20th C. Class 1 Intro_What is Modernity

Enlightenment

An intellectual movement that emphasized reason and empirical knowledge to combat ignorance, superstition, and tyranny to build a better world.

Voltaire

An Enlightenment thinker who believed in the advancement of science and society as a means of salvation for humanity.

Jean Jacques Rousseau

An Enlightenment thinker who argued that civilization corrupts natural man and that humanity's salvation lies in a return to a more innocent state.

Neoclassicism

An artistic movement characterized by a return to classical ideals and forms, prevalent in the 18th and early 19th centuries.

The Academy

Institutions in France that monitor, foster, critique, and protect French cultural production.

Modernity

An awareness of the present as distinct from the past, often associated with industrialization and enabled the rapid invention of new production processes in almost every industry.

Industrialization

The process that enabled rapid invention of new production processes and the creation of markets for various goods.

Crystal Palace

1850-51, London, England, Joseph Paxton - Modernity

Birth of Venus

1879, Oil on canvas, William Adolphe Bouguereau - Modernity

Oath of the Horatii

1784, Oil on canvas, Jacques-Louis David - Modernity

Abbey in Oak Forest

1810, Oil on canvas, Casper David Friedrich - Modernity

The Haywain

1821, Oil on canvas, John Constable - Modernity

Virgin and Child

1888, Oil on canvas, William Adolphe Bouguereau - Modernity

Revival Styles

Classical styles including Greek, Roman, and Egyptian were in part the result of a distinction made between modernity and past epochs.

Division of Labor

Essentially an assembly line where one person constantly does the same job/task over and overto increase efficiency and productivity in manufacturing and other industries.

The Machine

An instrument of progress offering new frontiers over land and sea, generating wealth, creating a new culture based upon science and rationality. Also seen as the great destroyer.

The Arts and Crafts Movement

Movement in response to the disrupted world of crafts and hastened collapse of vernacular traditions due to machine work. (Industrialization) Engendered a split between hand, mind and eye in the creation of utilitarian objects.

Houses of Parliament

1836-1860, London, Sir Charles Barry and James A.W.N (Abbott McNeill Whistler) - Arts and Crafts

Red House

1859-60, Bexleyheath, Kent, England, Philip Webb and William Morris - Arts and Crafts

The Green Dining Room

1866, Morris & Co. - Arts and Crafts

Ward Willits House

1902, Highland Park, near Chicago, IL, Frank Lloyd Wright - Aesthetic

Marshall Field Wholesale Building

1885-87, Chicago, IL, Henry Hobson Richardson - The Tall Building

Reliance Building

1890-94, Chicago, IL, Burnham and Root - The Tall Building

Wainwright Building

1890-91, St. Louis, MO, Adler and Louis Sullivan - The Tall Building

“Art for Art’s Sake”

Art should exist for its own sake, independent of moral and social concerns.

Symphony in White No. II, The Little White Girl

1864, James A.M.W - Aesthethic

Ukiyo-e

Floating world; A genre of Japanese woodblock prints and paintings featuring landscapes, tales from history, the theater, pleasure, and leisure.

Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket

1875, Oil on panel, James A.M.W - Aesthetic

Harmony in Blue and Gold: The Peacock Room

1876-77, the Freer Gallery, Smithsonian Institution - Aesthetic

Art and Money OR The Story of the Room

The Peacock Room, James A.M.W - Aesthetic

Symbolism (Post Impressionism)

The “painting of ideas”, Symbolism stressed feeling and evocation over definition and face and emphasized the power of suggestion

Vision After the Sermon

1888, Oil on canvas, Paul Gauguin - Abstraction

Te Aa No Areois (The Seed of Areoi)

1892, Oil on Burlap, Paul Gauguin - Abstract

Idol with Pearl

1892, wood, Paul Gauguin - Abstract

Mahana No Atua (Day of the God)

1894, Oil on canvas, Paul Gauguin - Abstract

The Scream

1893, Oil, Edvard Munch - Abstract

Street, Berlin

1913, Oil on canvas, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner - German Expressionism

Friedrich Nietzcohe

Rejected the ability of religion to determine moral values any longer (God is dead), suggested that humanity set itself the goal of the Overman

