1. Chapter 21 The Modern World: 1800-1945
Movements:
Neoclassicism
Romanticism
Realism
Impressionism
Post-Impressionism
Fauvism and Expressionism Cubism
Fantasy and Futurism
Dada and Surrealism
Harlem Renaissance, De Stijl and Bauhaus
For 19th-century artists and writers, walking through the teeming streets was the equivalent of today's channel surfing—one sensation followed quickly by another, offering fleeting glimpses of thousands of lives. They found it overwhelming, thrilling, and sometimes disturbing—artists recognized it as new and termed it “modern.”
This was the world of mass production, mass advertising, and mass consumption; the world of leisure activities, shopping, entertainment, and visiting Art Museums and Galleries.
We have already seen unique qualities from diverse traditions in art. We have also seen how diverse cultures have integrated new influences. As you look at these movements, you will realize that artists build upon or react against established traditions. In this age of communication, artists begin reacting more quickly, hence the number of rapidly accumulating movements. The changes of modernity occurred everywhere in Europe, but the debates they provoked played out most dramatically in France, especially in Paris, and this brief survey largely focuses there.

2. Neoclassicism and Romanticism
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Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Jupiter and Thetis, 1811.
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Eugène Delacroix, The Women of Algiers, 1834.
We ended chapter 17 with the rejection of Baroque & Rococo in the Neoclassical work of David. These artists favored emotional reserve, classical compositions, and precise draftsmanship. Ingres was a pupil of David, the leading painter of Neoclassicism and the most influential teacher in France at the turn of the 19th-century. Ingres inherited his master's admiration of ancient Greek and Roman Art, and emphasis on clean contours, a smooth finish, and precise draftsmanship.
On the left, Jupiter and Thetis, figures from Homer’s Iliad are portrayed. Here Thetis is shown pleading with Jupiter to intervene in the the war on behalf of her son. With its clear contours, clean colors, and precise draftsmanship, the painting clearly shows Ingres’ debt to his teacher. He felt that the greatest subject matter of all were history, Classical mythology, and Biblical scenes.
Ingres' lifelong rival was Delacroix, champion of the Romantic movement. The Romantic ideal stressed dramatic subject matter, turbulent emotions, and complex compositions. Romanticism was not a style so much as a set of attitudes and characteristic subjects. The 18th century is sometimes known as “the Age of Reason,” for its leading thinkers placed their faith in rationality. Romanticism championed emotion, intuition, and subjectivity.
Delacroix, visiting North Africa, was fascinated by this exotic world, filling numerous sketchbooks. Later, he drew upon this material to create paintings such as The Women of Algiers, a harem scene. Note the freer technique where contours are blurred and colors are broken.

3. Realism Insert 72 dpi visual Suggested visual: figure 21.3
Gustave Courbet,
The Artist’s Studio: A Real Allegory Summing Up Seven Years of My Life as an Artist, 1855.
The Realist movement in French Art came somewhat later than Neoclassicism and Romanticism and was, in effect, a reaction against both. Realist artists sought to depict the everyday and the ordinary (genre), rather than the heroic or the exotic. Their concerns were very much rooted in the present. One of the leaders of the Realist movement was Courbet. Here we see the artist’s past, or his roots, on the left. His current friends are on the right. In the center is the artist surrounded by Innocence and Truth.

4. Manet and Impressionism
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Edouard Manet,
Le Dejeuner Sur L’herbe, 1863.
In 19th century France, acceptance to the annual Salon exhibition was the mark of an artist’s success. The rejection of almost 3,000 works resulted in an uproar and a second exhibition called “Salon des Refuses.” This painting was the most notorious among them.
Manet seems to have wanted to accomplish 2 goals with his work. The first was to join Courbet and other artists in painting modern life. But the other was to prove that modern life could produce eternal subjects worthy of the great masters of the museums. His solution was to update two famous Renaissance images, Titian's "Fete Champetre" and Raphael's "The Judgment of Paris." One critic lamented that Manet was trying to achieve celebrity the easy way, by shocking his public. His painting is odd, and art historians still debate just what he meant by it. The title is translated as Luncheon on the Grass. The forms appear flattened and the perspective is off. Note the relative sizes of the rowboat and the bather next to it. The right side is spatially flattened to a flat green expanse. It feels like a stage setting with figures posed on a set.

