Interns Guide 2010 Mail

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INTERNS RESOURCE PACK2010


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INTERNS RESOURCE PACK

INDEX

p. 1 INTRO TO THE COLLECTION

p. 2 THE GUGGENHEIMS

p. 2 THE PALAZZO

p. 3 PEGGY TIMELINE

p. 6 INTRO TO MODERN ART

p. 6 MOVEMENTS AND MATERIALS

p. 15 20TH CENTURY TIMELINE


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INTRO TO THE COLLECTION

When Peggy Guggenheim (898-979) opened her Guggenheim Jeune Gallery in London in January 98, she was begin-ning, at 9 years old, a career which would signifcantly aect the course o post-war art. Her riend Samuel Beckett urged

her to dedicate hersel to contemporary art as it was a living thing, and Marcel Duchamp introduced her to the artists andtaught her, as she put it, the dierence between Abstract and Surrealist art (quotations are rom Peggy GuggenheimsOut of This Century).

In 99 she conceived the idea o opening a modern museum in London, with Herbert Read as its director. The museumwas to be ormed on historical principles, and a list o all the artists that should be represented, drawn up by Read and laterrevised by Marcel Duchamp and Nelly van Doesburg, was the basis o her collection. In 99-4, apparently oblivious o thewar, she busily acquired the works or the uture museum, resolving to buy a picture a day. Some o the masterpieces inher collection by P icabia, Braque, Dal and Mondrian or example were bought at this time, and she astonished Lger bybuying a painting on the day that Hitler invaded Norway. She acquired Brancusis Bird in Space as the Germans approachedParis.

In July 94 she returned in her native New york and in October the ollowing year Peggy Guggenheim opened her muse-um-gallery Art o This Century in New York. There she exhibited her collection o Cubist, Abstract and Surrealist art, whichwas already substantially that which we see today in Venice. The Austrian architect Frederick Kiesler created special galleryenvironments, and the gallery became at once the most stimulating venue or contemporary art in New York City. O theopening night she wrote: I wore one o my Tanguy earrings and one made by Calder in order to show my impartiality be-tween Surrealist and abstract Art. She also held temporary exhibitions o leading European artists, and o several then un-known young Americans such as Robert Motherwell, William Baziotes, Mark Rothko, David Hare, Richard Pousette-Dart,Clyord Still and Jackson Pollock, the star o the gallery, who was given his frst show there in November 94. Pollockand the others pioneered American Abstract Expressionism. One o the principal sources o this was Surrealism, which theartists encountered at Peggy Guggenheims gallery (she was married to Max Ernst, doyen o Surrealist painters, between94 and 94). More important however was the encouragement and support that Peggy Guggenheim, together with her

gallery advisor Howard Putzel, gave to the members o this nascent New York avant-garde. Peggy Guggenheim and hercollection thus played a vital role in the development o Americas frst art movement o international importance.

In 947, Peggy returned to Europe where her collection was shown or the frst time at the 948 Venice Biennale. In July 949she bought Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, on the Grand Canal in Venice, where she came to live, and where she held an exhibi-tion o sculptures in the garden. From late spring 9 on she opened her collection to the public every summer. In 99 theSolomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York invited Peggy Guggenheim to show her collection there, and it was thenthat she resolved to donate her palace and works o art to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. This had been createdin 97 by Peggy Guggenheims uncle Solomon, in order to operate his collection and museum which since 99, has beenhoused in Frank Lloyd Wrights amous museum on th Avenue.

During her -year Venetian lie, Peggy Guggenheim continued to help artists (such as Bacci and Tancredi) and to buyworks o art. She died aged 8 on December , 979. Her ashes are placed in a corner o the garden o Palazzo Venier deiLeoni, next to the place where she customarily buried her beloved dogs. Since this time, the Guggenheim Foundation hasconverted and expanded her private house into one o the fnest small museums o modern art in the world.


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THE GUGGENHEIMS

The Guggenheims originated in German-speaking Switzerland (Lengnau). An impoverished Simon Guggenheim, Peggysgreat-grandather, emigrated to Philadelphia in 847. Beginning as peddlers, but soon producing stove polish and coeeessence, Simon and his son Meyer prospered. It was Meyer who was the architect o the amily ortune. By 88 he was amillionaire, thanks to his manuacturing and importation businesses, but the Guggenheims really immense wealth camerom metals. The ortune dated rom Meyers 879 purchase o an interest in lead and silver mines in Leadville, Colorado.In 9 the Guggenheims took control o the American Smelting and Refning Company, a legend in the history o Ameri-can corporate capitalism. Beginning in 97, in partnership with J.P. Morgan and Jacob Schi, the Guggenheims orged arailroad through the tundra to mine Kennecott, a mountain in Alaska made up o about three-quarters pure copper. In 9the Guggenheims bought the Chuquicamata mine in Chile, which would yield million tons o copper. By the beginningo World War I, the Guggenheims were reported to own between 7 and 8 percent o the worlds silver, copper and lead.Born in 898, Peggy Guggenheim was the second daughter o Benjamin Guggenheim, Meyers sixth child, but her share inthe amily ortune was to be a modest one. Benjamin, the handsomest o Meyers sons, was something o a playboy. He letthe amily business in 9. When he drowned on the Titanic in April 9 (his dignifed, even heroic behavior orms part othe Titanic legend), Peggy and her mother, Florette Seligman, ound themselves mere spectators as the vast riches o the

Guggenheims grew and grew.Peggy never had unlimited unds. During the spring o 99, when she was planning her museum in London, Peggy recalled,I tried to think o ways to cut down my own personal expenses, in order to have sucient money or the projectactuallyI did not have nearly enough money or this venture as I had commitments o about ten thousand dollars a year to variousold riends and artists whom I had been supporting or years. I could not suddenly let them down or the museum.everypenny that I could raise was to be used or the museum. Peggys commitments to art required some o the qualities handeddown by her grandather Meyer determination and imagination.

