Ch. 8: Mass Media

Once photography was established as an interpretive medium unto itself, photography’s position within the arts was reconsidered.

• Photography’s inherent characteristics were examined, and a photographic art theory emerged.• Modernist artists stopped using historical subject matter and trying to depict nature in a

realistic, convincing way, and started to explore experimental representation within their work.• Artists were freer to experiment with content. (Individual freedom over social authority.)• Aesthetic formalism emphasized forms over content. The belief that forms could become as

important as subject matter prevailed.• Modernist artists also believed that meaning is inherently placed in an artwork by the artist and

read by the viewer.

A key feature of the photography of the 1920s was the emergence of a wide variety of techniques, styles and approaches.

The photographic climate was one of experimentation, with photo-collage, montage, camera-less images, unusual vantage points and extreme close ups. Dadaism, Surrealism, Constructivism - were about exploring content, form and sometimes social / political commentary.

Christian Schad - German artist who joined the DADA movement in 1916.Schadograph, 1916

• DADA artists favored accident and chance in the making of their work. They were interested in the absurd, the random and the ridiculous -- in direct opposition to the conventional notions of art.

Man Ray (Emmanuel Rudnitsky), Rayograph, 1920.

“A certain amount of contempt for the material exmployed to express an idea isindispensable to the purest realization of this idea.”

Man Ray, Rayographs, 1920s.

Man Ray,Torso, Sabattier effect, 1920.

The sabattier effect (first documented by French scientist Armand Sabattier in1862) is the partial reversal of an image caused by exposing it to light duringdevelopment. This gives the print both positive and negative qualities and adds“halos,” called Mackie lines between adjacent light and dark areas.

Man Ray, Sabattier (solarization) effect, 1920.

Man Ray, Portrait of Lee Miller, Solarization effect, 1920s.

Man Ray’s work was inspired in part by the unique vision of the Dadaists and the Surrealists.

• Dada was not a particular style but claimed the freedom to experiment.

• The Dadaists were interested in using the element of chance and a sense of playfulness in their work. Their art was produced in unconventional ways and took unusual forms.

• The artist Jean Arp did a piece where he dropped torn paper and let it fall. “Arranged according to the laws of chance.”

Kurt Schwitters, Collage, 1920s.

Schwitters, Collage, 1920s.

Marcel Duchamp was associated with the Dada group and invented the readymade - taking common manufactured objects that he promoted as art.

• He wanted to create “a new thought for that object.” - to demystify art by proclaiming that there were so many interesting things in the world, there was no need to make objects.

• Duchamp’s aproach was conceptual, making the mental act of choice--not the physical act of the hand--the center of creation.

Duchamp (R. Mutt), Fountain, Readymade, 1917.

“In 1913 I had the happy idea to fasten a bicycle wheel to a kitchen stool and watch it turn. It was then that the word readymade came to mind.”

Duchamp, Readymade, 1913

“Generate ideas, no matter how wild or far-fetched, and enable new associations to be made in the gray matter of your brain.”

Bottle Rack, 1914

In 1919, Duchamp drew a moustache and goatee on a postcard sized reproduction of the Mona Lisa, creating one of the most well known acts of

degrading a famous work of art.

When pronounced in French, the title L.H.O.O.Q., puns the phrase “Elle a chaud au cul,” which translates colloquially as “She has a hot ass.”

Picasso, Bull Head, 1945

Man Ray, Object, 1920s.

Man Ray, Object to be Destroyed, 1920s.

Man Ray, Self Portrait, oil on canvas, bells, pushbutton

Surrealism came about after WW1 from Dadaism. It was defined as a state of mind rather than a specific artistic style. The surrealists were interested

in using dreams, the unconscious and free association.

DeChirico, oil on canvas, 1914

Surrealists were interested in the liberation from conscious reason and convention.

The poet Andre Bréton wrote a Manifesto of Surrealism in 1924 which said in part: “Surrealism is based on the belief in the superior reality of certain forms of

previously neglected associations, in the omnipotence of dream, in the disinterested play of thought.”

Dora Maar, Dream-Like, 1935

Man Ray, the Veil, 1930, Glass Tears, 1930-32

Man Ray, Le Violon d’Ingres, 1924

Man Ray, fashion for Harper’s Bazaar, 1937.

Man Ray, Self Portrait, 1930-32

Raul Ubac, La Conciliabule, Brulage print, 1938

Hans Bellmer with doll

Bellmer, Doll (La Poupée), 1935

Claude Cahun, Self Portrait, 1928

Cahun, Self Portrait, 1929

Cahun, Self Portrait, 1917

Cahun, Self Portraits, 1917

Foto ringl + pit, Petrole Hahn Advertising, Berlin, 1931.

George Hoyningen-Huene, Schiaparelli Beachwear, 1930

Horst P. Horst, Electric Beauty, 1930s.

Paul Outerbridge, Saltine Box, 1922.

Outerbridge, Ide Collar, 1922.

Outerbridge, Canes, 1930s.

Outerbridge, Top Hat & Muffler, 1930s.

Outerbridge, Mannequin, 1920s.

.

Outerbridge, Still Life, 1937.

Outerbridge, Nude with Meatpacker’s Gloves, 1930s.

