What Would Be the Best Way of Describing the Art of Early 20th Century

The Early 20th Century

The early on 20th century was marked by rapid industrial, economical, social, and cultural change, which influenced the worldview of many and set the stage for new creative movements.

Learning Objectives

Identify how industrial, economic, social, and cultural alter prepare the phase for the fine art movements of the early 20th century

Key Takeaways

Primal Points

• The starting time ii decades of the 20th century were marked past enormous industrial, economic, social, and cultural developments.
• International merchandise brought with it increasing growth and prosperity, along with a rise in poverty and slums in major cities. Urbanization, advances in science and technology, and the spread of goods and data were markers of the times.
• With the outbreak of World State of war I in 1914, art became heavily influenced by the desire to abstract life and escape the horrific possibilities of the human condition. Artists began to question and play around with themes of reality, perspective, space, and time.

Cardinal Terms

• urbanization: The modify in a country or region when its population migrates from rural to urban areas.

The starting time two decades of the 20th century were marked by enormous industrial, economic, social and cultural change. International trade brought with information technology increasing growth and prosperity, along with a rise in poverty and slums in major cities. Urbanization, architectural advances, increases in engineering science, and the spread of goods and information were markers of the times. Competition between nations was reflected in attempts to show off advances in technology, concern, and architecture, amidst other things. Prominent scientific advancements of the time included Einstein'southward Theory of Relativity and Freud's development of modernistic psychology.

Afterward the relative peace of most of the 19th century, rivalry betwixt European powers erupted in 1914 with the outbreak of the first Earth War. Over threescore meg European soldiers were mobilized from 1914–1918 as countries around the world were chosen into the conflict. With the widespread death and destruction of the greatest state of war the globe had ever seen, fine art increasingly became a means for escapism, a way to abstract life and escape the difficulties of the human status.

A ration party of the Majestic Irish gaelic Rifles in a advice trench during the Boxing of the Somme, July 1916: The death and destruction of Earth War I contributed to the want of artists to abstract life.

The economic and social changes of the early 20th century greatly influenced the North American and European worldview which, in turn, shaped the development of new styles of art. Artists began to question and experiment with themes of reality, perspective, space and fourth dimension, and representation. Einstein's Theory of Relativity contributed to the development of cubism, and developments in psychology greatly influenced the subject field matter of a number of creative schools of idea. The rapid rise of technology impacted artists both directly and indirectly, from the invention of new artistic materials to subject matter and themes.

Fauvism

The Fauves were a group of early 20th century Modern artists based in Paris whose works challenged Impressionist values.

Learning Objectives

Contrast the characteristics of Fauvism, as found in the work of Matisse and Derain, from those of its predecessor Impressionism

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• The Fauvist movement, led by Henri Matisse and Andre Derain, officially lasted for only 4 years: 1904–1908.
• Bright color, simplification, abstraction, and unusual brush strokes are hallmarks of the Fauvist mode. Fauvist influences and references include Van Gogh'south Post- Impressionism and the Neo-Impressionist technique of Pointillism.
• Gustave Moreau, a controversial professor at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, mentored several of the Fauves, including Matisse, and profoundly influenced their work.

Key Terms

• Mail-Impressionism: (Fine art) a genre of painting that rejected the naturalism of impressionism, using color and form in more than expressive manners.
• pointillism: In fine art, the use of small areas of color to construct an image.
• Fauvism: An artistic movement of the concluding part of the 19th century that emphasized spontaneity and the utilize of extremely brilliant colors.

Fauvism is the style of les Fauves (French for "the wild beasts"), a brusk-lived and loose group of early 20th century Modern artists whose works emphasized painterly qualities and stiff color over the representational or realistic values retained by Impressionism. While Fauvism as a mode began around 1900 and continued beyond 1910, the move every bit such lasted but a few years, 1904–1908, and had three exhibitions. The leaders of the move were Henri Matisse and André Derain.

Charing Cross Bridge, London past André Derain, 1906: The vibrant, surprising use of color in this work is feature of the Fauvist style.

