What is Modernism

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What is Modernism?

• Denham Ewington
• HUM251
• Spring 2009

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• Impressionism
• Neo-romanticism
• Post-Impressionism

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Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 1926)from The
Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge (1910)

• Im learning to see. I dont know what the cause
  is, but things penetrate me more deeply and dont
  remain on the surface where everything used to
  just stop. I have an inner existence that I did
  not know about before. Everything ends up there
  now. I dont know what happens there.

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Auguste Rodin (1840 1917)Jean dAire, 1886
Davidsons Jean dAire in the VAC
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Vincent van Gogh (1853 1890)Room at Arles, 1889
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Paul Cezanne (1839 1906)Still Life with Skull,
ca. 1900
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Paul Cezanne (1839 1906)Seven Bathers, ca. 1900
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• Russian Symbolism

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Valery Bryusovs 1904 Keys to the Mysteries
????? ????

• At the same time when all the crowbars of
  science, all the axes of public life, are not
  able to break down the walls and doors that
  enclose usart conceals within itself awesome
  dynamite, Let contemporary artists consciously
  forge their works in the shape of keys to the
  mysteries, in the shape of mystical keys that
  will unlock for mankind the doors of its blue
  prison to eternal freedom.

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Vrubel The Demon Seated ????? ???????(1890)
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Vrubel Dance of Tamara ????? ?????? (1890)
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Vrubel The Swan Princess ???????-?????? (1900)
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• Expressionism
• Primitivism
• Fauvism

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Vassily Kandinsky, On the Spiritual in
ArtÜber das Geistige in der Kunst (1911)

• Every work of art is the child of its age and, in
  many cases, the mother of our emotions. It
  follows that each period of culture produces an
  art of its own which can never be repeated.
• It is impossible for us to live and feel as did
  the ancient Greeks. In the same way those who
  strive to follow the Greek methods in sculpture
  achieve only a similarity of form, the work
  remaining soulless for all time. Such imitation
  is mere aping.

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KandinskyComposition VI, 1913
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Bakst Costume design for Ballets russes
production of The Firebird ???-????? (1910)
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Benois Program for Paris production of
Petrushka ???????? (1911)
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Larionov Set for Rimsky-Korsakovs The Snow
Maiden ?????????? (1915)
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Chagall Me and the Countryside ? ? ???????
(1911)
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Chagall Soldier Drinking ?????? ????
(1911-1912)
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Franz Marc, Horses and Eagle (1912)
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Marc, The Tiger (1912)
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Franz Marc, Fighting Forms (1914)
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• war

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August Stramm, Schlachtfeld Battlefield
(1915)

•  
• Battlefield
•  
• Yielding clod lulls iron off to sleep
• bloods clot the patches where they oozed
• rusts crumble
• fleshes slime
• sucking lusts around decay.
• Murder on murder
• blinks
• in childish eyes.

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Stramm, letter to Herwarth and Nell Walden (1914)

• There is so much death in me and death. Crying
  inside me and outside I am hard and raw I desire
  nothing. I would like to murder murder then at
  least I would be at one with everything around me
  then I would have ground to stand on then I would
  not be so terribly alone in the air with no
  wings.

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Oskar Kokoschka, Self Portrait for Der Sturm
(1910)
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Otto Dix, Shock Troop Advancing Under Gas, (1924)
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Otto Dix, Crippled War Veterans Playing Cards,
(1920)
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• Russian Futurism

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David Burliuk, Aleksandr Kruchenykh, Vladimir
Mayakovsky, and Viktor Khlebnikov A Slap in the
Face of Public Taste ???????? ?????????????
????? (1912)

• The past is too tight. The Academy and Pushkin
  are less intelligible than hieroglyphics.
• Throw Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, etc., etc.
  overboard from the Ship of Modernity.
• From the heights of skyscrapers we gaze at
  their insignificance!...
• And if for the time being the filthy stigmas of
  your common sense and good taste remain in
  our lines, nonetheless, in them for the first
  time already glimmers the Summer Lightning of the
  New Coming Beauty of the Self-sufficient
  (self-centered) Word.

