Chapter 22: Early- and Mid-Twentieth-Century Art

Key Notes

• Time Period
  • Fauvism: c. 1905
  • Expressionism: 1905–1930s
  • The Bridge: 1905
  • The Blue Rider: 1911
  • Cubism: 1907–1930s
  • Constructivism: 1914–1920s
  • Dada: 1916–1925
  • De Stijl: 1917–1930s
  • Mexican Muralists: 1920s–1930s
  • International Style: 1920s–1930s
  • Surrealism: 1924–1930s
  • Harlem Renaissance: 1930s
  • Abstract Expressionism: Late 1940s–1950s
  • Pop art: 1955–1960s
  • Color Field Painting: 1960s
  • Happenings: 1960s
  • Site Art: 1970s–1990s
  • Postmodern: 1975–today
• Culture, beliefs, and physical settings
  • Europe and the Americas experience great innovations in economics, industrialization, war, and migration. There is a strong advancement in social issues.
  • The avant-garde emerges as artists express themselves in various new movements.
  • Freud and Einstein had philosophies that affected the world.
• Cultural interactions
  • Artists are exposed to diverse, sometimes exotic, cultures as a result of colonial expansion.
• Material Processes and Techniques
  • Architecture is affected by new materials and new modes of construction.
  • Artists use new media including photography, lithography, and mass production. Artists also create new monumental works, such as earthworks, as well as ready-made objects.
• Theories and Interpretations
  • Audiences and patrons were often hostile to art made in this period.
  • Art history as a science continues to be shaped by theories, interpretations, and analyses applied to these new art forms.

Historical Background

• The early twentieth century was a period of intense creativity in the arts.
• Cataclysmic events such as World War I, World War II, and the Great Depression did not hinder artistic expression.
• Artistic expression flourished in nearly every artistic venue, including literature, music, dance, and the fine arts.
• Some movements drew inspiration from these cataclysms while others sought to escape the visceral world.
• New technologies, new freedom to express race and gender identities, and the collapse of traditional patronage were among the reasons for the creativity seen in the twentieth century.
• The twentieth century is considered one of the most creative periods in art history.

Patronage and Artistic Life

• Early-twentieth-century art was sponsored by cultured and intellectual patrons who embraced the modern spirit through art.
• Patrons like Gertrude Stein promoted great artists through their sponsorship and connections.
• Museums now also serve as patrons, commissioning works of sculpture and painting from contemporary artists to be showcased in public spaces.
• The Armory Show of 1913, which introduced modern art to American audiences, was generally reviled, with some works like Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon horrifying the public.
• World War II resulted in Paris losing its position as the art capital of the world to New York, which became the financial and cultural capital of the United States.
• Many fleeing Europeans settled in New York, and the city had an active artistic community unafraid of experimentation.
• Mondrian, Duchamp, and Kandinsky moved to New York to galvanize modern American artists in what became The New York School.
• De Kooning and Frankenthaler settled in New York to produce their most impressive works.

Key Terms

• Abstract: works of art that may have form, but have little or no attempt at pictorial representation
• Action painting: an abstract painting in which the artist drips or splatters paint onto a surface like a canvas in order to create the work
• Assemblage: a three-dimensional work made of various materials such as wood, cloth, paper, and miscellaneous objects
• Biomorphism: a movement stressing organic shapes that hint at natural forms
• Cantilever: a projecting beam that is attached to a building at one end, but suspended in the air at the other
• Collage: a composition made by pasting together different items onto a flat surface
• Color field painting: a style of abstract painting characterized by simple shapes and monochromatic color
• Documentary photography: a type of photography that seeks social and political redress for current issues by using photographs as a way of exposing society’s faults
• Earthwork: a large outdoor work in which the earth itself is the medium
• Ferroconcrete: steel reinforced concrete; the two materials act together to resist building stresses
• Happening: an act of performance art that is intially planned but involves spontaneity, improvisation, and often audience participation
• Harlem Renaissance: a particularly rich artistic period in the 1920s and 1930s that is named after the African-American neighborhood in New York City where it emerged.
  • It is marked by a cultural resurgence by African-Americans in the fields of painting, writing, music, and photography
• Installation: a temporary work of art made up of assemblages created for a particular space, like an art gallery or a museum
• Mobile: a sculpture made of several different items that dangle from a ceiling and can be set into motion by air currents
• Neoplasticism: a term coined by Piet Mondrian to describe works of art that contain only primary and neutral colors and only straight, vertical, or horizontal lines intersecting at right angles
• Photomontage: The technique of creating an image by combining photographs, sometimes with other materials, to form a unified image
• Ready-made: a commonplace or found object selected and exhibited as a work of art
• Silkscreen: a printing technique that passes ink or paint through a stenciled image to make multiple copies
• Venice Biennale: a major show of contemporary art that takes place every other year in various venues throughout the city of Venice; begun in 1895

Early and Mid-20th Century Art

• In the early 20th century, traditional painting techniques were challenged.
• Color was used to evoke feelings and challenge the viewer, while perspective was discarded or tilted for dramatic impact.
• Compositions were forcefully altered, and abstraction became a key feature of modern art, with abstract forms placed directly in the center of compositions.
• Artists experimented with new techniques like photomontage and collage, drawing inspiration from African cultures and rethinking traditional representations.
• Manifestos served as a call to arms for the modern art movement.
• The Armory Show in 1913 showcased contemporary European and American artists.
• Modern sculpture also experimented with new materials and formats, like plastic and mobiles.
• In the Dada movement, found objects became works of art through the artist's declaration.

