Early 20th Century Art

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Early 20th Century Art
William V. Ganis, PhD
Additional Images from Marsha Russell Notes from
Gardner's Art Through the Ages
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EUROPE, 1900 to 1920 The Early 20th
Century Developments in industrialization,
urbanization, and the growth of nationalism and
imperialism continued to affect countries
throughout the twentieth century. 20th-Century
Intellectual Developments New discoveries and
new ways of thinking in a variety of fields
forced people to revise how they understood their
worlds. Challenging Newtonian physics Scientifi
c activity in the early twentieth century
challenged the Newtonian model of the universe.
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Advances in technology Scientific
developments were not limited to the realm of
physics. Advances in chemistry, biology,
biochemistry, microbiology, and medicine in the
early twentieth century yielded knowledge of
polymers, plastics, fertilizers, enzymes,
viruses, vitamins, hormones, and
antibiotics. Mind over matter Significant
changes and developments also occurred in
philosophy, psychology, and economic theory The
Rise of Industrial Capitalism As
industrialization matured, the capitalist owners
and managers of large-scale industries wielded
considerable economic and political power. To
counter this power and to protect themselves from
exploitation, the working classes formed trade
unions and socialist political parties.
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World War I and the Russian Revolution Imperiali
st expansion by mostly European countries was
driven largely by the need of advanced industrial
societies for raw-material sources and
manufacturing markets. The Great
War Nationalism and imperialism led to
countries forming alliances to protect their
individual interests from competitors. A conflict
between two of these alliances led to World War I
(1914-1918). The devastation of World War I
brought widespread misery, social disruption, and
economic collapse.
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The Tsar's demise The Russian Revolution, which
erupted in 1917, was the result of
dissatisfaction with the regime of Tsar Nicholas
II. Russia was officially renamed the Soviet
Union in 1923
The Great Depression of the 1930s was largely due
to the international scope of banking and
industrial capitalism. World war once
again The Great Depression and the failure of
postwar treaties and the League of Nations to
keep the peace, led to the rise of totalitarian
regimes in several European countries. The
seizure of power by these regimes created
conflicts that evolved into World War II
(1939-1945). Besides territorial and
nationalistic interests of the individual
countries involved, Adolph Hitler's Nazis in
Germany also wanted to build a racially exclusive
Aryan state. The Evolution of Modernism and the
Avant-Garde Artists also responded in various
ways to the upheavals of the early twentieth
century. Changes in the art world itself also
influenced artistic developments. The
avant-garde, which continued to challenge
traditional notions about art and its relation to
society, became a major force.
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EXPRESSIONISM IN EARLY-20TH-CENTURY
EUROPE Expressionism refers to art that is the
result of the artist's unique inner or personal
vision and that often has an emotional dimension.
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Fauvism
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Fauvism The Fauves movement, which appeared in
1905, pursued an art that was direct and
anti-theoretical and also used intense,
emotionally charged color juxtapositions. The
Fauves wished to liberate color from its
descriptive function and to use it for both
expressive and structural end
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Henri Matisse Woman with the Hat 1905oil on
canvas2 ft. 7 3/4 in. x 1 ft. 11 1/2 in.
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The primacy of color In his Woman With the Hat,
Henri Matisse uses seemingly arbitrary colors
juxtaposed in ways that sometimes produce jarring
contrasts
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Henri Matisse Red Room (Harmony in
Red) 1908-1909oil on canvas5 ft. 11 in. x 8 ft.
1 in.
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From green, to blue, to red The simplified and
schematized objects and flattened out forms in
Matisse's Red Room (Harmony in Red) are painted
with rich and intense colors that are selected
and juxtaposed to generate a feeling of warmth
and comfort
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Henri Matisse Dance II 1909-10oil on canvas 8
ft. 5 5/8 in. x 12 ft. 9 1/2 in.
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also by Matisse
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André Derain Waterloo Bridge 1906oil on
canvas80.5 x 101 cm
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Expressing content with color In André Derain's
London Bridge, light and shadow are indicated by
contrasts of hue. Color both delineates space and
expresses the picture's content.
