2. Art in the Early 20th Century:
Early British Modernism (c.1900-c.1915)
Early U.S. Modernism (c.1900-c.1929)
Pre-War Vienna and German Expressionism (c.1900-1930s)
École de Paris
Fauvism (1905-1907)
Cubism (1907-1920s)
Futurism, Orphism and Rayonism (c.1909-c.1916)
The Birth of Abstract Art
Constructivism (1915-mid 1920s)
Dada (1915-c.1922)
Bauhaus (1919-1923)
Surrealism (1920-late 1940s)
Neue Sachlichkeit (“New Objectivity”; 1923-early 1930s)
Avant Garde in Britain and the U.S.
Realism and Figurative Painting in the U.S. and Europe
Naïve Painting
Mexican Art
3. Art changed completely in the 20th century. With the
birth of Modernism, a rapid succession of “isms” followed,
movements in which artists rejected naturalism—representing
the physical world realistically—and academic art—with its
emphasis on classical traditions. Instead, they experimented
with technique and form, questioning the very nature of art and
humanity.
At the turn of the century, the dramatic winds of
Modernism swept over the English Channel, exciting a
generation of British painters and sculptors—before World War I
destroyed the spirit of optimism. Virtually the whole generation
of British Modernists were educated at the Slade School of Fine
Art in London. Founded in 1871 by Felix Slade, it overtook the
Royal Academy as the most important art school in the country.
British Modernism reached its height just before World
War I. Conventional subject matter began to be superseded by
abstract painting and sculpture, including non-representational
easel paintings, colorful geometrical images and sculpture
reduced to simplified forms. The boldness of British Modernism,
however, was shattered by the war, and with few exceptions,
the work of this generation of artists declined markedly
afterwards.
15. The Vorticists at the Restaurant de la Tour Eiffel, Spring 1915
by Roberts
16. By the end of the 19th century, the U.S. had forged its
own history, and writers had succeeded in creating a distinctive
American voice. To do the same for painting, artists opted to
engage with the new realities of city life and the challenging
ideas coming from Europe.
Around 1900, America experienced rapid population
growth and urbanization. City life became the central theme of
a group of young realist painters who became known as the
“Ashcan School” because they depicted the unglamorous life of
street life. They were the first representatives of U.S.
Modernism, although their style was conservative by European
standards.
Many American artists went to Paris or Rome to study
fine arts, and visiting exhibitions played a key role in changing
the American art world. By the end of the 1920s, a number of
American artists had been influenced by the most advanced
European tendencies. The forms of Modern art could be
equated with the machines that were transforming American
life.
Fragmentation in the paintings of some artists of the
period reflect the hectic bustle of city life, while others came
close to total abstraction.
24. Beginning at the turn of the 20th century, Pre-War Vienna
was the epicenter for music, literature, and the visual arts. The city
became a magnet for free-thinking artists from across Europe.
At times, this cultural environment led to conflict and
scandal. A pulsating metropolis of nearly two million inhabitants,
Vienna was also a deeply divided city. While the poor were packed
into tenement buildings, the aristocracy, barons of commerce, and
senior civil servants lived in splendid apartments.
By 1900, an extensive program of public works had been
completed, providing an underground train system, new tramways,
public buildings, and electric street lighting. Much of the new
construction was designed in the “Jugedenstil,” the German term
for Art Nouveau. Working alongside architects, leading artists
designed interiors with Symbolist motifs, such as elegant floral
patterns and sinuous female forms.
Vienna was also a vibrant café society, where artists and
their friends met to discuss projects, artistic events abroad, and the
controversial ideas of the day, such as those of Sigmund Freud, the
Viennese founder of psychoanalysis. Upright Viennese citizens
believed Freud’s theories concerning primal sexual urges and the
meaning of dreams were immoral. It was in this realm of sex and
nudity that artists would engage in battles with Viennese notions of
decency.
