NCC ART104DIALOGUE WITH EUROPE

Avant-garde…artists or works that are novel or experimental

 

Relates to military term for soldiers who explore battlefield ahead of advancing army

suggests small group of intellectuals who push the boundaries of what is accepted as the norm

Manet. Luncheon on the Grass (Le Dejeuner Sur L'Herbe). 1863.

The term "modernism" develops out of the avant-garde

Modernism…philosophy that affirms the power of human beings to make, improve, deconstruct and reshape their lives, with the aid of scientific knowledge, technology and practical experimentation.  The term covers many political, cultural and artistic movements rooted in the changes in Western society at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century.

The Modern World Emerges• At the turn of the century (1900), a number of traditional points of

view were replaced with radically new ways of thinking

• Einstein publishes his Theory of Relativity in physics• Increasing industrialization changes the way people live, buy and

work• Freud introduces his concepts of the subconscious mind• The Wright brothers demonstrate that humans can fly• Ford proves that machines can be made quickly and efficiently

• And... the traditional center of the art world in Paris was losing its

hold

Characteristics of Modern Art:

• Discarded “traditional” forms of art as old-fashioned and irrelevant

• Embraced disruption• Belief in universals and the essential• Emphasis on innovation (being the first)

The 1913 Armory Show introduces radical European abstraction to America for the first time

Marcel Duchamp. Nude Descending a Staircase. 1912

Marcel Duchamp. L.H.O.O.Q. 1919.

Marcel Duchamp. Fountain. 1917.

The Mexican Muralists - "Los Tres Grandes"Orozco, Siquieros & Rivera

American artists identified with the Mexican Muralists because they sought many of the same goals:

– In search of a distinctive national imagery and style

– Belief in use art as a vehicle for social change– Embraced the notion that art was for "the people"

rather than the wealthy elite

Jose Clemente Orozco. Prometheus. 1930

In Greek mythology, Prometheus (meaning "forethought”) is a Titan, culture hero, and trickster figure who is credited with the creation of man from clay, and who defies the gods and gives fire to humanity, an act that enabled progress and civilization. Prometheus is known for his intelligence and as a champion of mankind.

The punishment of Prometheus as a consequence of the theft is a major theme of his mythology, and is a popular subject of both ancient and modern art. Zeus, king of the Olympian gods, sentenced the Titan to eternal torment for his transgression. The immortal Prometheus was bound to a rock, where each day an eagle, the emblem of Zeus, was sent to feed on his liver, which would then grow back to be eaten again the next day.

In the Western classical tradition, Prometheus became a figure who represented human striving, particularly the quest for scientific knowledge, and the risk of overreaching or unintended consequences. In particular, he was regarded in the Romantic era as embodying the lone genius whose efforts to improve human existence could also result in tragedy: Mary Shelley, for instance, gave The Modern Prometheus as the subtitle to her novel Frankenstein

David Siqueiros would paint América Tropical above what is now La Placita Olvera in Downtown Los Angeles on October 9, 1932. It was poorly received and criticized for its political and social message. It was whitewashed soon thereafter. Eighty years later, The Getty Conservation Institute conserved and restored the mural. It became accessible to the public on its 80th birthday, October 9, 2012. No known color photographs of América Tropical are known to exist so conservators used scientific analysis and best practices to get at the artist's vision of his piece.

Diego Rivera. Man, Controller of the Universe. 1934Man at the Crossroads was a fresco in the Rockefeller Center, New York. The painting was controversial because it included an image of Lenin and a Soviet Russian May Day parade. Despite protests from artists, Nelson Rockefeller ordered its destruction before it was completed.

SOCIAL REALISM & REGIONALISM

Grant Wood. American Gothic. 1930.

Dorothea Lange. Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California. 1936.

Thomas Hart Benton. The Arts of the West. 1932."I wallowed in every cockeyed ism that came along, and it took me ten years to get all that modernist dirt out of my system." - Thomas Hart Benton

ARSHILE GORKY1904 - 1948

Vostanik Manoog Adoyan , Arshile (refers to the hero Achilles), Gorky (Russian for bitter)…The bitter Achilles.

Most of his works express his experiences and feelings on the armeanian genocide, as well as sexual images. His style is characterized by figuration and abstraction seemingly melded into one another, much in the styles of Cezanne and Picasso. 

Arshile Gorky. The Betrothel II. 1947.

Vassily Kandinsky. Improvisation No. 30 (Cannons). 1913.

Arshile Gorky dancing at a party

Arshile Gorky, The Artist and His Mother, 1926—42…from a 1912 photograph

I don’t like that word, “finish.” When something is finished, that means it’s dead, doesn’t it? I believe in everlastingness. I never finish a painting—I just stop working on it for a while. Arshile Gorky, 1948

In March 1919, 14-year-old Vosdanig Manoog Adoian watched his mother starve to death, one of countless victims of the Ottoman Turkish effort to displace or exterminate the empire’s Armenian population.

His painting is both an exploration of modern painting and an emotional evocation of personal and national tragedy, it is one of the most powerful portraits of the 20th century.

Arshile Gorky. Garden in Sochi. c. 1943.Sochi…Russian resort on the Black SeaSosi…poplar tree in Armenian"It was the custom in our family at the birth of a son to plant a poplar tree which would later have the birth date and name carved on it. Gorky as a child loved his tree and took great pride in caring for it.”

Arshile Gorky. The Liver is the Cock's Comb. 1944. "I do not believe in anarachy in art. There must be some structure...For me, art must be a facet of the thinking mind...unrelenting spontaneity is chaos." - Gorky

Arshile Gorky. The Liver is the Cock's Comb. 1944The work, if taken from a symbolic statement of the artist, seems to speak of the perfectly ordered world in which Gorky lived before the wild and savage world around him came and destroyed it.  The title suggests many double meanings, such as the “cock’s comb”, which is both a headdress, and a feathered phallic symbol…seem to link both mind and body.  The liver was often  thought of in past as a the source of passion and love rather than the heart, so the title could be suggesting that mind and body connection, as well as being represented on the canvas. 

Arshile Gorky, American (born Armenia), 1904-1948, The Black Monk (“Last Painting”), c. 1948, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, MadridAround. 1946 Gorky’s works, which had been populated with distorted, menacing figures since the Cubist period, began to convey his own angst even more intensely. Although by then his work had earned a certain amount of recognition, he failed to achieve financial stability. On top of this, his studio was gutted by fire, he was diagnosed with throat cancer, he split up with his second wife and his painting hand was paralyzed in a car accident. He committed suicide in 1948

Meyer Schapiro wrote of Gorky, “To be a disciple of Picasso in New York in the 1920s and early ’30s was an act of originality [and] an enormous risk.” And an act of self-assertion. But it was also humble, since Gorky considered painting a language to be learned. How better to grasp it than by imitation, just as the Renaissance masters had copied the ancients. Innovation and self-expression were secondary. Gorky’s growing proficiency would lead a friend to call him “the Poussin of America [who] knew what art was, how it was put together. He knew like Poussin where all the blocks fit.”