KVB102 Modernism Flashcards
Pablo Picasso,1912
L’Aficionado
Oil on canvas
Cubism - Flat two-dimensional surface, away from traditional perspective, foreshortening, modelling that art should imitate nature
- Part of the transition to synthetic cubism.
- Nimes, ole, bullfighter written in work
-monochromatic scale brown and tan hues in order not to distract the viewer from the structure of the form
Georges Braque, 1908
Grand Nu
Oil on Canvas
Cubism-Flat two-dimensional surface, away from traditional perspective, foreshortening, modelling that art should imitate nature
-Thick outlines and simplified surface made the perspective shallower
-Response to Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon
Juan Grid, 1914
Breakfast
papier collé (collage of paster papers, gouche and oil)
Synthetic Cubism
-breakfast table as a vertiginous collision of perspectives and methods of representation
-two types of mechanically printed, imitation wood-grain paper evoke the table’s surface and legs
-real wallpaper suggests the background wall. -These printed sheets, in addition to vibrant blue and white papers and wedges of painted canvas, fit together in a tightly interlocking structure.
- objects are drawn from different angles, including cups and saucers, an eggcup and spoon, and a coffeepot. Modeled in high relief, these elements display a three-dimensionality that stands in stark contrast to the papers’ flatness.
-printed packaging label and newspaper clipping. Bearing the word “GRIS,” it serves as a kind of signature.
Ernst Kirchner, 1913
Street Scene in Berlin
Expressionism - jarring colours, rapid rough brushwork, use of vivid colour and brushstrokes to exaggerate emotions and feeling, focused on capturing emotions and feelings and rather than what the subject actually looks like
-Showed influences from Post-Impressionism, Fauvism and Symbolism
-painted in a lonely period of Kirchners life after Brücke group disbanded
- two prostitutes strolling the streets, surrounded by furtively glancing men
-prostitutes as a symbol of the modern city
-intense, clashing colors heighten the excitement and anxiety, and the tilted horizon destabilizes the scene.
Erich Heckel, 1914
In a Lunatic Asylum
Expressionism - jarring colours, rapid rough brushwork, use of vivid colour and brushstrokes to exaggerate emotions and feeling, focused on capturing emotions and feelings and rather than what the subject actually looks like
-Showed influences from Post-Impressionism, Fauvism and Symbolism
-depicts four inmates confined to a mental institution
-squalid and disheveled man in the foreground on the left may well be suffering from a depressive disease now treatable with drugs and not requiring institutionalization
-one listening on the right by applying his ear to the partition or wall could be a paranoid schizophrenic.
-Two other men are shown in the background and through a window we catch a glimpse of what may well be the women’s section.
Franz Marc, 1912
Deer in a Monastery Garden
Expressionism - jarring colours, rapid rough brushwork, use of vivid colour and brushstrokes to exaggerate emotions and feeling, focused on capturing emotions and feelings and rather than what the subject actually looks like
-Showed influences from Post-Impressionism, Fauvism and Symbolism
-The Primary colors of blue represented the spiritual within himself and masculinity, yellow represents the sun and femininity and red the passion, love and vulnerability.
-The deer is posed in the center of the garden at one with her surroundings while radiating purity and absolute harmony.
