Post on 25-Feb-2020
03.11.2011
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ART IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE
TWENTIETH CENTURY
Futurism, Manifesto of Futurist Architecture
Constructivism
Precisionism
Week 6
THREE MODERNIST
MOVEMENTS
FUTURISM CONSTRUCTIVISM PRECISIONISM
PERIOD: 1909-1918 1913-1932 1915-1930
LOCALE: Italy Russia United States
ARTISTS: Boccioni, Balla, Severeni,
Carrà, Russolo
Tatlin, Malevich,
Popova, Rodchenko,
Lissitzky, Gabo, Pevsner
Sheeler,
Demuth,
O’Keeffe
FEATURES: Lines of force
representing movement
and modern life
Geometric art, reflecting
modern technology
Sleek (düz) urban
and industrial forms
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States of Mind I: The Farewells, Oil on canvas,
(70.5 x 96.2 cm).
States of Mind II:
Those Who Go, Oil on canvas,
(70.8 x 95.9 cm).
States of Mind III:
Those Who Stay,Oil on canvas,
(70.8 x 95.9 cm).
Umberto Boccioni (Italian, 1882-1916)
Three States of Mind , 1911
Futurism: Kinetic art
The kinetic energy of an object is the energy which it possesses due to its motion.
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Futurism: Kinetic art
Futurism was an Italian phenomenon.
Futurism began in 1909 as a literary movement when the Italian poet F.T.Marinetti
issued its manifesto.
Marinetti a hyperactive self-promoter nicknamed ―The Caffeine of Europe‖ challenged
artists to show ―courage, audacity, and revolt‖ and to celebrate “a new beauty, the
beauty of speed.”
Futurist artists tried to unveil the poetry in motion.
The key to Futurist art was MOVEMENT.
The painters combined bright Fauve colors with fractured Cubist planes
to express propulsion (itici kuvvet).
Their quest was ―to throw all tradition,‖ therefore they published a manifesto
to voice their highly reactionary philosophy.
―..... With our enthusiastic adherence to Futurism, we will:
1.Destroy the cult of the past, the obsession with the ancients, pedantry and academic formalism.
2.Totally invalidate all kinds of imitation.
3.Elevate all attempts at originality, however daring, however violent.
4.Bear bravely and proudly the smear of “madness” with which they try to gag all innovators.
5.Regard art critics as useless and dangerous.
6.Rebel against the tyranny of words: ―Harmony‖ and ―good taste‖ and other loose expressions which can be used to destroy the works of Rembrandt, Goya, Rodin...
7.Sweep the whole field of art clean of all themes and subjects which have been used in the past.
8.Support and glory in our day-to-day world, a world which is going to be continually and splendidly transformed by victorious Science.
The dead shall be buried in the earth’s deepest bowels! The threshold of the future will be swept free of mummies! Make room for youth, for violence, for (gözüpek) daring!‖
Manifesto of the Futurist Painters, (Milan) Poesia, February 11, 1910.
Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Luigi Russolo, Giacomo Balla, Gino Severini
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States of Mind I: The Farewells, Oil on canvas,
(70.5 x 96.2 cm).
States of Mind II:
Those Who Go, Oil on canvas,
(70.8 x 95.9 cm).
States of Mind III:
Those Who Stay,Oil on canvas,
(70.8 x 95.9 cm).
Umberto Boccioni (Italian, 1882-1916)
Three States of Mind , 1911
Futurism: Kinetic art
Set in a train station, this series of three paintings
explores the psychological dimension of modern
life's transitory nature. In The Farewells, (veda)
Boccioni captures chaotic movement and the fusion
of people swept away in waves as the train's steam
bellows into the sky. Oblique lines hint at departure in
Those Who Go, in which Boccioni said he sought to
express "loneliness, anguish, and dazed confusion." In
Those Who Stay, vertical lines convey the weight of
sadness carried by those left behind.
States of Mind I: The Farewells, Oil on canvas,
(70.5 x 96.2 cm).
States of Mind II:
Those Who Go, Oil on canvas,
(70.8 x 95.9 cm).
States of Mind III:
Those Who Stay,Oil on canvas,
(70.8 x 95.9 cm).
Umberto Boccioni (Italian, 1882-1916)
Three States of Mind , 1911
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Funeral of the Anarchist Galli, 1910-11.
Carlo Carrà (Italian, 1881-1966)
Oil on canvas, (198.7 x 259.1 cm), MoMA.
Carlo Carra met Umberto Boccioni and Luigi Russolo, and together they came to know
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and to write the Manifesto dei pittori futuristi (1910). Carrà continued,
however, to use the technique of Divisionism despite the radical rhetoric of Futurism. In an
attempt to find new inspiration Marinetti sent them to visit Paris in autumn 1911, in preparation
for the Futurist exhibition of 1912. Cubism was a revelation, and in 1911 Carrà reworked a large
canvas that he had begun in 1910, the Funeral of the Anarchist Galli (New York, MOMA). He
had witnessed the riot at the event in 1904. The crowd and the mounted police converge in
violently hatched red and black, as Carrà attempted the Futurist aim to place the spectator at
the centre of the canvas. In the reworking he attempted to make the space more complex and
the lighting appear to emerge from within.
