Chapter 20

The Twentieth Century:The Early Years

When people ask me to compare the 20th century to older

civilizations, I always say the same thing: “The situation is

normal.”

–Will Durant

Early 20th Century Movements

• Fauves

• Expressionism

• Cubism

• Futurism

• Early Abstraction

• Fantasy and Dada

• Surrealism

• The Bauhaus

The Fauves

• The Salon d’Automne was an independent exhibition in 1903.

• Brought together the works of French avant-garde artists.

• A critic gave them the name The Fauves.

• Like the Postimpressionists, the Fauves rejected the soft palette and delicate brushwork of the Impressionists.

• Their subject matter included traditional nudes, still lifes, and landscapes.

• Color and brushwork was chosen on the basis of its emotive quality.

• Fauvism did not last very long.

The Fauve continued…

• Their art was characterized by harsh, non-descriptive color; bold linear patterning; and a distorted perspective

The artists:

• André Derain -– One of the founders of the Fauves.

• Henri Matisse – Gained critical recognition for the Fauves.

– His reputation exceeded the movement.

– Thought paintings should be joyous.

Fig. 20-1 p. 470 ANDRÉ DERAIN. London Bridge (1906). Oil on Canvas. 26” x 39”.

Fig. 20-2 p. 471 HENRI MATISSE. Red Room (Harmony in Red) (1908-1909). Oil on

Canvas. 69 3/4” x 85 7/8”.

Expressionism

• Expressionism is the distortion of nature in order to achieve a desired emotion or representation of inner feelings.

• It differs from the imitation of nature by other artists.

• The movement reacted against Realism and Impressionism.

• Edvard Munch and Käthe Kolliwtz were also expressionistic artists.

3 Types of Expressionist Movements

1. Die Brücke (The Bridge)1. Founded in Dresden Germany

2. Short lived

2. Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider)1. Emotionally charged subject matter, often

radically distorted.

2. Work focused on contrasts and combinations of abstract forms and pure colors.

3. Neue Sachlichkeit (The New Objectivity)1. Commented on the bureaucracy and military

with images of human torture.

Die Brücke (The Bridge)

• The movement was founded to bridge disparate styles.

• The subject matter was often radically distorted.

• It was founded around the same time as Fauvism.

The artists:

• Emil Nolde

• Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Figure 20.3, p.472: EMIL NOLDE. Dance around the Golden Calf (1910). Oil on canvas. 34 3⁄8” x 41”.

Der Blaue Reiter(The Blue Rider)

• This movement focused on the contrasts and combinations of abstract forms and pure color.

• Some of the artworks are non-objective, or abstract.

The artists:

• Wassily Kandinsky

• Franz Marc

• Paul Klee

Fig. 20-4, p.473 WASSILY KANDINSKY. Sketch I for Composition VII. (1913). Oil on Canvas. 30 3/4” x 39 3/8”.

Neue Sachlichkeit (The New Objectivity)

• A movement that reacted to the horrors and senselessness of war.

• Its art commented bitterly on bureaucracy and the military, with visions of human torture.

The artists:

• Max Beckman

• George Grosz

• Otto Dix

CUBISM

• Second major art movement of the 20 century.

• Cubism can trace its heritage to Neoclassicism and art of Cézanne.

• Cézanne’s geometrization of nature, abandonment of scientific perspective, his rendering of multiple views, and his emphasis on the two-dimensionality of the canvas influence cubism.

• Pablo Picasso was Cubism’s driving force.

Cubism continued…

Types of Cubism:

• Analytic Cubism

• Synthetic Cubism

The artists:

• Pablo Picasso

• Georges Braque

• Jacques Lipchitz

• Alexander Archipenko

Pablo Picasso

• The Blue Period – 1901- 1904

– Picasso’s first major art phase.

– Characterized by an overall blue tonality.

– Distortion of the body through elongation

– And melancholy subjects

• The Rose Phase– 1905 - 1908

– Subjects mainly from the circus life

– Used pink tones

• The Start of Cubism– In 1907 Picasso saw 2 exhibit that influenced his work, the

Cezanne retrospective and an exhibit of ethnographic art from Africa, Oceania, and Iberia.

Figure 20.6, p.475: PABLO PICASSO. Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907). Oil on canvas. 8’ x 7’8”.

