Art History IIInstructor Dustin M Price

What did we cover last time?

-James McNeill Whistler

- His Nocturne In Black and gold, The Falling Rocket

-Symbolism

- Sigmund Freud

- Psychoanalysis

- Gustav Klimt

- His Philosophy, Medicine, and Jurisprudence and Goldfish

- Egon Schiele

-Had Quiz 9

Umberto Boccioni Unique Forms of Continuity in Space 1913

Futurist Movement:

-This group of artists were convinced that motion itself was the glory of the new 20th century, especially when considering all the new technology and machinery being invented.

- Human beings were now physically traveling farther and faster than they ever had. Speeding along the countryside in planes, trains, and you guessed it, automobiles.

-This new sensation of speed needed to be addressed by art according to the Futurists. They strived to capture movement in there work. We can see this attempt to capture movement in Boccioni’s sculpture (left) its as if a photograph was taken of a ballerina draped in silk, dancing.

-We see these artists delight in trying to capture the elusion of movement

Balla, Dynamism of a Dog

What is happening at the beginning of the 20th Century?

-What seemed like an endless progress of civilization began to weaken and finally stop (in some ways) because of the atrocities of WWI

- Beginning in 1914 the war initially pitted the Allies (Britain, France and Russia, and later America) against the Central Powers (Germany, Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Ottoman Empire)

- This war lead some to question the powers (social and political) that had precipitated the carnage

- This war was also a turning point in the reasoning for warfare i.e. ideology instead of territory

- Many of the recent scientific and mechanical inventions were used against man

Henri Matisse Pablo Picasso

Henri Matisse (1869 – 1954)

- “Matisse studied law in Paris at the insistence of his father, but started to paint in 1889; from 1891 he devoted himself exclusively to art.

- At the Académie Julian he studied under William Bouguereau, then under Gustave Moreau at the Académie des Beaux-Arts

- he became fascinated by the work of Van Gogh and later Cézanne and Gauguin

- While staying in the fishing village of Collioure in southern France in 1905, Matisse began to use broader brushstrokes and very expressive colors. He displayed a number of works in this style at the 1905 Salon

-The exhibition – and especially Matisse’s work – caused a great commotion

Henri Matisse (1869 – 1954)

- The exhibitors were mockingly dubbed Fauves, or ‘wild beasts’ and Matisse soon acquired a reputation as their undisputed leader

-In subsequent years the artist experienced his most productive period and painted his best known pictures

-In 1917 Matisse moved to southern France and settled in Nice. For some ten years his work became more tempered

- After an operation in 1941 the painter was confined to a wheelchair

-He continued to work until his death in 1954”

- Lets further discuss FauvismHenri Matisse, Green Stripe Madame Matisse 1905

Henri Matisse (1869 – 1954)

-In 1905, Matisse and his friends; Derain, Vlaminick, Cammoin, Manguin, and Marquet all exhibited at the Salon d’Automne

- In this exhibition the paintings where housed in a room where there were a number of “Academic” marble sculptures also being displayed

- During the show a critic confronted by the “wild” style of Matisse in comparison to the classical sculpture of the marbles exclaimed, “Donatello chez les fauves!” or, (Donatello among the wild beasts!) This label stuck to Matisse and Fauvism was born!

- Shortly after the show, “Matisse’s Fauve canvases, The Woman with the Hat (left) in particular, provoked the crowd’s hilarity as no work had done”

The Joy of Life

Picasso:

-“The artistic genius of Pablo Picasso has impacted the development of modern and contemporary art with unparalleled magnitude

-His prolific output includes over 20,000 paintings, prints, drawings, sculptures, ceramics, theater sets and costumes that convey myriad intellectual, political, social, and amorous messages

- His creative styles transcend realism and abstraction, Cubism, Neoclassicism, Surrealism, and Expressionism

- Born in Malaga, Spain, in 1881, Picasso studied art briefly in Madrid in 1897, then in Barcelona in 1899, where he became closely associated with a group of modernist poets, writers, and artists who gathered at the café Els Quatre Gats (The Four Cats)

Picasso:

-“Living intermittently in Paris and Spain until 1904, his work during these years suggests feelings of desolation and darkness inspired in part by the suicide of his friend Casagemas

-Picasso's paintings from late 1901 to about the middle of 1904, referred to as his Blue Period, depict themes of poverty, loneliness, and despair

- Picasso moved to Paris in 1904 and settled in the artist quarter Bateau-Lavoir, where he lived among bohemian poets and writers

- In 1905, Picasso directs his attention toward more pleasant themes such as carnival performers, harlequins, and clowns. He abandons the daunting blues in favor of vivid hues, red for example, to celebrate the lives of circus performers (categorically labeled his Rose Period)”

Pablo Picasso, Self Portrait with Cloak 1901

Let us quickly discuss and then view a 7 minute video on arguably one of the most important paintings in Modern Art Les Demoiselles d’Avignon

Picasso:

-““With the stylistic inconsistencies and primitivist impulses of Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (left) Pablo Picasso launches the most formidable attack ever on mimetic representation” (1900)

- This painting (completed in 1907) is arguably one of the most important works of modern art

- In this painting we see the beginnings of one of the most widely celebrated modern artistic movements, Cubism

