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130 Cards in this Set

  • Front
  • Back
De Stijl
Strip nature of all it’s forms and you will have style left
Underlying laws of everything
Inspired by theosophysought to uncover hidden
Not an emotional connection to the machine relationships btwn natural forms
Utilizing machine’s power to create a new collective order
Primary colors/ RT angle contained within everything
Practical application
Product of WWI
By surrounding someone in De Stijl they believed they could weed out aggression, desire for dominance
Achieved utopian world, harmony, unity, final destination
Architecture was central
Mondrian, Composition in Color A, 1917

Too much flatness, didn’t allow enough room for flexibility
Impossible to reject totally the arbitrarity of composition
Mondrian, Painting No. 1, 1921

Grey hues
Arrived at a solution he considered successful
Colors are always on perimeter, they never touched each other
Didn’t see it as flat white/grey parts are meant to be seen as pushing forward
Unity/ final destination of all beings
Gerrit Rietveld, Schroeder House, Utrecht, 1924

Diagonals, no curves
Positive/negative space in windows/walls
Primary color accents
Interlocking planes of rectangular slabs
Appearance of a Constructivist sculpture
Rooms have close relationship btwn interior spaces & exterior nature
DADA (Zurich, New York, Berlin)
Can’t change human behavior
Utopian societies are unrealistic
Logic is an illusion
The world is irrational, absurd, no point to anything
Many Dada artists were also poets
Dada was a state of indifference Tzara’s idea (romanian poet)
Challenged tradition in art
Iconoclastic, “anti-art”, against standards of society & beauty
Their works were a wake up call to society
Science/technology led to chaos of capitalism
Adopted language of advertising & business in order to criticize capitalism
Dada was a state of mind, not a technique
Everything was tongue in cheek
Chance & accident
Making & performing or art was more important than finished products
Logic, reason, Western ideals of progress led to disaster of WWI
Search for new vision and content
Zurich Dadaists were rexamining traditions, rules, beauties of the past
Hugo Ball performing a sound poem at the Cabaret
Voltaire (Zurich), 1916
Tristan Tzara

Dada artists did many performances
Marcel Janco, Mask, 1919, paper,
cardboard, string, gouache

Dada theater wore masks
Masks compelled the wearer to act unpredictably
Arp, Automatic Drawing, 1916, ink,
19 ¾ x 21”

Intended to look like spontaneous forms
Organic shapes
Forms based from nature could relate more to humans than geometric (biomorphic)
Jean Arp, Collage Arranged According to the
Laws of Chance, 1916, torn and pasted paper

Random pieces of paper glued to surface
Completely by CHANCE represented how the world works
Randomly dropped paper on the floor
Liberation from rational thought processes
depersonalization
Arp, Fleur Marteau (Flower Hammer), 1916,
o/wood, 24 3/8 x 19 5/8”

Nonsense sculpture
“constructed paintings”  medium btwn painting & sculpture
Organic forms evoke the bod & its processesbiomorphic
Shapes has certain universal significances ex:egg shape symbol of metamorphosis
Shape suggested an object gave the relief its name
Arp, Head with Three Annoying Objects, 1930, bronze

Concretion
Represent organic/ natural processes of solidification of mass
Mustache, mandolin, fly 3 objects
Nonsense flavor
Objects weren’t secured to the “head” intended to be moved around by the viewer
Titles applied to his works after he made them intention of inspiring associations btwn images & ideas
Meaning of hi work is open-ended
“human concretion” although forms are not from nature, they are as concrete and sensual “as a leaf or stone”
Concrete art specific connotation for his sculptures in the round
Duchamp, Passage from the Virgin to the Bride, 1912 (MoMA)

Sex, work makes fun of human drives
Partly satirical
Organic elements interested in medical/ bodily systems
Sense of movement passage btwn 2 phases
Mechanical elements
Abandoned physicality of human body
The organic becomes mechanized
Duchamp, The Chocolate Grinder (2), 1913, oil/wood and string

Engineering drawings wanted to make art that looks like it was produced by a machine
Remove artistic skill/preference of artist’s hand
Focus on the process
Collage
Looks like it was produced in real life
Saw the machine in real life
Mechanical drawing impersonality of the ruler
Duchamp, The Bottle Rack, 1914

Ready made taking an object from ordinary life, saying this was art
 Promoted the dignity of art through the choice of the artist
Changed their context, their name
Anything could be art
Called this piece art, signed it
Found object
Duchamp, The Bicycle Wheel, 1913
“READY-MADE”

“assisted” ready-made: He assembled the wheel to the stool
b/c ready made could be repeated forever, Duchamp only made a few yearly so original concept doesn’t lose impact
It is in the nature of the readymade to lack uniqueness
R. Mutt, Fountain, 1917 (Duchamp)
Society for Independent Artists, N.Y.
Photo by Alfred Stieglitz

Urinal: deliberate act of provocation
work was rejected from Society for independent artists
“chosen” by R. Mutt, not him
Reference to large Brooklyn water supply company
Challenge ideas or originality, reproducibility. fundamentality
Duchamp, L.H.O.O.Q., 1919
“Elle…”

