Boccioni

Riot in the Galleria

1910

Futurism, post-Cubism

deliberately revolutionary, address popular audience

reject traditional political/cultural character of Italy

champion modernity, technology, the machine, urbanization, industrialzation,

dynamic sensation - what it means to be living in modern world

steel, glass, elecricity of building

pointilist (Neo-Impressionism) - anarchy, political

figures blurred, motion, energy

Boccioni

The City Rises

1910-1911

growth of city, rapid urbanization (Milan)

skyscrapers in back, blur of working process abstracted

horsepower

fury, intensity, dynamism

color

Boccioni

Dynamism of a Speeding Horse and House

1914-1915

oil, wood, copper, iron - construction out of collage

fragmentation, pre-formed wood mass-produced

intersecting energies (interpenetration)

highly abstracted

Boccioni

The Street Enters the House

1911

simultaneity, the snesation of modernity

sum total of visual sensations experienced in city

horse run through - interpenetration

fragmentation, overload

"spectator in center of picture"

Balla

Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash

1912

new technologies of vision, stop-action, chronophotog

temporality + movement

Concharova

The Cyclist

1913

Futurism insp - motion, speed, chromophotog

less pointilist, more Cubist fragmented style

interest in sensation of speed and movement, machine (bicycle)

Cubist vocab - signs, letters, pop culture

Malevich

Warrior of the First Division, Moscow

1914

oil + collage on canvas + found objects

language of synthetic cubism (flat planes)

unconvential military (WWI) portrait

found objects taken out of real world context

formally simplifying with floating rectangles of color

moving synCub to total non-rep

Malevich

Red Square

1915

oil on canvas (not collage!)

radical

Suprematism: basic, simple, square as fundamental, supreme element of art; essentialism

visual analog for: consciousness, beyond traditional spirituality, intuition

irreducible core, essential minimal

democratic

Malevich

Suprematist Construction

1915-1916

aerial suprematism - reference to airplane, modernity

later he thinks it's too literal

Malevich

White on White

1918

light plays off - distinguish

infinity of light, non-material

the most simplified forms

space of no human measure, beyond rationality

Semaphore: symbolic shape in space

anti-materialist, anti-rationalist

too abstract?

Tatlin

Selection of Materials: Iron, Stucco, Glass, Asphalt

1914

"technician" not "artist" (too bourgeois)

art + life

non-figurative, non-rep, all about modern materials

opening up of space

utilitarian materials dictate form, sculpt space

Tatlin

Corner Counter-Relief

1915

iron, aluminum

no backgrop, sculpture is the objects in space

engage with materials in space of the real world

total integration of artwork with its environment

Janco

Mask

1919

paper, cardboard, pastels

constructed object - Cubism

meant to be worn!* 

primitivist? outside of modernity

Zurich DaDa (SEE NOTES!!!!!!! 11/02)

*Hugo Ball - Cabaret Volataire

Arp

Collage According to the Laws of Chance

1916-1917

visual, collage

accident + chance determine art (rather than will)

some other force outsode of Western rationality

*see discussion section notes!!!!!!!!!!

Arp

Forest

1917

wood relief

depersonalized, resist artist's olition

organic oder (artist just vehicle)

**abstract + organic

vitalist aesthetic

Duchamp

The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even

1915-23

oil, wire, lead foil on glass

ironic, not niaeve or organic

nonsense? created its own rationale, logic (priv expose)

little to do with causality, arrived shattered - chance

irony about machine, love

suspension of desire, sexuality

Duchamp

Bicycle Wheel

1913

replica

readymade ("brainfacts")

real world objects in changed context

concept > craft

art because he said so

"aesthetic of indifference"

not about beauty, tradition, color, form

IS about intellectual process

Duchamp

Fountain

1917

"mass produced world" of NY + mass consumed

ready made, machine tooled

fetishized American technology, indusrty

R. Mutt - anonymous submission, rejected

Hoch

Da-Dandy

1918

photomontage

aesthetic of fragmentation

completely constructed out of mass media images

reconsideration of what art is

attack social order, bourgeoise, capitalism

advertisements for revolutionary change

photography not truth, can be manipulated

female iconography - distorted modern woman

objectification of women

Hoch

Cut With a Kitchen Knife through the Beer Belly of the Weimar Republic

1919-1920

fragmentation, chaos of soiciety, confusion of times

dancer - feminine freedom?

