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Early Expressionism
Munch: The Mind Cracking
Edvard Munch (12 December 1863 – 23 January 1944) was a Norwegian Symbolist painter,
printmaker and an important forerunner of expressionistic art. His best-known composition, The Scream, is
part of a series , in which Munch explored the themes of life, love, fear, death, and melancholy. Many of
his paintings, including The Scream, have universal appeal in addition to their highly personal meaning.
Munch’s art was highly personalized and he did little teaching. His ―private‖ symbolism was far more
personal than that of other Symbolist painters. Nonetheless, Munch was highly influential. He was an
important inspiration particularly for German expressionist movement. His philosophy was:
―I do not believe in the art which is not the compulsive result of Man’s urge to open his heart.‖
↓
Expressionists followed his philosophy
From Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works, Munch learned Paris and spent some time there, but his
most fertile period was between 1892- and 1908 when he was in Berlin. He was reactionary against
conventional behaviour.
MOOD: Munch was always an outsider. He was always in a melancholic mood. He called his paintings as
his ―children.‖
Childhood: He had a traumatic childhood: his mother and eldest sister died of consumption, when
he was young. His fanatically religious father raised Munch. Even as an adult, Munch was so afraid
of his father that he wanted his first nude painting to be covered by the exhibition organizers, so that
his father could not see it.
He was treated for depression at a sanatorium when he was young. There he realized that his
psychological problems were a catalyst for his art.
SPECIALITY: Munch was specialized in portraying extreme emotions, like jealousy, sexual desire, and
loneliness.
INFLUENCES: Early work: Impressionist, Post-Impressionist works of France and Art Nouveau
STYLE: Early work: violent brushstrokes, tormented themes; late work: optimistic themes, less moving
brushstrokes
Munch was a forerunner of expressionism, a style that portrayed emotions through distortiing form and
color.
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The Scream. 1893. Oil, tempera, and pastel on cardboard. Nasjonalgalleriet, Oslo.
“The Scream” an icon of
contemporary life:
• Depicts an agonized figure against
a blood red sky.• Munch: “above the blue back fjord
hung the clouds red as blood, red
as tongues of fire.”
• Represents the intolarable fear of
losing one’s mind.
• Every line in the painting heaves
with agitation, setting up the
turbulent of rythms with no relief for
the eye: hypnosis of the spectator
• Today, it is a cliché for high anxiety,
but at the time it was exhibited, it
caused such an disturbance, so that
the exhibition was closed.
Madonna Although it is a highly unusual representation,
nevertheless, this painting is of Mary, the mother of
Jesus.
Until the 20th century Mary was usually represented in
high art as a chaste, mature woman.
True to the Norwegian cultural beliefs and way of life,
the painting is a strong dose of realism.
Ms. Sigrun Rafter, an art historian at the Oslo National
Gallery suggests that: Munch intended to represent
Mary in the life-making act of intercourse, with the
sanctity and sensuality of the union captured by
Munch.
The usual golden halo of Mary has been replaced with a
red halo symbolizing the love and pain duality.
The viewers viewpoint is that of the man with her.
Even in this unusual pose, she embodies some of the
key elements of canonical representations of the Virgin:
She has a quietness and a calm confidence about her.
Her eyes are closed, expressing modesty, but she is
simultaneously lit from above;
Her body is seen, in fact, twisting toward the light so as to
catch more of it, even while she does not face it with her
eyes.
These elements suggest aspects of conventional
representations of the Annunciation.
The Annunciation is, in Christianity, the revelation to Mary, the
mother of Jesus by the angel Gabriel that she would conceive a child
to be born the Son of God.
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Puberty, 1895; Oil on canvas, 150 x 110 cm; Nasjonalgalleriet
(National Gallery), Oslo
The Dance of Life, 1899-1900 ; Oil on canvas; National Gallery, Oslo
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Self Portrait: Between Clock and Bed,1940-42; Oil on canvas, 149.5 x 120.5 cm; Munch Museum, Oslo
After 1910, Munch returned to Norway, where he lived and painted until his death. In his later paintings Munch showed more interest in nature, and his work became more colorful and less pessimistic.
The Twentieth Century:
MODERN ART
Twentieth century art provided the
sharpest break with the past in the
whole evolution of Western Art.
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• Twentieth century art took to an extreme what Courbet
and Manet began in the 19th century:
portraying contemporary life rather than
historical events.
• It declared all subjects as fair.
• It liberated form from traditional rules: as in Cubism.
• It freed color from accurately representing an object:
as in Fauvism .
• Modern artists confronted convention, tradition.
• They listened to Gauguin’s demand “ a breaking of all
the old windows, even if we cut our fingers on the
glass.”
• At the core of this philosophy of rejecting the past called
Modernism, was a relentless quest for radical freedom of
expression.
• Released from the need to please a patron, the artist
stressed private concerns, experiences and imagination
as the sole source of art.
• Art gradually moved away from any pretense of
rendering nature toward pure abstraction, where form,
line and color dominate.
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PARIS and NEW YORK:
THE INSPIRATIONS OF MODERN ART• During the first half of the century, the school of Paris
reigned supreme. Whether or not artists of a particular trend
live in Paris, most movements emanated from France.
• Until World War II, the City of Light shined as the brightest
inspiration of modern art.
• Fauvism, Cubism, and Surrealism originated there.
• In the 1950s, the New York School of Abstract
Expressionism dethroned the School of Paris.
• The forefront of innovation shifted for the first time to the
United States, where Action painter jackson Pollock, as his
colleague Willem de Kooning said, “busted our idea of
picture all to hell.”
WORLD HISTORY ART HISTORY ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY
Wrights flight airplane 1903 Machintosh builds Hill HOuse
Einstein announces relativity theory 1905 First Fauve exhibit, Die Brücke founded
Earthquake shakes San Francisco 1906 Gaudi starts building Casa Mila
1907 Brancusi carves first abstract sculpture
1908 Picasso and Braque found Cubism
1908-13 Ash Can painters introduced realism Wright invents Prairie House
1910 Kandinsky paints first abstract canvas
1911 Der Blaue Reiter formed
Henry Ford develops assembly line 1913 Armory Show shakes up American art
World War I declared 1914
1916 Dada begins
Lenin leads Russian revolution 1917 De Stijl founded
1918 Bauhaus formed
1920s Mexican muralists active
U.S. Women win vote 1920 Soviets suppress Constructivism
Hitler writes Mein Kampf 1924 Surrealists issue manifesto Gropius builds Bauhaus in Dessau
Lindbergh flies solo across Atlantic 1927 Buckminister Fuller designs Dymaxian House
Fleming discovers penicillin 1928
Stock Market crashes 1929 Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoy sets style for Modernism
1930s American scene painters popular, Social Realists paint political art Empire State Building opens
FDR becomes President 1933
Commercial television begins 1939
U.S: enters WWII 1941
First digital computer developed 1944 Pope’s National Gallery is last major Classical
building in U.S.
Hiroshima hit with atom bomb 1945 Dubuffet coins term “L’Art Brut”
Mahatma Gandhi assasinated, Israel founded 1948
People’s Republic of China founded 1949
Oral Contraceptive invented 1950 Abstract expressionism recognized
1952 Harold Rosenberg coins term “Action Painting”
DNA structure discovered, Mt. Everest scaled 1953
Supreme Court outlaws segregation 1954
Salk invents polio vaccine 1955
Elvis sings rock’n roll 1956 Wright builds Guggenheim
Soviets launch Sputnik 1957
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Fauvism (1900-1910)• Les Fauves (French for The Wild Beasts) were a short-lived and loose grouping of early 20th century
Modern artists whose works emphasized painterly qualities and strong color over the
representational or realistic values retained by Impressionism.
• While Fauvism as a style began around 1900 and continued beyond 1910, the movement as such lasted
only three years, 1905–1907, and had three exhibitions.
• The leaders of the movement were Henri Matisse and André Derain.
CHARACTERISTICS: The paintings of the Fauves were characterized by:
– seemingly wild brush work
– and harsh colors,
– a high degree of simplification and abstraction in their subject matter .
INFLUENCES: Fauvism can be classified as:
– an extreme development of Van Gogh's Post-Impressionism fused with the pointillism of Seurat and
– other Neo-Impressionist painters, in particular Paul Signac.
– Other key influences were Paul Cezanne and Paul Gauguin, whose employment of areas of saturated color—
notably in paintings from Tahiti—strongly influenced Derain's work at Collioure in 1905.
In 1888, Gauguin had said to Paul Sérusier.:
“ How do you see these trees? They are yellow. So, put in yellow; this shadow, rather blue, paint
it with pure ultramarine; these red leaves? Put in vermilion. ” → Fauvism can also be seen
as a mode of Expressionism.
ORIGINS OF FAUVISM:
Gustave Moreau was the movement's inspirational teacher; a controversial professor at the École des Beaux-
Arts in Paris and a Symbolist painter, he taught Matisse, Marquet, Manguin, Rouault and Camoin during the
1890s, and was viewed by critics as the group's philosophical leader until Matisse was recognized as such in
1904.Moreau's broad-mindedness, originality and affirmation of the expressive potency of pure color
was inspirational for his students. Matisse said of him, "He did not set us on the right roads, but off the roads.
He disturbed our complacency.‖ This source of empathy was taken away with Moreau's death in 1898, but the
artists discovered other catalysts for their development.
In 1896, Matisse, then an unknown art student, visited the artist John Peter Russell on the island of Belle Île
off Brittany. Russell was an Impressionist painter; Matisse had never previously seen an Impressionist work
directly, and was so shocked at the style that he left after ten days, saying, "I couldn't stand it any more." The
next year he returned as Russell's student and abandoned his earth-colored palette for bright Impressionist
colors, later stating, "Russell was my teacher, and Russell explained color theory to me." Russell had been a
close friend of Vincent van Gogh and gave Matisse a Van Gogh drawing.
In 1901, Maurice de Vlaminck encountered the work of Van Gogh for the first time at an exhibition,
declaring soon after that he loved Van Gogh more than his own father; he started to work by squeezing paint
directly onto the canvas from the tube.
In parallel with the artists' discovery of contemporary avant-garde art came an appreciation of pre-
Renaissance French art, which was shown in a 1904 exhibition, French Primitives. Another aesthetic feeding
into their work was African sculpture, which Vlaminck, Derain and Matisse were early collectors of.
Many of the Fauve characteristics first cohered in Matisse's painting, Luxe, Calme et Volupté ("Luxury,
Calm and Pleasure"), which he painted in the summer of 1904, whilst in Saint-Tropez with Paul Signac and
Henri-Edmond Cross.
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Henri Matisse, Luxe, Calme et Volupté, 1904, Musée National d'Art Moderne.
Henri Matisse (31 December 1869 – 3 November 1954) was a French artist, known for his use of color and his fluid,
brilliant and original draughtsmanship. He was a Master draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but excelled primarily as a
painter. Matisse is regarded, with Picasso, as the greatest artist of the 20th century. Although he was initially labeled as a Fauve (wild
beast), by the 1920s, he was increasingly hailed as an upholder of the classical tradition in French painting. His mastery of the
expressive language of color and drawing, displayed in a body of work spanning over a half-century, won him recognition as a
leading figure in modern art.
Luxe, Calme et Volupté is an
oil painting by Henri Matisse
from 1904.
Its title comes from the poem
L'Invitation au voyage, from
Charles Baudelaire's volume
Les Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers
of Evil):
Là, tout n'est qu'ordre et beauté,
Luxe, calme et volupté.
↓
There all is order and beauty,
Luxury, peace, and pleasure.
Matisse's early work, which he began exhibiting in 1895, was informed by the dry academic manner, particularly evident in his drawing. Discovering manifold artistic movements that coexisted or succeeded one another on the dynamic Parisian artistic scene, such as Neo-Classicism, Realism, Impressionism, and Neo-Impressionism, he began to experiment with a diversity of styles, employing new kinds of brushwork, light, and composition to create his own pictorial language.
In its palette and technique, Matisse's early
work showed the influence of:
Édouard Manet (1832–1883) and
Paul Cézanne (1839–1906).
In the summer of 1904, while visiting his artist
friend Paul Signac at Saint-Tropez, Matisse
discovered the bright light of southern France,
and this discovery led him change his color
selection to a much brighter palette.
He also was exposed, through Signac, to a
Pointillist technique of small color dots
(points) in complementary colors, perfected
in the 1880s by Georges Seurat (1859–
1891).
In the summer of 1906, Matisse and André
Derain (1880–1954) made a vacation to
Collioure, a seaport on the Mediterranean
coast, and there, Matisse created brilliantly
colored canvases structured by color
applied in a variety of brushwork, ranging
from thick impasto to flat areas of pure
pigment, sometimes accompanied by a
sinuous, arabesque-like line.A Glimpse of Notre-Dame in the Late Afternoon,
1902.Oil on paper mounted on canvas, 72,5 x 54,5 cm,
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York
FAUVISM TO COME...
Its somber coloration is typical of
Matisse's works executed between
the end of 1901 and the end of
1903, a period of personal
difficulties for the artist. This
episode has been called Matisse's
Dark Period.
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The Open Window also known as Open Window, Collioure, is a painting by Henri Matisse from 1905, oil on canvas, former collection of Mr. and Mrs. John Hay Whitney, New York, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.
An example of the Fauvist style of painting that Matisse became famous for; and for which he was a leader, roughly between the years 1900-1909.
The theme of an open window in Matisse's work is a recurring theme throughout his long career.
In Open Window, Collioure, 1905, he painted the view out the window of his apartment in Collioure, on the Southern coast of France.
We see sailboats on the water, from Matisse's hotel window out onto the harbor of Collioure.
He used the theme of the open window in Paris and especially during the years in Nice and Etretat, and in his final years, particularly during the late 1940s.