29. In the early 20th century, the classical ideals of academies
and the rapidly aging Art Nouveau style held artistic vision in
Germany in a stranglehold. Inevitably, any new movement would
have to be violently different, and that movement was
Expressionism. What distinguished German Expressionist art
was its emphasis on the highly personal psychological and
emotional response of the artist to the subject, and not the subject
itself.
A handful of young architecture students from Dresden
formed “Die Brüke” (“The Bridge”), naming their group after the
German philosopher Nietzsche. They shared Nietzsche’s view that
many was a bridge to a better world—and because Dresden was
famous for its bridges. Their bright, acid colors—set against each
other to create a sense of edge—and heavily distorted outline
pushed art decisively away from naturalism.
Almost at the same time, another style of Expressionism
was being formed in Munich, which took its name from an almanac
published by the group of artists called “Der Blaue Reiter” (“The
Blue Rider). Believing that creativity was not found in academic art,
they printed pictures of ancient Egyptian artifacts, children’s
drawings, and the newest artistic innovations alongside each other.
They sought to return society to a state of harmony that they felt
had been lost in the process of modernization.
41. There had not been an artistic hub like Paris since
Renaissance Florence, and from 1904 to 1929, it was the
most important artistic center. Of all European cities, Paris
had by far the largest art market with upward of 100 private
galleries.
In time, the notion of a specifically Parisian artistic
phenomenon arose: an École de Paris (“School of Paris”).
Foreign painters, sculptors, art dealers and publicists from
abroad descended on the city and settled among the
resident French artists, both native Parisians and those who
had arrived from the provinces.
However, this school was not an art movement
linked by a manifesto, training, or shared political views.
Rather it was a group of artists who were united by a desire
to follow a bohemian lifestyle, share their experiences, and
choose, if they wanted, to attend Paris’s numerous art
academies and open studios. In this way, a wide variety of
artists found common ground.
47. Fauvism exploded onto the Paris art scene in 1905.
Its bright, pure colors, flattened perspective, and simplified
detail signalled a new era. Unwittingly, a small group of
French artists had developed the first modern art movement.
The Fauves were a group of friends who sought a
more dynamic way of depicting nature. They experimented
with bold, non-naturalistic color and applied their paint in
short, energetic strokes, which prompted them to be dubbed
“Les Fauves,” or “Wild Beasts.”
For all the impression of wildness, however, the
Fauves soon revealed they were more interested in solid,
permanent structure than violent expression or the
impressionist “fleeting moment.” Pure color—sometimes
softened with a touch of white—was applied in little dabs and
strokes. The canvas was left bare in places to act as color
itself.
By 1906-07, the parameters of Fauvism had shifted to
include line to define shape and larger blocks of more muted
color. The human form replaced landscape as the focal point
of their paintings. Some of the Fauves stayed with their
original style, but their approach was generally less daring.
55. In the space of just a few years, Cubism overturned many of
the visual conventions that had dominated Western art since the
Renaissance. Initially the project of a handful of painters working in
Paris, it laid the groundwork for innovative art for over 50 years.
By the beginning of the 20th century, Europe’s most advanced
painters were becoming less concerned with creating an illusion of
depth and volume in their work. Artists had grown increasingly
aware of alternatives to art of the Western tradition and how it
challenged Western art’s ideas of naturalism and beauty. By
experimenting with representations of objects and space, Cubism
broke down these conventions by representing their subjects in
terms of block-like forms.
Cubism eventually evolved from complex and fragmented
forms that were shattered and reconstituted on the picture surface
to simple flat planes of color and abstract forms. Most Cubist
paintings used a limited range of colors, preferring to concentrate
on the analysis of form, but late Cubism became more colorful and
exuberant.
The lack of concern for subject matter has led to Cubism
being described as an attempt to achieve a kind of “pure visual
music.” Rather than seeing the subject from a single point of view,
painters combined different angles and aspects of a subject. The
images created have to be deciphered, requiring the viewer to
become an active participant.
71. In the years before World War I in Europe, the Futurists, the
Orphists, and the Rayonists all believed that a new form of art was
needed for changing society. Although their theories were not the same,
they all pushed painting in the direction of totally abstract art.
