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What 20th Century Art Movement Was Attributed to Henri Matisse

The Early on 20th Century

The early 20th century was marked by rapid industrial, economical, social, and cultural alter, which influenced the worldview of many and prepare the stage for new artistic movements.

Learning Objectives

Identify how industrial, economic, social, and cultural alter set the stage for the fine art movements of the early 20th century

Key Takeaways

Cardinal Points

  • The outset ii decades of the 20th century were marked by enormous industrial, economic, social, and cultural developments.
  • International trade brought with it increasing growth and prosperity, along with a rise in poverty and slums in major cities. Urbanization, advances in scientific discipline and technology, and the spread of goods and information were markers of the times.
  • With the outbreak of World War I in 1914, art became heavily influenced by the want to abstract life and escape the horrific possibilities of the human status. Artists began to question and play around with themes of reality, perspective, infinite, and time.

Key Terms

  • urbanization: The alter in a country or region when its population migrates from rural to urban areas.

The first two decades of the 20th century were marked by enormous industrial, economical, social and cultural change. International trade brought with it increasing growth and prosperity, along with a rising in poverty and slums in major cities. Urbanization, architectural advances, increases in technology, and the spread of goods and information were markers of the times. Contest betwixt nations was reflected in attempts to show off advances in technology, business, and architecture, among other things. Prominent scientific advancements of the time included Einstein'due south Theory of Relativity and Freud's development of modern psychology.

After the relative peace of nearly of the 19th century, rivalry between European powers erupted in 1914 with the outbreak of the first Globe War. Over 60 1000000 European soldiers were mobilized from 1914–1918 equally countries effectually the world were called into the conflict. With the widespread expiry and destruction of the greatest war the world had always seen, art increasingly became a means for escapism, a way to abstruse life and escape the difficulties of the human status.

image

A ration party of the Royal Irish Rifles in a advice trench during the Battle of the Somme, July 1916: The death and destruction of World War I contributed to the want of artists to abstruse life.

The economic and social changes of the early 20th century greatly influenced the North American and European worldview which, in turn, shaped the evolution of new styles of art. Artists began to question and experiment with themes of reality, perspective, space and time, and representation. Einstein's Theory of Relativity contributed to the development of cubism, and developments in psychology greatly influenced the subject matter of a number of creative schools of thought. The rapid rising of applied science impacted artists both directly and indirectly, from the invention of new creative materials to subject matter and themes.

Fauvism

The Fauves were a group of early on 20th century Modernistic artists based in Paris whose works challenged Impressionist values.

Learning Objectives

Contrast the characteristics of Fauvism, as found in the work of Matisse and Derain, from those of its predecessor Impressionism

Fundamental Takeaways

Key Points

  • The Fauvist movement, led past Henri Matisse and Andre Derain, officially lasted for but four years: 1904–1908.
  • Bright color, simplification, abstraction, and unusual castor strokes are hallmarks of the Fauvist mode. Fauvist influences and references include Van Gogh's Post- Impressionism and the Neo-Impressionist technique of Pointillism.
  • Gustave Moreau, a controversial professor at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, mentored several of the Fauves, including Matisse, and profoundly influenced their piece of work.

Key Terms

  • Mail-Impressionism: (Art) a genre of painting that rejected the naturalism of impressionism, using color and form in more expressive manners.
  • pointillism: In art, the use of pocket-size areas of color to construct an epitome.
  • Fauvism: An creative movement of the last part of the 19th century that emphasized spontaneity and the utilize of extremely bright colors.

Fauvism is the style of les Fauves (French for "the wild beasts"), a short-lived and loose group of early 20th century Modern artists whose works emphasized painterly qualities and strong colour over the representational or realistic values retained by Impressionism. While Fauvism every bit a style began effectually 1900 and continued beyond 1910, the movement every bit such lasted only a few years, 1904–1908, and had three exhibitions. The leaders of the movement were Henri Matisse and André Derain.

Painting of the Charing Cross Bridge with city buildings in the background and boats in the foreground. Many bright colors are used.

Charing Cross Bridge, London by André Derain, 1906: The vibrant, surprising use of colour in this piece of work is feature of the Fauvist style.