Fauvism

• Fauvism: An art movement that debuted in 1905 at Salon d’Automne in Paris.
  • It was so named because a critic, Louis Vauxcelles, thought that the paintings looked as if they were created by “Wild Beasts.”
• Fauvism was inspired by Post-Impressionist painters like Gauguin and Van Gogh, whose work was exhibited in Paris around this time.
• Fauves stressed a painterly surface with broad flat areas of violently contrasting color.
• Figure modeling and color harmonies were suppressed so that expressive effects could be maximized.
• Fauvism all but died out by 1908.

➼  Goldfish

• Details

  • By Henri Matisse
  • 1912
  • Oil on canvas
  • Formerly in Pushkin Museum of Art, Moscow, Russia

• Form

  • Strong contrasts of color.
  • Thinly applied colors; the white of the canvas shows through.
  • Energetic, painterly brushwork.
  • Broad patches of color anticipate color-field painting later in the century.

• Content

  • Still-life painting.
  • Compare to Ruysch, Fruits and Insects, and Daguerre, Still Life in Studio.

• Context

  • May have been in response to a trip in Morocco, where Matisse noted how the local population would daydream for hours, gazing into goldfish bowls. Form, color, and subject matter were inspired by this trip.
  • Admired the relaxed and contemplative lifestyle of the Moroccans, which symbolized a meditative state of mind and a sense of paradise lost to Europeans.
  • May have been influenced by the decorative quality of Asian art and diverse cultures from North Africa.

• Image

  

Expressionism

• In 1905, a group of German artists in Dresden formed Die Brüke (The Bridge), after being inspired by the Fauve movement in Paris.
  • They were named The Bridge because they saw themselves as a bridge from traditional to modern painting.
• Die Brüke emphasized the same Fauve ideals, including violent juxtapositions of color that upset critics and the public.
• A second Expressionist group called Der Blaue Reiter, (The Blue Rider, formed in Munich, Germany in 1911.
• Der Blaue Reiter began to move towards abstraction, forsaking representational art.
• Artists like Kandinsky saw abstraction as a way to conceive the natural world in terms that went beyond representation.
• Kandinsky's influential essay, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, outlined his theories on color and form for the modern movement.

➼  Improvisation 28 (2nd Version)

• Details

  • By Vassily Kandinsky
  • 1912
  • Oil on canvas
  • Found in Guggenheim Museum, New York

• Form

  • Strongly articulated use of black lines.
  • Colors seem to shade around line forms.

• Content

  • Using schematic means, Kandinsky depicts cataclysmic events on the left (boat and waves—a deluge, a serpent, a cannon) and a sense of spiritual salvation on the right (a couple embrace, a candle, a church on a hill).

• Context

  • Kandinsky wanted the viewer to respond to a painting the way one would to an abstract musical composition: a concerto, a sonata, a symphony.
  • The artist felt that sound and color were linked; for example, it was possible to hear color.
  • He used words such as “composition” and “improvisation” in the titles of his works, words associated with musical composition.
  • Kandinsky’s works have a relationship to atonal music, which was evolving at this time.
  • Movement toward abstraction; representational objects suggested rather than depicted.

• Image

  

➼  Self-Portrait as a Soldier

• Details

  • By Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
  • 1915
  • Oil on canvas
  • Found in Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio

• Form

  • Nightmarish quality.
  • Colors are nonrepresentational but symbolic, chosen to provide a jarring impact. Expressive quality of horrified facial features and grim surroundings.
  • Tilted perspective moves things closer to the picture plane.
  • Main figure has a drawn face, with a cigarette hanging loosely from his lips.
  • The eyes are unseeing and empty, without pupils; the iris reflects the blue of his uniform.
  • The bloody stump of a hand represents losses in war, loss of the artist’s ability to paint, his creativity, his artistic vision, and his inspiration.
  • Sharp angular lines reinforce a sense of violence and anxiety.

• Context

  • Kirchner became an “unwilling volunteer,” a driver in the artillery in World War I, to avoid being drafted into the infantry.
  • He is wearing the uniform of his field artillery regiment.
  • He was declared unfit for service; he had lung problems and weakness and suffered a mental breakdown—there is scholarly debate as to whether he faked these ailments to avoid service.
  • This self-portrait was painted during a recuperation period.
  • His life was plagued by drug abuse, alcoholism, and then paralysis.
  • The artist feared that war would destroy his creative powers.

• Image

  

➼  Memorial Sheet for Karl Liebknecht

• Details

  • By Käthe Kollwitz
  • 1919–1920
  • Woodcut
  • A Private Collection

• Form

  • Stark black and white of the woodcut used to magnify the grief.
  • Human grief dominates.

• Patronage: Family of Liebknecht asked Kollwitz to memorialize him.

• Technique

  • Wood-block print.
  • Kollwitz used this technique to reinforce the emotions depicted in the scene.
  • She liked the “primitive” quality that wood-block prints could render.

