art
Spicegirl1974
M5W14FromFauvismtoDada.pptxPresentation by Dr. Marc A. Cirigliano
From Fauvism to Dada
The avant-garde desire to innovate
Abstraction
Changing concepts of time and perception
Technological and industrial changes to society and the cityscape
Primitivism
Factors Underlying Modern Art
From Antiquity and the Middle Ages, critics recognized that art presented only a partial representation of reality, so all art was, in this sense, an abstraction.
From the Renaissance on, there is the recognition that painting is abstract in the sense that it depicted a three-dimensional illusion on a flat, two-dimensional surface.
In 1790 Immanuel Kant, in his Critique of Judgment, asserts that humans have a purely visible capacity that is not linked to concepts and/or ideas. Therefore, we can and do see things as purely visual form with no reference to any conceptual meaning in our lives. This is abstraction.
Kant’s assertion is further developed by Konrad Fiedler as the theory of pure visibility.
Background on Abstraction
The impact of photography allowed painters to explore aspects of the visual experience to the exclusion of direct copying.
James Abbott McNeill Whistler asserted that his painting Symphony in White, No. 1, also known as The White Girl, is only an arrangement of colors and lines and nothing more. This assertion of abstraction flipped people (and critics) out at the time.
Aspects of Post-Impressionism and Symbolism move painting and poetry away from direct representation into searching for the “essence” of the subject, which is a definite move way from objects and toward abstraction.
Background on Abstraction (cont.)
We can argue that all art is abstract in that the work of art is not the thing in itself. For example, a portrait is not the person, but it may, in some way, resemble that person.
We can also argue that no art is abstract in that all art consists of lines, colors and shapes that are found in the world, so arts’ visual elements are real and not abstract.
There are two major types of abstraction:
Geometric abstraction—where the visual elements resemble the lines and angles of geometric forms
Biomorphic abstraction—where the visual elements resemble the curving and irregular lines and shapes of biological life.
Finally, abstraction is part of everyday life. It is not that radical an idea or practice. Why? Because we see it all the time in graphic design that is part of day-to-day communications in marketing, advertising and more.
More on Abstract Art
A given moment does not exist alone. It consists of 3 parts:
Immediate past
Transitory present
Anticipatory future
So, reality is a constant state of flux. We began to see this in Cézanne's work.
Human perception is not fixed from one point, like Renaissance perspective, but consists of a multiple flow of information that the mind assembles into our reality
Changing Concepts of Time & Perception: Henri Bergson (1858-1941)
Early 20th century discovery of African, Oceanic and Native American art = non-Western or prehistoric peoples
Back to a simpler and purer time that wasn’t corrupted by civilization
Discovery of more and more about non-Western cultures through interaction with such cultures as China and Japan, but more importantly, Africa, Oceania and the Native Americas
Rise of Cultural Relativism (not Moral Relativism)
Expositions with this art and material culture take place in Europe
From a Western POV, this art is non-representational
Background on Primitivism
Overarching Factors
Idea and expectation of change through a progress that is modern drives society as a whole.
The Avant-Garde seeks change and innovation all the time.
Expressionism
Dr. Charles Cramer and Dr. Kim Grant:
Fauve painters tended to use a limited range of colors, emphasizing the brightest shades of the primaries (red, blue, and yellow) as well as the secondaries green and orange. Vlaminck took this restricted palette further than Derain and Matisse, and often used his colors straight out of the tube without mixing them.
In Bougival he organizes the landscape in broad color areas: red for the foreground field, yellow leaves for the middle ground, green trees in the background, and blue hills and water in the distance. The paint is applied with simple, blunt strokes to create a powerful image of a fall day in the countryside.
See the entire Smarthistory article:
Dr. Charles Cramer and Dr. Kim Grant, "Fauve Landscapes and City Views," in Smarthistory, April 16, 2020, accessed June 5, 2020, https://smarthistory.org/fauve-landscape-city-views/.
