Lecture, 1900 09 20th-cent
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This document provides an overview of major artistic movements and works from 1900-1913. It begins with Post-Impressionism and the work of Seurat, Cezanne, Van Gogh and Gauguin. It then discusses Fauvism and key works by Matisse. Proto-Cubism is examined through Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. German Expressionism and the Blue Rider movement are covered along with works by Kandinsky and Franz Marc. Futurism is summarized along with Balla's Girl Running on a Balcony. Primitivism and its influence on early 20th century avant-garde art is also addressed.
Lecture, 1900 09 20th-cent
- 1. The 20th Century – 1900 - 1909 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_8y0sQ0HME “The world has changed less since the time of Jesus Christ than it has in the last thirty years.” Charles Peguy 1913 Ford Motor Company, Model T The Shock of the New, 1980, Robert Hughes
- 2. Klimt, Jurisprudence, 1903-07, Vienna Secession & Austrian Expressionism Schiele, Nude Self-Portrait in Gray with Open Mouth, 1910 Univ. of Vienna gouache and black crayon
- 3. The Post-impressionists – The “Fathers” of Modern Art Seurat Cezanne Van Gogh Gauguin
- 4. Fauvism Henri Matisse, Woman with a Hat, 1905, oil
- 5. Proto- Cubism/Pri mitivism Picasso, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907, oil
- 6. German Expressionism – Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider( & Die Brücke (The Bridge) Franz Marc, The Fate of the Animals, 1913, oil Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Street, Dresden, 1908, oil
- 7. Futurism (Italy) Giacomo Balla, Girl Running on a Balcony, 1912, oil Umberto Boccioni, Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, 1913
- 8. Word Presentations • Avant-garde • Primitivism
- 9. • Depended on European imperialism • “To go “back in time” to a less civilized, less evolved state (“Civilization has fallen from me little by little” -Gauguin) • Rejection of civilized and corrupt Western world • To identify the self with the other & to find one’s natural identity (Gauguin had partial Peruvian ancestry) • Hybrid art –“purity and primacy pursued through hybridity and pastiche” – Art Since 1900 (European, Tahitian, Egyptian, Peruvian, Indonesian aesthetics, etc) “I Am African” campaign, 2006, advertisement Primitivism
- 10. Group Work • Identify the main visual and conceptual characteristics of the artwork • Identify the central critical issues and connect them with pertinent vocabulary • Select one question to present to the class • Select one person to present (change each week); 5 minutes to informally present your findings
- 11. Austria, 1900 Hans Olbrich, Secession Building, 1897-98 Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams published 1900 in Vienna, founder of psychoanalysis To liberate “repressed instincts and unconscious desires”, the dream or “rebus” is an indication that those desires long to be free Klimt, Schiele (Kokoschka also considered) “To each age its art, to art its freedom”
- 12. Gustav Klimt co-founder of Secession and 1st President sought to separate from conservative Academy of Fine Arts in 1897, during decline Austro-Hungarian empire embraced Art Nouveau (Jugendstil in German) trained as architectural decorator (School of Arts & Crafts) advocate for union between all arts: gesamkunstwerke
- 13. Klimt, Jurisprudence, 1903-07, Univ. of Vienna
- 14. • Portraits & public commissions for allegorical works • In 1894, University of Vienna commissioned 3 ceiling paintings (philosophy, medicine, jurisprudence) • Supposed to extol Enlightenment beliefs, but actually exposed darker, more ambiguous issues • Rejected by University, regarded as pornographic & perverted • Many works deal with battle between life and death, good and evil, depicting skeletal, emaciated figures and threatening female forms • Furies: Roman mythology, female personifications of vengeance; Graces above: Greek goddesses of charm, beauty and nature (fertility) - truth, justice, law • “punishment psychologized as castration” (Art Since 1900) Klimt, Jurisprudence, 1903-07, Univ. of Vienna
- 15. Klimt’s University of Vienna Ceiling Paintings – Philosophy & Medicine (L to R)
- 16. Raphael, The School of Athens (Philosophy), ca. 1510, Italian, fresco
- 17. Egon Schiele • under tutelage of Klimt, but rejected Art Nouveau style in favor of Expressionist style • embattled artist who exploited his own persecution for fame • in 1912 jailed (24 days) for kidnapping and corrupting a minor and publicly reviled for explicit images of self and teenage girls, drawings publicly burned • him, his wife and unborn child died in Spanish Flu Epidemic of 1918 • produced 300 paintings and 3,000 works on paper
- 18. Schiele’s “Girls” Two Girls Lying Entwined, 1915 Female Act, 1910
- 19. Voyeurism and exhibitionism Explicit nudes of self and women • Embodiment of “psychosexual disturbance”? vs. the classical nude or social type (proper portrait) • the damaged self, exposed, gaunt – arms amputated, ribs exposed, body dirtied Schiele, Nude Self-Portrait in Gray with Open Mouth, 1910 gouache and black crayon Michelangelo David 1501
