1. “The Artist as Idea Maker”
Early Modernism
“The Artist as Idea Maker”
Vol s

2. A series of “isms”
Local traditions in art have given way to international trends
Three “isms” are most important and have branched off throughout the 20th century- Expressionism, Abstraction, and Fantasy
Expressionism- the human community
Abstraction- the structure of reality
Fantasy- the individual human mind
Realism continues as a trend along with other movements throughout the 20th century
Modernism allowed artists to assert their freedom to create in a new style and provide them with a mission to define the meaning of their times
Influenced by- the beginning of the atomic age
-existentialism (Nietzsche)- “God is Dead”
-the invention of psychoanalysis
Freud-inner drives control human behavior
Jung-collective unconscious
-The Russian Revolution
-The Great War (humanity’s inhumanity)
-The Great Global Depression
-the rise of the “Avant Garde”

3. Expressionsim-
-release of the artist’s inner vision
-evoke feelings from the viewer
Fauvism- very short-lived
full of violent color and bold distortion, brutal brushstrokes
Shocking to the critics and the public
Called “Fauves”- wild beasts
Artists wore the label with pride
Sense of liberation and experimentation held the group together
Color’s structural, expressive, and aesthetic capabilities

4. Henri Matisse, The Joy of Life, 1905-06
Flat planes of color, bold outlines come from Gauguin-also humanity in a state of nature- pagan scene like a bacchanal
“genius of omission”- radical simplification
The act of painting was joyous for him and his paintings show this

5. Believed that color was the formal element most responsible for pictorial coherence
Color was not meant to imitate nature, but to express inner emotions
Matisse, The Red Studio, 1911

6. Fauvism with political connotations
Reminiscent of stained glass because Roualt was an apprentice
A figure of merciless authority clutching flowers
Roualt, The Old King,

7. German Expressionism- “Die Brucke” (The Bridge)
Color is important, but equal to that of distortion of images and violent brushstrokes
Movement centered in Dresden, Germany and led by Ernst Kirschner
Thought of themselves as bridging the old age of art with the new
Influenced by medieval craft guilds- lived and worked together equally
Focused on the detrimental effects of industrialization
Kirschner, Self Portrait, 1915

8. Most of Emile Nolde’s paintings were religious like Roualt
Slashing, violent brushstrokes for non-angry subject matter
Nolde, Wildly Dancing Children, 1912

9. Austrian painter related to the group
Like Van Gogh- saw himself as an inner visionary, a witness to inner truth
Tortured psyche influenced by Freud’s work
Kokoschka, Self Portrait, 1913

10. Kathe Kollwitz Worked almost exclusively in printmaking and drawing
Themes of inhumanity and injustice
The plight of workers and war victims
Pacifist- son died in WWI
Kollwitz, The Survivors, 1923

11. Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider)- another German Expressionist movement
Produced feeling is visual form
Kandinsky, Composition VII, 1913
Complete abstraction- non-objective work-elimination of representation
Knew about music, literature, science (the atomic theory)- material objects have no structure or purpose
Orchestration of color, form, line, and space- blueprints for an enlightened and liberated society, emphasizing spirituality

12. Armory Show of 1913 introduced America to Fauvism and German Expressionism
Started in NY and traveled to Chicago and Boston
Armory show contained over 1600 pieces of art- exposed American viewers and artists to work going on in Europe
Very controversial- NY Times called it “Pathological”
Alfred Steiglitz, a photographer, was pivotal in supporting American abstractionists
Marsden Hartley was an American living in Munich and was directly influenced by these European movements
Hartley, Portrait of a German Officer, 1914

13. Followed Matisse’s “genius of omission”
Disturbed the basic shape of the material as little as possible
Interested in primitive carvings and their formal simplicity and coherence
Brancusi, Golden Bird, 1919

14. Moore, Reclining Figure, 1935-36
Henry Moore- simplicity of form continued
Also influenced by prehistoric- Monoliths
Classical motif that has been eroded

15. ABSTRACTION The process of analyzing and simplifying observed reality
First “rediscovered” by Cezanne
Picasso- staggering contributions to the history of art and the development of abstraction
Traditional artist in that he made careful studies of his work
Quest for innovation, insistence on challenging established views, constant experimentation
Found inspiration from African sculpture (due to widened colonialism)
Fractured shapes, jagged planes, illegible space-tension between 2d and 3d
Inconsistency of treatment of the women
Picasso, Les Demoiselles D’Avignon, 1907
“I paint forms as I think them, not as I see them”