Added facial hair to color reproduction
Anniversary of Da Vinci’s death
“she has a hot ass”- French phonetic translation
Mona Lisa had just been stolen in 1911
People though Da Vinci was gay
This work plays on androgyny, gender issues
Duchamp, The Bride Stripped Bare by Her
Bachelors Even (The Large Glass), 1915-23, 9 x 6’

oil, lead wire,
foil, dust and
varnish on
glass

Used machines to satirize body systems
Ideas more important than visual realization
Sex
A wedding of mental/visual elements
Produced by chance
Milky way  3 shapes/squares
Shapes in bottom left based on clothes in Sears catalog
Bride is stripping, getting bachelors excited
Their secretions (love gasoline) power a machine looks like the chocolate grinder
Love operation process of sex “ideal 4th dimension”
Not a success b/c no secretion from bride
Metaphor for masturbation, frustration
Glued all the pieces of glass together
Parody of human sexuality, science  references to alchemy (turning stone into gold)  stone if referred to as the “bride”
Transparency captured the “chance environment” of its surroundings
Elaborate mating ritual
Bride on top half form taken from “the Passage from Virgin to Bride”
“mechanistic and cynical interpretation of love”
The Green Box, 1914

Every idea/ note/ sketch about “the Bride Stripped” thrown into a box
Picabia, Portrait of a Young American Girl in a State of Nudity, 1915, ink

Satirizing naked body
Machines
Spark plug
Drive/performance
Picabia, Portrait of Stieglitz, 1915, published in 291

Not sarcastic
Shown as an actual camera
photographer
Max Beckmann, Night, 1918-19
Weimar Republic (1918-1933)

Berlin Dada: more serious, very political, less nonsensical
“struggles on the side of the German proletariat”
John Heartfield and Rudolf
Schlichter, The Prussian Archangel, 1920 (2004 reconstruction)
Grosz: Germany’s Winter Tale, 1917

Poem about longing for Germany, he felt it was disappearing
Greed, corruption
Eating sausage, beer, thinking about sex
Decadance
Fractured chaos
3 pillars of German society at bottom
Educator on right
Hannah Höch, Cut with the Kitchen
Knife, 1919-20, photomontage

Portrait of her age
Pictures cut from a newspaper
Fractured chaos of modern Germany
Machines, modernity, cultural figures, “new woman”
Photomontage integration of images of modern life into works of art
Photomontage relies on material taken from normal context and introduces it into a new, disjunctive context gives it new meaning
Satire of Weinmar society
Despised gov’t leaders in corner labeled
Photos of gears/ wheels tribute to “anti-Dada”
Technology & sense of dynamic movement
Grosz, Gray Day, 1921

Neue Sachlichkeit
(New Objectivity)

“New Objectivity”:
Artists’ ideas were shifting toward disillusionment & cynicism
Grosz, Dix
Dada artist
Subject: disabled war veteran & municipal officer wearing a pin worn by conservatives
Black market businessmen peeking in back
Otto Dix, The Matchseller, 1920

Neue Sachlichkeit
(New Objectivity)

No arms nor legs
Graffiti in paintings
Wealthy Berliners rushing to get away, dog peeing on man
Berlin was filled w/ war veterans cripples, facial disfigurements WWI
Dix, Skat Players, 1920, oil and collage

Extreme grotesque imagery
Scat is a popular German card game
Grotesque becomes part of everyday life
Disfigurements, amputees
Saw atrocities in war, served 3 years, was severely wounded
True side of human nature, aimed to shock people
Dix, Big City Triptych, 1927-28,

Pleasure, decadence, suffering
Transvestites
War cripples on left
Jazz music was popular
Prostitutes doing the Charleston
American culture “destroying” German tradition
Schwitters, Picture with Light Center,
1919, collage and oil on cardboard

Dada - Hannover

Collage
Non-representational
Found paper, garbage
Uses paint to add color
One of most flexible mediums
“All values only exist in relationships to each other and that restriction to a single material is one-sided and small-minded”
Merz sum of all art forms
Collages made of garbage
Element of beauty
Berlin Dadaists didn’t find it edgy enough
Schwitters: Merzbau, 1920s Hannover,
Destroyed 1943

A niche for every artist that inspired him, filled those spaces with objects
Art became life
Destroyed by Nazis 1930attempt to make a TOTAL work of art
Abstract sculpture w/ apertures dedicated to his Dadaist & Constructivist friends
Robert Rauschenberg, Bed, 1955, “Combine”

Painting over collage
Influenced by Schwitters, Duchamp
De Chirico, The Soothsayer’s Recompense, 1913 (Ariadne)

Works were oddities
Laid groundwork for surrealism
Haunting, empty, evocative spaces
Influenced by German symbolist painters
Metaphysics: seeks to explain nature of reality beyond physical
References to trains, stations, railroads references to his past
Studied Schopenhauer, Nietzsche studied the unconscious
On Spirit Seeing believed in the supernatural, hypnosis
Interested in showing inner self in mankind
Freud: primary influence of surrealists, influenced De Chirico past predetermines present, childhood, mankind in society
Metaphysical School: retained forms of Renaissance reality, perspective, recognizable sculptural environment, figures
Juxtapositions to produce surprise/shock-> atmosphere of strangeness
Strongly influenced Surrealism’s exploration of the intuitive and irrational
De Chirico: concept of a painting as a symbolic vision he read Nietzsche
art expresses deep-seated motivations with human psyche
Psychoanalysis, study of subconscious, symbolism of dreams


Past in present: clocks, classical sculpture mourns the loss of Theseus
Smoke of a train modern element
Themes of loss, mourning melancholy of departure fills scene (shadow)
Fear of death: part of mankind’s nature
De Chirico, Nostalgia of the Infinite, 1913-14

