May 6
The World Wars
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Constantin
Brancusi. Sleep. 1908. |
Constantin
Brancusi. Sleeping Muse. 1909 - 1911. |
Constantin
Brancusi. The Newborn. 1915. |
Preble,
Duane, Sarah Preble and Patrick Frank. Artforms. Seventh ed. Prentice
Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2002. |
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Essence =
that which makes something what it is; intrinsic, fundamental nature or
most important quality |
"Simplicity
is not a means to an end in art, but one arrives at simplicity in spite
of oneself, in approaching the real sense of things." -Brancusi |
Constantin
Brancusi. Bird in Space. 1928?
Preble,
Duane, Sarah Preble and Patrick Frank. Artforms. Seventh ed. Prentice
Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2002.
Wassily Kandinsky. Composition VII. 1923.
Synesthesia = sensation felt in one part of the body when another part is stimulated
"Color
is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings.
The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations
in the soul." - Vassily Kandinsky
Historic Context |
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1912 |
Titanic sinks |
1913 |
Armory Show in New York |
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1914 - 1918 |
World War
I |
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First wide-scale use of mechanized warfare |
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Over 16 milion people die |
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1916 - 1923 |
Dadaism |
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1917 - 1920 |
Russian Revolution |
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1919 - 1933 |
Bauhaus school sought the unity of all the visual and plastic arts from architecture and painting to weaving and stained glass |
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1922 |
Formation
of the Soviet Union |
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Fascists under
Mussolini seize power in Italy |
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1924 - 1940s |
Surrealism |
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1926 - 1953 |
Stalin gains control
the Soviet Union |
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1929 |
Great Depression
begins |
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1933 |
Hitler's Nazi
Party seizes power - end of the German Weimar Republic |
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1939 - 1945 |
World War
II |
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Largest & deadliest war with 62 million deaths |
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1945 |
U.S. bombs Hiroshima and Nagasaki with newly developed atomic bombs |
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The 1913 Armory Show introduces radical European abstraction to America for the first time
Armory Show Main Hall
http://www.usc.edu/schools/annenberg/asc/projects/comm544/library/images/415.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Stamp-ctc-armory-show.jpg |
Marcel Duchamp. Nude Descending
a Staircase. 1912. |
President T. Roosevelt exclaimed, "That's not art!" |
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New York Times critic said Duchamp's painting resembled "an explosion in a shingle factory." |
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American Art News offered a prize to anyone who could find the nude |
Dadaism 1916 - 1923 |
(Some of the) Berlin Dadaists in 1921 |
Dada = a nonsensical term used to define an international artistic and literary movement. Born of the widespread disillusionment engendered by World War I, it attacked conventional standards of aesthetics and behavior and stressed absurdity and the role of the unpredictable in artistic creation. |
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"Dada
knows everything. Dada spits on everything. Dada says 'knowthing,'
Dada has no fixed ideas. Dada does not catch flies. Dada is bitterness
laughing at everything that has been accomplished, sanctified... Dada
is never right... No more painters, no more writers, no more religions,
no more royalists, no more anarchists, no more socialists, no more
police, no more airplanes, no more urinary passages... Like everything
in life, Dada is useless, everything happens in a completely idiotic
way... We are incapable of treating seriously any subject whatsoever,
let alone this subject: ourselves." - Gardner's Art Through the
Ages |
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"While
the thunder of guns rolled in the distance, we sang, painted, glued
and composed for all our worth. We are seeking an art that would heal
mankind from the madness of the age."- Jean Arp |
Marcel Duchamp. L.H.O.O.Q. 1919.
Elger, Dietmar. Dadaism. Koln: Taschen, 2004.
Marcel Duchamp. Fountain. 1917.
Readymade = an object from popular or material culture presented without further manipulation as an artwork by the artist
Man Ray. Ingres'
Violin. 1924. |
Surrealism 1924 - mid 1940s |
1900 Sigmund Freud publishes The Interpretation of Dreams |
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Surrealist
Manifesto proclaimed: |
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Unconscious
mind more powerful than the conscious mind |
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Sought
to make visible the imagery of the unconscious |
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Purpose
of their art was to resolve the two states of dream and reality
into a kind of absolute reality, a surreality |
Salvador Dali. The Persistence of Memory. 1931.
"The only difference between me and a madman is that I am not mad." - Salvador Dali
Meret Oppenheim. Object (Luncheon in Fur). 1936.
Preble, Duane, Sarah Preble and Patrick
Frank. Artforms. Seventh ed. Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River,
NJ, 2002.
Frida Kahlo. The Two Fridas. 1939.
Pablo Picasso. Guernica. 1937.
Preble,
Duane, Sarah Preble and Patrick Frank. Artforms. Seventh ed. Prentice
Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2002.
"Painting
is not done to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war for
attack and defense against the enemy." - Picasso |