Umberto Boccioni, 1911
The Street Enters the House
oil on cavnas
Futurism - a focus on the technical progress of the modern machine age, dynamism, speed, energy, vitality and change
- Composition is very chaotic, buildings fold down onto the construction site
-three women peering into the site (futurism has scorn for women) disdain for femininity which is the romantic, the domestic
-Scaffolding - everything is in the process of being made space is in a constant flux
Giacomo Ball, 1912
Dog on a Leash
oil on canvas
Futurism -a focus on the technical progress of the modern machine age, dynamism, speed, energy, vitality and change
- Study of movement
- Dachshund was seen as the Epitomy of speed
- Low lying, to the ground
- Looks like its moving a lot faster than it is
- Photograph reference (really cropped and looking at the ground)
- As viewers of the work we get the idea that we are looking down at the dog, split shot
- Lots of repetition in work
- Convey speed and urgency - energy of modern life
- Animal companionship verses the working animal, a very modern interpretation
- Inference of blurring through the repetition of legs and tails
- Luxury of identity - luxury of owning an animal. Was becoming more of a middle class
- Dauxhound was associated with an upper class society, so seeing it with a middle class person is a very modern thing
- Deep blue tones, different tonality happening in the movement. Opacity and texturing of the shoes and shadows
- Almost mathematical in terms of the legs moving
- Capturing a single moment with a series of different planes
Gino Severini, 1915
Armoured Train
oil on canvas
Futurism- a focus on the technical progress of the modern machine age, dynamism, speed, energy, vitality and change.
- Mechanisation of the human form, cannon is combining with the people
- Cruxifix thats happening within the train. All about destroying idols, yet they are creating their new idols and religions (futurism) hypocritical
-Ray of light shooting out of the canon, trying to purify the land
-Rayinism (rays of light) seen a lot in religious works
-deep shadows
-eye is drawn to the canon as a focal point, direction that the train is following - train is in flux - no end or begning
- Viewer is getting pushed into the artwork, standing on balcony looking over. inspired by Severinis view from his studio which looked out onto train year where trains would carry men and amo
El Lissitzky, 1920
Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge
Constructivism- style that emerged in Russia. rejected mimetic representation and was a consistent form of geometric abstract art, which as reflected in its name, was characterised by a high level of technical and mathematical perfection. The Constructivist avant-garde movement also served a social function, in that it was intended to put architecture, painting and sculpture in the service of society, as universal and collective art. Constructivism was about an entirely new approach to making objects, one which sought to abolish the traditional artistic concern with composition, and replace it with ‘construction.’ The movement called for a careful technical analysis of modern materials, and it was hoped that this investigation would eventually yield ideas that could be put to use in mass production, serving the ends of a modern, Communist society.
-one of Lissitzky’s earliest attempts at propagandistic art.
- He produced this and other politically charged work in support of the Red Army shortly after the Bolsheviks had waged their revolution of 1917.
-The red wedge symbolized the revolutionaries, who were penetrating and killing the anti-Communist White Army. The white background depicts a bright future.
Vladimir Tatlin, 1919
Monument to the Third International: Sketch of Indirect Axis
Constructivism-style that emerged in Russia. rejected mimetic representation and was a consistent form of geometric abstract art, which as reflected in its name, was characterised by a high level of technical and mathematical perfection. The Constructivist avant-garde movement also served a social function, in that it was intended to put architecture, painting and sculpture in the service of society, as universal and collective art. Constructivism was about an entirely new approach to making objects, one which sought to abolish the traditional artistic concern with composition, and replace it with ‘construction.’ The movement called for a careful technical analysis of modern materials, and it was hoped that this investigation would eventually yield ideas that could be put to use in mass production, serving the ends of a modern, Communist society.
-The original Monument has not survived and is known only from photographs, but it was never intended to be a durable object.
-It was a 20-foot-tall wooden model for an enormous structure that was never constructed, in part because the material and technological resources required to build it successfully were unavailable in post-revolutionary Russia.
-It is both a symbol of exalted utopian goals and an ironic monument to the economic and technological limitations of the early Soviet state.
-Its design consists of a contracting double helix that spirals upward, supported by a huge diagonal girder. Inside this external metal, structure are four geometric volumes that were intended to revolve at different speeds.
Piet Mondrain, 1915
Pier and Ocean V
Charcoal and watercolor on paper
de Stijl-Clean lines, right angles, and primary colors characterized this aesthetic and art movement expressed via architecture and paintings. De Stijl art was envisioned by its creators as a universal visual language appropriate to the modern era, a time of a new, spiritualized world order.
- Mondrian used Cubism to forge his approach to abstraction,
-Mondrian regarded the vertical and horizontal lines as the basic oppositional principles, which could effectively interact to yield a union that symbolises the state of universal harmony.
