Module 6 Modernism

MODERNISM

Modern

- relates to the present or recent times as opposed to the remote past

- characterized by or using the most up-to-date techniques, or equipment

- denoting the form of language that is currently used, as opposed to any earlier form

- denoting a current or recent style or trend in art, archticture, or other cultural activity marked by a significant departure from traditional styles and values

Modern etymology

Latin 'modo' (just now)

Modernism

- began to be used in the late 16th century, delineating the period off medieval and ancient times

- movement in scoiety and culture that sought to reflect the experience and values of industrial life

Raymond Williams

- wrote about modernism as a retrospective title in his book, When Was Modernism?

Modernism as a retrospective title

- only given after the fact

- artist could be innovating, might occasionally use the word 'modern', but not consider themselves modernists

Modernism as a time of divisions

- across political inclinations, artistic movements, both between and within them

Modernism's canonization after WWII

- now relegates these ideas into the recesses of the past and eventually absorbed into a capitalist market

Industrial Revolution

- played a huge role in art and culture towards the 19th century

- massive societal shift from farming communities into large scale productions

What did the Industrial Revolution introduce?

- factories, concept of working days (hours, minutes), development of new technologies, exploitation of natural resources

First Locomotives

- factories once powered by water moved into steam

Working Conditions of the Industrial Revolution

- increasingly dangerous

- concepts of work safety were not yet standardized

- child labor still employed

- brutal deaths occurred mostly with children

- further demand for slave labor in the colonies producing raw materials (sugar, tobacco, coffee, palm oil)

19TH CENTURY: REALISM

Promotion of Neoclassicism

- phenomenon of the art school and art academies

Art Schools

- these schools taught artists that their work needs to be 'instructive, morally uplifting, refined, inspired by the classical tradition, a good reflection of the national culture, and above all, about beauty

Art schools brewed the desire to?

- art schools brewed the desire to create works that spoke to their modern era, not just reflect on the past

Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture

- Paris, est. 1648

Royal Academy of Art

- London, est. 1768

- patterned after Paris

Hierarchy in painting

1. History painting

2. Portraiture

3. Genre painting

4. Landscapes

5. Still life

History painting

- highbrow subjects from classical traditions

Portraiture

- capturing likeness

Genre painting

-everyday life

Landscapes

- rural or urban topography

Still life

- explore color and texture

Highest type of painting in the hierarchy

History painting

Lowest type of painting in the hierarchy

Still life

Features of the hierarchy

- most had moralizing undertones

- size also reflected the hierarchies

A Burial at Ornans

- large-scale work, which was often reserved for history painting realism

- depictions of an ordinary funeral (his great-uncle) with ordinary figures, grave digger is central to the piece

- members of the church are seen, but they are not given more importance over the people in this painting

- Christ is depicted as a sculpture, an object in use, firmly planting this painting in the real and modern world

- people in mourning, not in any idealized position or appearance

- highlighting the agency of each person, a sense of introspection

Gustave Courbet

- main realism proponents in France

- believed that artists should be creating work of their time

Painting according to Gustave Courbet

- essentially a concrete art and can only consist of the representation of real and existing things

- completely physical language, the words of which consist of all visible objects

- object which is abstract, not physical, non-existent, is not within the realm of painting

Le Dejeuner sur L'herbe, Edouard Manet

- originally titled Le Bain (The Bath)

- rejected by the official Salon (Royal Academy in Paris), instead exhibited at the Salon des Refusees (Exhibition of Refused Works)

- features figures that are clearly modern

- nude woman is recognizable (Manet's model, not a nymph or figure in mythology), as well as the 2 male characters (Manet's relatives)

Manet's relatives

- Manet's relatives as models created a sense of discomfort in the viewer

Strange rendering in Le Dejeuner sur L'herbe

- figure in the back seems to be olarge for her distance to the foreground, nude woman appears to have flat 'studio lighting'