Man Ray, Solarized Nude, 1927.

Outerbridge, 1930s.

Nikolas Murray, advertisement, 1940s.

Nikolas Murray, advertisement, 1940s.

Nikolas Murray, advertisement, 1940s.

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, photograms, 1923.

The Bauhaus was formed in 1919 during the Weimar Republic (1918-1933), and became the most influential architectural and design

movement since the time of the Renaissance.

The photography work of the Bauhaus artists was marked by a modern and geometric style, with unusual perspectives and tight framing. This style

became known as the New Vision or New Objectivity.

Maholy-Nagy came from a Constructivist background.Constructivism - a period from 1913 through the 1920s during which Russian avant-

garde artists rejected traditional easel painting and “art for art’s sake” in favor of utilitarian designs intended for mass production.

Lazlo Moholy-Nagy, Lucia Moholy, photomontage (fotoplastik)

Another distinctive characteristic of the New Vision / New Objectivity is the close up. It was regarded as one means for the objective presentation of fact.

Florence Henri, Portrait.

Florence Henri

Henri, Perfume Advertisement, 1930s.

Henri, Cubist Still Life, 1930s

Herbert Bayer, early design work, 1921

Bayer, early design work, 1921

Bayer, postcard design for Bauhaus exhibition

Bayer, Lonely Metro, 1932

Bayer, Harper’s Bazaar, 1940

Albert Renger-Patzsch, from The World is Beautiful, 1928

Renger-Patzsch, from The World is Beautiful, 1928

Karl Blossfeldt, from Art Forms in Nature, 1928

Blossfeldt, from Art Forms in Nature, 1928

Hannah Hoch, Cut With the Kitchen Knife Dada Through the last Weimar Beer Belly Cultural Epoch of Germany, photomontage, 1919

Hannah Hoch, The Legs of Marlene, photomontage, 1919

Hoch, photomontage, 1919

Hoch, photomontage, ND

Hannah Hoch, Self Portrait, 1930s

John Heartfield (Helmut Herzfeld), Hitler the Superman Swallows Gold and Spews Junk, photomontage, 1930s.

Heartfield, With His Call, He Will Gas Us All, 1930s.

Heartfield, Hurray, the Butter is Gone!, photomontage, 1930s.

Aleksander Rodchenko, Advertisment, 1923, Nine Inch Nails logo, 1987

Suprematism (1915-1923) was a Russian avant-garde movement to

reduce painting to pure geometric abstraction by eliminating any allusions

to the real world.

Rodchenko, Advertisment for baby pacifiers, 1923

Rodchenko, Photomontage, 1923

Rodchenko, Breakfast Table, 1924

Rodchenko, Pioneers, 1924

Rodchenko, (left) Courier, (right) Portrait of My Mother 1920s

André Kertész (1894-1985)

Kertész, Siesta, Paris, 1927.

Kertész, Meudon, 1928.

Kertész, Chez Mondrian, 1927.

Kertész, Satiric Dancer, 1926.

Kertész, Distortion #60, 1926.

Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004), On the Banks of the Marne, 1938

Cartier-Bresson, Valencia, Spain, 1933

Cartier-Bresson, Gare St. Lazure, Paris, 1953

Cartier-Bresson, Pub, London, 1930s

Cartier-Bresson, Sleeping Fruit Vendor, Spain, 1930s

Edward Weston (1886-1958), Prologue to a Sad Spring, 1920.

Charles Sheeler

Weston, Armco Steel, 1922.

Weston, Pulqueria, 1926.

Weston, Excusado, 1925.

Weston, Garlic, 1927

Weston, Pepper, 1930

Weston, 1927

Group f64 - Ansel Adams (1902-1984), Moon and Half Dome, 1930s

Group F64, founded in Oakland, CA. in 1932 by Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Imogen Cuningham, Willard Van Dyke, Sonia

Noskowiak, John Paul Edwards and Henry Swift.

• They promoted straight, modern photography. They named themselves after the smallest aperture on the camera lens to symbolize their allegiance to: sharply focused images printed on glossy gelatin silver papers without any signs of pictorial “handwork” and mounted on white boad.

• “…Group f64 limits its members and invitational names to those workers who are striving to define photography as an art form by simple and direct presentation through purely photographic methods. The group will show no work at any time that does not conform to its standards of pure photography. Pure photography is defined as possessing no qualities of technique, composition or idea, derivative of any other art form.”

Adams, Merced River, 1930s

Adams, Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, 1944

Imogen Cunningham (1883-1976)

Cunningham, 1926

“The greatest aesthetic beauty, the fullest power of expression, the real worth of themedium lies in ts pure form rather than its superficial modifications.” (F64 group)

Cunningham, Braille, 1930s

Cunningham, Self Portrait on Geary St., 1958

Cunningham, Irene “Bobby” Libarry, from after 90, 1976

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Film un Foto - an international exhibition in Stuttgart, Germany, 1929. The show consisted of about 1,000 photographs from Europe, the Soviet Union and the United States. The list of artists included Weston, Cunningham, Outerbridge, Steichen, Moholy-Nagy, Renger-Patzsch, Bayer, Heartfield, Rodchenko and Man Ray.