The development of Futurism (1909-c.1916) overlapped with that
of Cubism. Futurist painters proclaimed themselves “the primitives of a
new and transformed sensibility.” They combined some elements of
Neoimpressionism (such as pointillist brushwork) with photographic
analysis and the fractured forms of Cubism. They also used
unnaturalistic color to heighten the impact of the work on the viewer,
and “force-lines” to convey movement and draw the viewer into the
picture.
Orphism (1911-c.1914) was a term coined by the critic
Guillaume Apollinaire in 1912 to describe a more colorful and abstract
form of Cubism associated with music. Orphist artists were inspired by
complementary color theory to develop increasingly abstract paintings
based around color blocks and discs, and were a key advance toward
artistic abstraction.
Rayonism (1912-c.1914) was a short-lived Russian movement,
which attempted to synthesize the discoveries of Cubism, Futurism, and
Orphism into a single artistic language. Characterized by rhythmically
interacting shafts of color, Rayonist paintings provided a crucial step in
the development of Russian abstract art.
81. Art without subject matter was a revolutionary concept in the
early 20th century. Identifiable people and objects were replaced by
floating shapes—some resembling creatures, other geometric—blocks of
color so big that they filled an entire canvas, and vertical and horizontal
lines.
In the first decade of the 20th century, Fauvist and Expressionist
artists had removed the connection between the colors they used to
represent nature and nature itself. The Cubists had divided objects into
multiple planes, challenging dimensions of space, and the Futurists
challenged concepts of time.
Until 1910, these artists had kept within the bounds of concrete
reality—they had depicted recognizable subjects. The biggest leap of all
would be removing any reference to the world of identifiable objects.
The foundation of art was reproducing some facet of the world as the
artists saw it. It would be no simple matter to take the decisive step
towards abstraction—art without representation.
Abstract artists were united by one urge. They wanted to
oppose the self-limiting material values that they felt dominated society
with a new, profound set of spiritual ideals. Their approach to creativity
was steeped in ancient philosophy, esoteric Eastern beliefs, and new
mystical writings. Music, which was abstract, ordered, and emotionally
charged, provided a guide for abstract artists.
89. Composition
in Red,
Black, Blue,
and Yellow
by
Mondrian
90. When the Russian Revolution took place in 1917, there was
already a group of progressive artists prepared to help build a new
communist society. Such a task required a new artistic language
that could encapsulate the ideals of the revolution, and that
language was Constructivism.
Constructivism can be traced to Vladmir Tatlin’s achievement
after visiting Picasso’s Paris studio in 1914. Tatlin’s achievement
was to transform the painted Cubism that he saw there into “real
materials in space.” He began by making wall-mounted “painted
reliefs” that employed metal, string, and wood projecting out of the
surface. By 1915, he was creating free-hanging sculptures, in which
natural materials were used for their color, texture, and shape.
The emphasis on materials became more meaningful after
the workers’ state had been established. Wood, metal, glass, and
plastics were used in industry, so when artists used these materials,
they were cementing their bond with the working people. By 1919,
Constructivism had gained the Communist Party’s backing.
By 1920-21, however, a political division developed between
those Constructivists who believed that artists should maintain a
personal involvement with the creative process, and those who
believed that artists were “intellectual workers.” This led to some
artists leaving Russia for the West to make “pure art,” while those
who remained placed their talents at the service of the new regime.
99. Dada was a richly subversive art movement that developed
at the time of World War I as a protest against bourgeois
conventions and the folly of war. The aim of the Dadaists was to
destroy traditional values in art and to create new art to replace the
old.
Dada started in 1916 in Zurich where Hugo Ball, a German
actor, musician, theatrical producer, and playwright established a
small music hall called the Cabaret Voltaire. He was soon joined by
other émigrés, and the group chose the name Dada—French for
“hobby horse”—randomly from a French-German dictionary.
The Dadaists loudly rejected the old artistic structures and
set out to scandalize and outrage their audience. They composed,
printed, and performed nonsense poetry and songs, and produced
imagery and objects designed to shock the viewer. More than any
previous art movement, Dada rejected established institutions.