Ritmi Plastici, 1911.
Carlo Carrà (Italian, 1881-1966)Ink on paper, (10.7 x 7.4 cm).
photographic studies of animal locomotion
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Swifts: Paths of Movement + Dynamic Sequences, 1913.
Giacomo Balla (Italian, 1871-1958)Oil on canvas, (96.8 x 120 cm).
Balla, one of the founding
members of Futurism, spent
much of his career studying
the dynamics of movement
and speed. The subject of
this painting is the flight of
swifts; black wings whir
before a window. Inspired
by photographic
studies of animal
locomotion, Balla created
an image of motionpushed close to
abstraction. The wings
each represent a different
position in a trajectory of
motion, and the bird’s body
is rendered as a
diagrammatic line. Here
Balla looks to science
to establish a new,
modern language for
painting.
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Speeding Automobile, 1912. Giacomo Balla (Italian, 1871-1958)Oil on wood, (55.6 x 68.9 cm).
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Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, 1913
Umberto Boccioni (Italian, 1882–1916)Bronze H. (121.9 x 15 1/2 x 91.4 cm)
Boccioni, who sought to infuse art with dynamism and
energy, exclaimed, "Let us fling open the figure and let it
incorporate within itself whatever may surround it." The
contours of this marching figure appear to be carved by the
forces of wind and speed as it forges ahead. While its
wind–swept silhouette is evocative of an ancient statue, the
polished metal alludes to the sleek modern machinery beloved
by Boccioni and other Futurist artists.
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Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, 1913
Umberto Boccioni (Italian, 1882–1916)Bronze H. (121.9 x 15 1/2 x 91.4 cm)
In Unique Forms of Continuity in Space,
Boccioni puts speed and force into sculptural form. The
figure strides forward. Surpassing the limits of the body,
its lines ripple outward in curving and streamlined flags,
as if molded by the wind of its passing. Boccioni had
developed these shapes over two years in paintings,
drawings, and sculptures, exacting studies of human
musculature. The result is a three-dimensional portrait
of a powerful body in action.In the early twentieth century, the new speed and force of machinery
seemed to pour its power into radical social energy. The new
technologies and the ideas attached to them would later reveal
threatening aspects, but for Futurist artists like Boccioni, they were
tremendously exhilarating. Innovative as Boccioni was, he fell short of his
own ambition. In 1912, he had attacked the domination of sculpture by
"the blind and foolish imitation of formulas inherited from the past," and
particularly by "the burdensome weight of Greece." Yet Unique Forms of
Continuity in Space bears an underlying resemblance to a classical work
over 2,000 years old, the Nike of Samothrace. There, however, speed is
encoded in the flowing
stone draperies that wash
around, and in the wake of,
the figure. Here the body
itself is reshaped, as if the
new conditions of
modernity were
producing a new
man.
Muscular Dynamism (1913).
Umberto Boccioni (Italian, 1882-1916)Pastel and charcoal on paper, (86.3 x 59 cm),
MoMA.
Armored Train in Action, 1915.Gino Severini (Italian, 1883-1966)Charcoal on paper,
(56.9 x 47.5 cm), MoMA.
This study for the most famous of
the Futurist war paintings, The
Armored Train (1915),
incorporates an unusual aerial
perspective in its depiction of a
train filled with armed
soldiers. Severini enjoyed a
unique vantage point—from his
studio in Paris, he was able to
observe the constant movement
of trains filled with soldiers,
supplies, and weaponry.
Severini did not combat during
World War I, but he took the
advice of Marinetti to "try to live
the war pictorially, studying it
in all its marvelous mechanical
forms."
The Futurists glorified modern technology, and World War I, the
first war of the twentieth century to employ the technological
achievements of the industrial age in a program of mass destruction, was
for them the most important spectacle of the modern era. Their admiration
for speed—made possible by machinery—is represented here by the
fractured landscape, which accentuates the train's force and momentum
as it cuts through the countryside.Armored Train in Action foreshadows a fundamental principle of Severini's later art:
the "image-idea," in which a single image expresses the essence of an idea. Through a
depiction of the plastic realities of war—a train, canon, guns, and soldiers—he provides a
pictorial vocabulary necessary to grasp its deeper symbolism.
