Week 2 Lecture, 20th Century

Editor's Notes

• #2: Imagine you are living at the dawn of the 20 th century, around the year 1900. The world is rapidly modernizing. New, unorthodox ideas are circulating. Important scientific discoveries are being made, some that will aid in the development of war machinery and some that will prolong and save lives. It seems as if new technologies are being introduced daily and soon, the automobile will be rolling off the assembly line in the USA and the airplane will take flight. The world of the machine and the readymade good will transform daily life. People will travel to and colonize distant lands. New cultures, their peoples, and their raw materials will be explored and exploited. How would you react to such changes? Would you fear or reject it and seek to retreat away from this newly modern world, into the past, or would you leave it entirely? Would you hold tight to conservative values and past traditions? Or would you embrace it and celebrate these new technologies and their possibilities? Or might you approach it cautiously? As you learned last week in your introduction to issues surrounding mass media in late 20 th century art and popular culture, much of the story of 20 th century art is about how modernization and technology totally transformed visual culture and culture altogether, what the late critic Robert Hughes called “The Shock of the New”. The television, the cinema, the phone, and now, the internet. In many ways, we are still living in the aftermath of this, as we carry around our mobile phones and tablets, often using technology to plan our day and mediate our relationships with others. These artists of the early 20 th century understood they were living in a new world and they wanted their art to reflect this. In many cases, they were tired of the old ways, ways that they regarded as too archaic, conservative, and out-of-touch. What the avant-garde artists who are recognized here (in your textbook) wanted in many cases was freedom: personal, artistic, sexual freedom. What did this look like? How did this visually manifest itself? And how would they use the relics of the past to create something new? These are the central questions we’ll attempt to answer as we cover art from 1900-1909. We will look at various regions in Europe and the most significant artists in those areas as we move chronologically through the first decade of the 20 th century. First stop, Vienna….
• #6: afterward, Klimt turned to profitable commissions by socialites, away from the avant-garde
• #12: Postimpressionism: “ In the broadest sense, the theory or practice of any of several groups of painters of the early 1900's, or of these groups taken collectively, whose work and theories have in common a tendency to reaction against the scientific and naturalistic character of impressionism and neo-impressionism…They tend to, and sometimes reach, a condition in which both representation and traditional decoration are entirely abolished and a work of art becomes a purely subjective expression in an arbitrary and personal language.” 1) Seurat: optical effects (Chevreul ’s ideas on color) 2) Cezanne: structure and classicism 3) Van Gogh: expressionism (feeling) 4) Gauguin: primitivism and the visionary artist (a Romantic concern)—a “vision-quest” among tribal cultures Interest in tribal art vert influencial on art of the era both formally (Picasso, Matisse) and conceptually. Some artists played the role of the primitive (retreating to country life, living among peasants (van Gogh and Gauguin), surrounding self with collected tribal artifacts) and some escaped the west altogether and lived among native, colonized peoples (Gauguin again, emil nolde, pechstein) -Like the Vienesse secession, it was an act of rebellion against authority and tradition, both against the academy and reigning avant-garde styles (impressionism and postimpressionism)
• #16: -Griselda Pollock: Gauguin makes three moves: 1) nod to traditional subject 2) nod to avant-garde treatment of traditional subject 3) his transformation of that subject into a primitivist one
• #19: -acc to book, Matisse understood that “the four major postimpressionists had all stressed that if color and line were to be celebrated, if their expressive function were to be enhanced, they had to become independent from the objects they depicted.” (p.71) -they had to be systematically separated (color, line, shape) and then recombined, a back to basics approach to painting. Divisionism or pointillism as it is now called gave him a method with which to begin
• #25: Picasso, on the other hand, was not interested in conflating visual beauty and sensual pleasure, or in finding a good armchair in which to rest. There is nothing idle going on this picture, unlike those before it by Titian, Ingres, and then, Matisse. Although, having seen Matisse ’s Joy of Life at Gertrude and Leo Stein’s salon, he apparently made this picture in response. This is all action, and erect alertness.
• #26: This painting labored over, worked over, 16 sketchbooks and numerous studies, these tell us much about the meaning and motivation for making it For a long time, it was seen by very few; exhibited twice in 1916, 1918, then remained in Picasso ’s studio until bought by Jacques Doucet in 1924, Doucet’s widow sold to dealer in 1937, at which time it arrived at MoMA (1937) -very little writing on it, except for a few articles (Kahnweiler) -two important articles: Alfred H. Barr ’s article on it in 1951 and later Leo Steinberg’s article, “The Philosophical Brothel” (based on an early title of the painting) in 1972. Your textbook uses these essays to interpret the ptg. As opposed to the tradition of Bordello pics—for male sexual gratification, Demoiselles challenges this gaze by threatening it (with the allegory removed, the painting becomes a direct address to the male viewer) Also the tradition of western painting is to physically and psychologically connect the figures and objects in the same space, a Renaissance notion of strived for unity Here is a shift from narrative (western ptg) to anti-narrative (Picasso)
• #35: Other early 20th century movements were more revolutionary, even anarchist in their philosophy of artmaking and life. They were interested in the machinery of modern life. But, their view of it was not pessimistic. They celebrated it—the car, the machinery of war to the point of wanting to tear down/violently overthrow all remnants of a past order (museums, libraries) in a celebration of the cleansing power of war. Marinetti founder of futurism developed his own origin myth, published in his first manifesto—he recounted the moment of his awakening when, racing in his sports car, he overturned in the muddy waters of a suburban ditch—only to emerge as a Futurist poet “ We want to glorify war - the only cure for the world - militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of the anarchists, the beautiful ideas which kill, and contempt for woman…We want to demolish museums and libraries, fight morality, feminism and all opportunist and utilitarian cowardice.”-F. T. Marinetti, Futurist Manifesto, 1909
• #37: Inspired by a number of movements including cubism, divisionism, post-impressionism
• #39: Futurists most innovative with their experiments with sound, yet another instance of the parallels between music and art in the early 20th cent. You could argue that the very thing the Futurists championed was what brought about their ruin, war, specifically WWI. Boccioni died accidentally falling off a horse in a battle training exercise in 1916, Saint ’Elia died in battle. And Marinetti’s affiliation with fascism would only bring him problems. Carra, as your book states departed from the aesthetic and turned to de Chirico’s metaphysical paintinng which we’ll talk about later. And Severini to classicism. A general “rappel a l’ordre ensued, part of an anti-modernism which reacted against these modernist experiments.