Early 20th Century

EARLY 20^th CENTURY

Theme: “Abstraction”

Cutting-edge artists made figures abstracted and made them the center of the canvas and composition. This new way of visualizing art and objects radically changed artistic production.

Historical Context (1900-1945)

• WWI
• Great Depression
• WWII
• Communism
• Lost Generation displacement (fundamental ideas shaken)

Artistic Innovations

Three main tendencies:

1. Abstraction, even nonrepresentational
2. Emphasis on physical processes, materials
3. Questioning how art has been done, new techniques and materials, including ordinary, “non-artistic” materials

• 1903: Salon d’Autumne (reaction against conservative artistic values of French Royal Academy)
• 1913: Armory Show introduced modern art to America
• Gallery 291: exhibited photographs by paintings
• Avant-garde: new and cutting edge

Architecture

Architecture moved cities into utopias. This new age demanded new styles of architecture. Industrialism triumphed. Classicism was rejected.

 

(4) 139. Fallingwater.

 Frank Lloyd Wright. American. 1936-39. Prairie Style.

Learning Objective: Prairie Style architecture

Themes:

Domestic
Private
Man v. nature
Light
Status
Architecture
Water
Site-specific

Fallingwater by American architect Frank Lloyd Wright is a building constructed of stone that stands in Fallingwater, Pennsylvania.

Form

Prairie Style gets its name from its long horizontal lines, inspired by the prairies and plains. Fallingwater is integrated into the landscape, horizontal lines, horizontal windows, restraint in decoration and a stacked quality.

Wright called this his “organic architecture,” inspired by Transcendentalism. Most materials came from the site or broader area.  It is central and natural with an in situ stone core for the fireplace.

The color palette is limited:

• light ochre (yellowy tan)
• “Cherokee red” based on natural rock color

There is a liberal use of glass. The house has no walls facing the waterfall. Corner-turning windows do not use mullions and create unbroken views of nature. Elongated horizontal windows encourage the viewer to look outside.

The architecture creates the Illusion that the stream flows through the house. The powerful falls is heard from every room.

The ceilings are low reaching only up to 6 feet and 4 inches.  This encourages you to move towards the windows for the feeling of openness.

The floor is polished with wax to give it the appearance of wetness.

The house is darkest at the entrance and gets lighter as you move towards the back by the windows.

The use of cantilever construction allowed Wright to hang the house over the falls. Cantilever is a long projecting beam that has reinforcing wire-mesh and steel bars embedded inside of it to increase tensile strength. He used reinforced concrete or ferroconcrete.

Edgar Kaufmann Sr, the Pittsburgh department store tycoon, commissioned Wright to build Fallingwater. Kaufmann sent a copy of Wright’s blueprints to his personal engineer who found the ground of Fallingwater unstable and dimensions of the cantilever untenable. He did not recommend that Wright proceed with the house. The architect was upset but permitted an increase in the number and diameter of the structure’s steel reinforcements.

Function

This was created as a private home and weekend retreat for the Kaufmann family.

The clients were very interested in modern art and Wright’s work. It was a sign of status to have a weekend home.

 

The house was designed to be in harmony with nature. It is not just plunked down on top of the waterfall. It looks like it has grown out organically. It tumbles downward and outward like the waterfall itself.

Content

 Private home / weekend retreat

SUB-IMAGE 1 (Interior)

Wright designed the original interior furnishings. Notice the designs are simple and matching the exterior in colors and materials.

• First floor: living room, kitchen
• Second floor: three bedrooms
• Third floor: study and bedroom of son, Edgar Kaufmann Jr.

Context

The mid 1930s were bad years for American architecture. It was the time of the Great Depression. Almost no private homes were built.

Wright and his wife were struggling to keep Taliesin, his studio/home, out of foreclosure.

Wright was also being viewed by his contemporaries as “out of style”. In a review of architecture in 1932, he was criticized for his “unwillingness to absorb the innovations of his contemporaries”.

Philip Johnson, the designer of the Seagram Building, would call Wright the “greatest architect of the 19^th century” to jab at how old and outdated he was.

Wright developed an apprenticeship program called “the fellowship” to create business. Edgar Kaufmann Jr. was one of his first apprentices.

Kaufmann Sr. asked Wright about making a summer home for his family. They owned a large chunk of property in this area but the spot with the waterfall was their favorite.  Wright visited the site in December 1934. He rejected a conventional view of the waterfall and wanted to make the house a part of it.

Wright procrastinated for 9 months until Kaufmann Sr. called and said he was driving 140 miles to Taliesin to see what Wright had done.

Apprentice Edgar Taffel said: Wright briskly emerged from his office, sat down at the table with the plot plan and started to draw. The design just poured out of him. ‘Lilian and Edgar will have tea on the balcony…they’ll cross the bridge to walk in the woods…’ Pencils were being used up as fast as we could sharpen them. Erasures, overdrawing, modifying, flipping sheets back and forth. Then, the title across the bottom was scribbled: ‘Fallingwater.’

The whole process took two hours.

Wright was influenced by Transcendentalism meaning all nature and humanity are connected. He was also influenced by Japanese architecture and wanted to create harmony between man and nature.

 

(4) 135. Villa Savoye.  

Le Corbusier (architect). French. 1929. International Style.  

Learning Objective: International Style architecture

Themes:

Domestic
Private
Technology
Status
Architecture
Appropriation
Man v. nature

Villa Savoye created by architect Le Corbusier is a steel and concrete constructivo that stands in Poissy-sur-Seine, France.

International Style was named that because its rational approach to design could be used universally. It was devised through the Five Points of Architecture, a universal system of architecture.

1. Pilotis: slender columns (derived from classicism) to raise the building off the ground.
2. Two Roof terraces: bring nature into an urban setting.
3. Free and open floor plan.
4. Façade that is simple, smooth, unadorned, lacking ornamentation, white

Ribbon windows: let in light but reinforce simplicity, a streamlined look, and a view of nature.

• Delicate floating box
• Completely devoid of historical ornamentation
• Ribbon windows seem industrial, productive
• Painted white to evoke simplicity and the classics, while creating a smooth quality.
  • Association of newness, purity, simplicity, health
• Ground floor walls are recessed and painted green, so the house looks like a floating box.
• Constructed with man-made materials of concrete and glass.

SUB-IMAGE 1 (Interior staircase)

• • Non-traditional transitions between floors with spiraling staircases and ramps.
  • In contrast to hallways, corners, edges that we are used to that demarcate space.

Function

The patrons were Pierre and Emilie Savoye. They believed in the benefits of fresh air and sunshine and considered outdoor time to be the mark of modern leisure. They wanted a home that integrated outdoor and indoor spaces.

The home was designed to maximize pleasure and efficiency, while stripping away excess. This required minimal distractions and an integration of exterior and interior.

The home is in the Paris suburb to escape from crowded Paris.

Content

This is a functional house with a roof garden with plants and sculpture.

