The Revolutionary Period

20th Century Modernism, Part II:

Art Between the World Wars

Shifting
Perspectives
> Brutality of war brought new vision
~ Did not destroy faith in machines

> Combatant nations were economically weak

~ U.S. became largest manufacturing power
~ Economic instability led to new ideas for recovery and reform

> Soviet Russia: ideal or threat?

Fernand Lger
> The City
~ Painting should be accessible to the people
~ Precise and neat parts fit into an appointed place
~ World without sentiment or criticism
~ People are geometric shapes

> Ballet Mecanique

~ Abstract silent film
~ Machine forms replace humans
~ Airplane propeller, electric doorbell, player piano

Dada
> Nihilistic movement
> Artists: distrustful of order and reason
~ Challenged polite society
~ Protested pretense of fine art
~ Attached bureaucratic hypocrisies

> Reduced the role of art to absurdity

~ Arts task is destruction not creation

> Photomontage
~ Political orientation
~ Mass media in daily life

Hannah Hoch, was a German Dada

artist. She is best known for her work
of the Weimar period, when she was
one of the originators
of photomontage.

Hannah Hoch, Cut With the

Kitchen Knife, 1919

Marcel Duchamp

L.H.O.O.Q. (1919)
"She has hot pants"

Surrealism

A cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for its
visual artworks and writings..

Existentialism
Albert Camus
-finding meaning
-living without meaning
John Paul Sartre
-what it means that "God is dead" (cf. Nietzsche)
-defining yourself
-the significance of choice
-existentialism is a humanism

Neoclassical Interlude
The legacy of neoclassical
architecturereached from
Boullee to Louis Kahn.

Social Realism

Also known as Socio-Realism, is an artistic movement, expressed in the

visual and other realist arts, which depicts social and racial injustice, economic
hardship, through unvarnished pictures of life's struggles; often
depicting working class activities as heroic.

Nonobjectivism
Piet Mondrian
-Mondrian today
-The only referent to the
image in the picture is the
picture itself
-the real world and the
imitation of it is no longer
the basis for art

Architecture
From the Greek
arkhitekton, from "chief"
and "builder, carpenter,
mason") is both the
process and product
of planning, designing and
construction.

Art Deco
or deco, is
an eclectic artistic and
design style that began in
Paris in the 1920s and
flourished internationally
throughout the 1930s and
into the World War II era.

International Style

is a major architectural style that emerged in the 1920s and 1930s, the formative decades of Modern architecture. The term
originated from the name of a book by Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson, The International Style

Art and
Revolution
> Russian Revolution 1917
~ Experimental art endorsed by Bolshevik leadership, avantgarde

> Postrevolutionary Art

~ Folk art linked with modern art
~ Kazimir Malevich, Liubov Popova, Vladimir Tatlin, Aleksander
Rodchenko, El Lissitzky
~ Suprematism, constructivism

> Artist as engineer/builder; society vs. individual

> Stalins Russia
~ Socialist Realism: to inspire and instruct

Surrealism
> Greater reality underlying, yet symbolized by, the physical
world
> Andr Breton
~ Surrealist Manifesto fo 1924
~ convulsive beauty

> Paul luard

~ Poetry: the debacle of the intellectual

> Salvador Dali

~ Phobias, delusions, abnormal psychology

> Alberto Giacometti

~ Barenness and isolation in sculpture

Independent
Artists
> Paul Klee
~ Childlike vision: spontaneity untroubled by reason
~ Casual doodles = mastery of line

> Joan Mir

~ Art of invention that eluded logic, reason
~ Guided by subconscious mind

Post-War
Literature and Music
> T.S. Eliots The Wasteland

~ Plummeting faith in human nature and Western culture

> Franz Kafka

~ Capricious, malevolent power of rulers

> Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

~ Puzzled, suffering, alienated outlook

> James Joyce, Gertrude Stein

~ Stream-of-consciouness technique

> Alban Berg, Wozzeck

~ Antimilitary convictions, disillusionment

~ Postwar depression, loss of traditional values

Neoclassical
Interlude
> Classical past calmed post-war anxiety
> Order, clarity, traditional iconography
> Collaborative efforts to recollect antiquity
~ Stravinsky: Apollo and the Muses, Oedipus Rex, Persephone
~ Jean Cocteau: Antigone
~ Darius Milhaud: The Eumenides
~ Diaghilev Dance Co.: Mercury (Satie)