Apart from Matisse and Derain, other artists included Albert Marquet, Charles Camoin, Louis Valtat, the Belgian painter Henri Evenepoel, Maurice Marinot, Jean Puy, Maurice de Vlaminck, Henri Manguin, Raoul Dufy, Othon Friesz, Georges Rouault, the Dutch painter Kees van Dongen, the Swiss painter Alice Bailly, and Georges Braque (subsequently Picasso'due south partner in Cubism).

The paintings of the Fauves were characterized by seemingly wild castor work and strident colors, while their subject matter had a high caste of simplification and abstraction. Fauvism can be classified as an farthermost development of Van Gogh'southward Post-Impressionism fused with the pointillism of Seurat and other Neo-Impressionist painters, in particular Paul Signac. Other key influences were Paul Cézanne and Paul Gauguin, whose employment of areas of saturated colour—notably in paintings from Tahiti—strongly influenced Derain's work.

Gustave Moreau, a controversial professor at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and a Symbolist painter, was the movement's inspirational teacher. Moreau taught Matisse, Marquet, Manguin, Rouault, and Camoin during the 1890s, and was viewed by critics as the group's philosophical leader until Matisse was recognized as such in 1904. Moreau'southward broad-mindedness, originality, and affirmation of the expressive potency of pure color was inspirational for his students.

Derain and Matisse worked together through the summer of 1905 in the Mediterranean village of Collioure, and later that yr displayed their highly innovative paintings at the Salon d'Automne. The brilliant, unnatural colors led the critic Louis Vauxcelles to derisively dub their works as les Fauves, or "the wild beasts," which the artists then appropriated equally the title for their motion. The painting that was singled out for special condemnation, Matisse'due south Adult female with a Hat, was subsequently bought past the major patrons of the avant-garde scene in Paris, Gertrude and Leo Stein.

A bright and colorful portrait of a woman wearing a hat.

Woman with a Chapeau by Henri Matisse, 1905.: This painting was rejected by critics when initially exhibited, but was soon acquired past avant-garde collectors Leo and Gertrude Stein.

Primitivism and Cubism

Every bit ane of the most influential artists of the 20th century, Pablo Picasso is widely known for his interest in Cubism and Primitivism.

Learning Objectives

Place Picasso's unique importance to the evolution of both Primitivism and Cubism in the early 20th century

Primal Takeaways

Key Points

  • 1906–1909 is referred to as Picasso'due south African period, during which he produced Les Demoiselles d'Avignon and several other paintings incorporating primitivist elements.
  • Picasso was inspired by African artifacts also as the piece of work of Post-Impressionist artist Paul Gauguin.
  • The formal elements of Les Desmoiselles d'Avignon bridged Picasso's African Period and subsequent Cubist work.
  • Picasso and Georges Braque co-founded the Cubist motility, one of the nearly influential movements in Modern Fine art.
  • Cubism stressed basic abstruse geometric forms that presented the subject area from many angles simultaneously.

Central Terms

  • primitivism: Primitivism is a Western art movement that borrows visual forms from non-Western or prehistoric peoples, a do that was central to the development of mod fine art.

African Menstruation and Primitivism (1906–1910)

During the tardily 19th and early 20th centuries, the European cultural elite were discovering African, Micronesian, and Native American art. African artifacts were beingness brought back to Paris museums following the expansion of the French empire into Africa. The printing was abuzz with exaggerated stories of cannibalism and exotic tales about the African kingdom of Dahomey. The mistreatment of Africans in the Belgian Congo was exposed in Joseph Conrad's popular book, Center of Darkness.

Artists such as Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse, and Picasso were intrigued and inspired past the stark ability and simplicity of styles of "primitive" cultures. Around 1906, Picasso, Matisse, Derain, and other Paris-based artists had acquired an interest in Primitivism, Iberian sculpture, African art, and tribal masks, in part due to the works of Paul Gauguin that had recently achieved recognition in Paris'south avant-garde circles. Gauguin's powerful posthumous retrospective exhibitions at the Salon d'Automne in Paris in 1903 and 1906 had a powerful influence on Picasso'southward paintings.

A nude Hina is seen from behind imploring a dark male spirit.

The Moon and the Earth by Paul Gauguin, 1893: Picasso was greatly influenced past Gauguin's African inspired works like The Moon and The Earth.