Apart from Matisse and Derain, other artists included Albert Marquet, Charles Camoin, Louis Valtat, the Belgian painter Henri Evenepoel, Maurice Marinot, Jean Puy, Maurice de Vlaminck, Henri Manguin, Raoul Dufy, Othon Friesz, Georges Rouault, the Dutch painter Kees van Dongen, the Swiss painter Alice Bailly, and Georges Braque (subsequently Picasso's partner in Cubism).

The paintings of the Fauves were characterized by seemingly wild brush piece of work and strident colors, while their subject matter had a high degree of simplification and abstraction. Fauvism tin exist classified as an farthermost development of Van Gogh's Postal service-Impressionism fused with the pointillism of Seurat and other Neo-Impressionist painters, in particular Paul Signac. Other key influences were Paul Cézanne and Paul Gauguin, whose employment of areas of saturated color—notably in paintings from Tahiti—strongly influenced Derain'south work.

Gustave Moreau, a controversial professor at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and a Symbolist painter, was the movement's inspirational teacher. Moreau taught Matisse, Marquet, Manguin, Rouault, and Camoin during the 1890s, and was viewed by critics as the group'southward philosophical leader until Matisse was recognized equally such in 1904. Moreau's broad-mindedness, originality, and affirmation of the expressive potency of pure color was inspirational for his students.

Derain and Matisse worked together through the summertime of 1905 in the Mediterranean hamlet of Collioure, and later that year displayed their highly innovative paintings at the Salon d'Automne. The vivid, unnatural colors led the critic Louis Vauxcelles to derisively dub their works as les Fauves, or "the wild beasts," which the artists then appropriated equally the title for their movement. The painting that was singled out for special condemnation, Matisse's Adult female with a Hat, was after bought by the major patrons of the avant-garde scene in Paris, Gertrude and Leo Stein.

Adult female with a Hat by Henri Matisse, 1905.: This painting was rejected by critics when initially exhibited, merely was soon acquired by avant-garde collectors Leo and Gertrude Stein.

Primitivism and Cubism

Equally ane of the most influential artists of the twenty^th century, Pablo Picasso is widely known for his interest in Cubism and Primitivism.

Learning Objectives

Place Picasso'southward unique importance to the development of both Primitivism and Cubism in the early 20th century

Key Takeaways

Cardinal Points

• 1906–1909 is referred to equally Picasso's African menstruum, during which he produced Les Demoiselles d'Avignon and several other paintings incorporating primitivist elements.
• Picasso was inspired by African artifacts as well as the piece of work of Mail-Impressionist creative person Paul Gauguin.
• The formal elements of Les Desmoiselles d'Avignon bridged Picasso's African Period and subsequent Cubist work.
• Picasso and Georges Braque co-founded the Cubist movement, i of the most influential movements in Modern Art.
• Cubism stressed basic abstruse geometric forms that presented the subject area from many angles simultaneously.

Key Terms

• primitivism: Primitivism is a Western art movement that borrows visual forms from non-Western or prehistoric peoples, a practice that was central to the development of modern art.

African Period and Primitivism (1906–1910)

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the European cultural elite were discovering African, Micronesian, and Native American fine art. African artifacts were being brought back to Paris museums following the expansion of the French empire into Africa. The printing was abuzz with exaggerated stories of cannibalism and exotic tales well-nigh the African kingdom of Dahomey. The mistreatment of Africans in the Belgian Congo was exposed in Joseph Conrad'south popular book, Eye of Darkness.

Artists such every bit Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse, and Picasso were intrigued and inspired by the stark power and simplicity of styles of "archaic" cultures. Around 1906, Picasso, Matisse, Derain, and other Paris-based artists had acquired an interest in Primitivism, Iberian sculpture, African art, and tribal masks, in function due to the works of Paul Gauguin that had recently achieved recognition in Paris'southward avant-garde circles. Gauguin's powerful posthumous retrospective exhibitions at the Salon d'Automne in Paris in 1903 and 1906 had a powerful influence on Picasso'south paintings.

The Moon and the Earth by Paul Gauguin, 1893: Picasso was greatly influenced by Gauguin's African inspired works like The Moon and The Earth.

