Early 20th Century: the Avant-gardes...2010/03/22 · Marcel Duchamp was an artist that still seems...
Transcript of Early 20th Century: the Avant-gardes...2010/03/22 · Marcel Duchamp was an artist that still seems...
Early 20th Century: the Avant-gardes
Why the name Avant-
garde?
Fauvism: Matisse
Cubism: Picasso and
Braque
Nonobjective painting:
Mondrian
Abstract sculpture:
Brancusi
Dada: Duchamp
From Paris to New
York: from Surrealism
to Abstract
Expressionism (Dali
and Pollock)
The term “Avant-garde” is taken from
the French which originally applied to
the foremost part of an army.
However, since the early 20th century
it has been used to describe
contemporary pioneers or innovators
in any of the arts
and also signifies work which
challenges accepted standardsDuchamp, Fountain, 1917
British trenches, Belgium, 1917
Matisse, the Dance, 1909-10, oil on canvas, 8’5”x12’8”
a group of painters
who worked in Paris
exploring the
liberation of color
The leader of this
group was Matisse
Fauvism:
In his Dance, Matisse
adopts a traditional
theme:
the dance as symbol of
harmony among
humans
But he gives an un-
mistakably 20th century
interpretation to it
A. Lorenzetti, The Effects of Good
Government: detail of the dance,
Siena, 1338 -1339, fresco
Matisse, the Dance, 1909-10, oil on canvas, 8’5”x12’8”
1) broad areas of uniform color
2) flowing rhythms of lines
3) patterned, FLAT composition that
adheres to the picture plane
4) Color is exalted for it sensuous
EXPRESSION alone, Independent of
descriptive reality
4 main features:
Matisse avoided using traditional modeling
to suggest three-dimensionality
He limited the colors to four, setting the warm
orange hue of the figures and their outlines
against two cold hues (blue and green)
the majestic size contributes to the powerful
effect of its bright colors and simplified forms
The Dance was created for a Russian patron,
Sergei Shchukin, who was a keen on dance
and music
More than the aspect of people dancing, Matisse
represents here the power and shared feeling
of dance and music
After Van Gogh, it was evident that the
aim of a painter was NOT to copy
nature
After the invention
and diffusion of
photography,
painting had no
longer to fulfill the
human need to
record/copy reality
H. Matisse,
Tangier: The
Town and the
Bay,
photograph
Spanish artist Pablo
Picasso made an even
more radical step
This monumental
painting is the
beginning of Cubism
(the most influential art
movement of the 20th
century)
Subject: the scene is a
brothel, with 5
prostitutes
cubismPicasso, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon,
1907, oil on canvas, MoMA
Picasso attacks the
Western tradition
of
1) A painting as a
window: no
perspective
(multiple
viewpoints), he
looks at “other”
traditions (Egypt,
African art)
2) Art as the realm of
beauty: clash of
colors, lines and
shapes
In the following years,
Picasso further
experimented this style
with the French painter
Georges Braque
The term “Cubism” was
first used in a 1908
review of an exhibition
of Braque’s painting
because he:
“despises form, reduces
everything to cubes”
Violin and Palette - main
elements of mature
cubism:
1)The image represent a
violin seen from
several simultaneous
viewpoints
Braque, Violin and Palette,
oil on canvas, 1909,
Guggenheim, New York
we understand the violin
walking around it: seeing
it from many
perspectives, in different
moments
we must remember that in
1895 the Lumiere brothers
had opened the first
public movie theater
2) It is not a particular
violin, it rather suggests the
notion of a violin:
Those are the shapes,
forms, and colors that
define a violin as a distinct
object
it’s important to notice that
while Cubism is a
PROCESS OF
ABSTRACTION, cubist
works never became
NONOBJECTIVE
NONOBJECTIVE (or
NONREPRESENTATIONAL)
: when the forms in a work of
art do not resemble forms in
the visual world
The purest and most
extreme research in non-
objective painting is that of
the Dutch painter Piet
Mondrian
Mondrian totally renounced
the world of physical
appearances
limiting himself to:
-LINES and RECTANGLES
- PRIMARY COLORS,
BLACK AND WHITE
P. Mondrian, Composition (Blue, Red, and
Yellow), 1930
Nonobjective art
Total FLATNESS
Scholars have seen in Mondrian the
most radical consequence of that
process started with
Impressionism
Within Mondrian’s career itself the
process of abstraction was a long-
term achievement (4 main stages):