Shadows, perspective, tiny people, anxiety
De Chirico, The Melancholy and Mystery of The Street, 1914

Titles are essential component of work, add another dimension
Portrays anxiety & fear
Tiny people, fragility, SHADOWS
Perspective vast distances white building extends to infinity
SCALE
Who is the other shadow, why are the doors open
Though components are familiar, their arrangement & dramatic quality creates an ominous mood
Suspense
Matte finishes
De Chirico, Song of Love, 1914

Influenced many Surrealists in the future
Classical head time passing
Unlocked repressed associations/ emotions
Objects have no rational relationship to one another
De Chirico incorporated mannequins into his compositions as surrogates for the human figure
Suggest the figures used in drawing studies, Renaissance
SURREALISM
Emerged out of Dada
Breton: poet, dabbled in collage, some art treated WWI veterans w/ psychiatric help interpreted dreams
Manifesto of Surrealism: 1924 literature movement, based on Freudian studies
Breton grew disillusioned w/ Dada too academic
Pure psychic automatism, purely of the mind
Dictation of thought in the absence of moral preoccupation
Composing without any preconceived subject or structure
Beyond any aesthetic of moral preoccupation, absence of reason DADA influence
Forms of association, combinations of objects that don’t go together
1927: first Surrealist gallery Magritte & Dali joined later
Loved primitive art
Art that revealed the unconscious, to undo preconceptions of order & reality

2 strands of surrealism:
1st: Miro, Masson biomorphic/abstract Surrealismautomatism
“dictation of thought without control of the mind”
Some degree of imagery is normally present
2nd: Tanguy, Dali, Magritte detailed scenes & objects taken out of normal context
Distortion, dream-like
Images of the subconscious
**both differed from Dada in their privileging of the unconscious (rather than forms & rhythms of the machine)
LIKE Dada: explored unconventional techniques

Revolutionary political movement deppening political crisis, financial collapse, rise of fascism
Provoked MORAL ANXIETY anarchism
Russian revolution provided a channel for Surrealist protests
Exquisite Corpse, Man
Ray, Tanguy, Miro, and
Morice

Each artist added a bit to the picture
Method was adopted for collective drawings
Surrealist love of the unexpected element of chance, randomness
Intended to express the true function of thought
Breton: generally acknowledged leader of Surrealism
Max Ernst, Two Children Threatened by a Nightingale,
collage, 1924

Link btwn poetry & image
Irrationality, general fear in a dream state
Gate literally functioned as opening a threshold
Girl running w/ a bloody knife
Hooded man holding a baby
automatism
Man Ray, The Enigma of Isodore Ducasse,
1920

Ducasse: French symbolist poet, loved by Surrealists
Championed idea of combining unrelated objects-> the “uncanny”
Umbrella & sewing machine wrapped in burlap
Oppenheim, Object: Luncheon in Fur, 1936
Freud, “Uncanny”
(Unheimlich) 1919

Notion of the “uncanny” something from everyday life out of context Freudian idea
Shock devices unlock repressed memory
Combinations of fantasy & reality
Everything meant to remain secret is becoming unhidden
Repulsive, provocative
Miro, Tilled Field, 1923

Flat, planar background
Objects attached together on surface
Objects seen over & over personal language
Biomorphic shapes
Plowed field is now just wiggly lines
EYE eye of the artist
Lizard in dunce cap next to “jour” reference to disliking cubism too geometric
Miro, Catalan Landscape, The Hunter, 1923-24,
25 ½ x 39 ½”

Every blob/line has a meaning or represents a figure
Hunter is all lines except for his heart & his pipe, conical gun
Giant creature on bottom is a sardine lives in water, not on land, eating a fly
Daydream effect
Highly abstract
Miro, Dog Barking at the Moon, 1926

Emptiness, very minimal empty spaces spoke to him
Dark, nocturnal landscape foreboding, resembles a dream
Inspired by children’s art, cartoons
Meditation
In early sketch, moon & dog talked
Ladder appears in many paintings connect real & imaginary symbol of transcendence, bridge to another realm
Flame necessary in every painting
Surrealists were influenced by Easter Island, ideograms
Fascinated by anthropology & archaeology, ancient civilizations
Miro, Birth of the World, 1924
6 x 8’

First using an automatist technique
Subject was popular among surrealists
Title added last
Poured cans of paint on canvas, spread paint around, poured glaze over
Person, shooting star, balloon
Every image is sign for something
Picture paints itself
Very few ppl saw it, kept secret, known as “urban legend”
Miro, The Poetess (Constellation series),
1940, oil wash and gouache on paper,
18 x 15”

One of 23 small gouache paintings
Allover pattern and design intricate, lyrical
Ideas of flight & transformation inspired by migration of birds, flow of constellations
Rhythm of line & arabesque
Horror vaccui
Oil wash shimmers inspired by water reflections, visualizations of music
Stars
Creatures throughout
Miro, Harlequin’s Carnival, 1924-25

Interior, night, party, filled w/ people, sense of caprice, teeming w/ life
Ladder, ear, eye  appear in most of his work
Even inanimate objects have sense of vitality
Spread equally across surface of painting
Used a grid in composition
Whimsical quality
Masson, Automatic Drawing, 1924

Masson: most passionate revolutionary deeply spiritualy scarred by WWI experience
Anarchist, regularly contributed automatic art to La Revolution Surrealiste
1st to SPECIALIZE in automatic drawing drawing free-handedly, done once you pick up your hand
Expressed emotions, contained various images relating to sadism of human beings, brutality of all living things