THE PALAZZO

Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, begun in 748, is an unfnished palace. Its architect was Lorenzo Boschetti, whose only otherbuilding in Venice is the church o San Barnaba. A model or the completed palace exists in the Museo Correr, Venice. Itsmagnifcent classical aade would have matched that o Palazzo Corner, opposite, with the triple arch o the ground oor(which is the explanation or the pillars visible today) extended through both thepiani nobiliabove.We do not know why this Venier palace was let unfnished. Money may have run out, or some say that the powerul Corneramily blocked the completion o a building that would have obscured the view o the lagoon beyond the Dorsoduro pen-insula. Another explanation may rest with the ate o the next-door Gothic palace, which was demolished in the early 9thcentury: structural damage to this may have been caused by the deep oundations o the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni. Nor isit known how the palace came to be associated with the Leoni lions. It is said that a lion was once kept in the garden, butthe name is more likely to have arisen rom the yawning lions heads o Istrian stone which decorate the aade.In the 9s the house was owned by the amboyant Marchesa Luisa Casati, hostess to the Ballets Russes, and the subject

o portraits by artists as various as Boldini, Troubetzkoy, Man Ray and Augustus John. In July 949, Peggy Guggenheimpurchased Palazzo Venier dei Leoni rom the heirs o Viscountess Castlerosse (died 94). Palazzo Venier dei Leonis longlow aade, made o Istrian stone and set o against the trees in the garden behind, orms a welcome caesura in the statelymarch o Grand Canal palaces rom the Accademia to the Salute.


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PEGGY TIMELINE

Peggy Guggenheim 898-979

1898 Peggy Guggenheim born in New York. Her ather, Benjamin, was the sixth child o Meyer. Being the baby othe amily, Meyer did not send him to a prestigious business school like his other sons. He eventually leaves theamily business and acquires a reputation as a playboy. He dies on the Titanic in 9. As a result, Peggy andher two sisters and mother, Florette Seligman, receive a stipend rom the amily ($4,) but do not receiveequal gains rom the amily ortune. This leaves Peggy eeling like the impoverished relative o the rest o theGuggenheim amily.

1919 At years old Peggy becomes fnancially independent.

1921 Peggy begins to travel in Europe with no prior ormal training in art history. In Paris, she purchases books byBernard Berenson (an American art historian) and studies the Italian Renaissance.

1922 Peggy marries Laurence Vail (a Dada writer and artist) who was born and lived or most i his lie in France. Hewas much involved in the art scene in Paris, thus serves as Peggys entre to the avant-garde. They have twochildren together, Sindbad and Pegeen (both now deceased).Through Laurence Peggy meets Marcel Duchamp, who was to remain a lie long riend. He plays a part in thedevelopment o her artistic taste.

1929 She divorces Laurence Vail, goes to London and begins a fve-year relationship with John Holms, an English warhero and intellectual. In 94 he dies accidentally during a routine surgery. She later writes that he was the onetrue love o her lie.

1938 Peggy opens Guggenheim Jeune at Cork Street, London, a modern art gallery. She says that at the time she

was ignorant o all art that had ollowed Post-Impressionism and so leans heavily on Duchamp or assistance.He proposes artists and ideas or shows to her and suggests that she specialize in the two main tendencies omodern art, Surrealism and abstraction.The frst show is dedicated to Jean Cocteau, including drawings and urniture or his play The Knights of theRound Table. Three weeks beore the opening, the English customs reuses to release one o the works as a re-sult o its depiction o pubic hair. Peggy is told that she was only allowed to reclaim the painting i she promisednot to exhibit it to the public. She displays it in her oce and buys it or hersel.The Cocteau exhibition is ollowed by the frst show in England o Vasily Kandinskys work when he is alreadyover 7 years old. The works dated rom 9-97. While the show receives good reviews nothing sells with theexception oDominant Curve (a 9 masterpiece, now in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum) which Peggybuys. She later sells it in the belie that it is a Fascist painting.

She also has a contemporary group sculpture exhibition with artists Antoine Pevsner, Henry Moore, Henri Lau-rens, Alexander Calder, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Constantin Brancusi, Jean Arp and his wie Taeuber-Arp.This sparks another run in with customs as James B. Manson, director o the Tate Gallery, reuses to certiy theworks as art and classifes them instead as manuactured goods, incurring import duties. Peggy takes the case


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to the House o Commons and wins, resulting in a defning moment in the recognition and appreciation omodern art in the UK.Peggy buys Head and Shellby Jean Arp (PGC), ollowing her introduction to him by Duchamp, and a paintingby Delvaux (PGC) rom her neighbors in the London Gallerythese are the earliest works to enter her collection.Peggy occasionally buys one work rom her shows, anonymously, to encourage the artist. She says that without

planning to she began her collection.The gallery also holds a retrospective o Yves Tanguy. The Tanguy show is a success and rom it Peggy buys TheSun in its Jewel Case (PGC).

1939 In March Peggy gives English abstract-surrealist John Tunnard his frst one-man show and acquires two worksby him, still in the collection today.Ater a year and a hal Guggenheim Jeune closes. Peggy resolves to open a Museum o Contemporary art inLondon. The plan includes expanding the collection and establishing a rotating loan collection.Herbert Read, English art historian, poet and editor oThe Burlington Magazine is contracted to be the directoro the museum. She chooses the house o Kenneth Clark as the location. Read compiles a list o artists or anopening exhibition, later revised by Duchamp, hersel, Nelly van Doesburg and Howard Putzel. The list includes

works o Cubism, Constructivism, Purism, Suprematism, Dada, De Stijl and Surrealism. Plans or the museumare eventually abandoned dueing to World War II. This rees ounds or her collection.Peggy goes to Paris with her shopping list, acquiring art at the rate, she claimed, o a picture a day. It is a avor-able time to collect as art is going at a good price with the threat o the German invasion and the war.

