Modernism Flashcards
The most dramatic and far-reaching development in the history of twentieth-century art is…
the move toward various forms of explicitly abstract art that followed in the wake of Cubist experiments.
Ever since the latter part of the nineteenth century, a number of artists were beginning to…
consider a painting as an entity unto itself rather than an imitation of, or an illusion of, the physical world.
Although Cubist pictures may represent…
highly abstracted interpretations of the material world, they were not in themselves abstract.
In Russia and Netherlands, in particular, abstraction found…
a fertile ground and its most expansive and most radical manifestations, with implications not merely for painting and sculpture but for architecture as well as graphic, industrial, and even fashion design.
Abstract, nonobjective, or nonrepresentational art:
Art that depends solely on color, line, and shape for its imagery rather than motifs drawn from observable reality.
people of time were not happy with the state of present times.
Looked to the future for better life
Development of a Bottle in Space
Futurist sculpture
Umberto Boccioni
1912
Table + Bottle + House
Umberto Boccioni
1912
SUPREMATISM
“the supremacy of pure feeling in creative art.”
“the visual phenomena of the objective world are, in themselves, meaningless, the significant thing is feeling, as such, quite apart from the environment in which it is called forth.
Kazimir Malevich
(1878-1935)
El (Eleazar) Lissitzky
(1890-1941)
El (Eleazar) Lissitzky (1890-1941), a disciple of…
Malevich influenced the design teachings of the Bauhaus.
Lissitzky was a propagandist for
the Stalinist regime.
Prounenraum (Proun Room) created for Berlin Art Exhibition
created for Berlin Art Exhibition 1923
El Lissitzky
The Constructor
El Lissitzky, Wolkenbügel, 1924
“cloud-irons” skyscrapers,
El Lissitzky, Wolkenbügel, 1924
“Konstruktivizm”
(Constructivism)
The word “Konstruktivizm” (Constructivism) was first used
by a group of Russian artists in the title of a small 1922 exhibition of their work in Moscow.
It was Cubist art that was characterized by…
abstract, geometric forms and a technique in which various materials, often industrial in nature, are assembled rather than carved or modeled.
However, Constructivism originally referred to a movement of…
Russian artists after the 1917 Revolution who enlisted art in the service of the new Soviet system.
These artists believed that a full integration of…
art and life would help foster the ideological aims of the new society and enhance the lives of its citizens. Such utopian ideals were common to many modernist movements, but only in Russia were the revolutionary political regime and the revolution in art so closely linked.
Vladimir Tatlin
(1895-1953)
Vladimir Tatlin
was the founder of Russian Constructivism.
Pablo Ruiz Picasso
(1881-1973)
Along with French artist Georges Braque (1882-1963) Picasso co-founded the…
Cubist movement.
Georges Braque
(1882-1963)
Paul Cézanne
(1839–1906)
Vladimir Tatlin
(1895-1953)
Counter-Relief
1915
Vladimir Tatlin
Model for Monument to
the Third International
1919-20
Vladimir Tatlin
What is important for the Model for Monument to the Third International
the idea of the object is important
Late 19th century explorations of the…
irrational and fantastic and a growing interest in naïve and primitivizing modes of expression in an art found a striking embodiment during World War I in the eclectic productions of a diverse group of artists who labeled endeavor “Dada.
The Dadaist felt that…
reason, logic, and Western ideals of progress had led to the disaster of world war, and that the only way forward was through political anarchy, the natural emotions, the intuitive, and the irrational.
Dada was first and foremost a…
response to the brutal, mechanized madness of war.
More distantly, dada can be seen as a descendant of…
Romanticism and Symbolism,
which themselves were proceeded by a thousand years or more of individuals and
movements concerned with some sort of personal, eccentric , unorthodox, mystical,
or supernatural expression.
MARC CHAGALL
(1887-1985)
Russian Jewish artist
MARC CHAGALL art
His art followed a divergent
from that of the Constructivists
in post-revolutionary Russia.
Child-like Art
His paintings displayed a sense
of fantasy that anticipates
aspects of Surrealism.