In 1907, Picasso experienced a "revelation" while viewing African art at the ethnographic museum at Palais du Trocadéro. African art influenced Picasso's painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), specially in its treatment of the two figures on the right side of the composition. This painting is too considered a protocubist work bridging Picasso'southward African and Cubist periods. Other works of Picasso'due south African Period include Bosom of a Adult female (1907, in the National Gallery, Prague); Mother and Child (Summer 1907, in the Musée Picasso, Paris); Nude with Raised Arms (1907, in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid, Spain); and Three Women (Summertime 1908, in the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg).

Les Desmoiselles d'Avignon by Pablo Picasso, 1907: This work is influenced by primitivism and is considered to be i of the earliest examples of Cubist painting.

Cubism (1909–1912)

Cubism, established by Picasso and his colleague Georges Bracque, was marked past a revolutionary difference from representational art. In Cubist artwork, objects were analyzed, broken upwardly, and reassembled in an bathetic form instead of existence depicted from one viewpoint. Picasso, Braque, and other Cubists depicted subjects from a multitude of viewpoints to create a greater scope of context. Cubism has been considered the most influential fine art motion of the 20th century.

Violin and Candlestick by Georges Braque, 1910: Georges Braque, with Picasso, was one of the founders of Cubism.

Cubism had a global reach every bit a movement, influencing similar schools of idea in literature, music, and architecture. Detail offshoots beyond France included the movements of Futurism, Suprematism, Dada, Constructivism, and De Stijl, which all developed in response to Cubism. Early Futurist paintings have some commonalities with Cubism: the fusing of the past and the present and the representation of different views of the subject pictured at the same fourth dimension, also chosen multiple perspective, simultaneity or multiplicity. Constructivism was influenced by Picasso'due south technique of constructing sculpture from separate elements. Other common threads between these disparate movements include the faceting or simplification of geometric forms, and the association of mechanization and mod life.

Cubist Sculpture

Just as in painting, Cubist sculpture is rooted in Paul Cézanne's reduction of painted objects into component planes and geometric solids (cubes, spheres, cylinders, and cones). And just as in painting, it became a pervasive influence and contributed fundamentally to Constructivism and Futurism.

Cubist sculpture adult in parallel to Cubist painting. During the autumn of 1909 Picasso sculpted Caput of a Adult female (Fernande) with positive features depicted by negative space and vice versa. Marcel Duchamp was responsible for some other extreme development inspired by Cubism. The ready-made arose from a joint consideration that the piece of work itself is considered an object (just as a painting), and that it uses the material detritus of the globe (every bit collage and paper mache in the Cubist structure and Assemblage). The adjacent logical stride, for Duchamp, was to present an ordinary object equally a cocky-sufficient work of fine art representing just itself. In 1913 he fastened a cycle bike to a kitchen stool and in 1914 selected a bottle-drying rack as a sculpture in its own right.

Other Forms of Cubism

Futurism and Constructivism developed from Cubism in Italy and Russia respectively.

Learning Objectives

Differentiate the creative styles of Futurism and Constructivism from their Cubist origins

Key Takeaways

Primal Points

• Cubist work represents an creative field of study from multiple perspectives simultaneously.
• Italian Futurism and Russian Constructivism are two movements that were greatly influenced past Cubism.
• Divisionism, a technique in which color and lite are deconstructed, is an important attribute of Futurist and Cubist work.
• Gertrude Stein, Wallace Stevens, Pierre Reverdy, and William Faulkner all applied Cubist principles to written work.
• Cubist poets and writers also influenced Dada and Surrealism.

Central Terms

• futurism: An early 20th century avant-garde art movement focused on speed, the mechanical, and the mod, which took a deeply combative mental attitude to traditional artistic conventions; (originated by F.T. Marinetti, among others).
• divisionism: In art, the use of small areas of colour to construct an image.
• constructivism: A Russian movement in modern art characterized by the creation of nonrepresentational geometric objects using industrial materials.

Cubism

Cubism was an avant-garde art movement of the early on 20th century pioneered by Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, and afterwards joined by Juan Gris, Jean Metzinger, Albert Gleizes, Robert Delaunay, Henri Le Fauconnier, and Fernand Léger. The move revolutionized European painting and sculpture and inspired related movements in music, literature, and architecture. Cubism has been considered the near influential art motion of the 20th century.

