Early Modernists
Europe: 1900-1920
Fauvism,
German Expressionism,
Primitivism/Cubism,
Futurism,
Dada, and
Suprematism/Constructivism
Context: Europe 1900-1920
- Non-European influences to European art and culture due to
imperialism and colonialism.
- Pessimism and a sense of hopelessness due to war and conflict.
Rising nationalism results in military build-up in central Europe,
creates rivalry between major powers.
- New building technologies due to rapid industrialization
(reinforced concrete, steel, the skyscraper)
- New awareness of space and time due to scientific
discoveries/inventions – Wright brothers (flight), Einstein (theory
of relativity), and Ford (automobile).
- Mass communication increases – ideas spread – Edison (motion
picture camera), Marconi (radio)
- New interest in the inner world of fantasy, dreams, sexuality,
neurosis due to studies and writings of human psyche by Freud
(psychoanalysis), Jung (collective unconscious).
- Rise of new political ideologies between 1900 and 1940, such as
Communism, Fascism, and Nazism.
What is Modernism?
1. Interest in psychological reality and imagined reality.
2. Art that calls attention to the process of its making, or calls
attention to itself as art.
3. Focus on the individual in the form of self-analysis and selfexpression.
4. Desire for freedom from the academic art institutions and
traditional processes of art-making.
5. Interest in the exotic and in new sources of imagery which
are often non-Western.
6. Elements of art – line shape form, value, color, texture – used
to create structure in an artwork.
7. Experimentation and use of modern materials and
technology for art-making.
8. Challenging conventional ideas of what is “beautiful.”
9. Fracturing of image and the process of various ways of
abstraction.
10. The objectification of the art work – the painting as an
object itself. Moving away from illusionary space.
11. The “shock of the new” – emphasis on innovation
12. The avante-garde, or “front lines” of artists, pushing
boundaries and challenging tradition.
Red Room (Harmony in Red)
Matisse
Fauvism
• In 1905, at the third Autumn Salon in Paris, a group of young
painters exhibited canvases so simplified in design and bright in
color that a critic described the artists as fauves, or wild beasts.
• Fauvists were influenced by Gauguin and van Gogh, but went even
further in using color experimentally, to create emotions.
• They worked with spontaneity, creating textured surfaces, linear
patterns, and bright, expressive colors.
• The movement only stayed together about five years before the
artists went on to pursue separate, individual styles.
Woman with the Hat
Henri Matisse, 1905.
Oil on canvas, 2’8” x 2’.
Matisse
• Henri Matisse, a French painter, was the most successful of the
Fauve artists.
• He strove to use color to convey meaning.
• In Woman with the Hat, he painted his wife, Amelie. The pose is
conventional, but the colors he used are arbitrary (random), rather
than realistic.
• Furthermore, there is a quick, sketch-like feeling to the strokes.
• Matisse’s choices in colors were intuitive. He chose colors that felt
right to him.
• In Red Room (Harmony in Red), Matisse painted a servant setting a
table. He first painted it in green, then blue, but it was not until he
painted it yet again in red that he felt satisfied with the “harmony”
of the colors.
• Like Whistler, Matisse thought of colors in a painting to be similar
to notes in a musical composition.
Street, Dresden
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, 1908.
Oil on canvas, 4’11” x 6’7”.
German Expressionism
• German Expressionists also used color to express their ideas, but
even more so they used distortions of form, ragged outlines, and
agitated brushstrokes.
• Protested the decadence of the upper class, and the alienation of
urbanized society.
• There were two major factions of German Expressionists, as well as
some artists who did not associate with any faction.
- Die Brücke (The Bridge) – Gathered in Dresden in 1905 under
the leadership of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. So named because they
felt they “bridged” the gap between old and new. Modeled
themselves on medieval craft guilds whose members lived
together and practiced all the arts equally.
- Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) – Formed in Munich in 1911 by
Kandinsky and Marc. Named whimsically after Kandinsky and
Marc’s mutual interest in the color blue and horses.
Saint Mary of Egypt Among Sinners
Emil Nolde, 1912. Left panel of triptych.
Oil on canvas, 2’10” x 3’3”.
Nolde
• Emil Nolde was only officially a member of the Die Brücke artists
for one year, but his style links him to the other Die Brücke artists
throughout his career.