1940-41 Peggy is aced with the problem o storing the works so as to not risk confscation by the Nazis. The Louvrejudges the works as too recent to be worthy o storage space. She fnds a barn near Vichy in the south o Francewhere she hides her collection. Late in 94 she moves it to the museum in Grenoble and begins the work ocataloguing. In 94 the collection is shipped to the States in crates labeled household items.Whilst staying in Marseilles waiting to return to the States she helps Varian Frys American Relie Committeewhich was enabling Jewish artists and intellectuals to escape France.July 94, Peggy arrives in New York with Max Ernst. They marry in December.

1942 With the help o Jimmy Ernst (son o Max), Inez Ferren and Andr Breton, Peggy publishes the catalogue oher collection with the titleArt of This Century.She hires Frederick Kiesler, a Viennese architect based in New York, to design the interior o gallery space thatshe has rented at West 7th Street, New York. She calls it Art o This Century. It opens October. This is thefrst time that her collection is displayed to the public. The tickets cost US $. and the proceeds went to theRed Cross.At the opening she wears one earring by Yves Tanguy representing Surrealism (a small landscape) and anotherby Alexander Calder or abstraction (a small-scale brass mobile). This demonstrates her impartiality towardsboth movements.

1943 Peggy, wanting to represent some o the young and new American talent to balance out her European collec-tion, holds a Spring Salon or Young Artists in May-June. The selection jury includes James Johnson Sweeney,Howard Putzel, Marcel Duchamp, and Piet Mondrian. Some members o the uture Abstract Expressionistgroup (Jackson Pollock, Arshile Gorky, William Baziotes, Robert Motherwell) enter work. Piet Mondrian andPutzel encourage Peggy to take on Pollock.July: she begins paying a $ monthly stipend to Pollock (through July 948). This enables him to leave his

job as an odd-job maintenance man at the Museum o Non-Objective Art, the Guggenheim gallery o Peggysuncle Solomon, and work on his art ull-time. In November Peggy holds his frst one-man show. Meanwhile shecommissions a Muralor the entrance hall in her New York apartment. It is eet long and eet high (now inthe museum o the University o Iowa, to which she gave it).Art o this Century becomes the space or New Yorks avant-garde. Peggy plays a role in the history o AbstractExpressionism, giving exhibitions to artists such as Robert Motherwell, William Baziotes, David Hare, HansHomann, Mark Rothko, Richard Pousette-Dart and Clyord Still.

1946 Peggy publishes the frst edition o her memoirs. She is so rank about hersel, her riends and her amily that her Gug-genheim uncles try to buy the whole print run. She returns to Europe and begins her search or a residence in Venice.


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INTRO TO MODERN ART

Beauty must be convulsive or cease to be, said Surrealist spokesman Andr Breton. In the twentieth century, art was ag-gressively convulsive, with styles replacing each other at an astonishing rate. Throughout this dizzying parade, one theme

was constant; art concerned itsel less with exterior visual reality and more with interior vision. As Picasso put it, the artistpaints not what you see, but what you know is there.Twentieth-century art provided the sharpest break with the past in the whole evolution o Western art. It took to an extremewhat Gustave Courbet and douard Manet began in the nineteenth century portraying contemporary lie rather thanhistorical events. Twentieth-century art not only declared all subjects air game, it also liberated orm (as in Cubism) romtraditional rules and reed color (in Fauvism) rom accurately representing an object. Modern artists defed convention witha vengeance, heeding Paul Gauguins demand or a breaking o all the old windows, even i we cut our fngers on the glass.At the core o Modernism (with this rejection o the past) was a relentless quest or radical reedom o expression. Releasedrom the need to please a patron, the artist stressed private concerns, experiences and imagination as the sole source oart. Art gradually moved away rom any pretense o rendering nature toward pure abstraction where orm, line and colordominated.

During the frst hal o the century (beore World War II) the School o Paris reigned supreme. Whether or not artists o aparticular trend lived in Paris (or were French), most movements emanated rom France. Fauvism, Cubism and Surrealismoriginated there. In the 9s the New York School o Abstract Expressionism dethroned the School o Paris. The oreronto innovation shited or the frst time to the United States, where Action Painter Jackson Pollock, as his colleague Willemde Kooning said, busted our idea o a picture all to hell.

MOVEMENTS AND MATERIALS

ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM

An American movement o the mid-94s through the 9s, Abstract Expressionism (or the New York School as it wascommonly reerred to) was characterized by a ferce attachment to sel-expression o the psyche. It was the frst movementwith joint American and European roots (the European variant dubbed Art Inormel in 9 by the French critic MichelTapi) and synthesized numerous sources rom the history o modern painting. These ranged rom the expressionism oVincent Van Gogh to the abstraction o Vasily Kandinsky, the saturated color o Henri Matisse and the poetic imagery oMir. Abstract Expressionism stressed energy, action. It used much o what had been defned as art as little more than apoint o departure. Abstract Expressionists liberated themselves rom geometric abstraction and the need to depict recog-nizable images. Given ree rein to impulse and chance, the impassioned act o painting became an absolute value in itsel.

Key artists in the collection:William Baziotes, Willem de Kooning, Adolph Gottlieb, Robert Motherwell, Jackson Pollock,Clyord Still.

Key work in the collection: Jackson Pollock,Alchemy(947)


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ABSTRACTION

In its aesthetic use, the term abstraction reers to an historical style in which representational or mimetic subject matter isreplaced by other concerns. The development o these concerns, which has been a central aspect o modern art, can bedivided into two phases: an early European phase, about 97-98, and a later postwar phase in the United States andEurope, about 94-9 (although abstract works had been created in the U.S. as early as 9).In its European phase, abstract art developed in a context o theoretical and social concerns where artworks were givenprophetic or pedagogical roles in the task o creating an ideal society. These roles were oten articulated both in maniestosassociated with various movements and in the copious writings o individual artists.The American phase o abstract art came to prominence shortly ater the end o World War II, and its stylistic dominancecontinued until the advent o Pop art in the 9s. Although this new abstract art had European ideological and stylisticroots it was soon regarded as distinctly American. This art, identifed by the term Abstract Expressionism, exhibits singularcharacteristics o extended scale, energy and immediacy.

