Early 20th Century Art

Modernism

The Evolution of Modernism and The Avant-Garde

• Modernism rejected and challenged anything traditional

• Searched for new ways to communicate about the “modern world”

• Avant-garde means before the group – Avant-garde art is radical and is critical of political and social institutions (Revolutionary)

Abstraction

• Abstraction involves simplifying and changing shape and form to be less realistic / less naturalistic

• Expressive

• Affects of Photography (Move away from Realism – “the camera can already take real images”)

• Multiple Views (element of time and movement)

Joan Miro

Joan MiroDutch InteriorOil on Canvas1928

Joan MiroDutch InteriorOil on Canvas1928

Hendrick SorghThe Lute Player

Oil on Canvas1660

Joan MiroDutch InteriorOil on Canvas

1928

• Joan Miro was a Spanish Artist associated with Surrealist Movement

• Miro was inspired by Dutch Renaissance Art

• Miro used same theme as the original Renaissance painting, but changed the colors, shape / form, composition

• Distortion of the original image

Franz Marc

Franz Marc, Fate of the Animals, 1913, Oil on Canvas

• Distorted image “shattered glass”

• Experimented with color and color symbolism

• Founder of The Blue Rider Group “Der Blaue Reiter”

(Expressionist Movement)

• He believed animals were “more beautiful, more pure” than humans

Franz Marc, Fate of the Animals, 1913, Oil on Canvas

Color and Form

• Continuing from the 19th Century (influence of Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, and artists such as Van Gogh and Gaugin)

• Symbolism of Color

• Emotion / Feeling

Henri Matisse

Henri Matisse

The Dance

1909

Oil on Canvas

Henri Matisse, The Dance, 1909, Oil on Canvas

Matisse was a French Artist who was part of Fauvism Movement

Expressive color / symbolic color

Circular composition (rhythm)

Celebration of Life (optimism)

Making Art in Times of War

People and artists greatly affected by war

World War I (1914 – 1919)

World War II (1939 – 1945)

Russian Revolution (1917 – 1923)

Spanish Civil War (1937)

Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso, Guernica, 1937, Oil on Canvas

Pablo Picasso

Guernica

1937

Oil on Canvas

3.5 m x 7.8 m

Black and White large-scale painting

Based on Images from Newspaper about bombing of civilians in Guernica, Spain (Spanish Civil War)

Cubist Style (Picasso helped to invent the movement)

Symbols – Horse, Bull, Light

Effects of Psychology

Developments in the study of Psychology

New understanding of Psychology influenced artists

Sigmund Freud • developed psychoanalysis in early 20th century• wrote The Interpretation of Dreams in 1900

Carl Jung• Further studies of dreams and the subconscious /

unconscious mind

Frida Kahlo, The Two Fridas, 1939, Oil on Canvas

Frida Kahlo

Frida Kahlo, The Two Fridas, 1939, Oil on Canvas

• Paintings based on personal emotions

• Symbolism

• Kahlo associated with the Surrealist Movement

• Two “sides” / parts of her personality and background

• Inability to have children and many operations due to accident

• Relationship with Diego Rivera, Mexican artist

Major Early 20th Century Art Movements

• Fauvism• Expressionism • Cubism• Futurism• De Stijl• Suprematism / Constructivism• Dadaism• Surrealism

Fauvism

• Used pure hues (unmixed colors from the color wheel)

• Rejected “imitative” colors (colors that imitate real life) to create “stronger reactions” to their work

• Color as a conveyer of meaning / symbolism

Henri Matisse

Henri Matisse, Red Room, 1908 – 1909, Oil on Canvas

Henri Matisse

Henri Matisse, Red Room, 1908 – 1909, Oil on Canvas

Matisse was one of the main artists in the Fauvist group

Feeling of warmth and comfort in the room

Used color to express emotions

Expressionism

• “Raw human emotion”• Expressiveness of form – distorted color, line, shape,

etc.