• He primarily focused on religious imagery.
• Instead of the quiet spirituality of traditional religious paintings, his
images are visceral and forceful.
• In St. Mary of Egypt Among Sinners, Nolde depicted Mary
Aegyptica, a Catholic saint from the 300s who had lead a life of lust
and prostitution until a religious experience in Jerusalem lead her to
convert to Christianity and live the rest of her days as a hermit.
• The painting depicts Mary before her conversion, dancing
seductively for a group of lecherous men, whose lust magnifies their
brutal ugliness.
Improvisation 28
Vassily Kandinsky, 1912.
Oil on canvas, 3’8” x 5’4”
Kandinsky
• Kandinsky was one of the founding members of the Der Blaue
Reiter movement. He moved from his homeland of Russia (Moscow)
to Germany in 1896.
• Kandinsky was a well-read intellectual, who gave up a promising
career teaching economics to begin painting. He also taught his
artistic theories at the Bauhaus for several years.
• Reading new scientific theories about atomic structure by
scientists like Einstein and Planck convinced Kandinsky that material
objects had no real substance, thereby shattering his faith in a world
of tangible things.
• Instead, he focused on creating a spiritual experience through art.
In addition to being pleasing to the eye, certain colors (or
combinations of colors) could resonate with a person’s soul.
• Furthermore, different colors had different meanings (for instance,
white is clarity, hope, and silence, whereas black is obscurity,
hopelessness, and death).
• He took the relationship between music and art to a new level,
associating certain sounds to different colors (for instance, yellow is
the color of middle C on a brassy trumpet).
• He elaborated on his many theories in two treatises, Point and Line
on Plane, and Concerning the Spiritual in Art.
Franz Marc
• Marc grew increasingly pessimistic about the state of humanity,
especially as World War I loomed on the horizon.
• He depicted animals because he believed they were more pure
than flawed humanity, and thus more appropriate vehicles to
express an inner truth.
• He ascribed certain attributes to different colors. He wrote in a
letter that “blue is the male principle, severe and spiritual. Yellow
is the female principle, gentle, happy, and sensual. Red is matter,
brutal and heavy.”
• Fate of the Animals was painted at the brink of World War I,
which started the next year. He was killed in the Battle of Verdun.
• The animals in the painting appear trapped in a forest amid
falling trees, some apocalyptic event destroying both the forest
and the animals.
• Marc distorted and fragmented the scene like shattered glass.
• The darker colors of severity and brutality dominate.
• On the back of the canvas, Marc wrote: “All being is flaming
suffering.”
Fate of the Animals
Franz Marc (German), 1913.
Oil on canvas, 6’4” x 8’9”.
Nude Self-Portrait, Grimacing
Egon Schiele, 1910.
Gouache, watercolor,
• Schiele had a prolific career, making over 3000 artworks
and pencil on paper.
(including 100 self-portraits), despite dying of Spanish flu at
1’10” x 1’2”.
Egon Schiele
28.
• He was not formally associated with any Expressionist
group, and lived in Austria.
• He worked predominately with gouache (a type of opaque
watercolor) and watercolor.
• As a teenager, Schiele watched the slow, painful
deterioration of his father, who contracted syphilis and died
when Egon was 15. Schiele afterward associated sex with
physical and emotional pain and death.
• Protégé of Klimt, and was influenced by van Gogh and
Munch.
• Depictions primarily depicted emaciated bodies and
tormented psyches.
• In what ways did Schiele emphasize the repulsiveness of
the figure?
Primitivism & Cubism
• Cubism –
- Developed by Picasso and Braque in 1906.
- Dissected three dimensional objects into their various parts, then
reassembled them on the picture plane in a new order.
- Influenced by the radical new understanding of the physical world
introduced by Einstein, which disrupted the Newtonian idea of the
universe as an orderly machine.
- Two main branches: analytical and synthetic. Analytical cubism
involved the analysis and dissection of the form, which was then
painted by the artist (such as the example to the right). In Synthetic
cubism (1912), artists assembled paintings and drawings from objects
and shapes cut from paper or other materials.