• Context

  • Liebknecht was among the founders of the Berlin Spartacus League, which became the German Communist Party.
  • In 1919, Liebknecht was shot to death during a Communist uprising in Berlin called the Spartacus Revolt (named for the slave who led a revolt against the Romans in 73 B.C.E.).
  • Liebknecht was held to be a martyr in the Communist cause.
  • There are no political references in the woodcut.
  • Themes of war and poverty dominate the artist’s oeuvre.
  • She often emphasized the theme of women grieving over dead children; her son died in World War I; the artist then became a socialist.

• Image

  

Cubism

• Cubism originated in Pablo Picasso's studio in 1907.
  • The first Cubist painting was Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.
• African masks, which were popular in Paris at the time, may have influenced Picasso's use of simple geometries.
• Picasso broke down the human form into angles and shapes to create a new way of looking at the human figure.
• Cubism uses multiple views to show different angles of an object or figure.
  • Wedges and facets dominate the style, and shading is sometimes used to create the illusion of depth.
• The Analytical phase of Cubism (1907-1912) was highly experimental and featured jagged edges and multifaceted lines.
• Synthetic Cubism (after 1912) was inspired by collages and found objects and featured flattened forms.
• Curvilinear Cubism (in the 1930s) was a more flowing, rounded response to the flattened forms of Synthetic Cubism.

➼  Les Demoiselles d’Avignon

• Details

  • By Pablo Picasso
  • 1907
  • Oil on canvas
  • Found in Museum of Modern Art, New York

• Content

  • Depicts five prostitutes in a bordello in Avignon Street in Barcelona, each posing for a customer.
  • Poses are not traditionally alluring but awkward, expressionless, and uninviting.

• Form

  • The three on the left are more conservatively painted; the two on right more radical; reflects a dichotomy in Picasso.
  • Multiple views are expressed at the same time.
  • Depth is limited, but ambiguous and ever shifting.
  • The painting has semitransparent passages.

• Context

  • This is the first cubist work, influenced by late Cézanne and perhaps African masks (faces on the right) and ancient Iberian sculpture (figure on the left).
  • Influenced by Gauguin’s so-called Primitivism.

• Image

  

➼  The Portuguese

• Details

  • By Georges Braque
  • 1911
  • Oil on canvas
  • Art Museum, Basel, Switzerland

• Form

  • Braque rejected naturalistic and conventional painting.
  • Fractured forms; breaking down of objects into smaller forms.
  • Clear-edged surfaces at the front of the picture plane, not recessed in space.
  • Nearly monochrome.

• Context

  • Analytical Cubism; Braque worked in concert with Pablo Picasso to develop this style.
  • This is not a portrait of a Portuguese musician, but rather an exploration of shapes.
  • The only realistic elements are the stenciled letters and numbers; perhaps they suggest a dance hall poster behind the guitarist, a café-like atmosphere.

• Image

  

➼  The Kiss

• Details

  • By Constantin Brancusi
  • 1907–1908
  • Stone Sculpture
  • Found in Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia

• Form

  • Symbolic, almost Cubist rendering of the male and female bodies.
  • Simplified carving.
  • Intertwined and enveloped figures.
  • Interlocked forms; fused bodies.
  • Two eyes become one, almost Cyclops-like.
  • Rough surface contributes to a feeling of naturalism; this is an artistic break from the high-polish effect of past sculpture.

• Patronage: Requested by John Quinn, Brancusi’s patron in New York, who admired the small plaster version of The Kiss in the collection of the artist Walter Pach.

• Context

  • Brancusi worked in Rodin’s studio; cf. Rodin’s The Kiss.
  • This is the fourth stone version of this subject:
  • First version was one of Brancusi’s earliest efforts at stone carving (Craiova Art Museum, Romania).
  • Second version (a plaster cast) was exhibited at the Armory Show.
  • Third version used as a tombstone in Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris over the body of a suicide victim: a young Russian anarchist.
    • The artist was asked by a friend of the deceased, who had jilted her, for a marker for her grave.
    • The artist said take what you want; he took this work.
  • There may be many more undocumented versions.

• Image

  

Photo-Secession

• From 1902 through 1917 Alfred Stieglitz’s gallery, called Gallery 291, was the most progressive gallery in the United States, showcasing photographs as works of art beside avant-garde European paintings and modern American works.

➼  The Steerage

• Details

  • By Alfred Stieglitz
  • 1907
  • photogravure
  • A private collection

• Form

  • Interested in compositional possibilities of diagonals and lines acting as framing elements.
  • Diagonals and framing effects of ladders, sails, steam pipes, etc.
  • Stieglitz photographed the world as he saw it; he arranged little, and allowed people and events to make their own compositions.
  • Influenced by experimental European painting; compared with a Cubist drawing by Picasso, Cubist-like in arrangement of shapes and tonal values.

• Content

  • Steerage: the part of a ship reserved for passengers with the cheapest tickets.
  • Depicts the poorest passengers on a ship traveling from the United States to Europe in 1907; they were allowed out for air for a limited time.
  • Some may have been people turned away from entrance to the United States; more likely, they were artisans whose visas had expired and were returning home.

• Context

  • The work depicts social divisions in society.
  • Published in October 1911 in Camera Work.