5. Impressionism Insert 72 dpi visual Insert 72 dpi visual
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Pierre-Auguste Renoir,
Le Moulin de la Galette, 1876.
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Claude Monet,
A Bridge Over a Pool of Water Lilies, 1899.
The Impressionists looked to Manet as their philosophical leader, as they also believed that modern life itself was the most suitable subject for modern art. With Impressionism, art moved outdoors—not the artificial outdoors of Manet, but the true outdoors. Painting up until then had been a studio product, in part because of the cumbersome materials it involved. Thanks to the new availability of portable oil colors in tubes, many of the Impressionists took their canvases, brushes, and paints outside to be part of the shifting light they wanted to depict. This is a transitory moment, as light shifts rapidly.
The light in Renior's Le Moulin de la Galette is a light we have not seen before in painting, the dappled, shifting, transient light that filters through leaves stirred by the breeze. Traditional chiaroscuro required a steady and even source of light for modeling form. But light in nature was not always like that. For these artists, loose, rapid brushwork was an essential part of the effect.
The term Impressionism actually came from a critic who wrote that Monet’s paintings seemed to be a mere impression of a painting. The Impressionists often painted the same scene at different times of the day, or in different seasons to study how light and color changed from one transient atmospheric effect to another. It was important to work rapidly, before the transient light could change. This painting of Monet’s own water garden, is woven entirely of broken color, the flicked brushstrokes alternately suggesting masses of foliage, then their reflections.

6. Impressionism Insert 72 dpi visual Suggested visual: figure 21.8
Edgar Degas,
Woman at a Café, 1877.
Another member of the Impressionist group was Edgar Degas. He was not interested in painting outdoors, or in recording sensations of perceptions, or in landscape. His great interest was the human figure. A student of social classes, Degas here portrays prostitutes, and he was taken to task for depicting this subject with “terrifying realism.”

7. Post-Impressionism Insert 72 dpi visual Suggested visual: figure 21.9
Paul Gaugain,
Te Aa No Areoi ( The Seed of Areoi), 1892.
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Paul Cezanne,
Mont Sainte-Vistoire,
The Post-Impressionists each had a unique style. They admired the brighter palette and direct painting technique of the Impressionists. But what they had in common was the rejection of the transient moment in favor of enduring concepts.
Paul Gaugain sought to escape from the emotional effects of modern life in Tahiti, his island paradise. Again we see a tendency to use exaggerated, bright colors, but within flattened areas. He felt the need for more substance and solidity. He expressed spiritual meaning through strong outlines, tertiary color harmonies to portray the exotic. Her pose-legs shown in profile, shoulders depicted frontally-is derived from Egyptian art.
Cezanne also exaggerated color, but his was a unique concept. Instead of flattening space, he did the opposite. He actually broke space up into geometric, solid forms: rectangular landscape, pyramid-shaped mountain. His brushstrokes are also geometric. A favorite subject of his was this mountain near his home, which he drew or painted 75 times.
Picasso was intrigued by his writings on viewing nature in terms of its geometric structure: the cube, cylinder, and cone. This was an influence on the later Cubism movement.