Key artists in the collection: Vasily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, Frantisek Kupka, Robert Delaunay, Kasimir Malevich, El Lis-sitzky, Theo van Doesburg, Georges Vantongerloo, Jean Hlion. For the second phase o Abstract expressionist painters:Mark Tobey, as well as several European artists including the Italians Pizzinato, Bacci, Tancredi, Fontana.

ALUMINUM

A silvery-white, ductile metal, with good conductive and thermal properties, and used to orm many hard, light alloys whichare corrosion-resistant due to a protective oxide that orms on its surace. Aluminum can be cast and welded and is availablein a variety o colors (through a process called anodizing).

Key work in the collection: Alexander CaldersArc of Petals

ART BRUT

Coined by the artist Jean Dubuet in 94, Art Brut literally translates to raw art and reers to the art o children, Naveart (see entry) outside art, and the art o the mentally ill. Dubuet writes [it is] art at its purest and crudestspringingsolely rom its makers knack o invention and not, as always in cultural art, rom his power o aping others or changing likea chameleon. Jean Dubuet did not consider his own art in this category.

ARTE POVERA

An Italian movement o the mid-9s through the 97s; the title o Arte Povera was coined by the Italian critic GermanoCelant in 97. Arte Povera is characterized by a use o humble (everyday, non traditional) materials and metaphoricalimagery culled rom nature, history, or contemporary lie. Coupling idealism about the redemptive power o history andart with a solid grounding in the material world, Arte Povera artists typically made the clash-or reconciliation- o opposites

a source o poignancy in their work.Artist in the collection: Mario Merz

ASSEMBLAGE

A technique and not a style, assemblage is the three-dimensional counterpart o collage and involves the transormation onon-art objects and materials into sculpture through combining or constructing techniques such as gluing or welding. Thisradical new way o making sculpture turned its back on the traditional practices o carving or casting materials.

Artists in the collection: Umberto Boccioni, Joseph Cornell


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BAUHAUS

A school (99-) combining the fne and applied arts and architecture, its name (reerring to masons lodges o medievaltimes) reected the concept o workshop training as opposed to academic studio education. Such communal idealism,partly a reaction against the horrors o World War I, was very much based on the thinking o 9th-cetnury writers such asJohn Ruskin and William Morris. Its mission was nothing less than a new, all-embracing cultural and environmental paradigm a new architecture, a new vision and a new way o living that would be commensurate with the social and technologi-cal challenges o modernization. The schools geometric ormalism and expressive unctionalism, prototypes or urnitureand household objects, as well as exemplary buildings, graphic design, typography, photography, and advertising, weredisseminated throughout the world through publications, exhibitions, perormances and events as well as the commercialpromotion o its products and designs.

Artists in the collection: Vasily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Jose and Anni Albers

BRASS

Brass is the bright yellow or golden alloy o copper and zinc, in the proportion o about two parts copper to one part zinc.

The zinc makes brass stronger and harder than copper is alone. It is malleable and ductile, though variations in its composi-tion make its properties variable.

Key works in the collection: Constantin Brancusi, Maiastra and Bird in Space

BRONZE

Bronze consists o any o various alloys o copper and tin, sometimes with other metals and commonly used in casting.

Key works in the collection: Marino Marini, The Angel of The City, Alberto Giacometti, Woman with her Throat CutandStanding Woman (Leoni), Henry Moore, Three Standing Figures

COLORFIELD PAINTING

In the late 94s and early s a ew New York School (Abstract Expressionist) painters spun o a variation on Action Paint-ing where large expanses, or felds o color became the ocus. Among the main characteristics o color-feld painting areits use o colors close in tonal value and intensity, its radically simplifed compositions and the choice o very large ormats.

Artists in the collection: Mark Rothko and Clyord Still (n.b. their works in the collection pre-date the time when their artmay be considered in this category)

CONCEPTUAL ART

In Conceptual art the idea, rather than the object, is paramount. Conceptual artists reacted against the increasingly com-mercialized art world o the 9s and the ormalism o postwar art. What Conceptual artists produce are works that docu-ment their thinking and highlight that the art object is not an end in itsel. According to Joseph Kosuth Actual works arelittle more than historical curiosities. In simple terms: i a creative idea is undamental to art, then producing an actual objectprovoked by that idea is superuous. Art resides in the core concept, not the practical work.

CONSTRUCTIVISM

Constructivism (originating in Russia in 94) reers to sculpture that is made rom metal, glass, cardboard, wood or plastic(oten in combination) and that emphasizes space rather than mass and relies on the intrinsic qualities o the materials.The traditional subtractive or additive ways o making sculpture had conversely ocused on mass. Constructivism emerged

rom Georges Braque and Pablo Picassos Cubist experiments, translating the angular orms o his paintings and collagesinto three dimensions.

Key artists in the collection: Antoine Pevsner and El Lissitzky


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CONT CRAYON

A drawing medium made o compressed powdered graphite or charcoal mixed with a wax or clay base, square in cross-section. It was invented in 79 by Nicolas-Jacques Cont, who created the combination o clay and graphite in response tothe shortage o graphite caused by the Napoleonic Wars. They are now manuactured using natural pigments, clay, and abinder and are commonly ound in black, white, sanguine tones (reddish brown), as well as grey and other colors.