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André Derain The Dance 1906oil on canvas6 ft.
7/8 in. x 6 ft.10 1/4 in.
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André Derain Turning Road, LEstaque 1906oil on
canvas 51 x 76 3/4 in.
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also by Derain.
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Other Fauves Maurice Vlaminck, Georges Rouault,
Dufy
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Independent at work in Germany Paula Moderson
Becker
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Die Brücke
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German Expressionism Die Brücke The German
Expressionists sought expressiveness through
distortions of form, ragged outline, and agitated
brushstrokes. Under the leadership of Ernst
Ludwig Kirchner, the German Expressionists
thought of themselves as paving the way for a
more perfect age by bridging the old age to the
new. From this concept, they derived their name
Die Brücke (The Bridge)
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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner Nudes in the Forest
1908oil on canvas
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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner Street, Dresden 1908oil on
canvas4 ft. 11 1/4 in. x 6 ft. 6 7/8 in.
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Urban life in prewar Dresden Kirchner's
expressive Street, Dresden shows the frenzied
urban activity of a bustling German city before
the First World War. The scene is jarring and
dissonant and the harshly rendered figures,
painted in garish, clashing colors, appear
somewhat menacing and confrontational.
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also by Kirchner
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Emil Nolde Saint Mary of Egypt among
Sinners 1912oil on canvas2 ft. 10 in. x 3 ft. 3
in.
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Lust and lechery Emil Nolde's visceral and
forceful interpretation of Saint Mary of Egypt
among Sinners uses distortions of form, jarringly
juxtaposed color, and raw brushstrokes to amplify
the harshness and brutal ugliness of the leering
faces.
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also by Nolde
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Other artists associated with the group
Kokoschka, Müller
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Otto Müller Couple in a Landscape 1909lithograph
on paper
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Der Blaue Reiter
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German Expressionism Der Blaue Reiter Wassily
Kandinsky and Franz Marc founded the German
Expressionist group Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue
Rider) in Munich in 1911. They sought to capture
their feelings in visual form while also
eliciting intense visceral responses from viewers.
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Vasily Kandinsky Blue Mountain No. 84
1908-09oil on canvas41 3/8 x 37 7/8 in.
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Vassily Kandinsky Sketch for Composition Number
2 1910oil on canvas38 x 52 in.
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Blueprints for Enlightenment Kandinsky was one
of the first artists to explore complete
abstraction. In Improvisation 28 he eliminated
representational elements. Guided by his interest
in theosophy and the spiritual, Kandinsky
believed that artists can use color, form, line,
and space to express the spirit and their
innermost feelings.
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Vassily Kandinsky Improvisation 28 1912oil on
canvas3 ft. 7 7/8 in. x 5 ft. 3 7/8 in.
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Other work by Kandinsky
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Franz Marc The Large Blue Horses 1911oil on
canvas40 3/4 x 70 7/8 in.
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Expressing an inner truth Franz Marc painted
animals using a system of colors expressing
specific feelings or ideas. Animals' Fate is
painted with severe and brutal colors.
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Franz Marc Fate of the Animals 1913oil on
canvas6 ft. 4 3/4 in. x 8 ft. 9 1/2 in.
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Additional work by Marc
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Gabriele Münter Jawlensky and Werefkin
1908-09oil on canvas
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Cubism
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Georges Braque Houses of LEstaque 1908oil on
canvas 28 3/4 x 23 5/8 in.
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Pablo Picasso The Blind Mans Meal 1903oil on
canvas
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Pablo Picasso Gertrude Stein 1906-1907oil on
canvas3 ft. 3 3/8 in. x 2 ft. 8 in.
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EMBRACING ABSTRACTION Pablo Picasso's
extensive artistic production during his long
career covered a wide range of media (painting,
sculpture, ceramics, prints, and drawings) and
styles.
The Fragmentation of Forms in Space A planar
portrait of a writer In his portrait of
Gertrude Stein, Picasso painted Stein's head as a
simplified planar form, incorporating aspects
derived from African sculpture, ancient Iberian
sculpture, and the late paintings of Cézanne.