• Primitivism
- The incorporation of stylistic elements from Africa, Oceania, and the
native peoples of the Americas into the art of European artists was
called Primitivism. Artists like Picasso collected non-Western art,
admiring it for its different stylistic preferences and standards.
- The availability of non-Western art was a result of imperialism.
Museums displaying the “curiosities,” such as statues of tribal gods,
reinforced the perceived need for the “barbaric” people to be
civilized, and thus justified colonialism.
Girl with Mandolin
Pablo Picasso
Picasso
• “I paint forms as I think them, not as I see them.” - Picasso
• Picasso was a prodigious young Spanish artist who had already
mastered Realism by the time he enrolled in an art academy.
• His early career saw a brief period of Impressionism as well as a
Blue Period (1901-1904), in which he expressed his inner melancholy
by depicting sad figures using mostly blue tones.
• Not satisfied, he continued searching for new and innovative ways
to depict things (a search that continued through his long career,
leading him to constantly evolve in style).
• Inspired by the geometry of African masks he had collected, as well
as ancient Iberian (the peninsula on which Spain and Portugal are
located) statues, he began working on Les Demoiselle’s d’Avignon
(the Young Women of Avignon).
• Although originally from Spain, Picasso spent most of his life living
in Paris.
The Tragedy
Portrait of the
Artist’s Mother
Man with Guitar
Picasso
• Inspired by the geometry of African masks he had collected, as well
as ancient Iberian (the peninsula on which Spain and Portugal are
located) statues, he began working on Les Demoiselle’s d’Avignon
(the Young Women of Avignon).
• Originally intended to be called Philosophical Bordello, it initially
had two men mingling with the women in the reception room of a
brothel on Avignon Street in Barcelona. One man was a sailor, the
other carried a skull.
• Picasso removed the men, and simplified the room to draperies.
• He fractured the shapes of the figures, and interwove them with
the jagged planes of drapery and empty space. Space is ambiguous.
• The three figures on the left are rendered with the calm, ideal
features of the Iberian sculptures he had seen.
• The two figures on the right have energetic, violently striated
features based on African masks. Picasso believed that the masks he
collected were powerful, magical even, and served as mediators
between humans and the forces of evil.
• To match the powerful new two heads of his right figures, Picasso
also revised their bodies by breaking them into more ambiguous
planes, suggesting a combination of views.
Les Demoiselles
d’Avignon
Pablo Picasso,
1907.
Oil on canvas,
8’ x 7’8”
Still Life with Chair Caning
Picasso, 1912.
Oil, oilcloth, and rope • Picasso was constantly challenging himself to try new styles,
on canvas. 10” x 1’2”.
Other Picasso Work
Girl Before a
Mirror (1932)
Three Musicians (1921)
Girl with Mandolin (1910)
materials, and approaches to art making. As a result, his long career
shows a variety of styles.
• His early work, including Girl with Mandolin and Les Demoiselles
d’Avignon are classified as Analytic Cubism, characterized by the
artist’s careful analysis of the 3 dimensional form of their subject,
which they fragmented and reassembled from different viewpoints.
• In 1912, with the creation of Still Life with Chair Caning, Cubism
entered its Synthetic Cubism phase, during which artists assembled,
or “synthesized” their Cubist vision (still from multiple viewpoints) of
their subject.
• Still Life with Chair Caning is assembled using oil paint, rope, and a
lithographic reproduction of a photo of chair “caning” (the woven
seat of a chair). Because the image of the caning is an illusion, the
non-representational painted forms seem more honest/real.
• The letters JOU reference the masthead of newspapers
(journeaux), and also is a play on “jouer” (play) and “jouir” (enjoy).
The illusion of the letters is broken by the U falling out of the shape
around it, and falling under the thin cylinder above.
• The diamond pattern in Three Musicians and Girl Before a Mirror
references Harlequin, a clown character in popular plays to whom
Picasso likened himself.
Guernica
Guernica
Picasso, 1937. Oil on canvas. 11’5” x 25’5”.
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Guernica
Picasso, 1937. Oil on canvas. 11’5” x 25’5”.
Guernica
• Although he moved to Paris, Picasso kept an eye on the political
events in his home country of Spain.