• Image

  

Dadaism

• Dada is a word that means "hobby horse" and refers to an art movement that existed from 1916 to 1925 in various cities.
• Dadaists were disillusioned by the pointlessness of World War I and rejected traditional art methods and exhibitions.
• They didn't use oil and canvas but instead accepted ready-mades as an art form and worked on glass.
• Dadaists challenged the relationship between words and images and often incorporated words prominently in their works.
• The meaning of Dada works often depended on chance or location.
• Even accidents like broken glass were seen as enhancements, acknowledging chance's role in creating art.
• In Dada, the artistic concept is more important than the execution.

➼  Fountain

• Details
  • By Marcel Duchamp
  • Originally 1917; this version is 1950
  • readymade glazed sanitary china with black paint
  • Found in Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania
• Form
  • Ready-made sculpture; actually a found object that Duchamp deemed to be a work of art.
  • Signed by the “artist,” R. Mutt, a pun on the Mutt and Jeff comic strip and Mott Iron Works.
  • Item purchased from a sanitary-ware supplier and submitted to the Society of Independent Artists, a group that Duchamp helped to found.
• Function and History
  • Entered in an unjuried show, the work was refused—narrowly voted out by the organizers.
  • Thought to be indecent, not fit to show women.
  • Duchamp resigned in protest.
  • It is not fully understood why Duchamp resigned; it may have come from his experience exhibiting an earlier work Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2 to the Salon des Indépendants in Paris; although the work was illustrated in the show’s catalog, Duchamp was asked to remove it a few days before the opening.
  • He removed the object but felt betrayed; said it was a turning point in his life.
  • Fountain can be seen as an experimental replay by Duchamp, testing the commitment of the new American Society to freedom of expression and tolerance of new conceptions about art.
• Context
  • The title is a pun: a fountain spouts liquid, a urinal collects it.
  • The placing of the urinal upside down is an added irony.
  • The rotation of Fountain may symbolize seeing something familiar from a new perspective.
  • The original is now lost; Duchamp oversaw the “remaking” of a few models in 1964.
• Image \n

Surrealism

• Surrealists were influenced by the psychological studies of Freud and Jung and aimed to represent the unseen world of dreams, subconscious thoughts, and unspoken communication.
• The movement started with the theories of Andre Breton in 1924 and went in two directions: abstract biomorphic forms and veristic reality-based subjects combined in unusual ways.
• The titles of Surrealist paintings won't help one understand the inscrutable world of Surrealism; the movement is meant to puzzle, challenge, and fascinate.
• Surrealism draws inspiration from mysticism, psychology, and symbolism and is not meant to be clearly understood or didactic.

➼  Object (Le Dejéuner en fourrure)

• Details

  • By Meret Oppenheim
  • 1936
  • fur-covered cup, saucer, and spoon
  • Found in Museum of Modern Art, New York

• Form: An assemblage.

• Context

  • Said to have been done in response to Picasso’s claim that anything looks good in fur; Oppenheim said to respond, “Even this cup and saucer?”
  • Erotic overtones.
  • Combination of unalike objects: fur-covered teacup, saucer, and spoon. The tea cup was purchased at a department store; the fur is the pelt of a Chinese gazelle.
  • A contrast of textures: fur delights the touch, not the taste; cups and spoons are meant to be put in the mouth.
  • Oppenheim did not title the work, but the Surrealist critic, Andre Breton, called the piece Le Déjeneur en fourrure, or Luncheon in Fur, a title that references Édouard Manet’s Luncheon on the Grass as well as the erotic novel by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch called Venus in Furs.
  • Chosen by visitors to a Surrealist show in New York as the quintessential Surrealist work of art.
  • Because fame came to Oppenheim so young (she was twenty-two when she produced this work), it inhibited her growth as an artist.

• Image

  

➼  The Two Fridas

• Details

  • By Frida Kahlo
  • 1939
  • oil on canvas
  • Found in Museum of Modern Art, Mexico City

• Content

  • On the left: Kahlo is dressed as a Spanish lady in white lace, linking her to a European heritage.
  • On the right: Kahlo dressed as a Mexican peasant—the stiffness and provincial quality of Mexican folk art was a direct inspiration for the artist.
  • Behind is a barren landscape; two figures sit against a wildly active sky.

• Context

  • There is a juxtaposition to two self-portraits.
  • Kahlo’s two hearts are joined together by veins that are cut by scissors at one end and lead to a portrait of her husband, artist Diego Rivera, at the other; painted at the time of their divorce.
  • The vein acts as an umbilical cord; symbolism: Rivera as both husband and son.
  • Blood on her lap suggests many abortions and miscarriages; also, surgeries related to her health issues.
  • Kahlo rejected the label Surrealism for her artwork.

• Image

  

➼  The Jungle

• Details

  • By Wifredo Lam
  • 1943
  • gouache on paper mounted on canvas
  • Found in Museum of Modern Art, New York

• Form

  • Crescent-shaped faces suggest African masks and the god Elegua.
  • Rounded backs, thin arms and legs, pronounced hands and feet.
  • Long vertical lines suggest sugarcane, which is grown in fields, not jungles.

