MODERNISM

“Modernism released us from the constraints of everything that had gone before with a euphoric sense of freedom. ” Arthur Erickson

“War is the highest form of modern art.” Tommaso Marinetti, founder of Futurism

“In general, modern art... has been inspired by a natural desire to chart the uncharted.” Herbert Read

“On or about December 1910, human character changed….” Virginia Woolf

“Modern music is as dangerous as cocaine.” Pietro Mascagni

“The impulse of modern art is the desire to destroy beauty. ” Barnett Newman

“And yet what is Modernism? It is undefined. ”John C. Ransom

Science: An Indeterminate Universe

Quantum Physics – Max Planck Energy is not continuous, but comes in small but

discrete units. The elementary particles behave both like

particles and like waves. The movement of these particles is inherently

random. 3

Principle of Uncertainty – Werner HeisenbergIt is physically impossible to know both the

position and the momentum of a particle at the same time.

Theory of Relativity – Albert Einstein E=mc2

Energy = mass x speed of light squared

Psychology: Whither the Self?

Sigmund Freud Psychoanalysis and

Dream Analysis – the Unconscious Mind

Psyche: Id Ego Superego

Oedipal Complex Repression and

Sublimation Civilization and Its

Discontents

Karl Jung

o Collective Unconscious

o Psyche: o Personao Animus/Animao Shadow

o Archetypes: primal patternso The Heroo The Trickstero The Great Mothero The Sage

o Myth, dreams, folklore

Motifs and Movements Fragmentation: Cubism Precision: Imagism Speed: Futurism Alienation/Angst: Expressionism Color: Fauvism Technology: Constructivism Functionalism: Bauhaus/International

Style Protest/Propaganda: Social Realism Chaos/Irrationality: Dadaism The Subconscious: Surrealism Form: Abstraction

Fragmentation:

Georges Bracque Woman with a Guitar, 1913

CUB ISM

Juan Gris, Still Life with Fruit Dish and Mandolin, 1919

Primitivism:

African Influence

s

Pablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907

Poetry: Imagism Discordant Abstract Open Verse Imagists:

Ezra Pound Amy Lowell H.D.

Heat by H. D.

O wind, rend open the heat, cut apart the heat, rend it to tatters.

Fruit cannot drop through this thick air– fruit cannot fall into heat that presses up and blunts the points of pears and rounds the grapes.

Cut the heat– plough through it, turning it on either side of your path.

Imagism“It is essential to prove that beauty may be in small, dry

things. The great aim is accurate, precise and definite

description.” – T.E. Hulme

IN A STATION OF THE METRO

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;Petals on a wet black bough. Ezra Pound

William Carlos Williams

“The Great Figure”Among the rainand lightsI saw the figure 5in goldon a redfire truckmovingtenseunheededto gong clangssiren howlsand wheels rumblingthrough the dark city

Charles Henry Demuth (1883-1935), I Saw the Figure Five in Gold

Speed: Futurism

Umberto Boccioni, Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, 1913“The cry of rebellion which we

utter associates our ideals with those of the Futurist poets. These ideas were not invented by some aesthetic clique. They are an expression of a violent desire, which burns in the veins of every creative artist today. ... We will fight with all our might the fanatical, senseless and snobbish religion of the past, a religion encouraged by the vicious existence of museums. We rebel against that spineless worshipping of old canvases, old statues and old bric-a-brac, against everything which is filthy and worm-ridden and corroded by time. We consider the habitual contempt for everything which is young, new and burning with life to be unjust and even criminal.”Filippo Tomaso Marinetti, The Futurist Manifesto, 1909

Vorticism

The cover of the first edition of BLAST, 1914.

The cover of the second edition of BLAST, 1915.