• In the 1930s, a civil war broke out in Spain. Although he believed
that art should be used as “an instrument for offensive and
defensive war against the enemy,” when an exiled Spanish official in
Paris asked Picasso to produce a major work for the Spanish Pavilion
at the Paris International Exposition, he hesitated.
• Shortly thereafter, the city of Guernica, the capital of the Basque
region of Spain, was brutally bombed by Nazi air forces allied with
the rebel Spanish general Francisco Franco. They bombed the city at
the busiest hour of a market day, killing or wounding many of
Guernica’s 7000 inhabitants.
• News of the bombing jolted Picasso into action, and he completed
the large-scale painting in only two months.
• The painting shows the aftermath of a bombing (no bombs shown,
no German planes). It could be the aftermath of any war atrocity.
• Discuss what each figure is doing.
• The bull represents brutality and darkness.
• The fragmentation and dislocation of the figures echoes the actual
horror and pain of the event.
• To accent the starkness, he limited his palette to greyscale.
Georges Braque
• Braque and Picasso pioneered both Analytic and Synthetic Cubism
together, both making important works in each sub-genre.
• This painting is an example of the earlier Analytic Cubist era.
• The subject of the painting is a musician that the artist recalled seeing
years earlier in a bar in Marseilles.
• How is this work (as well as Girl with Mandolin) different from the
work o the Fauves and German Expressionists?
• Braque’s dissection of the man and his instrument is so thorough that
the viewer must look closely to discover clues to the subject.
• Braque left some lighter areas transparent, so that the viewer could
look through the plane of the lighter color to a different image below.
• He added stenciled letters and numbers to add to the painting’s
complexity. The letters are flat shapes, and they lie flat on the painted
canvas surface, yet the shading and shapes of other forms seem to flow
behind and underneath them, pushing the letters and numbers forward.
Sometimes they seem attached to the surface of some object within the
painting.
• The letters seem to anchor the painting in the world of representation,
thereby increasing the tension between representation and abstraction,
and creating a sense of doubt and ambiguity for the viewer.
The Portuguese
Georges Braque, 1911.
Oil on canvas, 3’10” x 2’8”
Cubist Sculpture
• The Russian artist Archipenko was influenced by Analytic Cubism.
• He explored the Cubist idea of spatial ambiguity and the
relationship between sold forms and space.
• In this sculpture, instead of sculpting a head, he left a negative
space (void) where here head should be. Although negative spaces
have been common in art throughout history, this was one of the
first in which it was an integral part of the design/composition.
• The negative space is of equal importance to the form.
• Julio Gonzalez was a Spanish artist and friend of Picasso, who was
from a family of metalworkers. He helped Picasso with several
sculptures that Picasso designed.
• While helping Picasso with the technical aspects of welding,
Gonzalez in turn learned about abstract sculpture.
• In his version of Woman Combing her Hair, he used prefabricated
materials (such as iron rods and sheets), which he welded together
to make the sculpture.
• The overall effect is rougher and rawer than Archipenko’s smooth
bronze cast.
• Furthermore, Gonzalez’s take is less realistic than Archipenko’s.
While Achipenko’s is easily identifiable as a female figure, Gonzalez’s
is not.
Woman Combing Her Hair
Aleksander Archipenko, 1915.
Bronze, 1’2” tall.
Woman Combing Her Hair
Julio Gonzalez, 1936.
Welded Iron, 4’4” tall.
The City
Fernand Léger, 1919.
Oil on canvas, 7’7” x 9’9”.
Purism & Fernand Léger
• Purism, an art movement founded by the architect and painter Le
Corbusier, believed that Cubism was merely decorative, and out of
touch with the “machine age.”
• Purists maintained machinery’s clean functional lines and the pure
forms of its parts should direct artists’ experiments in design.
• Fernand Léger, a former French Cubist, was inspired by the
“machine aesthetic,” and brought together the meticulous Cubist
analysis of form with Purism’s broad simplification and machinelike
finish of the design components.
• Léger’s works have the sharp precision of a machine, whose
beauty and quality he appreciated.
• He incorporated into his works the massive effects of modern
posters and billboard advertisements, the harsh flashing of electric
lights, and the noise of traffic.
• He depicted the mechanical commotion of urban life, including the
robotic movements of mechanized people.
Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash
Giacomo Balla, 1912.