• Context

  • Cuban-born artist whose career took him to Europe and the United States.
  • The artist was interested in Cuba’s mixture of Hispanic and African cultures.
  • This work was “intended to communicate a psychic state.”
  • The work addresses the history of slavery in colonial Cuba.
  • Influences include African sculpture; Cubist works; Surrealist paintings (Lam was a member of the Surrealist movement in Paris).
  • The painting contrasts a Cuban landscape with a tourist image of Cuba as a tropical paradise.

• Image

  

Constructivism

• Constructivists were known for experimenting with new architectural materials and assembling them in a way that lacked historical reference.
• Starting in 1914, Stepanova and other Constructivists viewed the new Russia as an idealistic center that didn't need historical reference or decoration.
• Influenced by the Cubists, Constructivists designed buildings without precise facades, emphasizing the dramatic use of materials in the project.
• They were inspired by the modern industrial complexes that dominated employment in the early 20th century.

➼  Illustration from The Results of the First Five-Year Plan

• Details
  • By Varvara Stepanova
  • 1932
  • photomontage
  • Found in Museum of the Revolution, Moscow, Russia
• Form and Function
  • Graphic art for political and propaganda purposes; a photomontage.
  • Red color dominates—the color of Communist Soviet Union.
  • A large portrait of Lenin dominates; although deceased, his image is used to stimulate patriotism.
  • Masses of people below illustrate the popularity of the Five-Year Plan.
  • CCCP (Союз Советских Социалистических Республи) is a Russian abbreviation for the Soviet Union.
• Context
  • Stepanova was one of the main figures in the Russian avant-garde movement.
  • Influenced by Cubism and Futurism.
  • Five-Year Plan:
  • Soviet practice of increasing agricultural and industrial output in five years.
  • Launched in 1928, considered complete in 1932.
  • Emphasis on growth of heavy industry rather than consumer goods.
  • Huge increases in electrical output (dominant industrial symbol in the work).
  • The failures of the five-year plan are overlooked in this representation (famine, extreme poverty, political oppression); instead it is a propaganda statement of the virtues of the Stalinist state.
• Image \n

De Stijl

• De Stijl was a movement represented by Dutch painter Mondrian and was at its peak between 1917 and the 1930s.
• De Stijl paintings are completely abstract, with titles that don't reference nature, and are painted on a white background with black lines shaping rectangular spaces.
• Only the three primary colors (red, yellow, and blue) are used, without any modulation.
• Lines can only be placed perpendicularly, and diagonals are forbidden in this neoplastic style of art, according to Mondrian.

➼  Composition with Red, Blue and Yellow

• Details
  • By Piet Mondrian
  • 1930
  • oil on canvas
  • Found in Kunsthaus,Zurich
• Form
  • Only primary colors used—red, yellow, and blue—plus the neutral colors, white and black.
  • Severe geometry of form; only right angles; grid-like forms.
  • No shading of colors.
• Context
  • The artist is interested in the material properties of paint, not naturalistic depictions.
  • The artist expresses ideas using abstract elements—that is, line and color.
  • Influenced by Cubism.
• Image \n

Early and Mid-20th Century Architecture

• Early-twentieth-century architecture is marked by a complete embrace of technological advances.
• Ferroconcrete construction, particularly in Europe, allowed for new designs employing skeleton frameworks and glass walls.
• The cantilever helped push building elements beyond the solid structure of the skeletal framework.
• In general, architects avoided historical associations: There are few columns and fewer flying buttresses.
• Architects prefer clean sleek lines that stress the building’s underlying structure and emphasize the impact of the machine and technology.

The Prairie Style

• The Prairie School of architecture refers to a group of architects who worked in Chicago from 1900 to 1917, with Frank Lloyd Wright being the most famous.
• They rejected historic styles of architecture but insisted that buildings should be in harmony with their site.
• Wright used complex irregular plans and forms that reflected contemporary painting's abstract shapes, such as rectangles, triangles, squares, and circles, with stylized botanical shapes being particularly valued.
• Cantilever construction was used by Wright to extend porches and terraces from the main structure, giving the impression of weightless anchors holding up forms hovering over open space.
• The use of organic materials such as concrete with pebble aggregate, sand-finished stucco, rough-hewn lumber, and natural woods was believed to be the most beautiful.
• The alignment of these houses emphasized the horizontal nature of the prairie.
• Fallingwater reflects many of the same characteristics of the Prairie School, although it was designed well after the movement peaked.

➼  Fallingwater

• Details

  • By Frank Lloyd Wright
  • 1936–1939
  • reinforced ­concrete, sandstone, steel, and glass
  • Found in Bear Run, Pennsylvania

• Form

  • Cantilevered steel-supported porches extend over a waterfall.
  • The accent is on horizontal lines—as opposed to the verticality of much of twentieth-century architecture.
  • The architecture is in harmony with the site.
  • The living room contains a glass curtain wall around three of the four sides; the building embraces the woods around it.
  • The floor of the living room and the walls of building are made from the stone of the area.
  • The hearth (physically and symbolically) is the center of the house, an outcropping of natural stones surrounds it.
  • The interior shows a suppression of space devoted to hanging a painting; Wright wanted the architecture to dominate.
  • The ground plan and design is irregular and complex.
  • Only two colors used: light ochre for the concrete and Cherokee red for the steel.

