MODERNISM

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MODERNISM
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• Modernism released us from the constraints of
  everything that had gone before with a euphoric
  sense of freedom.  Arthur Erickson
• War is the highest form of modern art. Tommaso
  Marinetti, founder of Futurism
• In general, modern art... has been inspired by a
  natural desire to chart the uncharted. Herbert
  Read
• On or about December 1910, human character
  changed. Virginia Woolf
• Modern music is as dangerous as cocaine. Pietro
  Mascagni
• The impulse of modern art is the desire to
  destroy beauty. Barnett Newman
• And yet what is Modernism? It is
  undefined. John C. Ransom

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Science An Indeterminate Universe

• Quantum Physics Max Planck
• Energy is not continuous, but comes in small but
  discrete units. 
• The elementary particles behave both like
  particles and like waves. 
• The movement of these particles is inherently
  random. 3
• Principle of Uncertainty Werner Heisenberg
• It is physically impossible to know both the
  position and the momentum of a particle at the
  same time.
• Theory of Relativity Albert Einstein
• Emc2
• Energy mass x speed of light squared

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Psychology Whither the Self?

• Sigmund Freud

• Karl Jung

• Psychoanalysis and Dream Analysis the
  Unconscious Mind
• Psyche
• Id
• Ego
• Superego
• Oedipal Complex
• Repression and Sublimation
• Civilization and Its Discontents

• Collective Unconscious
• Psyche
• Persona
• Animus/Anima
• Shadow
• Archetypes primal patterns
• The Hero
• The Trickster
• The Great Mother
• The Sage
• Myth, dreams, folklore

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Motifs and Movements

• Fragmentation Cubism
• Precision Imagism
• Speed Futurism
• Alienation/Angst Expressionism
• Color Fauvism
• Technology Constructivism
• Functionalism Bauhaus/International Style
• Protest/Propaganda Social Realism
• Chaos/Irrationality Dadaism
• The Subconscious Surrealism
• Form Abstraction

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Fragmentation
C UB ISM
Georges Bracque Woman with a Guitar, 1913
Juan Gris, Still Life with Fruit Dish and
Mandolin, 1919
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Poetry Imagism

• Discordant
• Abstract
• Open Verse
• Imagists
• Ezra Pound
• Amy Lowell
• H.D.

• Heat by H. D.
• O wind, rend open the heat, cut apart the heat,
  rend it to tatters. Fruit cannot drop through
  this thick air fruit cannot fall into heat
  that presses up and blunts the points of pears
  and rounds the grapes. Cut the heat plough
  through it, turning it on either side of your
  path.

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Imagism

• It is essential to prove that beauty may be in
  small, dry things. The great aim is accurate,
  precise and definite description. T.E. Hulme

IN A STATION OF THE METRO The apparition of
these faces in the crowdPetals on a wet black
bough.
Ezra Pound
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William Carlos Williams The Great Figure
Among the rainand lightsI saw the figure 5in
goldon a redfire truckmovingtenseunheededto
gong clangssiren howlsand wheels
rumblingthrough the dark city
Charles Henry Demuth (1883-1935), I Saw the
Figure Five in Gold
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Speed Futurism
Umberto Boccioni, Unique Forms of Continuity
in Space, 1913
The cry of rebellion which we utter associates
our ideals with those of the Futurist poets.
These ideas were not invented by some aesthetic
clique. They are an expression of a violent
desire, which burns in the veins of every
creative artist today. ... We will fight with all
our might the fanatical, senseless and snobbish
religion of the past, a religion encouraged by
the vicious existence of museums. We rebel
against that spineless worshipping of old
canvases, old statues and old bric-a-brac,
against everything which is filthy and
worm-ridden and corroded by time. We consider the
habitual contempt for everything which is young,
new and burning with life to be unjust and even
criminal. Filippo Tomaso Marinetti, The Futurist
Manifesto, 1909
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Vorticism
The cover of the first edition of BLAST, 1914.
The cover of the second edition of BLAST, 1915.
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AlienationAngstExpressionism
Emil NoldeMaskenstilleben (Masks Still
Life)1911
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Color Fauvism
La femme au grand chapeau (Woman with large hat)
by Kees van Dongen, 1906
Woman with a Hat by Henri Matisse, 1905
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Fiction Stream-of-Consciousness

• Let us record the atoms as they fall upon the
  mind in the order in which they fall, let us
  trace the pattern, however disconnected and
  incoherent in appearance, which each sight or
  incident scores upon the consciousness. Let us
  not take it for granted that life exists more
  fully in what is commonly thought big than in
  what is small Virginia Woolf Modern Fiction

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Stream of Consciousness
James Joyce
William Faulkner
Dorothy Richardson
Virginia Woolf
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Technology Constructivism
Ilya Golosov, Zuyev Workers' Club, 1927Moscow
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Functionalism Bauhaus/International Style
Walter Gropius, The Bauhaus Building in Dessau,
Germany
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Commentary/Propaganda Social Realism
Isabel Bishop, Office Girls, 1938
Aaron Douglas, Gods Trombones, 1926
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Photography
Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother
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Chaos/Irrationality Dadaism
Photograph of Marcel Duchamp's "Fountain.
ready-mades

• Marcel Janco recalled,We had lost confidence in
  our culture. Everything had to be demolished. We
  would begin again after the "tabula rasa". At the
  Cabaret Voltaire we began by shocking common
  sense, public opinion, education, institutions,
  museums, good taste, in short, the whole
  prevailing order.
• Dada is the groundwork to abstract art and sound
  poetry, a starting point for performance art, a
  prelude to postmodernism, an influence on pop
  art, a celebration of antiart to be later
  embraced for anarcho-political uses in the 1960s
  and the movement that lay the foundation for
  Surrealism.-Marc Lowenthal

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The SubconsciousSurrealism
Rene Magritte, Attempting the Impossible, 1928
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Form AbstractionPiet Mondrian, Broadway
Boogie Woogie, 1942-43
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Abstraction Cycladic Influence on Modern Art
Constantin Brancusi
Cycladic Statue
Amedeo Modigliani
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Music

• Sound Experimentation

• Ragtime, Blues and Jazz

• Arnold Schoenberg
• Atonality
• 12-tone system serialism
• Song cycles Sprechstimme
• Igor Stravinsky
• Le Sacre du Printemps dissonance and heavy
  rhythm
• Eric Satie
• Incorporation of work sounds
• Alban Berg
• Operas Wozzeck and Lulu

• Roots in African-American work songs, gospel,
  drumming, parade music
• Moved from New Orleans up the Mississippi to St.
  Louis and Kansas City on to Chicago, NYC and LA
  wildy popular in Europe
• Ragtime Scott Joplin
• Opera Treemonisha
• Blues emotive lamentation using blues scale
• Jazz improvisational, ensemble

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Theatre
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Film Shadow Magic