Open Window, Collioure, 1905, Oil on Canvas, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.
Green Stripe (Madame Matisse) 1905; Oil and tempera on canvas, 40.5 x 32.5 cm;
Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Copenhagen
Green Stripe (Madame Matisse), 1905 In his green stripe portrait of his wife, he has used
color alone to describe the image.
Her oval face is bisected with a slash of green and her coiffure, purpled and top-knotted, juts against a frame of three jostling colors.
Her right side repeats the vividness of the intrusive green; on her left, the mauve and orange echo the colors of her dress.
This is Matisse's version of the dress, his creative essay in harmony.
Matisse painted this unusual portrait of his wife in 1905.
The green stripe down the center of Amélie Matisse's face acts as an artificial shadow line and divides the face in the conventional portraiture style, with a light and a dark side, Matisse divides the face chromatically, with a cool and warm side.
The natural light is translated directly into colors and the highly visible brush strokes add to the sense of artistic drama.
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Woman with a Hat (La femme au chapeau) is a
painting by Henri Matisse from 1905.
It is believed that the woman in the painting was
Matisse's wife, Amelie.
It was exhibited with the work of other artists, now
known as "Fauves" at the 1905 Salon d'Automne.
Critic Louis Vauxcelles described the work with the
phrase :
"Donatello au milieu des fauves!" (Donatello
among the wild beasts), referring to a
Renaissance-type sculpture that shared the
room with them.
The pictures gained considerable condemnation, such
as "A pot of paint has been flung in the face of the
public" from the critic Camille Mauclair, but also some
favorable attention.
The painting that was singled out for attacks was
Matisse's Woman with a Hat:
This had a very positive effect on Matisse, who
was suffering demoralization from the bad
reception of his work.
Woman with a Hat, 1905. Oil on Canvas, 79.4x 59.7 cm, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Les toits de Collioure, 1905, Oil on Canvas, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Russia
Les toits de Collioure is a painting by Henri Matisse from 1905. It is an example
of the Pointillist style that Matisse employed during his early period of Fauvism.
The painting is in the collection of The Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Russia.
Henri Matisse, Le bonheur de vivre, 1905-6,Oil on Canvas, 175 x 241 cm,
Barnes Foundation, Merion, PA
Le bonheur de vivre (The joy of Life),
is a painting by Henri Matisse. In the
central background of the piece is a
group of figures that is similar to the
group depicted in his painting The
Dance (second version).
―This painting was Matisse's own
response to the hostility his work had
met with in the Salon d'Automne of
1905, a response that entrenched his
art even more deeply in the aesthetic
principles that had governed his
Fauvist paintings which had caused a
furor and which did so on a far grander
scale, too.‖
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Blue Nude II, 1952, gouache découpée, Pompidou Centre, Paris
They represent female nudes either seated
or standing, and are among Matisse's final
works in any medium. During the early to
mid-1940s Matisse was in poor health.
Eventually by 1950 he stopped painting in
favor of his paper cutouts. The Blue Nudes,
are a major series' of Matisse's final body of
works known as the cutouts. They are
widely viewed as an important and
innovative group of Matisse's collages.
Blue Nude I. (Souvenir de Biskra). 1907. Oil on canvas. Baltimore Museum of Art,
Baltimore, MD, USA.
Paintings such as Woman with a Hat (San Francisco Museum of Modern
Art), when exhibited at the 1905 Salon d'Automne in Paris, gave rise to the
first of the avant-garde movements (fall 1905–7), named "Fauvism― by a
contemporary art critic, referring to its use of arbitrary combinations
of bright colors and energetic brushwork to structure the
composition.
During his brief Fauvist period, Matisse produced a significant number of remarkable canvases, such as the
portrait of Madame Matisse, called The Green Line (1905; Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen); Bonheur
de vivre (1905–6; Barnes Collection, Merion, Pa.); Marguerite Reading (1905–6; MoMA, New York); two
versions of The Young Sailor (1906), the second of which is at the Metropolitan Museum ; Blue Nude:
Memory of Biskra (1907; Baltimore Museum of Art); and two versions of Le Luxe (1907), among others.
Madras Rouge, 1907. 99.4 x 80.5 cm. Oil on canvas. In the collection of the Barnes Foundation
Subsequently, Matisse's career can be
divided into several periods that changed
stylistically, but his underlying aim always
remained the same: to discover "the
essential character of things" and to
produce an art "of balance, purity, and
serenity," as he himself put it in his "Notes
of a Painter" in 1908.
The years 1908–13 were focused on art
and decoration, producing several large
canvases such as:
Reclining Odalisque;
two important mural-size
commissions, Dance and Music
(1909–10);
a trio of large studio interiors,
exemplified by The Red Studio (1911;
MoMA, New York); and
a group of spectacularly colored
Moroccan pictures.
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The Dance (second version), 1910 Oil on Canvas, 260 x 391 cm, Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia
The painting shows five dancing figures, painted in a strong red, set against a very simplified green landscape and
deep blue sky. It reflects Matisse's incipient fascination with primitive art, and uses a classic Fauvist color palette: the
intense warm colors against the cool blue-green background and the rhythmical succession of dancing nudes convey
the feelings of emotional liberation and hedonism. The painting is often associated with the "Dance of the Young Girls"
from Igor Stravinsky's famous musical work The Rite of Spring.
The Dance (second version) is commonly recognized as "a key point of (Matisse's) career and in the development of
modern painting".
The Dessert: Harmony in Red is a painting by French artist Henri
Matisse, from 1908. It is considered by some critics to be
Matisse's masterpiece. It is an example of Impressionism's lack
of a central focal point.The painting was ordered as
"Harmony in Blue," but Matisse was dissatisfied with the result,
and so he painted it over with his preferred red.
It is in the permanent collection of the Hermitage Museum, but currently (as of February 2008)
on temporary display in the Royal Academy, London, England.
Matisse also limits his perspective in this work. He makes elisions in the line around the table, frames the chair, the window, and the little house in an innovative manner by cutting them off, and encloses two of the planes, the green and the blue in a window.
The Dessert: Harmony in Red, 1908, Oil on Canvas, 180 x 220 cm, Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg
MATISSE AND PICASSO:Around 1904 he met Pablo Picasso, who was 12 years younger than him. The two
became life-long friends as well as rivals and are often compared; one key difference between them is that Matisse drew and painted from nature, while Picasso was
much more inclined to work from imagination. The subjects painted
most frequently by both artists were women and still life, with Matisse more likely to place his figures in fully realized interiors.
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The Conversation, c.1911, Oil on Canvas, 177 x 217 cm; The Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Russia
• Matisse painted The Conversation at a time when he had abandoned the open, spontaneous brushwork of his Fauve period in favor of a flatter and more decorative style.
• The painting is large (69 5/8 in. x 85 3/8 in., or 177 cm x 217 cm), and shows Matisse in profile, standing at the left in striped pajamas, while his wife, Amélie, sits at the left.
• The flatly painted blue wall behind them is relieved by a window opening onto a garden landscape.
• The pajamas worn by Matisse were fashionable as leisure wear in early 20th century France.
• They had recently been introduced to Europe from India, and Matisse habitually thereafter wore pajamas as his studio working clothes.
Art historian Hilary Spurling has described this "stern encounter" as "portray[ing] the profound underlying shape or mechanism of a relationship laid down for both parties on the day, soon after they first met in 1897, when Matisse warned his future wife that,dearly as he loved her, he would always love painting more."
Le Rifain assis, 1912-13, Oil on Canvas, 200 x 160 cm. Barnes Foundation, Merion, PA
The Yellow Curtain, 1915, Oil on Canvas, 146 X 97 cm, Museum of Modern Art New York City
These were followed by four years (1913–17) of experimentation and discourse with the Cubism of Pablo Picasso and Juan Gris. The resulting compositions were much more austere, almost geometrically structured and at times close to abstraction, as shown in the View of Notre-Dame (1914; MoMA, New York), the Yellow Curtain (1915; private collection), The Piano Lesson (1916; MoMA, New York), Bathers by a River (1916; Art Institute, Chicago), and a group of portraits in which a seated figure or the sitter's head is positioned against a thinly brushed, neutral background. Yet he also created meticulously drawn portraits such as the famous Plumed Hat (1919; MoMA, New York).
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Andre Derain (1880-1954) Derain was one of the founding fathers of fauvism, and one of its wildest practitioners.
Influenced by van Gogh and working with Vlaminck in 1904 he felt that the impressionists had disintegrated their work into dots
excessively. Instead, he chose to use wide, choppy brush strokes of pure color. In 1905, he worked with Matisse to bring the
technique to maturity.
1905Boats
Derain and Matisse
worked together through
the summer of 1905 in the
Mediterranean village of
Collioure and later that
year displayed their highly
innovative paintings at the
Salon d'Automne. The
vivid, unnatural colors led
the critic Louis Vauxcelles
to derisively dub their
works as les Fauves, or
"the wild beasts", marking
the start of the Fauvist
movement.
Boats at Collioure's Harbor Collioure
Boats at Collioure Suburb of Collioure
1905, Paintings of Collioure
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St. Paul's Cathedral from the Thames, 1906 Blackfriars Bridge, 1906
In March 1906, the noted art dealer Ambroise Vollard sent Derain to London to compose a series of paintings
with the city as subject. In 30 paintings (29 of which are still extant), Derain put forth a portrait of London that
was radically different from anything done by previous painters of the city such as Whistler or Monet. With
bold colors and compositions, Derain painted multiple pictures of the Thames and Tower Bridge. These London
paintings remain among his most popular work.
The Houses of Parliament, 1906
André Derain was a
quintessential Fauve. He
reduced his brushstrokes to
Morse Code: dots and
dashes of burning primary
colors, exploding, he said,
like, “charges of dynamite.”
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The Thames, 1906
Charing Cross Bridge, London, 1906
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The Dancer, 1906
Derain pioneered strong color
as an expressive end in itself.
His bold, directional
brushstrokes eliminated lines
and the distinction between
light and shade.
For the first two decades of the
twentieth century, Derain was at the
avant-garde hub, a creator Fauvism,
and an early Cubist. He later turned
into old Masters for inspiration and his
work became dry and academic.
Revision: Fauvism
An early-20th-century movement in painting begun
by a group of French artists and marked by the use
of bold, often distorted forms and vivid colors.
Movement in French painting from c. 1898 to 1906
characterized by a violence of colors, often applied
unmixed from commercially produced tubes of paint
in broad flat areas, by a spontaneity and even
roughness of execution and by a bold sense of
surface design. It was the first of a succession of
avant-garde movements in 20th-century art and was
influential on near-contemporary and later trends
such as Expressionism, Orphism and the
development of abstract art.
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Picasso (1881-1973) The King of Modern Art
• For half a century, Picasso led the forces of artistic innovation, shocking the world
by introducing a new style, an then moving on as soon as his unorthodoxy became
accepted.
• His most significant contribution, aided by Braque, was inventing Cubism, the major
revolution of twentieth century art.
• Until the age of 91, Picasso remained vital and versatile.
• Although Picasso worked in a number of distinctive styles, his art was always
autobiographical. ―The paintings,‖ he said, ―are the pages of my diary.‖
• Women were his chief sources of information, so a chronolocigal overview of his
paintings reveal the features of his lovelife.
Blue Period (1901-1904)
• Picasso’s first original style grew out of his down-and-out years as
an impoverished artist.
• The Blue Period of 1901-04 is socalled because of the cool blue
shades Picasso used.
• Frequently he depicted solitary figures set against almost empty
backgrounds, the blue palette imparting a mood of melancholy and
desolation to images that suggest unhappiness and dejection,
poverty, despondency, and despair. Most prevalent among his
subjects were the old, the destitute, the blind, the homeless, and
the otherwise underprivileged outcasts of society.
The Old GuitaristPablo Picasso
Oil On Panel, 1903
Brooding Woman (recto), Three Children (verso), 1904Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881-1973)Watercolor on paper, (27 x 36.8 cm), MoMA.
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The Blind Man's Meal, 1903Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881–1973)Oil on canvas (95.3 x 94.6 cm)
In a letter, preserved in the Barnes
Collection in Merion, Pennsylvania,
Picasso gives a very precise description
of the composition:
"I am painting a blind man at the table.
He holds some bread in his left hand and
gropes with his right hand for a jug of
wine."
An empty bowl and a white napkin
complete the still life on the table.
The man's slightly contorted figure, long
thin El Greco–like hands, unadorned
surroundings, and his blindness make his
disenfranchised condition all the more
poignant.
The highlights on his face and neck,
hands, bread, and napkin put the figure in
relief against the austere background.
The painting is not merely a portrait of a
blind man; it is also Picasso's
commentary on human suffering in
general.
The meager meal of bread and wine
invites references to the figure of Christ
and the principal dogma of Catholic faith,
whereby bread and wine represent
Christ's body and blood, sacramental
associations that Picasso as a Spaniard
would have known.
Additionally, the work elicits affinities to
Picasso's own situation at the time, when,
impoverished and depressed, he closely
identified with the unfortunates of society.
The Blind Man's Meal, painted in
Barcelona in the autumn of 1903,
summarizes the stylistic characteristics
of Picasso's Blue Period:
rigorous drawing,
simple hieratic compositions
and forms,
and of course, a blue tonality.
The composition presents a forlorn
figure seated at a frugal repast
Rose Period (1905-1906)• The Rose Period signifies the time when the style of Pablo Picasso's painting used cheerful orange
and pink colors in contrast to the cool, somber tones of the previous Blue Period.
• It lasted from 1904 to 1906.
• Picasso was happy in his relationship with Fernande Olivier whom he had met in 1904 and this has
been suggested as one of the possible reasons he changed his style of painting.