• Top: garden with decoration inspired by grain silos / steam liners
• Middle: rooms
• Bottom: garage

Context

Le Corbusier wanted to capture the essence of modern architecture. Therefore, he needed to use modern technologies. The architect looked to cars, ocean liners, factories, even grain silos to do so.

In 1929, he a wrote book entitled Toward an Architecture. In it he argued that classical architecture when combined with ideas pulled from cars, airplanes and trains could be used to make modern homes. He said science, technology, rationalism, efficiency, leisure, cleanliness, and order helped to maximize leisure. Therefore, this should be the most important thing.

The Greeks created ideal and streamlined forms, beautiful in their simplicity. Think the Parthenon.

Modern cars, airplanes and trains are also simple, beautiful, and efficient. They are streamlined, orderly, clean, and harmonious in their design. Therefore, a modern home, based on the objects of modernity should have all these same influences and qualities.

Le Corbusier wrote, “A house is a machine for living in.” This was a radical new idea of the domestic home.

 

(4) 128. The Kiss.

Gustav Klimt. Austrian. 1907-1908.  Art Nouveau / Austrian Secession.

Learning Objective: Austrian Secession /Art Nouveau painting

Themes:

Male-female relationships
Ideal man
Ideal woman
Sexuality
Abstraction
Cross-cultural
Appropriation
Stylized bodies

Museum: Osterreichische Gallerie, Vienna

The Kiss by Austrian artist Gustav Klimt is an oil on canvas work measuring 5 feet 11 inches by 5 feet 11 inches.

Art Nouveau means “New Art” with organic lines, simulating forms in nature and an emphasized on decorative patterns. Austrian Secession is highly ornate, decorative, fanciful, and feels dream-like or other worldly.  Here we see the beginnings of abstractions.

Gold leaf was used on a highly decorative surface that creates both texture and reflection.

The larger male figure is characterized by square and rectangular forms.  The female form has soft lines and floral patterns with a rounded form.  The formal qualities such as patterning and repetition, make the space seem flat and as if there is no recession. The work ignores perspective, scale, space, modeling, and proportion.

Function

This is a new avant-garde treatment of traditional subject matter. Lovers are quite common in art history, but these lovers don’t look anything like other lovers we have seen.  Think: The Swing. The artists rejected the Vienna art establishment.

The theme of lovers preoccupied Klimt. This shows love as an icon and something to be worshipped and adored. This illustrates a transcendent universal experience even in times of great change and modernization. The work is an ideal of what love can be.

Content

This is the theme of lovers, united through a kiss. They are embracing in a field of flowers which is reminiscent of fertility, and vibrancy. The man is bent over the woman, and she clings tightly to him as he kisses her. They are dangerously close to the edge of the precipice. This is likely due to the fin de siècle anxiety expressed through the danger and beauty of their passion.

The golden halo surrounds the couple, and unites them, as they are lost in the kiss

The man is physically powerful. We see the intensity of his desire. He is larger and dominates her. This is detailed, with rectangular and square forms. The woman is passively falling into his embrace. This is detailed with ovals and circles.

Love transports them out of our world. 

Klimt & Byzantine Influence

Klimt loved Byzantine art and had recently traveled to Ravenna to see San Vitale.

The background of The Kiss is flat and gold, unlike our world. This is like the Byzantine use of gold. They are transported to a sacred infinite world.

Klimt follows tradition in the gender representations of the two figures—also Byzantine conventions, in this theme of lovers.

Fin de siècle

Fin de siècle or end of an era was at the end of the 19^th century to 1914. Society changed rapidly during the late 19^thearly to the 20^th century. The middle class was growing and so too was their wealth. This was characterized by decadence, excitement, extravagance. On the reverse this was also a time of anxiety and worry about increasing agitations across Europe.

Art became a form of escapism.

1897: Austrian Secession

• Austrian artists objected to the conservatism of the Vienna art establishment.
• Klimt was the president of the Austrian Secessionists.
• Created their own exhibition space to explore what art could be without the strictures of the academy.
• Time of incredible innovation

 About the Artist

Austrian born artist, Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) is best known for his iconic painting, The Kiss.  He is famous for his “Golden Phase”, which culminated with this work.  It was Inspired by a visit to Ravenna during his travels through Italy in 1903 which introduced him to the world of Byzantine mosaics. Other inspirations were the medieval book covers with flat Gothic ornamentation and illuminated manuscripts.

Klimt was a sought-after portrait painter, who specialized in Viennese ladies. One such painting is Portrait of Adele Bloche-Bauer (1907), a painting, now with its own layered history, which sold at auction for more than $135 million, U.S., in 2006, exemplifies his stunning style, in fin-de-siecle Vienna.

Art consumed Klimt and he was noted to have said, “Whoever wants to know something about me must observe my paintings carefully and try to see in them what I am.”

 

(4) 131. Goldfish.

Henri Matisse. French.  1912. Fauvism.

Learning Objective: Fauvist painting

Themes:

Animals in art
Water
Cross-cultural
Abstraction
Still life
West vs Nonwest

Museum: Pushkin Museum, Moscow

Goldfish by French artist Henri Matisse is an oil on canvas work measuring 4 feet 7 inches by 3 feet 2 inches.  Here, the artist shows interest in abstraction and simplifying all forms.

What is Fauvism?

Fauvism uses expressive, vibrant color in a non-realistic way. Placement of complementary colors in proximity makes them more active. On a color wheel, green, yellow, orange, red and purple are all in a row. This breaks with the traditional approach to color. Also note the bold brushwork.

There is an incorrect rendering of space. A study of ovals and circles, becomes flattened as they do not recede all at the same angle. This enables us to see the fish simultaneously from two different angles. It is not necessary to perfectly imitate reality.

Function

By depicting the goldfish and the water, Matisse captures a stereotypical Western view of an Arab paradise. He invites the viewer to indulge in the pleasure of watching the goldfish. He wanted art that would be soothing and calming.

This is the use of color in a new and vibrant way –like Gauguin.

Content

We see Matisse’s own garden furniture, plants, and fish tank.

Context

Goldfish were introduced to Europe from East Asia in the 17^th century.

Goldfish were a reoccurring subject in the work of Henri Matisse. He visited Morocco, in 1912, and noted how the local population would daydream for hours, gazing into fishbowls. People found them tranquil, entrancing and calming.

Matisse admired Moroccans’ lifestyle which appeared to him to be relaxed and contemplative. This is a dangerous – but common – Western fantasy of Arab/Oriental life. We saw Ingres and Gauguin do this same thing.

The theme of paradise is prevalent. Even the name Goldfish defines these creatures as a shorthand for paradise and a golden age, with beautiful shimmering scales. Water is a common theme in Islamic art for cleansing, purifying, and tranquillity.

About the Artist

French-born artist Henri Matisse (1869 -1954) was known for his use of colour and his originality. Primarily known as a painter, he was also a sculptor, printmakers, and draftsman.

 

(4) 133. Self-Portrait as a Soldier.

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner.  German. 1915. German Expressionism (The Bridge).