Oil on canvas, 2’11” x 3’7”.
Futurism
• Futurism was a movement located in Italy that shared many of the
same interests as the French Cubists and German Expressionists.
• Had a strong socio-political agenda. Futurists were indignant over
the political and cultural decline of Italy, and published fiery
manifestoes advocating revolution and the destruction of museums
(which they called “mausoleums”).
• They advocated war, seeing it as a cleansing agent.
• Aesthetically, they were interested in the speed and dynamism of
modern technology.
• Futurist art often focused on motion in time and space,
incorporating the Cubist discoveries derived from formal analysis.
• “We declare… that all forms of imitation must be despised, all
forms of originality glorified… that all subjects previously used must
be swept aside in order to express our whirling life of ssteel, of pride,
of fever and of speed… that movement and light destroy the
materiality of bodies.” – from Futurist Painting: Technical Manifesto.
Unique Forms of Continuity in Space
Umberto Boccioni, 1913 (cast 1931).
Bronze, 3’8” tall.
Boccioni
• Boccioni was one of the co-signers of the manifesto.
• His sculpture, Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, is the definitive
example of Futurist sculpture because it highlights the formal and
spatial effects of motion rather than their source, the human figure.
• The figure is so expanded, interrupted, and broken in plane and
contour that it almost disappears behind the blur of its movement.
• It bears some resemblance to Nike of Samothrace (Winged
Victory), but the ancient sculpture only used the billowing of fabric
and posture to convey motion.
• In its power and sense of vital activity, this sculpture creates an
image symbolic of the dynamic quality of modern life.
Severini
• Severini’s painting depicts an armored train, mounted with a
booming cannon, below which riflemen aim at an unseen target.
• The train is “high tech,” with glossy, aerodynamic sides and shiny
rivets.
• Severini depicted all of the components of the painting (train,
soldiers, cannon, smoke, etc.) broken into facets and planes,
suggesting action and movement.
• The painting depicts the Futurists’ passion for speed, modern
technology and aesthetics, and their faith in the cleansing action of
war.
• In contrast to the Cubists and German Expressionists, the colors
are light, and death and destruction (the tragic consequences of
war) are absent.
• Once World War I broke out, the group dissipated, because many
of the war-supporting members of the group joined the army. Some
of them, such as Boccioni, died in the war.
Armored Train
Gino Severini, 1915.
Oil on canvas, 3’10” x 2’10”.
Dada
• “Cubism was a school of painting. Futurism was a political movement.
DADA is a state of mind.” – Andre Breton
• Although Futurists hoped the war would revolutionize the world, the
reality of war was different. New weapon technologies, such as machine
guns, poison gas shells, armored vehicles, and high explosives, resulted in a
huge death toll.
• Furthermore, there was no clear, “justifiable” reason for the war in the
first place. It was primarily fought due to rivalries between Serbia/Russia
and Austria/Hungary, which in turn dragged in the other powers of Europe.
• The Dada movement emerged in reaction to what many artists saw as
nothing more than an insane spectacle of collective homicide. Dadaists
believed that Enlightenment reasoning had produced global devastation,
and consequently, they turned away from logic in favor of the irrational.
Absurdity became their goal.
• Although initially a cynical, pessimistic, even nihilistic movement, it
evolved to have a whimsical, irreverent, and yet also thought-provoking
sense of humor.
• Influenced by the writings of Freud (exploration of the unconscious and
inner drives) and Jung (who elaborated on Freud’s theories by dividing the
unconscious into the personal unconscious and collective unconscious).
• The collective unconscious is comprised of memories, associations shared
by all humans. People are not born with a clean slate.
L. H. O. O. Q.
Marcel Duchamp, 1919.
Arp
• Arp incorporated the element of chance into his work.
• Tired of his Cubist-inspired collages, he tore some squares out of
colored paper, and dropped them onto a larger paper on the floor.
With some minor adjusting, he then glued the papers into place.
• The similarity of the shapes guaranteed a somewhat regular
design, enhanced by his adjustments, but chance had introduced an
imbalance that seemed to Arp to restore to his work a special
mysterious vitality he wanted to preserve.
• Arp’s renunciation of artistic control and reliance on chance when
creating his compositions reinforced the anarchy and subversion
inherent in Dada.
