Modernism Survey

I.   Elements of Modernism (Continued)

A.  Abstraction

1.  Painting: Cézanne, Nonobjective art

2.   Literature

B.  Primitivism

C.  Experimentation with time and space

1.   Art: Cubism, Futurism

2.   Literature

D.  The unconscious

1. Theorists: Freud, Jung

2.  Art: Surrealism

II.  Modern Architecture

A.  Precursor: Sullivan

B.  Modernist architects: Wright, Gropius, Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, Pruitt-Igoe

III. Total War, Totalitarianism, and the Arts

A. Total Wars: WWI, WWII

B. War Ideology:

1. Romantic language of war

2. Modern irony

C. Rise of German Fascism

1. Hitler and Nazi

2. The Holocaust

I. Elements of Modernism

A.    Abstraction

B.     Primitivism

C.    Experimentation with time and space

D.    The Unconscious

A. Abstraction

A.    Abstraction:

1.      nonrepresentational art

2.      self-consciousness of medium

3.      art for art’s sake

Maurice Denis: painting is “a float surface with shapes, lines and colors assembled in particular order” (Fiero 343)

Abstraction in Painting

The Basket of Apples

Still Life with Peppermint Bottle

Cézanne, “Still Life with Peppermint Bottle.” c.1894.
Chisnell. Web. 27 July 2011.
http://chisnell.com/art/PostImpressionism/Forms/Gallery.aspx

Cézanne, “Mount Sainte-Victoire Seen from Bellevue. c. 1882-85.
Baymaugallery. Web. 27 July 2011.
https://sites.google.com/site/baymaugallery/gallery9

Mont Sainte-Victoire Seen from the Bibemus Quarry

Cézanne, “Mont Sainte-Victoire Seen from the Bibemus Quarry.” c. 1897.
Baymaugallery. Web. 27 July 2011.
https://sites.google.com/site/baymaugallery/gallery9

Mount Sainte-Victoire

Abstraction in Literature

A.    Ezra Pound:

1.      imagism: “rhythmic arrangement of words” producing an emotional “shape”—Pound inspired by Chinese calligraphy

2.      Pound declared, “make it new”

3.      Pound, “In a Station of the Metro” (1926)

B.     Frost, “The Road Not Taken” (1916)               

(Fiero 355-58)

Pound’s Explanation of “In a Station of the Metro”

“Three years ago in Paris I got out of a ‘metro’ train at La Concorde, and saw suddenly a beautiful face, and then another and another, and then a beautiful child’s face, and then another beautiful woman, and I tried all that day to find words for what this had meant to me, and I could not find any words that seemed to me worthy, or as lovely as that sudden emotion. . . .

And that evening, as I went home along the Rue Raynouard, I was still trying and I found, suddenly, the expression. I do not mean that I found words, but there came an equation . . . not in speech, but in little splotches of colour.”

(Emphasis added. http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/m_r/pound/metro.htm)

B. Primitivism

A.    Modernist influenced by traditional cultures of Africa and Oceania (Gauguin, Picasso, etc.)

B.     Background: 1889 Paris Exposition Universelle showed arts of Asia, Africa and Oceania.

C.    Rise of anthropology: Sir James Frazer, The Golden Bough, a comparative study of traditional folk customs.

D.    Modernist interest in primitive cultures arose from contact with those cultures.

E.     Ironically, this contact contributed to the destruction of those cultures.

F.     Modernist primitivism is therefore nostalgic.

(Fiero 340-42)

A.    Background:

1.      Einstein’s special theory of relativity: time and space related (Fiero 354)

2.      Henri Bergson: duration: the fusing or streaming together of past and present: “perpetual becoming” (Fiero 321-22)

B.     Painting (spatial medium): introduces time

C.     Literature (temporal medium): introduces space: “Spatial Form”

Cubism

A.    Analytic: through multiple perspectives, time enters into the space of the canvas

B.     Synthetic: real objects pasted onto the canvas—presentation and representation merge together

                   (Fiero 359-62)

Picasso, “Man with a Violin.”1912. Angel-art-house. Web. 27 July 2011.
http://www.angel-art-house.com/oil_paintings_artists/p/PicassoPablo/Man_with_a_Violin_1912.htm