Violin and Candlestick by Georges Braque, 1910: Georges Braque, with Picasso, was one of the founders of Cubism.

In Cubist artwork, objects are analyzed, cleaved up, and reassembled in an abstracted form. Instead of depicting objects from one viewpoint, the artist depicts the bailiwick from a multitude of viewpoints to stand for the subject in a greater context.

Constructivism

Constructivism was an artistic and architectural philosophy that originated in Russian federation in 1919. It entailed a rejection of the thought of autonomous fine art and was in favor of art as a practice for social purposes. Constructivism had a keen affect on modern art movements of the 20th century, influencing major trends such every bit Bauhaus and the De Stijl movement. It is hard to isolate a detail artful mutual to the Constructivist philosophy as it is so broad, but it can exist roughly distinguished past its use of bright, bold color and geometric designs, specially in graphic design.

The Outset Working Group of Constructivists (including Liubov Popova, Alexander Vesnin, Rodchenko, Varvara Stepanova, and the theorists Aleksei Gan, Boris Arvatov, and Osip Brik) developed a definition of Constructivism every bit the combination of faktura: the item material backdrop of an object, and tektonika, its spatial presence. Initially the Constructivists worked on three-dimensional constructions equally a means of participating in industry. Afterwards the definition would be extended to designs for 2-dimensional works such as books and posters.

Proun Vrashchenia past El Lissitzky c. 1919: The geometric forms and bright colors in this painting are characteristic of the Constructivist aesthetic.

Futurism

Futurism was an Italian movement that emphasized and glorified themes associated with contemporary concepts of the futurity such as speed, engineering science, youth, and violence, as well as objects such as the car, the airplane, and the industrial city. In 1910 and 1911 futurist painters made use of the technique of divisionism, which entails breaking lite and colour downwards into a field of stippled dots and stripes. Severini was the first to come into contact with Cubism. Following a visit to Paris in 1911, the Futurist painters adopted the methods of the Cubists. Cubism offered them a ways of analyzing free energy in paintings and visually expressing their desired focus on dynamism, move, and speed. The adoption of Cubism determined the style of much subsequent Futurist painting.

Abstruse Speed + Audio, by Giacomo Balla 1913–1914: This is a seminal work from the Futurist movement which was influenced by Cubism.

German Expressionism

High german Expressionism refers to a number of related creative movements start before WWI and peaking in Berlin during the 1920s.

Learning Objectives

Discuss the importance of the group Die Brücke and artists such as Kirchner, Kollwitze, Schiele, and Modersohn-Becker in the development of German Expressionism

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• Kathe Kollwitz, Egon Schiele, and Paula Modersohn-Becker are amongst the contained German Expressionists who were unaffiliated with other Expressionist groups but nonetheless successful.
• Kollwitz is best remembered for her compassionate series, The Weavers.
• Many of Egon Schiele's contemporaries found the explicit sexual themes of his piece of work disturbing.
• Paula Modersohn-Becker is amid the start recognized female artists to create nude self-portraits.

Cardinal Terms

• Weimar Republic: The autonomous regime of Federal republic of germany from 1919 to the assumption of power past Adolf Hitler in 1933.
• expressionism: A motion in the arts in which the artist does non depict objective reality, merely rather a subjective expression of inner experience.
• Fauvism: An artistic movement of the terminal role of the 19th century that emphasized spontaneity and the use of extremely bright colors.

Expressionism

Expressionism was a modernist movement, beginning with poetry and painting, that originated in Germany at the starting time of the 20th century. It emphasized subjective experience, manipulating perspective for emotional issue in guild to evoke moods or ideas. Expressionist artists sought to express pregnant or emotional experience rather than physical reality.

Expressionism was developed as an avant-garde style before the Starting time Earth State of war and remained pop during the Weimar Republic, particularly in Berlin. The style extended to a wide range of the arts, including painting, literature, theatre, dance, film, compages, and music.