When the war ended, the Dada spirit quickly spread to
Cologne, Berlin, and Hanover, then finally settled in Paris. By 1921,
most of the important Dadaists had gathered in the French capital
around the poet and critic André Breton.
Dada challenged the rules of art. Everyday objects as art,
political collage, the use of chance and playful metaphysics—all
these energized the movement. The Dada group dissolved in 1921,
but many of the artists went on to become Surrealists.
111. Founded in Germany in 1919, the Bauhaus School
of Art and Design was the vision of modernist architect
Walter Gropius. Established in the city of Weimer, the
Bauhaus (“Building House”) school aimed to overcome the
prejudice that raised high art over lowly design.
The school survived shortages of funds, political
instability, and occasional internal divisions. It was twice
forced tor relocate and produced just 500 graduates in 14
years, yet it was the 20th century’s most influential school
of design. Classes were held in workshops with
apprentices taking a compulsory preliminary class before
moving on after six months to train in the field of their
choice.
Students studied color theory, practical use of
materials, draftsmanship, painting, and photomontage.
After 1925, the school’s focus shifted from craft to
industrial design. New products, such as ceiling lamps,
cantilever chairs, and furniture suitable for office or home,
were designed by Bauhaus technicians and produced by
companies who owned large-scale factories.
120. Surrealism started as a literary and political movement but
had a profound effect on art, photography, and film. Influenced by
the political writings of Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud’s work on
psychology, it aimed to uncover the repressed subconscious using
dreamlike imagery that challenged perceptions of authority.
The Surrealist movement was started in Paris by the poet
and critic André Breton, who published the first Surrealist
Manifesto and launched the journal La Révolution Surréaliste in
1924. Breton and his fellow writers wanted to free the imagination
by tapping into the unconscious mind through automatic writing, a
process of free association, in their poetry and prose.
Breton found support for his ideas in the visual arts.
Although there was no single style of Surrealist art, there are two
dominant strands: strange objects in dreamlike settings to create a
hallucinatory effect, and those using free association, which the
Surrealists called automatism. The latter was achieved by such
means as staring at a pattern until a hallucination occurred.
The Surrealists sometimes incorporated photography in
their work as they were able to link the real and surreal by
manipulating photographic techniques, or simply using it to isolate
the unexpected. Taboo-breaking images of sexuality, violence, and
blasphemy also were common.
137. When Expressionism’s passion was nearly spent, and
angry Dada risked becoming merely chic entertainment, German
art had to take a long hard look at itself and the role it played in
society. Neue Saclichkeit (“New Objectivity”) was just that look.
Also known as New Realism, this movement was characterized by
a newfound attention to the realistic representation of objects in
a detailed way.
There was no specific style, nor even a shared political
perspective, though certain artists were deeply angered by
society’s callousness and wished to place their art at the service
of their indignation. New Objectivity is perhaps best seen as a
reaction to what had gone before.
The unifying subject that artists were concerned with was
people. They painted either portraits with a cool, analytical
detachment or groups of figures, often at social gatherings. Some
made searing social commentaries by juxtaposing individuals of
radically different social status in the same frame to show
disgust with social division or with human rottenness. Other
artists painted with a desire to reveal what they felt behind
surface appearances, creating art with a sense of nostalgia,
almost melancholy, in their arrangements of classically posed
figures.
147. Between the wars, Britain and the U.S. produced a
variety of avant-garde artists. They looked to Paris and
European modernism for inspiration, but they produced art that
reflected their own national backgrounds.
Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth were at the
forefront of the British avant-garde movement. After traveling
through France and visiting cutting-edge artists, in 1933 they
helped establish Unit One, the first British modernist movement
to embrace art, design and architecture. Unit One organized
exhibitions across Britain, which sparked debate and polarized
opinion on modern art. British avant-garde painters and
sculptors tended toward abstraction, but they also continued the
tradition of British landscape art.