veiled/coded political statement - censorship

Kaiser Wilhelm anti-Dada

Grosz

Fit for Active Duty

1916-1917

ink on paper

expressionist but too academic - becomes radical Dada

was solider

caustic horror

Grosz

Pimps of Death

1919

razorsharp line

simplicity of children's drawings but biting

skeletal soldiers dressed like whores

Hausmann

Mechanical Head (Spirit of the Age)

1920

found objects, dummy's head

pioneer of photomontage - "photoconstructor"

nonsensical, crude, Frankenstein, experiment

wounded soldier coming home

construction of humanity

head usually center of logic, reason, turned inside out

Schwitters

Merzbau, Merz column

1923

his house, "total work of art," built out from column

ritualistic space, non-rationalized, non-institutional

multi-perspectival

destroyed in Ally Bombing, Nazis showed in Degenerate Art exhibit, rebuilt in Scandanavia, England

de Chirico

The Mystery and Melancholy of the Streets

1914

Surrealism ("meaning beyond appearances")

sense of another reality, dream - anxious, foreboding

deeeeep space (anxiety)

not realistic - theatre for dream space, imagery

menacing shadows, train phobia,

circus car

de Chirico

The Child's Brain

1914

confrontational

classic columns/curtain - authority of Italian classical past

paternal figure

Freud - respected and resented by child

mysteries of unconcious

Man Ray

The Gift

1921

readymade manipulated

proto-Surrealist-

randomy found by chance, recombined with other elements in irrational manner, subvert expectations, create aggressive object, incongruous

jolt between logical + illogical

ambivalence of gender

Ernst

Elephant Celebes

1921

constructed like collage

proto-Surrealist - hallucinatory, irrational, state of disbelief

juxtaposition of unrelated imagrey, contradictory

machinomorphic imagery (machine that doesnt work)

"the art of the insane"

madness as regression into primitive stage (primal world inside)

Ernst

Two Children Threatened by a Nightingale

1924

constuction with oil painting

imagistic/veristic surrealism (v. abstract)

deep space - dream theatre, multiple vanishing pts

children closer to unconcsious

deliberate suspension of rationality

meant to trigger our own dream imagery

*DREAM + REALITY = ABSOLUTE REALITY, SURREALITY

*****see notes on surrealism as noun, philosophy!!!!!!!

Dali

The Persistence of Memory

1931

haunting allegory

deep empty space

juxtaposition of unrelated realities (irreconciable opposites)

soft metal, manamde + organic

subversion

dismantle rationality, reality

Magritte

The Human Condition

1933

painting as window to reliaty (Renaissance notion of picture-window)

realism does not equal reality - many levels of meaning

"magic realism," veuristic surrealism, trompe l'oeil

Miro

The Hunter

1923-24

Spanish, comes to Paris

memories of Spanish farm life

youthful, childlike

pictograms - preconcious, before language

free flowing, linear, doodling!

Cubic language

forms struggle for realization

Miro

The Birth of the World

1925

experiment with automatism

poured blue wash on canvas, wiped, doodled

free unconcious THEN careful calculation - projects image

Miro

Relief Construction

1930

wood + metal

constructions of objects picked out of garbage (chance)

biomorphic

nails - aggressive edge

willfully ugly at times

Giacometti

Suspended Ball

1930-31

plaster, metal

moving sculpture / possiblity of motion - plays on our anticipation

sylistic primitivism - crude construction, anti-precious

deep space/stage/framework we respond to physically (dream space again oy)

OUR interpreation of relationship - disquieting? sexual?

Giacometti

Invisible Object

1934

bronze

figure, not object

mystical, primal, archaic

suspended in gridlike structre - set apart from reality

African, Oceanic but mechanical, military - irrec opps

what is absent?

desire never satiated

Oppenheim

Object

1936

fur of Chinese gazelle

juxtaposition of distant realities

commonplace object transformed

aestheticism < associations

physical presence disquieting

erotic? not as violent? at least not anti-women

Oppenheim

Ma Gouvernante

1936

shoes, silver platter

bound feet or aristocratic women in China (Freud - fetish)

pleasure + fear

sexy heels (dangerous, erotic) covered up - less threat?

Bellmer

La Poupee

1936

photography

mutilated female dolls

castration anxiety (male fear projected onto female)

misogyny + immasculization

horrors of WWI - prosthetics, displace tramautic MALE experience of war

directed at/against current perfect Arayan body

delcared degenerate by Nazis

Mondrian!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Still Life with Ginger Pot I!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

1911-1912!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

working through Cubism

Mondrian!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Still Life with Ginger Pot II!!!!!!!!!!!!