Expressionist painters had many influences, amid them Edvard Munch, Vincent van Gogh, and several African artists. They were also enlightened of the Fauvist motility in Paris, which influenced Expressionism's tendency toward arbitrary colors and jarring compositions.

Dice Brücke

In 1905, a group of four German artists, led past Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, formed Die Brücke (the Bridge) in the city of Dresden. Later members were Emil Nolde, Max Pechstein, and Otto Mueller. The group aimed to eschew the prevalent traditional academic way and find a new mode of artistic expression, which would form a bridge (hence the proper name) betwixt the by and the present. They responded both to past artists such as Albrecht Dürer, Matthias Grünewald, and Lucas Cranach the Elder, too every bit contemporary international avant-garde movements. As part of the affidavit of their national heritage, they revived older media, especially woodcut prints. Die Brücke is considered to be a key grouping of the German language Expressionist motility, though they did not utilize the word itself. The group is oftentimes compared to both Primitivism and Fauvism due to their use of loftier-keyed, not-naturalistic color to express extreme emotion like the Fauvists and a rough drawing technique that eschewed consummate abstraction, similar the Primitivists.

Der Blaue Reiter

A few years later, in 1911, a similar-minded group of young artists formed Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) in Munich. The grouping was founded by a number of Russian emigrants, including Wassily Kandinsky, Alexej von Jawlensky, Marianne von Werefkin, and native German artists, such as Franz Marc, August Macke, and Gabriele Münter. Like Dice Brücke, Der Blaue Reiter is considered a major feature of the German Expressionist movement.

Within the group, artistic approaches and aims varied from artist to artist, all the same, in that location was a shared desire to express spiritual truths through their fine art. Der Blaue Reiter every bit a group believed in the promotion of modern art, the connectedness between visual art and music, the spiritual and symbolic associations of color, and a spontaneous, intuitive approach to painting. Members were interested in European medieval art and Primitivism, as well as the contemporary, non-figurative fine art scene in France. As a consequence of their encounters with Cubist, Fauvist and Rayonist ideas, they moved towards abstruse art.

Kathe Kollwitz

Käthe Kollwitz (1867–1945) was a German painter, printmaker, and sculptor whose work offered an eloquent and often searing account of the human condition, and the tragedy of war, in the starting time one-half of the 20th century. Initially her work was grounded in Naturalism, and later took on Expressionistic qualities. Inspired by a performance of Gerhart Hauptmann'due south The Weavers, which dramatized the oppression of the Silesian weavers in Langembielau and their failed defection in 1842, Kollwitz produced a bicycle of half-dozen works on the Weavers theme. Rather than a literal analogy of the drama, the works were a gratuitous and naturalistic expression of the workers' misery, hope, courage, and, eventually, doom. The Weavers became Kollwitz' nearly widely acclaimed work.

Mother with her Dead Son past Käthe Kollwitz: This Kollwitz sculpture is a WWII war memorial.

Egon Schiele

Egon Schiele (1890–1918) was an Austrian painter. A protégé of Gustav Klimt, Schiele was a major figurative painter in the early on 20th century. His work is noted for its intensity, as well equally for the many self-portraits he produced. The twisted torso shapes and expressive line that characterize Schiele'southward paintings and drawings mark the artist as an early exponent of Expressionism. Schiele was influenced by his mentor, Klimt, every bit well as by Edvard Munch, Jan Toorop, and Vincent van Gogh. Schiele explored themes not only of the man course, merely too of human being sexuality. Many viewed Schiele's work as being grotesque, erotic, pornographic, or agonizing, focusing on sex, death, and discovery.

Sitzender weiblicher Akt mit aufgestützen Ellbogen past Egon Schiele: Schiele's depiction of female nudes scandalized his contemporaries.

Paula Mendersohn-Becker

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907) was a German painter and one of the near of import representatives of early Expressionism. In a brief career, cutting short by her death at the age of 31, she created a number of groundbreaking images of keen intensity. Modersohn-Becker studied briefly at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and was influenced by French post impressionists Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, and Paul Gauguin. On her final trip to Paris in 1906, she produced a series of paintings about which she felt slap-up excitement and satisfaction. During this menses of painting, she produced her initial nude cocky-portraits—something unprecedented by a female painter—and portraits of friends such as Rainer Maria Rilke and Werner Sombart.