Learning Objective: German Expressionism (The Bridge) painting

Themes:

Psychological
Self-portrait
Male-female relationships
Ideal man?
Stylized bodies

Museum: Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College

Self-Portrait as a Soldier by German artist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner is an oil on canvas work measuring 2 feet 3 inches by 2 feet. 

Expressionism is defined by the use of distorted, jagged forms and jarring colors for emotional impact.

The composition of this oil painting is tilted up and compressed. The perspective is strange with harsh colors. Greens, oranges, and yellows clash together in our mind. It causes a sense of instability, discord, and anxiety.

There are intense, harshly contorted forms, roughly sketched and stylized long. Angular forms are inspired by “primitive” African masks. Even the female nude is jarring and sharp…very different from Venus of Urbino.

 

Function

This is a self-portrait of Kirchner and an exploration of the artist’s personal fears. It focuses on his artistic failures and sexual impotency. It is his reckoning with his own weakness. His frustrations with his artistic, masculine, militaristic, and sexual inadequacy are captured.

Content

Kirchner is dressed in a military uniform. It is not in a military context however, as he is in his studio. There is a number 75 epaulets on his shoulders. This indicates his membership in the 75^th Field Artillery Regiment. Symbols on his cap represent the German Reich.

Kirchner appears sallow, harsh, edgy, angular, yellow, and sickly. He holds a limp cigarette in his mouth in reference to his physical and sexual inadequacies.

Kirchner has an amputated arm that is bloody. This is a symbol of his inadequacies. The amputation is a metaphor for his “artist’s block”. He felt like he couldn’t create, and when he did, it was not well-received.

What about the nude that stands behind him almost like a statue? The figure is very different from the fleshy, attractive, inviting bodies we have seen in Venus of Urbino and La Grande Odalisque.

In summary, Kirchner stands in his studio with everything he would need to make love and make art, and instead he can do neither.

A Timeline

In 1905 Kirchner helped found the German Expressionist group Die Brücke (The Bridge). They believed they would be a bridge to the future. They promoted an entirely new way of being an artist. The focus was on distorted, jagged forms and color to display emotion.

Die Brücke artists were interested in “primitive” art, particularly from Africa. They believed “primitive” art was honest, direct, and purer than art from Western industrialized nations. Obviously, this is not a politically correct notion, but it had a huge impact on Expressionism. Die Brücke artists wanted to adopt the “natural” state they saw in “primitive” art.

In 1913 Die Brücke disbanded. It was two years before this painting was created.

In 1914 Kirchner volunteered to be a driver in WWI. He did this to avoid being drafted in a more dangerous combat role. He suffered a mental break down and was diagnosed as an alcoholic and barbiturate addict. He was discharged.

The artist returned to Berlin to paint but suffered a nervous breakdown again. Then, he lived in two mental institutions. He became severely addicted to alcohol and morphine. For a time, his hands and feet were paralyzed, and his limbs did not function as they should have.

Despite being well-received internationally (some argue he is as important, if not more so, than Picasso), his art was rejected by Hitler in the 1930s. Hitler persecuted artists who painted in a style that was outside of his “Aryan ideal”.

The Degenerate Art Show in 1937 was held by Hitler. He exhibited all modernist art he hated and 32 of the works were Kirchner’s. Hitler had over 600 of Kirchner’s works removed from public collections. Many were destroyed.

Kirchner shot and killed himself in July of 1938. He tried to get his girlfriend to do it with him. She refused and they had a huge fight. He went outside and shot himself in the heart.

 

(4) 132. Improvisation 28 (second version).

 Wassily Kandinsky. Russian. 1912. German Expressionism (Blue Rider)

Learning Objective: German Expressionism (Blue Rider) painting

Themes:

Abstraction
Landscape
Biblical
Water

Museum: Guggenheim

Improvisation 28 (second version), by Wassily Kandinsky is an oil on canvas work measuring 3 feet by 6 inches and 5 feet and 3 inches.

Form 

There is little to no discernible representation with a high amount of abstraction, but this is not pure, total abstraction.

Some characteristics of German Expressionism include brilliant clashing color as well as the use of color for its own sake. It is not there to mimic, describe or capture.

Black diagonal lines are also characteristic. These crisscross and lead your eye across the painting. Look at the top left to bottom right. Then, to the bottom middle and to the top right to bottom right. This creates a sense of musicality and staccato.

Automatism is letting the mind go and purely letting the hands control the artmaking. It is a very difficult process to use. Kandinsky tried but found that representation, narrative and content seeped back into the work.

The artist wanted the work to be mostly abstract because he believed if we recognized things too clearly that our conscious mind would take over the interpretation. We would then close off our emotional ability to respond to color.

Function 

• One of the first modern abstract (not purely abstract, though) artworks.
• Uses abstraction to depict meaning (from St. John the Divine Book of Revelations) a relevant subject for a pre-WWI world.
• Aimed to let his subconscious come out (automatism) but battled with the difficulty of suppressing narratives/content.
• Explored the connections between music and art.

Content

Improvisations: paintings which were inspired by “spiritual events”.

Left side: Apocalypse

Why did he select the apocalypse? Likely he saw a relation or connection to the chaotic times he lived in.

On the top left there is a mountain. In the middle left there are cannons and smoke from a battlefield (atmospheric effects of smoke). On the bottom left there is a flood like the Old Testament flood. In the bottom middle, there are horses/riders of the apocalypse (a clever reference to Blue Rider name) through the curves of the manes and necks of the horses.

The Right side: Salvation

To the top right is a church on a hill. On the bottom right, figures are kissing.

In Comparison

Both Kandinsky’s Improvisation 28 and Bible Moralisée reveal St. John the Divine’s Book of Revelations (which discusses the Apocalypse).

Context

Kandinsky was influenced by music, especially the composer Wagner, and he often named his paintings in musical terms. He associated his paintings with music and called all of them improvisations. He referred to his paintings as dissonant or a cacophony. These terms refer to sound.

It is believed Kandinsky had synesthesia (like Munch). This allowed him to see sound and hear color.

Der Blaue Rider moves towards abstraction and simplified forms to see our world. It still uses still German Expressionist (vibrant color/jagged line) characteristics.

 

(4) 134. Memorial Sheet for Karl Liebknecht.

Käthe Kollwitz. Woodcut. 1919-1920. German Expressionism.

Learning Objective: German Expressionist woodcut

Themes:

Print
Commemoration
Propaganda
Politics
Text and image
Appropriation
Funerary

Memorial Sheet for Karl Liebknecht is a woodcut work by artist Käthe Kollwitz, which measures 1 foot 2 inches by 1 foot 9 inches.  

The artist first experimented with her creations. She tried first to make etchings, then lithographs. Then ultimately, she settled on woodcuts for which she is best known for. Kollwitz believed woodcuts captured the rough, vital energy needed for depicting horrors of war. Figures are made sharp and stark.

The composition is divided into three sections. The densely packed top level has well modeled faces. In the middle level one figure breaks between the barriers. The lowest level is contrasted with white and blackened faces. It is an inverted color scheme from the one she establishes up above. The contrast and emphasis let us see Liebknecht’s face.