1911-12!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

representational

solidity of space; lines, arcs, planes

shadow, highlight - not random chirascuro

space + void

Mondrian!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Composition No 10: Pier + Ocean!!!!!!!! (Piet + Ocean)

1915!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

not Cubist: no connection to reality

developing neo-Plasticism (new plastic art, beyond cubism)

give visual form to: philosophical world view, the universal, absolute

religion + philosophy

see world in opposing forces that work in harmony-

+/-, masc/fem, static/dynamic, vert/horiz

spiritual geometry

things greater than ourselves

Mondrian!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Composition with Grid 9: Checkerboard with Light Colors!

1919!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

underlying logic of world, geometry of universe

modular grids

even title non-rep, unrelated to world

no "image" - regularity + order

Mondrian!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Composition with Yellow, Red, Black, Blue, Gray!!!!!!!!!!!

1920!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

fully developed neo-Plasticism

still grid - but not as overall, balanced, break from regul

reductive vocab, parallel + perpendic lines

opposing binaries, equivalent to reality

dynamic equilibrium - tension in formal harmony

no center, no focus - distribution across surface

mystical, greater whole

Mondrian!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Lozenge with Two Lines!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

1931!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

square put on its point but grid remains grid

simple, no symmetry

dynamic spatial arrangement

forms that advocate tension into world around them

Rietveld

Schroder House

1923-24

Utrecht, Holland

objects in space

make human the universal/limitless space out there

developing modernist architecture vocab:

geometric simplicity, no applied ornaments, no assoc with past, forms just about themselves, modern materials (steel, glass, concrete), utopian belief in tech/future, rationality, opaque + transparent planes

Rietveld

Red and Blue Chair

1917

independent objects

careful relationship

total work of art

uncover the random

exposed structre

Tatlin

Monument to the Third International

1920

Petrograd

"constructivism"

meant to be tower, never built, to house Sov gov (productive building!!)

open spiral glass + metal tower

function integrated into new society

utopian infinity

no applied ornament, no pretense, exposed structre

Rodchenko

Oval Hanging Construction No. 12

1920

aluminum

nonobjective objects in space

no pedestal - you approach it in space

space is part of work, moving space

see whole structre at once (cubism)

forms + relationships shift + change

geometric based on penetration of ellipse - rational

Gabo

Column

1923

plexiglass, glass

architectural forms - intended to be monument

rectilinearity, not aesthetic?

rational, transparency of planes, multipe POVs

symmetry based on center

constructing SPACE

utopian, universalist

El Lissitzky

8 Position Proun (Proun Room)

1923

Weimar

takes from Malevich (Suprematism) but also Dada

reject tyranny of subjectivity, bourgeois

love systematization of expression, universality

reject "Exhibition"

art = science= technology = ORGANIZATION

Proun: affirmation of the new, looking to future

Schwitters

Merzbild Rossfett (Horse Fat)

1919

assemblage, mini construction

becomes more rectilinear (Constructivism)

Feininger

Cathedral of the Future

1919

print

medieval cathedral

"total work of art"

cover design for Bauhaus manifesto

Brandt

Coffee and Tea Service

1924

silver

metalworks shop at Bauhaus

everyday objects for use having equal amount of craft + beauty

negotiated contracts w/ industries to mass-produce Bauh

designs with same level of quality for public purchase (but still usually too expensive)

Gropius

Bauhaus

1926

Dessau

Institute of Design - a plant for education

industry, factory, machine - Bau becomes company (patents, mass production)

INTERNATIONAL STYLE:

transcultural, steel frame, glass curtain, interior/exterior, form = function, universal, no decoration

Gropius

Bauhaus: interior, director's office

1926

Dessau

clean, geometric, spare

use of glass inside

modular types of furniture

pure forms

Mohly-Nagy

Light Space Modulator

1930

industrial, technological edge - engineer > artist

machine is "spirit of the century"
Russian constructivism, photography infl

omassproduction of ordered paintings for interior

machine + kinetic sculp - light + movement

create enviornment of light

Le Corbusier

Purist Still Life

1922

aestheticism, purism

inspired by Synthetic Cubism

ordered, structred - verticals, horizontals, stable

subdued colos

still life of useful objects (tools, etc) - machine based, maufactured look, clean edges

intelligible (unlike SynCubism) but simplified

Leger

The Balustrade

1925

love of the machine

flat planes of bright color

simplified

fluted column - architectural object

diessected parts, modeling, but not as much as Cubism

Le Corbusier

Pavilion de l'Esprit Nouveau

1925

Paris

democratize modern art, aestheticize massproduction

International Style - underlying humanitarianism + utopia

need for mass housing after WWI

break down interior + exterior space, glass curtain

geometry - square, grid, circle, rotunda

nature + technology coexist

Wright

Kaufmann House (Falling Water)