Alienation

Angst

Expressionism

Emil NoldeMaskenstilleben (Masks Still Life)1911

Theatre: Questions of Identity

Pirandello: Naked Masks Dramatic illusion What is real? What is identity behind

the social mask? Impossibility of

authentic communication Leads to Beckett’s

Theatre of the Absurd

Samuel Beckett, Endgame

Color: FauvismWoman with a Hat by Henri Matisse, 1905

La femme au grand chapeau (Woman with large hat) by Kees van Dongen, 1906

Fiction: Stream-of-Consciousness

“Let us record the atoms as they fall upon the mind in the order in which they fall, let us trace the pattern, however disconnected and incoherent in appearance, which each sight or incident scores upon the consciousness. Let us not take it for granted that life exists more fully in what is commonly thought big than in what is small” – Virginia Woolf “Modern Fiction”

Stream of Consciousness

James Joyce

Dorothy RichardsonVirginia

Woolf

William Faulkner

Technology: Constructivi

sm

Ilya Golosov, Zuyev Workers' Club, 1927Moscow

Functionalism: Bauhaus/International Style

Walter Gropius,The Bauhaus Building in Dessau, Germany

Commentary/Propaganda: Social Realism

Isabel Bishop, Office Girls, 1938Aaron Douglas, God’s Trombones, 1926

Strakhov, Emancipated Women Build Socialism, 1920

Rivera, The Arsenal, detail, 1928

Film: Propaganda and Satire

Leni Riefenstahl, The Triumph of the Will, 1934

Charlie Chaplin,1940

Photographyand

Photo-journalism

Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother

Epic Theatre: Bertolt Brecht

Socially Conscious

Didactic Dialectic Theatrical Borrows from

Cabaret

Mother Courage and Her Children, 1934

PROTEST: Picasso, Guernica

Chaos/Irrationality:

Dadaism Marcel Janco recalled,We had lost confidence in our culture. Everything had to be demolished. We would begin again after the "tabula rasa". At the Cabaret Voltaire we began by shocking common sense, public opinion, education, institutions, museums, good taste, in short, the whole prevailing order.

Dada is the groundwork to abstract art and sound poetry, a starting point for performance art, a prelude to postmodernism, an influence on pop art, a celebration of antiart to be later embraced for anarcho-political uses in the 1960s and the movement that lay the foundation for Surrealism.-Marc Lowenthal

Photograph of Marcel Duchamp's "Fountain“. ready-mades

The Subconscious:

Surrealism Film: Luis

Bunuel and Salvador Dali, Un Chien Andalou, 1929

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAiIUdWk1Ng&feature=related

Rene Magritte, Attempting the Impossible, 1928

Form: Abstractio

n

Piet Mondrian, Broadway Boogie Woogie, 1942-43

Abstraction Cycladic Influence on Modern Art

Constantin Brancusi

Amedeo Modigliani

Cycladic Statue

MusicSound Experimentation Arnold Schoenberg:

Atonality12-tone system: serialism Song cycles:

Sprechstimme Igor Stravinsky: Le Sacre du Printemps:

dissonance and heavy rhythm

Eric Satie: Incorporation of “work”

sounds Alban Berg

Operas: Wozzeck and Lulu

Ragtime, Blues and Jazz

o Roots in African-American work songs, gospel, drumming, parade music

o Moved from New Orleans up the Mississippi to St. Louis and Kansas City on to Chicago, NYC and LA – wildy popular in Europe

o Ragtime: Scott Joplino Opera: Treemonisha

o Blues – emotive lamentation using blues scale

o Jazz – improvisational, ensemble

Dance: Ballet

Diaghilev: Ballet Russe Choreographers: Fokine, Nijinsky Dancers: Pavlova, Nijinsky,

Karasavina Designers: Picasso, Bakst Composers: Ravel, Debussy,

Rimsky-Korsakov, Stravinsky

L’apres midi d’un faune:

The Afternoon of a Faun, 1912

Music by Claude Debussy

Choreography by Vaslav Nijinsky

Design by Leon Bakst

Le sacre du printemps : The Rite of Spring, 1913

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jo4sf2wT0wU

Music by Igor Stravinsky; Choreography by Vaslav Nijinsky

Modern Dance: Isadora Duncan

freedom of movementhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPlN_gO5TOM

Modern Dance: Denishawn –Ruth St. Denis and Ted

Shawninternational influence

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42Hc6pvnI8A&list=PL2BAF1DD92407A23B

Modern Dance: Katherine Dunham

Afro-Caribbean Influence

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W23MYjH92co

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vyx6ue7K6o