German Expressionism

German Expressionism has two main characteristics:

• Jagged, rough lines
• Vivid, expressive colors

While this work does not utilize color, it certainly has the rough, expressive, and splintered use of line.

Function

This is propaganda to ennoble, aggrandize, honor, and memorialize Liebknecht. Prints were able to produce multiple copies of the same image. This was cheap and easy to distribute. It was the ideal medium for spreading political statements.

After the death of Karl Liebknecht, his family asked Kollwitz to make a work to memorialize him.

• She had 2 sons join the army in WWI; one died; her work stagnated; she had lost passion
• She had seen Liebknecht speak and admired his charisma, even though she was not a communist.
• However, communists criticized her because she was not a communist herself.

She defended herself, “As an artist, I have the right to extract emotional content out of anything.”

Content

• Made in the style of the Lamentation, with Liebknecht as the Christ-like figure/martyr
  • Followers of Christ/Liebknecht mourning over their dead bodies
• Focus is on common people – workers – affected by tragedy
  • Dignity, variety of working class
  • Mother and child (future generations affected)
  • Mourner’s hand connects to the chest of the martyred revolutionary
• Text says: From living to dead memory; indicates he will live on as Christ did

About Liebknecht

In 1912, Liebknecht became a communist and was elected to the Reichstag (German Parliament). He was very opposed to WWI.

Liebknecht formed the Berlin Spartacus League which printed an illegal newspaper called the Spartacus Letters (from the name Spartacus after the slave who led a failed revolt against the Roman Army in 73 BCE). Spartacus League essentially became the German Communist party.

In 1916 the Spartacists called for an end to the war. Liebknecht was arrested and spent the rest of the war in prison. In 1918 he was released when amnesty was granted to all political prisoners.

In 1919 a German Revolution (aka Spartacus Revolt) was attempted. It was the Spartacus League vs. the government of Friedrich Elbert. The revolt was defeated with ease by Elbert’s Germany army.   Liebknecht was murdered, after being held in a hotel room, before being transported to prison.

The Artist and the Art  

• Kollwitz was the first woman accepted into the Prussian Academy of Arts (she received a studio, an income, and a professorship).
• In political turmoil after WWI, many artists turn to prints as an ideal medium for spreading political statements.
• German Expressionism grew as a reaction to WWI: exhibiting the disjointed, broken, jagged society that remained.

Cubism (1907-1930s)

Cubism was inspired by Cézanne’s Post-Impressionistic works. The first Cubist painting was Les Demoiselles d’Avignon created by Pablo Picasso. It was Influenced by simple geometric African masks (primitivism) and Cézanne’s multiple views.

How can we think of Cubism?

1. A fragmentation of an object (or objects) into its most simple geometric shapes.
2. Shatter an object. When you put it back together, twist and invert the various shards before reassembling. This allows you to see the object from multiple viewpoints.  

Goal #1: Can you simplify an object to its most basic geometric forms?

Goal #2: Can you view an object from more than one side at once?

Characteristics

1. Simple geometric shapes
2. Non-realistic colors
3. Space is flattened (perspective and lighting are not used to create realistic space)

 Three phases:

• Analytical (jagged; sharp; multifaceted)
• Synthetic (collages; flattened)
• Curvilinear (flowing; rounded)

 

(4) 126. Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.

 Pablo Picasso. Spanish. Oil on canvas. 1907. Cubism.

Learning Objective: Cubist painting (Picasso)

Themes:

Female nude
Sexuality
Abstraction
Ideal woman
Cross-cultural
Appropriation
Stylized bodies

Museum : MOMA

 Les Demoiselles d’Avignon by Spanish artist Pablo Picasso is a painting using oil on canvas.  It measures 8 feet by 7 feet 8 inches. This work fully explores abstraction and marks a radical break from traditional composition and perspective in painting.

The space comes towards us in jagged shards. The figures are aggressively abstracted into sharp geometric forms. The limbs seem at times dislocated. The figures do not have rounded volume, instead, they are splintered. There is no modeling as that would have created the illusion of roundness. The space is radically compressed and flattened, like a still life.

Do not let the rough painting and jagged form make you think this was quick. The result took over 100 sketches.

Function

Picasso continued to examine the female nude, as artists have done throughout western art history. He created his personal fantasy by playing on the reclining female nude with not one but five women.

He also had anxiety about sleeping with prostitutes. There was considerable anxiety over life-threatening sexually transmitted diseases. Therefore, pleasure was linked to morality in an era before antibiotics.

Here he created his version of Cubism. This was a new visual style in art.

Picasso’s intense competitive nature drove him to outdo his rivals (Matisse) and role models (Cezanne).

Audience Response

The viewers responded with complete confusion, and disgust. They felt he had butchered historical art traditions. What possible reason could there be for this?

Content

 The title is in reference to a famed Avignon Street in Barcelona which Picasso frequented.

The work is of five prostitutes.  The women stare directly at the viewer. This builds on what Olympia had done for art.  Les Demoiselles d’Avignon replaces sensual eroticism of traditional female nudes, with aggressively crude pornography. Notice the figure squatting in the lower right.

The faces are splintered and inspired by African masks. Two women push aside curtains, while the others strike seductive and erotic poses. We see that this has become a show for Picasso.

Originally, the work contained two men, but he removed them. Why? If men were present, women would attend to them. If there were no men, Picasso was their focus. Viewers become the customers.

Desirable vs. Dangerous

Picasso frequently went to brothels. Across Europe, there was a growing public health crisis, with the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.  Prostitutes were beginning to be seen as intriguing, and desirable, but dangerous. Getting an STD could literally kill you.

Context

Faces were influenced by Primitivism and African masks that Picasso had collected. France was still a major colonial power in Africa. Many African artworks were taken and sold in Paris.

The work was also inspired by Archaic statuary (Anavysos Kouros). The figure on the far left shows this (one leg forward, arm down by side). Picasso had recently seen an exhibition of archaic sculpture at the Louvre.

Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) contributed to many art movements including Surrealism, Neoclassicism and Expressionism. He was a founder of Cubism, along with artist George Braque.  Picasso’s paintings often included dominant colours, like the Blue Period or Rose Period. Picasso not only painted, but he also created prints, drawings, sculpture, ceramics, and even set and costume designs for ballet.

 

(4) 130. The Portuguese.

Georges Braque. French. 1911. Cubism.

Learning Objective: Cubist painting (Braque)

Themes:

Abstraction
Text and image

Museum: Kunstmuseum Basel, Basel, Switzerland

The Portuguese by Georges Braque is an oil on canvas work measuring 3 feet 8 inches by two feet and six inches. The work takes the 400 years of Renaissance tradition–form, color, space, perspective, modeling, recession– and throws it away!

The Goals of Cubism

Instead of a single vantage point, the viewer sees the painting from many angles. The fixed point of view is gone. Cubism breaks an object down to its basic geometric forms.