André Derain
The Dance
1906
oil on canvas
70 3/4 x 90 inches
Fridart Collection
From SmartHistory:
André Derain’s The Dance is an ambitious and remarkably eclectic painting that combines references to multiple European and non-European sources. The highly saturated palette of the primary colors (red, blue, and yellow), with the addition of the secondary green, is characteristic of Fauvism, a pictorial style associated with wild and unrestrained expression. In its attempt to synthesize a disparate collection of sources and references, The Dance testifies to the multi-layered, hybrid approach modern artists adopted as they attempted to create art works imbued with so-called primitive qualities.
Dr. Charles Cramer and Dr. Kim Grant, "André Derain, The Dance ," in Smarthistory, April 15, 2020, accessed June 5, 2020, https://smarthistory.org/andre-derain-the-dance/.
Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker, "Henri Matisse, The Red Studio ," in Smarthistory, August 9, 2015, accessed June 5, 2020, https://smarthistory.org/matisse-the-red-studio/.
Click on the image to start the video.
Henri Matisse
The Red Studio
1911
oil on canvas
181 x 219.1 cm
Museum of Modern Art, New York
Hint: Use your knowledge of line, implied line, color and texture to analyze this composition of Matisse.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, "Henri Matisse, the illustrated book Jazz ," in Smarthistory, January 26, 2016, accessed June 5, 2020, https://smarthistory.org/henri-matisse-the-illustrated-book-jazz/.
Click on the image to start the video.
Expressionism
Erich Heckel
Fränzi Reclining 1910
Woodcut
35.6 x 55.5 cm
The Museum of Modern Art
One Key Expressionist Movement: Die Brücke In 1905, four young artists working in Dresden and Berlin, joined together, calling themselves Die Brücke (The Bridge). Led by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, the group wanted to create a radical art that could speak to modern audiences, which they characterized as young, vital, and urban. Drawn from the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche, the nineteenth-century German philosopher, the name “Die Brücke” describes their desire to serve as a bridge from the present to the future. While each artist had his own personal style, Die Brücke art is characterized by bright, often arbitrary colors and a “primitive” aesthetic, inspired by both African and European medieval art. Their work often addressed modern urban themes of alienation and anxiety, and sexually charged themes in their depictions of the female nude. Their first exhibition was held in the showroom of a lamp factory in Dresden in 1906 for which they published a program of woodcut prints reflecting their interest in earlier traditions of German art. In the introductory broadsheet (above left), Kirchner made clear the group’s revolutionary intentions. He proclaimed…
Source: SmartHistory
“With faith in progress and in a new generation of creators and spectators we call together all youth. As youth, we carry the future and want to create for ourselves freedom of life and of movement against the long established older forces.”
Franz Marc, The Large Blue Horses, 1911
Oil on canvas, 41.6 × 71.3 inches, Walker Art Center
Another key Expressionist movement:
Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider)
Based in the German city of Munich, the group known as Der Blaue Reiter lasted only from their first exhibition at the Galerie Thannhausen in 1911 to the outbreak of World War I in 1914. Created as an alternative to Kandinsky’s previous group, the more conservative Neuen Künstlervereinigung München (New Artists Association of Munich or NKVM), Die Blaue Reiter took its name from the motif of a horse and rider, often used by founding member Vasily Kandinsky…
…In contrast to Die Brücke, whose subjects were physical and direct, Kandinsky and other Die Blaue Reiter artists explored the spiritual in their art, which often included symbolism and allusions to ethereal concerns. They thought these ideas could be communicated directly through formal elements of color and line, that, like music, could evoke an emotional response in the viewer.
Source: SmartHistory:
From SmartHistory on The Blue Rider:
The name Der Blaue Reiter, as Kandinsky later somewhat flippantly suggested, was chosen because fellow artist Franz Marc liked horses and Kandinsky liked riders, and they both liked the color blue. The group’s emblem was the Roman Christian soldier Saint George, who slew a dragon that was demanding human sacrifices.