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Antonio Sant’Elia
Terraced Building with exterior elevators
1914
Manifesto of Futurist Architecture It must soar up on the brink of a tumultuous abyss: the street will no longer lie like
a doormat at ground level, but will plunge many stories down into the
earth, embracing the metropolitan traffic, and will be linked up for
necessary interconnections by metal gangways and swift-moving
pavements. The decorative must be abolished. The problem of Futurist
architecture must be resolved, not by continuing to pilfer from Chinese, Persian
or Japanese photographs or fooling around with the rules of Vitruvius, but
through flashes of genius and through scientific and technical expertise.
Everything must be revolutionized. Roofs and underground spaces
must be used; the importance of the façade must be diminished;
issues of taste must be transplanted from the field of fussy moldings, finicky
capitals and flimsy doorways to the broader concerns of bold groupings and
masses, and large-scale disposition of planes. Let us make an end
of monumental, funereal and commemorative architecture. Let us overturn
monuments, pavements, arcades and flights of steps; let us sink the streets and
squares; let us raise the level of the city.
I COMBAT AND DESPISE:
1. All the (fals) pseudo-architecture of the avant-garde, Austrian, Hungarian,
German and American;
2. All classical architecture, solemn, hieratic, scenographic, decorative,
monumental, pretty and pleasing;
3. The embalming, reconstruction and reproduction of ancient monuments
and palaces;
4. Perpendicular and horizontal lines, cubical and pyramidical forms that are
static, solemn, aggressive and absolutely excluded from our utterly new
sensibility;
5. The use of massive, voluminous, durable, antiquated and costly materials.
Manifesto of Futurist Architecture
AND PROCLAIM:
1. That Futurist architecture is the architecture of calculation, of audacious
temerity and of simplicity; the architecture of reinforced concrete, of
steel, glass, cardboard, textile fiber, and of all those substitutesf or wood,
stone and brick that enable us to obtain maximum elasticity and lightness;
2. That Futurist architecture is not because of this an arid combination of
practicality and usefulness, but remains art, i.e. synthesis and expression;
3. That oblique and elliptic lines are dynamic, and by their very nature
possess an emotive power a thousand times stronger than perpendiculars and
horizontals, and that no integral, dynamic architecture can exist that does not
include these;
4. That decoration as an element superimposed on architecture is absurd, and
that the decorative value of Futurist architecture depends solely on the
use and original arrangement of raw or bare or violently colored
materials; 5. That, just as the ancients drew inspiration for their art from the elements of
nature, we—who are materially and spiritually artificial—must find that
inspiration in the elements of the utterly new mechanical world we have created, and of which architecture must be the most beautiful
expression, the most complete synthesis, the most efficacious integration;
6. That architecture as the art of arranging forms according to pre-established
criteria is finished;
7. That by the term architecture is meant the endeavor to harmonize the
environment with Man with freedom and great audacity, that is to transform the
world of things into a direct projection of the world of the spirit;
From an architecture conceived in this way no formal or linear habit can grow,
since the fundamental characteristics of Futurist architecture will be its
impermanence and transience. Things will endure less than us. Every
generation must build its own city. This constant renewal of the
architectonic environment will contribute to the victory of Futurism which has
already been affirmed by words-in-freedom, plastic dynamism, music without
quadrature and the art of noises, and for which we fight without respite against
traditionalist cowardice.
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Architectural Study: Search for Volumes in an Isolated Building, ca. 1919, Sketch by Virgilio Marchi (Italian, 1895–1960)Pencil and watercolor on paper 15 1/4 x 22 1/2 in. (38.7 x 57.2 cm)
In its upwardly spiraling movement, this drawing
by Virgilio Marchi typifies Futurist architectural
design. It is one of several renderings made by Marchi
in 1919 and 1920 for an ideal contemporary city
that was never erected. His plans indicated the
preoccupation of the period with technological
advances in transportation and
construction. The building in the present study
resembles a cone—round at the bottom, pointed at the
top. There are tunneled areas and open archways below,
with stairs leading to various flat levels. The two towers
that rise from the center are openly constructed with
stairs and columns. A spotlight is perched on a beam
that extends from the peak of the left tower. The
sweeping curves and strong, linear slashes of this
beautiful drawing are reminiscent of Giacomo Balla's
earlier painted imagery.
Futurism was primarily concerned
with images of speed and motion,
which were intended to represent
the spirit of the modern age.
Although the greatest expression of
Futurism is found in the medium of
painting, there were some sculptural
pieces executed as well, most notably by
Umberto Boccioni. Architecture, a later
focus for the movement, provided
another three-dimensional forum for
Futurist ideas about dynamism. The
resulting schemes were visionary
imaginings that were difficult to
translate into actual structures
and so remained, for the most
part, studies on paper.
