objects being
placed together producing a piece that was both " playful and menacing".
(http://www.tate.org.uk accessed 16th April 2014) The piece itself measures "178 x
330 x 178 mm" (http://www.tate.org.uk accessed 16th April 2014) and is made of
"steel, plaster, rubber, resin and paper" (http://www.tate.org.uk accessed 16th April
2014)Steel especially is a material of the Industrial Revolution, and just as Duchamp
and Picasso have done, the sculpture was not made from carving into marble or
bronze. Another factor is that again we can say just as Duchamp's Urinal that the
Telephone that Dali used is a mass produced manufactured object. We can almost
say that Dali's Lobster Telephone is a readymade, just as Duchamp emblazoned his
urinal with the signature R.Mutt, Dali added a Lobster to his telephone. The Lobster
Telephone was a commission piece for Edward James, a British poet and collector
who was fascinated in Surrealism pieces and took an interest in Dali's work, he also
commissioned a work called Mae West lips sofa the year after.
(http://www.nga.gov.au accessed 16th April 2014) In total four telephones were
created for use in James' manor house, now all of these telephones are in galleries
around the world. (http://www.nga.gov.au accessed 16th April 2014) Dali's aim was
to astound the public, originally he called the piece Aphrodisiac Telephone
(http://www.nga.gov.au accessed 16th April 2014), the word aphrodisiac meaning
"arousing sexual desire." (http://dictionary.reference.com accessed 16th April 2014)
Dali was deeply interested in the connection between food and sex and it was for this
reason that the Lobsters sexual organs which are located in its tail are placed right
above the mouthpiece of the telephone. (http://www.tate.org.uk/ accessed 16th April
2014) This recurring theme of sex throughout his painting were due his "strong
feeling of sexual inadequacy", (http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com accessed
16th April 2014) Dali was also rumoured to have practiced voyeurism and
autoerotism (http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com accessed 16th April 2014)
which we could link to his sexual opinions on objects.
Dali was, in my opinion, was trying to put across his own ideas about sex and
showing a more sexually liberating idea to the public . During the period when this
piece was created, sex ,although acknowledged, was still somewhat a tender subject.
Before the 20th century, sex was not considered a "public or respectable ideal even
for married adults." (http://www.faqs.org accessed 16th April 2014) In the 1920's and
1930's sexual freedom was becoming more and more common and in order to
change this sexual educators in fact tried to get physiologists and socialists to give
evidence that sex before marriage did threaten a youth's chances of a fulfilling
marriage. (http://www.faqs.org accessed 16th April 2014) Dali touched on the subject
of sex even in his earlier works such as The Persistence of Memory, in which the
long eyelashes of the creature could be seen as sexual, (http://www.moma.org
accessed 16th April 2014) and the hanging watches as a fear of impotence.
(Gregory, 1976, Page 2319)
I personally feel that the reason Dali's piece is considered Modernist is the
way it was trying to give people a new way of thinking and looking at the world. Not
only was he aiming to revolutionise the way we thought about sex but he was also
putting two household objects together that had never been put together in such a
way before. Even though Duchamp has mixed two objects together, he meanings did
not encompass the same social meanings as Dali's.
Although these pieces were created years apart from each other and each
highlighted a different movement of the modern era, we can still see strong
connections that make them modernist pieces. Firstly their use of materials in all
cases were very much products of the Industrial revolution, steel wire, porcelain, and
also manufactured objects such as the telephone and the urinal. All the artists had
started to discover different ways of creating art that no longer conformed with the
traditions that had come before them. They all intended in a way to shock people and
to make people look on art in a whole new light. I think that this whole effect is
primarily due to the rate in which the world has started to change and evolve since
the year 1900 and somewhat before and I do not doubt that art has been a
contribution to this evolution. It can still be debated whether modernism is still
happening because artists are producing new ideas and suggestions everyday and in
some cases these still get rejected by the public. Although people are now much
more open to alternative means of art, most of what gets created could still be
considered as breaking the traditions, even if these traditions are modernist.
So in conclusion, what actually is Modernism? From looking at examples and
textbook definitions, Modernism is the period of change. It is when artists moved
away from traditions and customs and decided to take into their own hands what
they were creating. Even though, in Duchamp's case, sometimes their art was
rejected. Modernism has changed the way people of today look at art and it has
broadened the response to the every impending question what is art?. In my
personal opinion I feel the leaps and bounds that were taken from the beginning to
the end of modernism and the drastic changes that happened even between
movements proves that modernism is without a doubt the biggest rediscovery and
revolution of art to date.
Guitar - Pablo Picasso (1912-1913)
Source: http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=80934
Fontain - Marcel Duchamp (1917)
Source: http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/blogs/pictures-happy-birthdaymarcel-duchamp
Lobster Telephone - Salvador Dali (1936)
Source: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/dali-lobster-telephone-t03257
Bibliography
Books
Mink, J (2000) Duchamp: Taschen : Köln
Munday, J (2008) Duchamp Man Ray Picabia : Tate Publishing: London
Crouch,C (1999) Modernism in Art, Design and Architecture: Macmillian Press
Limited: Hampshire and London
Weston,R (1996) Modernism : Phaidon Press Limited: London
The Museum of Modern Art, (1999) MoMa Highlights,The Museum of Modern Art:
New York
Hilton,T (1976) Picasso : Thames and Hudson LTD : London
Journal
Gregory, C, The Great Artists, Dali : Marshall Cavendish Volume 7 Number 73 (1986)
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