High Modernism, Art And Culture

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Stream of consciousness

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Experimental novels.
James Joyce.
Virginia Woolf

Narrative consisting of uneditedthoughts of one of the characteres through whose mind the reader experiences the story.

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Prominent experimental writers

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James Joyce
Virginia Woolf
Ernest Hemmingway
William Faulkner

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Modernist writers

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D.H. Lawrence
George Orwell

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Poets

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William Butler Yeats
T.S. Eliot
Langston Hughes

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Drama

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Inter war period. Drama moved in new direction
- Bertolt Brecht
Rebellion against traditional theatre
Alienation effect. making bourgeois audiences uncomfortable.
Teamed with composer Kurt Weill
Other playwrites:
- Jean Cocteau
- Eugene O'Neill, America's first world famous dramatist. Both used ancient greek tragedy in modern forms.

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Philosophy and Science

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Wittgenstein> positivism
Heidegger> existentialism
Existentialism> Camus, Sartre

Einstein/Heisenberg, Max Planck. Uncertainty in physics coincided with art. and uncertainty of ideas.

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Painting

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Dominated visual arts interwar period.
Many new styles but prevailing themes:
- abstraction
- primitivism
- fantasy
- expressionism.
Picasso and Matisse continued to influence yet also worked within these categories all of which arisen out of Post-Impressionist period.

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Abastraction painting

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Soviet Painters, moved beyond cubism to full abstraction 1917.
- Kasimir Malevich. completely non objective canvasses. influenced by cubism/futurism. Painting devoted to purity

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Kasimir Malevich

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Soviet Painter, moved beyond cubism to full abstraction 1917.
Completely non objective canvasses. influenced by cubism/futurism. Painting devoted to purity
Ethical/philosopical dimension of art
> Suprematism
- Geometrical shapes
Flatness, coolness, severe rationality. Remain central branch of abstract art today.
Helped shape Constructivism.
Malevich Christian views counter to Marxism. Abolished by Lenin.

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Social Realism

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Replaced Constructivism/Suprematism in Russia under Marxism.
Traditional styles, techniques glorifying soviet russia. Greater mass appeal

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De Stijl

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the Netherlands. Movement similar to Constructivism and Suprematism. Shared belief that art should have spiritual values. Artists to revamp society along rational lines. From town planning to eating utensils. A more harmonious vision of life would result.
- Piet Mondriaan leader of group.

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Piet Mondriaan

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Main proponent of The Stijl.
Developed elaborate theory to give metaphysical meaning to his abstract paintings.
member of Theosophists (mystical cult) stress of cosmic duality vertical representing the male, horizontal female.
Red, Blued and Yellow. > symbols for sky, sun, dynamic union.
Remained faithful to grid and primary colours.

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Cubism

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Pablo Picasso reigning cubist. Cubism remained leading artform.
Most famous of Picasso: Guernica. Senseless bombing by the nazis of a town. New blending of Cubism with social protest
Multiple styles but returning to his cubist roots.
- Idea of flatness in prized by Modern painters
- Georgia O'Keeffe
American refused to follow european painters to pure abstraction. Pursued distictively American type of abstraction. American subjects. Kept representation of natural world as primary goal.

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Primitivism and Fantasy in painting

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Primitivism led to Dada in Zurich and Paris 1915-1925
Dada led to Surrealism
- Marcel Duchamp (Dada)
- Salvador Dali
- Paul van Klee (fondness of children scribles)
- Frida Kahlo (Mexican painter, unsettling self portraits reflected physical/spiritual suffering)

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EXPRESSIONISM in painting

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- Henri Matisse
- Max Beckhamm

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Henri Matisse

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Founder of Fauvism before the war.
Now move to expressionism Large Reclining Nude shows new style characterized by fresh approach to human figure.
Abbandoned highly saturated colours of Fauvism replaced with cooler tones.
Remained true to theme of distortion (leading expressionist theme)
rebuked for concentrating on pretty subjects while world slipped into anarchy.

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Max Beckhamm

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heir to German expressionism.
registered horror era's turbulent events. The departure. Spiritual and personal issues. Influenced by Arthur Schopenhauer, east asian philosopy and Jewish cabala. Yearning to be free of horrors of earthly existence.
Rejected by the nazis.

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Architecture

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Continued ot search for pure style, free of decoration, totally functional.
Mythical quest, idea new architecture could solve social problems by creating physical environments. Recurrent theme of European modernism.
Best expressed by the Bauhaus aimed to bring about social reform throuh new visual environments. especially design of day to day objects. 1919-1933
Spartan style and introduction of International style
- Walter Gropius central figure.
- Le Corbusier

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Le Corbusier

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House is a machine for living 1887-1965
- Savoye House
Cubist abstraction and constructivist purity. (white)

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Film

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Most popular mass entertainment
D.W. Griffith
- Birth of a Nation (1915)
- Intolerance (1916)
Showed it was possible for movie to be serious form of art.
Sergei Eisenstein
- The Battleship Potemkin (1925)
Pioneered montage techniques highly elaborate editing patterns. Believed key element of film was the way th scenes were arranged.
Orson Welles
- Citizen Kane (1941)
Learned from german exiles in America. Expressionist methods of theatrical lighting and mulitple narrative voices.

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Music: Atonalist, Neoclassicism and an American Idiom

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1920-1930. Western music fragmented into two rival camps.
1. Austro-German school headed by Arnold Schoenberg. Atonality and serial music.
2. Igor Stravinsky and French school. experimented wih primitive rhythms and harsh dissoncance but after WWI adopted stern neo-classical style.

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American music

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- Charles Ives
focussed on American melodies. folk songs, ragtime... experimented with tonality and rhythm similar to European Avant Garde.
- Aron Copland
distinctive American style.
- George Antheil
followed in steps of the futurists, worshipping the machine. incorporated industrial sounds.
- William Grant Still
Great African American composer.
- John Cage
Experimental music
4.33. absolving distinction of sound and music.
Jazz:
Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald

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Harlem Renaissance

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- Zora Neale Hurston
- Langston Hughes
. Emergence came with the population shifts of 1914. Blacks moving to nothern cities.
Negro culture craze sprang up at the same time. fueled by jazz and avant garde cult of primitivism.

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Cunningham

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Ballet. Afwerping van het keurslijf van de dans.
Vernieuwend in Cunningham was dat alle artistieke componenten in zijn choreography hun eigen autonomie behouden. Abstracte autonome genres die ieder hun ding doen en niet eens meer met elkaar te maken hadden. Soms zelfs bij de eerste voorstelling dat deze bij elkaar kwamen.
Idee van autonomie en experiment.
Onderzoek naar bewegingsmogelijkheden van de mens.