MARCEL DUCHAMP
(1887-1968)
By the beginning of World War I Duchamp had…
rejected the works of many of his
contemporaries as “retinal” art, or art only intended to please the eye. Although a gifted
painter, he ultimately abandoned conventional methods of making art in order, as he
said, “to put art back at the service of the mind.”
Duchamp experimented with…
everyday objects in creating of his art. For him, the conception, the “discovery,” was what made a work of art, not the uniqueness of the object.
In a deliberate act of provocation, Duchamp submitted a…
porcelain urinal, which he turned ninety degrees and entitled Fountain, to the 1917 exhibition of the New York Society of
Independent Artists
“The Fountain” by
MARCEL DUCHAMP
1917
“Nude Ascending a Staircase”
MARCEL DUCHAMP
1912
Cubist + Futurist
KURT SCHWITTERS
(1887-1948)
Hanoverian Artist
KURT SCHWITTERS work
His work was apart from Berlin Dadaist artists
KURT SCHWITTER quarreled publicly with…
Huelsenbeck, a prominent Dada artist and was denied access to Club Dada because of his involvement with the apolitical and pro-art circle around Herwarth Walden’s Der Sturm Gallery.
KURT SCHWITTER established his own…
Dada variant in Hanover under the designation “Merz,” a word in
part derived from the word “Commerzbank” included in one of his collages.
Schwitter’s collages were made of…
rubbish picked up from the street –cigarette
wrappers, tickets, newspapers, string, boards, wire screens, and whatever caught his
fancy. (detritus of his surroundings into strange and wonderful beauty.)
what were KURT SCHWITTER pictures called
Merzbilder or Merzeichnungen (Merz pictures or Merz drawings)
Kurt Schwitters, Hanover
Merzbau, destroyed, photo taken
1931
Kurt Schwitters, Hanover
Merzbau reconstruction by
Peter Bissegger, 1981-1983
Hanover Merzbau features
spacial qualities, forms, light, shadow, contrast
Adolf Loos
(1870-1933)
Austrian architect
worked for menswear fashion company
hated the Victorian women silhouette (puffy dresses)
Adolf Loos work
Rebelled against Art Nouveau
Suggested that architects had a new task to find a formal language for new materials
Was against pretext of style
Suggested that it was useless to the form of the modify the form of the objects
already adapt to their function
Artisan: the man connected to objects he has created and produced, in whom truth,
distinction , history, and creation were incarnated
The evolution of culture is synonymous with the removal of ornament from
utilitarian objects
Loos finds modern ornament…
obscene. He longs for a cleaner, cooler environment. The naked wall becomes a symbol of the victory of logos (reason) over eros (Platonism defines beauty as the object of eros.)
Gesamtkunswerk
(Total work of art)
Frank Lloyd Wright
(1867-1959)
Peter Behrens
(1868-1940)
Walter Gropius
(1881-1969)
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
(1886-1969)
Le Corbusier
(1887-1965)
Gropius, Meyer, and Rohe
BAUHAUS
Bauhaus promised to…
heal the breach that had opened up between beauty and reason, art and technology, freedom and necessity.
BAUHAUS
school that trained architects + textile artists (women)
DE STIJL
Pure abstraction –cubist art
Neoplasticism
(the superiority of abstract values of form and color (the primaries and black) over all naturalistic and subjective values in art)
color/contrast
no objects what so ever
Larkin Building date + location
Buffalo, NY
1904
Larkin Building architect
Frank Lloyd Wright
Larkin Building features
clarity in how structure works
no ornamentation
Robie House date + location
Chicago,
1908-10
Robie House architect
Frank Lloyd Wright
AEG Factory architect
Peter Behrens
AEG Factory features
purpose not romanticized
strictly utilitarian
can combine romanticized + utilitarian
Bauhaus date + location
Weimar, Germany, 1923
Bauhaus architect
Walter Gropius
Café l’Aubette date + location
France, 1926-8
Café l’Aubette architect
Theo van Doesburg
Theo van Doesburg work
Named his new departure Elementarism,
and argued that the inclined plane
reintroduced surprise, instability, and
dynamism.
