A Look at Nineteenth- and
Twentieth-Century Art and
Movements
ROMANTICISM
Appreciating the “impulse from a
vernal wood”
O man, of whatever country you are, and
whatever your opinions may be, behold your
history, such as I have thought to read it, not in
books, written by your fellow- creatures, who are
liars, but in nature, which never lies.”
--- Rousseau
Rousseau and his Social Contract
Features of Romanticism
 Emphasis on the Imagination
 Emphasis on the Rights of the Individual, the
Common Man
 Emphasis on Nature
 Emphasis on Exotic Locales
The Imagination
 Henry Fuseli, The Nightmare, 1781.
Oil on canvas
William Blake, Ancient of
Days, 1794. Metal relief
etching.
Francisco Goya, The Sleep of
Reason Produces Monsters, ca.
1798. Etching and aquatint.
Francisco Goya, The Third of
May, 1808. Oil on canvas.
Francisco Goya, Saturn
Devouring One of His Children,
1819-23. Detail of a detached
fresco on canvas.
Eugene Delacroix, Death of
Sardanapalus, 1826. Oil on
canvas.
The Rights of the Individual, of
the Common Man
Eugene Delacroix, Liberty
Leading the People, 1830. Oil on
canvas.
Theodore Gericault, Raft of
the Medusa, 1818-19. Oil on
canvas.
Theodore Gericault, Insane
Woman, 1822-23. Oil on
canvas.
Nature and Exotic Locales
John Constable, The
Haywain, 1821. Oil on
canvas.
J.M.W. Turner, The Slave
Ship, 1840. Oil on canvas.
The Hudson River School
in America
Thomas Cole, The Oxbow,
1836. Oil on canvas.
Albert Bierstadt, Among the Sierra
Nevada Mountains, California,
1868. Oil on canvas.
Frederic Edwin Church, Twilight
in the Wilderness, 1860’s. Oil on
canvas.
Thomas Cole, Kaaterskill Falls,
1826
Asher B. Durand, Kindred Spirits,
1849
Painter Thomas Cole with his
friend poet William Cullen Bryant
Components of the Realism Movement
 Realism seeks to present the world as it is in its
present time
 Dialect is important; regionalism grows out of the
realism movement
 Details about the everyday lives of the common
man become important
 First criticized as grotesque and uncouth
 Becomes socially critical
European Realism
Gustave Courbet, The Stone
Breakers, 1849-50. Oil on
canvas.
Jean-Francois Millet, The
Gleaners. Oil on canvas.
Honore Daumier, Rue
Transnonain, 1834. Lithograph.
Honore Daumier, The Third-Class
Carriage, ca. 1862. Oil on canvas.
Eduoard Manet, Le Dejeuner
sur l’Herbe (Luncheon on the
Grass), 1863. Oil on canvas.
American Realism
Winslow Homer, The Veteran in a
New Field, 1865. Oil on canvas.
Edmonia Lewis,
Forever Free, 1867.
Marble, 3’5 1/4 “ x 11” x 7”
Thomas Eakins, The Gross
Clinic, 1875. Oil on canvas.
Timothy O’Sullivan, A Harvest of
Death, Getysburg,
Pennsylvania, July 1863.
Negative by Timothy O’ Sullivan.
Frederic Remington, The Cavalry
Charge, 1907. Oil on canvas.
Frederic Remington,
Radisson and Groseilliers,
1905. Oil on canvas.
Frederic Remington, The Bronco
Buster, 1905. Bronze.
Features of Impressionism, 1880’s
 Seeks to present life in its present moment
 As such, very concerned with effects of light
 Impressionist absorption with light on color
also deepened and encouraged by new
color theories of late 19th century
 Impressionist movement also seen at first in
a negative light
Claude Monet, Impression:
Sunrise 1872. Oil on
canvas.
Claude Monet, Terrace at SainteAdresse, 1866-67. Oil on canvas.
Claude Monet, Haystack,
1891. Oil on canvas.
Claude Monet, Rouen
Cathedral (Full Sunlight), 1893.
Oil on canvas.
Claude Monet, Water Lilies,
1906. Oil on canvas.
American Impressionists
Winslow Homer, The Fog Warning, 1885
Even in Impressionism, American artists still
stress the rugged individual
One of America’s Most Famous
Impressionist Paintings:
Winslow Homer, Snap the Whip, 1872.
Mary Cassatt
Modernism: 1900-1950
“You are all a lost generation.”