THREE MODERNIST
MOVEMENTS
FUTURISM CONSTRUCTIVISM PRECISIONISM
PERIOD: 1909-1918 1913-1932 1915-1930
LOCALE: Italy Russia United States
ARTISTS: Boccioni, Balla, Severeni,
Carrà, Russolo
Tatlin, Malevich,
Popova, Rodchenko,
Lissitzky, Gabo, Pevsner
Sheeler,
Demuth,
O’Keeffe
FEATURES: Lines of force
representing movement
and modern life
Geometric art, reflecting
modern technology
Sleek (düz) urban
and industrial forms
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Constructivism • Around 1914, Russian avant-gardes flourished with artists called Constructivists, like
Vladimir Tatlin, Luibov Popova, Kasimir Malevich, El Lissitzky, Alexander Rodchenko, Naum
Gabo, and Antonie Pevsner.
– From Cubism, the Constructivists borrowed broken shapes.
– From Futurism, they adopted multiple overlapping images to express agitated
(telaşlı) modern life.
– They pushed art from being representational, to being abstract.
THE POLITICAL CONDITION IN RUSSIA:
Three years later, in 1917, the well-known Russian revolution occured, and as a result of this
revolution, the Russian society is converted from a feudal state to a ―people’s republic.” Lenin
tolerated the avant-garde because he thought that with the help of those artists, and through
newly developed novel visual styles, it could be possible to teach the illiterate public his own
ideology. For a brief time, before Stalin cracked down, and banned ―elitist‖ easel painting,
Russia’s most adventurous artists led a social, as well as artistic, revolution.
They wanted to strip art, like the state, of petty bourgeois anachronisms (çağdışılık).
They tried to remake art, as well as society, from scratch.
The Monument to the Third International.
• About 1914, Tatlin (1885-1953) originated
Russian geometric art. He called his art,
which was highly abstract and was due an
intention to reflect modern technology as
“Constructivism.”
• The aim of Tatlin‟s
“Constructivism” was to
“construct” art, not to create it.The style recommended to use industrial
materials, such as glass metal and plastic
in three dimensional works.
• Tatlin’s most famous work was a monument
to celebrate the Bolshevik revolution.
Intended to be higher than Eiffel Tower, the
monument was planned for the center of
Moscow. Since it was hard to supply steel of
that amount, his idea remained only as a
model, but it would clearly would have been
the most astonishing ―construct‖ ever.
• Tilted like the leaning Tower of Pisa, the
openwork structure of glass and iron was
based on a contunial spiral to denote
humanity‟s upward progress.
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Kazimir Severinovich Malevich (February 23, 1879, previously 1878 – May 15, 1935)
Englishman in Moscow, 1914
From Cubism, the Constructivists borrowed broken shapes.
From Futurism, they adopted multiple overlapping images to express agitated modern life.
Abstraction, overlapping of images, a new construction
Autonomous shots, recomposed in a new construction → MONTAGE
Bureau and Room, 1913
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Suprematist Composition: White on White 1918. Oil on canvas, 79.4 x 79.4 cm; MoMA
Kazimir Severinovich Malevich (February 23, 1879, previously 1878 – May 15, 1935) was a painter and art
theoretician, pioneer of geometric abstract art and the originator of the Avant-garde Suprematist (üstünlük)
movement. His squares floating on a white background and finally his white on white paintings simplified art more radically than ever before. Malevich wanted to “free art from the burden (yük) of the object.” He tried to make his shapes and colors as pure as musical notes, without reference to any recognizable
object.
• Malevich, who founded what he called Suprematism, believed in an extreme of reduction:
``The object in itself is meaningless... the ideas of the
conscious mind are worthless''.
• What he wanted was a non-objective representation, ̀ `the supremacy of pure feeling.'' This can
sound convincing until one asks what it actually means. Malevich, however, had no doubts as to what he
meant, producing objects of iconic power such as his series of White on White paintings or Dynamic
Suprematism (1916; 102 x 67 cm ), in which the geometric patterns are totally abstract.
• Malevich had initially been influenced by Cubism and primitive art, which were both based on nature,
but his own movement of Suprematism enabled him to construct images that had no reference at all
to reality.
• Great solid diagonals of color in Dynamic Suprematism are floating free, their severe sides denying
them any connection with the real world, where there are no straight lines.
• This is a pure abstract painting, the artist's main theme being the internal movements of the
personality.
• The theme has no precise form, and Malevich had to search it out from within the visible expression of
what he felt. They are wonderful works, and in their wake came other powerful Suprematist painters
such as Natalia Goncharova and Liubov Popova.
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Suprematist Composition: White on White 1918. Oil on canvas, 79.4 x 79.4 cm; MoMA
Malevich described his
aesthetic theory, known as
Suprematism, as "the
supremacy (üstünlük) of
pure feeling or perception in
the pictorial arts."
He viewed the Russian
Revolution as having paved
the way for a new society in
which materialism would
eventually lead to spiritual
freedom.
This austere painting counts
among the most radical
paintings of its day, yet it is not
impersonal; the trace of the
artist's hand is visible in the
texture of the paint and the
subtle variations of white.