• Movement started in Germany in 1905 • Die Brucke (The Bridge)• Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider)

Egon Schiele

Egon Shiele, Self-Portrait, 1911, Drawing (Gouache and pencil on paper)

Egon Schiele

Egon Shiele, Self-Portrait, 1911, Drawing (Gouache and pencil on paper)

Physical and psychological torment

Use of line and textures to convey feeling

Max Beckmann

Max Beckmann, Night, 1918 – 1919, Oil on Canvas

Max Beckmann

Max Beckmann, Night, 1918 – 1919, Oil on Canvas

Violence and brutality in society

Rape, torture, theft

Work is “powerful” and honest

Wassily Kandinsky

Wassily Kandinsky, Improvisation 28, 1912, Oil on Canvas

Wassily KandinskyNon-representational – based on formal elements (line, color, shape)

Avant-Garde Expressive style

Der Blaue Reiter (Blue Rider) Group

Expression of inner feelings / spirituality

Wassily Kandinsky, Improvisation 28, 1912, Oil on Canvas

Kathe Kollwitz

Kathe Kollwitz, Memorial to Karl Liebknecht, 1919, Woodcut (graphic arts)

Kathe Kollwitz

Kathe Kollwitz, Memorial to Karl Liebknecht, 1919, Woodcut (graphic arts)

Liebknecht (leader of Socialist revolution in Germany in 1919) was assassinated

Surrounded by poor people

Bold black and white of woodcut adds to the powerful feeling

Cubism• Cubists rejected naturalistic / realistic art

• Preferred using abstract shapes and forms

• Viewing the subject from many different angles using geometric forms

• Neutral Colors

• Interested in connecting music to visual art

• Analytic Cubism – first phase of cubism started by

Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso

• Synthetic Cubism – Collage (mixed media) – materials from different sources

Georges Braque

Georges Braque, The Portuguese, 1911, Oil on Canvas

Georges Braque

Georges Braque, The Portuguese, 1911, Oil on Canvas

Analytic Cubism

Based on an image of a Portuguese musician (connection between visual art and music)

Perception of 2-D and 3-D space

Contains numbers and letters – 2-D

Neutral colors – pure color eliminated in early cubism

Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso, Still Life with Chair-Caning, 1911-1912, Oil and Collage on Canvas

Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso, Still Life with Chair-Caning, 1911-1912, Oil and Collage on Canvas

Synthetic Cubism

New Medium of collage (from French word “to stick”)

Illusion of seat of a chair

Jou – from “Journal” (French newspaper) also word refers to “play” and to “game”

Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso, Three Musicians, 1921, Oil on Canvas

Pablo Picasso

Later Cubism

Music and Visual Art / Rhythm

Reintroduced color into his compositions

Pablo Picasso, Three Musicians, 1921, Oil on Canvas

Futurism

Began as a literary movement in Italy in 1909, but later included visual arts, film, theater, music, and architecture

Inspired by the Cubists

Artists had a socio-political agenda

Published several manifestos – a written document that explains the overall intentions of the group – in this case, advocating a revolution in society and art

Umberto Boccioni

Umberto Boccioni, Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, 1913, Bronze

Umberto Boccioni

Umberto Boccioni, Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, 1913, Bronze sculpture

Feeling of Motion

Symbolic of Dynamic modern life

Figure moving ahead in a brave, new world

Giacomo Balla

Giacomo Balla, Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash, 1912, Oil on Canvas

Giacomo Balla

The effect of motion by repeating shapes

Several different views at the same time

Giacomo Balla, Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash, 1912, Oil on Canvas

Suprematism

• Russian movement

• Pure language of shape and color

• Non-objective (no recognizable image)

• Based on Inner Feelings

Kazimir Malevich

Kazimir Malevich, Suprematist Composition: Airplane Flying, 1915, oil on canvas

Kazimir Malevich

Feeling unattached to objects

“The Suprematist artist does not observe and does not touch – they feel”

Dynamic movement of shapes

Kazimir Malevich, Suprematist Composition: Airplane Flying, 1915, oil on canvas

Constructivism

• Art movement that began in Soviet Union after the Russian Revolution

• Experimented with new materials

• Moving toward the future

Vladimir Tatlin

Vladimir Tatlin, Monument to the Third International, 1919-1920, model (wood, iron, glass)

