American Modernism

1
American Modernism

• Armory Show
• Chicago, 1913

2
(No Transcript)
3

• Paul Cézanne
• Four Bathers
• 1879-1882

4

• Pablo Picasso
• Woman with Mustard Pot
• 1910

5

• Marcel Duchamp
• Nude Descending a Staircase
• 1912

6

• Seeing New York with a Cubist
• The Rude Descending a Staircase (Rush Hour at
  the Subway)
• 1913

7

• Henri Matisse
• Le Luxe II
• 1907-08

8
American ModernismHad to Deal With

• The Place of Internationalism
• The Schematic
• Theory
• What does it mean to be new?

9
Chicago

• Optimism
• A little uncivilized

10
Spectacle

• Step In! No Danger! Cubist Show Now On!
• "Remember, this is the uncensored sho. It's
  there--there--there--on the inside, ladies and
  gentlemen. It's continuous. It's different, and
  it's art--art of the present and the future. A
  thrill every minute. Something new to tickle the
  fancy and feast the eye."
• That was all that was needed--just a real
  old-fashioned bally-ho at the head of the marble
  staircase in the Art Institute yesterday--to
  make the first-time visitor to the international
  exhibition of modern art believe he had done a
  Rip Van Winkle act and awakened in the old Clark
  Street Museum.
• Chicago Record-Herald, March 25, 1913

11
Chicago Evening Post March 24, 1913

• Colonel Henry Clay Medders of Kentucky in the Big
  City
• Lets see now. I had two small ones before
  breakfast and

12

• Crazy quilt art

13
Three modes of interaction

• Parody
• The law
• Obscenity

14

• Alexander Archipenko
• Le Repos
• 1911

15
Underlying Issues

• Spectacle
• Primitivism
• Difficulty
• Mimesis

16
Modernism As a Deliberate Break

• Moment of modernism was unmistakable
• Shaken faith in traditional modes
• Implications of this break
• Self-conscious modernism

17
Three sites of struggle

• Professionalism
• Public culture
• Modes of coping

18
Professionalism

• Definitions
• Specialization and technical innovation
• Self consciousness
• Rise of difficulty

19
Public Culture

• Mass culture
• Urbanization
• Democratization
• The avant-garde

20
Modes of Coping

• Finding order
• Subject/object and representation
• Romanticist or Classicist?