The imprecise outlines of the
asymmetrical square generate
a feeling of infinite space
rather than definite borders.
Black Square, 1915, Oil on Canvas, State Russian Museum, St.Petersburg
At the exhibition 0.10, the Black
Square (1915; Moscow),
painted on a square canvas
surrounded by a margin of
white, was hung across the
corner of the separate room
where works by Malevich and
his followers were displayed; it
was announced as the essential
Suprematist work.
On the one hand, it was
radically nihilistic and could be
interpreted as a gesture of
rejection, providing no
narrative, theme,
composition or picture space, apparently rejecting all
pictorial conventions and
offering a canvas of
unprecedented blankness; on
the other hand, suspension
across the corner of a room was
a common way to display
domestic icons, and by referring
to this tradition its rejection of
convention was not total.
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Black Circle,1913-1915
Suprematism
Term coined in 1915 by
Kazimir Malevich for a new
system of art, explained in
his booklet :
Ot kubizma i futurizma k
suprematizmu: Novyy
zhivopisnyy realizm
„From Cubism and
Futurism to
Suprematism: the new
realism in painting‟
Followed by the Black
Circle (one version after 1920; St
Petersburg, Rus. Mus.) and the
Black Cross (Paris, Pompidou),
the Black Square can be
related to an icon tradition
that survived so strongly in
Russia, using ancient forms
that were increasingly
admired by Russian artists
seeking to exert their
independence from western
European traditions.
Suprematism (Self-Portrait), 1916
The term itself implied the supremacy of
this new art in relation to the past.
Malevich saw it as purely aesthetic
and concerned only with
form, free from any political or
social meaning.
He stressed the purity of shape,
particularly of the square, and he
regarded Suprematism as primarily an
exploration of visual language comparable
to contemporary developments in writing.
Suprematist paintings were first displayed
at the exhibition ―The last Futurist exhibition
of paintings: 0.10‖ held in Petrograd (now St
Petersburg) in December 1915; they
comprised geometric forms which
appeared to float against a white
background.
While Suprematism began before the
Revolution of 1917, its influence, and the
influence of Malevich’s radical approach to
art, was pervasive in the early Soviet
period.
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Suprematism (Supremus No. 58) 1916; Oil on canvas, 79.5 x 70.5 cm;
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
Malevich declared that the Black
Square constituted the „zero of form‟,
an end to old conventions and the
origin of a new pictorial
language. The forms of this
language were strictly geometrical as
in the Suprematism series, but they
rapidly evolved into increasingly
complex paintings in which the
geometrical elements employed richer
colours and inhabited an ambiguous
and complex pictorial space.
Suprematism, 1916-17; Oil on canvas, 80 x 80 cm; Fine Arts Museum, Krasnodar
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Suprematist Painting 1917; Oil on canvas, 96.5 x 65.4 cm; The Museum of Modern
Art, New York
Lyubov Sergeyevna Popova(April 24, 1889 – May 25, 1924) was a Russian avant-garde artist (Cubist, Suprematist and Constructivist), painter and
designer. She was also a rarity in the highly
masculine world of Soviet art. She added glowing color to Analytical Cubism.
Air+Man+Space, 1912
Through a synthesis of styles, Popova
worked towards what she termed painterly
architectonics. After first exploring
Impressionism, by 1913, in Composition with
Figures, she was experimenting with the
particularly Russian development of
Cubo-Futurism: a fusion of two equal
influences from France and Italy.
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Aleksander Mikhailovich Rodchenko [O.S. 23 November] 1891 – December 3, 1956) was a Russian artist, sculptor,
photographer and graphic designer. He was one of the founders of constructivism and Russian design; he was married to the
artist Varvara Stepanova. -Rodchenko was one of the most versatile Constructivist and Productivist artists to emerge after the
Russian Revolution. He worked as a painter and graphic designer before turning to photomontage and photography. His photography
was socially engaged, formally innovative, and opposed to a painterly aesthetic. Concerned with the need for analytical-documentary
photo series, he often shot his subjects from odd angles—usually high above or below—to shock the viewer and to postpone
recognition. He wrote: "One has to take several different shots of a subject, from different points of
view and in different situations, as if one examined it in the round rather than looked
through the same key-hole again and again."
1920s. Rodchenko and Stepanova
Rodchenko Poster/Flier
Lazar Markovich Lissitzky (November 23, 1890 – December 30, 1941), better known as El Lissitzky, was a Russian artist,
designer, photographer, typographer, polemicist and architect. He was an important figure of the Russian avant garde, helping
develop suprematism with his mentor, Kazimir Malevich, and designing numerous exhibition displays and propaganda works for
the former Soviet Union. His work greatly influenced the Bauhaus and constructivist movements, and he experimented with
production techniques and stylistic devices that would go on to dominate 20th-century graphic design.