• Harlequins, circus performers and clowns appear frequently in the Rose Period and will populate
Picasso's paintings at various stages through the rest of his long career. The harlequin, a comedic
character usually depicted in checkered patterned clothing, became a personal symbol for Picasso.
• The Rose Period has been considered French influenced, while the Blue Period more Spanish
influenced, although both styles emerged while Picasso was living in Paris.
Picasso's highest selling painting, Garçon à la pipe (Boy with a pipe) was painted during the Rose Period. Other Rose Period works include: Woman in a Chemise (Madeleine) (1904-05), Lady with a Fan (1905), Two Youths (1905), Harlequin Family (1905), Harlequin's Family With an Ape (1905), La famille de saltimbanques (1905), Boy with a Dog (1905), Nude Boy (1906), and The Girl with a Goat (1906).
Pablo Picasso, Garçon à la pipe, (Boy with a Pipe), 1905, Rose Period
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At the Lapin Agile, 1905Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881–1973)
Oil on canvas (99.1 x 100.3 cm)
The destitute outcasts featured in
Picasso's Blue Period gave way, in
1905, to circus performers and
harlequins in more colorful settings.
At the Lapin Agile is a canvas nearly
square and broadly painted. It was
originally conceived to decorate a bar in
Montmartre. We depict the interior of
that bar here.
Since the painting would be seen across
a crowded and smoky room, Picasso's
composition was of posterlike simplicity.
He aligned glasses and figures—hatted
and shown from full-face to profile
view—along severe diagonals, ending
with a seated guitarist, Frédéric (Frédé)
Gérard, the café's owner.
Standing at the counter is Picasso
himself, dressed as the melancholy and
gaunt Harlequin in a vivid diamond-
patterned shirt and three-cornered hat.
Behind him, in profile with heavy
makeup and pouty lips, leans Germaine
Pichot, a model and notorious femme
fatale, wearing a gaudy orange dress,
bead choker, boa, and feathered hat.
In 1901, unrequited love for Germaine
had driven Picasso's close friend Carlos
Casagemas to suicide, a melodrama
that continued to haunt Picasso several
years later.
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon,
1907Oil on canvas; 243.8 x 233.7 cm,
The Museum of Modern Art, New
York
Although still a transitional work, this
large painting may be called the first
Cubist picture. Its combined
influences are manifold, ranging
from El Greco, the bathers of
Cézanne, and Iberian and African art
that Picasso had recently seen at
the ethnographic museum in Paris.
Picasso made innumerable
preparatory studies for this work.
The title, given years later by a
friend of Picasso, is an ironic
reference to a cabaret or maison
publique on the Carrer d'Avinyó
(Avignon Street) in Barcelona. The
dynamic power of this work, its
expressionistic violence and the
barbaric intensity of the five women,
especially the two on the right, was
unsurpassed in European art at that
time. The picture remained with
Picasso until 1920, when it passed
into the collection of the famous
couturier Jacques Doucet. While in
Picasso's studio and seen by other
artists, the work acquired a
legendary reputation.
• Les Demoiselles d'Avignon
(The Young Ladies of
Avignon) portrays five nude
female prostitutes in a brothel
on Avinyó Street in
Barcelona.
• All of the figures depicted are
physically jarring, none
conventionally feminine, all
slightly menacing, and each
is rendered with angular and
disjointed body shapes.
• Two of the women are
rendered with African mask-
like faces, giving them a
savage and mysterious aura.
• In his adaption of Primitivism
and abandonment of
perspective in favor of a flat,
two-dimensional picture
plane, Picasso makes a
radical departure from
traditional European painting.
• The work is one of Picasso's
most famous, and is widely
considered to be a seminal
work in the early
development of both Cubism
and modern art.
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Cubism was a 20th century avant-garde art movement, pioneered by
Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, that revolutionized European
painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music and
literature. There are two branches of Cubism:
1. Analytic Cubism was both radical and influential as a short but
highly significant art movement between 1907 and 1911 in France.
2. In its second phase, Synthetic Cubism, the movement spread and
remained vital until around 1919, when the Surrealist movement
gained popularity.
Cubism
Art historian Douglas Cooper divided Cubism into three phases:
1. Early Cubism (1906-1908)
• Picasso
• Braque
2. High Cubism (1909-1914)
• Juan Gris
3. Late Cubism (1914-1921)
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Analytical Cubism
• Analytical Cubism is one of the two major branches of the artistic
movement of Cubism and was developed between 1908 and 1912.
In contrast to Synthetic cubism, Analytic cubists "analyzed" natural
forms and reduced the forms into basic geometric parts on the two-
dimensional picture plane. Color was almost non-existent except for
the use of a monochromatic scheme that often included grey, blue
and ochre. Instead of an emphasis on color, Analytic cubists focused
on forms like the cylinder, sphere and the cone to represent the
natural world. During this movement, the works produced by Picasso
and Braque shared stylistic similarities.
Synthetic Cubism
• Synthetic Cubism was the third main movement within Cubism that
was developed by Picasso, Braque, Juan Gris and others between
1912 and 1919.
• Synthetic cubism is characterized by the introduction of different
textures, surfaces, collage elements, papier collé and a large variety
of merged subject matter. It was the beginning of collage materials
being introduced as an important ingredient of fine art work.→ the
invention of a new art form called, collage.
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• The Cubist painters rejected the inherited concept that art should
copy nature, or that they should adopt the traditional techniques of
perspective, modeling, and foreshortening.
• They wanted instead to emphasize the two-dimensionality of the
canvas.
• So they reduced and fractured objects into geometric forms, and then
realigned these within a shallow, relieflike space.
• They also used multiple or contrasting vantage points.
The liberating formal concepts initiated by Cubism also had far-reaching consequences for
Dada and Surrealism, as well as for all artists pursuing abstraction in Germany, Holland,
Italy, England, America, and Russia.
Girl with a Mandolin (Fanny Tellier),
late spring 1910, Paris.
Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881-1973)Oil on canvas, (100.3 x 73.6 cm), MoMA.
In Cubist work up to 1910, the subject of a
picture was usually discernible. Although
figures and objects were dissected or
"analyzed" into a multitude of small facets,
these were then reassembled, after a
fashion, to evoke those same figures or
objects.
During "high" Analytic Cubism (1910–12),
also called "hermetic," Picasso and Braque
so abstracted their works that they were
reduced to just a series of overlapping
planes and facets mostly in near-
monochromatic browns, grays, or blacks.
In their work from this period, Picasso and
Braque frequently combined representational
motifs with letters. Their favorite motifs were
still lifes with musical instruments, bottles,
pitchers, glasses, newspapers, playing
cards, and the human face and figure.
Landscapes were rare.
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Candlestick and Playing Cards on a Table, Autumn 1910
Georges Braque (French, 1882–1963)Oil on canvas Oval: 65.1 x 54.3 cm
The composition of this small oval
painting consists of clearly defined Cubist
planes in hues of brown and ocher
highlighted by black and white. At the
center can be identified the corner of a
table upon which rests the round base of
a brass candlestick and, at the right, two
playing cards—the ace of hearts and the
six of diamonds.
This still life presents one of the earliest
instances of Braque's choice of an oval
format. Soon, both Braque and Picasso
would make frequent use of this shape.
In rectangular Analytic Cubist paintings,
planes and facets of forms concentrate in
the center of a composition, and the
corners remain relatively empty. An oval
format avoids such corners, and
therefore Braque and Picasso sometimes
favored this shape.
Portrait of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, 1910,
Pablo Picasso, (Spanish, 1881–1973)The Art Institute of Chicago.
Picasso wrote of Kahnweiler What would
have become of us if Kahnweiler hadn't
had a business sense?
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"Ma Jolie,"
winter 1911-12, Paris
Pablo Picasso
(Spanish, 1881-1973)Oil on canvas,
(100 x 64.5 cm), MoMA.
"Ma Jolie,"
1913-1914
Pablo Picasso
"Ma Jolie!" (My pretty girl) was Picasso's pet name for his lover
Marcelle Humbert ("Eva"). These easily legible words form a stark
contrast to the nearly indecipherable image of Eva playing a string
instrument. Numerous clues connect "Ma Jolie" to reality:
1. a triangular form in the lower center, strung like a guitar;
2. below the strings, four fingers, with an angular elbow to the
right; and
3. in the upper half, perhaps a floating smile.
Together these elements suggest a woman holding a musical
instrument, but the picture hints at reality only to deny it. Planes,
lines, spatial cues, shadings, and other traces of painting's
language of illusion are abstracted from descriptive uses; the figure
almost disappears into a network of flat, straight-edged,
semitransparent planes.
Yet "Ma Jolie," an example of high Analytic Cubism, is
actually a painting on a very traditional theme—a
woman holding a musical instrument. The palette of
brown and sepia is reminiscent of the work of
Rembrandt, and Picasso emphasizes the handmade
nature of the brushstrokes, underlining the artist's
human presence.
Still Life with a Bottle of Rum, Summer 1911
Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881–1973)Oil on canvas (61.3 x 50.5 cm)
Picasso painted Still Life with a Bottle of Rum
during the summer of 1911 in Céret, the small town
in the French Pyrenees that was so popular with
poets, musicians, and artists—especially the
Cubists—before World War I that it has been
called the "spiritual home of Cubism."
One is hard-pressed to see the bottle of rum
indicated in the title of this work, which was painted
during the most abstract phase of Cubism, known
as "high" Analytic Cubism (1910–12).
In the upper center of the picture are what seem to
be the neck and opening of a bottle. Some spidery
black lines to the left of it might denote sheet
music, and the round shape lower down, the base
of a glass. In the center, at the far right, is the
pointed spout of a porrón (Spanish wine bottle).
SIGNIFICANCE:
This is one of the first works in which
Picasso included letter forms. It has been
suggested that the ones shown at the
left, LETR, refer to Le Torero, the
magazine for bullfighting fans—Picasso
being one of them—but they might
simply be a pun on lettre, French for
"word."
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Still Life with a Pair of Banderillas,
Summer 1911
Georges Braque (French, 1882–1963)Oil on canvas (65.4 x 54.9 cm)
Braque joined Picasso in Céret, a small town in the
French Pyrenees, sometime during the last two
weeks in August and first week of September 1911.
By that time, their works had become difficult to
distinguish—a phenomenon that the artists actually
strove to achieve, by not signing their paintings.
During the last phase of the style known as Analytic
Cubism—also referred to as "high" or "hermetic"—
Picasso and Braque broke down their forms ever
more. Thus their compositions consisted mainly of
large, abstract planes and diagonal lines. The sober
palette of grays, browns, and blacks—some opaque,
some not—often applied, as here, in short
brushstrokes to create a dappled effect, enabled the
planes to overlap and merge with one another in a
shallow, relieflike space. Some tenuous links with
reality survive where images of naturalistic objects,
or parts of them, are incorporated in the composition.
The banderillas of the title, which cross each
other diagonally and horizontally, are the most
recognizable objects in the picture.
The letters ORERO stand for the bullfighting
magazine Le Torero, references to which also
appear in contemporary works by Picasso, as in
Still Life with a Bottle of Rum, painted at the same
time in Céret.
Forms are reduced to their utmost
simplicity and geometric core, while the
color scheme—taking its cue from the
tricolore held aloft—is composed of red,
white, and blue, along with earthen tones.
Painted in 1911, the year he became
associated with Cubism and joined the
Section d'Or group, Artillery demonstrates
the artist's ever greater emphasis on the
solid geometry that underlies all forms in
nature.
Artillery, 1911
Roger de La Fresnaye (French, 1885–1925)Oil on canvas (130.2 x 159.4 cm)
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Portrait of Picasso, 1912
Juan Gris (Spanish, 1887–1927)Oil on canvas
While Picasso and Braque are
credited with creating this new
visual language, it was adopted
and further developed by many
painters, including Fernand
Léger, Robert and Sonia
Delaunay, Juan Gris, Roger de
La Fresnaye, Marcel Duchamp,
Albert Gleizes, Jean Metzinger,
and even Diego Rivera.
Though primarily associated with
painting, Cubism also exerted a
profound influence on twentieth-
century sculpture and
architecture. The major Cubist
sculptors were Alexander
Archipenko, Raymond Duchamp-
Villon, and Jacques Lipchitz.
Violin and Playing Cards, 1913
Juan Gris (Spanish, 1887–1927)Oil on canvas (100 x 65.4 cm)
Although the painting is neither signed nor dated,
stylistically it belongs to the group of still lifes Gris
composed while in Céret, a small town in the
Pyrenees, from August to October 1913. It was a
most productive period for the artist. By then he had
developed a colorful Cubist style of broad, angular,
overlapping planes, a style that within a year would
evolve into a fully formed Synthetic Cubism,
influenced by Picasso's and Braque's papiers
collées.
On the simulated wood-grain table rest three playing
cards—heart, diamond, and club—a violin, and the
newspaper Le Journal. The violin is indicated by
different shaded passages of wood-graining, as also
by the instrument's purple, green, and black
"shadows." Black, sky blue, and purple angular
planes enrich the composition, which is set against a
deep rust-red diamond-patterned background
emulating the wallpaper.
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The Conquest of the Air, 1913.
Roger de La Fresnaye (French, 1885-1925)Oil on canvas, (235.9 x 195.6 cm), MoMA.
Man with Hat and a Violin, December 1912-1913
Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881–1973)Cut-and-pasted newspaper, with charcoal, on two sheets of cut-and-pasted paper
(122.2x47.3 cm)
This work, created in Paris, belongs to a group of about seventeen other
papiers collés by Picasso composed solely from newspaper articles. Here,
he arranged cuttings from Le Journal of December 3 and 9, 1912 , on a
sort of scaffolding of straight and slightly curved charcoal lines. The
various texts refer to the Balkan Wars, to the unrest of miners in the Nord
and Pas-de-Calais départements, to critical issues debated in Parliament
and in the Chambers, and to local announcements and advertisements.
