Modernism: Art and Literature

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Modernism Art and Literature

• 1920s From Gatsby to Picasso

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Essential Questions

• Unit EQ How and why do American values shift?
• Todays EQ How were the political, economic, and
  social factors of the era responsible for
  hastening the art and culture revolutions of the
  1920s?

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By the end of class today, students will be able
to

• define Modernism (a relatively complex idea in
  the world of art) in your own words
• learn some of the important Modernist artists
• understand the link between Modernism, Gatsby,
  Dadaism, Surrealism, and Cubism
• learn the names of some important artists
• analyze modernist paintings (good luck--theyre
  wacky), and in so doing review some techniques of
  interpretation

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What is modernism?
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Some Characteristics of Modernistic Thought

• Rejection of tradition as being outdated in a
  changing world (Make it new!)
• Rejection of rationality, harmony, and coherence
• Separation of the past as being different from
  the modern age
• Recognition that the world is complex
• Assertion that the old final authorities (God,
  government, science, and reason) were subject to
  intense critical scrutiny
• Approval/Embracing of discontinuity

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Link to Unit EQ

• All of these notions were reactions to a rapidly
  changing, post-WWI America.

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Influences Contributingto Modernism

• The 1920s the first time more people lived in
  urban areas than rural areas (in America)
• Characters move from the West to the East.
• West Rural America traditional spirit of hard
  work, self-reliance, religion, and independence.
• East Cities and changes that threaten old
  valuesModernists say that life will never go
  back to what it was
• Americansbecause of communal living in cities as
  well as reactions to WWIlose faith
• Eyes of Dr. Eckleburg
• Americans losing faith in God

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Influences Contributingto Modernism

• In the past, there was a belief that Americans
  were making steady moral progress.
• The horror of WWI and trench warfare blew this
  notion out of the water
• Harsh, mechanical rationality of new
  technological weapons in WWI
• The fusion of the mechanical with the seemingly
  senseless slaughter of human beings left
  morality and realism pretty bankrupt
• Think of the death car in Gatsby

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FYI

• MANY Americans were NOT on board with Modernism!!
  
• Art exhibitions, theatre, cinema, books, and even
  new buildings of this time all served to cement
  in the public view the perception that the world
  was changing, but
• Many reacted hostilely!
• People spat on paintings
• Riots organized at openings
• Political figures denounced modernism as
  unwholesome and immoral

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Dada

• Begins in Switzerland during WWI and spreads
  peaks during early 20s
• Includes visual arts, literature, theatre, and
  graphic design
• Was anti-war
• Expressed anti-war politics through anti-art
• Dadaists wanted to ridicule what they considered
  meaningless in the modern world.
• Usually also anti-bourgeois and anarchistic
• Basically, they were pissed off at a world that
  allowed WWI to happen.

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Dada

• The Dada movement was not a movement
• Its artists were not artists
• Its art was not art
• because art (and everything else in the world)
  has no meaning anyway.
• Even the name Dadawhich some say means hobby
  horse in French and others just say is baby
  talkwas chosen because it was the catch phrase
  that made the least amount of sense.

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What the Dadaists did

• Used
• Mild obscenities
• Weird humor
• Visual puns
• Everyday objects renamed as art
• Examples
• Painting a mustache on the Mona Lisa and
  scribbling an obscenity underneath
• Putting a toilet on display and naming it
  Fountain, and putting a fake signature on it

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Marcel Duchamp
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Marcel Duchamp
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Sophie Taeuber
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Man Ray The Misunderstood
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Man Ray A Night at Saint Jean-de-Luz
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Francis Picabia Hera
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Surrealism

• Born out of Dada thought
• Andre Breton, the leader of the surrealist
  movement, said Surrealism was a revolutionary
  movement.
• Surrealist works feature
• the element of surprise
• unexpected juxtapositions
• non sequitur
• Most surrealists regarded their work as an
  expression of PHILOSOPHY--the work itself was
  merely an artifact of that philosophy

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FYI

• Andre Breton (the leader of Surrealism) served
  in a neurological hospital where he used the
  psychoanalytic methods of Sigmund Freud (more on
  him later) with soldiers who were shell-shocked.
• Surrealism defined as
• Dictionary Surrealism, n. Pure psychic
  automatism, by which one proposes to express,
  either verbally, in writing, or by any other
  manner, the real functioning of thought.
  Dictation of thought in the absence of all
  control exercised by reason, outside of all
  aesthetic and moral preoccupation.Encyclopedia
  Surrealism. Philosophy. Surrealism is based on
  the belief in the superior reality of certain
  forms of previously neglected associations, in
  the omnipotence of dream, in the disinterested
  play of thought. It tends to ruin once and for
  all other psychic mechanisms and to substitute
  itself for them in solving all the principal
  problems of life.

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Andre Masson Pedestal Table in the Studio
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Salvador Dali The Persistence of Memory
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Dali Rhinoceros Disintegration of Ilissus of
Phidias
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Dali Metamorphosis of Narcissus
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DaliSoft Construction With Boiled Beans
(Premonition of Civil War)
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Dali Accommodations of Desire
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Max Ernst-- The Elephant Celebus
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Cubism

• An earlier movement 20s are Late Cubism, but
  it doesnt emerge in America until then
• Backlash to Impressionism, which focuses on light
  and color
• In Cubist artworks, objects are
• Broken up
• Analyzed
• Re-assembled in an abstracted form
• Instead of depicting objects from one viewpoint,
  the artist depicts multiple viewpoints of a
  subject in order to represent the subject in a
  greater context
• Often, surfaces intersect at seemingly random
  angles, removing a coherent sense of depth
• Space shallow and ambiguous

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Pablo Picasso
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Pablo Picasso Le Guitariste
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Picasso Three Musicians
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Georges Braque Woman with a Guitar
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Review and Discuss

• Without looking at your notes!
• What is modernism?
• What is Dada?
• What is Surrealism?
• What is Cubism?
• How are Dadaist, Surrealist, and Cubist art works
  representative of Modernist thought?
• Why do these art forms flourish in America in the
  20s?