Picasso, “Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler.” 1910. Wikipedia. Web. 27 July 2011.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Picasso_Portrait_of_Daniel-Henry_Kahnweiler_1910.jpg

Braque, “Still Life on a Table.” c. 1914. Artchive. Web. 27 July 2011.
http://www.artchive.com/artchive/B/braque/gillette.jpg.html

Literature and Time—Space Experimentation

A.    Literature (temporal medium) calls attention to space of the text: “Spatial Form” (see e.e. cummings [in Fiero 389])

B.     Disruptions in experience of time (stream of consciousness):

1.      Proust, Remembrance of Things Past (in Fiero 384-85);

2.      Joyce, Ulysses;

Futurism

A.    Marinetti issued Futurist manifestoes

B.     Focus on modern sensation: “A roaring motorcar is more beautiful than the winged Victory of Samothrace.”

(Fiero 362-65)

Mondrian, “Brabant Farmyard.” 1904. Oberlin. Web. 27 July 2011.
http://www.oberlin.edu/amam/Mondrian.htm

Piet Mondrian (1872-1944)

-Dutch Painter

Rietveld, “Red and Blue Chair.” 1918. Web. Blogspot. 27 July 2011.
http://varshika-rai.blogspot.com/2009/05/architecture-you-can-sit-on.html

II. Modern Architecture

A. Precursor

Louis Henry Sullivan (1856-1924)

B. Modernist Architects

Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959)

A.    Student of Sullivan

B.     Stressed horizontality

C.     Influenced by Japanese architecture

D.    Founded the so-called Prairie School     

 (Fiero 372-73)

Wright, “Robie House.”Chicago ,1909. 25 October 2011
http://www.curatedmag.com/news/2010/05/17/frederick-c-robie-house-by-frank-lloyd-wright/

Wright, “Fallingwater.” Pennsylvania, 1936-39.
25 October 2011
http://www.historiasztuki.com.pl/72_ARCHWSP_1-eng.html

Walter Gropius (1883-1969)

A.    Founder of the Bauhaus (“House for Building”) in 1919 through a fusion of Grand Ducal Academy of Art with the Arts and Crafts School

B.     The idea was to create an idealistic community of craftsmen, like the medieval cathedral builders

C.     Wanted to unify architecture, sculpture, painting, and design

D.    Gropius embraced mass housing and industrial design

E.     His preferred materials: steel, concrete, and glass

(Fiero 374)

Gropius, “Bauhaus.” Dessau 1925-26. 25 October 2011
http://www.hubert-brune.de/architektur_modern.html

International Style

A.    Emphasis on truth-telling: no decoration

B.     Subscribed to idea that form follows function

C.     Building seen as volume generated by interplay of planes and spaces

D.    Planar flatness of walls: preference for stucco, which unfortunately cracks

E.     Le Corbusier (France), Walter Gropius (Germany), Philip Johnson (U.S.)

                                                  (Fiero 374)

Le Corbusier and International Style

A.    Le Corbusier was a failed sociological architect but an inspired aesthetic one

B.     He was among the founders of the International Style (term coined in 1932 by Philip Johnson and Henry Russell Hitchcock), as evidenced in his Villa Savoye, 1929-31

(Fiero 374-76)

Le Corbusier

A.    Promoted La Ville Radieuse, the “Radiant City”

B.     Voisin Plan of 1925 would clear 600 acre L-shaped site on Right Bank

C.     Get rid of history to make way for a “vertical city . . . bathed in light and air”

D.    Wanted wide roads for cars (Voisin was the carmaker that sponsored the research: Peugeot and Citroen declined)

               (Fiero 374-75)

Le Corbusier, “Villa Savoye,” Poissy, France, 1929-31. 25 October 2011
http://www.public.iastate.edu/~crickord/Villa%20Savoye%20button.html

Le Corbusier, Ville contemporaine pour trois million d’habitants, 1922.25 October 2011
http://madrid2008-09.blogspot.com/2009/03/apuntes-martes-10-de-marzo.html

Le Corbusier, “Drawing for the Voisin Plan,”1925. 25 October 2011
http://www.historiasztuki.com.pl/72_ARCHWSP_1-eng.html

Le Corbusier, “Drawing for the Voisin Plan,”1925. 25 October 2011 http://www.ad.ntust.edu.tw/grad/think/
HOMEWORK/University/corbusier/a9013038/index.htm

Le Corbusier, Unite d’Habitation,
Marseilles (1946-52)

A.    A one-unit Radiant City

B.     Influenced by utopian ideas of Charles Fourier (1772-1837)

C.     18 stories, containing flats for 1600 people

D.    Unrealistic: shopping mall on the 5th floor, but the French shop in outdoor markets

E.     Roof is sun-drenched, simple, the only successful part of the building

 What Can we Learn From Corbusier’s failures?