8. America in the 19th Century
Bridging the Atlantic
America in the 19th Century
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George Bingam,
Fur Traders Descending the Missouri c
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Mary Cassatt,
The Boating Party
Exploring their artistic roots, American artists often studied in Europe, taking advantage of the Museums. Many European artists explored new opportunities in America. But American artists were all aware of the new art being shown in Europe.
In America, Romanticism was often expressed in the glorification of the landscape. Bingham paints the air heavy with the golden light of dawn about to break. The boat glides silently, as father and son both look our way. Adding to the mystery of this piece, a bear cub is chained to the prow.
Mary Cassatt, an American artist, moved to Paris where she portrayed intimate, domestic scenes of mothers and children (genre). The Boating Party, painted in bold, simplified forms, broad areas of color and “bird’s eye view” reflects the influence of Japanese prints, which were recently introduced through museums in Europe.

9. Freeing Color: Fauvism and Expressionism
Into the 20th Century
The Avant Garde
Freeing Color: Fauvism and Expressionism
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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner,
Street, Dresden, 1907.
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Henri Matisse,
The Joy of Life,
The avant-garde was originally a military term, referring to the detachment of soldiers that went first into battle. By the 1880's, younger artists began to refer to themselves as the avant-garde.
The fauves (wild beasts) gained this name through the use of wild, subjective colors. Henry Matisse used color to convey emotions, freed from its role in describing objects. In The Joy of Life, we see colors used arbitrarily to describe the artist’s feeling, not the landscape itself. Fauvism did not last long, a mere three years or so, but was crucial for the development of modern art.
Fauvism was part of a larger trend in Europe called Expressionism, which arose as artists came to believe that the fundamental purpose of art was to express their intense feelings toward the world. In Germany, artists were disillusioned by plagues, wars, economic depression, and an oppressive government. The bright colors of the Post-Impressionists and the Fauves are used in a subjective way, and shapes are further distorted to focus on emotional impact. Expressionist artist looked to Gauguin, Van Gogh, and Edvard Munch as their predecessors. Kirchner’s street is teeming with activity, yet each person is alone in the crowd. The child in the center, feet planted apart to resist the flow, may be a stand-in for the artist questioning the purpose of all this solitary coming and going.

10. Fragmented, multiple viewpoints
Shattering Form
Cubism
Fragmented, multiple viewpoints
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Picasso,
Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907
Contrasting with the Expressionist’s emphasis on color were two Parisians that sought to concentrate on the representation of form in space. Pablo Picasso, at age 26, painted Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, a pivotal work in the development of 20th century art. Following Cezanne’s advice on form, Picasso rocked the art world with this shockingly geometric version of nudes. The figure-ground begins to flatten and meld together. Picasso consciously broke traditions that had been followed since the Renaissance period. Form is fragmented like diamond facets to present multiple viewpoints, rather than the fixed position required of linear perspective. This painting is our first glimpse of the Cubism movement. These prostitutes are far from enticing with their disturbing, angular forms. Note the use of the Egyptian eye on the left and the “primitive” African masks on the right. The Africans were adept at the use of abstraction to produce startling effects long before the Europeans.
Picasso’s partner in this movement was Georges Braque. Their styles became so closely intertwined that they even ceased signing their works for a brief time. Following Cezanne’s advise, they reduced forms to the cube, cylinder and cone. They also restricted color to gray, ochre and green. As Cubism progressed they added stenciled letters, newspaper and fabric elements, creating collage. While these two artists worked hand in hand, Picasso receives most of the credit.

11. Fantasy and Futurism Insert 72 dpi visual Insert 72 dpi visual
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Umberto Boccioni,
Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, 1913.
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Giorgio de Chirico,
The Disquieting Muses, 1916
Georgio de Chirico proclaimed, “that we should rid art of all that it has contained of recognizable material.” Fantasy art entered the realms of childhood visions and dreams. No sign of nature appears in The Disquieting Muses, composed of ancient Rome, the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution, represented by the Classical columns, the statue and the factory.
By contrast, the Futurists decided that motion itself was the glory of the new 20th century. Boccioni’s Unique Forms of Continuity in Space represents a striding human figure imagined in the light of contemporary science. The sleek surfaces and wind-swept form suggests the power and possibilities of life in the modern world.