Auguste Macke
St. George
1912
Alexei von Jawlensky
(left)
Self-Portrait
1905
oil on cardboard
52 x 38 cm
private collection
(right)
Savior’s Face: Martyr
1919
oil on linen-finish paper on board
32.5 x 25.4 cm
private collection
Alexei von Jawlensky
Although he studied painting with the Russian Realist Ilya Repin, Alexei von Jawlensky deliberately rejected his training in favor of a childlike simplicity and directness in his later works. For example, his 1905 Self-Portrait, while painterly and simplified, is a convincing likeness of the artist, with naturalistic proportions and chiaroscuro modeling. The coloring is bright, but based on close observation — warmer red tones appear on the cheeks, nose, and forehead, and cooler tones define the eyes, temples, and jawline.
The later work, Savior’s Face, was part of a series of portraits called “mystical” or “abstract heads,” which the artist noted were not executed from nature:
I sat in my studio and painted, and I did not need Nature to prompt me. It was enough for me to immerse myself in myself, to pray and prepare my soul to attain a religious state.
Souce: SmartHistory
Vasily Kandinsky
Improvisation 28 (second version)
1912
oil on canvas
111.4 x 162.1 cm
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
Be sure to read the entire SmartHistory article on Wassily Kandinsky:
Dr. Charles Cramer and Dr. Kim Grant, "Kandinsky, Apocalypse, Abstraction," in Smarthistory, April 11, 2020, accessed June 5, 2020, https://smarthistory.org/kandinsky-apocalypse-abstraction
From SmartHistory on music and Der Blaue Reiter:
The group’s belief that art had to go beyond merely representing material reality also took inspiration from music. Several of the essays in the Almanac were about music, including one by experimental composer Arnold Schönberg, and the sheet music for three compositions was included at the end of the Almanac.
Kandinsky in particular admired the way that music stirred inner emotional and spiritual states through abstract means, by combinations and sequences of sound, without attempting to imitate nature. Seeking a visual equivalent, Kandinsky theorized that painters could do the same by creating compositions of pure color and form…
Here is a link to three Arnold Schönberg pieces, although I do not know if these are the three pieces at the end of the Almanac.
Arnold Schoenberg: Three Piano Pieces, Op 11 performed by Joel Fan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6sxrciaTrY
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
Street, Dresden
1908
re-worked 1919
Wassily Kandinsky
Composition VII
1913
Wassily Kandinsky
Composition VIII
1923
Fauvism
The term Fauve was coined by French critic Louis Vauxcelles described the group of 'Fauves’ (French for wild beasts):
A movement I consider dangerous (despite the great sympathy I have for its perpetrators) is taking shape among a small clan of youngsters. A chapel has been established, two haughty priests officiating. MM Derain and Matisse; a few dozen innocent catechumens have received their baptism. Their dogma amounts to a wavering schematicism that proscribes modeling and volumes in the name of I-don't-know-what pictorial abstraction. This new religion hardly appeals to me. I don't believe in this Renaissance... M. Matisse, fauve-in-chief; M. Derain, fauve deputy; MM. Othon Friesz and Dufy, fauves in attendance... and M. Delaunay (a fourteen-year-old-pupil of M. Metzinger...), infantile fauvelet.
(from Louis Vauxcelles, 20 March 1907)
Henri Matisse
Luxe, calme et volupté
1904
Theme from the poem L'Invitation au voyage, from Charles Baudelaire's volume Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil):
Là, tout n'est qu'ordre et beauté, Luxe, calme et volupté. There, all is only order and beauty, Luxury, peace, and pleasure.
Iconography of Lux, calme et volupté
Henri Matisse
L'Atelier Rouge
1911
Cubism
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)
Study of a Torso, After a Plaster Cast
1893-94
Musée Picasso, Paris
Early Picasso
Pablo Picasso was a Spanish art student who settled in Paris.
A child prodigy in art. Note that he was only 12 or 13 years old when he created the study shown here.
Pablo Picasso
(Left)
Woman Ironing
1904
oil on canvas
116.2 x 73 cm
Guggenheim Museum,
New York
(Right)
Family of Saltimbanques
1905
oil on canvas
212.8 x 229.6 cm
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
We can see academic technical mastery at a young age, but Picasso explores, utilizing Expressionist elements, and also the influence of Cézanne.