-He claimed that the Cubism approach helped him to approach the truth with far reaching closeness and therefore be able to abstract everything until he arrived at the fundamental quality of the objects of his interest.
-In Ocean 5, Mondrian’s source is evidently found in the natural world, specifically in the ocean wave motions as they come into contact with the breakwater.
-He, however, succeeded to reduce the signs of this source into the most basic pictorial form.
-He determined his stroke by their structural function instead of their descriptive potential.
Bart van der Leck, 1918
The Horseman
Oil on Canas
de Stijl-Clean lines, right angles, and primary colors characterized this aesthetic and art movement expressed via architecture and paintings. De Stijl art was envisioned by its creators as a universal visual language appropriate to the modern era, a time of a new, spiritualized world order.
-he soon fell out with Mondrian and the other De Stijl artists, and began to include figurative elements in his work once more
-Published the horseman as his own manifesto
-horse and rider are clearly recognisable despite the considerable degree of abstraction.
-He transformed his large panes of colour into smaller, refined accents of colour that, together with black or grey lines, gave form to his motifs.
El Lissitzky, 1923
Proun Room (Reconstruction 1960’s), Berlin
Modernist Installation - Installation art is a term generally used to describe artwork located in three-dimensional interior space as the word “install” means putting something inside of something else. It is often site-specific - designed to have a particular relationship, whether temporary or permanent, with its spatial environment on an architectural, conceptual, or social level. It also creates a high level of intimacy between itself and the viewer as it exists not as a precious object to be merely looked at but as a presence within the overall context of its container whether that is a building, museum, or designated room.
-These works were prototypes for visionary inhabitable abstractions in which the visitor could experience geometric shapes and linear vectors wrapping around corners and launching toward the ceiling.
-In his transformation of the two-dimensional works into “abstract rooms” (such as this one), Lissitzky was part of a general blurring of disciplinary boundaries that took place as artists explored line throughout the twentieth century.
-His radical reconception of space and material is a metaphor for the fundamental transformations in society that he expected the Russian Revolution to produce.
-This reconstruction, based on an earlier version created by the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, the Netherlands reflects what is known about the original Proun Room today.
Marcel Duchamp, 1942
First papers of Surrealism
Modernist Installation - Installation art is a term generally used to describe artwork located in three-dimensional interior space as the word “install” means putting something inside of something else. It is often site-specific - designed to have a particular relationship, whether temporary or permanent, with its spatial environment on an architectural, conceptual, or social level. It also creates a high level of intimacy between itself and the viewer as it exists not as a precious object to be merely looked at but as a presence within the overall context of its container whether that is a building, museum, or designated room.
-exhibition included paintings and sculptures by more than thirty artists accompanied by examples of so-called ‘primitive art’, and was designed by Marcel Duchamp
-a group of émigré surrealist artists led by André Breton mounted the first major exhibition of surrealist art in the United States. Titled First Papers of Surrealism
Kurt Schwitters, 1920-43
Hanover Merzbau
Modernist Installation - Installation art is a term generally used to describe artwork located in three-dimensional interior space as the word “install” means putting something inside of something else. It is often site-specific - designed to have a particular relationship, whether temporary or permanent, with its spatial environment on an architectural, conceptual, or social level. It also creates a high level of intimacy between itself and the viewer as it exists not as a precious object to be merely looked at but as a presence within the overall context of its container whether that is a building, museum, or designated room.
-Schwitters’s art was more than just the collage object itself. It was a whole process, philosophy, and lifestyle, which he called merz—a nonsense word that became his kind of personal brand.
-He was a merz-artist who made merz-paintings and merz-drawings, and naturally, the place where he merzed—his studio and family home—was his merz-building, or Merzbau.
-Over the years, this Merzbau developed into a kind of abstract walk-in collage composed of grottoes and columns and found objects, ever-shifting and ever-expanding.