Letters added to The Portuguese make the viewer aware of the flat surface of the painting. It reminds us that the painting is a constructed object rather than an illusion to reality.  This is an experimentation with perspective, and a total flattening of space. It occupies multiple vantage points. Depth is limited.

The monochromatic color palette emphasizes structure over color. This contrasts with Fauves and Post-Impressionists.  There is no consistent light source, but a variety of shadows over the picture plane.

Function

There is an ambiguity of a clear, distinctive reading of the image. The central goal is to attempt to show numerous viewpoints simultaneously. This is a complete change! All other works, despite stylistic differences, viewed objects from the front.

This fragmentation leads to multiple viewpoints. It reduces figures into basic geometric forms.

Content

The guitar player on a dock was recreated from the memories of a Portuguese musician the artist saw years before, in a bar in Marseilles. It is totally broken in form, with large intersecting planes.

Context

• Braque was originally a Fauve who found it so challenging that he began to rethink his own style
• Formed cubism with Picasso in 1907-1908

The work was inspired by

• • • Cezanne’s flattening and abstraction
    • Primitivism’s interest in abstraction
    • Fragmentation of pre-WWI society

• WWI was so destructive to society and European ideals that many felt it had been splintered and shattered. Cubism takes this idea and applies it to art.

In Comparison    

Previously, the Renaissance taught us paintings were illusionistic and three-dimensional, as they were dubbed “windows into the world.”

Cezanne began to experiment with flattening, simplifying and breaking down. What happens when I paint something that is 3D, but I paint in on something 2D and I emphasize its 2D nature?

 

Braque now embraces this notion of flatness. We have not only flattened the guitar player; we have simplified him, shattered him and in gluing him back together, we have jumbled him up.

About the Artist

Georges Braque (1882-1963) was a French born painter and sculptor. He is best known for being a founder of Cubism, along with Picasso. Some of his other masterpieces include Piano and Mandola, Violin and Palette, Woman with Mandolin, and Women with a Guitar.

The artist even designed costumes for Ballets Russes and other companies in the 1920s to 1950s.

 

Constructivism (1914-1920s)

• Emphasized the construction of art
• Photomontages/ collages were popular
• New art form for a new state

 

(4) 137. Illustration from The Results of the First Five-Year Plan.

 Varvara Stepanova. Russian. 1932.  Constructivism.

 

Learning Objective: Constructivism photomontage

Themes:

Propaganda
Politics
interpretation of history
Rulers

Museum: State Museum of Contemporary Russian History, Moscow

Illustration from The Results of the First Five-Year Plan by artist Varvara Stepanova is a photomontage.

 Form

• Constructivism
  • Construction of the artwork is visible; free of traditional Russian characteristics; new art for a new state
• Photomontage: essentially a collage; became a favorite USSR technique
• Juxtaposition (contrast) of vibrant color, form, scale was common
  • Create sense of dynamism; causes elements to “pop out” even though work is flat
• Can include photographs, text, etc
• Color: Stepanova uses only black/white photos; sepia photos; red (color of Soviet flag)

 

“Constructivism”—the name that Stepanova and her fellow travelers gave to the new art—“is movement away from representation and contemplation toward activity and production.”

 The Artists

Function 

• Published in a magazine called USSR in Construction; made for distribution in France, Britain, and US to show achievements of Stalin’s regime (foreign audience)
• Propaganda to show success of communism, and that the USSR is a powerful force
• This is an ode to the success of the First Five-Year Plan, an initiative started by Stalin in 1928

Content  

• Depicts symbols of the success of the new nation
• Electrical tower à part of the technological improvements in the 5 Year Plans
• Crowds of people celebrating and public address speakers on a platform with the number 5, symbolizing the 5 Year Plan
• Placards saying CCCP (Russian initials for USSR)
• Founder Lenin is cropped, looming, and larger; looking to the future / size indicates impact

Context  

• Russia had for centuries been an absolute monarchy ruled by a tsar
  • 1914-1918 WWI; 1917-1922 Civil War
  • USSR established in 1922 under Vladimir Lenin
  • Celebrated by artists as an end to the corruption and extreme poverty that had defined Russia
  • Lenin realizes a jump to full-blown communism would be too dangerous, so he institutes something called the New Economic Policy (half capitalism, half communism)
• After Lenin died, Stalin took over and decided to introduce full communism (uses Collectivization and Five-Year Plans for industry).
  • Five-Year Plans were supposed to be ways to grow Soviet economy and create a military/artillery industry, with steel production
  • Initially: temporary success, but Five-Year Plans resulted in extreme poverty and famine; farmers were forced to give up land and livestock; terror, violence, fear
  • This initiative was disastrous but it became an absolute necessity for USSR to project a pristine image of its society no matter how dire the situation became.
• Stepanova: talented artist who defined herself as a Constructivist
  • She was known for her contributions to the USSR in Construction magazine

 

(4) 136. Composition with Red, Blue and Yellow.

 Piet Mondrian. Dutch. 1930. De Stijl.

Learning Objective: De Stijl Themes: abstraction

Museum: Kunsthaus in Zurich

Composition with Red, Blue and Yellow by Dutch artist Piet Mondrian is an oil on canvas work measuring 1 foot 6 inches by 1 foot 6 inches.

De Stijl is the Dutch for “the style”. It moves towards absolute pure abstraction. There is an asymmetrical balance and total flatness. The image is simplified and non-representational. There is absolute abstraction without any reference to objects in nature.

The painting has no individual brushstrokes. This is very difficult to do.

Composition with Red, Blue and Yellow uses pure primary colours of white, black, red, blue and yellow. It is abstracted to basic vertical and horizontal elements

Function

The goal was to create a relevant, new art style with the power to unite people. As a result of WWI, people had been so torn apart that they needed something to unite them.

Mondrian felt that pure abstraction was the only relevant, clear, and universal language. This could create the harmony and order the world needed this after WWI.

Content  

• Primary colors and white and black
• Black grid that creates squares and rectangles of white, blue, red, and yellow

Context

Art needed to reflect a greater universal truth as this was in question after WWI. Art needed to be accessible to everyone and free of cultural association.

Imagine Isenheim Altarpiece or Ndop figure. Depending on your cultural background, you can easily interpret those images or at least get the basic message. However, if it is not familiar to you, you must be taught.

What is the only thing that everyone universally can understand? Formalism and abstraction because there is no message to understand. That is the unifying power of abstraction.

If art is going to be relevant, it must change to become universal.

About the Artist

Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) was one of the founders of the Dutch modern movement De Stijl. He reduced his shapes to lines and rectangles and worked with a minimal color palette. He is best known for his work in the 1920s and 30s.

 

Modern Sculpture

Modern sculpture continued where Rodin left off. It moved toward pure abstraction. It used primitive sculpture as inspiration and rejected the strictures of Academies.

 

(4) 129. The Kiss.

Constantin Brancusi. Romanian. 20^th century sculpture.

