Trying to Make Sense of Modern Art or How I Learned to Appreciate
Twentieth Century Art and Love it
First, a bit of preamble
 If we remember Ezra Pound’s famous mantra “Make it New” we will
better be able to make sense of the chaotic nature of the art of the
twentieth century. Ezra Pound (more famous as editor of T.S. Eliot’s
The Wasteland than for his own poetry) set the tone for most artists of
the twentieth century by instilling in them the need to find new ways of
doing things – so much so that some artists would simply do things
“differently” just for the sake of being different or “new”.
 The first Non-objective or completely Abstract painting was actually
made in 1910 by the Russian artist Kandinsky – this along with the
political upheaval of Word War 1 and the aftermath of the war, caused
people to start looking at the world in a very different way. The
stability of the Victorian age was over – Monarchs were being
murdered, Communism was a real thing and paintings didn’t even have
to have “things” in them. No wonder that my grandparents and your
great grandparents were confused!
 The age of industry was fast upon us by this time as well and some
questioned the morality of it.
 The other arts – literature and music were going through the same
upheavals as Visual Art. In 1922, James Joyce published Ulysses, which
was met with mixed reviews on his use of interior monologue or stream
of consciousness. Virginia Woolf on reading Ulysses said “it was a bit
like scratching the boot boy’s pimples” Stravinsky wrote a ballet where
the principle dancer dances herself to death (The Firebird). Needless to
say, the times were chaotic, full of change and yes of course, they “Made
it new.”
And now, the real deal!
Expressionism – The Expressionists looked to Vincent Van Gogh as
their inspiration. Not unlike the Romantics of the 19th century, they did
Not like a lot of rules: they wanted to express their inner feelings about
themselves and society. This group also revived the medium of woodcut
(especially the German Expressionists). The expressionists kept the
virtue of the “Starving Artist” very much alive.
 Cubism – Pablo Picasso (along with George Braque and Juan Gris)
started Cubism. Some would say that Picasso’s painting Demoiselle
de Avignon was the first Cubist painting. In 1907 Picasso made that
painting in which he abandoned beauty as the ideal end for artists.
Indeed it was not that much earlier that Keats had espoused the
virtue of beauty in art in his poem Ode on a Grecian Urn – “Truth is
beauty and beauty is truth …” One could say that Picasso is saying
that beauty and truth are definitely not synonymous! This could
again be seen much later in 1937 when Picasso painted the enormous
Guernica which was a political statement against the looming fascist
forces in Spain under Generalissimo Franco. This painting has
become something of a twentieth century icon of anti-war paintings.
Back to cubism though – In its early stages Cubism was very
academic and orderly, being the logical conclusion of the style of
Cezanne’s painting (whom in fact the cubists saw as their mentor).
For someone like Picasso, Cubism never really left his body of work,
even though he is attributed to virtually every artistic style of the
twentieth century. An interesting note as to the extent of Picassos
“genius” is that while he is not really known as a sculpture (he did
very little) he is attributed with being the originator of assemblage or
found art sculpture with his Bulls Head –(bicycle seat and handle
bars)
 Dadaism –Bordering on Anarchy, Dadaism created quite the impact
in Paris between the wars. Marcel Duchamp was the definitive
Dadaist. The Dadaist were basically an anti-art movement. Whether
it was Duchamp painting a moustache on a print of the Mona Lisa or
putting a men’s urinal on display as art there was always
controversy. Duchamp was the master of Conceptual Art. The
whole idea of putting a urinal on display – or “Ready Mades” as he
referred to them brings up the notion of context. If something is put
in a gallery would we look at it differently? In the latter part of
Duchamp’s life he “retired” to play chess and this became his art.
And this was all decades before Andy Warhol!
 Surrealism – The Surrealists believed in interpreting dreams in their
paintings. The poet Andre Breton wrote a manifesto for Surrealism
(as most movements in the twentieth century did) and in it he said
that the perfect work of art was a bullet right between the eyes. Max
Ernst, Salvador Dali and Rene Magritte are probably the most
famous of the group. Indeed we are all familiar with Dali’s melting
clocks in The Persistence of Memory which apparently is from a
dream and some say melting cheese! The Surrealists were also great
admirers of Sigmund Freud which would explain their great interest
in dreams as Freud also found dreams to be the window of the soul.
 Futurism and Fauvism – The Futurists wanted to burn down the
museums and proclaim their love of dynamism. Most of their works
portrayed motion and unlike most other artistic groups, they reveled
in the mechanical machine age. The group was relatively short lived
and did not have as much of an impact on society as the other
groups. The Fauves (wild beasts) were a group of French painters
who spawned that other great artist of the twentieth century – Henri
Matisse. Matisse’s body of work is as though it were planned from
the outset. He starts out as somewhat of an Impressionist with bold
colours and over the years his work gets more and more simple, to
the point where he simply cut out shapes of paper and glued them to
canvas. His influence on twentieth century design was immense.