Two American artists—Alexander Calder and Stuart
Davis—were also connected to the European avant-garde. Both
artists lived in Paris in the late 1920s. The random motion of
Calder’s steel and wire sculptures was influenced by Dadaists
and Surrealists, but they were also indebted to American folk
art. Davis was inspired by Cubism, but his subject matter was
distinctly American. Unlike his British contemporaries, Davis
celebrated the urban world in joyous, decorative paintings that
depicted modern buildings, neon lights, street signs, posters,
and commercial packaging.
157. In the 1920s and 1930s, a number of artists resisted the trend
toward abstraction, preferring to work more conventionally while still
reflecting contemporary life. Figurative painters in Europe and
America continued the tradition of Realism, but in several diverse
styles.
Both painting styles portray social reality and truth rather than
aesthetics and ideals. Many 20th-century painters reflected their time
period in the choice of subject matter and in the styles they adopted,
continuing a tradition of representational art that still exists today.
Realist and figurative painting had two principle sources: 19th
century social realism by previous artists who were concerned with
representing everyday working life, and the revival of the classical style
in Europe following World War I, a tendency associated with nationalism
and political conservatism. As well as nostalgic rural genre paintings
and landscapes, there was an emergence of realistically-depicted urban
scenes and interiors reflecting an ever increasing industrialized
environment and the psychological tensions of the modern world.
In America, the realism of the Ashcan school was followed by a
gentler and more nostalgic figurative style during the Depression years
on the part of the American regionalists, although it would resurface
again in other artists. Precisionist painters were influenced by
photography, but many also developed their own naturalistic style.
Representational painting in Europe also had regional variations, but
some form of realism continued into the 20th century across most of the
continent.
177. With the revolutionary changes in art at the start of the 20th
century came a reappraisal of previously dismissed genres, including
Naïve painting, sometimes confusingly known as Primitive art. The
lack of training of Naïve artists was recognized as a strength rather
than a shortcoming, giving their work a refreshing spontaneity and
directness.
Naïve painting can be loosely defined as the work of artists
with little or no formal training, but it does not imply an amateur
status. When this style entered the mainstream of fine art, it was
adopted by formally-educated artists, who might be more properly
labeled “pseudo-” or “faux-naïve.”
Naïve artists were largely untouched by trends in the art
world. Their influence on mainstream art, however, has been
considerable. Unlike many 20th-century artists, Naïve painters are
often motivated by their interest in a subject. Frequently, there is a
preoccupation with the past. Although some have aspired to emulate
academic painters, the common stylistic elements come from their
lack of training in conventional techniques. The composition is often
simple and instinctive, sometimes to the point of being wildly
unstructured. This unsophisticated quality is intensified by a lack of
scientific perspective.
Naïve paintings are also frequently crowded with detail—
especially awkwardly drawn figures—contrasting with flat areas of
paint. Combined with a tendency to use bright, unnaturalistic colors,
this gives Naïve art a vitality and a childlike innocence.
188. Fueled by protest after centuries of colonial occupation,
Mexican art is a rich blend of diverse sources, and reflects a
complex mixture of historic and social factors. European influences
became a point of contention at the beginning of the 20th century
after the Mexican Revolution (1910-20) challenged artists to form a
unique national identity.
From panoramic murals to modest still lifes, Mexico’s people
and culture were at the ideological center of art production. Looking
at their Pre-Columbian past and indigenous populations with fresh
eyes (now freed from European value judgments), Mexican artists
began to incorporate the nature, people and culture around them
instead of emulating foreign trends.
Art that focused on all things Mexican became an important
part of the search for national identity. American Indian holidays,
costume, and folk art became a source of inspiration. These motifs
were often mixed with references to ancient gods, religious
practices and the distinctive Mexican landscape. Some artists also
portrayed the cruelties and injustices of the Spanish Conquest.
Although no one style was ever promoted or followed,
Mexican art retains a distinctive look and a unique color palette.
Moreover, the far-reaching influence of Mexican muralism on art
throughout Latin America and all over the world cannot be
underestimated.