In 1907, Picasso experienced a "revelation" while viewing African fine art at the ethnographic museum at Palais du Trocadéro. African art influenced Picasso's painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), especially in its treatment of the two figures on the right side of the limerick. This painting is also considered a protocubist piece of work bridging Picasso'southward African and Cubist periods. Other works of Picasso'south African Menstruation include Bust of a Woman (1907, in the National Gallery, Prague); Mother and Kid (Summer 1907, in the Musée Picasso, Paris); Nude with Raised Arms (1907, in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid, Espana); and Iii Women (Summer 1908, in the Hermitage Museum, Saint petersburg).

The work portrays five nude female prostitutes. The women appear as slightly menacing and rendered with angular and disjointed body shapes.

Les Desmoiselles d'Avignon past Pablo Picasso, 1907: This work is influenced by primitivism and is considered to be i of the earliest examples of Cubist painting.

Cubism (1909–1912)

Cubism, established by Picasso and his colleague Georges Bracque, was marked by a revolutionary departure from representational art. In Cubist artwork, objects were analyzed, broken up, and reassembled in an abstracted form instead of being depicted from one viewpoint. Picasso, Braque, and other Cubists depicted subjects from a multitude of viewpoints to create a greater scope of context. Cubism has been considered the nearly influential art movement of the 20th century.

A monochromatic painting depicting various objects, including a violin and a candlestick, broken up and reconstructed in a way that makes it difficult to tell what the objects are.

Violin and Candlestick past Georges Braque, 1910: Georges Braque, with Picasso, was one of the founders of Cubism.

Cubism had a global reach every bit a motion, influencing similar schools of thought in literature, music, and architecture. Particular offshoots across French republic included the movements of Futurism, Suprematism, Dada, Constructivism, and De Stijl, which all developed in response to Cubism. Early on Futurist paintings take some commonalities with Cubism: the fusing of the past and the present and the representation of unlike views of the subject pictured at the same fourth dimension, also called multiple perspective, simultaneity or multiplicity. Constructivism was influenced by Picasso'due south technique of constructing sculpture from separate elements. Other common threads between these disparate movements include the faceting or simplification of geometric forms, and the association of mechanization and mod life.

Cubist Sculpture

Just as in painting, Cubist sculpture is rooted in Paul Cézanne'due south reduction of painted objects into component planes and geometric solids (cubes, spheres, cylinders, and cones). And merely as in painting, it became a pervasive influence and contributed fundamentally to Constructivism and Futurism.

Cubist sculpture developed in parallel to Cubist painting. During the autumn of 1909 Picasso sculpted Head of a Adult female (Fernande) with positive features depicted past negative infinite and vice versa. Marcel Duchamp was responsible for another farthermost evolution inspired by Cubism. The prepare-made arose from a joint consideration that the work itself is considered an object (just every bit a painting), and that it uses the material detritus of the world (as collage and newspaper mache in the Cubist construction and Assemblage). The next logical step, for Duchamp, was to present an ordinary object as a self-sufficient piece of work of art representing only itself. In 1913 he attached a bicycle wheel to a kitchen stool and in 1914 selected a bottle-drying rack as a sculpture in its own right.

Other Forms of Cubism

Futurism and Constructivism developed from Cubism in Italy and Russia respectively.

Learning Objectives

Differentiate the artistic styles of Futurism and Constructivism from their Cubist origins

Key Takeaways

Central Points

  • Cubist work represents an artistic subject from multiple perspectives simultaneously.
  • Italian Futurism and Russian Constructivism are two movements that were profoundly influenced by Cubism.
  • Divisionism, a technique in which color and lite are deconstructed, is an of import aspect of Futurist and Cubist piece of work.
  • Gertrude Stein, Wallace Stevens, Pierre Reverdy, and William Faulkner all applied Cubist principles to written work.
  • Cubist poets and writers also influenced Dada and Surrealism.

Key Terms

  • futurism: An early 20th century avant-garde art move focused on speed, the mechanical, and the modern, which took a deeply antagonistic attitude to traditional artistic conventions; (originated by F.T. Marinetti, amid others).
  • divisionism: In art, the use of small areas of color to construct an image.
  • constructivism: A Russian movement in modern art characterized past the creation of nonrepresentational geometric objects using industrial materials.

Cubism

Cubism was an avant-garde art motion of the early 20th century pioneered by Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, and later joined past Juan Gris, Jean Metzinger, Albert Gleizes, Robert Delaunay, Henri Le Fauconnier, and Fernand Léger. The movement revolutionized European painting and sculpture and inspired related movements in music, literature, and architecture. Cubism has been considered the well-nigh influential art movement of the 20th century.