Pablo Picasso
Les Demoiselles d’Avignon
1907
Oil on canvas
243.9 x 233.7 cm
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker, "Pablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon ," in Smarthistory, August 9, 2015, accessed June 6, 2020, https://smarthistory.org/pablo-picasso-les-demoiselles-davignon/.
Click on the image to start the video
Picasso’s Demoiselles has many recognizable creative sources, but it is also unique, one-of-a-kind, which bespeaks Picasso’s genius imagination for being able to conceive such an original artwork that is a radical break with both tradition and his then avant-garde.
The work has shock-effect and defiance. Robert Rosenblum says it is “a barbaric, dissonant power” paralleled by classical music in the coming decade:
Bela Bartok’s Allegro barbaro (1910)
Igor Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps (1912-13)
Sergei Prokofiev’s Scythian Suite, (1914-1916)
Pablo Picasso
Three Women
1907-08
oil on canvas
200 x 178 cm
The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg
Dr. Charles Cramer and Dr. Kim Grant, "Pablo Picasso, Three Women ," in Smarthistory, April 7, 2020, accessed June 6, 2020, https://smarthistory.org/pablo-picasso-three-women/.
Image: The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg
Pablo Picasso’s Three Women shows both a simplification of the human body to basic geometric forms and a novel approach to representing the figure in space. Rather than depicting the figures as independent forms in an open spatial environment, Picasso’s women form an interlocking whole, fitting together like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle.
The jutting hip of the central figure forms a common edge with the right-hand figure’s torso and breast, and the left-hand figure’s shoulder, arm, and head help to define the central figure’s right side. The figure on the right merges with the surrounding form, which is probably a curtain…
…The effect of these repeated patterns and ambiguities is a painting that shifts oddly from conveying a strong sense of solid volumes and space, and a reminder that the painting is literally a flat surface covered in a pattern of painted geometric shapes.
Source: SmartHistory
Georges Braque
Le Viaduc à L’Estaque
(The Viaduct at L’Estaque)
1908
oil on canvas
28-5/8 x 23-1/4″ / 72.5 x 59 cm
Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris
Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker, "Georges Braque, Le Viaduc à L’Estaque , (The Viaduct at L’Estaque ) ," in Smarthistory, November 25, 2015, accessed June 6, 2020, https://smarthistory.org/georges-braque-le-viaduc-a-lestaque-the-viaduct-at-lestaque/.
Click on the image to start the video.
Pablo Picasso
Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler
1910
oil on canvas
39 9/16 x 26 9/16 inches
Art Institute of Chicago
Dr. Charles Cramer and Dr. Kim Grant, " Pablo Picasso, Portrait of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler ," in Smarthistory, March 7, 2020, accessed June 6, 2020, https://smarthistory.org/pablo-picasso-kahnweiler/.
As Cézanne emphasized, “Treat nature by the cylinder, the sphere, the cone, everything in proper perspective so that each side of an object or a plane is directed towards a central point.”
If we take that geometric breakdown of objects and space as a starting point and integrate into such a scene that human perception consists of a series of non-fixed viewpoints, then we have the basis of Cubism.
Notice, as well, that the geometric forms we see in Picasso’s Kahnweiler are in themselves also broken into other geometric forms. It is rare to see a complete geometric shape. Rather, a rectangle contains other rectangles, triangles and/or circles , and vice versa.
In this portrait, we are aware of the two-dimensionality of the canvas while also being aware of the figure in three-dimensional space.
Pablo Picasso
The Guitarist
1910
oil on canvas
100 x 73 cm
Centre Pompidou, Paris
Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker, "Pablo Picasso and the new language of Cubism," in Smarthistory, May 12, 2018, accessed June 6, 2020, https://smarthistory.org/picasso-guitar/.
Click on the image to start the video.