Learning Objective: Early 20^th century sculpture

Themes:

Male-female relationships
Abstraction
Cross-cultural
Appropriation

Museum: Philadelphia Museum of Art

The Kiss by artist Constantin Brancusi is a stone sculpture measuring 1 foot 10 inches tall.

This is a subtractive sculpture-in-the-round. It has no negative space. The emphasis is on the original/starting shape of the block of stone. This is an abstraction of human bodies.

The right angles of the elbows align with and emphasize the block. A single incised line separates the two figures. This leaves the block very raw. Its emphasis is on cubic quality and the rough surface. This was radical. Donatello, Michelangelo, Houdon – emphasized the technical finish. Rodin began to “roughen” up sculpture, and this was a total disregard of academic finish.

The work is not on a pedestal and is meant to be directly on the ground. This takes the sculpture out of the academic realm.

This work is a manipulation of the human body to fit form, rather than to fit style.

It is a rejection of academic tradition: idealization, finish, scale, size, and pedestal.

Function  

• 1) Redefine sculpture and start where his teacher Rodin left off
• 2) Reject authority and strictures of the academy
• 3) Be inspired by primitivism
• 4) Show a modern take on a traditional subject (lovers)
• 5) Attempt to maintain the materiality of the stone (make content fit form, not content fit style)

Content  

• Two half-length figures who hold each other tight in an embrace
• Emphasis is on the union of these two figures
• Female figure: longer hair, slight suggestion of breasts, eye is smaller
• Just like Klimt’s version – in terms of the union of the figures

About the Artist

Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957) was not technically a cubist, but he was inspired by Cubism. He was a student of Rodin’s.  The mentor broke rules about the idealization of sculptural figures. He took issue with the classical ideal.

Brancusi took what his teacher did a step further. Brancusi was an outsider to modernism (like Munch as a Norwegian was). He was Romanian and went to the Academy in Bucharest.

Brancusi was inspired by primitivism (African art), as well as Assyrian and Egyptian art.

 

Dada (1916-1925)

Dada was the result of WWI’s chaos and despair

Dada is a nonsense word that was “sufficiently insignificant to satisfy the Dadaists’ contempt for significance”.

Artists united in their horror of the war and the disgust for the societies responsible. They made arts that was absurd because they thought life was absurd. It was intentional mockery.

 

(4) 144. Fountain (second version).

Marcel Duchamp. American. Original 1917; 1950. Dada.

Learning Objective: Dada sculpture

Themes:

Appropriation
Innovation
Materials with significance
Satire

Museum: San Francisco MOMA and Tate London have copies

Fountain (second version) by Marcel Duchamp is a readymade glazed sanitary china with black paint. The work stands 15 inches tall.

 Form

 Sculpture in the round

Toilet was a found object: artist appropriates it, choice to do this makes it art.

This is known as a readymade, a commonplace object selected and exhibited as a work of art. The artist has had to do little as the work was made ready.

The ONE THING that had united ALL other works is that an artist’s hand made it.

Duchamp said, “Why is art more about craft than vision?”

Function

Here, art is a transformation of ordinary materials into something that makes us see things in a new way

Duchamp said this is what happens with pigments, roots, and oil. It is mixed up as paint and depicts an image. He questioned why was what he was doing so terribly wrong?

“It’s art because I said so,” said Marcel Duchamp. By saying this he illustrated the power of the artist to create a new thought and new purpose to an object.

Duchamp rejected the assumption that art must be linked to the craft of the hand. Instead, he said art should be about an idea.

What is art, after all?

Does it have to be made by the hand of the artist?

Can the artist just have an idea and put that idea into action?

This work designates a lowly object as a work of art. It makes the viewer ask, what can be considered art? He INTENDED for this to be absurd, to demonstrate the societal constructions about art.

“I’ve done everything as other artists did it, yet people will say this isn’t art.” Marcel Duchamp.

What Do We See?

He turned the urinal on its side and placed it on a pedestal (wooden block). This undermined its utilitarian associations and uses sculptural traditions of aggrandizement.

• Pun: fountain spots liquid, a urinal is meant to collect it.

• • We certainly wouldn’t want to drink from this…

• He signed it R. Mutt 1917, and named it a Fountain (a nonsense name based on Mott Ironworks where he bought the urinal)

Context

 Dada was an art movement in the early 20^th century. It arose as a reaction to WWI.

• Artwork/poetry/performances are often nonsensical and absurd
• Intentional mockery of society and conventions

After moving from Paris to NYC in 1915, Duchamp became a founding member of the American Society of Independent Artists (ASIA), a group dedicated to advancing new art forms. He was the director.

The group tackled the problem of juried art shows.  Juries always selected traditional works. Artists had to be selected to show art, ASIA wanted to promote new possibilities.

The 1917 Show was advertised as “No Jury – No Prizes. They planned to accept all works. The entrance fee was $80.  This was to encourage nontraditional works.

Duchamp submitted this urinal as sculpture and paid the $80 fee. It inspired a heated debate amongst the board and was rejected an hour before the opening. Remember Duchamp was the director! He resigned immediately in protest.

About the Artist

French American artist Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) produced paintings, sculpture, and short films. He was associated not only with Dadaism, but Cubism and Surrealism.

Surrealism (1920s-1940s)

Surrealism was influenced by Dada and began as a literary movement.  It grew out of Freudian free-association and dream analysis. Then there was automatic writing, word games, and hypnotic trances.

The goal was liberating the individual unconscious. Automatism worked in creating without conscious control.

Surrealism was meant to puzzle or challenge the viewer.

René Magritte. The Treachery of Images. 1928–1929. Oil on canvas. Surrealism.

Salvador Dalí. The Persistence of Memory. 1931. Oil on canvas. Surrealism.

 

(4) 140. The Two Fridas.

Frida Kahlo. Mexican. 1939. Surrealism.

Learning Objective: Surrealist painting (female painter)

Themes:

Portrait
Ideal woman
Male-female relationships
Stylized bodies
Duality
West vs Nonwest
Psychological

Museum: Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City

The Two Fridas by Mexican artist Frida Kahlo is an oil on canvas work measuring 5 feet 7 inches by 5 feet 7 inches.

Surrealism is meant to puzzle or challenge the viewer. It often shows dream–like scenes with a psychological focus. This double self-portrait is in a Surrealist, unclear, confusing space. The space is flat, with an even balance, split evenly up and down, with a focus on the foreground.

Function 

• Psychological: examines her inner feelings as a self-portrait study
• Surrealists want to examine inner states, psychological states of mind
• Reveals the deep hurt over losing her husband, her culturally mixed heritage, the harsh reality of her medical conditions, and the repression of women
• Shows the ultimately conflicted personal feelings of Frida

Content

Two seated figures hold hands and share a bench in front of a stormy sky. They are identical twins except for their attire.

On the left side, rejected Frida wears Victorian/German clothing. She has a clamping vein, and her blouse is ripped open to reveal her weak and exposed heart. There is a sense of vulnerability.

On the right side, Rivera still loves her. Frida’s heart is still whole. She wears the indigenous dress that Rivera preferred her to wear. The vein feeds his portrait. Her heart is strong and secure. Her skin is darker.

