Modernism
Historical Context
World War I– The Great War: Technology of
destruction
 Communism—Stalin’s industrialization of the
Soviet Union: 20 million dead
Social realism in the arts
 Fascism-Nationalism and racism: Hitler’s
institutionalization of genocide
Radio and film used for propaganda
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Mass Media in the U.S.
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Documentary arts:
Commercial film
Radio programs
Posters
Photography
Science
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Einstein’s Theory of Relativity
Quantum mechanics
Picasso
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Mastered traditional techniques
“blue period”
“rose period”
Abandoned Renaissance tradition: new rules
Les Demoiselles D’Avignon
Influences on Picasso
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Cézanne’s Bathers
African and Polynesian masks
Primitivism
Cubism
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Revolutionary departure from representational
art. The area around painted objects became
part of the abstract geometric forms.
Presented the object from many angles
simultaneously.
Georges Braque
Stages of Cubism
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Analytical phase: browns and grays. Colors
should not distract from lines and planes
Synthetic phase: collage
Abstraction
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Pure line, shape and color: non-objective
Sculpture: Boccioni’s Unique Forms of Continuity
in Space Brancusi’s Bird in Space
Painting: Piet Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie Woogie
Anti-Art
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Dada: rejection of reason and order in art
Marcel Duchamp’s ready-mades: L.H.O.O.Q.
mobile sculpture, urinal
Later influenced performance art, pop art
Expressionism
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Henri Matisse: fauvism
The Blue Window, Issy-les-Moulineaux
German Expressionism: Die Brücke
Emil Nolde’s Dance Around the Golden Calf
Der Blaue Reiter
Wassily Kandinsky’s Improvisation 28 (Second
Version)
Paul Klee’s All Around the Fish
Freud
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The Interpretation of Dreams influenced the
humanities of the Twentieth Century
Psychoanalysis: freeing unconscious desires
repressed by parental and societal taboos
Georgio de Chirico’s The Mystery and Melancholy
of a Street
Surrealism
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André Breton: automatism
Surrealist painters sought to release the images
of the subconscious
Joan Miró’s The Birth of the World
Salvador Dalí’s The Persistence of Memory
Modernism in Literature
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Poets discarded meter and rhyme: vers libre
Prose: Virginia Woolf ’s interior monologues or
stream of consciousness reveal the characters’
inner thoughts.
Mrs. Dalloway: A single day
James Joyce’s Ulysses: A single day
Modernist Literature
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T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land
New hero: ironic, frustrating, disappointing,
self-doubting, anxious.
Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis
Character becomes a giant insect
Music/Stravinsky
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Le Sacré du Printemps shocked the music world
Russian folk tradition
Diaghilev: artistic director
Nijinsky: dancer-choreographer
Stravinsky’s music introduced multiple meters,
or polyrhythm, and multiple simultaneous keys
or polytonality
Creates disturbing dissonance
Music/Schoenberg
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Rejected the classical tradition of orchestral
music
Atonal music: not composed in a key:
expressionistic
Pierrot Lunaire
Twelve-tone method: not popular with
audiences
Modernist Architecture
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Bauhaus School (German) Walter Gropius:
Clean, functional design
Le Corbusier (French) functional glass and metal
designs
Art deco: sleek, simple shapes with decorative
forms, like the “gargoyles” of the Chrysler
Building
Bertolt Brecht
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Epic theater
The Threepenny Opera
The disparity between the ruling class in
Germany and the working classes
Political Paintings
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Orozco, Siqueiros and Rivera: murals on public
buildings in Mexico
Rivera’s The Enslavement of the Indians: criticism
of Spain’s oppression of the indigenous people
Kahlo’s The Broken Column
Picasso’s Guernica: decimation of the town of
Guernica by German bombs during Spanish
Civil War
Cinema
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D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation
Silent film: Charlie Chaplin
Soviet film: Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin
Montage technique: “Odessa Steps”
Leni Riefenstahl’s The Triumph of the Will, Nazi
propaganda
The U.S.A./ N.Y.
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Photography: Alfred Stieglitz
Painter: Georgia O’Keeffe
The Harlem Renaissance:
Countee Cullen
Langston Hughes
Zora Neale Hurston
U.S.A/Other Artists
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Edward Hopper Nighthawks
Willa Cather
William Faulkner: Absalom, Absalom!
American Dance
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Modern Dance: freedom from classical ballet
Isadora Duncan
Modern Ballet: classical training/freer
expression
George Ballanchine
Martha Graham
American Music
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Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring
Charles Ives’ Three Pieces in New England
Architecture
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Frank Lloyd Wright: incorporate nature
“Fallingwater”
Jazz!
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Improvised melodies, “swing” rhythm
African-American origins
George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, Rhapsody in
Blue: concert music
Large dance bands
Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Charlie
“Bird” Parker, John Coltrane, Miles Davis