Georges Braque
The Portuguese
1911
oil on canvas
116.8 x 81 cm
Kunstmuseum Basel, Basel, Switzerland
From SmartHistory:
A step to the right and a step to the left [can] complete our vision. The knowledge we have of an object is … a complex sum of perceptions … the object must always be presented from the most revealing angle.
Jacques Rivière, “Present Tendencies in Painting” (1912)
Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker, "Georges Braque, The Portuguese ," in Smarthistory, August 9, 2015, accessed June 6, 2020, https://smarthistory.org/braque-the-portuguese/.
Pablo Picasso
Girl Playing Mandolin
1910
Pablo Picasso
Portrait of Ambrose Vollard
1910
Pablo Picasso
Siphon, Glass, Newspaper and Violin
1912
paper and charcoal
18 1/2 x 24 5/8 inches
Moderna Museet, Stockholm
Dr. Charles Cramer and Dr. Kim Grant, "Synthetic Cubism, Part I," in Smarthistory, November 24, 2019, accessed June 6, 2020, https://smarthistory.org/synthetic-cubism-part-i/.
Image: Moderna Museet , Stockholm
Synthetic Cubism
From SmartHistory:
Synthetic Cubist works use multiple forms of representation, combining the abstracted forms of Analytic Cubism with color, collage, and even sometimes naturalistic representations, to create a complex whole.
We should also clarify that Synthetic Cubism include printed newspaper, with the print emphasizing the flatness of the canvas, and that the work of art contains symbols that represent significance beyond their visible shape.
In addition, there are forms pasted on the work that call to mind their original use, such as wallpaper, woodgrain, etc.
Synthetic Cubism
Pablo Picasso
Three Musicians
1921
oil on canvas
200.7 x 222.9 cm
Museum of Modern Art, New York
Dr. Charles Cramer and Dr. Kim Grant, "Pablo Picasso, The Three Musicians ," in Smarthistory, March 23, 2020, accessed June 6, 2020, https://smarthistory.org/pablo-picasso-three-musicians/.
Salon Cubism
Cubist rooms at the Salon d’Automne, 1912
Dr. Charles Cramer and Dr. Kim Grant, "Salon Cubism," in Smarthistory, March 23, 2020, accessed June 9, 2020, https://smarthistory.org/salon-cubism/
There was another branch of Cubism different from that of Picasso and Braque: Salon Cubism.
Today, most people associate Cubism with Picasso and Braque, but in the early 1910s when the style was new, the works of many other Cubist artists, including Jean Metzinger, Albert Gleizes, Henri Le Fauconnier, and Fernand Léger, were better known. These artists are often called the Salon Cubists because they participated in the large annual public exhibitions in Paris known as Salons. Picasso and Braque, by contrast, had an exclusive contract with their dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler and only showed their Cubist works in Paris at his private gallery.
From SmartHistory
From SmartHistory:
The first difference is scale… Picasso’s and Braque’s contemporary Cubist works were rarely more than a quarter that size, and often much smaller.
Another difference is subject matter. Picasso and Braque painted mostly still lifes and single figures in portrait format, while the Salon Cubists addressed grand themes and painted multi-figure compositions, landscapes, and cityscapes. Albert Gleizes’ The Bathers combines a pastoral scene of nude figures bathing in the foreground with the factory chimneys of a modern suburb smoking in the background.
Albert Gleizes
The Bathers
1912
Oil on canvas
105 x 171 cm
Musee d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris
Dr. Charles Cramer and Dr. Kim Grant, "Salon Cubism," in Smarthistory, March 23, 2020, accessed June 9, 2020, https://smarthistory.org/salon-cubism/.
Fernand Leger continues to branch out ……
Fernand Léger
The City
1919
Oil on canvas
231.1 × 298.4 cm
Philadelphia Museum of Art
Borrowing from Analytic and Synthetic Cubism, Leger develops his own Cubist language in depicting the energy and complexity of the modern city.
Dr. Charles Cramer and Dr. Kim Grant, "The Cubist City – Robert Delaunay and Fernand Léger," in Smarthistory, March 23, 2020, accessed June 6, 2020, https://smarthistory.org/cubist-city-robert-delaunay-fernand-leger/.