Perhaps the most famous work by
Lissitzky from the same period was the
1919 propaganda poster, Beat the Whites
with the Red Wedge.
In the poster, the intrusive red wedge
symbolizes the Bolsheviks, who are
penetrating and defeating their opponents,
the Whites, during the Russian Civil War.
Russia was going through a civil war at the
time, which was mainly fought between the
"Reds" (communists and revolutionaries)
and the "Whites" (monarchists,
conservatives, liberals and socialists who
opposed the Bolshevik Revolution).
The image of the red wedge shattering the
white form, simple as it was,
communicated a powerful message that
left no doubt in the viewer's mind of its
intention. The piece is often seen as
alluding to the similar shapes used on
military maps and, along with its
political symbolism, was one of El
Lissitzky's first major steps away from
Malevich's non-objective suprematism into
a style his own.
“Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge", a 1919 lithograph by Lissitzky
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El Lissitzky, Proun 30t, 1920. Sprengel Museum Hannover
Lissitzky's Suprematist story of two squares in six constructions, 1922
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Proun 19D, c. 1922Gesso, oil, collage, etc., on plywoodThe Museum of Modern Art, New York
Proun G7, 1923Distemper, tempera, varnish and pencil on canvas, 77 x 62 cm
Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Dusseldorf
El Lissitzky , Proun 5, Installation
Design for the Abstract Cabinet, 1927-1928
Section of the Room for Constructivist Art, 1926
Drawing of the Wolkenbügel (Cloud-Iron) in Nikitskii Square, 1925
Photomontage of the Wolkenbügel (Cloud-Iron)
in Nikitskii Square, 1925
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Model for the interior of the Soviet PavilionInternational Fur Trade Exhibition, Leipzig
Entrance, 1930International Fur Trade Exhibition, Leipzig
THREE MODERNIST
MOVEMENTS
FUTURISM CONSTRUCTIVISM PRECISIONISM
PERIOD: 1909-1918 1913-1932 1915-1930
LOCALE: Italy Russia United States
ARTISTS: Boccioni, Balla, Severeni,
Carrà, Russolo
Tatlin, Malevich,
Popova, Rodchenko,
Lissitzky, Gabo, Pevsner
Sheeler,
Demuth,
O’Keeffe
FEATURES: Lines of force
representing movement
and modern life
Geometric art, reflecting
modern technology
Sleek (düz) urban
and industrial forms
03.11.2011
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Precisionism
• The artists who came to be known as the Precisionists never formally organized themselves
as a group or issued a manifesto; instead, they were associated through their common style
and subjects.
• Around 1920, a number of artists in the United States began experimenting with a highly
controlled approach to technique and form.
• They consistently reduced their compositions to simple shapes and underlying
geometrical structures, with clear outlines, minimal detail, and
smooth handling of surfaces.
• Their paintings, drawings, and prints also showed the influence of recent work by
American photographers, such as Paul Strand, who were utilizing sharp focus and
lighting, unexpected viewpoints and cropping, and emphasis on the abstract form
of the subject.
The Precisionists borrowed freely from recent movements in European art, including Purism's call to visual order
and clarity and Futurism's celebration of technology and expression of speed through dynamic
compositions. Charles Demuth adapted Cubism's geometric simplifications and faceted, overlapping planes,
while Morton Schamberg can be linked to Dada through his use of machinery as nontraditional subject matter.
After Sir Christopher Wren, 1920Charles Demuth (American, 1883–1935)Watercolor, gouache, and pencil on cardboard (60.5 x 51 cm)
Demuth spent several summers in Provincetown,
Massachusetts, located at the tip of Cape Cod and
a popular summer destination for artists and
writers in the early twentieth century. He painted a
number of Provincetown landmarks, including
this view of the Center Methodist Episcopal
Church. In this watercolor, the church's prominent
steeple and spire rise above the surrounding
residential architecture. Built in 1860, the church
had been designed in a variant of the English
Baroque style, which is often associated with the
architect Christopher Wren (1632–1723). Certain
elements of Demuth's composition are indebted to
his knowledge of Cubism and Futurism. Repeated,
diagonal "lines of force" break the area of the sky
into fragments, and the houses in the foreground
seem crystallized from multiple planes; however,
the overall effect is legible and cohesive. In
demonstrating that he could apply his Precisionist
style to more traditional subjects as well as modern
industrial ones, Demuth remained a painter of the
American scene.
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In other respects, however, the Precisionists defined
themselves as distinctively American artists. Artists such
as Charles Sheeler, Elsie Driggs, Ralston Crawford, and
Louis Lozowick, as well as Demuth, distanced
themselves from European influences by selecting
subjects from the American landscape and regional
American culture. These subjects included elements
unique to early twentieth-century life, including urban
settings (particularly the dramatic engineering advances
of skyscrapers and suspension bridges) and the
sprawling industrial locales of steel mills, coalmines,
and factory complexes. Many of the same artists also
applied their new, hard-edged style to long-familiar
American scenes, such as agricultural structures or
local crafts and domestic architecture. Even such
conventional motifs as a still life of fruit or flowers were
treated to a fresh assessment in the Precisionist style.
