Discovering the humanities 3rd by henry m sayre 2016 chapter 14

The Aggressive New Modern Art:Les Demoiselles d'Avignon • The birth of modern art is marked by the shift in painting from an optical art —painting what one sees—to an imaginative constru

Discovering the Humanities

by Pearson Education, Inc or its affiliates

All Rights Reserved

The Modernist World: The Arts in an Age of Global Confrontation

14

Learning Objectives

1 Outline the various ways in which

modernism manifests itself in art and literature

2 Describe the Great War's impact on

the art and literature of the era

Robert Delaunay L'Equipe de Cardiff (The Cardiff Team) 1913.

Oil on canvas 10' 8-3/8" × 6' 10".

Collection Van Abbemuseum Photo: Peter Cox, Eindhoven [Fig 14.1]

The Rise of Modernism in the Arts

• The Post-Impressionists saw themselves

as inventing the future of painting, of

creating art that would reflect the kind

of sharply etched innovation that, in

their eyes, defined modernity

Post-Impressionist Painting

• Among the Post-Impressionists were

Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, and

Georges Seurat, who sought to capture something transcendent in their act of vision, something that captured the

essence of their subject

Georges Seurat A Sunday on La Grande Jatte 1884–86

Oil on canvas 81-3/4" × 121-1/4" Helen Birch Bartlett

Memorial Collection, 1926.224 Photograph © The Art Institute

of Chicago All Rights Reserved [Fig 14.2]

Closer Look: Georges Seurat,

A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grand Jatte

Pointillism: Seurat and the

• Seurat created his paintings by

carefully applying tiny dots of color—

pointilles.

Pointillism: Seurat and the

Symbolic Color: Van Gogh

• The Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890) was committed to

discovering a universal harmony in

which all aspects of life were united

through art

• Van Gogh found Seurat's emphasis on contrasting colors appealing

Vincent Van Gogh Night Café 1888.

Oil on canvas 28-1/2" × 36-1/4".

Yale University Art Gallery Bequest of Stephen Carlton Clark, B.A 1903 1961.18.34.

[Fig 14.3]

Symbolic Color: Van Gogh

• Color, in van Gogh's paintings, becomes symbolic, charged with feelings

• For many viewers and critics, van

Gogh's paintings are the most

personally expressive in the history of art, offering insights into the painter's

psychological state

Vincent van Gogh The Starry Night 1889.

Oil on canvas 28-3/4" × 36-1/4"

The Museum of Modern Art, New York Acquired through the

Lillie P Bliss Bequest (472.1941) ©2014 Photo The Museum

of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence [Fig 14.4]

Closer Look: Vincent van Gogh,

The Starry Night

The Structure of Color: Cézanne

• Like the Impressionist painters, the

Post-Impressionist Paul Cézanne (1839–

1906) continued to paint en plein air.

• Cézanne's color is not symbolic, but he used it instead to structure the space of the canvas

Paul Cézanne Still Life with Plaster Cast ca 1894.

Oil on paper on board 26-1/2" × 32-1/2"

© Samuel Courtauld Trust, The Courtauld Gallery, London/The

Bridgeman Art Library [Fig 14.5]

Closer Look: Cézanne, Still Life

with Plaster Cast

The Structure of Color: Cézanne

• His work reflects a tension between

spatial perspectives and surface

flatness that became one of the chief

preoccupations of modern painting in

the twentieth century

Paul Cézanne Mont Sainte-Victoire 1902–04.

Oil on canvas 28-3/4" × 36-3⁄16".

Philadelphia Museum of Art: The George W Elkins Collection, 1936 E1936-1-1 © Photo The Philadelphia Museum of Art/Art Resource/Scala, Florence Photo: Graydon Wood [Fig

14.6]

Escape to Far Tahiti: Gauguin

• The painter Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) left France for the island of Tahiti

(French Polynesia) in 1891

• As in van Gogh's work, color in

Gauguin's work is freed from

representational function to become an almost pure expression of the artist's

feelings

Paul Gauguin Mahana no atua (Day of the God) 1894.

Oil on canvas 27-3/8" × 35-5/8".

The Art Institute of Chicago Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial

Collection (1926.198) Photograph © 2007 The Art Institute of

Discovering Art: Paul Gauguin,

Mahana no Atua: Detail 1

Discovering Art: Paul Gauguin,

Mahana no Atua: Detail 2

Pablo Picasso's Paris: At the Heart

of the Modern

• 13 rue Ravignon was Picasso's studio

from the spring of 1904 until October

1909, and his paintings were stored

there until 1912

• Another place his works were exhibited

was the Saturday evening salons of

expatriate Gertrude Stein, although

viewers had to "know someone who

knew someone."

Pablo Picasso Gertrude Stein Autumn–Winter 1906.