-Modernist principles might be good for a painting, or even a house, but they do not succeed as a basis for organizing a city or society.

Le Corbusier, “Unite d’Habitation.” Marseilles, 1946-52. 25 October 2011
http://litspat.medialoperations.com/files/2010/05/unite-dhabitation-marseille.jpg

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969)

A.    mastered the use of glass in the steel-frame skyscraper, creating the face of the modern corporation

B.     linear, rational, and (in theory) cheap

C.     believed in an objective architecture based on the machine age; rejected ornaments, calling them “noodles”

D.     Philip Johnson said: “[Mies] believed in the ultimate truth of architecture, and especially of his architecture.”

E.     1954-58 Seagram Building: made the curtain wall of bronze because he wanted a warm dark color:  most elegant but most expensive curtain wall ever hung on steel frame

(Fiero 443-44)

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Seagram Building, New York, 1954-58. 25 October 2011
http://www.ou.edu/class/arch4443/
50''s%20Minimalism/Seagram%20Building.jpg

Pruitt-Igoe and the End of Modernity

“The failure of Pruitt-Igoe represents to many the failure of modernist thinking and high-tech solutions to social problems (rational planning built on objectivist models of human behavior).”

http://www.umsl.edu/~keelr/010/pruitt-igoe.htm

George Hellmuth and Minoru Yamasaki, Pruitt-Igoe Project, St. Louis, MO, 1956.
http://www.umsl.edu/~keelr/010/pruitt-igoe.htm

The Freudian Revolution

The Revolt of the Unconscious Against Civilizing Forces

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

A.    Like Marx, a determinist

B.     People determined by their instincts

1.      Life instinct: sex (libido)

2.      Death instinct: aggression, self-destruction

Freud: The Psyche

A.    Id:  the raw instincts

B.     Ego:  the manager of the id that sublimates the instincts

C.     Superego:  the “conscience” that manages the ego according to social standards and morality                                   

(Fiero 381)

Sublimation vs. Repression

A.    Sublimation=positive redirection/ modification of instincts

B.     Repression: When an instinct is not sublimated but frustrated. The instinct does not go away but takes the form of a neurotic symptom

                                               (Fiero 281-82)

Civilization and its Discontent (1930)

A.    Causes of suffering

1.      Body

2.      External world

3.      Relations with others

B.     Freud: methods to avoid suffering

1.      Voluntary isolation (avoid suffering from others)

2.      Human community (avoid suffering from external world)

3.      Intoxication

4.      Sublimation: art, science

5.      Delusion: alternative reality

6.      Mass delusion = religion

(Fiero 382-84)

Freud & the Arts

A.    Liberate the unconscious mind—an escape from “civilization”

B.     Stream of consciousness (literature): Proust, Joyce, Faulkner, Woolf

C.     Surrealism:

1.      literature: Kafka

2.      visual arts: Miro, Klee, Dali, Kahlo, Magritte

André Breton (1896-1966)

“Surrealist Manifesto” (1924)

SURREALISM, n. “Psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express -- verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner -- the actual functioning of thought. Dictated by the thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern” (http://www.artic.edu/reynolds/essays/hofmann3.php).

Film: Un Chien Andalou(1929) 
(“An Andalusian Dog”)

A.    By Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali Principle: surrealism/dream sequence; Buñuel: “no idea or image that might lend itself to a rational explanation of any kind would be accepted.” Only psychoanalysis might explain it.

B.     Famous images:

1.      woman’s eye being slit as cloud passed over moon;

2.      ants crawling out of hole in man’s palm;

3.      man carrying Ten Commandments, pulling pianos with rotting donkeys and two priests (one played by Dali himself).

