MODERNISM
“Modernism released us from the constraints of
everything that had gone before with a euphoric
sense of freedom. ” Arthur Erickson
“War is the highest form of modern art.” Tommaso
Marinetti, founder of Futurism
“In general, modern art... has been inspired by a
natural desire to chart the uncharted.” Herbert Read
“On or about December 1910, human character
changed….” Virginia Woolf
“Modern music is as dangerous as cocaine.” Pietro
Mascagni
“The impulse of modern art is the desire to destroy
beauty. ” Barnett Newman
“And yet what is Modernism? It is undefined. ”
John C. Ransom
Science: An Indeterminate Universe
 Quantum Physics – Max Planck
Energy is not continuous, but comes in small but
discrete units.
The elementary particles behave both like
particles and like waves.
The movement of these particles is inherently random. 3
 Principle of Uncertainty – Werner Heisenberg
It is physically impossible to know both the position and
the momentum of a particle at the same time.
 Theory of Relativity – Albert Einstein
 E=mc2
 Energy = mass x speed of light squared
Psychology: Whither the Self?
Sigmund Freud
Karl Jung
 Psychoanalysis and Dream
Analysis – the Unconscious
Mind
 Psyche:
o Collective Unconscious
o Psyche:
 Id
 Ego
 Superego
 Oedipal Complex
 Repression and Sublimation
 Civilization and Its Discontents
o Persona
o Animus/Anima
o Shadow
o Archetypes: primal
patterns
o
o
o
o
The Hero
The Trickster
The Great Mother
The Sage
o Myth, dreams, folklore
Motifs and Movements
 Fragmentation: Cubism
 Precision: Imagism
 Speed: Futurism
 Alienation/Angst: Expressionism
 Color: Fauvism
 Technology: Constructivism
 Functionalism: Bauhaus/International Style
 Protest/Propaganda: Social Realism
 Chaos/Irrationality: Dadaism
 The Subconscious: Surrealism
 Form: Abstraction
Fragmentation:
C
U
B
I
S
M
Georges Bracque Woman with a Guitar, 1913
Juan Gris, Still Life with Fruit Dish and Mandolin, 1919
Poetry: Imagism
 Discordant
 Abstract
 Open Verse
 Imagists:
 Ezra Pound
 Amy Lowell
 H.D.
Heat by H. D.
O wind, rend open the heat, cut
apart the heat,
rend it to tatters.
Fruit cannot drop
through this thick air–
fruit cannot fall into heat
that presses up and blunts
the points of pears
and rounds the grapes.
Cut the heat–
plough through it,
turning it on either side
of your path.
Imagism
“It is essential to prove that beauty may
be in small, dry things. The great aim is
accurate, precise and definite
description.” – T.E. Hulme
IN A STATION OF THE METRO
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet black bough.
Ezra Pound
William Carlos Williams
“The Great Figure”
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
Charles Henry Demuth (18831935), I Saw the Figure Five in Gold
Speed: Futurism
“The cry of rebellion which we utter
associates our ideals with those of the
Futurist poets. These ideas were not
invented by some aesthetic clique. They
are an expression of a violent desire,
which burns in the veins of every
creative artist today. ... We will fight with
all our might the fanatical, senseless and
snobbish religion of the past, a religion
encouraged by the vicious existence of
museums. We rebel against that spineless
worshipping of old canvases, old statues
and old bric-a-brac, against everything
which is filthy and worm-ridden and
corroded by time. We consider the
habitual contempt for everything which
is young, new and burning with life to be
unjust and even criminal.”
Filippo Tomaso Marinetti, The Futurist
Manifesto, 1909
Umberto Boccioni,
Unique Forms of
Continuity in Space,
1913
Vorticism
The cover of the first edition of
BLAST, 1914.
The cover of the second edition of
BLAST, 1915.
Alienation
Angst
Expressionism
Emil Nolde
Maskenstilleben
(Masks Still Life)
1911
La femme au grand chapeau
(Woman with large hat)
by Kees van Dongen, 1906
Woman with a Hat by Henri Matisse, 1905
Color: Fauvism
Fiction: Stream-of-Consciousness
 “Let us record the atoms as they fall upon the
mind in the order in which they fall, let us
trace the pattern, however disconnected and
incoherent in appearance, which each sight or
incident scores upon the consciousness. Let
us not take it for granted that life exists more
fully in what is commonly thought big than in
what is small” – Virginia Woolf “Modern
Fiction”
Stream of Consciousness
James Joyce
Virginia Woolf
William Faulkner
Dorothy Richardson
Technology:
Constructivism
Ilya Golosov,
Zuyev Workers' Club, 1927
Moscow
Functionalism:
Bauhaus/International Style
Walter
Gropius,
The Bauhaus
Building in
Dessau,
Germany
Commentary/Propaganda:
Social Realism
Isabel Bishop, Office Girls, 1938
Aaron Douglas, God’s Trombones, 1926
Photography
Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother
Photograph of Marcel Duchamp's "Fountain“.
ready-mades
Chaos/Irrationality:
Dadaism
 Marcel Janco recalled,
We had lost confidence in our culture.
Everything had to be demolished. We
would begin again after the "tabula
rasa". At the Cabaret Voltaire we began
by shocking common sense, public
opinion, education, institutions,
museums, good taste, in short, the
whole prevailing order.
 Dada is the groundwork to abstract
art and sound poetry, a starting
point for performance art, a prelude
to postmodernism, an influence on
pop art, a celebration of antiart to
be later embraced for anarchopolitical uses in the 1960s and the
movement that lay the foundation
for Surrealism.
-Marc Lowenthal
The Subconscious:
Surrealism
Rene Magritte, Attempting the Impossible, 1928
Form:
Abstraction
Piet Mondrian,
Broadway Boogie Woogie,
1942-43
Abstraction
Cycladic Influence
on
Modern
Art
Constantin Brancusi
Cycladic Statue
Amedeo Modigliani
Music
Sound Experimentation
Ragtime, Blues and Jazz
 Arnold Schoenberg:
 Atonality
 12-tone system: serialism
 Song cycles: Sprechstimme
 Igor Stravinsky:
 Le Sacre du Printemps:
dissonance and heavy
rhythm
 Eric Satie:
 Incorporation of “work”
sounds
 Alban Berg
 Operas: Wozzeck and Lulu
o Roots in African-American
work songs, gospel, drumming,
parade music
o Moved from New Orleans up
the Mississippi to St. Louis and
Kansas City on to Chicago,
NYC and LA – wildy popular
in Europe
o Ragtime: Scott Joplin
o Opera: Treemonisha
o Blues – emotive lamentation
using blues scale
o Jazz – improvisational,
ensemble