A monochromatic painting depicting various objects, including a violin and a candlestick, broken up and reconstructed in a way that makes it difficult to tell what the objects are.

Violin and Candlestick by Georges Braque, 1910: Georges Braque, with Picasso, was 1 of the founders of Cubism.

In Cubist artwork, objects are analyzed, broken up, and reassembled in an bathetic form. Instead of depicting objects from 1 viewpoint, the artist depicts the bailiwick from a multitude of viewpoints to correspond the subject in a greater context.

Constructivism

Constructivism was an artistic and architectural philosophy that originated in Russia in 1919. It entailed a rejection of the idea of autonomous art and was in favor of art as a practise for social purposes. Constructivism had a great impact on modern art movements of the 20th century, influencing major trends such as Bauhaus and the De Stijl move. Information technology is difficult to isolate a particular aesthetic common to the Constructivist philosophy every bit information technology is and then broad, but information technology can exist roughly distinguished by its utilize of bright, bold color and geometric designs, especially in graphic design.

The Get-go Working Group of Constructivists (including Liubov Popova, Alexander Vesnin, Rodchenko, Varvara Stepanova, and the theorists Aleksei Gan, Boris Arvatov, and Osip Brik) adult a definition of Constructivism as the combination of faktura: the particular material properties of an object, and tektonika, its spatial presence. Initially the Constructivists worked on iii-dimensional constructions as a ways of participating in industry. Later the definition would be extended to designs for two-dimensional works such equally books and posters.

Painting does not depict specific objects, but rather a collection of different two- and three-dimensional shapes.

Proun Vrashchenia by El Lissitzky c. 1919: The geometric forms and brilliant colors in this painting are feature of the Constructivist artful.

Futurism

Futurism was an Italian movement that emphasized and glorified themes associated with contemporary concepts of the future such equally speed, technology, youth, and violence, likewise equally objects such as the car, the plane, and the industrial urban center. In 1910 and 1911 futurist painters made use of the technique of divisionism, which entails breaking light and colour downward into a field of stippled dots and stripes. Severini was the first to come into contact with Cubism. Following a visit to Paris in 1911, the Futurist painters adopted the methods of the Cubists. Cubism offered them a means of analyzing energy in paintings and visually expressing their desired focus on dynamism, motion, and speed. The adoption of Cubism adamant the fashion of much subsequent Futurist painting.

A colorful painting with crisscrossing lines representing sound.

Abstract Speed + Sound, by Giacomo Balla 1913–1914: This is a seminal piece of work from the Futurist movement which was influenced by Cubism.

German Expressionism

German Expressionism refers to a number of related creative movements first before WWI and peaking in Berlin during the 1920s.

Learning Objectives

Discuss the importance of the group Die Brücke and artists such as Kirchner, Kollwitze, Schiele, and Modersohn-Becker in the development of German Expressionism

Cardinal Takeaways

Central Points

  • Kathe Kollwitz, Egon Schiele, and Paula Modersohn-Becker are among the contained High german Expressionists who were unaffiliated with other Expressionist groups but nonetheless successful.
  • Kollwitz is all-time remembered for her compassionate series, The Weavers.
  • Many of Egon Schiele's contemporaries institute the explicit sexual themes of his piece of work disturbing.
  • Paula Modersohn-Becker is amidst the first recognized female artists to create nude cocky-portraits.

Cardinal Terms

  • Weimar Republic: The autonomous regime of Germany from 1919 to the assumption of ability by Adolf Hitler in 1933.
  • expressionism: A movement in the arts in which the artist does not depict objective reality, only rather a subjective expression of inner experience.
  • Fauvism: An creative movement of the last part of the 19th century that emphasized spontaneity and the use of extremely brilliant colors.

Expressionism

Expressionism was a modernist movement, beginning with poesy and painting, that originated in Germany at the first of the 20th century. It emphasized subjective experience, manipulating perspective for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas. Expressionist artists sought to express significant or emotional experience rather than concrete reality.

Expressionism was developed as an avant-garde mode before the First Earth State of war and remained popular during the Weimar Commonwealth, peculiarly in Berlin. The style extended to a broad range of the arts, including painting, literature, theatre, dance, film, architecture, and music.