16. Cubism a radical turning point in the history of art
Dismissal of pictorial illusionism
Cezanne’s idea of the cylinder, sphere, and cone
New logic of design
Painting moved far beyond the depiction of reality- mirrored society’s fears of the uncertainty of a non-Newtonian world
Received its name after Matisse described a work by Braque as having been painted in “little cubes”

17. Analytical Cubism Little contrast in color
Complex and systematic design
Faceted shapes, translucent divisions of space
Differing views of the same subject in the same work
Invented by Picasso and George Braque- at the same time, but not really in collaboration
Retains some sort of depth
Picasso, Portrait of Vollard, 1910

18. New Space Concept- first since Masaccio
Synthetic Cubism
Invented by Braque and Picasso
Puts forms back together after breaking them apart
“Collage Cubism” after the French word for “paste-ups”
Foreign materials are pasted onto the design- makes the collage look like a real surface
Scraps are changed and painted on, giving them a double meaning
Both represent and present (be themselves)
Picture plane is in front of the surface
Braque, Gillet, 1914
New Space Concept- first since Masaccio

19. Started to add color to Cubsim in the 1920s
Renaissance perspective gone wrong
Jumble of flat shapes turn into a slight image
Dog beats to a rhythm
Picasso, Three Musicians, 1921

20. Cubism in sculpture
Fragmented, dissolved form
Split into many planes
Parallels with Braque and Picasso
Lipchitz, Bather, 1917

21. Movement of Purism invented by architect Le Corbusier, the architect
Opposed Synthetic Cubism because it was out of touch with the machine age
Thought that design should come from the clean functional lines of machines
Ferdinand Leger- clean lines mixed with Cubist sensibility
Very precise and very large!! (7’X9’)
Leger, The City, 1919

22. FUTURISM
Cubism was adapted to stand for the dynamism of modern life- always moving and changing
Futurists rejected the past and exalted the beauty of the machine
Showed motion in a static image
2oth century energy
Many of the artists of the movement were killed in WWI- by the machines that they loved
Boccioni, Dynamism of a Cyclist, 1913

23. DADA
Started as a reaction to the horrors of WWI and Nihilism
Began independently in Zurich and NY
French for “hobbyhorse”
Believed that reason and logic had been responsible for war
Only hope was anarchy, irrationality, and intuition
Pessimism and disgust of the artists helped them reject tradition-
Arp pioneered the use of chance in artwork- releassed him from the role of artist
For Dadaists, the idea of chance comes from the unconsciousness- influenced by Freud
Jean Arp, Collage Arranged According to the Laws of Chance,

24. Duchamp was the central figure in NY Dada scene
Exhibited his first “ready-made” sculptures- mass produced common products “selected” by the artist
Free from the opinions of the population- neither good or bad taste
Forces viewers to see the “artness” of objects
Duchamp, Fountain, 1913

25. Surrealism- most Dada artists joined the Surrealist movement as well
Included many similar ideas -used Dada techniques to “release the unconscious”
Exploration of ways to express in art the world of dreams and the unconscious
Inspired by Freud and Jung- interested in the nature of dreams
In dreams, people moved beyond the constraints of society
To bring inner and outer reality together
Two forms of Surrealism;
Biomorphic (interested in life forms)- Miro
Naturalistic (recognizable scenes of nightmare or dream images)-Magritte, Dali

26. Precursor to Surrealism
Disquieting sense of forboding and creepiness
As if another world exists beneath the one that is visible- influenced by Nietzsche who said “foreboding tha underneath this reality in which we live and have our being, another altogether different reality lies concealed”
De Chirico, Melancholy and Mystery of a Street, 1914

27. Interested in Collage and “decalcomania”- transferring oil paint from another surface
Used rubbings called “Frottage”- joined fragmented images from newspapers and magazines to create a disjointed image
Max Ernst, La Toilette de la Mariee, 1940

28. Salvidore Dali, Illuminated Pleasures, 1929
The celebrity of the group
Dreamlike, disquieting combination of images- sexual in nature, convincingly real

29. Joan Miro- organic forms that expand and contract visually
Used automatism- planned accidents
Element of hallucination
Began paintings as collages so that he could move elements around at will
Combination of unconscious and conscious image-making
Miro, Le Petit Rose, 1933

30. Klee, Golden Fish, 1922
Used fantasy images to represent the non-visible world
Thought that humanity’s deeper nature could be found in primitive shapes and symbols
Studied nature and science, especially the processes of growth and change

31. Oppenheim, Luncheon in Fur, 1936
Humor and eroticism of Surrealism translated into sculpture
Magical transformation of forms and textures to show the absurdness of everyday objects