History of 20th Century ArtWeek 4

1920 - 1929

World War I 1914-1918

Stormtroops Advancing Under Gasetching and aquatint by Otto Dix, 1924

Battle of the Somme, Soldier Carrying Casualty, 1916

Trench & mechanized warfare More than 9 million deaths

1920: “Art is Dead!” - Dada Fair held in Berlin

• Dada Berlin formed as attack on bourgeois German society

• Politically mobilized & aligned with the Communist party which was found in Germany in 1919

• Shared distaste for earlier 20th century avant-garde movements (Expressionism & spirituality, Cubism’s emphasis on aesthetics, Futurism & typography) , though influenced by them

• Revolutionized exhibition practice by having a fair (“a parody of the display of commodities”)

• Photomontage emerges as a major strategy to deconstruct the image & dismantle Weimar consumer culture (driven by commodity images and advertizing)

Hoch andHaussman

Dummy with a pig’s headdressed as German officer

Hannah Hoch

• The “It Girl” of a circle of male artists in Berlin Dada

• Demonstrates major tenets of Berlin Dada (anti-aesthetic, illogical, non-hierarchical, politically driven and left wing)

• Images clipped and collaged together with no apparent formal logic

• Grotesque juxtapositions, distortions of scale

• To disrupt and make illegible mass-produced images & texts (magazines, etc)

• Inventory of major German figures (Einstein, Friedrich Ebert, Kathe Kollwitz (a German Expressionist artist), Marx, Lenin) with Dada sayings written throughout (“Dada is not an art trend”)

• Major Berlin Dadaists in lower right quadrant, including Hoch above map of European countries where women can vote Hannah Hoch, Cut with a Kitchen Knife through

the Beer Belly of the Weimar Republic, 1919

“..from an iconically rendered narrative to a purely structural deployment of textual material” – Art Since 1900

Cubist Collage vs. Dada Photomontage

Picasso, Glass and Bottle of Suze, 1912 Hannah Hoch, Cut with a Kitchen Knife through the Beer Belly of the Weimar Republic, 1919

John Heartfield – A New Logic of Photomontage

• Also a Berlin Dadaist• Anglicized his German name to protest

German nationalism and anti-British sentiment during WWI

• Designer for AIZ (widely circulated Communist publication); images protested against emerging fascist movements (particularly in Germany before Hitler elected Chancellor)

• Developed more direct, aesthetically cohesive photomontage technique through airbrushing (vs. chaotic early photomontage)

• As “communicative action” (toward just democracies and seeking emancipation from authoritative political systems)

• To appeal to working class, to mobilize • Anonymous “fat cat” behind him, mocking

the Nazi salute as a plea for cash (Nazism funded by big business to defeat a Communist proletarian revolution) Heartfield, The Meaning of the Hitler Salute: Little Man Asks

for Big Gifts. Motto: Millions Stand Behind Me!, from AIZ, No. 26, 1932

Dada in Film

Entr’acte1924

By Rene Clair

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1G39B3ECZGA&feature=related

1923 – The Bauhaus holds first publicexhibition in Weimar Germany• Like Berlin Dada, the Bauhaus begin with

the Weimar Republic in 1919 and ended with it, in 1933 when Hitler shut it down

• Inspired by Arts & Crafts movement around turn of the century (creative collab. between art & industry)

• To unite fine & applied arts (gesamtkunstwerk)

• Socialist and humanitarian organization; championed the worker

• Walter Gropius its first director• Viewed the Gothic cathedral as a precedent

and metaphor• To rebuild the world after it had been

destroyed by war?

Together let us desire, conceive and create the new structure of the future, which will embrace architecture and sculpture and painting in one unity, and which will one day rise toward heaven from the hands of a million workers like the crystal symbol of a new faith. – Gropius, Bauhaus manifesto, 1919

Ruins of Cathedral ofSt. Quentin, France, 1918

Lyonel FeiningerCathedral of the Future1919, woodcut

Kurt SchwittersMerzbau: The Cathedral of

Erotic Misery1923-

Hannover, Germany

"Becoming absorbed in art is like going to church."

Bauhaus – 1919 - 1922

• Focused on fundamentals of materials (natural) and arts & crafts

• Two parts to curriculum: 1) instruction in craft workshops, led by “workshop masters” (sculpture, carpentry, metal, pottery, weaving, etc); 2) instruction in artistic “form problems,” led by “form masters,” (Paul Klee, Kandinsky, Itten)

• Early Form Masters (e.g. Itten, who taught Vorkers course) examined the mystical qualities of natural forms, the psychology of color, and used Old Master works as models Johannes Itten, The Beginning, 1916

Paul KleeAngelus Novus

1920

Bauhaus – 1923 on – From Medievalist to Industrialist

• Laszlo Maholy-Nagy takes over Vorkers course; school transformed into a Constructivist model which embraced new media and industrial technologies

• Maholy-Nagy self-taught, made photomontages and kinetic metal constructions with made-to-order parts

