Early 20th Century: the Avant-gardes

Why the name Avant-

garde?

Fauvism: Matisse

Cubism: Picasso and

Braque

Nonobjective painting:

Mondrian

Abstract sculpture:

Brancusi

Dada: Duchamp

From Paris to New

York: from Surrealism

to Abstract

Expressionism (Dali

and Pollock)

The term “Avant-garde” is taken from

the French which originally applied to

the foremost part of an army.

However, since the early 20th century

it has been used to describe

contemporary pioneers or innovators

in any of the arts

and also signifies work which

challenges accepted standardsDuchamp, Fountain, 1917

British trenches, Belgium, 1917

Matisse, the Dance, 1909-10, oil on canvas, 8’5”x12’8”

a group of painters

who worked in Paris

exploring the

liberation of color

The leader of this

group was Matisse

Fauvism:

In his Dance, Matisse

adopts a traditional

theme:

the dance as symbol of

harmony among

humans

But he gives an un-

mistakably 20th century

interpretation to it

A. Lorenzetti, The Effects of Good

Government: detail of the dance,

Siena, 1338 -1339, fresco

Matisse, the Dance, 1909-10, oil on canvas, 8’5”x12’8”

1) broad areas of uniform color

2) flowing rhythms of lines

3) patterned, FLAT composition that

adheres to the picture plane

4) Color is exalted for it sensuous

EXPRESSION alone, Independent of

descriptive reality

4 main features:

Matisse avoided using traditional modeling

to suggest three-dimensionality

He limited the colors to four, setting the warm

orange hue of the figures and their outlines

against two cold hues (blue and green)

the majestic size contributes to the powerful

effect of its bright colors and simplified forms

The Dance was created for a Russian patron,

Sergei Shchukin, who was a keen on dance

and music

More than the aspect of people dancing, Matisse

represents here the power and shared feeling

of dance and music

After Van Gogh, it was evident that the

aim of a painter was NOT to copy

nature

After the invention

and diffusion of

photography,

painting had no

longer to fulfill the

human need to

record/copy reality

H. Matisse,

Tangier: The

Town and the

Bay,

photograph

Spanish artist Pablo

Picasso made an even

more radical step

This monumental

painting is the

beginning of Cubism

(the most influential art

movement of the 20th

century)

Subject: the scene is a

brothel, with 5

prostitutes

cubismPicasso, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon,

1907, oil on canvas, MoMA

Picasso attacks the

Western tradition

of

1) A painting as a

window: no

perspective

(multiple

viewpoints), he

looks at “other”

traditions (Egypt,

African art)

2) Art as the realm of

beauty: clash of

colors, lines and

shapes

In the following years,

Picasso further

experimented this style

with the French painter

Georges Braque

The term “Cubism” was

first used in a 1908

review of an exhibition

of Braque’s painting

because he:

“despises form, reduces

everything to cubes”

Violin and Palette - main

elements of mature

cubism:

1)The image represent a

violin seen from

several simultaneous

viewpoints

Braque, Violin and Palette,

oil on canvas, 1909,

Guggenheim, New York

we understand the violin

walking around it: seeing

it from many

perspectives, in different

moments

we must remember that in

1895 the Lumiere brothers

had opened the first

public movie theater

2) It is not a particular

violin, it rather suggests the

notion of a violin:

Those are the shapes,

forms, and colors that

define a violin as a distinct

object

it’s important to notice that

while Cubism is a

PROCESS OF

ABSTRACTION, cubist

works never became

NONOBJECTIVE

NONOBJECTIVE (or

NONREPRESENTATIONAL)

: when the forms in a work of

art do not resemble forms in

the visual world

The purest and most

extreme research in non-

objective painting is that of

the Dutch painter Piet

Mondrian

Mondrian totally renounced

the world of physical

appearances

limiting himself to:

-LINES and RECTANGLES

- PRIMARY COLORS,

BLACK AND WHITE

P. Mondrian, Composition (Blue, Red, and

Yellow), 1930

Nonobjective art

Total FLATNESS

Scholars have seen in Mondrian the

most radical consequence of that

process started with

Impressionism

Within Mondrian’s career itself the

process of abstraction was a long-

term achievement (4 main stages):

P. Mondrian, The Red Tree.

1908

1st stage: Powerful

colors and emotional

energy of curvilinear

style

P. Mondrian, The Grey Tree. 1912

2nd stage: Less

representational, reduction of

colors to black, white, and grey

(Direct influence of cubism)

P. Mondrian, The Apple Tree. 1912

P. Mondrian, Composition No. 10, 1915

3rd stage: Plus and

Minus compositions,

reality is reduced to

vertical and

horizontal lines,

only black and white

since 1919 M. began to build his

paintings exclusively of horizontal

and vertical lines,

he destroyed every hierarchy:

- NO opposition FIGURE -

GROUND existing since the origins

of art

- NO CENTER,

- NO EQUILIBRIUM

4th stage:

P. Mondrian, Composition (Blue, Red, and

Yellow), 1930

The first great abstract sculptor

was the Rumanian Constantin

Brancusi, who moved to Paris in

1904

Here, he developed a sculpture

based on organic abstraction (as

opposed to the geometric

nonobjectivity of Mondrian)

Inspired by diverse tradition:

especially the geometric

simplification of African

sculpture and of Romanian folk

carving

Brancusi, Bird in Space, c. 1924, polished bronze,

height 4’ 2”

Abstract sculpture:

B. considered his works as the

essence of things

Contrary to Mondrian he negated

that his art was abstract:

“that which they call abstract is

the most realist,

because what is real is not the

exterior form

but THE IDEA, THE ESSENCE OF

THINGS”

In Bird in Space, B. does not

represent a flying bird

He rather gives shape to the idea of

lightness and graceful energy

by means of simplified volumes,

verticality and the smooth mirror-

like texture

Brancusi, Bird in Space, c. 1924, polished bronze,

height 4’ 2”

What’s the difference

between this

..and these?

dada

Marcel Duchamp was an artist

that still seems shocking to us

today,

Although his works were done

almost 100 years ago

during WWI he was close to the

DADA movement

Duchamp,

Fountain,

Ready-

made,

1917

In this context he produced his

Ready-made works:

Ready made: On the pedestals

in the gallery where we expect

to find sculpture

Duchamp placed common

objects used in everyday life

Like this upended porcelain

urinal, which he titled Fountain

By doing so he conferred an

artistic dignity on a found object

just designating it a work of

art

If this seems absurd to you (as

it did to critics and the public of

early 20th century)

then you are beginning to

understand the function of

these objects as works of art

Similarly to Manet,

D.’s idea was to

counter the

accepted values of

art

by dissolving the

aesthetic

presuppositions

of the viewer:

Everything that was commonly

considered characteristic of a

good piece of art is here

negated:

1) The quality of the object and

the craft of the artist as an

highly sophisticated artisan

(ON THE CONTRARY, FOR D.,

ART is ABOUT MEANINGS!)

2) The piece of art as a rare,

unique, and therefore

precious work, to be

venerated

WHILE THIS IS AN

INDUSTRIAL, MASS-

PRODUCED OBJECT,

RELATED TO

BIOLOGICAL NEEDS

RATHER THAN

“CULTURAL” EDIFICATION

3) The artwork as something

beautiful, visually

pleasant, aesthetically

elevated

THE SHAPE OF THIS

OBJECT IS PURELY

FUNCTIONAL, WITH A

TOTAL ABSENCE OF

GOOD OR BAD TASTE

Piero Manzoni,

Artist’s Shit, 1961

Duchamp originated a whole

tendency

of art as a permanent provocation

How New York Stole the Idea of

Modern Art

One of the first things done

by Hitler when he went

into power in 1933

Was to close the

Bauhaus, the most

important school of art and

architecture of Europe

He also organized a

traveling exhibition entitled

Degenerate Art

here the European

Avant-gardes were

shown as

the symptoms of an ill

society

led by Jews and

Internationalism

As a result, some of the

most important European

artists and architects

moved to New York

Where modern art was

welcomed as the

demonstration of

individual freedom

The group with the main

impact was that of the

Surrealists

Surrealist exhibition at Peggy

Guggenheim’s Art of This Century,

New York, 1942

Dali, The persistence of Memory.

1931. Oil on Canvas, 9 1/2 x 13"

(21.1 x 33 cm). The Museum of

Modern Art

Most popular figure, the

Spanish Dali

He painted in a

painstakingly precise

and traditional style

This traditionalism

contrasted with the

incongruity of what was

depicted

- Break the boundaries

between the realm of

dreams and that of

reality

(disquieting and

incongruous mental

associations)

- Art as representation of

the subconscious

Pollock, No. 30, 1950, Met Pollock developed the surrealist idea

of showing the subconscious to its

extreme

The painting is no longer the result

of a carefully planned, intellectual

work

But rather the direct record of life

(ACTION PAINTING)

Abstract Expressionism

The traditional way of

easel painting is radically

destroyed

And substituted by the

technique of “drip

painting”

The artist worked with the

canvas flat on the floor,

constantly moving all

around it while applying

the paint and working

from all four sides

Pollock, No. 30, 1950, MetThere's no central point of focus,

no hierarchy of elements in this

composition

in which every bit of the surface

is equally significant