1. NCC ART104
DIALOGUE WITH EUROPE
Avant-garde…artists or works that are novel or
experimental
Relates to military term for soldiers who explore
battlefield ahead of advancing army
suggests small group of intellectuals who push the
boundaries of what is accepted as the norm

2. Manet. Luncheon on the Grass (Le Dejeuner Sur L'Herbe). 1863.

3. The term "modernism" develops out of the
avant-garde
Modernism…philosophy that affirms the power
of human beings to make, improve, deconstruct
and reshape their lives, with the aid of scientific
knowledge, technology and practical
experimentation. The term covers many
political, cultural and artistic movements rooted
in the changes in Western society at the end of
the 19th and beginning of the 20th century.

4. The Modern World Emerges
• At the turn of the century (1900), a number of traditional points of
view were replaced with radically new ways of thinking
• Einstein publishes his Theory of Relativity in physics
• Increasing industrialization changes the way people live, buy and
work
• Freud introduces his concepts of the subconscious mind
• The Wright brothers demonstrate that humans can fly
• Ford proves that machines can be made quickly and efficiently
• And... the traditional center of the art world in Paris was losing its
hold

5. Characteristics of Modern Art:
• Discarded “traditional” forms of art as old-
fashioned and irrelevant
• Embraced disruption
• Belief in universals and the essential
• Emphasis on innovation (being the first)

6. The 1913 Armory Show introduces radical European
abstraction to America for the first time

7. Marcel Duchamp. Nude Descending a
Staircase. 1912

8. Marcel Duchamp. L.H.O.O.Q. 1919.

9. Marcel Duchamp. Fountain. 1917.

10. The Mexican Muralists - "Los Tres Grandes"
Orozco, Siquieros & Rivera
American artists identified with the Mexican
Muralists because they sought many of the same
goals:
– In search of a distinctive national imagery and style
– Belief in use art as a vehicle for social change
– Embraced the notion that art was for "the people"
rather than the wealthy elite

11. Jose Clemente Orozco. Prometheus. 1930

12. In Greek mythology, Prometheus (meaning "forethought”) is a Titan, culture
hero, and trickster figure who is credited with the creation of man from clay,
and who defies the gods and gives fire to humanity, an act that enabled
progress and civilization. Prometheus is known for his intelligence and as a
champion of mankind.
The punishment of Prometheus as a consequence of the theft is a major theme
of his mythology, and is a popular subject of both ancient and modern art.
Zeus, king of the Olympian gods, sentenced the Titan to eternal torment for
his transgression. The immortal Prometheus was bound to a rock, where each
day an eagle, the emblem of Zeus, was sent to feed on his liver, which would
then grow back to be eaten again the next day.
In the Western classical tradition, Prometheus became a figure who
represented human striving, particularly the quest for scientific knowledge,
and the risk of overreaching or unintended consequences. In particular, he was
regarded in the Romantic era as embodying the lone genius whose efforts to
improve human existence could also result in tragedy: Mary Shelley, for
instance, gave The Modern Prometheus as the subtitle to her novel
Frankenstein

13. David Siqueiros would paint América Tropical above what is
now La Placita Olvera in Downtown Los Angeles on October 9,
1932. It was poorly received and criticized for its political and
social message. It was whitewashed soon thereafter. Eighty
years later, The Getty Conservation Institute conserved and
restored the mural. It became accessible to the public on its
80th birthday, October 9, 2012. No known color photographs of
América Tropical are known to exist so conservators used
scientific analysis and best practices to get at the artist's vision
of his piece.

14. Diego Rivera. Man, Controller of the Universe. 1934
Man at the Crossroads was a fresco in the Rockefeller Center, New York. The painting was
controversial because it included an image of Lenin and a Soviet Russian May Day parade.
Despite protests from artists, Nelson Rockefeller ordered its destruction before it was
completed.

15. SOCIAL REALISM &
REGIONALISM

16. Grant Wood. American Gothic. 1930.

17. Dorothea Lange. Migrant Mother,
Nipomo, California. 1936.

19. Thomas Hart Benton. The Arts of the West. 1932.
"I wallowed in every cockeyed ism that came along, and it took me ten years to get all
that modernist dirt out of my system." - Thomas Hart Benton

20. ARSHILE GORKY 1904 - 1948
Vostanik Manoog Adoyan , Arshile (refers to the hero Achilles), Gorky
(Russian for bitter)…The bitter Achilles.
Most of his works express his experiences and feelings on the armeanian
genocide, as well as sexual images. His style is characterized by figuration
and abstraction seemingly melded into one another, much in the styles of
Cezanne and Picasso.

21. Arshile Gorky. The Betrothel II.
1947.
Vassily Kandinsky. Improvisation No. 30
(Cannons). 1913.

22. Arshile Gorky dancing at a party

23. Arshile Gorky, The Artist and His Mother, 1926—42
…from a 1912 photograph
I don’t like that word, “finish.” When
something is finished, that means it’s dead,
doesn’t it? I believe in everlastingness. I
never finish a painting—I just stop working
on it for a while. Arshile Gorky, 1948
In March 1919, 14-year-old Vosdanig
Manoog Adoian watched his mother starve
to death, one of countless victims of the
Ottoman Turkish effort to displace or
exterminate the empire’s Armenian
population.
His painting is both an exploration of
modern painting and an emotional
evocation of personal and national tragedy,
it is one of the most powerful portraits of
the 20th century.

24. Arshile Gorky. Garden in Sochi. c. 1943.
Sochi…Russian resort on the Black Sea
Sosi…poplar tree in Armenian
"It was the custom in our family at the birth of a son to plant a poplar tree which
would later have the birth date and name carved on it. Gorky as a child loved his tree
and took great pride in caring for it.”

25. Arshile Gorky. The Liver is the Cock's Comb. 1944.
"I do not believe in anarachy in art. There must be some structure...For me, art must be a
facet of the thinking mind...unrelenting spontaneity is chaos." - Gorky

26. Arshile Gorky. The Liver is the Cock's Comb. 1944
The work, if taken from a symbolic statement of the artist, seems to speak of the perfectly
ordered world in which Gorky lived before the wild and savage world around him came and
destroyed it. The title suggests many double meanings, such as the “cock’s comb”, which is
both a headdress, and a feathered phallic symbol…seem to link both mind and body. The
liver was often thought of in past as a the source of passion and love rather than the heart,
so the title could be suggesting that mind and body connection, as well as being represented
on the canvas.

27. Arshile Gorky, American (born Armenia), 1904-1948, The Black Monk (“Last
Painting”), c. 1948, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Around. 1946 Gorky’s works, which had been populated with distorted, menacing figures
since the Cubist period, began to convey his own angst even more intensely. Although by
then his work had earned a certain amount of recognition, he failed to achieve financial
stability. On top of this, his studio was gutted by fire, he was diagnosed with throat cancer,
he split up with his second wife and his painting hand was paralyzed in a car accident. He
committed suicide in 1948

28. Meyer Schapiro wrote of Gorky, “To be a disciple of Picasso
in New York in the 1920s and early ’30s was an act of
originality [and] an enormous risk.” And an act of self-
assertion. But it was also humble, since Gorky considered
painting a language to be learned. How better to grasp it than
by imitation, just as the Renaissance masters had copied the
ancients. Innovation and self-expression were secondary.
Gorky’s growing proficiency would lead a friend to call him
“the Poussin of America [who] knew what art was, how it was
put together. He knew like Poussin where all the blocks fit.”