Expressionist painters had many influences, among them Edvard Munch, Vincent van Gogh, and several African artists. They were too aware of the Fauvist movement in Paris, which influenced Expressionism'south trend toward arbitrary colors and jarring compositions.

Die Brücke

In 1905, a group of four German artists, led by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, formed Die Brücke (the Bridge) in the city of Dresden. Later members were Emil Nolde, Max Pechstein, and Otto Mueller. The group aimed to eschew the prevalent traditional bookish manner and discover a new manner of creative expression, which would form a bridge (hence the proper noun) between the by and the nowadays. They responded both to past artists such as Albrecht Dürer, Matthias Grünewald, and Lucas Cranach the Elder, also as contemporary international advanced movements. Equally office of the affirmation of their national heritage, they revived older media, particularly woodcut prints. Die Brücke is considered to be a key group of the German Expressionist movement, though they did not use the give-and-take itself. The group is often compared to both Primitivism and Fauvism due to their utilise of high-keyed, non-naturalistic color to express extreme emotion like the Fauvists and a rough drawing technique that eschewed complete abstraction, like the Primitivists.

Der Blaue Reiter

A few years later, in 1911, a like-minded group of young artists formed Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Passenger) in Munich. The group was founded by a number of Russian emigrants, including Wassily Kandinsky, Alexej von Jawlensky, Marianne von Werefkin, and native German artists, such as Franz Marc, August Macke, and Gabriele Münter. Like Die Brücke, Der Blaue Reiter is considered a major feature of the German Expressionist motion.

Within the grouping, artistic approaches and aims varied from artist to artist, even so, there was a shared desire to limited spiritual truths through their fine art. Der Blaue Reiter as a grouping believed in the promotion of mod art, the connexion betwixt visual fine art and music, the spiritual and symbolic associations of color, and a spontaneous, intuitive approach to painting. Members were interested in European medieval art and Primitivism, every bit well as the contemporary, not-figurative art scene in France. As a result of their encounters with Cubist, Fauvist and Rayonist ideas, they moved towards abstract art.

Kathe Kollwitz

Käthe Kollwitz (1867–1945) was a German painter, printmaker, and sculptor whose work offered an eloquent and often searing account of the human condition, and the tragedy of war, in the first half of the 20th century. Initially her work was grounded in Naturalism, and later took on Expressionistic qualities. Inspired by a functioning of Gerhart Hauptmann's The Weavers, which dramatized the oppression of the Silesian weavers in Langembielau and their failed revolt in 1842, Kollwitz produced a cycle of six works on the Weavers theme. Rather than a literal analogy of the drama, the works were a free and naturalistic expression of the workers' misery, hope, courage, and, eventually, doom. The Weavers became Kollwitz' most widely acclaimed work.

Photo of the sculpture depicting a mother cradling her dead son in a large, empty room.

Female parent with her Dead Son by Käthe Kollwitz: This Kollwitz sculpture is a WWII war memorial.

Egon Schiele

Egon Schiele (1890–1918) was an Austrian painter. A protégé of Gustav Klimt, Schiele was a major figurative painter in the early on 20th century. His work is noted for its intensity, as well as for the many self-portraits he produced. The twisted trunk shapes and expressive line that characterize Schiele'southward paintings and drawings marker the artist as an early exponent of Expressionism. Schiele was influenced by his mentor, Klimt, every bit well as by Edvard Munch, Jan Toorop, and Vincent van Gogh. Schiele explored themes not only of the human form, but also of human sexuality. Many viewed Schiele's work as being grotesque, erotic, pornographic, or agonizing, focusing on sexual activity, death, and discovery.

A painting of a woman wearing only a pair of hosiery and heels with her legs spread open.

Sitzender weiblicher Akt mit aufgestützen Ellbogen by Egon Schiele: Schiele's depiction of female nudes scandalized his contemporaries.

Paula Mendersohn-Becker

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907) was a German painter and one of the most important representatives of early Expressionism. In a brief career, cut short by her decease at the age of 31, she created a number of groundbreaking images of corking intensity. Modersohn-Becker studied briefly at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and was influenced by French mail impressionists Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, and Paul Gauguin. On her last trip to Paris in 1906, she produced a series of paintings well-nigh which she felt swell excitement and satisfaction. During this period of painting, she produced her initial nude cocky-portraits—something unprecedented past a female painter—and portraits of friends such as Rainer Maria Rilke and Werner Sombart.

