The Fall of Europe and the end of Modernism

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The Fall of Europe and the end of Modernism
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Photos from World War One Europe 1914-1918The
promises of modernization led to massive murder
and destruction
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Paris Worlds Fair, May 25 to November 25, 1937
Worker and Kolkhoz (Collective Farm) Woman by
Vera Mukhina, 80 ft high
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Totalitarian art and architecture Paris World
Fair 1937 (left) German Pavilion by Albert
Speer with Comrades, by Joseph Thorak, one of
Hitlers favorite sculptors(right) USSR
Pavilion, Vera Mukhina, The Worker and The
Collective Farm Woman, welded sheets of stainless
steel over wood frame. Notice gigantic scale,
signaling the insignificance of the individual
relative to the state.
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Joseph Thoraks studio near Munich, designed by
Albert Speer and paid for by the government
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Picasso, Guernica, 1937, Paris Worlds Fair, for
the Spanish Pavilion(137.4 in  305.5 in) Muséo
Reina Sofia, Madrid
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ANXIOUS VISIONS for anxious times Spanish Civil
War and impending World WarSalvador Dali, Soft
Construction with Boiled Beans Premonitions of
Civil War, 1936, oil on canvas, 39 x 39 (Spanish
Civil War), Surrealism
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Hitler and Goebbels visit the Degenerate Art
Exhibition, Munich, 1937 (insert below) German
Expressionist, degenerate artist, Max Beckmann
at MoMA NYC in 1947 with 1933 painting, Departure
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(left) Nazi 1937 music poster for degenerate art
exhibition. Jazz was despised as Jewish (Star of
David) and Black.(right) Degenerate art show
installation Dada with confiscated works by
modern masters, Kurt Schwitters and Paul Klee
artworks visible
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National Socialist (Nazi) Realism Arno Breker,
(left) Comradeship, 1940 (right) The Party, 1938
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Adolph Hitler (Austrian-German,1889-1945)
Photograph sent to Eva Braun after occupation of
Paris, June 14,1940. Hitlers tour of ParisThe
Fall of Paris marks the end of Modernism
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1940 - Occupation of Paris signifies the end
of Modernism Before the occupation and after,
hundreds of refugee European artists, scholars,
and scientists fled. Many came to the United
States. Surrealism is the last European art
movement. Center of world of art shifts from
Paris to New York City.
Photo of émigré European artists included in
the 1942 exhibition, Artists in Exile at the
Pierre Matisse gallery, New York
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Nazi (Axis) Blitzkrieg of London, beginning in
1941, inaugurating the ceaseless bombing of
civilian populations throughout the war by both
sides
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Soviet (Allied) bombing of Berlin, August 11,
1941
Dresden, September 1945 after fire bombings by
British American air forces 30,000 deaths
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(left) Francis Bacon (British), panel from Three
Studies for a Crucifixion, 1947(right) Alberto
Giacometti (Swiss), Pointing Man, 1947 Europe
after the War Existentialist Expressionism
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Neo Rauch, Das Neue (The New), 2003
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"We came from the people, we remain part of the
people, and see ourselves as the executor of the
people's will. (left) Joseph Goebbels, Nazi
Minister for People's Enlightenment and
Propaganda 1938 Nazi propaganda rally in
Graz.(right) Hans Haacke, And You Were
Victorious After All, Graz, Germany, 1988, a
reconstruction of 1938 Nazi propaganda, a public
art work attacked and destroyed.
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The atrocities of the Holocaust threw Western
humanism, with its premise that man is
essentially good and perfectable, into profound
crisis. Auschwitz, near Warsaw Poland, largest of
the Nazi concentration camps, was liberated by
Soviet troops in January, 1945 German Jewish
philosopher Theodor Adorno, self-exiled to New
York, famously asserted after this that "writing
poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric."
"Selection" on the unloading ramp at Birkenau,
May/June 1944. To be sent to the right meant
assignment to a work detail to the left, the gas
chambers.
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United States atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan,
August 6, 1945
The total estimated human loss of life caused by
World War II was roughly 72 million people. The
civilian toll was around 47 million. The Allies
lost about 61 million people, and the Axis lost
11 million.
Aftermath of Hiroshima bomb estimated
90,000166,000 deaths
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The U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima
(August 6, 1945) and Nagasaki (August 9). Japan
surrendered six days later and ended WW II.The
bombs killed 90,000166,000 people in Hiroshima
and 60,00080,000 in Nagasaki, with roughly half
of the deaths in each city occurring on the first
day and the rest within four months. Almost all
were civilians.Right Nagasaki before (top) and
after (the atomic bomb).
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Post-colonialism is one of the most important
historical contexts for todays global culture
Decolonization of Europes empires occurred after
World War II. Ghana gained independence in 1957,
the first in sub-Saharan Africa.
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The Algerian War of Independence from France
(1954 -1962), one of many anti-colonial wars for
national identity. De-colonization
characterized the post-modern/post-Europe period.
Bomb blast, Algiers, 1957
Poster for film about the Algerian War of
Independence from France.
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World map in 1980 The Cold War (1947-1991)
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Berlin Wall, August 13, 1961, the German
Democratic Republlic (Communist East Germany)
began under the leadership of Erich Honecker to
block off East Berlin and the GDR from West
Berlin by means of barbed wire and antitank
obstacles. Construction crews replaced the
provisional barriers by a solid wall.