Sketch for Composition II

1910, Oil on canvas, Vasily Kandinsky - German Expressionism

The Large Blue Horses

1911, Franz Marc - German Expressionism

Composition VII

1913, Oil on canvas, Vasily Kandinsky - Expressionism

The Joy of Life

1905, Oil on canvas, Henri Matisse - French Expressionism (Fauvism)

La Vie

1903, Oil on canvas, Pablo Picasso - Cubism

Woman Ironing

1904, Oil on canvas, Picasso - Cubism

Les Demoiselles d’Avignon

1907, Oil on canvas, Pablo Picasso - Proto-Cubism

Houses at L’Estaque

1908, Oil on canvas, Georges Braque - Cubism

Duration

A theory of time and consciousness: Should one attempt to measure a moment, it will be gone. One measures an immobile, complete line, whereas time is mobile and incomplete. Time can only be experienced as an uninterrupted duration.

Henri Bergson

Created the Theory of Duration

Girl with Mandolin (Fanny Tellier)

1910, Oil on canvas, Pablo Picasso - Cubism

Still Life with Chair Caning

1912, Oil and Oil cloth on canvas, edged with rope, Pablo Picasso

Maquette for Guitar

Oct. 1912, Construction of cardboard, string, and wire. (Restored), Pablo Picasso

The City Rises

1910-11, Oil on canvas, Umberto Boccioni - Futurism

Morning in the Country After the Storm

1912, Oil on canvas, Kasimir Malevich - Cubo-futurism

Last Futurist Exhibition of Paintings 0.10

1915-1916, St. Petersburg, Malevich - Suprematism

Black Square

1915, Oil on canvas, Malevich - Suprematism

Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge

1919, Poster, El (Eliezer Markovich) Lissitzky - Russian Constructivism

Counter-relief

1915, Iron, copper, wood, and rope, Vladimir Tatlin - Russian Constructivism

Monument to the Third International

1919-1920, wood, iron, glass model of an edifice, Vladimir Tatlin - Russian Constructivism

Divisionism (Pointillism/Neo Impressionism)

Seurat’s technique of using an overall pattern of small dot like brushstrokes of generally complementary colors

Descriptive Painting

Painting in which forms are used not as objects of emotion, but as means of suggesting emotion or conveying information - The Aesthetic Hypothesis Clive Bell

Expressionism

Artwork in which the image of reality is distorted in order to make it expressive of the artist’s thoughts and ideas; shown through undulating lines, rich color, and loose brushwork

Synthetism

The communication of emotion through abstract pictorial means. The direct impression of nature is submitted to intellectual choice, decorative arrangement and simplification of color and form

Weak Abstraction

For avant-garde artists working in the early 20th century, distilling to its essential qualities a form observed in the real world while keeping the same level of engagement with nature and visual phenomena

Cubism

A type of weak abstraction that maintains an emphatic hold on the physical world that uses neutral tones and merges planes to create a 2D piece

Primitivism (Western)

Used by western art historians to lump together the art of Africa, the pacific islands, and indigenous art of the Americas. The term itself means “early”, but its use was meant to imply that these civilizations were crude, simple, backward, stuck in an early stage of development. It is rooted in racism and colonialism

Primitivism (Art)

Artists fight against “an old established power” as “disorganized savages”

German Expressionism

Refers to art in which the image of reality is distorted in order to make it expressive of the artist’s inner feelings and ideas

Fauv

“Wild Beast” - referred to in relation to Matisse’s the Joy of Life

Nationalism

A looking back to earlier periods, that were more glorious in their national history

Tectonics

Tempered and formed on the one hand from the properties of communism and on the other from the expedient use of industrial material (Rodchenko, Constructivism)

Faktura

Organic state of the worked material or the resulting new state of its organism; material that is consciously worked and expediently used without hampering the construction or restructuring the tectonics (Rodchenko, Constructivism)

Construction

Should be understood as the organizational function of constructivism (Rodchenko, Constructivism)

Russian Suprematism

Abstract art developed from 1913 characterized by basic geometric forms, painted in a limited range of colors

How is Futurism and Cubism distinguishable?

By color, futurism uses bright, vibrant, primary colors while cubism uses neutral colors and tends to have a plane that blends into the background

Aesthetic Movement

Movement that promoted the idea that art should exist for its own sake, independent of moral or social concerns. Emphasizes beauty and sensory over narrative, meaningful art.