-- Gertrude Stein to
Ernest Hemingway
Features of Modernism
Loss of values and deep sense of alienation
from and disillusionment with the world as a
result of:
– World War I
– Rise of science
 “God is dead.”—Nietzsche
 The Origin of Species: Man did not come from God,
but from monkeys
– Increased urbanization of the world and
subsequent loss of small-town caring and
values
The Armory Show, 1913
Officially known as
The International Exhibition
of Modern Art
The show’s purpose was to question the
boundaries of art as an institution
 The show took place at
New York’s 69th Street
armory, on Lexington
Avenue between 25th
and 26th Streets
 It was home to approx.
1250 paintings,
sculptures and
decorative works by
over 300 European
and American artists
Marcel Duchamp, Nude
Descending a Staircase, 1912
 One of the most
controversial works from
the Armory Show,
Duchamp’s painting gave
rise to many spoofs, such
as Rude Descending a
Staircase and Food
Descending a Staircase
 One critic offered prize
money to anyone who
could find the nude
From Gallery I of the show
Europeans at
The Armory Show
One third of the show’s artists were
European, and movements such as
Impressionism, Post-Impressionism,
Fauvism and Cubism were
represented in the show
THE MOST FAMOUS CUBISTS:
Georges Braques,
Mozart Kubelick,
1912.
Influence of the
Jazz Age
PABLO PICASSO: THE OTHER
FAMOUS CUBIST
Woman with a Mustard Pot
Head of a Woman, 1909
The First Cezanne in an American
Museum: The Metropolitan Museum
of Art
Hill of the Poor or, as it’s now known, View of the Domain St. Joseph
Americans at
The Armory Show
Most of the American artists in the
show belonged to the Ashcan
School, whose most influential
members were known as
The Eight
John Sloan, Night Windows, 1910
John Sloan, Sunday, Women
Drying Their Hair, 1912
Circus, 1912, at the
Armory Show
Stag at Sharkey’s, 1909, one of Bellows’
most famous paintings
George Bellows
Robert Henri: Founder of
the Ashcan School
 Name was derogatory
 Given because subject
matter of artists seemed to
be ashcans
 Subject matter was of
lower class people going
about ordinary tasks of life
 Genre painting
 Brought attention to
injustices done to lower
classes . . .
Injustices such as the Sex Trade
Abastenia St. Leger Eberle,
White Slave, 1910
America During
the Modernist Era
War, the Depression, Immigration,
Racism and Urbanization
Alfred Stieglitz
 Stieglitz is one of the most
famous 20th-century
American photographers
 He also helped organize
the Armory Show and
launched the careers of
many American artists
 One of them was Georgia
O’Keefe, a woman who
also became his lover
 The Steerage, a print from
1907, shows Stieglitz’s
interest in capturing
human feeling and
repeating shapes and
patterns
ICONIC WORKS SHOW THE
MISERY OF MODERN LIFE
Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother,
Nipomo Valley, 1935. Gelatin
silver print.
Edward Hopper,
Nighthawks, 1942.
60-painting series
depicting the flight of
Black people from
South to North
Jacob Lawrence, The
Migration of the Negro, panel 1
and then panel 3, 1940-1.
Grant Wood, American Gothic, 1930.
 One of the most famous
American paintings ever,
this work is iconic and
highly parodied and
reproduced
 People mostly thought the
work dignified the life of
rural Americans
 In fact, Wood was
considered a Regionalist
and focused on Iowa in
particular
Postmodernism
1950-?
Abstract Expressionist Jackson Pollock dripped
paint onto canvases to create works like this one:
Number 1, 1950 (Lavendar Mist), 1950.
Pollock painting
Roy Lichtenstein
Left: Hopeless, 1963
Right: Maybe, 1963
POP ART returned to representational art
but used consumer culture and mass media
as inspirations
The Most Famous Pop Artist
 Andy Warhol,
Campbell Soup, 1964
 Have we reduced art
to mass merchandise
or have we elevated
mass merchandise into
art?
YOU DECIDE
Andy Warhol, Value Print War Cans
Andy Warhol, Marilyn Monroe, 1967
Green Coca Cola Bottles, 1962
Superrealist Duane Hanson mocks
American overconsumption
Supermarket Shopper,
1970
FEMINIST ART
Judy Chicago, The Dinner Party, 1979
Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Your Gaze
Hits the Side of My Face), 1981