During the winter of 1912–13, Picasso executed a great number of
papiers collés, which initiated the era of Synthetic Cubism.
With this new technique of pasting colored or printed pieces of
paper in their compositions, Picasso and Braque swept away the
last vestiges of three-dimensional space (illusionism) that still
remained in their "high" Analytic work.
THE DIFFERENCE:
In Analytic Cubism, the small facets of a dissected or "analyzed"
object are reassembled to evoke that same object,
In the shallow space of Synthetic Cubism—initiated by the
papiers collés–large pieces of neutral or colored paper
themselves allude to a particular object, either because they are
often cut out in the desired shape or else sometimes bear a
graphic element that clarifies the association.
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Still Life with Tenora (summer or fall 1913).
Georges Braque (French, 1882-1963)Cut-and-pasted printed and painted paper, charcoal, chalk,
and pencil on gessoed canvas, (95.2 x 120.3 cm), MoMA.
Still Life with Tenora is a consummate example of
Braque's papier collé (literally, pasted paper) style. The
bold geometric fragments of contrasting types of paper
interlaced with the figurative motifs drawn in charcoal
evoke the structure of a fugue, in which two distinct
melodies intertwine in a rich, sonorous composition, each
acting as a foil to the other's reality.
The invention of the papier collé in 1912 by Braque and
Pablo Picasso introduced a revolution in Western
painting, whose repercussions are still being felt today.
By pasting fragments of paper (newspaper, wallpaper,
and wood-grained paper) onto their still-life
compositions, they introduced real materials and
textures into an art hitherto based on illusionistic
renderings.
The significance of this breakthrough cannot be
overestimated because through this technique these
artists declared the autonomy of the painted or drawn
image, and radically severed it from any attempt at
representation. The fragments attached to the picture's
surface rarely followed the contours or silhouettes of the
drawn motifs (glasses, bottles, or musical instruments),
but, paradoxically, contradicted them. Thus, they
countered the conventional devices of modeling and
depth perspective, and drew attention to the absolute
flatness of the two-dimensional plane.
SUMMARY: So, the artists chose to break down the subjects
they were painting into a number of facets, showing several
different aspects of one object simultaneously.
The work up to 1912 is known as Analytical Cubism,
concentrating on geometrical forms using subdued colors.
The second phase, known as Synthetic Cubism, used more
decorative shapes, stencilling, collage, and brighter colors. It
was then that artists such as Picasso and Braque started to use
pieces of cut-up newspaper in their paintings.
Breakfast 1914. Juan Gris (Spanish, 1887-1927)
Gouache, oil, and crayon on cut-and-pasted printed paper on
canvas with oil and crayon, (80.9 x 59.7 cm), MoMA.
The papier collé, invented by Georges Braque and
Pablo Picasso in 1912, found a rich and complex
expression in the 1914 works of Gris. In conception,
his papiers collés are closer to paintings than are
the sparely drawn compositions of his forerunners;
unlike them Gris covers the whole surface with
pasted papers and paint.
In works such as Breakfast, Gris's use of printed papers is
more literal than theirs: the wood-grained fragments
usually follow some of the contours of a table and are
therefore integral to the composition; and his perspectival
cues are relatively legible and precise. His superimposed
drawings of domestic objects, fragmented yet softly
modeled and most often seen from above, combine to
create a more representational pictorial composition than
those of Braque and Picasso.
Despite these observations, Breakfast is full of troubling
contradictions. The striped wallpaper background spills
across the table; certain objects (a glass on the left, a
bottle in the upper right) appear as ghostly presences; the
coffeepot is disjointed; the tobacco packet is painted and
drawn in photographically realistic trompe l'oeil, but its
label is real. Thus, while aspects of domestic comfort are
captured in this image, Gris also raises many subjective
and objective questions about how reality is perceived.
The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA Highlights, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, revised 2004, originally published 1999, p. 76
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Exit the Ballets Russes, 1914
Fernand Léger (French, 1881-1955)Oil on canvas, (136.5 x 100.3 cm)
Along with Picasso, Braque, and
Gris, Fernand Léger ranks among
the foremost Cubist painters. By
1912, he had developed his own
adaptation of Cubism. Utilizing pure
color, he simplified the forms in his
pictures into geometric components
of the cone, cube, and sphere,
leaving their contours unbroken.
Leger was also fascinated by
machines and modern technology.
The curved forms Léger added to
the angular Cubist vocabulary was
his most significant reputation. He is
also noted for his urban, industrial
landscapes full of polished, metallic
shapes, robotic humanoids, and
hard-edged mechanical gears.
The Bargeman, which shows
a boat set against a
background dominated by the
facades of houses, provided
the artist with the opportunity
to combine several of his
favorite themes: motion, the
city, and men at work.
With colorful and overlapping
disks, cylinders, cones, and
diagonals, Léger presents a
syncopated, abstract
equivalent of the visual
impressions of a man
traveling along the Seine
through Paris. All that can be
seen of the bargeman,
however, are his tube-like
arms, in the upper part of the
composition, which end in
metallic-looking claws.
The Bargeman, 1918
Fernand Léger (French, 1881–1955)Oil on canvas (48.6 x 54.3 cm)
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Table by a Window, November 1917
Jean Metzinger (French, 1883–1956)Oil on canvas (81.3 x 65.1 cm)
Jean Metzinger was a member of the
so-called Puteaux Group of artists, who
were disciples of Cubism centered
around the brothers Duchamp-Villon.
He was also a theoretician and, with his
close friend Albert Gleizes, co-authored
the book Du Cubisme, published in
1912.
Throughout his career, Metzinger liked
to create variations on the same theme.
During the years 1916–19, still life
constituted one such major theme.
This work depicts an arrangement of
objects—a vase with flowers, a glass
and an absinthe spoon, the journal
L'Heure, and a playing card—placed on
a table next to a window in the artist's
studio in Meudon near Paris.
Still Life with Fruit Dish and Mandolin, 1919,
Juan Gris (Spanish, 1887–1927) Oil on Canvas
Man with a Guitar, 1915.
Jacques Lipchitz
(American, born Lithuania.
1891-1973)Limestone, (97.2 x 26.7 x 19.5 cm),
MoMA.
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The Studio, 1928,
Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881–1973) Oil on Canvas
Synthetic cubism employs strong colors and decorative sheds. At left the painter holds a brush indicated by a
small diagonal line at the end of horizontal ―arm.‖ his oval ―head‖ contains three vertical eyes, perhaps suggesting
the painter’s superior vision. A floating circle is all that remains of the artist’s palette. His subject, a still life of fruit
bowl and bust on a table with red tablecloth, also consists of geometric shapes. What holds the composition
together are repeated and precisely related vertical, horizontal and diagonal lines.
Guernica shows the tragedies of war and the suffering it inflicts upon individuals, particularly innocent civilians. This work has gained a monumental status, becoming a perpetual reminder of
the tragedies of war, an anti-war symbol, and an embodiment of peace. On completion Guernica was displayed around the world in a brief tour, becoming famous and widely acclaimed.
Guernica shows suffering people, animals, and buildings wrenched by violence
and chaos.
The overall scene is within a room where, at an open end on the left, a wide-
eyed bull stands over a woman grieving over a dead child in her arms.
The centre is occupied by a horse falling in agony as it had just been run
through by a spear or javelin. It is important to note that the cut in the horse's
side is a major focus of the painting.
Two "hidden" images formed by the horse appear in Guernica (illustrated to the
right):
A human skull overlays the horse's body.
A bull appears to gore the horse from underneath. The bull's head is formed
mainly by the horse's entire front leg which has the knee on the ground. The
leg's knee cap forms the head's nose. A horn appears within the horse's breast.
The bull's tail forms the image of a flame with smoke rising from it, seemingly
appearing in a window created by the lighter shade of gray surrounding it.
Under the horse is a dead, apparently dismembered soldier; his hand on a
severed arm still grasps a shattered sword from which a flower grows.
On the open palm of the dead soldier is a stigma, a symbol of martyrdom
derived from the stigmata of Christ.
Picasso created this mural in one month. ―Painting is not done to decorate
apartments,‖ Picasso said, ―it is an instrument of war for attack and
defense against enemy.‖ Picasso incorporated certain design elements to
create a powerful effect of anguish. He used a black-white-gray palette to
emphasize hopelessness and purposely distorted figures to evoke
violence. The jagged lines and shattered planes of Cubism denote terror
and confusion, while a pyramid format holds the composition together.
Some of Picasso’s symbols like the slain fighter with a broken sword
implying defeat, was not hard to decipher. Picasso’s only explanation of
these symbols was: ―The bull is not fascism, but it is brutality and
darkness...The horse represents the people.‖
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Guernica shows the tragedies of war and the suffering it inflicts upon individuals, particularly innocent civilians. This work has gained a monumental status, becoming a perpetual reminder of
the tragedies of war, an anti-war symbol, and an embodiment of peace. On completion Guernica was displayed around the world in a brief tour, becoming famous and widely acclaimed.
The shape and posture of the bodies express protest.
Picasso uses black, white, and grey paint to set a somber mood and
express pain and chaos.
Flaming buildings and crumbling walls not only express the destruction
of Guernica, but reflect the destructive power of civil war.
The newspaper print used in the painting reflects how Picasso learned
of the massacre.
The light bulb in the painting represents the sun.
The broken sword near the bottom of the painting symbolizes the
defeat of the people at the hand of their tormentors. (Berger 1980)
A light bulb blazes in the shape of an evil eye over the suffering horse's head (the bare
bulb of the torturer's cell.) Picasso's intended symbolism in regards to this object is
related to the Spanish word for light bulb; "bombilla", which makes an allusion to
"bomb" and therefore signifies the destructing effect which technology can have on
society.
To the upper right of the horse, a frightened female figure, who seems to be
witnessing the scenes before her, appears to have floated into the room through a
window. Her arm, also floating in, carries a flame-lit lamp. The lamp is positioned very
close to the bulb, and is a symbol of hope, clashing with the light bulb.
From the right, an awe-struck woman staggers towards the center below the floating
female figure. She looks up blankly into the blazing light bulb.
Daggers that suggest screaming replace the tongues of the bull, grieving woman, and
horse.
A bird, possibly a dove, stands on a shelf behind the bull in panic.
On the far right, a figure with arms raised in terror is entrapped by fire from above and
below.
A dark wall with an open door defines the right end of the mural.
THREE MODERNIST
MOVEMENTS
FUTURISM CONSTRUCTIVISM PRECISIONISM
PERIOD: 1909-1918 1913-1932 1915-1930
LOCALE: Italy Russia United States
ARTISTS: Boccioni, Balla, Severeni,
Carrà, Russolo
Tatlin, Malevich,
Popova, Rodchenko,
Lissitzky, Gabo, Pevsner
Sheeler,
Demuth,
O’Keeffe
FEATURES: Lines of force
representing movement
and modern life
Geometric art, reflecting
modern technology
Sleek urban and
industrial forms
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Futurism: Kinetic art
Futurism was an Italian phenomenon.
Futurism began in 1909 as a literary movement when the Italian poet F.T.Marinetti
issued its manifesto.
Marinetti a hyperactive self-promoter nicknamed ―The Caffeine of Europe‖ challenged
artists to show ―courage, audacity, and revolt‖ and to celebrate ―a new beauty, the
beauty of speed.‖
Futurist artists tried to unveil the poetry in motion.
The key to Futurist art was MOVEMENT.
The painters combined bright Fauve colors with fractured Cubist planes to
express propulsion.
Their quest was ―to throw all tradition,‖ therefore they published a manifesto to
voice their highly reactionary philosophy.
―..... With our enthusiastic adherence to Futurism, we will:
1.Destroy the cult of the past, the obsession with the ancients, pedantry and academic formalism.
2.Totally invalidate all kinds of imitation.
3.Elevate all attempts at originality, however daring, however violent.
4.Bear bravely and proudly the smear of ―madness‖ with which they try to gag all innovators.
5.Regard art critics as useless and dangerous.
6.Rebel against the tyranny of words: ―Harmony‖ and ―good taste‖ and other loose expressions which can be used to destroy the works of Rembrandt, Goya, Rodin...
7.Sweep the whole field of art clean of all themes and subjects which have been used in the past.
8.Support and glory in our day-to-day world, a world which is going to be continually and splendidly transformed by victorious Science.
The dead shall be buried in the earth’s deepest bowels! The threshold of the future will be swept free of mummies! Make room for youth, for violence, for daring!‖
Manifesto of the Futurist Painters, (Milan) Poesia, February 11, 1910.
Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Luigi Russolo, Giacomo Balla, Gino Severini
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35
Technical Manifesto of Futurist Painting
Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Luigi Russolo, Giacomo Balla, Gino Severini
... Our growing need of truth is no longer satisfied with Form and Color as they have been understood hitherto.
The gesture which we would reproduce on canvas shall no longer be a fixed moment in universal dynamism. It shall simply be the dynamic sensation itself.
Indeed, all things move, all things run, all things are rapidly changing. A profile is never motionless before our eyes, but it constantly appears and disappears. On account of the
persistency of an image upon the retina, moving objects constantly multiply themselves; their form changes like rapid vibrations, in their mad career. Thus a running horse has not
four legs, but twenty, and their movements are triangular.
All is conventional in art. Nothing is absolute in painting. What was truth for the painters of yesterday is but a falsehood today. We declare, for instance, that a portrait must not be
like the sitter, and that the painter carries in himself the landscapes which he would fix upon his canvas.
...We would at any price re-enter into life. Victorious science has nowadays disowned its past in order the better to serve the material needs of our time; we would that art,
disowning its past, were able to serve at last the intellectual needs which are within us.
