The Rise of Modernism

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The Rise of Modernism
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Igor Stravinsky Almost no musical work has had
such a powerful influence or evoked as much
controversy as Igor Stravinsky's ballet score
The Rite of Spring. The work's premiere on May
29, 1913, at the Théatre des Champs-Elysées in
Paris, was scandalous. In addition to the
outrageous costumes, unusual choreography and
bizarre story of pagan sacrifice, Stravinsky's
musical innovations tested the patience of the
audience to the fullest.
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Serge Diaghilev One of Stravinsky's most
significant collaborators was Serge Diaghilev,
director of the Ballets Russes. The two were
close working partners for some twenty years,
until Diaghilev's death in 1929. Much of
Stravinsky's most exceptional music, including
the score for The Rite of Spring, was composed
for the productions of Diaghilev.
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Stravinsky and Vaslav Nijinsky One of the
dancers recalled that Vaslav Nijinsky's shocking
choreography was physically unnatural to perform.
"With every leap we landed heavily enough to jar
every organ in us." The music itself was angular,
dissonant and totally unpredictable. When the
curtain rose and the dancing began, there
appeared a musical theme without a melody, only a
loud, pulsating, dissonant chord with jarring,
irregular accents. The audience responded to the
ballet with such a din of hisses and catcalls
that the performers could barely hear each other.
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Backstage at the premiere, Nijinsky shouted at
the dancers while Diaghilev tried to suppress a
possible riot by flashing the house lights.
Stravinsky himself fumed at the audience's
response to his music. If nothing else, the
ballet's premiere managed to instill in the
audience the true spirit of the music. As Thomas
Kelly states, "The pagans on-stage made pagans of
the audience." Despite its inauspicious debut,
Stravinsky's score for The Rite of Spring today
stands as a magnificent musical masterpiece of
the twentieth century.
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Lauded as one of the most influential events in
the history of American art, the Armory Show has
a mythic legacy that rivals the raucous opening
of Igor Stravinsky's ballet, The Rite of Spring
in Paris. In the wake of previous large
independent art exhibitions in France, Germany,
Italy, and England, from February 17th to March
15th, 1913, New York's 69th Regiment Armory on
Lexington Avenue between 25th and 26th streets
was home to approximately 1250 paintings,
sculptures, and decorative works by over 300
European and American artists.
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Even before the Armory Show opened, organizers
and more than a few journalists described the
exhibition as an invasion of modern art on
America. In the New York Times and Sun, headlines
like "It Will Throw a Bomb Into Our Art World and
a Good Many Leaders Will be Hit" and "Cubist,
Futurists, and Post Impressionists Win First
Engagement, Leaving the Enemy Awestruck" greeted
the public, emphasizing the paintings of Duchamp,
Matisse, and Picabia and the sculpture of
Brancusi as intellectual warfare.
Henri MatisseLuxury, II (1907-08)
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Though many directed their insults and praise at
a loosely defined cubism, Matisse was most
fiercely attacked for distorting the human form
to monstrous proportions. The most memorable
response was a public demonstration held by
students of the Chicago Art Institute. Matisse
was put on trial, and copies of three Matisse
paintings were, along with "Henry Hairmattress,"
burned in effigy.
Henri Matisse Goldfish and Sculpture
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Crowds were reportedly so large in Gallery I that
one could barely get a glimpse at the "success by
scandal," Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase,
No. 2 By the third week, the painting had gained
such notoriety that it was bought sight unseen by
Frederic Torrey, an art dealer from California.
Duchamp's painting was punned to deatha work
entitled "Food Descending a Staircase" was shown
at an exhibition parodying the most outrageous
works at the Armory, running concurrently with
the show at The Lighthouse School for the Blind
(Brown, Story 141). In American Art News, there
were prizes offered to anyone who could find the
nude (Brown, Story 136).
Marcel Duchamp Nude Descending a Staircase, No.
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However, by the second week of the show, many
visitors reportedly rushed to the "Chamber of
Horrors," Gallery I, in the far lefthand side of
the Armory. " ("Modern Art" 1). The "cubist
paintings" by Duchamp and Picabia (right) that
received such recognition at the Armory Show were
ironically some of the few works either artist
created using this method of fragmentation. Both
artists began dadist experiments soon after the
show, first in France and then in New York, where
they were warmly received thanks to their Armory
Show reputations.
Francis PicabiaFrench, 1878 or 1879-1953Dances
at the Spring (La Danse a la source), 1912
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Brancusi's sculptures in Gallery H baffled
critics more than any other three-dimensional
works in the show. Especially enigmatic were his
Sleeping Muse and Mademoiselle de Pologany
(left), which was compared to "a hardboiled egg
balanced on a cube of sugar" (Brown, Story 139).
Constantin BrancusiRumanian, 1876-1957Muse (Une
mu se), 1912
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As with many other works in the show, critics
only evaluated Brancusi's work on its adherence
to organic form. One writer, chosing to review
Brancusi's sculptures out of numerous other
possibilities, simply stated that his work was
too comical for commentary.
Constantin BrancusiRumanian, 1876-1957The Kiss
(Baiser), 1908
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Picasso, with five paintings and one sculpture in
Gallery I, went suprizingly unnoticed in the
press. Armory Show organizers were faulted for
dividing up his paintings, but the main problem
seemed to be their choices for the show. His most
striking works in the exhibition are and his
sculpture Female Head none of his prototypal
cubist works made it to the Armory.
Pablo PicassoSpanish, 1881-1973Woman with
Mustard Pot
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Les Demoiselles d'Avignon is one of the most
important works in the genesis of modern art. The
painting depicts five naked prostitutes in a
brothel two of them push aside curtains around
the space where the other women strike seductive
and erotic posesbut their figures are composed
of flat, splintered planes rather than rounded
volumes, their eyes are lopsided or staring or
asymmetrical, and the two women at the right have
threatening masks for heads. The space, too,
which should recede, comes forward in jagged
shards, like broken glass. In the still life at
the bottom, a piece of melon slices the air like
a scythe.The faces of the figures at the right
are influenced by African masks, which Picasso
assumed had functioned as magical protectors
against dangerous spirits this work, he said
later, was his "first exorcism painting."
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. Paris, June-July 1907.
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James Joyce was an Irish expatriate writer,
widely considered to be one of the most
influential writers of the 20th century. He is
best known for his landmark novel Ulysses (1922)
and its highly controversial successor Finnegans
Wake (1939), as well as the short story
collection Dubliners(1914) and the
semi-autobiographical novel A Portrait of the
Artist as a Young Man (1916).
James Joyce father of the modern novel
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STATELY, PLUMP BUCK MULLIGAN CAME FROM THE
STAIRHEAD, bearing a bowl of lather on which a
mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressing
gown, ungirdled, was sustained gently-behind him
by the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft
and intoned-- Introibo ad altare Dei.Halted,
he peered down the dark winding stairs and called
up coarsely-- Come up, Kinch. Come up, you
fearful jesuit.
Ulysses the Bible of modern literature