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Cover from original edition of Slap in the Face
of Public Taste (1912)
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Mayakovsky in 1910
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and in 1922
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Malevich Knife Grinder ????????? (1912)
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Malevich Englishman in Moscow ?????????? ?
?????? (1914)
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Malevich Suprematism ??????????? (1917)
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Tatlin Monument to the Third Internationalalso
known as Tatlins Tower ????? ???????
(1919-1920)
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• Italian Futurism
• Futurismo
• Vorticism

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F.T. Marinetti, The Manifesto of Futurism
(excerpt) 1909

• We want to sing the love of danger, the habit of
  energy and rashness.
• We want to exalt movements of aggression,
  feverish sleeplessness, the double march, the
  perilous leap, the slap and the blow with the
  fist.
• Beauty exists only in struggle. There is no
  masterpiece that has not an aggressive character.
  Poetry must be a violent assault on the forces of
  the unknown, to force them to bow before man.
• We want to glorify war - the only cure for the
  world - militarism, patriotism, the destructive
  gesture of the anarchists, the beautiful ideas
  which kill, and contempt for woman.

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Umberto Boccioni, Unique Forms of Continuity
(1913)
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Wyndham Lewis, cover of Blast 1915
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• dada

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Tristan Tzara, Dada Manifesto (1918)

• I'm writing this manifesto to show that you can
  perform contrary actions at the same time, in one
  single, fresh breath I am against action as for
  continual contradiction, and affirmation too, I
  am neither for nor against them, and I won't
  explain myself because I hate common sense.

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Marcel Duchamp (1917)
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• Acmeism

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Osip Mandelsshtams 1913 Morning of Acmeism
(excerpt)

• In poetry this reality is the word as such. .
  . Our Futurist, who could not cope with the
  conscious sense as creative material, frivolously
  threw it overboard and in essence repeated the
  same crude error as his predecessors. . . . We
  do not wish to divert ourselves with a stroll in
  a forest of symbols, because we have a more
  virgin, a denser forest a divine physiology,
  the infinite complexity of our own dark
  organism.

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Kruchenykh Cover to pamphlet Word as Such
????? ??? ??????? (1913)
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Altmans portrait of Akhmatova (1915)
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Vodkins portrait of Akhmatova (1922)
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• Bauhaus
• New Objectivity

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Walter Gropius, Bauhaus Manifesto 1919

• The ultimate aim of all creative activity is a
  building! Architects, painters, sculptors, we
  must all return to crafts! For there is no such
  thing as professional art. There is no
  essential difference between the artist and the
  craftsman. The artist is an exalted craftsman.
  Let us therefore create a new guild of craftsmen
  without the class-distinctions that raise an
  arrogant barrier between craftsmen and artists!

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Feininger, cover (woodcut) for the Bauhaus
Manifesto (1919)
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Bauhaus curriculum plan (Gropius, Muche,
Itten,1922)
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student work for Kandinsky, Klee, Moholy-Nagy,
Schlemmer (1923-27)
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Oskar Schlemmer (1926)from the Triadic Ballet,
Bauhaus 1926
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• The Death of Modernism A Case Study
• (Mayakovskys Suicide)

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Mayakovskys 1930 suicide note and poem
???????????? ??????? ? ????????? ?????
???????????

• As they say, the incident is closed.
• Love boat
• has crashed against the daily grind
• I dont owe life a thing
• and there is no point
• in counting over
• mutual hurts,
• harms
• and slights.

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Mayakovskys grave (Novodeivichy Cemetery in
Moscow)
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Mayakovsky metro station (St. Petersburg)
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Mayakovsky monument (Moscow)
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Mayakovsky metro station (Moscow)
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Mayakovsky metro station (Moscow)
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Three Mayakovsy ROSTA windows (1920)
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Three Mayakovsy ROSTA windows (1920)
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Three Mayakovsy ROSTA windows (1920)
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Mandelshtams NKVD arrest photo
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Chagall Revolution ????????? (1937)