1936-39

Bear Run, PA

ferro-concrete (steel mesh in concrete), glass

cantilever - plane that juts out (suppored by steel)

modern materials combined with nature

geometry, plane + void (Cubism)

fit into, not dominate, environment/landscape

Blossfeldt

Impatiens Glanduliofera Badsamine Springkraut

1927

photography

pure, pristine, clarity

CLOSE-UP of plant, structre made visible to natural world

"technological vision"

patterns, textures of close-up

"objective presentation of fact" 

Moholy-Nagy

Berlin

1928

photography

light, machine (steel tower), patterns

"new vision photography" - experimental, constructivism, aerial/bird's eye

unconventional vantage pts, see society anew

Krull

Self-Portrait with Cigarette

1925

photography, Berlin

camera as her expression

confrontational

obscured gender? - mechanomorphic

cigarette - independent woman

modern small camera

Jacobi

Self-Portrait, Berlin

1930

photography

proraiture, she + machine, woman as subj + obj

Jacobi

Portrait of Lotte Lenza Weill

1928

photography

public persona of "stars"

photo unrealistic rendering of person - construct self thru photograph

fashion, makeup, lighting

cigarette - new modern indpt woman

Deineka

Building New Factories

1920

fusing avantgarde (Soviet posters) + monumental public art

the worker - good of society, means of production

women happily working in light-filled factories

different scale - falling out of frame?

new modern steel buildings

deeeeep space

Brodsky

Lenin in the Smolny Palace

1930

heroic/academic realism - MUST paint this way!

Stalin's official portrait artist

sharp focus

first well-known portrait of Lenin

empty chair - democratic, invite people to chat with L

widely dessiminated

Gerasimov

Lenin on the Tribune

1929

G: "realist in form, socialist in content"

mandated style: art for the people, accessible, class concious, communist

typical people in typical circumstances working portrayed as HEROIC (but there are also real heroes like Lenin)

communism in everyday life

more painterly realist - rich colors, not as linear

Picasso

Guernica

1937

responding to horrors of Spanish Civil War

mural exhibited in Spanish pavilion at Paris World Fair

non-narrative, more vignettes suggesting brutalities

political allegory using modernist idiom - allows for multiple readings (unlike Soc-Realism), humanist statement

monochromatic - equalizing, no one center

traditional Renaissance triangle/diagonals/triptych

women - innocent, defenseless humanity

synthetic cubism + surrealism (spiky, flames, violence)

few images of hope - but candles, light, defeated man, flower

bull = Spain

Epstein

Tomb of Oscar Wilde

1912

primitivist, pre-classical (Egypt, Assyria) - Archaism

planar, direct carve tradition (carved work himself instead of commissioned it - respond to the stone as he works)

Epstein

Rock Drill

1913-15

plaster, drill

mechanimorphic

Vorticism - Brit response to Futurism (so love machines, technology, modernism)

violent, imply destruction [of old]

phalic, helmeted machine-man with baby inside him

machine reproduces itself?

rock drill the newest machine in America - crushes what is below it, like Duchamp, E purchases

after war: "armed sinister figure," no humanity - US

Gaudier-Brzeska

Red Stone Dancer

1913

red Mansfield stone

direct carve tradition + vitalism

vitalism: energy + life in raw, natural materials - work to bring it out

try not to impose own will, bring forth what is in stone

Moore

Reclining Figure

1929

brown stone

Leeds

looking at Aztec art - non-Western/primitivist/pre-Columb

abstracted figure but never non-representational

cubism influence

Moore

Reclining Figure

1938

elmwood

more abstracted

maternal, sense of the natural

"truth to materials"

3D, multiple POVs - CUBISM

hole, space an object in itself

naturalized Cubo-Constructivism

Moore

Four-Piece Comp: Reclining Figure

1934

alabaster

fragmented forms, more distilled/abstracted but still representational

biomorphic - inspiration from pebbles, bones, shells

organic

Hepworth

Large and Small Form

1934

alabaster

triplets?

figural, maternal

organicisim of stone

influenced by Arp, biomorphism

Moore

Large Spindle Piece

1968-74

modern public sculptor

aesthetic compromise/resolution of biomorphic surrealism + cubo-constructivism

hybrid of modernizations

pyschological humanism, organic + abstract - universal language?

energy

creation of Adam