• Context: Late expression of Prairie School ideas.

• Function and Patronage: Weekend retreat for the Kaufmann family, who owned a department store in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

• Image

  

The International Style

• International Style was popular from the 1920s to the 1950s.
• It is greatly influenced by the streamlined qualities of the Bauhaus.
• The style celebrates the clean, spacious, white lines of a building's façade.
• The internal structure uses a skeleton system and ferroconcrete construction.
• Great planes of glass wrap around the walls.
• The style avoids architectural ornament and the use of sculpture and painting on exterior surfaces.
• Le Corbusier's statement that a house should be a "machine for living" sums up the International Style.

➼  Villa Savoye

• Details

  • By Le Corbusier
  • 1929
  • steel and reinforced concrete
  • Found in Poissy-sur-Seine, France

• Form

  • Boxlike horizontal quality; an abstraction of a house.
  • The main part of the house is lifted off the ground by narrow pilotis—thin freestanding posts.
  • The house appears to float on pilotis; allows air to circulate around the base of the house.
  • The turning circular carport on the bottom floor enables family members to enter the house directly from their car.
  • All space is utilized, including the roof, which acts as a patio.
  • The roof terraces bring the outdoors into the house.
  • Subtle colors: white on exterior symbolizes modern cleanliness and healthful living.
  • Open interior is free of many walls.
  • Some furniture is built into the walls.
  • Ribbon windows wind around the second floor.
  • Streamlined look.
  • Living spaces that are surrounded by glass face an open courtyard-type setting on the second floor.

• Function and Patronage

  • A three-bedroom country house with servants’ quarters on the ground floor.
  • Built in suburban Paris as a retreat for the wealthy.
  • Patrons: Pierre and Emilie Savoye.

• Image

  

➼  Seagram Building

• Details

  • By Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson
  • 1954–1958
  • steel frame with glass curtain wall and bronze
  • Found in New York

• Function: 38-story corporate headquarters of the Seagram Liquor Company.

• Form

  • Bronze veneer gives the skyscraper a monolithic look; bronze is maintained yearly to keep the same color.
  • Set back from Park Avenue on a wide plaza balanced by reflecting pools.
  • Interplay of vertical and horizontal accents.
  • Mullions stress the verticality of the internal frame.

• Context

  • Minimalist architecture.
  • Monolith style expresses corporate power.
  • Mies’s saying of “Less is more” can be seen in this building with its great simplicity, geometry of design, and elegance of construction.
  • Mies also said, “God is in the details;” truthful buildings express their structure, not hide it.
  • Steel and glass skyscrapers and curtain wall construction became the model after World War II.
  • A triumph of the International Style of architecture.

• Image

  

The Harlem Renaissance

• In the early 1900s, many African-Americans migrated to Harlem in New York City.
• This created a cultural center in which art, theater, music, writing, and photography flourished.
• The movement began after World War I and peaked in the 1920s and early 1930s.
• Its influence extended into the later twentieth century.
• The movement's themes included racial pride, civil rights, and the impact of slavery on modern culture.

➼  The Migration of the Negro, Panel no. 49

• Details

  • By Jacob Lawrence
  • 1940–1941
  • casein tempera on hardboard
  • Found in Museum of Modern Art, New York

• Form

  • The work illustrates the collective African-American experience; therefore, there is little individuality in the figures.
  • Forms hover in large spaces.
  • Angularity of forms.
  • Tilted tabletops show the surface of the table.
  • Flat, simple shapes.
  • Unmodulated colors.
  • Collective unity achieved by painting one color across many panels before going on to the next color; overall color unity in the series unites each painting.

• Content

  • This scene involves a public restaurant in the North; segregation emphasized by the yellow poles that zigzag down the center.
  • Whites appear haughty and self-engrossed.
  • African-Americans appear faceless; forms reveal their bodies and personalities.

• Context

  • One of a series of 60 paintings that depicts the migration of African-Americans from the rural South to the urban North after World War I.
  • Negroes escaping the economic privation of the South.
  • Narrative painting in an era of increasing abstraction.
  • Cinematic movement of views of panels: some horizontal and others vertical.
  • Influenced by the Italian masters of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; used tempera paint.
  • The Phillips Collections in Washington, D.C., and the Museum of Modern Art in New York bought the collection and it was split.
  • The Phillips took the odd-numbered paintings; the Museum of Modern Art has the even-numbered ones.

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Mexican Muralists

• In the 1920s and 1930s, artists trained in the age-old practice of fresco painting led to a tremendous renaissance of Mexican art.
• Mexican Muralists frequently pushed a political or social message through big murals that everyone could see and admire.
• These didactic paintings feature a clear message that is presented in an easy-to-read format.
• The topics mainly support labor and working-class struggle, and they usually have a socialist goal.

➼   Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in the Alameda Park

• Details

  • By Diego Rivera
  • 1947–1948
  • fresco
  • Found in Museo Mural Diego Rivera, Mexico City

• Form

  • 50-foot-long fresco, 13 feet high.
  • Horror vacui; didactic painting.
  • Colorful painting.
  • Revival of fresco painting, a Mexican specialty.