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Pablo Picasso Les Demoiselles dAvignon 1907oil
on canvas8 ft. x 7 ft. 8 in.
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"I Paint Forms as I Think Them" Picasso's Les
Demoiselles d'Avignon shows the influence of
African, Iberian, and European art. The painting
points the way to a radically new method of
representing form in space. Shapes are fractured
and interwoven with the equally jagged planes
that represent drapery and empty space. The heads
of three of the figures were derived from ancient
Iberian sculptures, while the two other heads
were derived from African sculpture. The
painting's revolutionary ideas provided the point
of departure for the formulation of Cubism by
Braque and Picasso around 1908
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Cubism Outside the world of observation Cubism
rejected naturalistic depictions and conventional
pictorial illusionism. The Cubists dissected
visual reality into its constituent optical
features, which they then recomposed into a
coherent aesthetic object. Analytic
Cubism Analytic cubism The first phase of
Cubism is referred to as Analytic Cubism, which
involved analyzing form and investigating the
pictorial elements for conveying meaning.
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Georges Braque The Portuguese 1911oil on
canvas3 ft. 10 1/8 in. x 2 ft. 8 in.
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Analyzing a musician's form In The Portuguese,
an example of Analytic Cubism, Georges Braque
dissected the form of the image and placed it in
dynamic interaction with the space around it
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Pablo Picasso Ma Jolie 1911oil on canvas 39 3/8
x 25 3/4 in.
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Georges Braque LAffiche de Kubelick (Le
Violon) 1912 oil on canvas 18 1/8 x 24 in.
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Pablo Picasso The Accordionist Summer 1911oil on
canvas51 x 35 in.
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Pablo Picasso Still Life with Chair-Caning 1912oi
l and oilcloth on canvas10 5/8 in. x 1 ft. 1 3/4
in.
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Synthetic Cubism Illusion or reality? The
second phase of Cubism is called Synthetic
Cubism, in which artists constructed paintings
and drawings from objects and shapes cut from
paper or other materials to represent parts of a
subject. Picasso's Still Life with Chair-Caning
includes a piece of oilcloth pasted on the canvas
after it was imprinted with the photolithographed
pattern of a cane chair seat. The picture is
framed with a piece of rope
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Georges Braque Bottle, Newspaper, Pipe and
Glass 1913charcoal and various papers pasted on
paper1 ft. 6 7/8 in. x 2 ft. 1 3/4 in.
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Glued and stuck paper Georges Braque's Fruit
Dish and Cards is a variant of collage called
papier collé (stuck paper) that involved gluing
assorted paper shapes to a drawing or painting
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Pablo Picasso maquette for Guitar 1912cardboard,
string and wire2 ft. 1 1/4 in. x 1 ft. 7 1/2 in.
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Jacques Lipchitz Bather 1917bronze2 ft. 10 3/4
in. x 1 ft. 1 1/4 in.
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Cubist Sculpture Dynamic form in space One of
the most successful sculptors to adapt into three
dimensions t he planar, fragmented dissolution of
form central to Analytic Cubist painting was
JAQUES LIPCHITZ. The dissolution of form In
Jacques Lipchitz's Cubist sculpture Bather, form
is broken into cubic volumes and planes and made
to interlock and intersect to produce irregular
and spatially ambiguous facets and curves.
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Aleksandr Archipenko Woman Combing Her
Hair 1915 bronzeapproximately 1 ft. 1 3/4 in.
high
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The interplay of space and mass In his
quasi-representational statuette Woman Combing
Her Hair, Aleksandr Archipenko shows a complex
interpenetration of space and mass
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Julio González Woman Combing Her Hair ca.
1930-1933iron4 ft. 9 in. high
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Welded metal sculptures In his almost
completely abstract welded iron sculpture Woman
Combing Her Hair, Julio González reduced form to
an dynamic interplay of curves, lines, and planes.
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Purism
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Fernand Léger The City 1919oil on
canvasapproximately 7 ft. 7 in. x 9 ft. 9 1/2 in.