12. World War I and After Dada and Surrealism Insert 72 dpi visual
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Marcel Duchamp,
Fountain 1963 replica of 1917 original.
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Salvador Dali,
The Persistence of Memory 1931.
The dark side of science and technology was revealed when every major power in Europe was drawn into World War I beginning in The ideal of progress was shown to be utterly hollow, and ten million people lost their lives in one of the bloodiest wars in history. A group of artists waiting out the war in Zurich, in neutral Switzerland, banded together in a protest art movement called Dada. Dada is a nonsense word, which these artists felt embraced the concept behind the movement. This is an example of one of Duchamp’s “ready-mades,” a work of art that the artist has not made, but has “designated.” His intention was to find an object that had no aesthetic value, sign it, and exhibit it as art. While other artists were debating art history, he was debating the meaningless of life and art itself. Dada the ants suggests that time may be melting away, and nothing survives but the frenetic activity of the insects, who may outlive man.

13. Building New Societies
Between the Wars
Building New Societies
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Fernand Léger,
Woman and Child 1922.
The horrors of the times also brought artistic endeavors to build a better society. The De Stijl movement is epitomized by an artist we viewed earlier, Mondrian (5.29) who thought of his canvases as places where we could turn to stabilize ourselves and restore our calm. The Bauhaus and De Stijl both sought to create harmony between individual lives and modern industry and technology. The Bauhaus was a school formed in Germany in 1928 designed to eliminate divisions between painters, sculptors, architects, crafts, and designers. This “building house” sought new principles for designing with 20th century technology. They envisioned clean lines for “a return to order” and economical manufacturing made available for everyone. This is when the elements and principles became common terminology in arts education.
Leger presents a vision of harmony between life and modern industry. He uses straight lines, right angles, clear shapes, pure colors and surfaces of industrial production in his painting. Even the bodies seem to be made of manufactured parts. The woman and child seem to be content in their calm, ordered, well-lit world.

14. Between the Wars Building New Societies
Harlem Renaissance: dedicated to building a better society
through education and the arts.
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Aaron Douglas,
Aspects of Negro Life 1934.
Following World War I, one of the most vibrant movements to build a better society arose in the New York neighborhood known as Harlem. This predominantly African-American neighborhood became a magnet for artists, musicians, composers, playwrights, actors, scientists, and educators. Musicians Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, as well as writer Langston Hughes and the poet Countee Cullen are well known examples of the talent in Harlem. There is no single style, but this artist is representative of their aspirations. This is one of a series of murals for public libraries. This segment is called “From Slavery through Reconstruction.” Douglas’ simplification and stylization of forms surely derived from his studies of West African sculpture. Note the left to right progression from slavery to freedom. The dominant central figure points the way upward to freedom.

15. Chapter 21 The Modern World: 1800-1945
Movements:
Neoclassicism
Romanticism
Realism
Impressionism
Post-Impressionism
Fauvism and Expressionism Cubism
Fantasy and Futurism
Dada and Surrealism
Harlem Renaissance, De Stijl and Bauhaus
For 19th-century artists and writers, walking through the teeming streets was the equivalent of today's channel surfing—one sensation followed quickly by another, offering fleeting glimpses of thousands of lives. They found it overwhelming, thrilling, and sometimes disturbing—artists recognized it as new and termed it “modern.”
This was the world of mass production, mass advertising, and mass consumption; the world of leisure activities, shopping, entertainment, and visiting Art Museums and Galleries.
We have already seen unique qualities from diverse traditions in art. We have also seen how diverse cultures have integrated new influences. As you look at these movements, you will realize that artists build upon or react against established traditions. In this age of communication, artists begin reacting more quickly, hence the number of rapidly accumulating movements. The changes of modernity occurred everywhere in Europe, but the debates they provoked played out most dramatically in France, especially in Paris, and this brief survey largely focuses there.