A nude self-portrait that shows the artist from the waist up, holding flowers and wearing a necklace.

Selbstporträt past Paula Modersohn-Becker, 1906: Female nude self-portraits were uncommon subjects in this era.

Abstract Sculpture

Modernistic abstract sculpture developed alongside other avant-garde movements of the early 20th century like Cubism and Surrealism.

Learning Objectives

Discuss the development of abstract sculpture through the periods of Cubism and Surrealism, naming the of import works of Rodin, Picasso, Duchamp, and Brâncuşi

Cardinal Takeaways

Key Points

  • Auguste Rodin is seen equally the progenitor of modern sculpture.
  • Picasso and fellow cubist artists adult new means of constructing works of art using collage, or sculptural aggregation using disparate materials. This is known as Cubist constructionism.
  • Surrealism further expanded upon contemporary definitions of sculpture by introducing the concept of the " readymade."
  • Constantin Brâncuşi rejected naturalism in sculpture besides equally whatever form of representational fine art. His minimal, abstract artworks attempt to depict the essence of an object.

Primal Terms

  • abstruse art: Art that is not intended to depict objects in the natural world, only instead uses color and class in a not-representational manner.
  • naturalism: A creative motion that seeks to encapsulate reality or familiar experience in which subjects may receive highly symbolic, idealistic, or even supernatural treatment.
  • coulage: Automated or involuntary sculpture made by pouring a molten material (such as metallic, wax, or chocolate) into common cold water. As the textile cools information technology takes on what appears to be a random (or aleatoric) course, though the physical backdrop of the materials involved may lead to a conglomeration of discs or spheres.

Rodin

Auguste Rodin, along with artists like Edgar Degas and Paul Gauguin, adult a radical new arroyo to the creation of sculpture in the 19th century. Rodin was a naturalist, less concerned with monumental expression than with character and emotion. Departing from centuries of tradition, he turned abroad from the idealism of the Greeks and the decorative beauty of the Baroque and neo-Baroque movements. His sculpture emphasized the private and the concreteness of mankind, suggesting emotion through detailed, textured surfaces, and the interplay of light and shadow.

The modern sculpture motion essentially began during the Rodin showroom at the Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1900. At this event, Rodin showed his Burghers of Calais, Balzac and Victor Hugo statues, along with The Thinker. Though all of these are representational works of art, Rodin'due south arroyo to form paved the way for increasingly experimental and abstract art.

The work shows a nude male figure of over life-size sitting on a rock with his chin resting on one hand as though deep in thought.

The Thinker past Auguste Rodin: Rodin's experiments with form, visible in The Thinker, launched modernistic abstruse sculpture.

Influence of Cubism

Cubist sculpture developed in parallel with Cubist painting, centered in Paris kickoff around 1909 and evolving through the early 1920s. The style is well-nigh closely associated with the formal experiments of Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso. Others were quick to follow Braque and Picasso's lead in Paris, including Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Alexander Archipenko, Joseph Csaky, Jacques Lipchitz, Henri Laurens, and Ossip Zadkine.

During his period of Cubist innovation, Picasso revolutionized the art of sculpture by combining disparate objects and materials into one sculptural work—the sculptural equivalent of collage in ii dimensional art. Just equally collage was a radical development in two dimensional art, so was Cubist construction a radical evolution in three dimensional sculpture.

The surface and structure of this sculpture of a woman's head are broken up into fragmented forms.

Head of a Woman by Picasso, 1909: Picasso was a pioneer in early 20th century Cubist sculpture.

Influence of Surrealism

The appearance of Surrealism led to objects being described equally "sculpture" that would not have been termed as such previously. Surrealist sculpture fabricated use of many of the same techniques equally other forms of Surrealist fine art, such equally games to tap into the unconscious mind such as coulage, a kind of automatic or involuntary sculpture made past pouring a molten material into cold water. As the material cools it takes on what appears to be a random form, though the physical properties of the materials involved may lead to a conglomeration of discs or spheres. The artist may use a variety of techniques to affect the outcome. Involuntary sculpture is described by Surrealists as sculpture created by absent-minded-mindedly manipulating something, such as rolling and unrolling a motion picture ticket, bending a paper clip, etc.