-It was more than just a studio; it was itself a work of art.
-original exhibition was destroyed in 1943 by allied bombing
- Photographs can only capture what the Merz looked like at one moment
-One day the Merzbau could have a new column of debris stacked in the corner, the next day a new grotto dedicated to an artist friend.
-Photographs can’t quite capture the Merzbau‘s expanding and shifting nature.
Benita Otte and Ernst Gebhardt, 1923
Haus Am Horn Kitchen
experimental model prototype house
Bauhaus - The style of Bauhaus is commonly characterized as a combination of the Arts and Crafts movement with modernism, as evident in its emphasis on function and, according to the Tate, its “aim to bring art back into contact with everyday life.” Thus, typical Bauhaus designs—whether evident in painting, architecture, or interior design—feature little ornamentation and a focus on balanced forms and abstract shapes.
-as a prototype for affordable housing which could be quickly and inexpensively mass-produced.
-The use of experimental building techniques and materials not only helped to achieve this goal, but dovetailed perfectly with the increasing focus on functionalism in the Bauhaus curriculum.
-No room better expressed the newfound Bauhaus commitment to Modernism than the kitchen.
-Multiple texts at the time, such as 1915’s Scientific Management in the Home, promoted the notion that by removing all activities not related to the preparation of food from the kitchen, one could then make the room smaller – and by doing so, reduce any potential unnecessary movement and streamline the cooking process.
Marianne Brandt, 1924
Small Tea-Essence Pot
Tea Pot
Bauhaus - The style of Bauhaus is commonly characterized as a combination of the Arts and Crafts movement with modernism, as evident in its emphasis on function and, according to the Tate, its “aim to bring art back into contact with everyday life.” Thus, typical Bauhaus designs—whether evident in painting, architecture, or interior design—feature little ornamentation and a focus on balanced forms and abstract shapes.
-Only three inches high, its diminutive size results from its function.
-Unlike conventional teapots, it is intended to distill a concentrated extract, which, when combined with hot water in the cup, can produce tea of any desired strength.
-Here, the usual elements of a teapot have been reinvented as abstract geometric forms.
-The handle, a D-shaped slice of ebony set high for ease of pouring, provides a strong vertical contrast to the object’s predominant horizontality.
-Although the pot’s functionality is carefully resolved, its visual impact lies in the uncompromising sculptural statement it makes. It is defiantly modern.
Iwao Yamawaki, 1932
The Attack on the Bauhaus
Photomontage
Bauhaus - The style of Bauhaus is commonly characterized as a combination of the Arts and Crafts movement with modernism, as evident in its emphasis on function and, according to the Tate, its “aim to bring art back into contact with everyday life.” Thus, typical Bauhaus designs—whether evident in painting, architecture, or interior design—feature little ornamentation and a focus on balanced forms and abstract shapes.
-three men march from the upper right corner into the center of the picture.
-The energetic striding, the sound of boot heels can be almost heard, because two of the three wear boots and uniforms.
-The head of the third man is cropped, so it may well be that even more men will burst into the scene.
-The first man in uniform, who has nearly arrived in the middle of the picture is similar in appearance
-The three men march across the facade of the Dessau Bauhaus, which bisects the picture diagonally from the lower edge upwards and out to the right.
-The glass facade of the workshop building, as well as the south view with its iconic vertical lettering spelling out “Bauhaus” in capital letters, have fallen over but remain interlocked and now serve the three men as a stage.
-The overall effect of the picture is that of a theater scene, one anticipating an approaching catastrophe.
-Shortly before the end, the curtain falls and the viewer is left alone with the end as yet uncertain.
Hugo Ball, 1916
Cabaret Voltaire
Photograph
Dada - Dadaist art often features irrationality, humor, and silliness. An artistic and literary movement formed in response to the disasters of World War I (1914–18) and to an emerging modern media and machine culture. Dada artists sought to expose accepted and often repressive conventions of order and logic, favoring strategies of chance, spontaneity, and irreverence.