Very dense, agitated, stress
Makes you uneasy,worry
Masson, Battle of the Fishes, 1927, sand, oil,
pencil, glue

Squeezed pigment out of the tube
Red suggests blood, violence
sand painting suggested forms to artist “almost always irrational ones”
Lines, some color formed a pictorial structure round the sand
*allowed chance to determine composition
Masson, Figure, 1926-27, sand, oil, charcoal, glue

Applied glue irregularly, applied sand
Organic, biomorphic figures
Male legs
Half animal/half man: minotaur visualization used a lot
Flux, metamorphosis
Masson, Pasiphäe, 1943

Inspired by new surroundings
Spent a few months in Caribbean, fell in love w/ a woman brown tones
Conveys sense of violence, agitation, animalistic nature
Image of the unconscious itself
Mother of the minotaur slept w/ the bull bestiality, taboo
When we are born, we experience primitive qualities of mankind
Wanted to represent violent union of women & beast un a way that it is impossible to tell where one begins and the other ends
Ernst, Gramineous Bicycle, 1920-21, gouache, 29 ¼ x 39 ¼”

Botanical chart
Looks like cells under a microscope
Nonsense title
Related to sex
“woman” on a “bicycle seat”
Biomorphic imagery
Ernst, Elephant of the Celebes, 1921

Inspired by Sudanese corn bins
19th century science magazines
inspired by De Chirico’s work mannequin
Fish in sky
Specialized language
Painting based on dirty limerick
Woman: most compelling & alarming quality
Headless state: rooted in their instincts, their conscious
Appeals to subconscious perception
Many disparate motifs informed by a collage aesthetic
Ernst, The Horde, 1927, 115 x 146 cm.
“Grattage” and “Frottage”

Frottage over strings rubbing technique used to create texture
Reorganized textures into new contexts technical basis for unorthodox drawings
Brown paint, red crayon
Applied blue paint after used it to define forms
Monstrous creatures animalistic, manlike Darwin
Suggest hordes, rampages frightening
Protest Berlin Olympics against Nazis
Ernst, Europe After the Rain, 1940-42, 54 x 147.8 cm.
“decalcomania”

Painted forests/jungles
Depict anxiety through extreme states in nature
Imprisoned in Paris for being an enemy alien, released by an American, moved to USA
Metaphor for state of Europe during/after Nazi regime
Metaphor for structure of Europe: calcified, scorched
A “requiem for the war-ravaged continent”
Decalcomania: gouache o paper, put another paper on top, remove, leaves interesting marks
Opposition to evil of Nazi party
Ernst, Vox Angelika, 1943

Grid-like forms used as system of display
Rational grid to display the irrational
Retrospect of his career in the boxes
Muster of both abstract & representational Surrealism
Tanguy, Mama, Papa is Wounded, 1927, 36 x 29”

No training as artist
Mindscape: visualization of the unconscious
Biomorphic forms flat on canvas
Phallic image on left: castration anxiety
Exhibited obsessions that haunted him for the rest of his career
Infinite perspective depth graded color, sharp horizon line
Vast emptiness, intimate enclosure
Ambiguous shapes float in barren landscape
Magritte, Portrait, 1935

Magritte: explored how we “read” visual images as part of a code, system of signs
Irony, uncanny invention, deadpan realism

representational art
Studied/lived in Brussels
Visions of everyday world but skewed
Real ordinary objects
Discreet style, challenges normality
Objects can always become something else
Consciousness in external world
Magritte, The Menaced Assassin, 1926

Man at gramophone is assassin, detectives waiting outside
Depiction of primal, animalistic modern man
Influenced by commercial art
Meant to defy bourgeois values
Instinctual manner is most prominent in bourgeois
Avoids detection by dressing/acting like everyone else
Painting style is very discreet, also masks disturbing subject matter
Idea of the criminal within all of us
Magritte, The Treachery of Images,
1929

Object isn’t attached to his name
Representations of objects are always suitable to change
If it’s a painting, it’s not real
Relationship btwn words & images
Not fixed identity, confronts pictorial reality
Shows fascination w/ relationship of language to the painted image
Undermines natural tendency to speak of images as though they were actually the things they represent
Magritte, False Mirror, 1928

Eye is a false mirror, not to be trusted, visual reality is not the whole story
Eye: dual notion of vision & visionary
DALI
DALI: no automatic techniques
Objects are source of mental fantasy
Idea of the “uncanny”
Spanish traditional still lifes
Osmosis btwn reality & surreality
Felt he always related to deceased older brother
Felt photography was best for capturing surreality of objects
A lot of iconography in his art comes from childhood/adolescent experiences & subconscious
Landscapes marked by violence
Studied Freud: his writings on dreams seemed to answer the torments & erotic fantasies he suffered since childhood
Trompe l’oeil: aimed to make dream world more tangibly real than nature
Primary images: blood, excrement
From main object: Dali set up a chain of metamorphoses that dissolved and transformed the object into a nightmarish image
Dali, Accommodations of Desire, 1929

Excrement, blood, decay taboo body fluids
Repetition of form suggests hallucination, montage
Pet bat died when he was a child childhood memories
Expression of heterosexual anxiety
Lions represent male libido
Rocks represent female libido, serve as backdrops to imagery
Recurrent image army of ants disturbing
Sought in his art to create a specific documentation of Freudian theories applied to his own inner world
“spontaneous method of irrational knowledge based upon the interpretive-critical association of delirious phenomena”
Dali, Dismal Sport, (Lugubrious Game),1929
Oil and collage on wood