Duchamp

Marcel Duchamp had a deep bear upon on the development of brainchild in sculpture. He originated the utilize of the "institute object" or "readymade" with pieces like Fountain (1917), a urinal that was displayed every bit art. Duchamp experimented a great deal with sculpture, creating readymades, assemblages, and kinetic works. His notion that anything tin exist fine art that an artist names art is an idea that has resonated throughout many historical and gimmicky movements. Though never considered himself to be a Surrealist, he was involved socially with many key members of the movement and his ideas were of influence.

Duchamp participated in the pattern of the 1938 International Surrealist Exhibition, which was held at the Galerie des Beaux-arts, Paris. The show featured more 60 artists from different countries, including approximately 300 paintings, objects, collages, photographs, and installations. The surrealists wanted to create an exhibition which in itself would be a artistic act, and André Breton named Duchamp, Wolfgang Paalen, Man Ray, Salvador Dali, and Max Ernst to help do so.

Brâncuşi

The piece of work of Constantin Brâncuşi at the beginning of the century paved the way for later abstruse sculpture. In revolt against the naturalism of Rodin and his late 19th-century contemporaries, Brâncuşi distilled subjects downwardly to their essences equally illustrated by his Bird in Space series (1924). These elegantly refined abstruse forms became synonymous with 20th century sculpture.

Brâncuşi's touch on, with his vocabulary of reduction and abstraction, is seen throughout the 1930s and 1940s, and exemplified past artists including Gaston Lachaise, Sir Jacob Epstein, Henry Moore, Alberto Giacometti, Joan Miró, Ásmundur Sveinsson, Julio González, Pablo Serrano, and Jacques Lipchitz.

A black and white photo of the piece, a porcelain urinal signed

Fountain by Marcel Duchamp: Duchamp's appropriation of a urinal equally a piece of art challenged the prevailing definition of sculpture.

Dada and Surrealism

Dada and Surrealism were multidisciplinary cultural movements of the European avant-garde that emerged in Zurich and Paris respectively during the fourth dimension of WWI.

Learning Objectives

Identify the origins, characteristics, and political ideologies of Dada

Cardinal Takeaways

Key Points

  • Dada was a political movement opposed to artistic and social conformity as well equally the capitalist forces that led to WWI.
  • Dada artists worked in non-traditional media including collage, photomontage, and assemblage. Dada creative person Michel Duchamp pioneered the notion of the "readymade;" everyday objects appropriated for artistic purposes.
  • Dada spread throughout Europe and North America following WWI; by the early 1920s the center of Dada activity was Paris.
  • Dada informed many of the major advanced movements of the 20th century century, including Surrealism and Social Realism.
  • Surrealism began in the 1920s and had a lot in common with Dadaism.
  • Surrealist works drew inspiration from intuition, the power of the unconscious heed, and various psychological schools of thought.
  • Surrealist artists and writers regarded their work as an expression of the philosophical movement, with the artwork being an antiquity.

Key Terms

  • readymade: Everyday objects plant or purchased and declared fine art. The readymades of Marcel Duchamp are ordinary manufactured objects that the creative person selected and modified as an antidote to what he called "retinal art." Past just choosing the object (or objects) and repositioning, joining, titling, and signing it, the object became art.
  • collage: A composite object or collection (abstract or concrete) created by the assemblage of various media; especially for a work of art similar text, film, etc.
  • social realism: An artistic movement that depicted social and racial injustice and economic hardship through unvarnished pictures of life'southward struggles.

Dadaism

Dada was a multi-disciplinary art movement that rejected the prevailing creative standards by producing "anti-art" cultural works. Dadaism was intensely anti-war, anti-bourgeois, and held strong political affinities with the radical left. For many participants, the motion was a protest against the bourgeois nationalist and colonialist interests, which many Dadaists believed were the root cause of the war, and confronting the cultural and intellectual conformity—in art and more than broadly in guild—that corresponded to the war. Many Dadaists believed that the reason and logic of conservative capitalist club had led people into war. They expressed their rejection of that credo in creative expression that appeared to turn down logic and comprehend chaos and irrationality.