-Hugo Ball reciting the poem Karawane
-Was an artsy nightclub where dada was founded
Hannah Hoch, 1919-1920
Cut with the Kitchen Knife Dada through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch of Germany
Photomontage
Dada - Dadaist art often features irrationality, humor, and silliness. An artistic and literary movement formed in response to the disasters of World War I (1914–18) and to an emerging modern media and machine culture. Dada artists sought to expose accepted and often repressive conventions of order and logic, favoring strategies of chance, spontaneity, and irreverence.
-Höch’s photomontage and its cast of characters is divided, approximately, into four quadrants.
- The photomontage includes the “anti-dada” contingent at upper right (full of Weimar political figures), and the world of the Dadaists at the lower right.
-Dada images and text cut diagonally across the picture to the upper left where Albert Einstein proclaims that “dada is not an art trend.”
-At lower left, images of the masses seem to imply a coming revolution headed by assassinated Communist leader Karl Liebnecht who advises us to “join dada.”
John Heartfield, 1935
Hurrah, the butter is gone!
Photomontage
Dada - Dadaist art often features irrationality, humor, and silliness. An artistic and literary movement formed in response to the disasters of World War I (1914–18) and to an emerging modern media and machine culture. Dada artists sought to expose accepted and often repressive conventions of order and logic, favoring strategies of chance, spontaneity, and irreverence.
- A parody of the aesthetics of propaganda, the photomontage shows a German family at a dinner table eating a bicycle, where a nearby portrait of Hitler hangs and the wallpaper is emblazoned with swastikas
Andre Masson, 1926-27
Battle of Fishes
Sand, gesso, oil, pencil, and charcoal on canvas
Surrealism- aims to revolutionize the human experience.
Dream-like scenes and symbolic images
Unexpected, illogical juxtapositions
- Masson made Battle of Fishes by freely applying gesso to areas of the canvas, throwing sand on it, then brushing away the excess.
- The resulting contours suggested forms “although almost always irrational ones,” according to the artist around which he rapidly sketched and applied paint directly from the tube.
- The image that emerged suggests a savage underwater battle between sharp–toothed fish.
- Masson, who was physically and spiritually wounded during World War I, joined the Surrealist group in 1924.
- He believed that, if left to chance, pictorial compositions would reveal the sadism of all living creatures.
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Rene Magritte, 1933
The Human Condition
Oil on cavnas
Surrealism - aims to revolutionize the human experience.
Dream-like scenes and symbolic images
Unexpected, illogical juxtapositions
-displays an easel placed inside a room and in front of a window.
-The easel holds an unframed painting of a landscape that seems in every detail contiguous with the landscape seen outside the window.
-At first, one automatically assumes that the painting on the easel depicts the portion of the landscape outside the window that it hides from view.
- After a moment’s consideration, however, one realizes that this assumption is based upon a false premise: that is, that the imagery of Magritte’s painting is real, while the painting on the easel is a representation of that reality.
-In fact, there is no difference between them.
-Both are part of the same painting, the same artistic fabrication.
-It is perhaps to this repeating cycle, in which the viewer, even against his will, sees the one as real and the other as representation, that Magritte’s title makes reference.
Meret Oppenheim, 1936
Object (Déjeuner en fourrure)
Fur-covered cup
Surrealism- aims to revolutionize the human experience.
Dream-like scenes and symbolic images
Unexpected, illogical juxtapositions
- Oppenheim’s Object was created at a moment when sculpted objects and assemblages had become prominent features of Surrealist art practice.
- inspired by a conversation between Oppenheim, Pablo Picasso, and the photographer Dora Maar at a Paris café. Admiring Oppenheim’s fur-trimmed bracelets, Picasso remarked that one could cover just about anything with fur. “Even this cup and saucer,” Oppenheim replied.
-The work highlights the specificities of sensual pleasure: fur may delight the touch, but it repels the tongue. And a cup and spoon, of course, are made to be put in the mouth.