- 20. What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter - a soothing, calming influence on the mind, rather like a good armchair which provides relaxation from physical fatigue. -Henri Matisse Henri Cartier-Bresson, Matisse, 1946
- 21. France, 1906 – Cezanne dies. Post-impressionism ends & Fauvism begins • Cezanne only became famous at the end of his life in 1904, surviving years of ridicule, receives several retrospectives from 1904-07 • Admired for ordered and methodical process (small, discrete strokes) • Akin to Divisionist (aka pointilist) process • Return to French classical forms (geometry) & subjects • To this, Matisse added “epileptic” pure color (discovered when moved south near Mediterranean Sea) • Title (“Luxury, Tranquility & Pleasure”) taken from poem by Baudelaire Cezanne Large Bathers 1906 Henri Matisse, Luxe, Calme et Volupte, 1904-05
- 22. Matisse & Fauvism • short-lived movement, lasted a season and began with a scandal at the 1905 Salon d’Automne • Also included Andre Derain & Maurice de Vlaminck (his original inspiration) • Name (“wild beasts”) coined by critic Louis Vauxcelles • Reflects what Matisse thought to be “four trends” in Post- Impressionism (light, color, expression, primitivism) • Divisionist process abadoned • Pairing pure complementary colors for visual tension & balance • flat planes of nonmimetic color • unified pictorial surface • Allover composition (addresses entire canvas) Henri Matisse, Woman with a Hat, 1905, oil
- 23. Matisse, Open Window, 1905 “What counts most with colors are relationships. Thanks to them and them alone a drawing can be intensely colored without there being any need for actual color.” - Matisse
- 24. Matisse, Bonheur de vivre (joy of life), 1905 (5.5’x 8’)
- 25. • Only painting entered in 1906 Salon des Independents • Result of numerous sketches • Arcadian landscape inspired by French classicism • Pairs visual beauty and sensual pleasure • flat planes of unmodulated pure color on large scale • clashes of primary hues • thick contour lines in bright hues • deformed bodies merging together • stylistic disunity • discrepancies of scale Ingres Turkish Bath 1862 Matisse, Bonheur de vivre (joy of life), 1905 (5.5’x 8’) Matisse in Paradise
- 26. Art is a finger up the bourgeoisie ass -Pablo Picasso
- 27. France, 1907 http://www.moma.org/explore/multimedia/audios/3/36 Picasso, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907, oil Study for Les Demoiselles Student (holding skull or book) Sailor (holding wine flask) Prostitutes
- 28. The Gaze Interrupted • Two important analyses (Alfred Barr & Leo Steinberg) Picasso, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907, oil, 7’x7’ Barr -1st cubist painting (since clothed, male figures removed) -Once an allegory on mortality, sin (sailor in center) & virtue (student at side), now a purely formal composition -Stylistic shift: Iberian to African influences Steinberg -a “sexual metaphor” (fear of sex) -Emphasized by spatial distortion, stylistic disunity, format (square), & table as phallis -Figures are disconnected & only interact with viewer (implicated in this) -Their gaze, doubled with the association to African art, makes the feeling of fear and danger more palpable “…my first exorcism painting” - Picasso
- 29. The Birth of Venus, William-Adolphe Bouguereau, 1879
- 30. From Sex Kitten to Dominatrix Marilyn Monroe, Bert Stern, 1962 Maitresse Francoise (Annick Foucault)
- 31. 1908 - Wilhelm Worringer publishes Abstraction and Empathy • Abstraction a primordial urge • These artists look to tribal art and Worringer’s ideas to develop their work • Worringer: two opposed styles throughout history: realism (engagement with world) vs. abstraction (withdrawal from it) • Marc and Wassily Kandinsky formed Der Blaue Reiter in Munich, 1911 as search for “spiritual awakening” through art • St. George (patron saint Moscow)—symbolic of Christian Book of Revelations, second coming of Christ during the Apocalypse • Included in almanac are expressionist works, tribal art, art of children, Japanese masks and prints Vassily Kandinsky, Final study for cover of the Blaue Reiter Almanach, 1911, drawing “I caught a strange thought…it had settled in my open hand like a butterfly—the thought that people once before, a long time ago, like alter egos, loved abstractions as we do now. Many an object hidden away in our museums of anthropology looks at us with strangely disturbing eyes. What made them possible, these products of a sheer will to abstraction?” – Franz Marc, WWI
- 32. The Blue Rider – Art & The Natural World • German Expressionism • Abstraction as empathy & engagement • The spiritual is best expressed in abstract forms • Color and line “ignite” the spirit & correspond to particular emotions • They also correspond to music (notes, chords, melodies) Kandinsky, Lyrical, 1911, oil Kandinsky’s Questionnaire, 1923
- 33. Franz Marc, The Fate of the Animals, 1913, oil
- 34. Franz Marc • Interest in the spiritual, nature & animal world • Also had a visual system, endowing types of line with emotive characteristics (organic vs. geometric) and colors with moods & gender (blue=male, yellow=female) • Admired the Impressionists & Post-impressionists • In his animal pictures, he projects human qualities & anxieties • “all being is flaming suffering” • Died in WWI (My work is)…“a pantheistic penetration into the pulsating flow of blood in nature, in trees, in animals, in the atmosphere.” - Marc Franz Marc, The Fate of the Animals, 1913, oil
