“Modern Art”
A Movement Towards
Abstraction
Remember “Realism”?
Thomas Eakins, “The Gross Clinic”
(1875)
John Singer Sargent, “Mrs. Louise E.
Raphael” (1906)
What is “Modernism”?
• To what cultural forces is “modernism” a
response?
• Modernism / Modernity / Modernization
• “Make it new!” (Ezra Pound)
• What are the characteristics of modern
art? “What is art?”
• What are the characteristics of modern
literature? “What is poetry?”
George Luks, “Hester Street” (1905)
The Aims of Modernism
• The “Ashcan” artists wanted to rescue
American art from restrictive official ideology
of the Gilded Age, especially its narrow
emphasis on cultural refinement and its
cautious and controlling assessment of
American society.”
• “smash the glass and breathe freely”;
“experience ‘real life’ in all its intensity”
• art as provocation
The “Ashcan” Artists
VS.
George Bellows, “Both Members of This
Club” (1909)
John Sloan, “Movies 5 Cents” (1907)
The Armory Show, 1913
• “The Armory Show was a significant
moment in the history of American
modernism because it allowed
American writers, who felt an immediate
affinity with the European artists, to
recognize themselves as part of an
international movement of experimental
artists struggling to make sense of the
modern world” (American Modernism
17).
Pablo Picasso, “Violin”
(1914)
Warning:
• The following slide features a painting
entitled “Nude Descending a Staircase.”
Please resist the urge to behave like a
child. This is art.
European Influences: High Modernism
Marcel Duchamp, “Nude
Descending a Staircase”
(1912)
“Nude,” continued
• Among American writers, the Armory
Show had its most profound effect on
poets. William Carlos Willams…later
recalled seeing Duchamp’s “Nude”: I
laughed out loud when I first saw it, with
relief.”
Duchamp, “Fountain” (1917)
The Next
Phase of
Modernism
Hits the U.S.
“The Aero”
Marsden Hartley, 1914
“Radiator Building”
Georgia O’Keefe, 1926
“Waterfront Landscape”
Stuart Davis, 1936
“The Voice of the City of
New York Interpreted: The
Bridge.” Joseph Stella
(1920-1922)
• Steel Mill by Joseph
Stella, 1919-20
“American Landscape,” Charles Sheeler
(1930)
What is “literature”?
I heard a Fly buzz—when I died—
The Stillness in the Room
Was like the Stillness in the Air—
Between the Heaves of Storm—
The Eyes around—had wrung them dry—
And Breaths were gathering firm
For that last Onset—when the King
Be witnessed—in the Room—
I willed my keepsakes—signed away
What portion of me be
Assignable—and then it was—
There interposed a Fly—
With Blue—uncertain stumbling Buzz—
Between the light—and me—
And then the windows failed—and then
I could not see to see—
“This is Just to Say”
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
William Carlos
Williams
Modernism: Painting and Poetry
“The Figure 5 in Gold”
Charles Demuth, 1928
Modernism: Painting and Poetry
“The Great Figure”
(William Carlos Williams, 1921)
Among the rain
and lights
I saw the figure 5
in gold
on a red
fire truck
moving tense
unheeded
to gong clangs
siren howls
and wheels rumbling
through the dark city.
“The Figure 5 in Gold”
Charles Demuth, 1928