• Placement

  • Originally in the lobby of the Hotel del Prado.
  • After a 1985 earthquake destabilized the hotel, the fresco was placed in a museum adjacent to Alameda Park, Mexico City’s first city park—built on the grounds of an Aztec marketplace.

• Content

  • Three eras of Mexican history depicted from left to right:
  • Conquest and colonization of Mexico by the Spanish.
  • Porfirio Diaz dictatorship.
  • Revolution of 1910 and the modern world.
  • Depicts a who’s who of Mexican politics, culture, and leadership:
  • Sor Juana, in nun’s habit, at left center.
  • Benito Juárez, five-term president of Mexico, left at top.
  • General Santa Ana handing the keys of Mexico to General Winfield Scott.
  • Emperor Maximilian and Empress Carlota.
  • José Marti, father of Mexican independence (tipping his hat).
  • General Porfirio Díaz, with medals, asleep.
  • A police officer ordering a family out of an elitist park.
  • Francisco Madero, a martyred president.
  • José Posaro, artist and Rivera hero.
  • Rivera is in the center, at age ten, holding hands with Caterina (“Death”) and dreaming of a perfect love (Kahlo is behind him holding a yin/yang symbol—a symbol of Kahlo and Rivera’s relationship).

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Abstract Expressionism

• Sometimes called The New York School, Abstract Expressionism of the 1950s is the first American avant-garde art movement.
• It developed as a reaction against artists like Mondrian, who took the Minimalist approach to abstraction.
• Abstract Expressionists seek a more active representation of the hand of the artist on a given work.
• Action painting is a big component of Abstract Expressionism.

➼  Woman I

• Details

  • By Willem de Kooning
  • 1950–1952
  • oil on canvas
  • Found in Museum of Modern Art, New York

• Form

  • Ferocious woman with great fierce teeth and huge eyes.
  • Large, bulbous breasts satirize women who appear in magazine advertising; smile said to be influenced by an ad of a woman selling Camel cigarettes.
  • Jagged lines create an overpowering image.
  • The smile is a cut out of a female smile from a magazine advertisement.
  • Blank stare; frozen grin.
  • Ambiguous environment: vagueness, insecurity.
  • Thick and thin black lines dominate.

• Context

  • Combination of stereotypes; ironic comment on the banal and artificial world of film and advertising.
  • Commentary on the female form in art history.
  • Is she aggressive? Or have aggressions been committed against her? Or both?
  • One of a series of six paintings on this theme.
  • Influenced by everything from paleolithic goddesses to pin-up girls.

• Image

  

Color Field Painting

• Color field painting lacks the aggression of Abstract Expressionism.
• It relies on subtle tonal values that are often variations of a monochromatic hue.
• With Frankenthaler the images are mysteriously hovering in an ambiguous space.
• Other artists have a more clear-cut definition of forms with lines descending through the composition.
• Color field painting was popular in the 1960s.

➼   The Bay

• Details

  • By Helen Frankenthaler
  • 1963
  • acrylic on canvas
  • Found in Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, Michigan

• Form

  • Painted directly on an unprimed canvas; canvas absorbs the paint more directly.
  • Use of runny water-based acrylic paint.
  • Soak-stained technique.
  • Use of landscape as a starting point, a basis for imagery in the works.
  • The two-dimensionality of the canvas is accentuated.

• Context and Interpretation: Artist worked in the avant-garde New York School at mid-century.

• Image

  

Pop Art

• Pop Art is a movement that began in the 1950s and reached its climax in the 1960s.
• It uses materials from everyday life, such as consumer goods and famous singers.
• Pop artists do not distinguish between "high" art and mass-produced design.
• Pop Art glorifies the commonplace and brings attention to everyday reality.
• Pop Art is not intended to be satirical, although some of the images used may suggest otherwise.
• Pop Art is seen as a reaction against Abstract Expressionism.

➼   Marilyn Diptych

• Details

  • By Andy Warhol
  • 1962
  • oil, acrylic, silkscreen enamel on canvas
  • Found in Tate Gallery, London

• Form and Content

  • Marilyn Monroe’s public face appears sequentially as if on a roll of film.
  • Fifty images from a film still from a movie, Niagara (1953).
  • Social characteristics magnified: brilliance of blonde hair, heavily applied lipstick, seductive expression.
  • Private persona of the individual submerged beneath the public face.
  • Marilyn’s public face appears highlighted by bold, artificial colors.
  • Left, in color, represents her in life; right, in black and white, represents her in death; work done four months after her tragic death.
  • Repetition of faces reflects the repetition of the number of times Marilyn appeared before the public; sometimes overexposed, sometimes underexposed.

• Materials and Technique

  • Silkscreen printing technique applies photographic images in rectangular shapes onto a canvas background.
  • Silkscreen diminishes the role of shading and emphasizes broad planes and unmodulated color.
  • Diptych format suggests almost a religious presence.

• Context

  • Cult of celebrity; Monroe was a famous movie star of the 1950s.
  • Private persona of Marilyn submerged beneath the public face(s).
  • Repeated imagery drains the image of Monroe of meaning.
  • Reproduction of many denies the concept of the unique work of art.