• “For us chance was the ‘unconscious mind’ that Freud had
discovered in 1900… Adoption of chance had another purpose, a
secret one. This was to restore to the work of art its primeval magic
power and to find a way back to the immediacy it had lost through
contact with classicism.” – Hans Richter
Collage Arranged According to the Laws of Chance
Jean Arp, 1916-1917.
Torn and pasted paper. 1’7” x 1’2”.
Fountain
Marcel Duchamp, 1917.
Glazed sanitary china with
black paint, 1’ high.
Duchamp
• Duchamp was French, and spent the early part of his art career in
Paris, and the later part in New York City.
• First introduced his “readymade” sculptures in 1913, which were
mass-produced common objects, or “found objects” that the artist
selected and sometimes modified (“assisted readymade”).
• His most outrageous (and hence famous) readymade was Fountain,
a urinal that he turned onto its back, and signed “R. Mutt” (which
was a pun on the Mott plumbing manufacturer and the character
Mutt from the comic strip “Mutt and Jeff”).
• The art of this artwork lay in the artist’s choice of object, which
had the effect of conferring the status of art on it and forcing
The Bride Stripped Bare by her
viewers to see the object in a new light.
Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass)
• “Whether ‘R.Mutt’ with his own hands made the fountain or not
has no importance. He CHOSE it. He took an ordinary article of life,
placed it so that its useful significance disappeared under the new
title and point of view – created a new thought for that object.”
• Fountain was exhibited at the Society of Independent Artist’s show
(in America), which typically exhibited all works entered. However,
the show coordinators were outraged, and rejected Fountain.
Rrose Selavy
• After The Large Glass, Duchamp turned away from art to pursue
Photo by Man Ray.
his interest in chess.
Monument to the Third International
Vladimir Tatlin, 1919-1920.
Suprematism/Constructivism
• Russian movements which embraced the idea that art was integral
to helping improve society (as opposed to the pessimistic Dadaist
view).
• Suprematism – a movement developed by the Russian artist
Kazimir Malevich, who believed that the supreme reality in the world
was “pure feeling,” which attaches to no object.
• Malevich called for new, nonobjective forms in art – shapes not
related to objects in the visible world.
• Constructivism – a Russian art movement began in 1919 that was
inspired by the Russian Revolution (1917) . Focus on space and time.
Believed art could harness the power of industrialization to benefit
all people.
Malevich
• “Under Suprematism I understand the supremacy of pure feeling in
creative art. To the Suprematist, the visual phenomena of the
objective world are, in themselves, meaningless; the significant thing
is feeling…” - Malevich
• The basic form of his art was the rectangle.
• In this artwork, the brightly colored shapes float against and within
a white space, and the artist placed them in dynamic relationship to
one another. What makes them dynamic?
• Malevich believed that everyone could understand his art, as he
used the pure language of shape and color, to which everyone could
respond intuitively.
• In 1917, militarily weakened by WWI, the Russian revolution broke
out due to dissatisfaction with Tsar Nicholas II, who subsequently
abdicated the throne in March. By the end of the year, the
Bolsheviks, a faction of Russian Social Democrats (who later called
themselves Communists), lead by Lenin, had wrested control from
the provisional government (as well as several satellite countries).
• Although Malevich viewed the revolution as an opportunity to
wipe out past traditions and begin a new art culture, the political
leaders of the Soviet Union decided their new communist society
needed a more practical, realistic art, which could be used to teach
the public about their new government.
Suprematist Composition: Airplane Flying
Kazimir Malevich, 1915.
Oil on canvas, 1’11” x 1’7”.
Gabo
• Like Malevich, Gabo believed that art should come from sources separate
from the everyday world. For Gabo, the new reality was the space-time
world described by early -20th-century scientists.
• Gabo called himself a Constructivist because he built up his sculptures
piece by piece, instead of carving or modeling them in traditional ways.
• Although some of his works involve real motion, most of his works relied
on the relationship of mass and space to suggest the nature of space-time.
• To indicate volumes of mass and space more clearly in his sculpture, Gabo
used some new clear synthetic plastic materials (such as celluloid, nylon,
and Lucite) to create constructions whose space seems to flow through as
well as around the transparent materials.