Staircase represents sexual act
Everything is a symbol for something else
Phobia of grasshoppersit is on his face
Anxiety
Sculpture represents shame, giant head masturbation
Head is exploding, imagery revealed within it
Dali, Illumined Pleasures, 1929, 9 3/8 x 13 ¾”

Castration anxiety
Lion at top
Rock figures to represent women
3 screens: images of unconscious: mental screens
Materialize concrete irrationality
Dali, The Persistence of Memory, 1931,
9 ½ x 13”
“Paranoic-Critical Method”
Time associated w/ death & decay
Combines textures
Biomorphic profile of Dali, looks fetus-like
Soft, melting cheese Dali was obsessed with morphology of hard & soft head without bones, droopy watches
Paranoia: fear of persecution, seeing imaginary connections
Paranoiac-critical method: seeing into things/forms that aren’t there recognizable objects presented in unusual context
Denial of every 20h century experiment in abstract organization
Infinite space
Pictorial metamorphosis: matter is transformed from one state to another fundamental aspect of Surrealism
Dali, Metamorphosis of Narcissus, 1937

Fluidity, hybridization
Body of narcissus looking down into reflection
He becomes hand w/ flower in egg
Everything stands for something else
Never take what you see for granted
Bellmer, La Poupée, 1936
E.T.A. Hoffmann, “The Sandman”

Georges Bataille led new direction of Surrealism
Published new magazine in 1929: Documents
Believed we encountered our true inner selves in dreams
Into body parts/fluids taboo subjects

Dressed up/ took apart doll
Bondage, sadism, pedophilia
Photographed in a certain environment
Inspired by story featuring a man who falls for a doll, realized it is a fragment of his imagination
Deviant desires
Giocometti, Woman with Her Throat Cut,
1932, 8 x 34 ½ x 25”, bronze

Alludes to praying mantis
Skeletal quality
Morphic
Sexual attack construction of a dismembered female corpse
Spiked form suggests splayed & violated body of a woman
Shown on the floor without a base
Giocometti, The Palace at 4 A.M.,
1933, wood, glass, wire and string, 25 x 28 x 15 ¾”

Night terrors
Wooden rods outline structure of a house
Product of a period in artist’s life that haunted him
Woman strolls the palace
Seeing what can’t be seen metaphor for unconscious
Bird-like, Darwinian form skeleton bird
melancholy
Picasso, Seated Bather, 1930

Picasso never became a true Surrealist, but they worshipped  he never showed interest in the subconscious/dreamworld paintings never expressed depths of the psyche & intense emotion
Surrealists hated cubism rationality
Loved demarcation of women in “Demoiselles D’ Avignon”

Skeletal forms
Part skeleton/part petrified woman
Nonchalance of bather w/ predatory countenance of a praying mantis
Mouth: man-trap praying mantis idea
Big teeth
Sexual castration, suffering
Picasso, Nude in a Red Armchair,
1929

Biomorphic forms
Emphasized sexual parts
Shriveled body parts, sagging flesh
Same wallpaper pattern as in Matisse paintings
Wailing head “convulsive beauty”
Commentary on Picasso’s relationships w/ women
Picasso, Girl Before a Mirror, 1932
(Marie-Therese Walter)

Revealing the unconscious
Double-face
“beauty will be convulsive or it will not be”
Picasso, Minotauromachy, scraped etching
and aquatint, 1935

1920s-30s Surrealists were members of Communist party
Aspects of evil and victimization Goodness of little girl Minotaur is pure evil
Woman represents classical art/beauty
Horse represents Spain
Figures reminiscent of artist’s life & Spanish past
Inspired by Goya
Ambiguous iconography of a bull
Picasso, Guernica, 1937, 11 x 25’

Spanish civil war Picasso was against the Fascists
Depicts specific events also a general statement of anguish
Mother & child dead, people fleeing, dead man on ground
Triptych: more sacred
Light illuminated human slaughter
Human atrocities
Screaming horse, weeping woman open mouth agonized figures Surrealist
International Style Bauhaus
Glass box, reinforced concrete
Common theme: modernism applied to the service of social reform
Search for a universal language of design
International Style named during a show at MoMA in NY attempted to define the characteristics of the style
Eliminated the loadbearing wall structural steel & ferroconcrete
Curtain wall skin of glass, metal, or masonry enclosure rather than support
Regular distribution of structural supports rectangular regularity of design
Avoidance of decoration
Elimination of strong color contrasts
Free flow of interior space
Louis Sullivan, Guaranty Trust, 1894-96, Buffalo
(now the Prudential Building)

One of earliest skyscrapers
New buildings built after Chicago fire
Interior steel structure, exterior façade is merely enclosure terra cotta decoratin
Elevator was just invented
Vertical, lofty, “proud and soaring,” recognizable for its tallness
Loos, Steiner House, 1910, garden facade

Reinforced concrete walls
Viennese design meant to be made by machines
Peter Behrens, AEG
Turbine Factory, 1908-1909,
Berlin

Made generators, motors, lightbulbs
Innovative, pioneering, new design
Glass walls, exposed metal
Interior steel frame
Walter Gropius, Fagus Shoe Factory,
1914-16

Open, light, floating effect
Glass corners almost all glass exterior
Floors reinforced w/ steel
Gropius, Bauhaus, Dessau, 1925-26
“International Style,” MoMA exh. 1932,
Johnson and Hitchcock, curators; Alfred Barr