Work in the collection: John Tunnard, Pi

CUBISM

A major turning point in twentieth-century art, Cubism lasted in pure orm only rom 98 to 94. The style got its namerom Matisses dismissal o a Cubist landscape by Georges Braque as nothing but little cubes. Although the our truecubists Picasso, Braque, Gris and Lger broke objects into a multitude o pieces that were not actually cubes, the namestuck. Cubism liberated art by establishing, in Lgers own words that art consists o inventing and not copying. On thebrink o dissolving an object into its component parts, hints o it icker in and out o consciousness. Based on the world oappearances, Cubism delivered a multi-aceted ys-eye view o reality.

There were two orms o Cubism, Analytical and Synthetic. The frst, Analytical Cubism analyzed the orm o objects byshattering them into ragments. These works are also characterized by a palette o brown, green and grey in order to ana-lyze the orm without the distraction o bright colors. It oten involved an analysis o objects into their compound elementsand rearranging them on the canvas in a new pictorial order. The second orm, Synthetic Cubism, came in conjunction withPicasso and Braques invention o collage. From 9 to 94, joined by the Spanish painter Juan Gris, they incorporatedstenciled lettering and paper scraps into their paintings. The image was thus built up rom pre-existing elements or objects,rather than being created through a process o ragmentation. Sinthetic Cubism also saw the reintroduction o color.

Artists in the collection: Georges Braque, Albert Gleizes, Juan Gris, Fernand Lger, Louis Marcoussis, Jean Metzinger, andPablo Picasso

Key work in the collection: Pablo Picasso, The Poet

DADA

An early-twentieth-century movement (9-9), the word dada translates as hobby horse in French and yes in Slavictongues. One version o the names origin has it that in 9 the poet Tristan Tzara stuck a penknie in a dictionary at randomand it landed on the nonsensical-sounding term. The Dada artists blamed societys supposedly rational orces o scientifcand technological development or bringing European civilization to the brink o sel-destruction (World War I). They re-sponded with art that was the opposite o rational: simultaneously absurd and playul, conrontational and nihilistic, intuitiveand emotive.Their art also assaulted traditional notions o what art should be. Traditional media such as painting and sculpture wereabandoned in avor o techniques and devices such as collage, photomontage and ready-mades. Chance was credited with

a valid role in the act o creation.Key artists in the collection: Jean Arp, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Francis Picabia, Man Ray and Kurt Schwitters

DE STIJL

A Dutch movement led by painter Piet Mondrian, De Stijl (translating as The Style) artists aimed to eliminate emotionrom art and advocated instead a more severe art o pure geometry. Collaborators saw style not just as surace ornament,but as an essential ordering structure, which would unction as a sign or an ethical view o society. The common aim was tofnd laws o equilibrium and harmony that would be applicable to lie and society as well as art, and the style that is associ-ated with them is one o austere abstract clarity.

Key artists in the collection: Piet Mondrian, Theo van Doesburg, Georges Vantongerloo


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ENAMEL PAINT

A paint that air dries to a hard, usually glossy, fnish. Some enamel paints have been made by adding varnish (consistingtraditionally o a combination o drying oil, resin, and a thinner or solvent) to oil-based paints.

Work in the collection: Jackson Pollock, Alchemy

ENCAUSTIC

Encaustic painting involves using heated beeswax to which colored pigments are added. The liquid/paste is then applied toa surace usually prepared wood, though canvas and other materials are oten used.

Works in the collection: Victor Brauner, Tlventr and Consciousness of Shoch

FAUVISM

Fauvism isnt everything, Matisse remarked, only the beginning o everything. In duration, Fauvism was only a blip on

the screen o world art, lasting rom 94 to 98. As the frst major avant-garde art movement o the twentieth century,however, it kicked o the modern era with a bang. The 9 Paris exhibit that introduced Fauvism was one o those crucialmoments in art history, displaying work that made radical new use o color without reerence to actual appearance. Publicresponse was hostile and the group received their name rom a critic who called them wild beasts (auves). Far rom crazy,however, they were seeking to experiment with new ways to express their emotional response to a scene. Another inuenceon the Fauves reusal to imitate nature was their discovery o non-European tribal arts (they were among the frst to collectArican masks), which were to play a ormative role in modern art.

Artist in the collection: Amedeo Modigliani

FLUXUS

With Fluxus artists, social goals oten assumed primacy over aesthetic ones. The main aim was to upset the bourgeois rou-tines o art and lie. Early Fluxus events guerrilla theater, street spectacles, concerts o electronic music were aggressivedemonstrations o the libidinal energy and anarchy generally associated with the 9s. Rather than an alliance with popularculture, Fluxus artists sought a new culture, to be ashioned by avant-garde artists, musicians and poets.

Key artist in the collection: Yoko Ono

FUTURISM

Futurism began in 99 as a politically charged literary movement when the Italian poet F.T. Marinetti issued its maniesto,challenging artists to show courage, audacity, and revolt and to celebrate a new beauty, the beauty o speed. It embracednot only the visual arts but also architecture, music, cinema and photography. In February and April 9 fve artists signedmaniestos o the Futurist Painting: Giacomo Balla, Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carr, Luigi Russolo and Gino Severini. Fu-turism expressed the disappointment elt inItaly in advanced artistic and political circles at the apparent lack o progress the country had made since its unifcation inthe mid-9th century. Accordingly, stress was laid on modernity, and the virtues o technology, machinery and speed.Marinetti ound an ally in the ambitious, aggressive painter Boccioni, who urged painters to orsake art o the past or themiracles o contemporary lie, which he defned as railroads, ocean liners and airplanes. The key to Futurist art was move-ment, as painters combined bright Fauve colors with ractured Cubist planes to express propulsion. In his most amouspainting, The City Rises, Boccioni portrayed workers and horses bristling with his trademark lines o orce (diagonals enliv-ening the stasis o horizontals and verticals). He tried to capture not just a reeze-rame still o one instant but a cinematicsensation o ux. Crucial to the development o a mature Futurist style was exposure to Cubist orms and even collage in

Paris.Key artists in the collection: Giacomo Balla, Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carr, Luigi Russolo and Gino Severini


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GOUACHE

A type o paint consisting o pigment suspended in water. Gouache diers rom watercolor in that the particles are larger,the ratio o pigment to water is higher, and an additional, inert, white pigment such as chalk is also present. Like all watermedia, it is diluted with water. This makes gouache heavier and more opaque, with greater reective qualities.