Our renovated consciousness does not permit us to look upon man as the center of universal life. The suffering of a man is of the same interest to us as the suffering of an electric
lamp, which, with spasmodic starts, shrieks out the most heartrending expressions of color. The harmony of the lines and folds of modern dress works upon our sensitiveness with
the same emotional and symbolical power as did the nude upon the sensitiveness of the old masters.
In order to conceive and understand the novel beauties of a Futurist picture, the soul must be purified; the eye must be freed from its veil of atavism and culture, so that it may at
last look upon Nature and not upon the museum as the one and only standard.
As soon as ever this result has been obtained, it will be readily admitted that brown tints have never coursed beneath our skin; it will be discovered that yellow shines forth in our
flesh, that red blazes, and that green, blue and violet dance upon it with untold charms, voluptuous and caressing.
How is it possible still to see the human face pink, now that our life, redoubled by noctambulism, has multiplied our perceptions as colorists? The human face is yellow, red, green,
blue, violet. The pallor of a woman gazing in a jeweler’s window is more intensely iridescent than the prismatic fires of the jewels that fascinate her like a lark.
The time has passed for our sensations in painting to be whispered. We wish them in future to sing and re-echo upon our canvases in deafening and triumphant flourishes.
Your eyes, accustomed to semi-darkness, will soon open to more radiant visions of light. The shadows which we shall paint shall be more luminous than the high-lights of our
predecessors, and our pictures, next to those of the museums, will shine like blinding daylight compared with deepest night.
We conclude that painting cannot exist today withc without Divisionism. This is no process that can be learned and applied at will. Divisionism, for the modern painter, must be an
innate complementariness which we declare to be essential and necessary.
Our art will probably be accused of tormented and decadent cerebralism. But we shall merely answer that we are, on the contrary, the primitives of a new sensitiveness, multiplied
hundredfold, and that our art is intoxicated with spontaneity and power.
We declare:
1.That all forms of imitation must be despised, all forms of originality glorified.
2.That it is essential to rebel against the tyranny of the terms ―harmony‖ and ―good taste‖ as being too elastic
expressions, by the help of which it is easy to demolish the works of Rembrandt, of Goya and of Rodin.
3.That the art critics are useless or harmful.
4.That all subjects previously used must be swept aside in order to express our whirling life of steel, of pride, of fever
and of speed.
5.That the name of ―madman‖ with which it is attempted to gag all innovators should be looked upon as a title of honor.
6.That innate complementariness is an absolute necessity in painting, just as free meter in poetry or polyphony in
music.
7.That universal dynamism must be rendered in painting as a dynamic sensation.
8.That in the manner of rendering Nature the first essential is sincerity and purity.
9.That movement and light destroy the materiality of bodies.
We fight:
1.Against the bituminous tints by which it is attempted to obtain the patina of time upon modern pictures.
2.Against the superficial and elementary archaism founded upon flat tints, and which, by imitating the linear
technique of the Egyptians, reduces painting to a powerless synthesis, both childish and grotesque.
3.Against the false claims to belong to the future put forward by the secessionists and the independents, who have
installed new academies no less trite and attached to routine than the preceding ones.
4.Against the nude in painting, as nauseous and as tedious as adultery in literature.
We wish to explain this last point. Nothing is immoral in our eyes; it is the monotony of the nude against which we
fight. We are told that the subject is nothing and that everything lies in the manner of treating it. That is agreed; we
too, admit that. But this truism, unimpeachable and absolute fifty years ago, is no longer so today with regard to
the nude, since artists obsessed with the desire to expose the bodies of their mistresses have transformed the
Salons into arrays of unwholesome flesh!
We demand, for ten years, the total suppression of the nude in painting.
Set in a train station, this series of three paintings
explores the psychological dimension of modern life's
transitory nature. In The Farewells, Boccioni captures
chaotic movement and the fusion of people swept away
in waves as the train's steam bellows into the sky.
Oblique lines hint at departure in Those Who Go, in
which Boccioni said he sought to express "loneliness,
anguish, and dazed confusion." In Those Who Stay,
vertical lines convey the weight of sadness carried by
those left behind.
States of Mind I: The Farewells, Oil on canvas,
(70.5 x 96.2 cm).
States of Mind II:
Those Who Go, Oil on canvas,
(70.8 x 95.9 cm).
States of Mind III:
Those Who Stay,Oil on canvas,
(70.8 x 95.9 cm).
Umberto Boccioni (Italian, 1882-1916)
Three States of Mind , 1911
10.11.2010
36
Funeral of the Anarchist Galli, 1910-11.
Carlo Carrà (Italian, 1881-1966)
Oil on canvas, (198.7 x 259.1 cm), MoMA.
Carlo Carra met Umberto Boccioni and Luigi Russolo, and together they came to know Filippo
Tommaso Marinetti and to write the Manifesto dei pittori futuristi (1910). Carrà continued,
however, to use the technique of Divisionism despite the radical rhetoric of Futurism. In an
attempt to find new inspiration Marinetti sent them to visit Paris in autumn 1911, in preparation
for the Futurist exhibition of 1912. Cubism was a revelation, and in 1911 Carrà reworked a large
canvas that he had begun in 1910, the Funeral of the Anarchist Galli (New York, MOMA). He
had witnessed the riot at the event in 1904. The crowd and the mounted police converge in
violently hatched red and black, as Carrà attempted the Futurist aim to place the spectator at
the centre of the canvas. In the reworking he attempted to make the space more complex and
the lighting appear to emerge from within.
Ritmi Plastici, 1911.
Carlo Carrà (Italian, 1881-1966)Ink on paper, (10.7 x 7.4 cm).
Swifts: Paths of Movement + Dynamic Sequences, 1913.
Giacomo Balla (Italian, 1871-1958)Oil on canvas, (96.8 x 120 cm).
Balla, one of the founding
members of Futurism, spent
much of his career studying
the dynamics of movement
and speed. The subject of
this painting is the flight of
swifts; black wings whir
before a window. Inspired by
photographic studies of
animal locomotion, Balla
created an image of motion
pushed close to abstraction.
The wings each represent a
different position in a
trajectory of motion, and the
bird’s body is rendered as a
diagrammatic line. Here
Balla looks to science to
establish a new, modern
language for painting.
10.11.2010
37
Speeding Automobile, 1912. Giacomo Balla (Italian, 1871-1958)Oil on wood, (55.6 x 68.9 cm).
Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, 1913
Umberto Boccioni (Italian, 1882–1916)Bronze H. (121.9 x 15 1/2 x 91.4 cm)
Boccioni, who sought to infuse art with dynamism and energy,
exclaimed, "Let us fling open the figure and let it incorporate
within itself whatever may surround it." The contours of this
marching figure appear to be carved by the forces of wind and
speed as it forges ahead. While its wind–swept silhouette is
evocative of an ancient statue, the polished metal alludes to the
sleek modern machinery beloved by Boccioni and other
Futurist artists.
10.11.2010
38
Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, 1913
Umberto Boccioni (Italian, 1882–1916)Bronze H. (121.9 x 15 1/2 x 91.4 cm)
In Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, Boccioni puts
speed and force into sculptural form. The figure strides
forward. Surpassing the limits of the body, its lines
ripple outward in curving and streamlined flags, as if
molded by the wind of its passing. Boccioni had
developed these shapes over two years in paintings,
drawings, and sculptures, exacting studies of human
musculature. The result is a three-dimensional portrait
of a powerful body in action.
In the early twentieth century, the new speed and force of machinery
seemed to pour its power into radical social energy. The new technologies
and the ideas attached to them would later reveal threatening aspects,
but for Futurist artists like Boccioni, they were tremendously exhilarating.
Innovative as Boccioni was, he fell short of his own ambition. In 1912, he
had attacked the domination of sculpture by "the blind and foolish
imitation of formulas inherited from the past," and particularly by "the
burdensome weight of Greece." Yet Unique Forms of Continuity in Space
bears an underlying resemblance to a classical work over 2,000 years old,
the Nike of Samothrace. There, however, speed is encoded in the flowing
stone draperies that wash
around, and in the wake of,
the figure. Here the body
itself is reshaped, as if the
new conditions of modernity
were producing a new man.
Dynamism of a Speeding Horse + Houses (Dinamismo
di un cavallo in corsa + case), 1914-1915.Gouache, oil, paper collage, wood, cardboard, copper, and coated
iron, 44 1/2 x 45 1/4 inches. Peggy Guggenheim Collection.
76.2553.30.
Umberto Boccioni turned to
sculpture in 1912 after publishing his
manifesto on the subject on April 11
of that year. The Futurist aesthetic
platform as articulated in this
document advocates the use of
various materials in a single work,
the rejection of closed form, and the
suggestion of the interpenetration of
form and the environment through
the device of intersecting planes. In
Dynamism of a Speeding Horse +
Houses Boccioni assembled wood,
cardboard, and metal, with painted
areas showing a Futurist handling of
planes influenced by the Cubism
[more] of Pablo Picasso and Georges
Braque. Ironically, his intention of
preserving “unique forms” caught in
space and time is mocked by the
perishability of his materials—the
work has been considerably restored
and continues to present
conservation problems.
10.11.2010
39
Muscular Dynamism (1913).
Umberto Boccioni (Italian, 1882-1916)Pastel and charcoal on paper, (86.3 x 59 cm),
MoMA.
Armored Train in Action, 1915.Gino Severini (Italian, 1883-1966)Charcoal on paper,
(56.9 x 47.5 cm), MoMA.
This study for the most famous of
the Futurist war paintings, The
Armored Train (1915),
incorporates an unusual aerial
perspective in its depiction of a
train filled with armed soldiers.
Severini enjoyed a unique
vantage point—from his studio in
Paris, he was able to observe the
constant movement of trains
filled with soldiers, supplies, and
weaponry.
Severini did not combat during
World War I, but he took the
advice of Marinetti to "try to live
the war pictorially, studying it in
all its marvelous mechanical
forms."
The Futurists glorified modern technology, and World War I, the first war
of the twentieth century to employ the technological achievements of the
industrial age in a program of mass destruction, was for them the most
important spectacle of the modern era. Their admiration for speed—made
possible by machinery—is represented here by the fractured landscape,
which accentuates the train's force and momentum as it cuts through the
countryside.Armored Train in Action foreshadows a fundamental principle of Severini's later art:
the "image-idea," in which a single image expresses the essence of an idea. Through a
depiction of the plastic realities of war—a train, canon, guns, and soldiers—he provides a
pictorial vocabulary necessary to grasp its deeper symbolism.
Antonio Sant’Elia
Terraced Building with exterior elevators
1914
Manifesto of Futurist ArchitectureNo architecture has existed since 1700. A moronic mixture of the most various stylistic elements used to mask the skeletons o f modern houses is called modern architecture. The new beauty of
cement and iron are profaned by the superimposition of motley decorative incrustations that cannot be justified either by constructive necessity or by our (modern) taste, and whose origins
are in Egyptian, Indian or Byzantine antiquity and in that idiotic flowering of stupidity and impotence that took the name of neoclassicism.
These architectonic prostitutions are welcomed in Italy, and rapacious alien ineptitude is passed off as talented invention and as extremely up-to-date architecture. Young Italian architects (those
who borrow originality from clandestine and compulsive devouring of art journals) flaunt their talents in the new quarters of our towns, where a hilarious salad of little ogival columns,
seventeenth-century foliation, Gothic pointed arches, Egyptian pilasters, rococo scrolls, fifteenth-century cherubs, swollen caryatids, take the place of style in all seriousness, and
presumptuously put on monumental airs. The kaleidoscopic appearance and reappearance of forms, the multiplying of machinery, the daily increasing needs imposed by the speed of
communications, by the concentration of population, by hygiene, and by a hundred other phenomena of modern life, never cause these self-styled renovators of architecture a moment's
perplexity or hesitation. They persevere obstinately with the rules of Vitruvius, Vignola and Sansovino plus gleanings from any published scrap of information on German architecture that
happens to be at hand. Using these, they continue to stamp the image of imbecility on our cities, our cities which should be the immediate and faithful projection of ourselves.
And so this expressive and synthetic art has become in their hands a vacuous stylistic exercise, a jumble of ill -mixed formulae to disguise a run-of-the-mill traditionalist box of bricks and stone as a
modern building. As if we who are accumulators and generators of movement, with all our added mechanical limbs, with all the noise and speed of our life, could live in streets built for the
needs of men four, five or six centuries ago.
This is the supreme imbecility of modern architecture, perpetuated by the venal complicity of the academies, the internment camps of the intelligentsia, where the young are forced into the
onanistic recopying of classical models instead of throwing their minds open in the search for new frontiers and in the solut ion of the new and pressing problem: the Futurist house and
city. The house and the city that are ours both spiritually and materially, in which our tumult can rage without seeming a grotesque anachronism.
The problem posed in Futurist architecture is not one of linear rearrangement. It is not a question of finding new moldings and frames for windows and doors, of replacing columns, pilasters and
corbels with caryatids, flies and frogs. Neither has it anything to do with leaving a façade in bare brick, or plastering it, or facing it with stone or in determining formal differences between
the new building and the old one. It is a question of tending the healthy growth of the Futurist house, of constructing it wi th all the resources of technology and science, satisfying
magisterially all the demands of our habits and our spirit, trampling down all that is grotesque and antithetical (tradition, style, aesthetics, proportion), determining new forms, new lines, a
new harmony of profiles and volumes, an architecture whose reason for existence can be found solely in the unique conditions of modern life, and in its correspondence with the aesthetic
values of our sensibilities. This architecture cannot be subjected to any law of historical continuity. It must be new, just as our state of mind is new.