P. Mondrian, The Red Tree.
1908
1st stage: Powerful
colors and emotional
energy of curvilinear
style
P. Mondrian, The Grey Tree. 1912
2nd stage: Less
representational, reduction of
colors to black, white, and grey
(Direct influence of cubism)
P. Mondrian, The Apple Tree. 1912
P. Mondrian, Composition No. 10, 1915
3rd stage: Plus and
Minus compositions,
reality is reduced to
vertical and
horizontal lines,
only black and white
since 1919 M. began to build his
paintings exclusively of horizontal
and vertical lines,
he destroyed every hierarchy:
- NO opposition FIGURE -
GROUND existing since the origins
of art
- NO CENTER,
- NO EQUILIBRIUM
4th stage:
P. Mondrian, Composition (Blue, Red, and
Yellow), 1930
The first great abstract sculptor
was the Rumanian Constantin
Brancusi, who moved to Paris in
1904
Here, he developed a sculpture
based on organic abstraction (as
opposed to the geometric
nonobjectivity of Mondrian)
Inspired by diverse tradition:
especially the geometric
simplification of African
sculpture and of Romanian folk
carving
Brancusi, Bird in Space, c. 1924, polished bronze,
height 4’ 2”
Abstract sculpture:
B. considered his works as the
essence of things
Contrary to Mondrian he negated
that his art was abstract:
“that which they call abstract is
the most realist,
because what is real is not the
exterior form
but THE IDEA, THE ESSENCE OF
THINGS”
In Bird in Space, B. does not
represent a flying bird
He rather gives shape to the idea of
lightness and graceful energy
by means of simplified volumes,
verticality and the smooth mirror-
like texture
Brancusi, Bird in Space, c. 1924, polished bronze,
height 4’ 2”
What’s the difference
between this
..and these?
dada
Marcel Duchamp was an artist
that still seems shocking to us
today,
Although his works were done
almost 100 years ago
during WWI he was close to the
DADA movement
Duchamp,
Fountain,
Ready-
made,
1917
In this context he produced his
Ready-made works:
Ready made: On the pedestals
in the gallery where we expect
to find sculpture
Duchamp placed common
objects used in everyday life
Like this upended porcelain
urinal, which he titled Fountain
By doing so he conferred an
artistic dignity on a found object
just designating it a work of
art
If this seems absurd to you (as
it did to critics and the public of
early 20th century)
then you are beginning to
understand the function of
these objects as works of art
Similarly to Manet,
D.’s idea was to
counter the
accepted values of
art
by dissolving the
aesthetic
presuppositions
of the viewer:
Everything that was commonly
considered characteristic of a
good piece of art is here
negated:
1) The quality of the object and
the craft of the artist as an
highly sophisticated artisan
(ON THE CONTRARY, FOR D.,
ART is ABOUT MEANINGS!)
2) The piece of art as a rare,
unique, and therefore
precious work, to be
venerated
WHILE THIS IS AN
INDUSTRIAL, MASS-
PRODUCED OBJECT,
RELATED TO
BIOLOGICAL NEEDS
RATHER THAN
“CULTURAL” EDIFICATION
3) The artwork as something
beautiful, visually
pleasant, aesthetically
elevated
THE SHAPE OF THIS
OBJECT IS PURELY
FUNCTIONAL, WITH A
TOTAL ABSENCE OF
GOOD OR BAD TASTE
Piero Manzoni,
Artist’s Shit, 1961
Duchamp originated a whole
tendency
of art as a permanent provocation
How New York Stole the Idea of
Modern Art
One of the first things done
by Hitler when he went
into power in 1933
Was to close the
Bauhaus, the most
important school of art and
architecture of Europe
He also organized a
traveling exhibition entitled
Degenerate Art
here the European
Avant-gardes were
shown as
the symptoms of an ill
society
led by Jews and
Internationalism
As a result, some of the
most important European
artists and architects
moved to New York
Where modern art was
welcomed as the
demonstration of
individual freedom
The group with the main
impact was that of the
Surrealists
Surrealist exhibition at Peggy
Guggenheim’s Art of This Century,
New York, 1942
Dali, The persistence of Memory.
1931. Oil on Canvas, 9 1/2 x 13"
(21.1 x 33 cm). The Museum of
Modern Art
Most popular figure, the
Spanish Dali
He painted in a
painstakingly precise
and traditional style
This traditionalism
contrasted with the
incongruity of what was
depicted
- Break the boundaries
between the realm of
dreams and that of
reality
(disquieting and
incongruous mental
associations)
- Art as representation of
the subconscious
Pollock, No. 30, 1950, Met Pollock developed the surrealist idea
of showing the subconscious to its
extreme
The painting is no longer the result
of a carefully planned, intellectual
work
But rather the direct record of life
(ACTION PAINTING)
Abstract Expressionism
The traditional way of
easel painting is radically
destroyed
And substituted by the
technique of “drip
painting”
The artist worked with the
canvas flat on the floor,
constantly moving all
around it while applying
the paint and working
from all four sides
Pollock, No. 30, 1950, MetThere's no central point of focus,
no hierarchy of elements in this
composition
in which every bit of the surface
is equally significant