Key works in the collection: Max Ernst, Little Machine Constructed by Minimax Dadamax in Person, Jackson Pollock, Un-titled (work on paper).

INDIA INK

A simple black ink once widely used or writing and printing, and now more commonly used or drawing, basic India ink iscomposed o a variety o fne soot known as lampblack, combined with water to orm a liquid. Binding agents such as gelatinor, more commonly shellac, may also be added, to make the ink more durable once dried.

Work in the collection: Man Ray, Silhouette

JUNK SCULPTURE

Junk sculptures are assemblages ashioned rom industrial debris. The real originator o junk sculpture is the German Dadaartist Kurt Schwitters, who began to create assemblages and collages rom trash gathered in the streets ater WWI. ByWWII the Western Nations (especially the United States) had inadvertently pioneered the production o industrial reuseon a grand scale, giving artists the objects in dumps and automobile graveyards as new media.

Artists in the collection: Kurt Schwitters and Eduardo Paolozzi (rarely on display)

METAPHYSICAL PAINTING

The term applied to the work o Giorgio de Chirico and Carlo Carr beore, during and immediately ater World War I,pittura metasica was characterized by a recognizable iconography: a fctive space was created in the painting, modeledon illusionistic but deliberately subverted perspective. In de Chiricos paintings this was presented in deep city squares andreceding arcades or claustrophobic interiors. Within these spaces classical statues and mannequins (derived rom tailorsdummies) provided a eatureless and expressionless surrogate human presence. One o de Chiricos inuences was theGerman philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, whose notion o the eternal return and the circularity o time supported his ownviews about the re-enactment o myth. His central concern was true reality (where the past recurs), which is hidden behindthe reality o appearances and visible only to the clearsighted at enigmatic moments. In his paintings de Chirico sought tounmask reality and reveal its mysterious truth.

Key artists in the collection: Giorgio de Chirico, Mario Sironi and Carlo Carr

Key works in the collection: Giorgio de Chiricos The Red Tower, Nostalgia of the Poet

MINIMALISM

The term Minimalism emerged in the writings o the critic Barbara Rose during the mid-9s. In the article, entitled ABCArt, the name o the movement was not mentioned specifcally but she reerred to art pared down to the minimum. Bythe late 9s Minimalism came to be commonly used, implying the movements goal o reducing painting and sculptureto essentials. A key moment in its origins o Minimalism was the exhibition o Robert Morris works at the Jewish Museum,New York, titled Primary Structure. In the same year Morris published a three parts essay inArtforum expanding the criticalparameters o Minimalism.The movement was more requently associated with sculpture than painting. Minimalist sculpture eliminated representa-

tional imagery, pedestals, the artists hand and oten was also produced by industrial abricators.Artist in the collection: Dan Graham


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MODERNISM

As an art historical term, modernism reers to a period dating rom roughly the 8s to the 97s and is used to describethe style and the ideology o art produced during that era, characterized by a radically new attitude toward both the pastand the present. Mid-nineteenth-century Parisian painters, notably Gustave Courbet and Edouard Manet, rejected thedepiction o historical events in avor o portraying contemporary lie. Their allegiance to the new was embodied in theconcept o the avant-garde, a military term meaning advance guard or ront line.Crucial to the development o modernism was the breakdown o traditional sources o fnancial support rom the church,the state, and the aristocratic elite. Newly independent artists were now ree to determine the appearance and content otheir art but also ree to starve in the emerging capitalist art market (the scant likelihood o sales also encouraged artists toexperiment).Modern art arose as part o Western societys attempt to come to terms with the urban, industrial, secular society that beganto emerge in the mid-nineteenth century. Modern artists challenged middle-class values by depicting new subjects such asthe celebration o technology, the investigation o spirituality and the expression o primitivism (to name a ew). Modernart was also thought by Formalist critics to progress toward purity; in the case o painting this meant a refnement o themediums essential qualities o color and atness.

NAVE ART

Nave art is produced by artists who lack ormal training but are oten obsessively committed to their art making. Their workoten appears to be innocent, childlike and spontaneous as those artists were able (according to Jean Dubuet) to tap theimagination without sel-censorship.

Artists in the collection: Jean Dubuet, Pegeen, Hirshfeld

NEOPLASTICISM

A term coined by Piet Mondrian and frst used in 99, it gained currency as a descriptive term applied to Mondrianstheories o art and to his style o painting, in which a grid, delineated by black lines, was flled with blocks o primary color.Neo-Plasticism applied to all aspects o design that were part o daily lie. The evanescence o natural shapes was reducedto a ew essential expressive means: horizontal and vertical lines, areas o primary color and black and white. For Mondriana composition had to present a dynamic balance, in which the internal was externalized and the external internalized.

Key artist in the collection: Piet Mondrian

NEOPRIMITIVISM

A term used to describe a general aspiration towards primitivism in the work o the wider Russian avant-garde during the pe-riod o 9-94. They wished to return to their national artistic origins and to express them anew in painterly orm. Conse-

quently they looked back to traditional art orms or inspiration and spurned European fne art traditions o representation.Artist in the collection: Marc Chagall. Also Morris Hirshfeld (nave).

OIL PAINT

Slow-drying paint that consists o particles o pigment suspended in a drying oil, commonly linseed oil. The viscosity o thepaint may be modifed by the addition o a solvent such as turpentine and varnish may be added to increase the glossinesso the dried flm.