Selbstporträt past Paula Modersohn-Becker, 1906: Female nude self-portraits were uncommon subjects in this era.

Abstract Sculpture

Modern abstract sculpture adult alongside other advanced movements of the early 20th century like Cubism and Surrealism.

Learning Objectives

Talk over the evolution of abstract sculpture through the periods of Cubism and Surrealism, naming the important works of Rodin, Picasso, Duchamp, and Brâncuşi

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• Auguste Rodin is seen every bit the progenitor of modernistic sculpture.
• Picasso and young man cubist artists adult new ways of constructing works of art using collage, or sculptural assemblage using disparate materials. This is known as Cubist constructionism.
• Surrealism further expanded upon contemporary definitions of sculpture by introducing the concept of the " readymade."
• Constantin Brâncuşi rejected naturalism in sculpture likewise as any form of representational art. His minimal, abstract artworks attempt to draw the essence of an object.

Key Terms

• abstract art: Fine art that is not intended to depict objects in the natural globe, but instead uses colour and form in a not-representational way.
• naturalism: A artistic move that seeks to encapsulate reality or familiar experience in which subjects may receive highly symbolic, idealistic, or fifty-fifty supernatural treatment.
• coulage: Automated or involuntary sculpture made past pouring a molten material (such every bit metal, wax, or chocolate) into common cold water. As the material cools information technology takes on what appears to exist a random (or aleatoric) form, though the physical properties of the materials involved may atomic number 82 to a conglomeration of discs or spheres.

Rodin

Auguste Rodin, along with artists like Edgar Degas and Paul Gauguin, developed a radical new arroyo to the creation of sculpture in the 19th century. Rodin was a naturalist, less concerned with monumental expression than with character and emotion. Departing from centuries of tradition, he turned away from the idealism of the Greeks and the decorative dazzler of the Baroque and neo-Baroque movements. His sculpture emphasized the individual and the concreteness of flesh, suggesting emotion through detailed, textured surfaces, and the interplay of light and shadow.

The modernistic sculpture movement essentially began during the Rodin exhibit at the Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1900. At this outcome, Rodin showed his Burghers of Calais, Balzac and Victor Hugo statues, along with The Thinker. Though all of these are representational works of fine art, Rodin'due south arroyo to form paved the way for increasingly experimental and abstract art.

The Thinker by Auguste Rodin: Rodin's experiments with form, visible in The Thinker, launched modern abstract sculpture.

Influence of Cubism

Cubist sculpture developed in parallel with Cubist painting, centered in Paris beginning around 1909 and evolving through the early 1920s. The mode is most closely associated with the formal experiments of Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso. Others were quick to follow Braque and Picasso's lead in Paris, including Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Alexander Archipenko, Joseph Csaky, Jacques Lipchitz, Henri Laurens, and Ossip Zadkine.

During his flow of Cubist innovation, Picasso revolutionized the art of sculpture by combining disparate objects and materials into i sculptural work—the sculptural equivalent of collage in two dimensional art. Simply as collage was a radical development in two dimensional art, then was Cubist structure a radical evolution in three dimensional sculpture.

Caput of a Woman by Picasso, 1909: Picasso was a pioneer in early 20th century Cubist sculpture.

Influence of Surrealism

The appearance of Surrealism led to objects being described as "sculpture" that would not have been termed as such previously. Surrealist sculpture fabricated use of many of the same techniques every bit other forms of Surrealist art, such as games to tap into the unconscious heed such equally coulage, a kind of automated or involuntary sculpture made past pouring a molten material into cold water. Every bit the material cools it takes on what appears to be a random form, though the physical backdrop of the materials involved may atomic number 82 to a conglomeration of discs or spheres. The artist may employ a diversity of techniques to impact the outcome. Involuntary sculpture is described by Surrealists equally sculpture created past absent-mindedly manipulating something, such as rolling and unrolling a film ticket, bending a paper clip, etc.