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European Postwar Existentialism
1949 a founding feminist text rooted in
Existentialisms questions about the nature of
Being. One is not born a woman, one becomes
one. (De Beauvoir)
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Jean-Paul Sartre Simone de Beauvoir 1938 Paris
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Jean Fautrier (French, 1898-1964) Art Informel,
tachisme, Head of a Hostage, 20," oïl on panel,
1944, one of over thirty hostage paintings and
sculptures made during the occupation of Paris
that allude to the Nazi atrocities Fautrier is
said to have witnessed there.
These paintings addressed the most important
issue of their time, epitomizing a 'new human
resolve' against the horrors of war." - Jean
Fautrier
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Jean Fautrier, Large Tragic Head, bronze, 15 in.
high1943, Tate MA, London
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Jean Fautrier, Nude, 1960, oil on canvas,
tachism, 35 in. x 57 1/2 in.
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Germaine Richier (French, 1904-1959) Crucified
Christ, 1950, Notre-Dame de Tour Grâce d'Assy,
France. Post-humanist? (below right) Compare
Richiers teacher, Emile-Antoine Bourdelle,
Hercules, 1909. What became of the heroic human
body in Western art in the hands of WWII
generation artists? Why?
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Germaine Richier, (left) The Shepherd of Landes,
c. 5 ft high, bronze, 1951 (cast 1996), Tate
Modern, London (right) Le Griffu, 1952, bronze,
c. 39 in high
Shepherds head is cast from a piece of eroded
building rubble that Richier found on the beach.
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Germaine Richier, Praying Mantis, 1949, bronze,
47 height, Middelheim Sculpture Museum, Antwerp
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Germaine Richier in her studio, 1951 / Gordon
Parks, photograph (for Life magazine)
Life does not always belong to serene things.
(G. Richier)
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Alberto Giacometti (Swiss, 1901-1966), (left)
City Square, 1948, bronze, c. 8 x 25 x
17(right) Giacometti, Portrait of a Seated Man
(Diego), 1949, oil on canvas, 80 x 64 cm.
2 of 5 casts. Guggenheim collection photos. Lower
one is artists preferred viewpoint (eye-level,
close up), which alters the viewers perception
of scale
Portraits are the stopping point of an agonized
struggle with perception as proof of existence
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(left) Poseidon, Greek, c. 575 BC, bronze,
National Archaeological Museum, Athens. Gods
represented as men. The sculpture was a source
for Giacometti.(right) Giacometti, Man Pointing,
1947, bronze, 70 inches high, Existential man
thrown naked into the void (Heidegger, German
WWII-era existential philosopher).
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February 3, 2010, Striding Man I, bronze, 72
high, (1961, 2nd of six numbered editions plus
four artist proofs) by Alberto Giacometti sold
for 104,327,006 the most expensive work of art
ever sold at auction to date.
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Jean Dubuffet (French, 1901-1985) Art Brut
(left) Large Sooty Nude, 1944, o/c, 64H
(right) Tree of Fluids, 1952Art addresses the
mind, not the eyes. (Dubuffet)
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Jean Dubuffet, Fleshy Face with Chestnut Hair,
1951, Oil mixed-media, 28H, Art Brut. Compare
the head of the Apollo Belvedere (Roman copy of
Greek original c. 350 BC) and Jean Fautriers
1944 Hostage
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Brassai, (Gyula Halasz, French b. Brasso,
Romania, 1899 - 1987)(left) Swastika Graffiti
(right) Passion Graffiti, both Paris, 1939
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Henry Moore (English 1896-1986),Tube Shelter
Perspective, 1941, ink, pen, wax, and watercolor,
8 1/2 x 6 1/2 in., one of many such drawings
Moore made during WWII Blitz of London by Nazi
Germany.
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Henry Moore, working model for Reclining Figure
for Lincoln Center, New York, 1963-65, plaster
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Henry Moore, Reclining Figure for Lincoln Center,
New York, 1963-65, bronze
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Francis Bacon, Three Studies for Figures at the
Base of a Crucifixion, 1944, oil and pastel on
canvas, triptych on wood fiberboard, each 37 x 29
inches. The crucifixion was for Bacon a symbol
of humanitys sadism. (right) Picasso, On the
Beach (La Baignade) 1937. Picasso was a crucial
source and personally encouraged Bacon.
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Francis Bacon (British, 1909 -1992), (left)
Painting, 1946, oil and pastel on linen, 6' 6" x
52, MoMA, NYC
The black umbrella was the symbol of British
Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, and his
policy of Nazi appeasement before WWII. An
attempt to remake the violence of reality
itself (Bacon)
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Francis Bacon, Study after Velazquez's Portrait
of Pope Innocent X, 5 x 4 ft, 1953 (right top)
source Velazquez, Pope Innocent X, 1650 (right
below) a still from Sergei Eisensteins 1925
film, The Battleship Potemkin, Odessa steps
sequence
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Francis Bacon, Head Surrounded by Sides of Beef
(Study after Velasquez), 43 x 4, oil on
canvas, 1954, Art Institute Chicago
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(left) Francis Bacon, Three Studies of figures on
Beds, 1972, oil and pastel on canvas, triptych,
each panel 66 x 4 10(right) source Eadweard
Muybridge, photograph from The Human Figure in
Motion, 1887
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Sothebys May 14, 2008, a 1976 Francis Bacon
Triptych sells for 86,281,000 from existential
anguish and social disaster to prize art market
commodity