The Aggressive New Modern Art:

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon

• The birth of modern art is marked by

the shift in painting from an optical art

—painting what one sees—to an

imaginative construct—painting what

one thinks about what one sees

• The object of painting shifts, in other

words, from the literal to the

conceptual

The Aggressive New Modern Art:

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon

• The painting that introduced and

embodied this shift was Pablo Picasso's

(1881–1973) Les Demoiselles d'Avignon

(1907)

• The painting was correctly understood

as an assault on the idea of painting as

it had always been known

Pablo Picasso Les Demoiselles d'Avignon May–July 1907.

Oil on canvas 95-1/8" × 91-1/8".

Acquired through the Lillie P Bliss Bequest The Museum of

Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, New York ©

2014 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New

York/Scala, Florence [Fig 14.9]

Closer Look: Pablo Picasso, Les

Demoiselles d'Avignon

The Aggressive New Modern Art:

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon

• Picasso's painting confronts a variety of idealizations: the idealization of the

world as reflected in traditional

European art, the idealization of

sexuality—and love—and the

idealization of the colonizing mission of some European countries

The Invention of Cubism:

Braque's Partnership with Picasso

• The invention of Cubism was born out

of collaboration between Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque (1882–1963)

• The artists began to decompose their

subjects into faceted planes, so that

they seem to emerge down the middle

of the canvas from some angular maze

Georges Braque Houses at L'Estaque 1908.

Oil on canvas 28-3/4" × 23-3/4".

Estate of Georges Braque © 2014 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris Hermann and Margit Rupf Foundation/Giraudon/Bridgeman Images [Fig 14.10]

Pablo Picasso Houses on the Hill, Orta de Ebro.

1906 Oil on canvas 25-5/8" × 31-7/8".

Jens Ziehe/Nationalgalerie, Museum Berggruen, Staatliche Museen, Berlin © 2014 Estate

of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York [Fig 14.11]

Georges Braque Violin and Palette 1909.

Oil on canvas 36-1/2" × 16-1/4".

Solomon Guggenheim Museum 54.1412 © 2014 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New

York/ADAGP, Paris [Fig 14.12]

The Invention of Cubism:

Braque's Partnership with Picasso

• With the new style, Picasso and Braque were questioning the very nature of

reality, the nature of "truth" itself

• In 1912, they began to introduce actual two-and three-dimensional elements

into the space of the canvas, calling

their compositions collage, from the

French coller, "to paste or glue."

Futurism: The Cult of Speed

• In 1909, the Italian Filippo Marinetti

(1876–1944) wrote his Founding and

Manifesto of Futurism.

• Futurism rejected the political and

artistic traditions of the past and called for a new art

Pablo Picasso Guitar, Sheet Music, and Wine Glass 1912.

Charcoal, gouache, and papiers-collé 18-7/8" × 14-3/8".

The McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, TX Bequest of Marion Koogler McNay Art © 2014

Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York [Fig 14.13]

Futurism: The Cult of Speed

• The group included the Italian artists Giacomo Balla (1871–1958), Umberto Boccioni (1882–1916), Carlo Carrà

(1881–1966), Luigi Russolo (1885–

1947), and Gino Severini (1883–1966)

Futurism: The Cult of Speed

• The Futurists rejected static art and

sought to render what they thought of

as the defining characteristic of modern urban life—speed

• While they used the fractured idiom of Cubism, the work the Futurists created was philosophically remote from

Cubism

Futurism: The Cult of Speed

• Besides speed, they sought technology and violence, and they focused on the car, the plane, and the industrial town, all of which represented for them the triumph of humankind over nature

Umberto Boccioni Unique Forms of Continuity in Space 1913.

Bronze 43-7/8" × 34-7/8" × 15-3/4".

Acquired through the Lillie P Bliss Bequest (231.1948) The Museum of Modern Art, New York © 2014 Photo The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence [Fig 14.14]

A New Color: Matisse and the

• Fauvism was known for its radical

application of arbitrary, or unnatural, color

A New Color: Matisse and the

Expressionists

• Matisse's monumental Dance paintings

are something of a rebuttal of Picasso's

Demoiselles, representing a similar five

figures but in active motion and joy

• The most important Expressionist group

in Germany was Der Blaue Reiter,

headed by Wassily Kandinsky (1866–

1944) and Franz Marc (1880–1916)

A New Color: Matisse and the

Expressionists

• Marc's The Large Blue Horses, inspired

by Matisse, represents spiritual

harmony in the natural world despite its unnatural color choices

• Kandinsky's chief theme was the

biblical Apocalypse, suggested strongly

in his explosively colorful Composition

VII.

Henri Matisse Dance II 1910.

Franz Marc The Large Blue Horses 1911.

Oil on canvas 3'5-3/8" × 5'11-1/4".

Walker Art Center, Minneapolis Gift of T B Walker Collection, Gilbert M Walter Fund,

1942 [Fig 14.16]

Wassily Kandinsky Composition VII 1913.

Oil on canvas 6'6-3/4" × 9'11-1/8".

Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow © 2014 Artists Rights Society

(ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris akg-images/Erich Lessing.

[Fig 14.17]

Document: Vasily Kandinsky,

from Concerning the

Spiritual in Art

Modernist Music and Dance

• In music and dance, composer Igor

Stravinsky (1882–1971) and the Ballets Russes of impresario Sergei Diaghilev (1872–1929) shocked Paris with the

performance of Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring).

Modernist Music and Dance

• The ballet's story—subtitled Pictures

from Pagan Russia—centers on a

pre-Christian ritual welcoming the

beginning of spring that culminates in a human sacrifice

Modernist Music and Dance

• Sometimes different elements of the orchestra play different meters

simultaneously (polyrhythm)

contrasting with passages where the

same rhythm repeats itself (ostinato).

• Stravinsky's music was enormously

influential on subsequent composers

Modernist Music and Dance

• Polytonality occurred when two or

more keys were sounded by different instruments at the same time

• The dance moved away from the

traditional graceful movements of

ballerinas dancing en pointe (on their

toes in boxed shoes) toward a new

athleticism

Modernist Music and Dance

• Schoenberg, along with Berg and

Webern, abandoned tonality, which

was the organization of musical

compositions around a home key

• Atonality, a term implying the absence

of musical tone, was used to describe

"pantonal" music that contained notes but no structure

Modernist Music and Dance

Sprechstimme, or "speech-song" that

maintains the pitch without

modification

• Schoenberg had created a 12-tone

system in which none of the tones of

the chromatic scale could be repeated

in a composition until each of the other

11 had been played

Modernist Music and Dance

progressed with variation in the tone

row, or the 12 notes in their given

order

Early Twentieth-Century Literature

• Innovation pervaded the literature of

the early twentieth century

• Writers sought to capture the

simultaneous and contradictory

onslaught of information and emotions

of busy modern life

Guillaume Apollinaire and Cubist

Poetics

• Picasso's friend Guillaume Apollinaire

spread the principle of collage in his

literary works

• "Lundi, rue Christine" contains

alternating, fragmented poetic lines of

dialogue that Apollinaire overheard on a street in Paris

Ezra Pound and William Carlos

• Ezra Pound (1885–1972) submitted a

group of poems under the title Imagiste

to the American journal Poetry, which

set in motion the rules for Imagist

poems

Ezra Pound and William Carlos

Ezra Pound and William Carlos

Williams

• Pound's collection of essays, Make It

New, founded a mantra for the new

American poetry

• William Carlos Williams (1883–1963)

produced the poem "The Red

Wheelbarrow," which best exemplifies his style of Radical Imagism—strict

verbal simplicity

The Great War and Its Aftermath

• The assassination of Archduke Francis

Ferdinand launched events that would cause Britain to formally declare war on Germany on August 4, 1914

• With Europe consumed by trench

warfare, the human cost was

staggering

 Poison mustard gas was introduced,

maiming and killing thousands.

Trench Warfare and the Literary

Imagination

• The realities of trench warfare along the Western Front in northeast France and

northwest Germany had an immense

impact on the Western imagination

• The spirit of optimism that marked the era of invention and innovation in the

years before 1914 had evaporated

Trench Warfare and the Literary

Imagination

• Instead, art and literature after 1918

reflect an increasing sense of the

absurdity of modern life, the

fragmentation of experience, and the

futility of even daring to hope

Wilfred Owen: "The Pity of War"

• The poetry of 25-year-old Wilfred Owen (1893–1918), killed in combat just a

week before the armistice was signed in

1918, caused a sensation when it first appeared in 1920

• The poet's intent is to share his horrific dreams with the reader

T.S Eliot: The Landscape of

Desolation

• The poetry of T.S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot (1888–1965) reflects his background in philosophy and the classics

 The Waste Land begins with a reference

to the Anglican burial service performed often throughout the war

such as Shakespeare and Greek

mythology.

Escape from Despair: Dada

• Some writers and artists openly

opposed the war and protested the

social order that had brought about

what seemed to them nothing short of mass genocide

• Several artists formed the movement

that called itself Dada.

Escape from Despair: Dada

• Dada was an international signifier of

negation

• It did not mean anything, just as in the face of war, life itself had come to seem meaningless

• Dada came into being in the Cabaret

Voltaire in Zurich in February 1916

Hans (Jean) Arp Fleur Manteau (Flower Hammer) 1916.

Painted paper 24-3/8" × 19-5/8".

Fondation Arp Clamart, France © 2014 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/VG

Bild-Kunst, Bonn [Fig 14.18]

Escape from Despair: Dada

• The founding members were a group of intellectuals and artists escaping the

conflict in neutral Switzerland, including Tristan Tzara (1896–1963), Richard

Huelsenbeck (1892–1972), Hugo Ball

(1886–1927), Jean Arp (1896-1966),

and the poet, dancer, and singer Emmy Hennings (1885–1948)