MODERNISM
Mar 29, 2015
MODERNISM
“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
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 HeisenbergIt is physically impossible to know both the
position and the momentum of a particle at the same time.
Theory of Relativity – Albert Einstein E=mc2
Energy = mass x speed of light squared
Psychology: Whither the Self?
Sigmund Freud Psychoanalysis and Dream
Analysis – the Unconscious Mind
Psyche: Id Ego Superego
Oedipal Complex Repression and
Sublimation Civilization and Its
Discontents
Karl Jung
o Collective Unconscious
o Psyche: o Personao Animus/Animao Shadow
o Archetypes: primal patternso The Heroo The Trickstero The Great Mothero The Sage
o Myth, dreams, folklore
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
Fragmentation:
Georges Bracque Woman with a Guitar, 1913
CUB ISM
Juan Gris, Still Life with Fruit Dish and Mandolin, 1919
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.
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 crowd;Petals on a wet black bough. Ezra Pound
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
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
Vorticism
The cover of the first edition of BLAST, 1914.
The cover of the second edition of BLAST, 1915.
Alienation
Angst
Expressionism
Emil NoldeMaskenstilleben (Masks Still Life)1911
Color: FauvismWoman with a Hat by Henri Matisse, 1905
La femme au grand chapeau (Woman with large hat) by Kees van Dongen, 1906
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”
Stream of Consciousness
James Joyce
Dorothy RichardsonVirginia
Woolf
William Faulkner
Technology: Constructivism
Ilya Golosov, Zuyev Workers' Club, 1927Moscow
Functionalism: Bauhaus/International Style
Walter Gropius,The Bauhaus Building in Dessau, Germany
Commentary/Propaganda: Social Realism
Isabel Bishop, Office Girls, 1938Aaron Douglas, God’s Trombones, 1926
Photography
Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother
Chaos/Irrationality: Dadaism
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
Photograph of Marcel Duchamp's "Fountain“. ready-mades
The Subconscious:Surrealism
Rene Magritte, Attempting the Impossible, 1928
Form: Abstraction
Piet Mondrian, Broadway Boogie Woogie, 1942-43
Abstraction Cycladic Influence on Modern Art
Constantin Brancusi
Amedeo Modigliani
Cycladic Statue
MusicSound Experimentation Arnold Schoenberg:
Atonality12-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
Ragtime, Blues and Jazzo Roots in African-American
work songs, gospel, drumming, parade music
o Moved from New Orleans up the Mississippi to St. Louis and Kansas City on to Chicago, NYC and LA – wildy popular in Europe
o Ragtime: Scott Joplino Opera: Treemonisha
o Blues – emotive lamentation using blues scale
o Jazz – improvisational, ensemble