• Image

  

➼   Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks

• Details

  • By Claes Oldenburg
  • 1969–1974
  • cor-ten steel, steel, aluminum, and cast resin, painted with polyurethane enamel
  • Found in Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut

• Function

  • First installed, secretly, on Beinecke Plaza, New Haven, in 1969.
  • Intended as a platform for public speakers; rallying point for anti-Vietnam-era protests.

• Materials

  • Sculpture made of inexpensive and perishable materials (plywood tracks and an inflatable vinyl balloon tip).
  • Refurbished with steel and aluminum; reinstalled in 1974 in front of Morse College, at Yale—not its original location.

• Context

  • Tank-shaped platform base with lipstick ascending—antiwar symbolism.
  • Male and female forms unite: themes of death, power, desire, and sensuality.
  • First monumental sculpture by Oldenburg.

• Image

  

Happenings

• The word “happening” was coined in the late 1950s to describe an act of performance art that is initially planned, but involves spontaneity, improvisation, and often audience participation.
• Happenings continue today in various formats, including Flash Mobs, Improvisational Theater, and Performance Art.

➼   Narcissus Garden

• Details

  • By Yayoi Kusama
  • first seen in 1966
  • marble installations
  • Found in Venice

• Function and History

  • The artist originally featured the work as an uninvited participant in the 1966 Venice Biennale.
  • Fifteen hundred large, mirrored, plastic balls were placed on a lawn under a sign that said “Your Narcissism for Sale.”
  • The viewer is reflected seemingly into infinity in the mirrored surfaces.
  • The artist offered the balls for sale for 1,200 lire ($2 each) as a commentary on the commercialism and vanity of the current art world.
  • The installation later moved to water, where the floating balls reflect the natural environment—and the viewers—around the work; water placement makes a stronger connection to the ancient myth.
  • Balls move with the currents of the water and wind, reflecting organically made, ever-changing viewpoints.
  • The installation has been exhibited in many places around the world, both in water and in dry spaces

• Context

  • Narcissus Garden references the ancient myth of Narcissus, a young man who is so enraptured by his image in reflecting water that he stares at it indefinitely until he becomes a flower.
  • There is a deeper meaning today as Narcissus Garden references modern obsessions with selfies and uploaded images on social media.
  • Kusama is an internationally renowned Japanese-born artist:
  • Got her start showing large works of art featuring huge polka dots.
  • One of the foremost innovators of Happenings.
  • Works in a wide variety of media, including installations.

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Site Art

• Sometimes called Earth Art, Site Art is dependent on its location to render full meaning.
• Often works of Site Art are temporary, as in the works of Christo and Jeanne-Claude.
• Other times the works remain, but need the original environment intact in order for it to be fully understood.
• Such items are often called earthworks. Site Art dates from the 1970s and is still being done today.

➼   Spiral Jetty

• Details

  • By Robert Smithson
  • 1970
  • earthwork: mud, precipitated salt crystals, rocks, water coil
  • Found in Great Salt Lake, Utah

• Form

  • A coil of rock placed in a part of the Great Salt Lake that is in an extremely remote and inaccessible area.
  • The artist liked the site because of the blood-red color of the water, which is due to the presence of bacteria and algae that live in the high-salt content.

• Material: The artist used a tractor to move basalt from the adjacent hillside to create the jetty.

• Context

  • Upon walking on the jetty, the twisting and curling path changes the viewer’s view from every angle.
  • A jetty is usually a pier extending into the water; here it is transformed into a curl of rocks sitting silently in a vast, empty wilderness.
  • The coil is an image seen in North American earthworks—cf. Great Serpent Mound, Ohio—as well as in petroglyphs and Anasazi pottery.
  • The work reflects emerging views of the environmental movement; Earth Day was inaugurated in 1970.
  • Smithson wanted nature to have its effect on the jetty (sometimes it is submerged, sometimes it is visible).

• Image

  

Postmodern Architecture

• Postmodern architecture, generally thought to emerge in the late 1970s and early 1980s, sees the achievements of the International Style as cold and removed from the needs of modern cities with their cosmopolitan populations.
• Postmodernists see nothing wrong with incorporating ornament, traditional architectural expressions, and references to past styles in a modern context.
• Philip Johnson, himself a contributor to the International Style, as well as someone who worked on the Seagram Building, began the shift away to a Postmodern ideal with the AT&T building.

➼   House in New Castle County

• Details

  • By Robert Venturi, John Rauch, and Denise Scott Brown
  • 1978–1983
  • Made of wood frame and stucco
  • Found in Delaware

• Form

  • The façade contains an arch inside a pediment form.
  • A squat, bulging Doric colonnade is asymmetrically placed.
  • The columns are actually flat rather than the traditionally round forms.
  • The drainpipe at the left bisects the outermost column.
  • The flattened forms on the interior arches echo the exterior flat columns.
  • The interior forms reflect a craftsman’s hand in curved, cutting elements.

• Function

  • The house was designed for a family of three.
  • For the wife, a musician, a music room was created with two pianos, an organ, and a harpsichord.
  • For the husband, a bird-watcher, large windows were installed facing the woods.

• Context

  • Postmodern mix of historical styles.
  • Rural location in low hills, grassy fields of Delaware.
  • Venturi’s comment on the International style: “Less is a bore.”

• Image

  

Chapter 23: Indian and Southeast Asian Art

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