Image: Philadelphia Museum of Art
Orphism (Simultanism)
Sonia Delaunay, Bal Bullier, 1913
Oil on canvas, 97 x 336.5 cm (MNAM Centre Pompidou)
Dr. Charles Cramer and Dr. Kim Grant, "Sonia Delaunay," in Smarthistory, April 7, 2020, accessed June 6, 2020, https://smarthistory.org/simultanism-sonia-delaunay/.
Bal Bullier was a dance hall in Paris that Delaunay frequently visited with her husband, Robert. Her painting shows a scene of modern urban life comparable to those painted by the Impressionists in the late 19th century, such as Auguste Renoir’s Moulin de la Galette…
… The Delaunays were committed to developing Simultanism as a post-Cubist style of modern painting focused on color relationships, and to the depiction of modern subjects. In addition to the dance hall, Sonia painted the new electric streetlights in Paris, and Robert painted the Eiffel Tower, rugby matches, and airplanes.
Source: SmartHistory
Robert Delaunay
Simultaneous Windows on the City
1912
Orphism
Robert Delaunay gives us a complicated view of the city with an emphasis on light and color.
Image from Wikipedia:
Futurism
Giacomo Balla
Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash
1912
oil on canvas
35 1/2 x 43 1/4 ”
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo
The Futurists were particularly excited by the works of late 19th-century scientist and photographer Étienne-Jules Marey, whose chronophotographic (time-based) studies depicted the mechanics of animal and human movement.
A precursor to cinema, Marey’s innovative experiments with time-lapse photography were especially influential for Balla. In his painting Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash, the artist playfully renders the dog’s (and dog walker’s) feet as continuous movements through space over time.
Click on the image to start the video.
Étienne-Jules Marey
L’hômme machine
(Machine Man)
1885
Emily Casden, "Italian Futurism: An Introduction," in Smarthistory, August 9, 2015, accessed June 8, 2020, https://smarthistory.org/italian-futurism-an-introduction/.
Umberto Boccioni
The City Rises
1910
oil on canvas
199 cm × 301 cm
Museum of Modern Art, New York
Dr. Charles Cramer and Dr. Kim Grant, "Umberto Boccioni and the Futurist City," in Smarthistory, April 15, 2020, accessed June 8, 2020, https://smarthistory.org/umberto-boccioni-futurist-city/.
With Futurism we have the glorification of the modern age with its technology and machines. As a Futurist poet Filippo Marinetti wrote:
We will sing of great crowds excited by work, by pleasure, and by riot; we will sing of the multicolored, polyphonic tides of revolution in the modern capitals; we will sing of the vibrant nightly fervor of arsenals and shipyards blazing with violent electric moons; greedy railway stations that devour smoke-plumed serpents; factories hung on clouds by the crooked lines of their smoke . . . deep-chested locomotives whose wheels paw the tracks like the hooves of enormous steel horses . . .
Filippo Marinetti, “The Foundation and Manifesto of Futurism.”
Umberto Boccioni
Unique Forms of Continuity in Space
1913 (cast 1931)
Bronze
111.2 x 88.5 x 40 cm
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
A figure moving in space, with both the figure and the space around it, the air displaced by motion, sculpted.
As SmartHistory explains:
Movement was a key element for Boccioni and the other Futurists, as the technology of transportation (cars, bicycles, and advanced trains) allowed people to experience ever greater speeds. The Futurist artists often depicted motorized vehicles and the perceptions they made possible—the blurry, fleeting, fragmentary sight created by this new velocity.
And, as Marinetti defiantly declares as the Futurists try to destroy what they saw as an outmoded artistic heritage:
Museums: absurd abattoirs for painters and sculptors who ferociously slaughter each other with colour-blows and line-blows along the disputed walls!”
–F.T. Marinetti, “The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism,” 1909
Dr. Rosalind McKever, " Umberto Boccioni, Unique Forms of Continuity in Space ," in Smarthistory, August 9, 2015, accessed June 8, 2020, https://smarthistory.org/umberto-boccioni-unique-forms-of-continuity-in-space/.
