Introducting the "Jazz Age"---> Modernist Painting

What terms have been applied to the period between the end of the First World War in 1918 and stock market crash of October 1929?

The Jazz Age, the Roaring Twenties, the Machine Age

What system did American artists operate within at the turn of the 20th century?

The academy system

When had the academy system emerged?

In the 1820s

What was the most powerful arts organization in the 20s?

The National Academy of Design

What styles would the National Academy of Design tend to reward?

Narrative paintings and landscapes done in Impressionist styles

Access to exhibition opportunities were controlled by what?

Juries

Who often headed juries?

Older generations

Taking risks with what was not encouraged?

Subject matter or style

Who was the unofficial leader of the Ashcan School?

Robert Henri

What type of artists was Robert Henri?

A portrait artist

Where did Henri study?

Philadelphia and Paris

When did Henri move to New York?

1901

What job did Henri take up when he moved to New York?

A teaching position

Who did Henri mentor?

John Sloan, William Glackens, George Wesley Bellows, and George Benjamin Luks

Henri and the artists he mentored were known for their representations of what?

New York City, including images featuring the every day lives of working-class people and the grittier side of life in poor neighborhoods

The style of Henri’s students relied on what?

Thickly applied impasto brushwork

The thick impasto brushwork of Henri was inspired by who?

European painters Diego Velazquez, Frans Hals, and Edouard Manet

Where is the Macbeth Gallery located?

Manhattan

The 1908 group show at the Macbeth Gallery featured works by who?

Henri, Sloan, Glackens, Luks, Everett Shinn, Maurice Prendergast, Ernest Lawson, and Arthur B. Davies

Those featured at the 1908 Macbeth group show called themselves what?

The Eight

The work of The Eight was seen as what?

Bold and modern

How did The Eight gain the nickname “Ashcan School”

It was bestowed by an unfriendly critic

The Ashcan School often represented what?

Immigrant neighborhoods and sites of working class entertainment

What sites of working class entertainment would the Ashcan School paint?

Bars, restaurants, music halls, and boxing clubs

Who painted Stag at Sharkeys?

George Wesley Bellows

When was Stag at Sharkeys painted?

1909

By when did the Ashcan School disband?

Around 1917

What impact did the Ashcan School have on the art world?

They brought a fresh perspective and focus on social issues into American Painting

What did the Ashcan artists challenge?

The orthodoxies of art exhibition and art criticism

True or False, the Ashcan School did not contain the aggressive formal experimentation of European Avant-garde art movements

True

What did the Ashcan School retain commitment to?

Naturalism

What is Naturalism?

The representation of things as they appear to the eye

What movements in Europe were experimenting with new forms of abstraction pushing the limits of representation?

Cubism, Fauvism, and Expressionism

What key event brought experimental European movements to the United States?

The International Exhibition of Modern Art

Where was the International Exhibition of Modern Art on view?

The 69th Regiment Armory building in New York

When was the International Exhibition of Modern Art on view in the Regiment Armory Building?

In February and March 1913

Where did the International Exhibition of Modern Art travel to after being on view in New York?

Chicago and Boston

The exhibitions original venue led it to being named what?

The Armory Show

Who organized The Armory Show?

Walter B Davies, Walt Kuhn, and Walter Pach

How many works did the Armory Show bring together?

1300 works of modern and contemporary European and American art

Most of the pieces chosen for the Armory Show represented what?

The state of contemporary art in both Europe and the United States

How many people saw the International Exhibition of Modern Art at its three venues?

Between 250,000 and 275,000 people

Which artists features in the International Exhibition of Modern Art represented forms of art that American audiences were already used to?

Impressionist Claude Monet

What other artists apart of the Armory Show were unfamiliar?

Pablo Picasso and Marcel Duchamp

What movements featured in the Armory Show were relatively unfamiliar?

Cubism, Expressionism, and Futurism

What is Futurism?

A Italian movement focusing on speed, technology, modern life, and dynamism

Which of Duchamp’s work confounded viewers with its angular representation of the human form in motion and its collapse of space and time?

Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2

When was Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2 made?

1912

What did Leila Mechlen call modernist abstraction?

Lawless Art

Who was the President of the National Academy of Design?

Painter John White Alexander

How did John White Alexander respond to the Armory Show?

He recognized the need for change to shake up the American art world and wrote in favor of the younger artists he called “rebels”

What was the effect of the Armory Show?

It breathed much needed energy into the American art world just before WW1, it inspired Art collectors to purchase contemporary art and encourage the development of a culture of independent galleries

What is Dada?

An anti war movement

Where did Dada begin?

Switzerland

When did Dada begin?

1915

When did Marcel Duchamp arrive in New York?

1915

What other notable artist moved to New York?

Francis Picabla

Artists often gathered in the home of who?

Louise and Walter Arensburg

The Arensburg’s collected and championed what?

Modernmism

What are “little magazines”

Intellectual gatherings convened by wealthy hosts along with support from critics

How did “little magazines” affect the art world?

By bolstering more cutting edge artistic experimentation during WW1

New York Dada artists were more interested in what?

Conceptual art

What are conceptual artworks?

Works that are more concerned with the concept or idea behind the art than with its fabrication, artistic technique, or forms of representation

Dada and conceptual artists embraced what?

Chance, randomness, nonsense, and the refashioning of items of everyday life into artworks

Conceptual art explored and challenged what?

It explored the concepts of authorship and challenged the idea that artistic quality was tied to skill and training

When was Duchamp’s In Advance of the Broken Arm made?

1915

In Advance of the Broken Arm is an example of what?

Ready-mades

What consumer item does In Advance of the Broken Arm include?

A snow shovel

What are ready mades?

Ordinary consumer products purchased, titled, and displayed in artistic spaces transforming them from commodities into art

What was Duchamp facinated by?

American engineering, architecture, and plumbing

What artist in Duchamp’s own generation did he inspire?

Man Ray

Duchamp is considered the “father’ of what?

Father of conceptual art

What was Alfred Stieglitz?

A photographer and Gallerist

Where had Stieglitz studied?

Germany

When was Stiglitz in Germany studying?

The 1880s

When did Stieglitz move to New York?

1890

Early in Stieglitz career what was he associated with?

Pictoralism

What is Pictoralism?

A movement that argued for photography to be accepted as a fine art

What journal did Stieglitz own and publish in?

Camera Work

When did Stieglitz begin publishing in Camera Work?

1903

When did Stieglitz open his first gallery?

1905

What was Stieglitz first gallery known as?

291

Why was Stieglitz first gallery known as 291?

For its address on Fifth Avenue

291 was an important display site for what?

European modernism with work by Picasso and Henri Matisse

Stieglitz 291 gallery was one of the first to do what?

Display non-western art

When did 291 host a show of African sculpture?

1914

What was 291 known for?

Unconventional display methods

What unconventional display methods were used in 291?

Highlighting fewer works, neutral white walls, lost of space between pieces

When did 291 close?

1917

What two other influential exhibition spaces did Stieglitz control?

The Intimate Gallery and An American Place

Stieglitz used his power in the art world to champion who?

Arthur G. Dove, Marsden Hartley, Max Weber, and Georgia O’Keeffe

True or False, Stieglitz was known to be rigid on his definitions of modernism

True

Stieglitz would sometimes call the members of his group what?

His circle

Stieglitz circle was inspired by what?

Examples of European Avant Garde

Modernist painters included innovations from what avant garde movements?

Cubism and Expressionism

Modernist painters sought to move away from narrative and naturalism towards what?

Abstract forms