- 35. The Bridge – Art & the City • German Expressionism • The Bridge (Die Brucke) formed in 1905 in Dresden; Kirchner its head • Got name from Nietzche passage in his Thus Spoke Zarathustra (man as a bridge between animal and Superman) • Call to break free from conservative past toward modern, liberated present • All members were architecture students • Saw the primal in the urban environment • Main theme of modern anxiety and chaos • Kirchner believed the war would destroy his creative powers (he was declared unfit for service) • Committed suicide in 1938 following his inclusion in Hitler’s “Degenerate Artists” Kirchner, Self-Portrait as a Soldier, 1915, oil
- 36. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Street, Dresden, 1908, oil
- 37. The Bridge - “The Metropolitan Type” (Georg Simmel, 1903) • Germany rapidly industrializing • Bustling shopping district in Dresden • Middle-class citizens • Lack of architecture • The city as chaotic, primitive, alienating • Masklike faces of women • Blasé attitude to protect oneself from threatening external forces • Distorted space • Garish colors • Bold, blue line connects and separate Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Street, Dresden, 1908, oil Walker Evans & James Agee from Many Are Called, published 1966 (taken late 1930s) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfZu--psur8 http://www.moma.org/explore/multimedia/audios/3/63
- 38. 1909 – The Futurist Manifesto is Published • F.T. Marinetti self-appointed leader • Celebrated progress & industrialization • Glorified speed, violence, war, anarchy, misogyny • Attacked middle class values • Aligned with Fascist movement in Italy • Experimented with new media (photo, film, performance) • First movement to utilize mass culture (newspaper) to promote itself The Terminator, 1984 a speeding automobile…is more beautiful than the victory of Samothrace” Enrico Prampolini, Portrait of Marinetti, 1925
- 39. Giacomo Balla, Girl Running on a Balcony, 1912, oil
- 40. Futurist Strategies • Explored synesthesia – breaking down of boundaries between different senses (sight, sound, etc) • Explored kinesthesia – sense of body position, movement, weight • Aligned itself with technologies of vision and representation, such as chronophotography • To overcome media specificity (painting, sculpture, film, music and literature as static separate things) Thais, 1916, Bragaglia (director) only surviving full-length Futurist film Giacomo Balla, Girl Running on a Balcony, 1912, oil Umberto Boccioni, Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, 1913 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IA6znP94GHg
- 41. Futurism & Photography • Marey’s studies of the body in space—an early form of stroboscopy (using interrupted light to show slow motion) • Marey a physiologist who, once seeing Muybridge’s work in stop motion, turned to photography vs. graphics as a way of recording motion • Developed a photographic gun with a circular plate that created near instantaneous photos from a single viewpoint, then used a slotted disk in front of the camera to break up movement in set intervals registered on a single photographic plate • To avoid superimposition of the images, the subjects were clothed totally in black, and wore metal-studded strips on their arms and legs Etienne-Jules Marey, Figure in Motion, 1880s
- 42. FreeWord Poetry • From Zang Tumn Tuum, 1914, first collection • Typographic and orthographic (a correct writing system (punctuation, spelling, etc) for written language) experimentation • An expression of Marinetti’s experience of the sights, sounds, smells of Tripoli (capital of Libya) • Purely phonetic, textual, graphic performance, ontamontapoeic in nature http://www.ubu.com/sound/marinetti.html Marinetti, Dune, Parole in Libertà, score, 1914
- 43. Close Read: 1903 Gauguin, Spirit of the Dead Watching (Manao Tupapau), 1892
- 44. Primitivism & The Female Nude • a revision of Manet’s Olympia • flips scene (spirit instead of Laura) • averts eyes of Teha’amana (adolescent Tahitian wife) vs. direct gaze so that she is looked upon not looking at us • rotates her body to expose buttocks (submissive vs. in control) • “dream of sexual mastery”, both “desire and dread of feminine sexuality” (Art Since 1900) • Noa Noa, ca. 1895 • “The gaze” Gauguin, Spirit of the Dead Watching (Manao Tupapau), 1892
- 45. The Female Nude From Goddess (Courtesan?) to Concubine to Prostitute Titian Venus Of Urbino Ingres, Odalisque Manet, Olympia
- 46. Matisse & Primitivism Matisse’s Blue Nude: Souvenir of Biskra, 1907 • subtitle added decades later, recalls trip to N. Africa (Biskra) • admired African art’s “inverted planes and proportions • palm fronds echo contours of body • highly criticized during exhibition at Salon des Independents in 1907 “If I met such a woman in the street, I should run away in terror. Above all I do not create a human, I make a picture.” - Matisse