International style common qualities btwn all buildings
use of new materials replacement of walls by steel cage glass walls
Regularity of design grids, function
Uninterrupted interior spaces efficiently organized space combined functional organization & structure w/ a geometric, de-Stijl inspired design
No applied decoration aesthetics came from proportion and scale
Volume & transparency lightness

Bauhaus: concept of learning by doing unification of the arts
Developing basis of sound craft skills broke down barriers of fine art
Mies, Glass skyscaper model, 1919-21

Minimalist designfreeform plan of undulating curves
All glass sheathing
No real indication of structural system visionary architecture
Mies, German Pavilion at the Barcelona International Expo, 1929

Reflecting ponds in front & back
Rich, expensive materials
Mies office chairs now faous
Open interior, space defined by walls
“less is more”
Mies, German Pavilion at the Barcelona International Expo, 1929

Reflecting ponds in front & back
Rich, expensive materials
Mies office chairs now faous
Open interior, space defined by walls
“less is more”
Le Corbusier, Pavilion of L’Esprit Nouveau, for The International Exposition of Decorative and Industrial Art, 1925, Paris

Known for use of ferroconcrete
Modular conception of architecture each building begins w/ same basic structure
Houses on stilts added element of weightlessness
5 points of new architecture: 1 pillar free to rise, 2 independence of skeleton & wall (wall can be any material)
3 free flow of space in/outside, 4 free façade- any variable, 5 roof gardens
Le Corbusier, Villa Savoye, 1928-30

Le Courbusier: house as a “machine for living”
Maximize inner/outer space plans had freedom & flexibility
Upper living area suspended by pillars
Screen- wall construction
Ribbon windows
All rooms on one central floor
Ramp up to top floor roof garden
Meant to look like steamship/ ocean liner sleek, modern
Machine aesthetic based on notion of automobile as the ultimate machine
“boxes on stilts”
Wright, Robie House, 1909

NOT INTERNATIONAL STYLE
Proud of midwest
Low overhanging roofs frame outdoor patio space
Open interior space / flow structured around central fireplace/ chimney
Designed all furniture inside
Environmental/ organic sustainability  garden
Influenced by Japanese architecture
Wright, Falling Water,
Bears Run, Pa., 1935

Built on a hill over a waterfall designed as a vacation home
evironmental architecture house designed to be a “natural feature of the environment”
Made from local quarried stone
Built on huge rock foundation effective integration of exterior natural world w/ interior
Everything had to be exactly as he designed it
Ferroconcrete for cantilevered terraces
Sense of planar abstraction
Wright hated the machine-inspired architecture of International Style
Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Light-Space Modulator, 1923-30,
aluminum, plastic, wood, glass, chrome, 59 1/2”

Bauhaus: Gropius wanted to merge fine & applied arts student should learn skills application, theory
Vorkurs preliminary course well-known feature of Bauhaus intro to basic forms, materials, etc.
Stressed objectivity & scientific integration in the classroom

Inspired by Russian artists Malevich, Lissitzky
Light as dynamic body of element & space
Explored light, space, motion transparent & malleable materials
Pioneers the creation of light & motion machines built from reflecting materials & transparent plastics
Powered by electricity
Intersecting beams of light make shadow patterns embodies basic principles of Bauhaus & Constructivism
Fluid structure of shadow forms
AMERICAN ART
Took a backseat to European innovation until Abstract Expressionists
Robert Henri, Laughing Child, 1907
“The Ash Can School”, “The Eight”

Ash Can School: rejected from exhibit at National Academy of Design
Village/back alley/ street life in lower Manhattan subject matter
Common subjects, everyday urban life vitality of the city
Early developments toward realism
Drpression: inward-turning artists gave rise to naturalistic art
“The Eight”: united by being against Academic art & rigid jury system
Artists studied in Europe

Henri loved Manet, Dutch art
Known for forthwright expression & painterly freedom in portraits
Favored immediacy of expression over academic finish
Fresh enthusiasm
Wanted to create “American” painting for “American” people
John Sloan, The Hairdresser’s Window,
1907
“The Ash Can School”, “The Eight”

Day in everyday life
Commercial themes
Street life/ scene
Painted from memory of seeing this event in person
Artistic potential in commonplace subjects, including advertisements
Jacob Riis, Five Cents a Spot, 1889

Riis: photographed NYC tenement buildings, wretched conditions
Used pictures to expose poverty & starvation both direct results of Industrial Revolution
Life in lower east side
Rent a bed for a nickel
Tremendous gap btwn rich & poor social injustices
Part of “How the Other Half Lives”
Sought to improve living conditions for immigrants
Alfred Stieglitz, Steerage, 1907
291; Camera Work

Stieglitz: held photography exhibitions later ones with paintings & drawings
Closer in contact w/ current events– European art avant-garde leaders
Art was less “American”  Modernism

“truth to materials”  highly expressive images without darkroom
“straight” photography exploits the intrinsic properties of the camera to make photographs LOOK like PHOTOGRAPHS
taken on an ocean liner to Europe found lower-class passengers inspiring
A straight document of the scene
Dove, Nature Symbolized No. 2, 1912,
Pastel, 45.8 x 55 cm.