Analytic Cubism

• Term was coined by a hostile critic.

• This is a form of Cubism from c. 1910 that used a faceting of form.

• Cubism was a new treatment of pictorial space that hinged on rendering objects from multiple and radically different views.

• Instead of presenting us with a single view, the Cubists showed us many different sides of an object.

Analytic Cubism

The Artist:

• George Braque

• Met Picasso in 1907

• They worked together on the same artistic goals until 1914.

• First to begin inserting words and numbers in his work.

• Also used trompe l’oeil on portions of his Analytic Cubism.

See Georges Braque’s, The Portuguese (1911)

Synthetic Cubism

• This form of Cubism spanned from 1909–1912.

• Papier collé - Artists pasted objects, such as pieces of paper, found objects, rope, etc., to their works.

• Some of their compositions consist entirely of found objects.

• Guernica and Picasso’s 1937 return to Cubism.

Synthetic Cubism

• See Pablo Picasso’s

• The Bottle of Suze(1912-13)

• And Pablo Picasso’s

• Guernica

• (1937)

Cubist Sculpture

• Cubism began with two-dimensional surfaces, but it was limited by the surface itself.

• With Cubist sculpture, one could walk around and observe the many facets of a work of art.

The Artist:

• Alexander Archipenko– one of the inventors of cubist sculpture.

– Use of void space as solid form.

– The figure is fragmented, the contours are broken and dislocated.

Fig. 20-11 p. 478 ALEXANDER ARCHIPENKO. Walking Woman (1912). Bronze. H: 26 1/2”.

FUTURISM

• Futurism was a radical Italian movement that began after a 1909 manifesto called for an art of “violence, energy, and boldness”.

• Futurism owed much to Cubism.

• Dynamism is a word also used by the Futurists, fond of technology.

• The futurists were obsessed with illustrating images in perpetual motion.

Futurism continued…

• Futurism promoted nationalism to an extreme, plus modern warfare, speed, and violence.

• The subject was less important then the portrayal of the “dynamic sensation”.

• Although much of futurist work was abstract they always had a start in representation.

The artists:

• Giacomo Balla

• Umberto Boccioni

• Gino Severini

Figure 20.12, p.479: UMBERTO BOCCIONI. Unique Forms of Continuity in Space (1913). Bronze (cast 1931). 43 7⁄8” x 34 7⁄8” x 15 3⁄4”.

Fig. 20-13, p.479 GIACOMO BALLA. Street Light (1909). Oil on Canvas. 68 3/4” x 45 1/4”.

EARLY TWENTIETH-CENTURY ABSTRACTION IN THE UNITED STATES

• Before World War I, American artists adhered to Realism.

• Photographer Alfred Stieglitz brought the European Modernism to American in his exhibits in his, 291 Gallery.

• The 1913 Armory Show- the International Exhibition of Modern Art held at the 29th Regiment Armory in New York showcased Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase and created a stir.

Early Abstraction:American Artists

• Abstraction reflected changes in American culture and society

The artists:

• Georgia O’Keeffe

• Charles Demuth– Part of a group of artists called “Cubo-Realists” or

“Precisionists”.

• Stuart Davis

• Charles Burchfield

• Arthur Dove

Fig. 20-14, p.480 GEORGIA O’KEEFE. White Iris (1930). Oil on Canvas. 40” x

30”.

Figure 20.15, p.481: CHARLES DEMUTH. My Egypt (1927). Oil on composition board. 35 3⁄4” x 30”(90.8 cm x 76.2 cm).

EARLY TWENTIETH-CENTURY ABSTRACTION IN EUROPE

• During the second decade, two art movements were dedicated to pure abstraction (or non objective art):1. Constructivism

2. De Stijl

• Nonobjective art does not use nature or visual reality as a point of departure.

• It has no subject other them that of the forms, colors, and lines in it.

Early Abstraction continued…

The artists:

• Wassily Kandinsky-

– First painter of pure abstraction.

• Naum Gabo

– Constructivist sculpture

– Created works with intersecting planes of metal, glass, plastic, and wood to define space.

Figure 20.16, p.482: NAUM GABO. Column (c. 1923). Perspex, wood, metal, glass. 41 1⁄2” x 29” x 29”.

Early Abstraction continued…

The Artists continued…

• Piet Mondrian

– Influences by van Gogh

– Started out as an Impressionist landscape painter.