Café l’Aubette features
Utilization of abstract three-dimensional
forms
Use of “modern” materials: Concrete,
steel, aluminum, and glass
Use of primary colors and black
Avoiding wood
Piet Mondrian
(1872-1944)
Schröder House date + location
the Netherlands, 1924
Schröder House architect
Gerrit Reitveld
Gerrit Reitveld
(1888-1964)
Schröder House / De Stijl House features
notions of steel
sliding panels
primary colors, black, grey
windows open up interiors to exterior
natural light / views
fluid transition
Rue de Lota apartment features
not modern
many of her designs are modern (objects) like furniture
interiors are ART DECO
inspiration from Africa
Eileen Gray
(1878-
1976)
Rue de Lota apartment designer
Eileen Gray
German (Barcelona) Pavilion date + location
Barcelona,
1929
German (Barcelona) Pavilion designer
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
German (Barcelona) Pavilion features
lack of privacy
Tugendhat House date + location
Czech Republic, 1928-30
Tugendhat House designer
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Tugendhat House features
Open living spaces subdivided by an onyx marble screen
Floor to ceiling glass
Slim steel columns as unobstructive structural members (reflective quantities meant to disappear in the space)
Abstract arrangements of spatial elements
Colors and textures of the materials taking the place of ornamentation
Avoidance on wooden flooring = example of not using past precedence
natural state of materials - if it looks like marble it is
coldness to these spaces - effort to avoid textiles
Pavilion de l’Espirit Nouveau Exhibition of Decorative Arts date + location
Paris, 1925
Pavilion de l’Espirit Nouveau Exhibition of Decorative Arts designer
Le Corbusier
Towards a New Architecture…
(1923) House: a “machine for living”
Le Corbusier City proposal
Paper design not built
Shows criticism of modernism
Villa Savoye date + location
France, 1929-31
Villa Savoye designer
Le Corbusier
Villa Savoye features
Complex, surprising, and dramatic relationships between various spaces
Modular space (Golden section)
Purist in its forms and use of color and texture
Non-traditional transitional spaces: ramp leads up to the main living spaces
Pilotis: leaving the ground under the building open
Pilotis
leaving the ground under the building open
Church of Notre-Dame-du-Haut date + location
Ronchamp, 1951
Church of Notre-Dame-du-Haut designer
Le Corbusier
Church of Notre-Dame-du-Haut features
Abstract forms and geometry
Baroque - In terms of how it uses dramatic lighting
Church at Firminy date + location
France
Started 1963 / Completed in 2006
Church at Firminy designer
Le Corbusier (completed after his death)
Church at Firminy features
Little iconography compared to past presidents
Designed to make people feel something / moves people
Space creates an identity/experience for the organization
Whitney Museum of American Art date + location
New York, 1966
Whitney Museum of American Art designer
Marcel Breuer
Rise of the museum in modernism
Ex. contemporary art museums become important
Shows society beginning to accept contemporary art
Eileen Gray Operated in two different worlds
Born to prominent family = giving her access to designing
Ic4 Chaise Lounge,
1929
Le Corbusier & Perriand
Alvar Aalto
(1898-1976): Finnish architect and designer
Aino (Marsio) Aalto
(1894-1949)
Elissa Aalto
(1922-1994)
City Library date + location
Viipuri, Finland, 1927
City Library designer
Alvar Aalto
The Paimio Sanatorium date + location
Turku, Finland, 1930-3
The Paimio Sanatorium designer
Alvar Aalto (1898-1976)
Villa Mairea date + locaiton
Finland, 1938-41
Villa Mairea designer
Alvar Aalto
Church of Three Crosses (Vuoksenniska
Church) date + designer
1956-58
Alvar Aalto
Opera House date + location
Essen, Germany, 1959
Opera House designers
Alvar Aalto, Elissa Aalto, Herald Deilmann
Mount Angel Abbey Library date + location
St. Benedict, Oregon, 1964-70
Mount Angel Abbey Library designer
Alvar Aalto
