“Modern Art”

A Movement Towards Abstraction

Remember “Realism”?

Thomas Eakins, “The Gross Clinic” (1875) John Singer Sargent, “Mrs. Louise E. Raphael” (1906)

What is “Modernism”?

• To what cultural forces is “modernism” a response?

• Modernism / Modernity / Modernization • “Make it new!” (Ezra Pound) • What are the characteristics of modern art? “What is art?” • What are the characteristics of modern literature? “What is poetry?”

George Luks, “Hester Street” (1905)

The Aims of Modernism

• The “Ashcan” artists wanted to rescue American art from restrictive official ideology of the Gilded Age, especially its narrow emphasis on cultural refinement and its cautious and controlling assessment of American society.” • “smash the glass and breathe freely”; “experience ‘real life’ in all its intensity” • art as provocation

The “Ashcan” Artists

VS.

George Bellows, “Both Members of This Club” (1909)

John Sloan, “Movies 5 Cents” (1907)

The Armory Show, 1913

• “The Armory Show was a significant moment in the history of American modernism because it allowed American writers, who felt an immediate affinity with the European artists, to recognize themselves as part of an international movement of experimental artists struggling to make sense of the modern world” (

American Modernism

17).

Pablo Picasso, “Violin” (1914)

Warning:

• The following slide features a painting entitled “Nude Descending a Staircase.” Please resist the urge to behave like a child. This is art.

European Influences: High Modernism Marcel Duchamp, “Nude Descending a Staircase” (1912)

“Nude,” continued

• Among American writers, the Armory Show had its most profound effect on poets. William Carlos Willams …later recalled seeing Duchamp’s “Nude”: I laughed out loud when I first saw it, with relief.”

Duchamp, “Fountain” (1917)

The Next Phase of Modernism Hits the U.S.

“The Aero” Marsden Hartley, 1914 “Waterfront Landscape” Stuart Davis, 1936 “Radiator Building” Georgia O’Keefe, 1926

“The Voice of the City of New York Interpreted: The Bridge.” Joseph Stella (1920-1922)

•

Steel Mill

by Joseph Stella, 1919-20

“American Landscape,” Charles Sheeler (1930)

What is

“

literature

”

?

I heard a Fly buzz — when I died — The Stillness in the Room Was like the Stillness in the Air — Between the Heaves of Storm — The Eyes around — had wrung them dry — And Breaths were gathering firm For that last Onset — when the King Be witnessed — in the Room — I willed my keepsakes — signed away What portion of me be Assignable — and then it was — There interposed a Fly — With Blue — uncertain stumbling Buzz — Between the light — and me — And then the windows failed — and then I could not see to see — “ This is Just to Say ” I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox and which you were probably saving for breakfast Forgive me they were delicious so sweet and so cold William Carlos Williams

Modernism: Painting and Poetry

“The Figure 5 in Gold” Charles Demuth, 1928

Modernism: Painting and Poetry

“ The Great Figure Among the rain and lights I saw the figure 5 in gold on a red fire truck moving tense unheeded to gong clangs siren howls and wheels rumbling through the dark city.

” (William Carlos Williams, 1921) “The Figure 5 in Gold” Charles Demuth, 1928