[Doylestown House—The Stove], 1917Charles Sheeler (American, 1883–1965)
Gelatin silver print (23.1 x 16.3 cm)
This photograph was made at the Bucks County,
Pennsylvania, home that Charles Sheeler shared with fellow
painter and photographer Morton Schamberg. The spare
geometry of the eighteenth-century Doylestown farmhouse
proved an irresistible subject for an artist eager to explore with
a camera the radical formal ideas that had impressed him in
the paintings of Cézanne, Picasso, and Braque. It is an
elegantly balanced, harmonious work, a testament to
Sheeler's clarity of vision and ability to distill a scene to its
essence—a salient feature of the artist's work in all media.
The connections between the Precisionist approach and a wider social context were strong ones. In the later 1910s
and 1920s, the United States was expanding its communications technology, industrial production, and construction
in urban settings. The changing cityscape was documented by Strand and Sheeler in 1920, in their short film
Manhattan. However, as the country experienced a psychological reaction to the mass destruction wrought
overseas by the First World War and, later, the economic hardships of the Great Depression within its own borders,
the United States entered a period of political isolationism. Cultural critics voiced a need for America to seek and
shape its national identity through its own history, landscape, artifacts, and regional traditions. This attitude was also
reflected in a revival of interest in American folk art. The functional design of Shaker furniture, for example, was now
taken as evidence of preindustrial self-sufficiency, and was also seen as proto-modern in its simplicity.
Accordingly, there existed two opposing views of the machine's place in contemporary
American society, both of which were embodied by Precisionist art.
1. One view was the utopian ideal of technology bringing order to the modern world by
enhancing the speed, efficiency, and cleanliness of everyday life. It is worth noting that
Precisionism coincided with the landmark Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et
Industriels Modernes, held in Paris in 1925, and the like-minded Machine-Age Exposition
hosted by New York in 1927, both of which endorsed the amalgamation of art, design, and
industry in streamlined products for everyday use.
2. The opposing view stressed the dehumanizing effects of technology, warning that it
would replace workers, create pollution, and dominate the landscape in a destructive
manner. Occasionally, these two attitudes coexisted in an ambiguous tension within a
single work of art.
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Machinery, 1920
Charles Demuth (American, 1883–1935)Tempera and pencil on cardboard (60.9 x 50 cm)
This painting was first shown in an exhibition
of Demuth's works titled Arrangements of the
American Landscape Forms, held in 1920.
Rather than a traditional landscape scene, it
depicts industrial architecture in his
hometown of Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
Despite some abstract use of force lines and
fragmented planes, the subject remains
identifiable. It is a scene of rooftop machinery
set against a background of windows
belonging to an adjacent factory building; the
central structure is a cyclone separator, a
centrifuge-like apparatus often used in
industrial settings, consisting of a tank, a
funnel, and two arm like duct pipes.
Like Demuth's painting The Figure 5 in Gold,
this work was dedicated to his close friend, the
poet William Carlos Williams. Williams himself
contemplated the analogy between the arts
and technology. In 1944, he wrote, "To make
two bald statements: There's nothing
sentimental about a machine, and: A poem is a
small (or large) machine made out of words"
(introduction to The Wedge, 1944).
Forms in Space, 1927John Storrs (American, 1885–1956)
Stainless steel and copper (52.1 x 10.2 x 4.1 cm)
Storrs was the son of a Chicago architect and real estate developer, and the modern
architecture of his native city would influence his sculpture throughout his career.
He studied at various institutions in both the United States and Paris, where he was a
student of Auguste Rodin for a brief time.
He developed an approach to sculpture that acknowledged historical influences
ranging from Native American ceramics to ancient Egyptian and Greek stone carving,
while also incorporating recent styles such as Art Deco design.
Storrs produced his "skyscraper sculptures" in materials associated more with
industry and the decorative arts than with the fine arts. They are formal experiments
with volume and space, the balance of vertical and horizontal masses, and the play of
light on polished surfaces. Examples such as Forms in Space, in particular, signal his
interest in the latest architectural styles seen in Chicago and New York, where the
ever-taller office towers and apartment buildings were "set back" at their upper stories,
in accordance with new urban zoning requirements.
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Americana, 1931
Charles Sheeler (American, 1883–1965)Oil on canvas (121.9 x 91.4 cm)
Between 1926 and 1934, Sheeler produced a
series of seven paintings that depict the interior
of his home in South Salem, New York, and his
collection of early American furnishings.