The art of construction has been able to evolve with time, and to pass from one style to another, while maintaining unaltered the general characteristics of architecture, because in the course of
history changes of fashion are frequent and are determined by the alternations of religious conviction and political disposit ion. But profound changes in the state of the environment are
extremely rare, changes that unhinge and renew, such as the discovery of natural laws, the perfecting of mechanical means, the rational and scientific use of material. In modern life the
process of stylistic development in architecture has been brought to a halt. Architecture now makes a break with tradition. It must perforce make a fresh start.
Calculations based on the resistance of materials, on the use of reinforced concrete and steel, exclude "architecture" in the classical and traditional sense. Modern constructional materials and
scientific concepts are absolutely incompatible with the disciplines of historical styles, and are the principal cause of the grotesque appearance of "fashionable" buildings in which attempts
are made to employ the lightness, the superb grace of the steel beam, the delicacy of reinforced concrete, in order to obtain the heavy curve of the arch and the bulkiness of marble.
The utter antithesis between the modern world and the old is determined by all those things that formerly did not exist. Our lives have been enriched by elements the possibility of whose existence
the ancients did not even suspect. Men have identified material contingencies, and revealed spiritual attitudes, whose repercussions are felt in a thousand ways. Principal among these is
the formation of a new ideal of beauty that is still obscure and embryonic, but whose fascination is already felt even by the masses. We have lost our predilection for the monumental, the
heavy, the static, and we have enriched our sensibility with a taste for the light, the practical, the ephemeral and the swift. We no longer feel ourselves to be the men of the cathedrals, the
palaces and the podiums. We are the men of the great hotels, the railway stations, the immense streets, colossal ports, covered markets, luminous arcades, straight roads and beneficial
demolitions.
We must invent and rebuild the Futurist city like an immense and tumultuous shipyard, agile, mobile and dynamic in every deta il; and the Futurist house must be like a gigantic machine. The lifts
must no longer be hidden away like tapeworms in the niches of stairwells; the stairwells themselves, rendered useless, must be abolished, and the lifts must scale the lengths of the
façades like serpents of steel and glass. The house of concrete, glass and steel, stripped of paintings and sculpture, rich only in the innate beauty of its lines and relief, extraordinarily
"ugly" in its mechanical simplicity, higher and wider according to need rather than the specifications of municipal laws. It must soar up on the brink of a tumultuous abyss: the street will no
longer lie like a doormat at ground level, but will plunge many stories down into the earth, embracing the metropolitan traff ic,and will be linked up for necessary interconnections by metal
gangways and swift-moving pavements. The decorative must be abolished. The problem of Futurist architecture must be resolved, not by continuing to pilfer from Chinese, Persian or
Japanese photographs or fooling around with the rules of Vitruvius, but through flashes of genius and through scientific and technical expertise. Everything must be revolutionized. Roofs
and underground spaces must be used; the importance of the façade must be diminished; issues of taste must be transplanted from the field of fussy moldings, finicky capitals and flimsy
doorways to the broader concerns of bold groupings and masses, and large-scale disposition of planes. Let us make an end of monumental, funereal and commemorative
architecture. Let us overturn monuments, pavements, arcades and flights of steps; let us sink the streets and squares; let us raise the level of the city.
I COMBAT AND DESPISE:
1. All the pseudo-architecture of the avant-garde, Austrian, Hungarian, German and American;
2. All classical architecture, solemn, hieratic, scenographic, decorative, monumental, pretty and pleasing;
3. The embalming, reconstruction and reproduction of ancient monuments and palaces;
4. Perpendicular and horizontal lines, cubical and pyramidical forms that are static, solemn, aggressive and absolutely excluded from our utterly new sensibility;
5. The use of massive, voluminous, durable, antiquated and costly materials.
AND PROCLAIM:
1. That Futurist architecture is the architecture of calculation, of audacious temerity and of simplicity; the architecture of reinforced concrete, of steel, glass, cardboard, textile fiber, and of all
those substitutesf or wood, stone and brick that enable us to obtain maximum elasticity and lightness;
2. That Futurist architecture is not because of this an arid combination of practicality and usefulness, but remains art, i.e. synthesis and expression;
3. That oblique and elliptic lines are dynamic, and by their very nature possess an emotive power a thousand times stronger than perpendiculars and horizontals, and that no integral,
dynamic architecture can exist that does not include these;
4. That decoration as an element superimposed on architecture is absurd, and that the decorative value of Futurist architecture depends solely on the use and original arrangement
of raw or bare or violently colored materials;
5. That, just as the ancients drew inspiration for their art from the elements of nature, we—who are materially and spiritually artificial—must find that inspiration in the elements of the utterly
new mechanical world we have created, and of which architecture must be the most beautiful expression, the most complete synthesis, the most efficacious integration;
6. That architecture as the art of arranging forms according to pre-established criteria is finished;
7. That by the term architecture is meant the endeavor to harmonize the environment with Man with freedom and great audacity, that is to transform the world of things into a direct projection
of the world of the spirit;
From an architecture conceived in this way no formal or linear habit can grow, since the fundamental characteristics of Futur ist architecture will be its impermanence and transience. Things will
endure less than us. Every generation must build its own city. This constant renewal of the architectonic environment will contribute to the victory of Futurism which has already been
affirmed by words-in-freedom, plastic dynamism, music without quadrature and the art of noises, and for which we fight without respite against traditionalist cowardice.
10.11.2010
40
Antonio Sant’Elia
Terraced Building with exterior elevators
1914
Manifesto of Futurist Architecture
No architecture has existed since 1700. A moronic mixture of the most various
stylistic elements used to mask the skeletons of modern houses is called
modern architecture. The new beauty of cement and iron are profaned by the
superimposition of motley decorative incrustations that cannot be justified either
by constructive necessity or by our (modern) taste, and whose origins are in
Egyptian, Indian or Byzantine antiquity and in that idiotic flowering of stupidity
and impotence that took the name of neoclassicism.
These architectonic prostitutions are welcomed in Italy, and rapacious alien
ineptitude is passed off as talented invention and as extremely up-to-date
architecture. Young Italian architects (those who borrow originality from
clandestine and compulsive devouring of art journals) flaunt their talents in the
new quarters of our towns, where a hilarious salad of little ogival columns,
seventeenth-century foliation, Gothic pointed arches, Egyptian pilasters, rococo
scrolls, fifteenth-century cherubs, swollen caryatids, take the place of style in all
seriousness, and presumptuously put on monumental airs. The kaleidoscopic
appearance and reappearance of forms, the multiplying of machinery, the daily
increasing needs imposed by the speed of communications, by the
concentration of population, by hygiene, and by a hundred other phenomena of
modern life, never cause these self-styled renovators of architecture a
moment's perplexity or hesitation. They persevere obstinately with the rules of
Vitruvius, Vignola and Sansovino plus gleanings from any published scrap of
information on German architecture that happens to be at hand. Using these,
they continue to stamp the image of imbecility on our cities, our cities which
should be the immediate and faithful projection of ourselves.
And so this expressive and synthetic art has become in their hands a vacuous
stylistic exercise, a jumble of ill-mixed formulae to disguise a run-of-the-mill
traditionalist box of bricks and stone as a modern building. As if we who are
accumulators and generators of movement, with all our added mechanical
limbs, with all the noise and speed of our life, could live in streets built for the
needs of men four, five or six centuries ago.
Antonio Sant’Elia
Terraced Building with exterior elevators
1914
Manifesto of Futurist Architecture
This is the supreme imbecility of modern architecture, perpetuated by the venal
complicity of the academies, the internment camps of the intelligentsia, where
the young are forced into the onanistic recopying of classical models instead of
throwing their minds open in the search for new frontiers and in the solution of
the new and pressing problem: the Futurist house and city. The house and
the city that are ours both spiritually and materially, in which our tumult can rage
without seeming a grotesque anachronism.
The problem posed in Futurist architecture is not one of linear rearrangement. It is
not a question of finding new moldings and frames for windows and doors, of
replacing columns, pilasters and corbels with caryatids, flies and frogs. Neither
has it anything to do with leaving a façade in bare brick, or plastering it, or
facing it with stone or in determining formal differences between the new
building and the old one. It is a question of tending the healthy growth of the
Futurist house, of constructing it with all the resources of technology and
science, satisfying magisterially all the demands of our habits and our spirit,
trampling down all that is grotesque and antithetical (tradition, style, aesthetics,
proportion), determining new forms, new lines, a new harmony of profiles and
volumes, an architecture whose reason for existence can be found solely in the
unique conditions of modern life, and in its correspondence with the aesthetic
values of our sensibilities. This architecture cannot be subjected to any law of
historical continuity. It must be new, just as our state of mind is new.
The art of construction has been able to evolve with time, and to pass from one
style to another, while maintaining unaltered the general characteristics of
architecture, because in the course of history changes of fashion are frequent
and are determined by the alternations of religious conviction and political
disposition. But profound changes in the state of the environment are extremely
rare, changes that unhinge and renew, such as the discovery of natural laws,
the perfecting of mechanical means, the rational and scientific use of material.
In modern life the process of stylistic development in architecture has been
brought to a halt. Architecture now makes a break with tradition. It must
perforce make a fresh start.
10.11.2010
41
Antonio Sant’Elia
Terraced Building with exterior elevators
1914
Manifesto of Futurist Architecture
Calculations based on the resistance of materials, on the use of reinforced
concrete and steel, exclude "architecture" in the classical and traditional sense.
Modern constructional materials and scientific concepts are absolutely
incompatible with the disciplines of historical styles, and are the principal cause
of the grotesque appearance of "fashionable" buildings in which attempts are
made to employ the lightness, the superb grace of the steel beam, the delicacy
of reinforced concrete, in order to obtain the heavy curve of the arch and the
bulkiness of marble.
The utter antithesis between the modern world and the old is determined by all
those things that formerly did not exist. Our lives have been enriched by
elements the possibility of whose existence the ancients did not even suspect.
Men have identified material contingencies, and revealed spiritual attitudes,
whose repercussions are felt in a thousand ways. Principal among these is the
formation of a new ideal of beauty that is still obscure and embryonic, but
whose fascination is already felt even by the masses. We have lost our
predilection for the monumental, the heavy, the static, and we have enriched
our sensibility with a taste for the light, the practical, the ephemeral and the
swift. We no longer feel ourselves to be the men of the cathedrals, the palaces
and the podiums. We are the men of the great hotels, the railway stations, the
immense streets, colossal ports, covered markets, luminous arcades, straight
roads and beneficial demolitions.
We must invent and rebuild the Futurist city like an immense and tumultuous
shipyard, agile, mobile and dynamic in every detail; and the Futurist house must
be like a gigantic machine. The lifts must no longer be hidden away like
tapeworms in the niches of stairwells; the stairwells themselves, rendered
useless, must be abolished, and the lifts must scale the lengths of the façades
like serpents of steel and glass. The house of concrete, glass and steel,
stripped of paintings and sculpture, rich only in the innate beauty of its lines and
relief, extraordinarily "ugly" in its mechanical simplicity, higher and wider
according to need rather than the specifications of municipal laws.
Antonio Sant’Elia
Terraced Building with exterior elevators
1914
Manifesto of Futurist Architecture
It must soar up on the brink of a tumultuous abyss: the street will no longer lie like
a doormat at ground level, but will plunge many stories down into the earth,
embracing the metropolitan traffic, and will be linked up for necessary
interconnections by metal gangways and swift-moving pavements. The
decorative must be abolished. The problem of Futurist architecture must be
resolved, not by continuing to pilfer from Chinese, Persian or Japanese
photographs or fooling around with the rules of Vitruvius, but through flashes of
genius and through scientific and technical expertise. Everything must be
revolutionized. Roofs and underground spaces must be used; the importance of
the façade must be diminished; issues of taste must be transplanted from the
field of fussy moldings, finicky capitals and flimsy doorways to the broader
concerns of bold groupings and masses, and large-scale disposition of
planes. Let us make an end of monumental, funereal and commemorative
architecture. Let us overturn monuments, pavements, arcades and flights of
steps; let us sink the streets and squares; let us raise the level of the city.
I COMBAT AND DESPISE:
1. All the pseudo-architecture of the avant-garde, Austrian, Hungarian, German
and American;
2. All classical architecture, solemn, hieratic, scenographic, decorative,
monumental, pretty and pleasing;
3. The embalming, reconstruction and reproduction of ancient monuments and
palaces;
4. Perpendicular and horizontal lines, cubical and pyramidical forms that are static,
solemn, aggressive and absolutely excluded from our utterly new sensibility;
5. The use of massive, voluminous, durable, antiquated and costly materials.
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Manifesto of Futurist Architecture
AND PROCLAIM:
1. That Futurist architecture is the architecture of calculation, of audacious
temerity and of simplicity; the architecture of reinforced concrete, of steel, glass,
cardboard, textile fiber, and of all those substitutesf or wood, stone and brick
that enable us to obtain maximum elasticity and lightness;
2. That Futurist architecture is not because of this an arid combination of
practicality and usefulness, but remains art, i.e. synthesis and expression;
3. That oblique and elliptic lines are dynamic, and by their very nature possess an
emotive power a thousand times stronger than perpendiculars and horizontals,
and that no integral, dynamic architecture can exist that does not include these;
4. That decoration as an element superimposed on architecture is absurd, and
that the decorative value of Futurist architecture depends solely on the
use and original arrangement of raw or bare or violently colored
materials;
5. That, just as the ancients drew inspiration for their art from the elements of
nature, we—who are materially and spiritually artificial—must find that
inspiration in the elements of the utterly new mechanical world we have
created, and of which architecture must be the most beautiful expression, the
most complete synthesis, the most efficacious integration;
6. That architecture as the art of arranging forms according to pre-established
criteria is finished;
7. That by the term architecture is meant the endeavor to harmonize the
environment with Man with freedom and great audacity, that is to transform the
world of things into a direct projection of the world of the spirit;
From an architecture conceived in this way no formal or linear habit can grow,
since the fundamental characteristics of Futurist architecture will be its
impermanence and transience. Things will endure less than us. Every
generation must build its own city. This constant renewal of the architectonic
environment will contribute to the victory of Futurism which has already been
affirmed by words-in-freedom, plastic dynamism, music without quadrature
and the art of noises, and for which we fight without respite against traditionalist
cowardice.