– Studied cubist theory which lead him to his reduced forms and primary colors.

• Constantin Brancusi

– Used extreme simplification in his sculpture.

– Used the simplest contour that when combined with a title would create recognition.

Fig. 20-19, p.484 CONSTANTIN BRANCUSI. Bird in Space. (c1928). Bronze (unique

cast). H: 54”.

Early Abstraction:European Artists

• See Piet Mondrian’s Composition with Red, Blue, and Yellow (1930)

Figure 20.18, p.483: GERRIT RIETVELD. Schroeder House, Utrecht (1924).

FANTASY AND DADA

• Before the 20th century, only a handful of artists had ventured into the world of dreams or supernatural fantasies.

• The word “fantastic” has its origins from the Greek word phantastikos meaning “the ability to represent something to the mind” or “to create a mental image.”

• Fantasy is further defines as “unreal, odd, seemingly impossible, and strange in appearance.”

• Fantastic art, then, represents incredible unreal images from the artist’s mind.

Fantasy continued…

• Fantasy art includes images that may be joyful reminiscences, horrific nightmares, capricious thoughts, or grotesque thoughts or memories

The artists:

• Paul Klee– Whimsical and sardonic

– Used ethnographic and children’s art

• Giorgio de Chirico– Odd juxtaposition of familiar objects.

Fig. 20-20 P.484 PAUL KLEE. Twittering Machine (1922). Watercolor, pen and ink. 25 1/4”

x 19”.

Fantasy and Its Artists

• Also See Giorgio de Chirico’s The Mystery and Melancholy of the Street (1914)

DADA

• In 1916, during World War I, an international movement arose that declared itself against art.

• Dadaists declared that art- a reflection of the sorry state of affairs - was stupid and must be destroyed.

• Ironically, the movement against art actually created its own art.

• They created art that is meaningless, absurd and unpredictable.

• Dada is a random, made up word.

• Dadaism would provide the basis for Surrealism that started in the 1920s.

Dada and Its Artists

• Dada included collages, works mocking the masters, and irrational themes.

The artists:

• Marcel Duchamp

• Max Ernst

• Hannah Höch

• Francis Picabia

• Kurt Schwitters

Dada and Its Artists

• See Max Ernst’s Two Children Are Threatened by a Nightingale (1924).

Compare and Contrast

• Leonardo’s Mona Lisa, Duchamp’s Mona Lisa (L.H.O.O.Q.), Odutokun’s Dialogue with Mona Lisa, and Lee’s Bona Lisa

• Discuss “Mona Lisa: The Icon”

• and revisionist art that takes on one of the most famous works of art

Figure 20.23, p.486: MARCEL DUCHAMP. Mona Lisa (L.H.O.O.Q.) (1919). Rectified readymade; pencil on a reproduction. 7 3⁄4” x 4 7⁄8”.

Figure 20.24, p.487: G. ODUTOKUN. Dialogue with Mona Lisa (1991). Gouache on paper. 30” x 22”.

Figure 20.25, p.487: SADIE LEE. Bona Lisa (1992). Oil on board. 23” x 19”.

SURREALISM

Surrealism began after World War I as a literary movement.

Surrealism used 2 different methods to create art:

1. Illusionistic Surrealism - rendered the irrational content, absurd juxtapositions, and metamorphoses of the dream state in a highly illusionist manner.

2. Automatist Surrealism - use similar to automatic writing and was used to open the mind and show the subconscious through abstraction.

Surrealism continued…

The artists:

• Illusionistic Surrealism– Salvador Dalí

– Yves Tanguy

– René Magritte

• Automatist Surrealism– Joan Miró

– Andre Masson

Surrealism

• See Salvador Dalí’s The Persistence of Memory (1931)

• See Joan Miró’s Painting (1933)

THE BAUHAUS

• Early part of the 20th century saw numerous of inventions in architecture.

• Walter Gropius

– German architect

– started the expression, “form follows function” and “less is more”.

– Emphasis on simplicity and economical use of space, time, materials, and money.

Discussion Questions:

• Why were there so many artistic movements in the first half of the 20th century? Will this be revised?

• Is there a cohesive element in any of these movements?

• Do these movements reflect the historical periods of wars and devastating depression?

• What were these artists and movements trying to convey?