Vladimir Tatlin

Vladimir Tatlin, Monument to the Third International, 1919-1920, model (wood, iron, glass)

“Tatlin’s Tower”

Design for a monument to honor the Russian Revolution

Tower never built (only model)

Would have been twice as tall as the Eiffel Tower

De Stijl

• De Stijl means “the style”

• Movement formed by a group of young artists in Holland in 1917

• Believed in “birth of a new age”

• Integration of Art and Life

• Focus on Universal, rather than the individual

Piet Mondrian

Piet Mondrian, Composition in Red,

Blue, and Yellow, 1930, Oil on Canvas

Piet Mondrian

Piet Mondrian, Composition in Red, Blue, and Yellow, 1930, Oil on Canvas

One of the founders of the de Stijl movement

Believed the primary colors and values are the purest colors to create harmony in a composition

Influenced by Cubism (Mondrian saw Analytic Cubism in Paris in 1917)

Comparison

Dadaism

• Random word chosen from a French-German Dictionary

• Irrational and Intuitive

• Reaction to “insane” spectacle of war

• Anti-tradition

• Artistic and Literary Movement

• Dada is a “state of mind”

Man Ray

Man Ray, Gift, 1921, Painted flatiron with row of tacks

Man Ray

Man Ray, Gift, 1921, Painted flatiron with row of tacks

Man Ray was a Graphic Designer and Portrait Photographer

Manipulated Found Object

Interest in mass-produced objects and technology

Marcel Duchamp

Marcel Duchamp, Fountain, 1917, Ready-made sculpture

Marcel Duchamp

Marcel Duchamp, Fountain, 1917, Ready-made sculpture

“Ready-made” sculpture

Challenged the idea of What is art?

Radical, avant-garde

Hannah Hoch

Hannah Hoch, Cut with the Kitchen Knife, 1919-1920, Photomontage (collage)

Hannah Hoch

Hannah Hoch, Cut with the Kitchen Knife, 1919-1920, Photomontage (collage)

Chaotic and contradictory

Images of German Military leaders, Dada artists, dancers, animals, etc.

Self-portrait in the lower corner

Found text – “The Great dada World”

Kurt Schwitters

Kurt Schwitters, Merz 19,

1920,

Paper Collage

Kurt Schwitters

Kurt Schwitters, Merz 19, 1920, Paper Collage

Inspired by cubist collage

Paper found in the trash (trash elevated to art)

Non-objective (no recognizable images of objects)

“Merz” refers to commerce bank because the word appears in the found paper text

Surrealism

• Dada artists joined the Surrealist movement

• Dreams and the Unconscious Mind (Psychology)

• Bring together outer and inner reality

Max Ernst

Max Ernst, Two Children are Threatened by a Nightingale, 1924, Oil on Wood with Wood construction

Max Ernst

Max Ernst, Two Children are Threatened by a Nightingale, 1924, Oil on Wood with Wood construction

Ernst’s dream

Follows the rules of aerial and linear perspective, but the proportions are not true to life

Title is mysterious and unclear

Rene Magritte

Rene Magritte, The Treachery of Images, 1928 – 1929, Oil on Canvas

Rene Magritte

Rene Magritte, The Treachery of Images, 1928 – 1929, Oil on Canvas

Ceci n’est pas une pipe (This is not a pipe)

Discrepancy between the image of the pipe and the text (relationship of text and image)

The illusion of art

Treachery = dishonesty (from an old French word meaning to trick)

Rene Magritte

Rene Magritte, The Son of Man, 1964, Oil on Canvas

Rene Magritte

Rene Magritte, The Son of Man, 1964, Oil on Canvas

Modern man

Symbolism of the Apple, clouds, water, etc.

Comparison

Salvador Dali

Salvador Dali

Salvador Dali, The Persistence of Memory, 1931, Oil on Canvas

Salvador Dali

Salvador Dali, The Persistence of Memory, 1931, Oil on Canvas

Time and Memory

Landscape from Dali’s childhood in Spain

Dreamlike