Architectural Study: Search for Volumes in an Isolated Building, ca. 1919, Sketch by Virgilio Marchi (Italian, 1895–1960)Pencil and watercolor on paper 15 1/4 x 22 1/2 in. (38.7 x 57.2 cm)
In its upwardly spiraling movement, this drawing by
Virgilio Marchi typifies Futurist architectural design. It is
one of several renderings made by Marchi in 1919 and
1920 for an ideal contemporary city that was never
erected. His plans indicated the preoccupation of the
period with technological advances in transportation
and construction. The building in the present study
resembles a cone—round at the bottom, pointed at the
top. There are tunneled areas and open archways below,
with stairs leading to various flat levels. The two towers
that rise from the center are openly constructed with
stairs and columns. A spotlight is perched on a beam
that extends from the peak of the left tower. The
sweeping curves and strong, linear slashes of this
beautiful drawing are reminiscent of Giacomo Balla's
earlier painted imagery.
Futurism was primarily concerned with
images of speed and motion, which were
intended to represent the spirit of the
modern age. Although the greatest
expression of Futurism is found in the
medium of painting, there were some
sculptural pieces executed as well, most
notably by Umberto Boccioni. Architecture,
a later focus for the movement, provided
another three-dimensional forum for
Futurist ideas about dynamism. The
resulting schemes were visionary
imaginings that were difficult to translate
into actual structures and so remained, for
the most part, studies on paper.
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Constructivism • Around 1914, Russian avant-gardes flourished with artists called Constructivists, like Vladimir
Tatlin, Luibov Popova, Kasimir Malevich, El Lissitzky, Alexander Rodchenko, Naum Gabo,
and Antonie Pevsner.
– From Cubism, the Constructivists borrowed broken shapes.
– From Futurism, they adopted multiple overlapping images to express agitated
modern life.
– They pushed art from being representational, to being abstract.
THE POLITICAL CONDITION IN RUSSIA:
Three years later, in 1917, the well-known Russian revolution occured, and as a result of this
revolution, the Russian society is converted from a feudal state to a ―people’s republic.‖ Lenin
tolerated the avant-gardebecause he thought that with the help of those artists, and through
newly developed novel visual styles, it could be possible to teach the illiterate public his own
ideology. For a brief time, before Stalin cracked down, and banned ―elitist‖ easel painting, Russia’s
most adventurous artists led a social, as well as artistic, revolution.
They wanted to strip art, like the state, of petty bourgeois anachronisms.
They tried to remake art, as well as society, from scratch.
The Monument to the Third International.
• About 1914, Tatlin (1885-1953) originated
Russian geometric art. He called his art,
which was highly abstract and was due an
intention to reflect modern technology as
―Constructivism.‖
• The aim of Tatlin’s ―Constructivism‖ was to
―construct‖ art, not to create it. The style
recommended to use industrial materials,
such as glass metal and plastic in three
dimensional works.
• Tatlin’s most famous work was a monument
to celebrate the Bolshevik revolution.
Intended to be higher than Eiffel Tower, the
monument was planned for the center of
Moscow. Since it was hard to supply steel of
that amount, his idea remained only as a
model, but it would clearly would have been
the most astonishing ―construct‖ ever.
• Tilted like the leaning Tower of Pisa, the
openwork structure of glass and iron was
based on a contunial spiral to denote
humanity’s upward progress.
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The tower's main form was a twin helix which
spiraled up to 400 m in height, which visitors
would be transported around with the aid of
various mechanical devices.
The main framework would contain four large
suspended geometric structures. These
structures would rotate at different rates of
speed.
At the base of the structure was a cube which
was designed as a venue for lectures,
conferences and legislative meetings, and this
would complete a rotation in the span of one
year.
Above the cube would be a smaller pyramid
housing executive activities and completing a
rotation once a month.
Further up would be a cylinder, which was to
house an information centre, issuing news
bulletins and manifestos via telegraph, radio
and loudspeaker, and would complete a
rotation once a day. At the top, there would be
a hemisphere for radio equipment. There were
also plans to install a gigantic open-air screen
on the cylinder, and a further projector which
would be able to cast messages across the
clouds on any overcast day.
Kazimir Severinovich Malevich (February 23, 1879, previously 1878 – May 15, 1935) was a painter and art
theoretician, pioneer of geometric abstract art and the originator of the Avant-garde Suprematist movement. His squares floating on a white background and finally his white on white paintings simplified art more radically than ever before. Malevich wanted to “free art from the burden of the object.” He tried to make his shapes and colors as pure as musical notes, without reference to any recognizable object.
Englishman in Moscow, 1914
From Cubism, the Constructivists borrowed broken shapes.
From Futurism, they adopted multiple overlapping images to express agitated modern life.
Abstraction, overlapping of images, a new construction
Autonomous shots, recomposed in a new construction → MONTAGE
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Bureau and Room, 1913
• Kasimir Malevich, who founded what he called Suprematism, believed in an extreme of reduction:
``The object in itself is meaningless... the ideas of the
conscious mind are worthless''.
• What he wanted was a non-objective representation, ̀ `the supremacy of pure feeling.'' This can sound
convincing until one asks what it actually means. Malevich, however, had no doubts as to what he
meant, producing objects of iconic power such as his series of White on White paintings or Dynamic
Suprematism (1916; 102 x 67 cm ), in which the geometric patterns are totally abstract.
• Malevich had initially been influenced by Cubism and primitive art, which were both based on nature,
but his own movement of Suprematism enabled him to construct images that had no reference at all
to reality.
• Great solid diagonals of color in Dynamic Suprematism are floating free, their severe sides denying them
any connection with the real world, where there are no straight lines.
• This is a pure abstract painting, the artist's main theme being the internal movements of the personality.
• The theme has no precise form, and Malevich had to search it out from within the visible expression of
what he felt. They are wonderful works, and in their wake came other powerful Suprematist painters
such as Natalia Goncharova and Liubov Popova.
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Suprematist Composition: White on White 1918. Oil on canvas, 79.4 x 79.4 cm; MoMA
Malevich described his
aesthetic theory, known as
Suprematism, as "the
supremacy of pure feeling
or perception in the pictorial
arts."
He viewed the Russian
Revolution as having paved
the way for a new society in
which materialism would
eventually lead to spiritual
freedom.
This austere painting counts
among the most radical
paintings of its day, yet it is not
impersonal; the trace of the
artist's hand is visible in the
texture of the paint and the
subtle variations of white.
The imprecise outlines of the
asymmetrical square generate
a feeling of infinite space
rather than definite borders.
Black Square, 1915, Oil on Canvas, State Russian Museum, St.Petersburg
At the exhibition 0.10, the Black
Square (1915; Moscow),
painted on a square canvas
surrounded by a margin of
white, was hung across the
corner of the separate room
where works by Malevich and
his followers were displayed; it
was announced as the essential
Suprematist work.
On the one hand, it was
radically nihilistic and could be
interpreted as a gesture of
rejection, providing no narrative,
theme, composition or picture
space, apparently rejecting all
pictorial conventions and
offering a canvas of
unprecedented blankness; on
the other hand, suspension
across the corner of a room was
a common way to display
domestic icons, and by referring
to this tradition its rejection of
convention was not total.
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Black Circle,1913-1915
Suprematism
Term coined in 1915 by
Kazimir Malevich for a new
system of art, explained in
his booklet :
Ot kubizma i futurizma k
suprematizmu: Novyy
zhivopisnyy realizm
„From Cubism and
Futurism to
Suprematism: the new
realism in painting‟
Followed by the Black
Circle (one version after 1920; St
Petersburg, Rus. Mus.) and the
Black Cross (Paris, Pompidou),
the Black Square can be
related to an icon tradition
that survived so strongly in
Russia, using ancient forms
that were increasingly
admired by Russian artists
seeking to exert their
independence from western
European traditions.
Suprematism (Self-Portrait), 1916
The term itself implied the supremacy of
this new art in relation to the past.
Malevich saw it as purely aesthetic
and concerned only with form, free
from any political or social
meaning.
He stressed the purity of shape, particularly
of the square, and he regarded
Suprematism as primarily an exploration of
visual language comparable to
contemporary developments in writing.
Suprematist paintings were first displayed
at the exhibition ―The last Futurist exhibition
of paintings: 0.10‖ held in Petrograd (now St
Petersburg) in December 1915; they
comprised geometric forms which
appeared to float against a white
background.
While Suprematism began before the
Revolution of 1917, its influence, and the
influence of Malevich’s radical approach to
art, was pervasive in the early Soviet
period.
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Suprematism (Supremus No. 58) 1916; Oil on canvas, 79.5 x 70.5 cm;
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
Malevich declared that the Black
Square constituted the „zero of form‟,
an end to old conventions and the
origin of a new pictorial language.
The forms of this language were
strictly geometrical as in the
Suprematism series, but they rapidly
evolved into increasingly complex
paintings in which the geometrical
elements employed richer colours and
inhabited an ambiguous and complex
pictorial space.
Suprematism, 1916-17; Oil on canvas, 80 x 80 cm; Fine Arts Museum, Krasnodar
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Suprematist Painting 1917; Oil on canvas, 96.5 x 65.4 cm; The Museum of Modern
Art, New York
Lyubov Sergeyevna Popova(April 24, 1889 – May 25, 1924) was a Russian avant-garde artist (Cubist, Suprematist and Constructivist), painter and designer. She was also a rarity in the highly masculine world of Soviet art. She added glowing color to Analytical Cubism.
Air+Man+Space, 1912
Through a synthesis of styles, Popova
worked towards what she termed painterly
architectonics. After first exploring
Impressionism, by 1913, in Composition with
Figures, she was experimenting with the
particularly Russian development of
Cubo-Futurism: a fusion of two equal
influences from France and Italy.
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Aleksander Mikhailovich Rodchenko [O.S. 23 November] 1891 – December 3, 1956) was a Russian artist, sculptor,
photographer and graphic designer. He was one of the founders of constructivism and Russian design; he was married to the artist
Varvara Stepanova. -Rodchenko was one of the most versatile Constructivist and Productivist artists to emerge after the Russian
Revolution. He worked as a painter and graphic designer before turning to photomontage and photography. His photography was
socially engaged, formally innovative, and opposed to a painterly aesthetic. Concerned with the need for analytical-documentary
photo series, he often shot his subjects from odd angles—usually high above or below—to shock the viewer and to postpone
recognition. He wrote: "One has to take several different shots of a subject, from different points of view and in different situations, as
if one examined it in the round rather than looked through the same key-hole again and again."
1920s. Rodchenko and Stepanova
Rodchenko Poster/Flier
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He was a central exponent of Russian Constructivism,
owing much to the pre-Revolutionary work of Malevich
and Tatlin.
He was closely involved in the cultural debates and
experiments that followed the Revolution of 1917.
In 1921 he denounced, on ideological grounds, easel
painting and fine art.
He became an exponent of Productivism in many
fields, including poster design, furniture, photography
and film.
He resumed painting in his later years.
His work was characterized by the systematic way in
which from 1916 he sought to reject the conventional
roles of self-expression, personal handling of the
medium and tasteful or aesthetic predilections.
His early nihilism and condemnation of the concept of
art make it problematic even to refer to Rodchenko as
an artist: in this respect his development was
comparable to that of Dada, although it also had roots
in the anarchic activities of Russian Futurist groups.
Lazar Markovich Lissitzky (November 23, 1890 – December 30, 1941), better known as El Lissitzky, was a Russian artist,
designer, photographer, typographer, polemicist and architect. He was an important figure of the Russian avant garde, helping
develop suprematism with his mentor, Kazimir Malevich, and designing numerous exhibition displays and propaganda works for
the former Soviet Union. His work greatly influenced the Bauhaus and constructivist movements, and he experimented with
production techniques and stylistic devices that would go on to dominate 20th-century graphic design.
Perhaps the most famous work by
Lissitzky from the same period was the
1919 propaganda poster, Beat the Whites
with the Red Wedge.
In the poster, the intrusive red wedge
symbolizes the Bolsheviks, who are
penetrating and defeating their opponents,
the Whites, during the Russian Civil War.
Russia was going through a civil war at the
time, which was mainly fought between the
"Reds" (communists and revolutionaries)
and the "Whites" (monarchists,
conservatives, liberals and socialists who
opposed the Bolshevik Revolution).
The image of the red wedge shattering the
white form, simple as it was,
communicated a powerful message that
left no doubt in the viewer's mind of its
intention. The piece is often seen as
alluding to the similar shapes used on
military maps and, along with its political
symbolism, was one of El Lissitzky's first
major steps away from Malevich's non-
objective suprematism into a style his own.
“Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge", a 1919 lithograph by Lissitzky
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For a period El Lissitzky proceeded to develop a suprematist style
of his own.
He painted a series of abstract, geometric paintings which he
called Proun (pronounced "pro-oon"). (Project for the Affirmation of
the New). Lissitzky's Proun compositions utilize shifting axes and
multiple perspectives to convey the idea of rotation in space.
Later, El Lissitzky defined them ambiguously as "the station where
one changes from painting to architecture.―
Proun was essentially El Lissitzky's exploration of the visual
language of suprematism with spatial elements, utilizing shifting
axes and multiple perspectives; both uncommon ideas in
suprematism.
