Twentieth-Century Visual Art

Claude Monet, Waterlily Pond Edouard Manet, A Bar at the Folies- Bergère,

Georges Seurat, Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, Paul Gaugin, The Yellow Christ, 1889

Pablo Picasso, The Old Guitarist, 1903 Henri Matisse, Madame Matisse, 1905

Picasso, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907

Marcel Duchamp, Nude Descending a Staircase, 1912

Fernand Léger, The Railway Crossing, 1919 Piet Mondrian, Broadway Boogie Woogie, 1942

The devastation of World War I created a “lost generation” – those who survived often felt desolate, pessimistic, and despairing. The Dada movement began during the war and was named after the babblings of an infant and the French word for a child’s wooden horse. It suggests a desire to “start life over” and regain innocence. Dadaism was playful, experimental, and outrageous. Surrealism was a style that followed in the 1920s. Surreal means “above the real,” and the artists focused on exploring the imagination, sort of like the Romantics, but with an emphasis on free association and oddities. Artists of both movements looked at WWI and asked: “Why should art have to make sense if the world doesn’t? If nothing feels certain to us, then can’t anything be considered artistic?”

Duchamp has defaced the Mona Lisa – he’d have us ask, “Or has he?” Initials suggest “LOOK” in English and something tawdry in French. Duchamp specialized in “Ready-made” art – he found an object, gave it a title and maybe changed a few things, then claimed it as his own.

Duchamp turned this urinal upside down, signed it “R. Mutt,” and titled it Fountain. The Society of Independent Artists refused to include this in a show, calling it immoral and possibly plagiarism. Duchamp resigned from the Society.

To Be Looked At (From the Other Side of the Glass) with One Eye, Close To, for Almost an Hour from Made of glass so that it can be seen from multiple viewpoints and other objects in the room become part of the work. Cracked during shipping and Duchamp let the cracks become part of the finished work.

Le Violon d’Ingres, 1924 Playing on the symmetry between a woman’s body and a violin, and recalling the nude portraits done by Ingres, whose hobby was playing the violin. Puts sound holes like those on a violin on the woman’s back.

Twittering Machine His drawings are characterized by childlike imagery and fantasy. The birds become twittering machines, putting out meaningless sounds like industrial machines. The stick figures seem noisy, wiry, and mindless.

Dog Barking at the Moon, 1926 Imaginary scenes, also reminiscent of childhood. Unsupported ladder that goes nowhere – violates realistic rules and expectations. Klee said: “Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible.”

Time Transfixed, 1938 Impossible juxtaposition of realistic objects Room seems formal and cold, and the steam engine bursting in hasn’t disturbed anything.

By André Masson in 1924 Improvisational Meant to express the subconscious

The Persistence of Memory, 1931 Expressing anxiety and uncertainty Swarming ants imply decay Objects are hard-edged and realistic but warped at the same time.