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ORPHISM

A term coined by Guillaume Apollinaire to describe the art o Robert Delaunay and others in 9, it was conceived o as anoshoot o Cubism in which a more lyrical use o color was evident than in the relatively austere works o Picasso, Braqueand Gris. Apollinaire described Orphism as a non-representational color abstraction in which new structures were createdentirely rom the artists imagination, without reerence to the visual sphere. Although short-lived, Orphism was the frstmovement devoted explicitly to non-representational color abstraction.

Key artists in the collection: Robert Delaunay, Frantisek Kupka

POSTMODERNISM

Many theorists believe that the transition rom modernism to postmodernism signifed an epochal shit in consciousnesscorresponding to momentous changes in the contemporary social and economic order. Just as modern culture was drivenby the need to come to terms with the industrial age, so postmodernism has been ueled by the desire or accommoda-tion with the electronic age. Following World War II, most modern art making and art theory grew more reductive, moreprescriptive, more oriented toward a single, generally abstract mainstream.

Modernisms unyielding optimism and idealism gave way to the broader, albeit darker emotional range o postmodernism.One distinctly new aspect o postmodernism is the dissolution o traditional categories. The divisions between art, popu-lar culture and even the media have been eroded by many artists. Perhaps the clearest distinction between modern andpostmodern art, however, involves the sociology o the art world. The booming art market o the 98s atally underminedthe modern, romantic image o the artist as an impoverished and alienated outsider. The postmodern phenomenon oretrospective exhibitions or acclaimed artists in their thirties puts heavy pressure on artists to succeed at an early age andrequently results in compromises between career concerns and artistic goals, a problem unknown to the generations omodern artists who preceded them.

PRIMITIVISM

Primitive art typically reers to art rom pre classical or non-Western sources. The ideal o primitivism recalls the sentimentalnotion o the Noble Savage as a superior being untainted by civilization, which was popularized by the eighteenth-centuryFrench philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Imperial conquests also brought exotic oreign cultures to expositions and airsin the nineteenth century, oering non-naturalistic alternatives to the illusionistic tradition that had prevailed in Western artsince the Renaissance.

PURISM

French movement in painting and architecture, Purism was an aesthetic programme initiated in 98 by Le Corbusier as areaction to Cubist painting and ideas that dominated the avant-garde art in France beore World War I. Above all, Purist

philosophy is characterized by an admiration or the beauty and purity o the orm o the machine. While they embracedmuch Cubist subject matter, particularly the celebration o the ordinary, mass-produced object, they emphasized the ge-ometry, simplicity, proportion and harmony o those objects, rather than their dissection or analysis.

Key artist in the collection: Amde Ozenant

STAINLESS STEEL

A steel alloy with a minimum o . or % (but as much as %) chromium content by mass. The chromium orms a layeron the surace when exposed to oxygen. This layer is too thin to be visible and is impervious to water and air, protecting themetal beneath. Also, this layer quickly re-orms when the surace is scratched. Stainless steel does not stain, corrode, or rustas easily as ordinary steel.

Key work in the museum: David Smith, Sentinel V


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SUPREMATISM

A term coined in 9 by Kazimir Malevich or a new system o art. The term itsel implied the supremacy o this new artin relation to the past. Malevich saw it as purely aesthetic and concerned only with orm, ree rom any political or socialmeaning.He stressed the purity o shape, particularly o the square, and he regarded Suprematism as primarily an exploration ovisual language comparable to contemporary developments in writing. He asserted that a non-objective and apolitical art,which used only geometric shapes and a limited color range, was eternally enduring and capable o transcending religion byachieving the supremacy o pure emotion.

Key artist in the collection: Kazimir Malevich

SURREALISM

Surrealism dominated avant-garde art during the second quarter o the twentieth century. The term was coined by theFrench poet Guillaume Apollinaire in 97 in reerence to his drama Les Mamelles de Tiresias. The meaning o the term wasarticulated by the French poet Andr Breton in the frst Maniesto o Surrealism in 94. Breton defned it as pure psychic

automatism by which it is intended to expressthe true unction o thought. Thought dictated in the absence o all controlexerted by reason, and outside all aesthetic or moral preoccupations.Surrealism is a direct outgrowth o Dada, with Dada contributing such essentials as experimentation with chance and ac-cident, interest in ound objects, biomorphism (ambiguous and organic shapes) and automatism. The Surrealists gave theseDada concerns a psychological twist, helping to popularize the Freudian ascination with sex, dreams and the unconscious.During the 9s two styles o Surrealist painting developed. The frst was the automatism avored by Mir and Masson.Lyrical and highly abstract, their compositions present loosely drawn fgures or orms in shallow space. The second is exem-plifed by the bizarre, hallucinatory images o Tanguy, Dal and Ernst, which are rendered in a precise, realist style (VeristicSurrealism), or which pittura metafsica (de Chirico) was an important source.

Key artists in the collection: Jean Arp, Victor Brauner, Salvador Dal, Paul Delvaux, Max Ernst, Ren Magritte, Andr Mas-son, Joan Mir, Man Ray and Yves Tanguy

Key work in the collection: Ren Magritte, Empire of Light

TEMPERA

A permanent ast drying painting medium consisting o colored pigment mixed with a water-soluble binder medium (usu-ally a glutinous material such as egg yolk). Tempera paintings are very long lasting, exemplifed by the act that until around it was the primary method o painting until it was superseded by the invention o oil painting.