Suprematism at the time was conducted almost exclusively in flat,
2D forms and shapes, and El Lissitzky, with a taste for architecture
and other 3D concepts, tried to expand suprematism beyond this.
His Proun works (known as Prounen) spanned over a half a
decade and evolved from straightforward paintings and lithographs
into fully three-dimensional installations. They would also lay the
foundation for his later experiments in architecture and exhibition
design.
While the paintings were artistic in their own right, their use as a
staging ground for his early architectonic ideas was significant.
In these works, the basic elements of architecture — volume,
mass, color, space and rhythm — were subjected to a fresh
formulation in relation to the new suprematist ideals.
Through his Prouns, utopian models for a new and better world
were developed.
This approach, in which the artist creates art with socially defined
purpose, could aptly be summarized with his edict "task oriented
creation." A Proun by El Lissitzky, c.1925.
Commenting on Proun in 1921, El Lissitzky stated, "We brought the canvas into circles . . . and while we turn, we raise ourselves into the space."
Proun 19D, c. 1922Gesso, oil, collage, etc., on plywoodThe Museum of Modern Art, New York
Proun G7, 1923Distemper, tempera, varnish and pencil on canvas, 77 x 62 cm
Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Dusseldorf
El Lissitzky , Proun 5, Installation
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El Lissitzky, Proun 30t, 1920. Sprengel Museum Hannover
Lissitzky's Suprematist story of two squares in six constructions, 1922
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Design for the Abstract Cabinet, 1927-1928
Section of the Room for Constructivist Art, 1926
Drawing of the Wolkenbügel (Cloud-Iron) in Nikitskii Square, 1925
Photomontage of the Wolkenbügel (Cloud-Iron)
in Nikitskii Square, 1925
Model for the interior of the Soviet PavilionInternational Fur Trade Exhibition, Leipzig
Entrance, 1930International Fur Trade Exhibition, Leipzig
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Precisionism
• The artists who came to be known as the Precisionists never formally organized themselves
as a group or issued a manifesto; instead, they were associated through their common style
and subjects.
• Around 1920, a number of artists in the United States began experimenting with a highly
controlled approach to technique and form.
• They consistently reduced their compositions to simple shapes and underlying
geometrical structures, with clear outlines, minimal detail, and smooth handling of
surfaces.
• Their paintings, drawings, and prints also showed the influence of recent work by American
photographers, such as Paul Strand, who were utilizing sharp focus and lighting, unexpected
viewpoints and cropping, and emphasis on the abstract form of the subject.
The Precisionists borrowed freely from recent movements in European art, including Purism's call to visual order
and clarity and Futurism's celebration of technology and expression of speed through dynamic compositions.
Charles Demuth adapted Cubism's geometric simplifications and faceted, overlapping planes, while Morton
Schamberg can be linked to Dada through his use of machinery as nontraditional subject matter.
After Sir Christopher Wren, 1920Charles Demuth (American, 1883–1935)Watercolor, gouache, and pencil on cardboard (60.5 x 51 cm)
Demuth spent several summers in Provincetown,
Massachusetts, located at the tip of Cape Cod and
a popular summer destination for artists and
writers in the early twentieth century. He painted a
number of Provincetown landmarks, including this
view of the Center Methodist Episcopal Church. In
this watercolor, the church's prominent steeple and
spire rise above the surrounding residential
architecture. Built in 1860, the church had been
designed in a variant of the English Baroque style,
which is often associated with the architect
Christopher Wren (1632–1723). Certain elements
of Demuth's composition are indebted to his
knowledge of Cubism and Futurism. Repeated,
diagonal "lines of force" break the area of the sky
into fragments, and the houses in the foreground
seem crystallized from multiple planes; however,
the overall effect is legible and cohesive. In
demonstrating that he could apply his Precisionist
style to more traditional subjects as well as modern
industrial ones, Demuth remained a painter of the
American scene.
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In other respects, however, the Precisionists defined
themselves as distinctively American artists. Artists such
as Charles Sheeler, Elsie Driggs, Ralston Crawford, and
Louis Lozowick, as well as Demuth, distanced
themselves from European influences by selecting
subjects from the American landscape and regional
American culture. These subjects included elements
unique to early twentieth-century life, including urban
settings (particularly the dramatic engineering advances
of skyscrapers and suspension bridges) and the
sprawling industrial locales of steel mills, coalmines, and
factory complexes. Many of the same artists also applied
their new, hard-edged style to long-familiar American
scenes, such as agricultural structures or local crafts
and domestic architecture. Even such conventional
motifs as a still life of fruit or flowers were treated to a
fresh assessment in the Precisionist style.
[Doylestown House—The Stove], 1917Charles Sheeler (American, 1883–1965)
Gelatin silver print (23.1 x 16.3 cm)
This photograph was made at the Bucks County,
Pennsylvania, home that Charles Sheeler shared with fellow
painter and photographer Morton Schamberg. The spare
geometry of the eighteenth-century Doylestown farmhouse
proved an irresistible subject for an artist eager to explore with
a camera the radical formal ideas that had impressed him in
the paintings of Cézanne, Picasso, and Braque. It is an
elegantly balanced, harmonious work, a testament to
Sheeler's clarity of vision and ability to distill a scene to its
essence—a salient feature of the artist's work in all media.
The connections between the Precisionist approach and a wider social context were strong ones. In the later 1910s
and 1920s, the United States was expanding its communications technology, industrial production, and construction
in urban settings. The changing cityscape was documented by Strand and Sheeler in 1920, in their short film
Manhattan. However, as the country experienced a psychological reaction to the mass destruction wrought
overseas by the First World War and, later, the economic hardships of the Great Depression within its own borders,
the United States entered a period of political isolationism. Cultural critics voiced a need for America to seek and
shape its national identity through its own history, landscape, artifacts, and regional traditions. This attitude was also
reflected in a revival of interest in American folk art. The functional design of Shaker furniture, for example, was now
taken as evidence of preindustrial self-sufficiency, and was also seen as proto-modern in its simplicity.
Accordingly, there existed two opposing views of the machine's place in contemporary
American society, both of which were embodied by Precisionist art.
1. One view was the utopian ideal of technology bringing order to the modern world by
enhancing the speed, efficiency, and cleanliness of everyday life. It is worth noting that
Precisionism coincided with the landmark Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et
Industriels Modernes, held in Paris in 1925, and the like-minded Machine-Age Exposition
hosted by New York in 1927, both of which endorsed the amalgamation of art, design, and
industry in streamlined products for everyday use.
2. The opposing view stressed the dehumanizing effects of technology, warning that it would
replace workers, create pollution, and dominate the landscape in a destructive manner.
Occasionally, these two attitudes coexisted in an ambiguous tension within a single work
of art.
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Machinery, 1920
Charles Demuth (American, 1883–1935)Tempera and pencil on cardboard (60.9 x 50 cm)
This painting was first shown in an exhibition
of Demuth's works titled Arrangements of the
American Landscape Forms, held in 1920.
Rather than a traditional landscape scene, it
depicts industrial architecture in his hometown
of Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
Despite some abstract use of force lines and
fragmented planes, the subject remains
identifiable. It is a scene of rooftop machinery
set against a background of windows
belonging to an adjacent factory building; the
central structure is a cyclone separator, a
centrifuge-like apparatus often used in
industrial settings, consisting of a tank, a
funnel, and two arm like duct pipes.
Like Demuth's painting The Figure 5 in Gold,
this work was dedicated to his close friend, the
poet William Carlos Williams. Williams himself
contemplated the analogy between the arts
and technology. In 1944, he wrote, "To make
two bald statements: There's nothing
sentimental about a machine, and: A poem is a
small (or large) machine made out of words"
(introduction to The Wedge, 1944).
Forms in Space, 1927John Storrs (American, 1885–1956)
Stainless steel and copper (52.1 x 10.2 x 4.1 cm)
Storrs was the son of a Chicago architect and real estate developer, and the modern
architecture of his native city would influence his sculpture throughout his career. He
studied at various institutions in both the United States and Paris, where he was a
student of Auguste Rodin for a brief time.
He developed an approach to sculpture that acknowledged historical influences
ranging from Native American ceramics to ancient Egyptian and Greek stone carving,
while also incorporating recent styles such as Art Deco design.
Storrs produced his "skyscraper sculptures" in materials associated more with industry
and the decorative arts than with the fine arts. They are formal experiments with
volume and space, the balance of vertical and horizontal masses, and the play of light
on polished surfaces. Examples such as Forms in Space, in particular, signal his
interest in the latest architectural styles seen in Chicago and New York, where the
ever-taller office towers and apartment buildings were "set back" at their upper stories,
in accordance with new urban zoning requirements.
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Americana, 1931
Charles Sheeler (American, 1883–1965)Oil on canvas (121.9 x 91.4 cm)
Between 1926 and 1934, Sheeler produced a
series of seven paintings that depict the interior of
his home in South Salem, New York, and his
collection of early American furnishings.
The conflicting geometric patterns of the rugs,
pillows, woven sofa covering, and backgammon
set create a sense of visual disorientation in this
scene, as do the unusual perspective and
cropping of objects. However, the objects
themselves are rendered in an extremely precise
manner.
This painting is as much a statement about
national pride and the virtues of home and
craftsmanship as it is a portrait of the artist's living
space.
Sheeler was not alone in his interest in these
crafts; a number of influential collectors
developed an interest in American folk and
decorative arts in the 1920s and 1930s. In an era
that placed increasing emphasis on technology
and mass production, and in the years following
the international crisis of World War I, such
objects were nostalgic reminders of an ostensibly
simpler time.
South of Scranton, 1931
Peter Blume (American, born Russia, 1906–1992)Oil on canvas (142.2 x 167 cm)
Although the subjects of
Blume's pictures were
frequently mystifying and
tended toward Surrealism,
his technique possessed a
sharp clarity that associated
him with the Precisionist
school of painting.
South of Scranton gathers
various scenes that the artist
encountered during an
extended road trip in spring
1930. The industrial
machinery, coal piles, and
smoking locomotives at the
left side of the painting
represent selective locales
from the path.
Blume then traveled further
south to Charleston, South
Carolina, where he
witnessed several sailors
performing acrobatic
exercises aboard the deck of
a German cruiser ship in the
harbor.
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White Canadian Barn II, 1932
Georgia O'Keeffe (American, 1887–1986)Oil on canvas (30.5 x 76.2 cm)
This austere image, from a series of seven or eight barn paintings, was inspired by a summer trip that O'Keeffe made to the
rugged Gaspé Peninsula of Canada in 1932. The barn, as she depicts it, is stark in color and design, and precisely delineated. She
allowed the subject matter to determine the appropriate proportions of the composition: the narrow, horizontal format of White
Canadian Barn II echoes the flat rectangular forms of the barn roof and walls. The picture space is divided into three distinct areas
denoting sky, building, and ground. Although the barn's strictly frontal presentation almost completely negates its three-dimensional
form and depth, its somber coloring and massive size indicate a tangible and weighty presence. O'Keeffe distilled the essential
geometric shape from each architectural element of the structure and also eliminated the textured patterns of its surfaces and
other small details; only two impenetrable, black doorways anchor the breadth of the painting. While the artist denied having any
connections to organized art movements, her series of barn images (a subject atypical in her nature-inspired oeuvre) does closely
fit the style of the Precisionist painters.
Water, 1945
Charles Sheeler (American, 1883–1965)
Oil on canvas 24 x 29 1/8 in. (61 x 74 cm)
Water depicts one of the power generators built
by the Tennessee Valley Authority in the 1930s,
when hydroelectric power was being distributed
throughout the Tennessee River region of the
United States. Sheeler's experience as a
photographer influenced his Precisionist style of
painting, in which he emphasized the geometric
shapes of objects in a hard-edged, clearly lit
manner. For Sheeler, these monumental,
streamlined forms signified human ingenuity in
harnessing nature's power. His interpretation of
American industry was somewhat idealized:
workers are never shown, and the machinery is
pristine and gleaming, free of any dirt or smoke.
Sheeler expressed his feelings about the
emotional symbolism of technology when he
wrote: "Every age manifests itself by some
external evidence. In a period such as ours when
only a comparatively few individuals seem to be
given to religion, some form other than the Gothic
cathedral must be found. Industry concerns the
greatest numbers—it may be true, as has been
said, that our factories are our substitute for
religious expression" (quoted in Constance
Rourke, Charles Sheeler: Artist in the American
Tradition, 1938).
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Initially, no single label existed for this loosely associated group of artists of the Machine
Age. They were frequently called "the Immaculates" or "modern classicists" throughout
the 1920s. Although the "precision" and the "precise line" of their art were often noted in
written reviews, it was not until 1927 that Alfred H. Barr, the director of the Museum of
Modern Art in New York, officially used the name "Precisionists" to describe them as a
group. Other early sponsors of the style in New York City included Charles Daniel of the
Daniel Gallery, who exhibited the work of Charles Demuth, Niles Spencer, Charles
Sheeler, and Preston Dickinson; Stephen Bourgeois of the Bourgeois Gallery, who
promoted Joseph Stella and George Ault; and arts patron Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney
and her Whitney Studio Club.
Some of these artists, such as Demuth, Stella, and Sheeler, continued to work in a
Precisionist style for several decades. Meanwhile, a second generation of artists working
in a Precisionist style emerged during the 1930s. While still taking the American
industrial landscape as a frequent subject, they tended more toward abstraction or
Surrealism in their depictions of modernity. With the close of the 1930s, furthermore, the
United States was approaching involvement in the Second World War; the use of atomic
bombs in that war would give rise to widespread unease about technology's power to
destroy, undermining the confident outlook that had made the Precisionist mode
possible.
