Futurism, Manifesto of Futurist Architecture ...inar323.cankaya.edu.tr/uploads/files/Week...

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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 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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(70.5 x 96.2 cm).

States of Mind II:


(70.8 x 95.9 cm).

States of Mind III:


(70.8 x 95.9 cm).




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.


(70.5 x 96.2 cm).

States of Mind II:


(70.8 x 95.9 cm).

States of Mind III:


(70.8 x 95.9 cm).



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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


PERIOD: 1909-1918 1913-1932 1915-1930



Carrà, Russolo

Tatlin, Malevich,

Popova, Rodchenko,


Sheeler,

Demuth,

O’Keeffe



and modern life


modern technology

Sleek (düz) urban


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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

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sculpture

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ru-El_Lissitzky.ogg

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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


PERIOD: 1909-1918 1913-1932 1915-1930



Carrà, Russolo

Tatlin, Malevich,

Popova, Rodchenko,


Sheeler,

Demuth,

O’Keeffe



and modern life


modern technology

Sleek (düz) urban


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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25

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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26

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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27

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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28

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.

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