Duchamp

Marcel Duchamp had a deep touch on the evolution of abstraction in sculpture. He originated the use of the "institute object" or "readymade" with pieces like Fountain (1917), a urinal that was displayed as art. Duchamp experimented a not bad deal with sculpture, creating readymades, assemblages, and kinetic works. His notion that anything tin exist art that an artist names art is an idea that has resonated throughout many historical and contemporary movements. Though never considered himself to be a Surrealist, he was involved socially with many key members of the motion and his ideas were of influence.

Duchamp participated in the design of the 1938 International Surrealist Exhibition, which was held at the Galerie des Beaux-arts, Paris. The show featured more than lx artists from dissimilar countries, including approximately 300 paintings, objects, collages, photographs, and installations. The surrealists wanted to create an exhibition which in itself would be a creative human activity, and André Breton named Duchamp, Wolfgang Paalen, Human being Ray, Salvador Dali, and Max Ernst to assistance exercise so.

Brâncuşi

The work of Constantin Brâncuşi at the beginning of the century paved the manner for afterward abstract sculpture. In revolt confronting the naturalism of Rodin and his belatedly 19th-century contemporaries, Brâncuşi distilled subjects downwardly to their essences as illustrated by his Bird in Space series (1924). These elegantly refined abstract forms became synonymous with 20th century sculpture.

Brâncuşi's impact, with his vocabulary of reduction and abstraction, is seen throughout the 1930s and 1940s, and exemplified past artists including Gaston Lachaise, Sir Jacob Epstein, Henry Moore, Alberto Giacometti, Joan Miró, Ásmundur Sveinsson, Julio González, Pablo Serrano, and Jacques Lipchitz.

Fountain by Marcel Duchamp: Duchamp's appropriation of a urinal as a piece of art challenged the prevailing definition of sculpture.

Dada and Surrealism

Dada and Surrealism were multidisciplinary cultural movements of the European advanced that emerged in Zurich and Paris respectively during the time of WWI.

Learning Objectives

Identify the origins, characteristics, and political ideologies of Dada

Central Takeaways

Fundamental Points

• Dada was a political movement opposed to artistic and social conformity as well as the capitalist forces that led to WWI.
• Dada artists worked in non-traditional media including collage, photomontage, and assemblage. Dada artist Michel Duchamp pioneered the notion of the "readymade;" everyday objects appropriated for artistic purposes.
• Dada spread throughout Europe and North America following WWI; by the early on 1920s the heart of Dada activity was Paris.
• Dada informed many of the major avant-garde movements of the 20th century century, including Surrealism and Social Realism.
• Surrealism began in the 1920s and had a lot in common with Dadaism.
• Surrealist works drew inspiration from intuition, the power of the unconscious mind, and various psychological schools of thought.
• Surrealist artists and writers regarded their work equally an expression of the philosophical movement, with the artwork existence an artifact.

Central Terms

• readymade: Everyday objects found or purchased and alleged art. The readymades of Marcel Duchamp are ordinary manufactured objects that the creative person selected and modified as an antidote to what he called "retinal art." Past simply choosing the object (or objects) and repositioning, joining, titling, and signing it, the object became art.
• collage: A composite object or collection (abstract or concrete) created by the aggregation of diverse media; specially for a work of art like text, motion-picture show, etc.
• social realism: An artistic movement that depicted social and racial injustice and economic hardship through unvarnished pictures of life's struggles.

Dadaism

Dada was a multi-disciplinary art movement that rejected the prevailing artistic standards by producing "anti-art" cultural works. Dadaism was intensely anti-war, anti-bourgeois, and held potent political affinities with the radical left. For many participants, the movement was a protest against the bourgeois nationalist and colonialist interests, which many Dadaists believed were the root cause of the war, and against the cultural and intellectual conformity—in art and more broadly in society—that corresponded to the state of war. Many Dadaists believed that the reason and logic of conservative backer society had led people into war. They expressed their rejection of that ideology in artistic expression that appeared to reject logic and comprehend chaos and irrationality.

The origin of the proper noun Dada is unclear. Some believe that information technology is a nonsensical word while others maintain that it originates from the Romanian artists Tristan Tzara's and Marcel Janco's frequent use of the words "da, da," meaning "yes, yes" in Romanian. Another theory posits that the name "Dada" came during a meeting of when a knife stuck into a French–German lexicon happened to point to dada, a French word for "hobbyhorse." Likely, the origin of the name Dada is another attempt to devalue a arrangement of logic, namely that of language.