• To align art & industry; goal of functional, inexpensive, and beautifully designed products

• Made manifest in move to industrial city of Dessau where transformed to an “institute of design”

Walter Gropius, Bauhaus (exterior), 1925-26

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVnF9A3azSA&feature=related

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The Bauhaus Today

Marianne Brandt, Kandem table lamp for Korting & Mathiesen, 1928

IKEA Forsa lampMies van der Rohe, 860-880 Lakeshore Drive, 1948-51, Chicago

1924 – Andre Breton publishes first issue of La Revolution Surrealiste

• Longest lasting artistic revolution in the 20th century, from 1920s-60s

• To invest everything in ordinary outer life with poetry of the inner life, to make the ordinary extraordinary

• Engaged in a study of how the unconscious mind could be used to affect reality

• Founded Bureau of Surrealist Research in 1924; manifesto issued same year

Surrealism proposes a gathering of the greatest possible number of experimental elements, for a purpose that cannot yet be perceived. All those who have the means to contribute…are urgently requested to come forward: let them shine the light on the genesis of invention, or propose a new system of psychic investigation or freely criticize morality or simply entrust us with their most curious dreams. – Bureau statement to press

Man Ray, Waking Dream Séance, 1924

The Circle of Influence

• Movement self-consciously rooted in history (art, literature, etc); Raphael & Dostoevsky pictured above

• Also looked to non-traditional art forms (popular imagery, art of the insane – Hans Prinzhorn published Artistry of the Mentally Ill in 1922)

• Indebted to Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams and in exploring subconscious desires, however immoral, and the landscape of the mind

• Games and techniques for accessing the subconscious (automatism, frottage, fumage, etc)

Poe is Surrealist in adventure.

Baudelaire is Surrealist in morality.

Rimbaud is Surrealist in the way he lived, and elsewhere.

Mallarmé is Surrealist when he is confiding.

Jarry is Surrealist in absinthe.

Nouveau is Surrealist in the kiss.

-From Breton’s Manifesto of Surrealism, 1924

Max Ernst, A Friends’ Reunion, 1922

The Exquisite Corpse

Take one sheet of paper and mark it off in 4-5 equal sections. You must decide beforehand the "rule" or order of types of words that will dictate each person's participation (i.e. Noun, verb, adjective, noun, adverb, preposition, etc.). You will then pass the sheet of paper from person to person. Without letting others see what he/she is writing, each person will write down a word according to the rule, then fold over the paper so the person who follows cannot see what they're writing. When you’re finished, each group will look at what they have collectively written, and discuss what the implications are and what significance this game has for the intentions of Surrealists. At the end of the exercise, I'll ask each group to read the "sentence" they've created and to share their ideas

Yves Tanguy, Joan Miro et al, Exquisite Corpse, 1928

Surrealism. n.: Psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express – verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner – the actual functioning of thought. Dictated by thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern. - Manifesto of Surrealism, 1924

Art & Automatism

• Ernst called this “collage painting” most important contribution to surrealism

• Recalls fever-vision or hallucination of a bird in wood grain next to childhood bed

• Nightingale represents ominous presence or even death

• Faceless man (abducting child?) reaches for doorknob attached to frame (where does it lead?)

• Miro’s work shows a biomorphic automatism

• Suggests organic forms (people kissing) but introduces decorative abstraction

Ernst, Two Children Are Threatened by a Nightingale1924

Joan Miro, The Kiss, 1924

The Hundred HeadlessWoman

Max Ernst, Elephant Celebes (detail), 1921

Man Ray, Untitled (published in “La Revolution Surrealiste”), 1924

Rene Magritte, Le Viol, 1934

Hans Bellmer, La Poupee, ca. 1935

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7633509394552540790#

L’Age d’Or1930Luis Bunuel

Surrealism & The Uncanny

• Breton discovered this in a Parisian flea market (found object)

• Recognized it as a fulfillment of an automatic idea he was thinking of cendrier Cendrillon (Cinderella ashtray)

• The spoon infinitely redoubles itself (spoon is a slipper with a slipper for a heel and so on)

• Represents “objective chance” that triggers a desire or something already known to the person who discovers it (to Breton, this desire was for love)

• An extraordinary, strange or mysterious experience (the uncanny)

“…beautiful as the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on a dissecting table” – Lautreamont, 19th century

Breton, Slipper-Spoon, 1934

1925 – New Objectivity in Weimar Germany

• First exhibition of these new “magical realists” in 1925

• Organized by Hartlaub, the curator, who observed a return to figuration

• Signals end of German Expressionism & Dada• Reflects political turmoil, social disorganization

and disillusionment in early years of Weimar Republic

• Chronicled rise of fascism & corrupt ruling class in Germany (Grosz)

• Captured thriving artist bohemian society (Schad)

• Hartlaub recognized a tension between old world classicism (Ingrismus - seen in Picasso’s work) and Verismus (realism) in the above artists’ works