She is both women at once. They are linked through blood and gesture.

• Where one is weakened by an exposed heart (L), the other is strong (R).
• Where one still pines for her lost love (R), the other clamps down on that (L)
• Blood is a metaphor of union

Context

Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) was a mostly untrained painter who found refuge from pain throughout her life in art. She painted almost 200 self-portraits.

The Two Fridas was completed during her divorce from Diego Rivera.

She married Rivera in 1929. They each had affairs. Kahlo’s affairs were with men and women.

Kahlo’s father was German, and her mother was Mexican. Rivera encouraged her to abandon her Germanic/Western heritage and wear traditional Mexican clothing instead.

In an era when women wore elaborate hairstyles and clothing, Kahlo was a rebellious loner who wore indigenous clothing and did not shave. This was seen as very transgressive. During this time most women were domestic housewives. Kahlo was a businesswoman and artist.

In her paintings she often depicted physical deformities. She had polio as a child, which deformed her right leg. A bus accident when she was 18 caused her to be impaled through her groin which left her unable to walk for many months. Ultimately, she was unable to have children. She had severe scarring and deformity of the uterus. As a result, she underwent 32 operations. All these things challenged the definition of femininity.

 

(4) 138. Object (Le Déjeuner en fourrure).

Meret Oppenheim. German/Swiss. 1936. Surrealism.

Learning Objective: Surrealist sculpture

Themes:

Sexuality
Appropriation

Museum: MOMA

Object (Le Déjeuner en fourrure) by Meret Oppenheim is a fur-covered cup, saucer, and spoon. It is Chinese gazelle fur. The saucer measures 9 inches in diameter.

 Form                                                                                                                       

• Sculpted objects and assemblages had become prominent features of Surrealist art practice.
• Surrealists took Duchamp’s Fountain (absurd sculpture) and gave it a multiplicity of meanings
• How might an otherwise typical, functional found object be modified so it represents something deeply personal or symbolic? à Appropriation.

Function

Surrealism’s love of alchemy is revealed by turning something cool, smooth, ceramic, and metal into something warm, furry, and bristly.

This work has taken something utilitarian and turned it into a sculptural work. In a way, this is like a readymade!

Oppenheim stresses the physicality of the object, like Brancusi’s Kiss. It retains its original starting shape.

Imagine the feeling of the fur while drinking from the cup and using the saucer and spoon. How is this different than viewing a Renaissance or other work? The point is the viewer experiences the work. They think through what it would be like.

The form of this work is familiar to us, but the experience is not. Fur imbues these functional, hand-held objects with sexual connotations. Transformed genteel items traditional associated with female decorum into sensuous, sexually punning tableware. A small concave object covered in fur, that you put warm liquid into and is meant to be in your mouth…

A Note

Oppenheim herself said her work was not meant to have a sexual interpretation. She was very frustrated by this. She believed this interpretation was only because she was female, and she stopped producing art for a number of years.

The Hallmark of Symbolism

However, Surrealist interpretations vary and morph. This is believed to be a fair evaluation and the “way it worked”. It was thought that when a Surrealist artist makes their artwork and then displays it, the public has the right to make interpretations of it. This is a hallmark of Symbolism.

The Original Title

Oppenheim’s title was Object, but another Surrealist took the liberty of adding to the title: Le Dejeneur en fourrure (Luncheon in Fur) a sexual connotation for oral sex.

This is a play on Manet’s infamous Impressionist painting Luncheon on the Grass and a famous erotic novel Venus in Furs.

 Context

 A 22-year-old Meret Oppenheim was with Pablo Picasso and his mistress Dora Maar in a café. Oppenheim was wearing a brass bracelet covered in fur. Picasso, admiring it, proclaimed “Anything can be covered in fur!” Oppenheim replied, “Even this cup and saucer!”

Another version is that she commented her tea needed a fur coat to keep it warm.

When she finished Object (Le Déjeuner en fourrure), she submitted it for an exhibition of Surrealist artworks, in Paris. Many declared it a quintessential Surrealist object.

 

(4) 142. The Jungle.

Wifredo Lam. Cuban. 1943. Surrealism.

Learning Objective: Surrealist painting (Cuban artist)

Themes:

Race
Landscape
Nature
Cross-cultural
Interpretation of history
West vs Non west
stylized bodies

Museum: MOMA

The Jungle, by Cuban artist Wifredo Lam is a gouache on paper, mounted on canvas artwork measuring 8 feet by 8 feet.  Gouache is an opaque watercolor.

The forms are highly stylized and abstracted. Note the crescent-shaped faces, cloddish hands, feet, and long thin bodies. The color palette features blues, greens, oranges, and whites like in a jungle.

There is an uneasy balance between the composition’s denser top and the more open bottom. There are not enough feet and legs to support all the figures in the top half.

The unorthodox landscape excludes the horizon line, sky, or wide view. Instead, it is tight and cluttered.

Function

This is the artist’s emotional representation of the history of slavery in Lam’s native Cuba. It also illustrates how he thinks contemporary Cubans are viewed by Westerners as exotic and primitive. He uses stereotypes to combat stereotypes. This draws attention to the issues to oppression of Afro-Cubans and the harmful nature of Western stereotypes of the region.

Lam argues Afro-Cuban culture has been reduced to an absurdity, of both the exotic and primitive.

Content

The figures with crescent-shaped faces like African/Pacific masks, are in a landscape of Cuban sugarcane fields.  Lam often utilized symbols of Afro-Cuban culture, particularly Santeria (mix of Catholicism and African spirituality). In Santeria, the supernatural merges with the natural world through masks and animals. The figures are human, animal, and mystical all at once.

At the top right, the furthest figure holds a pair of shears in reference to harvesting.

To call it The Jungle suggests a search for a primitive culture. We are not in an urban or civilized area, but an untamed wilderness. Lam paints sugarcane and tobacco which are domesticated plants. Sugarcane is alien to the jungle setting, rather, it is grown in fields.

So why the Jungle? It captures the exotic, wild Western fantasy of tropical Cuba and reduces its inhabitants to strange, mystical hybrids who are not fully “civilized”.

Context

Originally enslaved by Spanish and Portuguese traders, Africans were forced to work sugarcane fields and convert to Catholicism. Africans continued to practice their native religion in the safety of jungles and fields.

In the 1940s in Cuba, sugarcane was big business. It required the toil of thousands of laborers. The reality of Cubans engaged in hard labor was in sharp contrast to how foreigners experienced the island as a tropical playground. While Americans enjoyed Cuba as a resort experience, US corporations ran their sugar businesses. The US controlled Cuban policies for decades.

Lam painted this after returning to Cuba from a trip to Europe where he was introduced to Surrealism. Surrealists aimed to unleash the unconscious mind. This freed things that have been suppressed. It brought with it dream-like distortions.

About the Artist

Wifredo Lam (1902-1982) was a Cuban artist and the grandson of an Afro-Cuban slave. His father was a Chinese immigrant who came to Cuba.