Abstract, organic quality
Wanted to paint inner essence of nature
O’Keefe, Drawing No. XIII,
1915, charcoal

Worked independently
Abstract style
Design sensibility came from Art Nouveau
Dominant awareness for pattern, shape, color
Followed Dow’s phases
Started in B&W
O’Keefe, Blue Lines No. 10, 1916
watercolor

Japanese brush
O’Keefe, Music: Pink and Blue, 1919

Texas landscape bigness, loneliness, windiness wonderful emptiness
Sense of plastic form
Sense of skin, hides, bones, organic shapes
Inspired by Dow listened to music while painting
Title suggests influence of Kandinsky’s equation of color with music & emotion
Study in chromatic relationships & organic form
O’Keefe, Series I – From the Plains,
1919

Texas landscape bigness, loneliness, windiness wonderful emptiness
Sense of plastic form
Sense of skin, hides, bones, organic shapes
Sheeler, Upper Deck, 1929
Precisionism

PRECISIONISM: smooth, sleek, crisp edges
Based off of photograph of German ship
Commissioned as an advertisement
Glowing, white surface
Makes machines look cleaner
Sheeler, American Landscape, 1930

Industry & technology was the path to prosperity “machine age”
Factories as substitutes for religious expression
No grime or filth parallels classical design
Harmony, order, purity, beauty
Belief in optimistic process
Charles Demuth, My Egypt, 1927,
24 x 60”, oil/composition board
Precisionism

America’s equivalent to the Pyramids
Low viewpoint
Demuth, Buildings Lancaster, 1930
Precisionism

Influenced by Cubism
Commercialism, business, advertising interest in advertising as images with a certain abstract quality of their own
Architectural
“American” subject
Demuth, I Saw The Figure 5
In Gold, 1928
(William Carlos Williams)

Precisionism: descriptive art, but guided by geometric simplification
William Carlos Williams uniquely American poet work about objects, material culture
Inspired by painting of fire truck, No. 5 on the side
Velocity, speed modernity identified w/ America
Strongly influenced later pop art
Davis, Lucky Strike, 1921

Wanted to paint what was unique of America material culture
Stuart Davis, Eggbeater No. 1, 1927

Influenced by cubists/ Armory show
Object-based
Wanted to paint what was unique of America material culture
Plays w/ positive/negative space
Perspectival line/space
Painted subject over and over until it ceased to exist other than through color, shape, & line relations
Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother, 1936
WPA/FSA (Nipoma California)

1930s/ Depression
Considered the 1st “documentary” photographer
Sponsored by Federal Farm Security Admin. (FSA) aimed to educate population about drastic tolls that Depression had taken
Migrant worker camp
Asked to take photos of migrant farm workers to illustrate a report on their condition
“Madonna of the Depression”
empathy and respect for her subjects
Walker Evans, Miner’s House,
West Virginia, 1935

Hired by FSA
Against salon photography straight photography
Simple, direct statement in his images that ends up being almost infinitely complex
Portrait tells volumes about inhabitants
Cheerful Santa ad other cutouts are sadly incongruent in stark environment
SE region of USA
Cut-out advertisements lie clearly not available to them
Thomas Hart Benton, City Building, from the
mural series “America Today,” New School
for Social Research, N.Y, 1930, distemper
and egg tempera on gessoed linen with oil
glaze, 7’8’ x 9’9”
Regionalism

1930s: representational art is the norm
More conservative/ reactionary after Depression represented in art
Regionalism: Benton, Wood midwesterners anti-European, anti-Abstraction, anti-Stieglitz
Middle-class, authentic American values, rejuvenation of the American spirit

Hard work, community ethic made America great promise for future
Industry rising, prosperity, optimism
White & black man working together
construction workers, NYC backdrop heroic
Michelangelo & El Greco- inspired anatomies & poses of figures
Benton, “Politics and Farming,”
From the mural series “A Social
History of the State of Missouri”
Missouri State Capital, 1936

Stereotypes of gender women at home HE-Man masculine ethos
Swirling forms
Wood, American Gothic, 1930
(Iowa)
Regionalism

Supported cultural naturalism, expression of American spirit
Themes from American myths & legends
wood- frame house  gothic style
Satirical intended to be respectful affection resilience of American spirit
Composition based on portrait from Civil War
Deliberately archaic style combined w/ homespun, Puritan content led to question of satire
Grant Wood, Young Corn, 1931, oil on
masonite board

Optimistic image, swelling fields
Curves suggest form of female body
Harmonious vision of cultivated nature
Keen sense of abstract composition and balance
Based on childhood memories
Modern technology & harsh realities of Depression have no place in the scene
Edward Hopper, Early
Sunday Morning, 1930

American Realist
More realistic interpretation of American society urban, poor areas, sense of isolation
Detested Regionalists
Influenced by de Chirico shadows, sensitivity to light sense of something being slightly off
Flat façade & dramatic lighting linked to his interest in stage design
Hopper, Nighthawks, 1942

Impending doom
uncanny
Horace Pippin, Domino Players, 1943, oil on
composition board

folk look  reflects folk culture African-American style
Tribute to African-American family
Security, sanctuary from hostile world
Grey tones
Based on childhood memories artist at table w/ female relatives
Domestic scene
Stylized silhouettes, organized color
Jacob Lawrence, No 1, 12 x 18” from
The Migration of the Negro series, 1940-41,
tempera on hardboard