The conflicting geometric patterns of the rugs,
pillows, woven sofa covering, and backgammon
set create a sense of visual disorientation in this
scene, as do the unusual perspective and
cropping of objects. However, the objects
themselves are rendered in an extremely
precise manner.
This painting is as much a statement about
national pride and the virtues of home and
craftsmanship as it is a portrait of the artist's living
space.
Sheeler was not alone in his interest in these
crafts; a number of influential collectors
developed an interest in American folk and
decorative arts in the 1920s and 1930s. In an
era that placed increasing emphasis on
technology and mass production, and in the years
following the international crisis of World War I,
such objects were nostalgic reminders of an
ostensibly simpler time.
South of Scranton, 1931
Peter Blume (American, born Russia, 1906–1992)Oil on canvas (142.2 x 167 cm)
Although the subjects of
Blume's pictures were
frequently mystifying and
tended toward Surrealism,
his technique possessed a
sharp clarity that
associated him with the
Precisionist school of
painting.
South of Scranton gathers
various scenes that the artist
encountered during an
extended road trip in spring
1930. The industrial
machinery, coal piles, and
smoking locomotives at the
left side of the painting
represent selective locales
from the path.
Blume then traveled further
south to Charleston, South
Carolina, where he
witnessed several sailors
performing acrobatic
exercises aboard the deck of
a German cruiser ship in the
harbor.
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White Canadian Barn II, 1932
Georgia O'Keeffe (American, 1887–1986)Oil on canvas (30.5 x 76.2 cm)
This austere image, from a series of seven or eight barn paintings, was inspired by a summer trip that O'Keeffe made to the
rugged Gaspé Peninsula of Canada in 1932. The barn, as she depicts it, is stark in color and design, and precisely delineated.
She allowed the subject matter to determine the appropriate proportions of the composition: the narrow, horizontal format of White
Canadian Barn II echoes the flat rectangular forms of the barn roof and walls. The picture space is divided into three distinct areas
denoting sky, building, and ground. Although the barn's strictly frontal presentation almost completely negates its three-
dimensional form and depth, its somber coloring and massive size indicate a tangible and weighty presence. O'Keeffe distilled
the essential geometric shape from each architectural element of the structure and also eliminated the textured patterns of its
surfaces and other small details; only two impenetrable, black doorways anchor the breadth of the painting. While the artist denied
having any connections to organized art movements, her series of barn images (a subject atypical in her nature-inspired oeuvre)
does closely fit the style of the Precisionist painters.
Water, 1945
Charles Sheeler (American, 1883–1965)
Oil on canvas 24 x 29 1/8 in. (61 x 74 cm)
Water depicts one of the power generators built
by the Tennessee Valley Authority in the 1930s,
when hydroelectric power was being distributed
throughout the Tennessee River region of the
United States. Sheeler's experience as a
photographer influenced his
Precisionist style of painting, in which he
emphasized the geometric shapes of
objects in a hard-edged, clearly lit
manner. For Sheeler, these monumental,
streamlined forms signified human ingenuity in
harnessing nature's power. His interpretation of
American industry was somewhat idealized:
workers are never shown, and the machinery is
pristine and gleaming, free of any dirt or smoke.
Sheeler expressed his feelings about the
emotional symbolism of technology when he
wrote: "Every age manifests itself by some
external evidence. In a period such as ours when
only a comparatively few individuals seem to be
given to religion, some form other than the Gothic
cathedral must be found. Industry concerns the
greatest numbers—it may be true, as has been
said, that our factories are our substitute for
religious expression" (quoted in Constance
Rourke, Charles Sheeler: Artist in the American
Tradition, 1938).
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Initially, no single label existed for this loosely associated group of artists of the Machine
Age. They were frequently called "the Immaculates" or "modern classicists" throughout the
1920s. Although the "precision" and the "precise line" of their art were often noted in written
reviews, it was not until 1927 that Alfred H. Barr, the director of the Museum of Modern Art
in New York, officially used the name "Precisionists" to describe them as a group. Other
early sponsors of the style in New York City included Charles Daniel of the Daniel Gallery, who
exhibited the work of Charles Demuth, Niles Spencer, Charles Sheeler, and Preston Dickinson;
Stephen Bourgeois of the Bourgeois Gallery, who promoted Joseph Stella and George Ault;
and arts patron Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney and her Whitney Studio Club.
Some of these artists, such as Demuth, Stella, and Sheeler, continued to work in a Precisionist
style for several decades. Meanwhile, a second generation of artists working in a Precisionist
style emerged during the 1930s. While still taking the American industrial landscape as a
frequent subject, they tended more toward abstraction or Surrealism in their depictions of
modernity. With the close of the 1930s, furthermore, the United States was approaching
involvement in the Second World War; the use of atomic bombs in that war would give rise to
widespread unease about technology's power to destroy, undermining the confident
outlook that had made the Precisionist mode possible.