• In Column, Gabo opened up the column’s circular mass so viewers could
experience the volume of space it occupies. Instead of making a circular
column, Gabo implies the circularity of the column by having a circular base
topped with two intersecting vertical planes.
• The opaque colored planes at the base and elsewhere set up counterrhythms to the crossed upright planes. They establish the sense of dynamic
kinetic movement Gabo always sought to express as an essential part of
reality.
Column
Naum Gabo, c. 1923.
Perspex, wood, metal, glass. 3’5” tall.
American Art
1900-1935
Sixth Avenue and 30th Street, New York City,
John Sloan, 1907.
• Increasingly common transatlantic travel resulted in greater
exchange of artistic ideas among European and American artists.
• Some artists, like Whistler and Cassatt, moved from the US to
Europe. On the other hand, many European artists (especially
before and after WWI) moved to the US.
• The early years of American art, still unexposed to the
revolutionary work of their European counterparts, continued in
Realism, depicting an unvarnished look at American life.
• The most prominent group of American Realist artists were
known as The Eight, lead by their teacher Robert Henri.
• Because their images depicting the rapidly changing urban
landscape of New York City often captured the bleak and seedy
aspects of city life, The Eight eventually became known as the Ash
Can School.
• The relative isolation of American artists from developments
across the Atlantic came to an abrupt end in March 1913 when
the Armory Show opened in New York City.
Armory Show
Nude Descending a
Staircase, No. 2
Marcel Duchamp,
1912.
Oil on canvas,
4’10” x 2’11”
• Today, the Armory Show is considered a seminal event in the
beginning of American modernism, but at the time it was hated by
critics. The show, held in the 69th Regiment Armory in NYC, exhibited
over 1,600 artworks by American and European artists.
• The show was organized by Walt Kuhn and Arthur Davies, whose
goal in exhibiting American and European art side-by-side was to help
the American artists consider whether the had “fallen behind.”
• European artists exhibited included Duchamp, Matisse, Picasso,
Braque, Kandinsky, Kirchner, and Brancusi.
• Perhaps the most reviled artwork of the show was Duchamp’s Nude
Descending a Staircase, No. 2, which (unlike his usual Dadaist work) is
stylistically similar to Futurists and Cubists.
• Critics used the following words to describe the show: pathological,
menace, lunatic, depraved, alien, perilous.
• The show also travelled to Boston and Chicago.
Ingres’ Violin
Man Ray, 1924.
Gelatin silver print, 11.5” x 9”.
Man Ray
• Man Ray (original name Emmanuel Radnitzky) was an
American artist, but as a close friend of Duchamp’s, his art
reflected a strong Dadaist sensibility.
• Although primarily known for his photography, he also
created ready-mades of found objects, such as his Gift.
• Ray was interested in mass-produced objects and
technology, as well as a dedication to exploring the
psychological realm of human perception.
• Man Ray was trained as an architectural draftsman and
engineer, and earned a living as a graphic designer and
portrait photographer.
• His interest in portraiture is evident in his many portraits
of his contemporaries, including Duchamp (as Rrose Selavy)
and Meret Oppenheim, a Surrealist artist.
• In his famous image, Ingres’ Violin, Man Ray referenced
Ingre’s depictions of the nude female, such as in Odalisque
and the Bather of Valpincon. He painted the f holes onto the
photograph, then took a second photograph of the original.
What does the image suggest?
Gift
Meret Oppenheim
Rrose Selavy
Self-Portrait
With Camera
Tears
Georgia O’Keeffe
• In her early career, Wisconsin-born O’Keeffe was a Precisionist
(an American movement that celebrated the beauty of mechanical
precision). In 1918, she moved to NYC, where she focused on the
awe-inspiring complexity of the city, as in New York, Night.
• While in NYC, she met Alfred Stieglitz, a photographer who also
owned an art gallery called 291 that regularly exhibited the latest
European and American art.
• Stieglitz was impressed with O’Keeffe’s talent, and drew her into
his artistic circles. Eventually, the pair married.
• In 1929, looking for new inspiration, and to get away from
summers in rural New York with Stieglitz’s family, O’Keeffe, went
with a friend to New Mexico. Inspired by the quiet beauty of the
landscape, she returned annually to paint, and moved there
permanently in 1949 (after the death of Stieglitz).