Work in the collection: Andr Masson, Bird Fascinated by a Snake


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A 20TH CENTURY TIMELINE

1900 Sigmund Freud publishes The Interpretation of Dreams

1904 Russo-Japanese War1905 Einstein announces relativity theory; First Russian Revolution; First Fauve exhibition

1907 Picasso paints Les Demoiselles dAvignon (Museum o Modern Art, New York)

1908 Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque invent Cubism

1909 The Italian writer Filippo Tommaso Marinetti launches Futurism in the Futurist Maniesto, published in Le Figaro(Paris)

1910 Futurists issue The Technical Manifesto of Futurist Painting

1911 Picasso paints The Poet(PGC); Marc Chagall paints Rain (PGC). These, along with some works on paper byKupka, are the earliest works in the Collection

1912 Titanic sinks; Brancusi creates Maiastra (PGC); Umberto Boccioni issues the Technical Manifesto of FuturistSculpture; Marcel Duchamp paints Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2; Apollinaire coins the term Orphism;Robert Delaunay paints Windows Open Simultaneously 1st Part, 3rd Motif(PGC).

1913 Giorgio de Chirico paints The Red Tower(PGC); The frst Armory Show in New York ocially known as the Inter-national Exhibition o Modern Art; Umberto Boccioni creates Unique Forms of Continuity in Space in plaster

1914 Gino Severini paints Sea=Dancer(PGC); World War I declared

1915 Italy enters World War I on the side o the Allies; Piet Mondrian paints Ocean 5 (PGC)

1915-23 Dada

1916 Battle o Verdun

1917 Bolshevik revolution in Russia; Lenin leads Russian Revolution and destroys the Tsarist autocracy; U.S. entersWorld War I; De Stijl ounded; Marcel Duchamp creates Fountain

1918End o World War I

1919 Marcel Duchamp creates L.H.O.O.Q.; Bauhaus ormed


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1922 Fascist revolution in Italy; Mussolini takes over; Peggy marries Laurence Vail

1923-40 Constantin Brancusi creates his Bird in Space series

1924 Surrealists maniesto by Andr Breton

1928 Picasso paints The Studio (PGC); Joan Mir paints Dutch Interior II(PGC)

1929 Stock market crashes in New York

1931 Empire State Building completed in New York; Salvador Dali paints The Persistence of Memory.

1931-32 Salvador Dali paints Birth of Liquid Desires (PGC)

1932 Alberto Giacometti creates Woman With Her Throat Cut(PGC)

1933Franklin D. Roosevelt becomes president o the United States o America; Adol Hitler becomes Chancellor oGermany. First Nazi concentration camp opens

1935 Anti-Jewish Nuremberg Laws introduced in Germany

1936 Spanish Civil War begins; Mussolini orms axis with Nazi Germany; Alberto Giacometti creates Woman Walking(PGC)

1937 Japan invades China; Yves Tanguy paints The Sun in its Jewel Case (PGC); Pablo Picasso paints Guernica

1938-39 Piet Mondrian paints Composition No. 1 with Grey and Red 1938/ Composition with Red 1939 (PGC)

1939 World War II begins with the German invasion o Poland

1940 Italy enters World War II on the side o Germany; Max Ernst paints The Attirement of the Bride (PGC)

1941 Atlantic Charter; Italy declares war on USSR; Alexander Calder createsArc of Petals (PGC); U.S. enters WorldWar II ater Japan attacks Pearl Harbor

1942 Jackson Pollock paints The Moon Woman (PGC)

1943 King Victor Emanuel III imprisons Mussolini; Armistice signed with the Allies; Italy declares war on Germany;Penicillin introduced as a drug; Peggy holds Jackson Pollocks frst solo exhibition atArt of this Century

1944 Allies invade Germany

1945 U.S. drops atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; World War II ends; Mussolini, who had been rescuedrom prison by Germans, is captured and executed by Italian partisans; Decolonialisation o Asia and Arica;United Nations ounded; Jean Dubuet coins tern LArt Brut

1946 First assembly o United Nations; Nuremberg trials; Italy becomes a Republic; Robert Coates (American writerand art critic) coins the term Abstract Expressionism

1947 India gains independence rom colonialism; Alberto Giacometti creates Standing Woman (Leoni) (PGC),Jackson Pollock paintsAlchemy(PGC)

1948 Mahatma Ghandi assassinated; New Italian constitution; State o Israel ounded; UN launches the declarationo Human Rights; Marino Marini createsAngel of the City(PGC); The Venice Biennale begins again ater a six


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year break during WWII, the work o the European Avant-Garde is shown or the frst time, including the worko Picasso at the 4th Biennale

1949 Cold War in eect; NATO ounded; Communists in China, led by Mao, orm the Peoples Republic o China

1950-53 Korean War

1951 Color TV frst broadcast

1952 Harold Rosenberg coins term Action Painting

1953-54 Rene Magritte paints Empire of Light(PGC)

1955 Italy joins the United Nations

1956 Frank Lloyd Wright builds the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation building in New York; Jackson Pollock dies

in a car accident whilst driving drunk1957 First Space Satellite launched (Sputnik); European Economic Community Founded, Italy is one o six ounding

member states

1958 NASA is ounded in the United States

1961 Berlin Wall built; Adol Eichmann tried in Jerusalem or crimes against humanity; the Soviet Union launch thefrst man into space

1963 John F. Kennedy assassinated in Dallas, Texas

1965 US sends frst troops to Vietnam

1968 Inamous student riots in Paris cause the collapse o the government under President Charles de Gaulle; MartinLuther King assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee

1969 Neil Armstrong becomes the frst man to walk on the moon

1971 VCR invented

1972 Terrorist attacks at Munich Olympic games

1973US pulls out o Vietnam; Art collector Robert Scull sells works rom his collection or $,4,9artistspicketed outside the auction as they would receive nothing o the phenomenal profts raised on works Scull hadbought cheaply directly rom the artists.

1974 President Nixon resigns ater US presidency; Terracotta army discovered in China

1975 Pol Pot becomes leader o Cambodia until 979. Ethnic cleansing under the Khmer Rouge kills up to . millionpeople

1978 Pope John Paul II elected pope, frst personal computers become available

1979 Sony Walkman invented; Mother Theresa given Nobel Peace Prize; Margaret Thatcher elected frst emale

Prime Minister in United Kingdom

Interns Guide 2010 Mail

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