WHAT MODERNISM MEANS

Question 1

Braque, Still Life Guitar 1924

Answer 1

cubism

geometric

Question 2

Delaunay Sonia, Prismes électriques 1914

Answer 2

• cubism style
• key figure in Parisian avant-garde and fashion, mother of abstraction
• known for dynamic art

Question 3

Eiffel Tower with Airplane 1887

Answer 3

• -Symbol of Modern Paris.
• symbol of modality
• The tower rests on four giant supports.
• The transparency of Eiffel’s structure blurs the distinctions between interior and exterior to an extent never before achieved or attempted.
• named after gustave eiffel

Question 4

Goncharova, Natalia, Linen 1912

Answer 4

• Russian avant-garde
• reveals a knowledge of Cubist painters such as Gleizes and Metzinger,
• but the Cyrillic letters add a distinctively Russian touch.

Question 5

Halberstadt, Photographic portrait of Sigmund Freud, signed by the sitter

Answer 5

• iconic portrait of the founder of psychoanalysis, signed by Freud.
• “This famous photograph of the founder of psychoanalysis was taken by his nephew Max Halberstad

Question 6

Kollwitz, Woman with Dead Child 1903

Answer 6

etching and lithograph

• German Expressionism
• had no formal association with any Expressionist group
• more universal statement of maternal loss and grief
• instead of the reserve and grace of the Virgin Mary the mother in her work showed raw and primal grief for the loss of her child

Question 7

Matisse, Red Studio 1911

Answer 7

• Post-Impressionist influences
• a retrospective of Matisse’s career at a vital turning point between his Fauvist beginnings and his first ‘mature’ individual style
• autonomy’ within avant-garde, Modernist art in Paris
• art should exist for its own sake/ sake for the aesthetic experience, rather than serve moral or political ends

Question 8

Modersohn-Becker, Reclining Mother with Child 1906

Answer 8

• Germany, Avant garde
• different form of nude not idolizing or sexualizing.
• Figure within space is almost abstracted floating in space.
• Focuses less on the face and more on the relationship between mother and child.
• Woman are more than something to look at
• Functioning as a caregiver and that’s her primary focus.
• Unidealized female nude not for the male gaze.

Question 9

Modersohn-Becker, Self Portrait 1906

Answer 9

• Germany, Expressionist
• Wood like face de-idolizing herself.
• Harsher more masculine features show her struggles in wanting to be an artist/ wanting to be a domestic female.
• She can’t be both in this society. Different portrayal of nude form.

Question 10

Schmutzer, Albert Einstein during a lecture in Vienna in 1921

Answer 10

photograph

Einstein an his Theory of Relativity