Gino Severini
Dynamic Hieroglyph of the Bal Tabarin
1912
oil and sequins on canvas
161.6 x 156.2 cm
Museum of Modern Art, New York
From SmartHistory:
Gino Severini’s Dynamic Hieroglyph of the Bal Tabarin draws us into the frenzied excitement of a Paris nightclub. Combining a Cubist technique of fractured planes with the use of repetition, Severini creates a brilliant kaleidoscope of partially-glimpsed figures in motion. Dominating the center of the painting are two dancing women —one with blond curls on the left, the other with dark hair on the right— and a swirling pink and purple dress. Looping patterns of real sequins decorate the dress, adding to the shimmering play of light in the painting.
Dr. Charles Cramer and Dr. Kim Grant, "Gino Severini , Dynamic Hieroglyph of the Bal Tabarin ," in Smarthistory, April 15, 2020, accessed June 8, 2020, https://smarthistory.org/gino-severini-dynamic-hieroglyph-bal-tabarin/.
72
Dadaism and World War I (1914-1918)
Image from WW2 Weapons: Somme-brit-infattack2
Over the top into No-Man’s-Land
Image from The Daily Mail: dailymail.co.uk
Into No-Man’s-Land
Casualties WWI, 1914 -1918
Everyone was traumatized during and after The Great War because so-called “rational civilization” had produced such massive death, destruction and suffering:
Total military and civilian casualties over 37 million
Over 16 million dead & 20 million wounded
10 million military personnel and about 7 million civilians dead
Around 2/3 of military deaths in World War I were in battle
1/3 to disease & illness
Dada had something to say about this!
Image: WWI Cemetery in Verdun, from Istitut-Ciel.com
Marcel Duchamp
Fountain
1917
Photograph by Alfred Stieglitz at 291 (art gallery) following the 1917 Society of Independent Artists exhibit, with entry tag visible. The backdrop is The Warriors by Marsden Hartley.
Image from Wikipedia: Fountain_(Duchamp)
Jules Dalou
Le Triomphe de la République
1899
Image from Parisienne de Photographie
One fountain celebrates France as a nation; the other, not so much.
Obviously, Duchamp does not think much of “civilization.”
Premises of Dada
Total rejection of modern civilization & its art
Rejection of middle-class values and modern rationalism
Bourgeois reason and logic led to WWI
17 million military and civilian deaths in WWI
Anti-war
Marcel Duchamp
The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even
(The Large Glass)
oil, varnish, lead foil, lead wire, and dust on two glass panels
277.5 × 177.8 × 8.6 cm
© Estate of Marcel Duchamp
Philadelphia Museum of Art
Image from Wikipedia:
Image from SmartHistory: duchamp-largeglass
What is Marcel Duchamp up to here with his The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even?
Duchamp was against retinal art; i.e., art that is only visual
In much of his work we have a deep conceptual rejection of all Western art traditions.
As well, we see a wicked critique of modern Western civilization.
The title is an avant-garde attack on middle-class values and morality:
Bride = wedding, but she is stripped naked
She is a bride at her wedding, but has nine—yes, nine—bachelors either after her or else they are hers, she has them.
What is Duchamp saying about modern society, its social practices & its institutions?
Visual analysis might contradict the title:
Bride is totally separate and above the bachelors
Nine bachelors are in the realm below, so how can she be stripped bare?
Once again, what is Duchamp saying about modern society, its social practices and its institutions?
Dr. Lara Kuykendall, "Marcel Duchamp, The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass) ," in Smarthistory, March 6, 2016, accessed June 8, 2020, https://smarthistory.org/duchamp-largeglass/.
Click on the image to start the video.
Marcel Duchamp
L.H.O.O.Q
1919
A found object turned into a work of art. The letters, when pronounced in French translate to:
“She has a hot ass.”
Image from Wikipedia: L.H.O.O.Q.
Thank you, students!
What a wonderful semester!!!