• Here all members of military, church and state are corrupt & grotesquely rendered

• Borrow from Dadaist collage aesthetic combined with painterly objectivity

George Grosz, Pillars of Society, 1926

I drew and painted from a spirit of contradiction, and attempted in my work to convince the world that this world is ugly, sick and mendacious’ - Grosz, 1924

Nazi officerw/ apocalypticscene comingfrom head

Politician with steaming pile of feces

Priest blessingthe army

Max Beckmann

• Scene of ruthless torture at end of WWI

• Expressionist angularity & compressed space adds to sense of aggression and violence

• German revolutionary on far right revealing/concealing scene

• Grosz & Beckmann both German soldiers in WWI; later turned against war

• Would later be dubbed a Degenerate Artist & forced to flee (first to Amsterdam, then St. Louis)

Beckmann, Night, 1918-19

BeckmannSelf-Portraitin Tuxedo1927

Weimar Bohemians

What we are showing is that art is still there…it is alive despite a cultural situation that seems hostile to the essence of art as other epochs have rarely been…thus artists disillusioned, sobered, often resigned to the point of cynicism having nearly given up on themselves after a moment of unbounded, nearly apocalyptic hope….have begun to ponder what is most immediate, certain, and durable: truth and craft. – Hartlaub, exhibition statement

Christian Schad, Self-Portrait, 1927

Schad, Agosta "the Winged One" and Rasha "the Black Dove”, 1929

Modernist Sculpture

Constantin BrancusiSelf-Portrait, 1933-34

Brancusi, The Kiss, 1916

Auguste Rodin, The Kiss, 1889

Nothing can grow under the shade of big trees. – Brancusi on Rodin

1927 – Brancusi on Trial: “It’s a Bird!”• Brancusi vs. U.S. (Oct.

1927)• Customs officer (also an

amateur artist) rejected Steichen’s classification of sculpture as art & charged import duty (called ‘kitchen utensil’)

• Based on previous decision that declared that art must resemble its subject

• Decision appealed and it went to trial (Brancusi did not attend)

• Brancusi’s friends called to testify on his behalf, including a lawyer collector who had secured duty-free imports on art

• After debate as to the nature of art (is it beautiful?), the name of the sculpture (pictorial nominalism) and how it should affect viewer (emotionally), the judge ruled in Brancusi’s favor

The object now under consideration ... is beautiful and symmetrical in outline, and while some difficulty might be encountered in associating it with a bird, it is nevertheless pleasing to look at and highly ornamental, and as we hold under the evidence that it is the original production of a professional sculptor and is in fact a piece of sculpture and a work of art according to the authorities above referred to, we sustain the protest and find that it is entitled to free entry. - Judge Waite

Brancusi, Bird in Space, 1928

Brancusi, Princess X, 1915-16

1927 - Meanwhile, Across the Atlantic…

• American artists inspired by “machine aesthetic”, particularly Charles Sheeler & Ford Motors

• Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) opens in 1929 to showcase modernist art in Europe

• Traced lineage to Post-Impressionism (Cezanne, etc) & Cubism

• Alfred Barr hired as first director; school in radical European modernism (DeStijl, Bauhaus, etc)

• MoMA’s exhibitions became the standard for modern art museums (focus on painting & sculpture, isolating the works on pristine white walls)

Diagram of modern art movements 1890-1935, 1935

Precisionism

• Seems to support Duchamp’s statement that America’s greatest works are “her plumbing and her bridges”

• NYC as beacon of new industrial age• Celebration of American industry (Five panels from L to R: The Port, The White Way I

(Manhattan avenues), The Prow (skyscrapers), The White Way II (Broadway), The Bridge (Brooklyn Bridge)

• Formatted as altarpiece to suggest industry as new religion?• Combines Cubist and Futurist aesthetics

Joseph Stella, Voice of the City: New York Interpreted, 1920-22, 7+ ft. tall

Charles Sheeler

• Received commission to photograph River Rouge Plant for Ford Motors outside of Detroit

• 23 buildings and 93 miles of track

• Made series of photos, then paintings inspired by them

• Completed 32 official photos, 9 of which published in magazines including Vanity Fair

• One had caption “an American altar of the God-Objective of Mass Production”

• Portrays industry as divinely ordained and in harmony with nature

• Anonymously controlled model of efficiency

Charles Sheeler, American Landscape, 1930

man nearly absent

Smoke merges with clouds

Plant reflected in river

The Course of Empire

Thomas Cole, The Course of Empire: Desolation, 1835 Yves Marchand, Romain Meffre, The Ruins of Detroit, 2010

Georgia O’Keeffe

• O’Keeffe would begin working in this Precisionist fashion when living in NYC

• Abandoned it when left for American Southwest

• Applied modernist formal concerns (abstraction, reduction, cropping) to organic naturalism

• Feminizes the masculine Precisionist view of the city?

Alfred Stieglitz Georgia O’Keeffe1918

Georgia O’Keeffe, Black Iris III, 1926