Harlem renaissance artist
Scenes from African-American culture
Migration from South to North after WWI
Looking for work escaping Southern racism & violence
Mosaic puzzle blocks of color
Style has a “craft” orientation
Visually unified panels through colors & bold silhouettes
Abstract Expressionism: Action Painting
and Color Field
“The Myth Makers”
Myth makers prominence of myth in their paintings
War sense of alienation, loss of faith in old forms of expression
Artists explored new ideas of though
Opposed to all forms of social realism
Psychic automatism: less of means of tapping into unconscious than a new way to explore forms
Gestural painters: had spontaneous & unique “touch of the artist”
His/her own “handwriting,” emphatic texture of paint ( De Kooning, Pollock)
Color Field Painters: concerned w/ an abstract statement in terms of a large, unified color shape or area
Gorky, The Liver is a Cock’s Comb, 1945,
93 x 105”

Not abstract expressionist but influential to them
Experienced Armenian genocide memories of his past
1940s art became more abstract planned out his pictures
Biomorphic imagery came from nature studied
Half inner vision/ half planned observation

Feathers/claws woman bending picking up a flower
Tried to “repossess” Armenia in his art
Based on memories of past, horrors of his childhood
Strange hybrid forms with rich, fluid color
Veiled, but recognizable shapes combined with overtly sexual forms
Erotically charged atmosphere w/ rich color
Biomorphic imagery owed to Miro & Kandinsky
Gorky, Agony, 1947, 40 x 50”

Thicker pigment, texture in brushwork
Content & mood are conveyed by formal elements
Gestural markings
Diagnosed w/ cancer wife & children left him, life becomes worse and worse, this painting was done a year before suicide
Orozco, Gods of the Modern World,
from series Modern Migration of the
Spirit, Dartmouth College, 1932-34
(Pollock visited in 1937)

Inspired Pollock larger than life, epic subject matter
MYTH: series history of civilization
Human violence & greed negative depiction
Christ comes to earth, sees all modern violence
Self-destruction of machine age
Communist-Marxist
Siqueiros, Echo of a Scream, 1937,
Enamel on wood, 121 x 91 cm.

Subject was from Sino-Japanese War new photograph of a crying baby
Human wasteland
Widespread use of industrial & metallic paints
Variety of accidental effects
Pollock, Male and Female, 1942,
73 x 49”
Carl Gustav Jung

Increased interest in primitive art
Mythological themes
Figures taken from Picasso’s art
Pollock, Guardians of the Secret, 1943,
4 x 6’3”

Guardian figures on side
Covered with cryptographic symbols
Alludes to a ritualCarl Jung’s themes in content of early work theories of the collective unconscious as a repository for ancient myths & universal archetypes
Gottlieb, Descent into Darkness,
1947

Dark, despair lived through WWII
Barnett Newman, Genesis-The Break,
1946, 24 x 27”

Abstract symbols/ imagery
Cryptographic
forms are abstracted and shed their biological associations
Division btwn heaven & earth
Primal forms taking shape
Pollock, Pasiphäe, 1943

Bull & Pasiphae embracing in center
Work begins to be more dense
Pollock, Cathedral, enamel, oil, and
aluminum paint, 1947, 71 ½ x 35”

Automatic technique
“confessional” handprints, things he allowed to fall accidentally into painting
Source of painting is self-conscious
Trance-like state
He can literally be IN the painting
Painting has a life of its own, it paints itself there can be no mistakes
Fusion of opposite characteristics: delicate, very detailed, layered, huge pieces
transcendent energy, force
Pollock, Number 1, 1950 (Lavender Mist), , oil, enamel
and aluminum on canvas, 7’4” x 9’11”

Automatic technique
“confessional” handprints, things he allowed to fall accidentally into painting
Source of painting is self-conscious
Trance-like state
He can literally be IN the painting
Painting has a life of its own, it paints itself there can be no mistakes
Fusion of opposite characteristics: delicate, very detailed, layered, huge pieces
transcendent energy, force

Drip painting
Mix of oil colors w/ black enamel & aluminum paint
Lines have no descriptive function
Hazy, luminous whole
Elements of intuition play a large, deliberate part
Colors & mass create sense of continuous movement
Inspiration came from Surrealism’s psychic automatism
Pollock, Portrait and a Dream, 1953, 11’ x 58”

Didn’t like abstract expressionism
Painted from the unconscious painting is a state of being, a self-discovery
Re-explored the figure
Visual dialogue
Dropped black paint in abstracted patterns vaguely suggest human anatomies
Right: self-portrait overt figuration w/ brush-applied color, figure lies within the paint
“when painting out of your unconscious, figures are bound to emerge”
Rothko, Untitled, 1949, 6’9” x 5’6 3/8”

Color Field painting:
Favored simple expression of complex thought Large shapes have the impact of the unequivocal
Reassertion of the picture plane flat forms destroy illusion and reveal truth
Abstract art wasn’t “subjectless”
No matter how reductive, it could still communicate the most profound subjects and elicit deep emotional response in viewer

Spiritual faith in art
Unprimed canvases, sponge paint
Illuminated, modulated, flat areas
Spaces refined & simplified to the point of being simply colored rectangles floating on a color ground
Blurred edges to create luminous color
Sensuousness of color areas & sense of indefinite outward expansion without a central focus
Painting is designed to absorb & engulf the spectator
Mesmerizing, haunting quality
Expression of basic human emotions not only about color relationships
De Kooning, Woman I, 1950-52

Attacked for being a misogynist
Inspired by advertisements
Representational and abstracts elements of his work were not mutually exclusive
Overpowering, hypnotic evocation of women as sex symbol/fertility goddess
Dual nature of sexual identity derived partly from the feminine in himself