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Purism The machine aesthetic Fernand Léger was
inspired by the "machine esthetic" and devised a
style that combined the Cubist analysis of form
with the Purist's broad simplification and
machine-like finish of the design components. In
Léger's The City, forms have the sharp precision
of the machin
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Another spin-off of Cubism a color cubism that
leads into a geometric abstraction - Orphism
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Kaleidoscopic colored shards In his cubist
depiction of the Eiffel Tower, Champs de Mars, or
The Red Tower, Robert Delaunay employs color.
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Futurism
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Futurism Combining art and politics Futurism
had both an artistic and a sociopolitical agenda.
The Futurists championed war as a cleansing agent
and called for the destruction of museums,
libraries, and similar institutions. They also
called for radical innovation in the arts and
were particularly interested in the speed and
dynamism of modern technology
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Filippo Tommaso Marinetti Founding Manifesto Le
Figaro February 20, 1909
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Umberto Boccioni Unique Forms of Continuity in
Space 1913bronze3 ft. 7 7/8 in. x 2 ft. 10 7/8
in. x 1 ft. 3 3/4 in.
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The sensation of motion Umberto Boccioni's
Futurist sculpture Unique Forms of Continuity in
Space attempts to show the formal and spatial
effects of motion in a striding human figure.
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Giacomo Balla Dynamism of a Dog on a
Leash 1912oil on canvas2 ft. 11 3/8 in. x 3 ft.
7 1/4 in.
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Simultaneity of Views Giacomo Balla's Dynamism
of a Dog on a Leash attempts to create the effect
of motion by repeating shapes and producing a
simultaneity of views.
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Etienne Jules Marey Chronophotograph 1883gelatin-
silver print
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Gino Severini Armored Train 1915oil on canvas3
ft. 10 in. x 2 ft. 10 1/8 in.
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A sanitized depiction of war "War-Sole Hygiene
to the World" Gino Severini's Armored Train
reflects the Futurist belief in the cleansing
action of war while capturing the dynamism and
motion central to Futurism. By breaking all the
objects in the painting into facets and planes,
Severini suggests action and movemen
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Additional Futurist Imagery.
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Giacomo Balla Street Light 1909 oil on canvas 68
3/4 x 45 1/4 in.
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Giacomo Balla Abstract Speed - The Car Has
Passed 1913 oil on canvas 50.2 x 65.4 cm
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Umberto Boccioni Cavalry Charge (Charge of the
Lancers) 1915 tempera and collage on
pasteboard 32 x 50 cm
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Gino Severini Red Cross Train Passing a
Village 1915 oil on canvas 35 x 45 3/4 in.
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Giacomo Balla Flight of the Swifts 1913 watercolor
on paper 23 x 33 in.
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Antonio Giulio Bragaglia The Cellist 1913 gelatin-
silver print
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Antonio Giulio Bragaglia Dynamism of a
Typist 1913 gelatin-silver print
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Antonio Giulio Bragaglia Polyphysiognomic
Portrait of Boccioni 1912-13 gelatin-silver print
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Umberto Boccioni Dynamism of a Soccer
Player 1913 oil on canvas 76 1/8 x 79 1/8 in.
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Umberto Boccioni TableBottleHouse 1912 pencil
on paper 13 1/8 x 9 3/8 in.
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Umberto Boccioni Development of a Bottle in
Space 1912 silvered bronze 15 x 12 7/8 x 23 in.
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Umberto Boccioni Materia 1912 oil on canvas 89 x
59 in.
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Gino Severini Dynamic Heiroglyphic of the Bal
Tabarin 1912 oil on canvas 63 5/8 x 61 1/2 in.
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Raymond Duchamp-Villon The Horse (Le
Cheval) 1914 bronze 43.6 x 41 cm
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Marcel Duchamp Nude Descending a Staircase No.
2 1912 oil on canvas 58 x 35 in.
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Francis Picabia Dances at the Spring 1912 oil on
canvas 47 1/2 x 47 1/2 in.