- Indeed, this painting is often referred to as a “transitional picture” or the, “first cubist painting” (perhaps more important for what it announced than as a work in itself)” (1900)

- We watch the video and then discuss Cubism

Cubism:

-Cubism was one of the most influential visual art styles of the early twentieth century. It was created by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque in Paris between 1907 and 1914

-The French art critic Louis Vauxcelles coined the term Cubism after seeing the landscapes Braque had painted in 1908 at L'Estaque in emulation of Cézanne

-The Cubist style emphasized the flat, two-dimensional surface of the picture plane, rejecting the traditional techniques of perspective, foreshortening, and modeling

-Cubist painters were not bound to copying form, texture, color, and space; instead, they presented a new reality in paintings that depicted radically fragmented objects

Braque Violin and Palette 1909-10

Analytical Cubism:

There are tow main movements in Cubism Analytical and Synthetic

-“analytical cubist work (left) involved the painting of an object from multiple viewpoints. The object would be broken into many pieces, seen from several angles, but the planes onto which the angles are drawn are connected by the edges

-In many analytical works, the subject is often recognized because of the edge connection, although the main subject of the painting can have its planes fused with a background pattern.

-Analytical paintings are often monochromatic because color, they thought, interfered with their intention to represent objects with the knowledge of an objects shape”

Picasso: Portrait of Ambroise Vollard

Synthetic Cubism:

-The two friends kept pushing their newfound style almost to the point of complete abstraction (Hermetic Cubism) but the next step was Synthetic Cubism

-Synthetic Cubism: is characterized by brighter colors, textures, and most notably the use of collage elements

- “Synthetic Cubism grew out of Analytical Cubism and the experimental nature of Collage.

-Synthetic Cubism developed through a construction process rather than the analytical process and deconstruction of Analytical Cubism.

-It is also more decorative and appealing and somewhat easier to interpret”

Picasso The Dream 1932

Dada Movement:

- “In 1916, a group of artists waiting out the war in Zurich, in neutral Switzerland, banded together as a protest art movement called Dada

- What did Dada protest? Everything. Dada was anti. Anti art, anti middle-class society, anti politicians, anti good manners, anti business-as-usual, anti all that had brought about the war

-In that sense, Dada was a big no. But Dada was also a big yes. Yes to creativity, to life, to silliness, to spontaneity.

- Dada was provocative and absurd. Above all, it refused to make sense or to be pinned down. More an attitude than a coherent movement, Dada embraced as many different kinds of art as there were artists”

The First International Dada Exhibition (1920)

Man Ray

Dada Movement:

- The Dadaists were disgusted with everything society had coveted up to the beginning of the war

- It felt that all the egotism, ruling class, seriousness, and faith in technology had all been contributing factors to WWI

-The movement believed there was a better way. It set out to undermine every aspect of society and art that it could.

- This movement was neither organized or wanted to be. Even the name “Dada” (according to legend) was picked out of a German-French dictionary by random

-Lets discus Marcel Duchamp one of the most infamous Dada artists (though he was not a formal member)

Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968)

- His initial foray into modern art followed the trends of his contemporaries, with his first paintings in the mode of Cézanne and the Impressionists, while after 1910 his work reflects a shift toward Cubism

- One of his most important works, Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2) 1912 (left) however, reflects Duchamp's ambivalent relationship with Cubism.

-He adopts the limited palette of Cubist paintings, but his invigorated figure is in a state of perpetual motion—a very different effect from Picasso and Braque's Analytic Cubism that held figures tightly in place

- Provoking negative reactions from even the Parisian avant-garde, the painting was rejected by the Salon des Indépendants for both its title and the artist's mechanistic, dehumanizing rendering of the female nude

Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968)

-“Subverting traditional or accepted modes of artistic production with irony and satire is a hallmark of Duchamp's legendary career. His most striking, iconoclastic gesture, the readymade, is arguably the century's most influential development on artists' creative process

-With Bicycle Wheel (1913) left, the first readymade, Duchamp moved toward a creative process that was antithetical to artistic skill

- He wanted to distance himself from traditional modes of painting in an effort to emphasize the conceptual value of a work of art, seducing the viewer through irony and verbal witticisms rather than relying on technical or aesthetic appeal”

- The concept, or idea behind the art was more important to Duchamp than the object or the artists ability to create it

Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968)

-Perhaps one of the most controversial artworks of all time is Duchamp’s Fountain (left)

- In this work he questions artistic process, the context in which art is shown, who can make art or say what art is, what exactly entails art , artistic freedom, mass production, cultural values, he questions modernity, and any prevailing rationality during a time of war, and whether art can be conceptually based

- Try forgetting that it is a urinal; and try to understand the messages behind it

-The fact that it’s a urinal is not the point, the questions that Duchamp raises with it about modern art is!

-It is not about the cover of the book but the story inside it

Vocab:Futurism Fauvism Picasso’s Blue and Rose Period Cubism Analytical and Synthetic Cubism collageAssemblageDada ReadymadePhotomontageThe Armory Show

ArtistsHenri MatissePablo Picasso Georges BraqueMarcel Duchamp Georgia O’Keefe

Artwork: Les Demoiselles d’Avignon 31-6Fountain 31-30An Orchard 31-38

Read pages1044 – 1070 by Monday