Il modernismo e le arti• “Three years ago in Paris I got out of a ‘metro’ train at La Concorde, and saw

suddenly a beautiful face, and then another and another, and then a beautiful child’s face, and then another beautiful woman, and I tried all that day to find words for what this had meant to me, and I could not find any words that seemed to me worthy, or as lovely as that sudden emotion. And that evening, as I went home along the Rue Raynourd, I was still trying and I found, suddenly, the expression. I do not mean that I found words, but there came an equation … not in speech, but in little splotches of colour. It was just that – a ‘pattern’, or hardly a pattern, if by ‘pattern’ you mean something you ‘repeat’in it. But it was a word, the beginning for me of a language in colour.” Ezra Pound, “Vorticism”, Fortnightly Review, 1 Sept. 1914

• The apparition of these faces in the crowd;/Petals on a wet, black bough. Ezra Pound, In a Station of the Metro

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Monet, Impression. Sunrise

Impressionism

• 1874: Monet, Impression. Sunrise• Main representatives: Manet, Monet, Degas,

Renoir, Sisley, Pissarro• 1874-1886: Eight Exhibitions• Transcription of visual reality as it affected the

retina of the painter within a discrete, short period of time

• To capture the effect of light and colour in an instant of time

Impressionism2

• Connection with contemporary writing and thinking about photography

• Connection with Naturalism• Recognition of the subjectivity of the act of

representational transcription• Impressionism fetishized the role of the

subjective perception in the act of representation• This aesthetic decision was to revolutionize, and

define modern art

Impressionism – techniques

• Short thick strokes of paint• Colours applied side-by-side • Colours mix in the eye of the viewer• Emphasis on the play of natural light• Painting en plein air

Monet

Monet, Haystacks Monet, Haystacks

Impressionism in England

• Paul Durand-Ruel: French art dealer. He organized exhibitions of Impressionism in England

• London: 11 exhibitions between 1870 and 1875

• 1882 – Exhibition at the Downdeswell Galleries

• 1905- Exhibition at the Grafton Galleries

Neo-impressionismo or Scientific Impressionism

• Georges Seurat • Painting based on the conscious and rigorous

application of contemporary scientific theories on light and human perception

• Painting reduced to its smallest elements – the molecule or dot

• Works composed of discrete dots or points of colour hence the name of pointillisme or divisionism

NeoimpressionismGeorges Seurat, A Summer Sunday at the Grande Jatte, 1884

Post-impressionism

• Term coined by Roger Fry in 1906• Gauguin, Cézanne, Seurat, and Van Gogh a conscious departure from what these artists

considered the narrowly optical art of impressionism

CubismPablo Picasso, Les Damoiselles d’Avignon, 1907

Cubism

• Founders: Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Georges Braque (1882-1963)

• Break with the principle of one point perspective

• Attempt to render the three-dimensionality of an object in the two dimensions of the canvas

• No fixed, single perspective• Collage technique

Cubism 2

• Main phases• 1909-12 Analytical Cubism: objects reduced to

their geometrical structures, monochromatic paintings in order to capture the “essential qualities” of the pictured object

• 1912 onwards Synthetic Cubism: practice of collage, elements of popular culture (wall-paper, posters, theatre tickets etc.), emphasis on the artificiality of the image

Pablo Picasso, Ritratto di Ambroise Vollard

FuturismoGiacomo Balla, Volo di una rondine

FuturismoGiacomo Balla, Volo di rondini

Futurism

• Marinetti published Il Manifesto del Futurismo – Le Figaro 20 February 1909

• Manifesto dei Pittori Futuristi - 11 February 1910 (Boccioni, Balla, Carrà, Russolo, Severini)

• Manifesto Tecnico della Pittura Futurista - 11 April 1910 (Boccioni, Balla, Carrà, Russolo, Severini)

Futurism 2

• Enthusiasm for modernity• Motion• Simultaneity• Technology • Speed • City • Beauty of the machine

Futurismo Giacomo Balla, Dinamismo di un cane al guinzaglio

Futurismo

Umberto Boccioni, La città sale