- loose brushstrokes, atypical style that would not be approved by the academies = forwarding artistic choices rather than that was prescribed

A Road in Louveciennes, Pierre-Auguste Renoir

- broke off from the state-sanctioned art exhibitions to pursue different ways of artmaking

- saw importance in landscape painting

- paintings are characterized by their sketchy renderings full of light

- attention to atmosphere

- plein-air

- influenced by Japanese painting

plein-air

- painting that highlighted the transient and fleeting

La Grenouillere, Pierre-Auguste Renoir

- citylife and middle-clas leisure interested the Impressionists

Societe Anonyme des Artistes

- established by young artists Claude Monet and Edgar Degas

20TH CENTURY: SUPREMATISM

Suprematism

- avant garde movement that emerged during WWI that sought to find new forms to depict reality

Realism in terms of?

- abstraction

- reality beyond what we usually experience

Kazimir Malevich

- pioneer of abstraction

- rejected the idea that realism in painting is representational to the world around us

What is real?

- the use and focus of formal elements, geometry, color is real in itself

- ability of artists to communicate a reality beyond materiality

- pure feeling and pure form

Black Square, Kazmir Malevich

- radical in its non-representation

- a time in Russia where Tsarist government is losing its power, society still heavily connected to the Orthodox church

- typically hung in the upper corner of the room, where Russian Orthodox icons are typically placed

20TH CENTURY: CONSTRUCTIVISM

1917 February Revolution

- monarchy was overthrown in favor of a provisional government, and Vladimir Lenin returned to Russia after his exile

1917 October Revolution

- Bolsheviks, under the leadership of Lenin, overthrew the government in favor of a socialist government

1922

- Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was established

Establishment of Soviet Union

- avant garde had a historical responsibility: giving form to a state for the proletariat

- constructivists instead focused on material, which reflected the industrialization happening in Russia

- challenged Suprematism and Malevich, contending that they reflecetd bourgeois ideas

Monument to the Third International in Moscow, Vladimir Tatlin

- emblematic of utopian aspirations of the communist leas of Russia

- envisioned as a 20ft (6m) wooden sculpture but was never constructed

- part of a large-scale program that sought to replace all tsarist movements

- utilitarian, housing different offices and the top would be a radio station

Faktura

- literally translating to "texture" = textural structure of a work of art and the manner by which is constructed

- material world > spiritual concerns

Graphic design

- reflected optimism around industrializatoin and the building of the Soviet Union, focus on clarity and agitprop (agitation propaganda) to reach broad publics

Advertising

- way to engage with building a Soviet economy

- simple colors, font for emphasis

- white diagonal lines are prevented from hitting the globe by an enormous shoe; USSR in red as a focus of the world

Charles Kramer and Kim Grant

"Not only will buying rubber overshoes keep your feet dry, it will help to maintain Soviet dominance the world

20TH CENTURY: BAUHAUS

Bauhaus

- champo- house of building

- emerged as a school of architecture and interior design in Weimar later Dessau, Germany

- became the foundation of modern art schools, highlighting interdisciplinarity (mixing of design, architecture, performance, visual arts, craft, technology)

- can be read as a hopeful envisioning of a certain type of future after the events of WWI

- took inspiration from the medieval practice of craftsmen in the service of building cathedrals

- each person had a specific task to build towards a common aesthetic, social, metaphysical, philosophical, and spiritual project

- championing clean, rational, and formal principles as a foundation for all design in part as a palliative to the devastating effects of war

Walter Gropius

- founder of Bauhaus

Manifesto

- common during this time as a means to outline their ideas, cultural programs and political agendas

Bauhaus manifesto

- sought to abolish the distinction between artist and craftperson ; mobilize all arts and crafts towards the creation environments; to foster links between the school and local manufacturers

Triadic Ballet (Das Triadische Ballet)

- explores the relationships of the human body and abstract space

- three dancers and three acts

- by Oskar Schlemmer