Dada began in Zurich in 1916. Cardinal figures in the Dada movement included Hugo Brawl, Emmy Hennings, Hans Arp, and Raoul Hausmann, amongst others. The motion influenced later styles like avant-garde, and movements including Surrealism, Nouveau réalisme, pop art and Fluxus.

Plaque commemorating the nascency of Dada movement: This plaque is from the Cabaret Voltaire, the showtime venue where Dada artists showcased their piece of work in 1916.

Dada was an informal international movement with participants in Europe and N America that employed all kinds of media but are known peculiarly for collage, writing, photomontage and operation. Dadaists worked in collage, creating compositions by pasting together transportation tickets, maps, plastic wrappers and other artifacts of daily life. Dada artists also worked in photomontage, a variation on collage that utilized actual or reproductions of photographs printed in the printing. In Cologne, Max Ernst used photographs taken from the front end during World War I to annotate on the state of war. Some other variation on collage used by Dadaists was assemblage, the associates of everyday objects to produce meaningful or meaningless pieces of work, including war objects and trash.

When World War I ended in 1918, most of the Zurich Dadaists returned to their dwelling countries, while some began Dada activities in other cities.

Dada poster from 1923: This affiche for a Dada soiree references the medium of collage.

Like Zurich, New York City was a refuge for writers and artists from World State of war I. Frenchmen Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia met American artist Homo Ray in New York City in 1915. The trio before long became the eye of radical anti-art activities in the United States.

During this fourth dimension, Duchamp began exhibiting "readymades" (everyday objects found or purchased and declared art) and was active in the Social club of Independent Artists. In 1917, he submitted the now famous Fountain to the Social club of Independent Artists exhibition. Initially an object of scorn within the arts community, the Fountain has since become almost canonized past some as one of the almost recognizable modernist works of sculpture. The committee presiding over United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland's prestigious Turner Prize in 2004, for example, called it "the almost influential work of mod art."

Fountain by Marcel Duchamp: Duchamp's appropriation of a urinal as a piece of fine art challenged the prevailing definition of sculpture.

By 1921, nearly of the original Dadaists moved to Paris, where Dada experienced its last major incarnation. Inspired past Tristan Tzara, Paris Dada presently issued manifestos, organized demonstrations, staged performances, and a number of journals.

While wide, the Dada motion was unstable. By 1924, artists had gone on to other ideas and movements including surrealism and social realism. Some theorists debate that Dada was the outset of postmodern art.

Surrealism

Surrealism was a cultural motion beginning in the 1920s that sprang directly out of Dadaism and overlapped in many senses. Surrealist works drew inspiration from intuition, the power of the unconscious mind, and diverse psychological schools of thought. The piece of work oft features unexpected juxtapositions, non sequiturs, and elements of surprise.

First and foremost, Surrealist artists and writers regarded their work equally an expression of the philosophical movement, with the artwork being an artifact. Leader André Breton was explicit in his assertion that Surrealism was above all a revolutionary motility. Surrealism developed out of the Dada activities during Globe State of war I and the most important middle of the movement was Paris. From the 1920s onward, the movement spread around the globe, somewhen affecting the visual arts, literature, picture show, and music of many countries and languages, as well as political thought and exercise, philosophy, and social theory.

As the Surrealists developed their philosophy, they believed that Surrealism would advocate the thought that ordinary and representative expression was vital and important, only that expression must be fully open to the imagination. Freud's work with complimentary association, dream analysis, and the unconscious was of utmost importance to the Surrealists as they developed methods to liberate their imaginations.

Similar Dada, Surrealism aimed to revolutionize human feel, in terms of the personal, cultural, social, and political aspects. Surrealists wanted to free people from false rationality, and also from restrictive community and structures. Breton proclaimed that the true aim of Surrealism was "long live the social revolution, and information technology solitary!"

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Source: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-arthistory/chapter/european-art-in-the-early-20th-century/

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