Neoclassicism:
the Visual Arts
> Pablo Picasso
~ Elegant line, sculpturesque modeling of bodies

> Aristide Maillol

~ Reasserted importance of the nude figure
~ Stable, calm figures
~ Merger of antiquity and modernity

> Piet Mondrian

~
~
~
~

Constructive nature of art

Art=collective, impersonal, international
Pictorial engineering
Balance of horizontal and vertical elements

Literary
Neoclassicism
> Reinterpretations of Greek myths to illustrate modern
moralistic or political parallels
> James Joyces Ulysses
~ Classical mythologies provides universal significance to
characters
~ Preserves classical unities of place, time, action
~ Concerned with the eternal search for the meaning of life

Social Realism
and Documentary
> Projects initiated to record/reveal economic and social
injustices
> Jos Clemente Orozco
~ Mexican muralist
~ Struggle of the illiterate masses
~ Grim satire of sterility of higher education

> Frida Kahlo

~ Personal experience, life events

Social Realism
and Documentary
> Photography integral in social documentation
~ Der Arbeiter-Fotograf
~ Mass Observation
- anthology of real life

~ Roman Vishniac
~ Farm Security Administration
- Record effects of Depression on small farmers
- Dorothea Lange, Ella Watson

> Documentary Films

> Picture Magazines

The Harlem
Renaissance
> Grew out of African-American efforts to study and express their
heritage
> Alain Locke encouraged blacks to look to Africa the way Western
culture looks to Greece
> Aaron Douglas, Work Progress Administration
~ Public art projects should educate viewers about African-American
accomplishments, influences

> William H. Johnson

~ Portray the lives and history of African Americans

Antiwar Art:
Picassos Guernica
> Monumental statement against brutality of war
> Combination of expressionist and abstract techniques to
protest cruel, inhuman acts
> Intended to shock and horrify its audience
> Symbolism expresses struggle between darkness and
light, barbarianism and civilization

Architecture
> Building must fulfill some practical purpose
> New architecture promoted by needs of changing society,
new materials and structural methods
~ Ferroconcrete
~ Cantilever

> Organic Architecture: Sullivan, Wright

> International Style: Gropius, Le Corbusier
> Art Deco Style

Organic
Architecture
> Louis Sullivan
~ Ideal building: form follows function

> Reevaluation of form, methods, materials, purposes

~ Need for centralized centers of commerce
- Skyscrapers

> Frank Lloyd Wright

~ Architecture as liberating force for occupants and architect
~ Ideal structure: grows organically out of its setting

Art Deco Style

>
>
>
>

Reflected vitality of Jazz Age

Inspired by speed and streamlined designs
Manifested faith in mechanized modernity
Extravagance offered release from drudgery, boredom, and
humdrum of daily life
> Criticism:
~ False approach to modernist challenge
~ Decoration without function suggests lack of spiritual strength

International Style:
the Bauhaus
> Germany: Walter Gropius
> Influential building
~ Cubist pattern
~ Design served purpose

> Fountainhead of new industrial design

~ Students taught to respect purpose of product
~ Uphold expressive and creative aspects of drawing and
painting

International Style:
Le Corbusier
> Houses as machines for living, containers for families,
extensions of public service
> Play of masses brought together in the light
> Structures built on piers
~ independence of things human

> LUnit dHabitation, Marseilles

~ Community of 1,600 people

~ Complete facilities for living, shopping, recreation
~ Apartments vibrating with color, light, and air

Relativism
> The only thing that is permanent is change.
> Eternal truths subject to revision and are true only in the
context in which they were devised
> Albert Einsteins theory of relativity
~ Any valid calculation or prediction must be based on the relative
position of the observer

> Pluralistic world, multiple roles and perspectives

Relativism
and the Arts
> Cubists: disintegration and reintegration
~ Several viewpoints occurring simultaneously

> Music: dissonance freed from consonance

> Literature: readers supply transitions, connections
between moods, fragments
> Provided a wealth of styles, techniques from all eras