The origin of the name Dada is unclear. Some believe that it is a nonsensical discussion while others maintain that it originates from the Romanian artists Tristan Tzara'due south and Marcel Janco's frequent utilise of the words "da, da," meaning "yes, aye" in Romanian. Some other theory posits that the name "Dada" came during a meeting of when a knife stuck into a French–German lexicon happened to point to dada, a French give-and-take for "hobbyhorse." Likely, the origin of the proper name Dada is some other try to devalue a system of logic, namely that of linguistic communication.

Dada began in Zurich in 1916. Primal figures in the Dada movement included Hugo Brawl, Emmy Hennings, Hans Arp, and Raoul Hausmann, among others. The movement influenced later styles like avant-garde, and movements including Surrealism, Nouveau réalisme, popular art and Fluxus.

A circular plaque with German writing.

Plaque commemorating the birth of Dada movement: This plaque is from the Cabaret Voltaire, the first venue where Dada artists showcased their work in 1916.

Dada was an informal international movement with participants in Europe and North America that employed all kinds of media but are known especially for collage, writing, photomontage and performance. Dadaists worked in collage, creating compositions past pasting together transportation tickets, maps, plastic wrappers and other artifacts of daily life. Dada artists too worked in photomontage, a variation on collage that utilized actual or reproductions of photographs printed in the press. In Cologne, Max Ernst used photographs taken from the front during Globe State of war I to comment on the state of war. Some other variation on collage used by Dadaists was assemblage, the assembly of everyday objects to produce meaningful or meaningless pieces of piece of work, including state of war objects and trash.

When World War I concluded in 1918, virtually of the Zurich Dadaists returned to their home countries, while some began Dada activities in other cities.

A black and white collage made up of words and letters.

Dada poster from 1923: This poster for a Dada soiree references the medium of collage.

Like Zurich, New York Urban center was a refuge for writers and artists from Earth War I. Frenchmen Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia met American artist Man Ray in New York City in 1915. The trio soon became the middle of radical anti-fine art activities in the United States.

During this time, Duchamp began exhibiting "readymades" (everyday objects found or purchased and declared art) and was active in the Gild of Contained Artists. In 1917, he submitted the now famous Fountain to the Lodge of Independent Artists exhibition. Initially an object of scorn within the arts community, the Fountain has since go near canonized by some as one of the most recognizable modernist works of sculpture. The commission presiding over Britain'southward prestigious Turner Prize in 2004, for instance, called information technology "the nigh influential work of modern art."

A black and white photo of the piece, a porcelain urinal signed

Fountain by Marcel Duchamp: Duchamp's appropriation of a urinal as a piece of art challenged the prevailing definition of sculpture.

By 1921, well-nigh of the original Dadaists moved to Paris, where Dada experienced its terminal major incarnation. Inspired by Tristan Tzara, Paris Dada soon issued manifestos, organized demonstrations, staged performances, and a number of journals.

While broad, the Dada movement was unstable. By 1924, artists had gone on to other ideas and movements including surrealism and social realism. Some theorists argue that Dada was the beginning of postmodern art.

Surrealism

Surrealism was a cultural movement first in the 1920s that sprang directly out of Dadaism and overlapped in many senses. Surrealist works drew inspiration from intuition, the power of the unconscious mind, and various psychological schools of thought. The piece of work oft features unexpected juxtapositions, non sequiturs, and elements of surprise.

First and foremost, Surrealist artists and writers regarded their work equally an expression of the philosophical motion, with the artwork existence an antiquity. Leader André Breton was explicit in his assertion that Surrealism was to a higher place all a revolutionary move. Surrealism developed out of the Dada activities during World War I and the most of import middle of the movement was Paris. From the 1920s onward, the motility spread around the globe, eventually affecting the visual arts, literature, film, and music of many countries and languages, as well every bit political thought and practice, philosophy, and social theory.

Equally the Surrealists adult their philosophy, they believed that Surrealism would advocate the thought that ordinary and representative expression was vital and important, only that expression must be fully open up to the imagination. Freud'southward work with free association, dream analysis, and the unconscious was of utmost importance to the Surrealists equally they developed methods to liberate their imaginations.

Similar Dada, Surrealism aimed to revolutionize homo experience, in terms of the personal, cultural, social, and political aspects. Surrealists wanted to gratuitous people from faux rationality, and besides from restrictive customs and structures. Breton proclaimed that the truthful aim of Surrealism was "long live the social revolution, and it lonely!"

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Source: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-arthistory/chapter/european-art-in-the-early-20th-century/