(4) 143. Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in the Alameda Park.

Diego Rivera. Mexican. 1947-1948. Surrealism.

Learning Objective: Surrealist mural/fresco

Themes:

Interpretation of history
Status
Politics
Portrait
Violence
Cross-cultural
West vs Northwest
Site-specific

Museum: Museo Mural in Mexico City

Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in the Alameda Park by Mexican born artist Diego Rivera is a fresco measuring 15 feet and 8 inches by 49 feet.

Form

• Congested picture plane with overlapping organic and geometric shapes, curving lines, bright colors
• Interior is lightest, edges are darkest
• Landscape depicts three separate groups
• Figures are stacked up for better viewing
• Fresco: tempera on wet plaster

Function

This is a dream-like depiction of the true history of the people of Mexico. The artist believed history is written by the victors, and thus depicts an incomplete story. Rivera depicts stories typically written out of history. He deliberately includes people of all classes.

This work is painted in the Versailles restaurant of the Hotel Prado, a government hotel next to Alameda Park.

Content

This is supposed to capture a dream-like fantasy of Mexican history. Since dreams are so strange, Rivera can juxtapose a variety of subject matter together.

Left (Spanish Conquest): Conquest and religious intolerance led to democratic nation

• Inquisitors
• Cortez in white ruff and bloody hands
• Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz
• Benito Juarez who restored the republic after French occupation in the Second Mexican Empire

Center (Fight for independence and revolution): Bourgeois men and women in park

This is in Alameda Park originally an Aztec marketplace and a place to burn heretics during the Spanish Inquisition. This was transformed into a private park for Spanish creole society. After the Mexican independence it became open to the public as a popular destination.

Rivera, shown as a child, holds hands with La Catrina. She represents the Aztec goddess Coatlicue whose symbol is that of a skull. Grinning skeletons are common in Mexican culture and were part of Aztec art before the Spanish conquest. Now she is in European clothing, also inspired by traditions of memento moris/vanitas.

Frida has her hand on his shoulder, nurturing him.  She holds a yin/yang symbol which represents the duality and the complexity of their relationship.

A gigantic balloon says RM, symbolizing hopes for the Republic of Mexico.

Others in the scene in the center include:

• Posada (the printmaker who designs the modern La Catrina)
• Porfirio Diaz (dictator who did not modernize Mexico and inadvertently caused the Mexican Revolution).
• An Indigenous woman clashes with police indicating not everything is better.

On the Right (Modern achievements?) is the future any better?  

• Workers’ flags
• Francisco Madero (overthrew Diaz and was assassinated in 1913), working class
• Indigenous family vs. police
• A man shooting someone in a face showing violence still pervades
• People trampled by horses
• There originally was a sign held by figures that said “God does not exist”
• Statement was made in 1836 by a speaker and Rivera was an atheist

Context

Rivera often painted frescos that celebrated the indigenous history of Mexico and socialism.  

The original work had a sign painted into it that said, “God does not exist”. In a deeply Catholic country, the accusation that God did not exist caused an uproar. Also, this was not what people expected to find in an upscale government hotel. Viewers protested the sign. The Mexican archbishop would not bless the hotel.

The painting was attacked.  

Rivera refused to change it, so it was hidden, until 1956.  Then Rivera agreed to alter it.

 

(4) 127. The Steerage.

 Alfred Stieglitz. American. 1907. 20^th century. Photography.

Learning Objective: Early 20^th century photography

 

Themes:

Abstraction
Appropriation
Print

Museum: Metropolitan and Getty have copies

The Steerage by Alfred Stieglitz is a photogravure.

Strictly speaking, a photogravure is not a photograph, because the image isn’t made in a darkroom.  The negative is transferred onto a copper plate coated with gelatin. The plate is dipped in a succession of etching acid baths, which eat away at the darker areas of the plate which have more gelatin. Next, the artist prints the image with ink.

Why would you use this? It is one of the best methods to mass produce large editions of photographs that are good quality. They have a very sensual velvety feel.

This is a study of composition, shape, rhythm, value, and line. Photography can capture abstraction in the same manner that painting can.

The artist explains:

A round straw hat, the funnel leading out, the stairway leaning right, the white drawbridge with its railings made of circular chains – white suspenders crossing on the back of a man in the steerage below, round shapes of iron machinery, a mast cutting into the sky, making a triangular shape.

 I stood spellbound for a while, looking and looking. Could I photograph what I felt, looking and looking and still looking? I saw shapes related to each other. I saw a picture of shapes and underlying that the feeling I had about life. […]

Spontaneously I raced to the main stairway of the steamer, chased down to my cabin, got my Graflex, raced back again all out of breath, wondering whether the man with the straw hat had moved or not. If he had, the picture I had seen would no longer be. The relationship of shapes as I wanted them would have been disturbed and the picture lost.

But there was the man with the straw hat. He hadn’t moved. The man with the crossed white suspenders showing his back, he too, talking to a man, hadn’t moved. And the woman with a child on her lap, sitting on the floor, hadn’t moved. Seemingly, no one had changed position. […] [It] would be a picture based on related shapes and on the deepest human feeling, a step in my own evolution, a spontaneous discovery.

Function

Stieglitz’s function was to argue for the elevation of photography to a fine art. It was an argument for photography’s merits. The emphasize was on how photography is different than painting.

Considered the first modernist photograph – why? Prior to this, photographers had tried to always emulate painting (think of Still Life in Studio).

Photography’s strengths are clarity and realism. This was the first photo that did not aim to emulate painting in style and subject matter.

There was an unintended function. It became associated with Documentary Photography and journalism. It also conveyed a message about its subjects and immigrants, even though this wasn’t Stieglitz’s intent.

Content  

• Upper and lower-class immigrants and travelers together on a boat
• Formal arrangements of diagonals, colors, tones

Context

Stieglitz ran an art gallery and published many art journals, that focused on photography

He was familiar with the debates about immigration reform and the ghastly conditions that steerage passengers were subjected to. Interestingly, Stieglitz, the son of a German immigrant, was opposed to admitting the uneducated and marginal to the USA.

Stieglitz’s wife Emmeline and their daughter were going to France. Emmeline was from a wealthy family, and Stieglitz was very class-conscious. Here is what he had to say about it.

How I hated the atmosphere of the first class on that ship. One couldn’t escape the ‘nouveau riches.’ […] On the third day out I finally couldn’t stand it any longer. I had to get away from that company. I went as far forward on the deck as I could […]

 As I came to the end of the desk I stood alone, looking down. There were men and women and children on the lower deck of the steerage. There was a narrow stairway leading up to the upper deck of the steerage, a small deck at the bow of the steamer. To the left was an inclining funnel and from the upper steerage deck there was fastened a gangway bridge which was glistening in its freshly painted state. It was rather long, white, and during the trip remained untouched by anyone. On the upper deck, looking over the railing, there was a young man with a straw hat. The shape of the hat was round. He was watching the men and women and children on the lower steerage deck. Only men were on the upper deck. The whole scene fascinated me.