• In addition to the New Mexico landscapes, O’Keeffe is known for
painting close-ups of flowers. Her flower paintings stripped the
flowers to their purest forms and colors to heighten their
expressive power.
• Exhibiting the natural flow of curved planes and contour,
O’Keeffe simplified the form almost to the point of complete
abstraction. Her painting is like quiet, graceful poetry, reflecting
the slow, controlled motion of growing life.
Jack in the Pulpit, No. IV
Georgia O’Keeffe, 1930.
Oil on canvas, 40” x 30”.
The Steerage
Alfred Stieglitz, 1907.
Photogravure (on
tissue),
1’ x 10”
Alfred Stieglitz
• Alfred Stieglitz, O’Keeffe’s husband, was an accomplished
photographer in addition to gallery owner.
• He worked to promote photography as a form of “fine art” like
painting, rather than a hobby or tool of necessity.
• Although he photographed a wide variety of subjects,
including portraits of loved ones and shifting clouds in the sky,
he is perhaps most well known for his images of urbanity.
• During a voyage to Europe in 1907, he grew tired of his
wealthy companions in first class. He wandered forward on the
ship to the end of the first class level, and looked out upon the
steerage passengers – people the US government sent back to
Europe after refusing them entrance into the country.
• In addition to the depiction of “simple people,” Stieglitz was
also interested in the formal elements of his composition. Part
of what struck him when he took The Steerage was the various
intersecting diagonal lines, which created strong triangles
throughout the work.
• Stieglitz wanted his photographs to be as honest as possible,
and developed his photos using the basic photographic
techniques (no “tricks” such as double exposures or otherwise
adding things to the image).
Fallingwater
(Kaufmann House)
F. L. Wright
• Wisconsin-born architect Frank Lloyd Wright moved to Chicago
Bear Run, Penn. and joined the modern architecture firm headed by Sullivan.
1936-39.
Frank Lloyd Wright
Robie House,
Chicago, 1907-1909.
• He believed in natural, organic, nonsymmetrical buildings that fit
into their environments. He aimed to develop an organic unity of
planning, structure, materials, and site, through continuity.
• In Robie House, Wright designed what he called a “Prairie House”
due to its long, sweeping, ground hugging lines that captured the
expansiveness of the Midwest.
• Features of Robie House: no façade, hidden entrance, extended
roof past walls, asymmetrical, closed bedrooms, open common
space arranged around a hearth, enclosed patios, and strip
windows to let in light.
• Fallingwater was designed as a weekend home for the
department store magnate Edgar Kaufmann Sr.
• Built OVER a waterfall (instead of next to it). Emphasis on
integrating the architecture into the surroundings.
• Building designed using cantilevered terraces that extend out
over the water below. Variety of textures (stone, glass, painted
metal, and concrete) enliven the surface of the building.
• Focus on defining space, not mass.
• Later in life, designed smaller, less expensive prairie house like
dwellings called Usonian houses (United States of North America).
Chrysler Building
William van Alen, Art Deco spire.
New York, NY, 1928-1930.
Chrysler Building
• Art Deco was a movement in the 1920s-30s which sought to
upgrade industrial design to “fine art” while using new materials
and decorative patterns that reflected the simplifying trends in
modernist architecture.
• A descendant of Art Nouveau, Art Deco had a streamlined,
elongated symmetrical aspects, characterized by flat shapes
filled with hard-edged patterns.
• The focus on stream-lined, aerodynamic design began with
trains, cars, and boats, and the popular appeal of these objects
lead to the streamlined aesthetic to be applied to all sorts of
objects (furniture, jewelry, utensils, illustrations, etc.).
• The masterpiece of Art Deco architecture is the Chrysler
Building in New York City, designed by William van Alen.
• In the Roaring Twenties, American millionaires and
corporations competed with one another to raise the tallest
skyscrapers in the biggest cities.
• Built up of polished stainless steel diminishing fan shapes, the
spire glitters triumphantly in the sky, a resplendent crown
honoring the business achievements of the great auto-maker.
• A temple of commerce, the Chrysler Building celebrated the
principles and success of American business before the Great
Depression of the 1930s.