Carl Jung (1875-1961)

Collective unconscious

A.    Not personal, but shared by human beings in general

B.     Encoded as archetypes: basic images, plot patterns, or character types reflecting the deep psychological needs of human beings, found in folklore, religious texts, & literature

C.    E.g., the child god, the hero, the wise old man

(left) Munch, “The Scream.” 1893. Wikipedia. Web. 28 July 2011. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scream

(middle) Dali, “The Persistence of Memory.” 1931. Wikipedia. Web. 28 July 2011. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Persistence_of_Memory

(right) Picasso, “Seated Woman.” 1927. Abacus-gallery. Web. 28 July 2011. http://www.abacus-gallery.com/cgi-bin/shop/shop.pl?fid=1285836587&cgifunction=form

III. Total War, Totalitarianism, and the Arts
ca. 1900-1950

A. Total Wars: WWI, WWII

World War I: Causes

A.    Extreme nationalism (roots in the 19th century)

B.     Militaristic view of war as heroic; highest expression of nation and individual

C.     Hostile alliance system

                                                        (Fiero 405)

B. War Ideology

Romantic Language of War

Source: Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory (1975)

-Horse = steed, charger

-Enemy= the foe

-Danger= peril

-Conquer= vanquish

-Brave= gallant

-The dead= the fallen

-To die= perish

-Warfare= strife

-Actions= deeds

-To win= conquer

-Quick= swift

-Sleep= slumber

-Enlist= join the colors

-Draft-notice= summons

Modern Warfare: WWI

A.    Trenches, barbed wire, machine guns

B.     Long battles without consequence (600,000 killed at Verdun, but nothing achieved)

C.     Propaganda necessary to keep soldiers and civilians supporting the war

Picasso, “Guernica.” 1937. Wikipedia. Web. 28 July 2011.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guernica_(painting)

Modern Irony

NOTHING is to be written on this side except the date and signature of the sender.  Sentences not required may be erased.

I am quite well.

I have been admitted into hospital

{sick, wounded}     and am going on well.

                                 and hope to be discharged soon.

I have received your letter dated________

I have received no letter from you {lately/ for a long time}

Signature only

Date____________________________________

War and Irony in Literature

A.    Owen, “Dolce et Decorum Est” (1918)

B.     Yeats, “The Second Coming” (1921)

C.     Jarrell, “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” (1945)

D.    Joseph Heller, Catch-22 (1955)

E.     Stanley Kubrick, Dr. Strangelove (Film, 1964)

C. Rise of German Fascism

Causes

A.    Humiliation from defeat in WW I

B.     Treaty of Versailles: $33 billion war debt; German army limited to 100,000

C.     Inflation: Gov. printed more money to pay debt; money became almost worthless—then Great Depression in 1929

                                               (Fiero 416-18)

Adolf Hitler (1889-1945)

A.    Born 1889, Austria: undisciplined, poor student

B.     Went to Vienna to study art, rejected from art academy

C.     Became anti-Semitic and anti-Marxist

Rise of Hitler and
National Socialist Workers’ Party (Nazi)

A.    1928: 12 seats in Reichstag (800,000 voters)

B.     1930: 107 seats in Reichstag (6.5 mill voters)

C.     1933: Hitler becomes chancellor, then Reichstag gives him dictatorial power

Note: Hitler was a product of democracy

Nazi Ideology

A.    Celebrated German soil and German blood

B.     Romantic view of German peasants

C.     The enemy: the city, industry, modernity

D.    The scapegoat: the Jews

Nazi View of Jews

A.    Outsiders: from outside Europe (corrupting the German blood)

B.     Urbanites (corrupting the German land)

C.     Businessmen/financiers (corrupting the German economy)

D.    Intellectuals and artists (corrupting German culture) [Marx and Freud were both Jewish]

Nazi View of Art

A.    Classicism and Romanticism are best

B.     Subjects: Good-looking German peasants; rural scenes

C.     Form: Representational art (experimental, distorted, and non-representational arts are “degenerate”)

D.    Exhibit mocking Modern Art in 1937 called “Degenerate Art”: Entartete Kunst

The Holocaust

A.    The Nazis passed laws to put Jews in ghettos

B.     Then they passed laws to move Jews to concentration camps, where 6,000,000 were murdered

C.     5,000,000 non-Jews also exterminated

The Holocaust: Uniqueness

A.    Focused: singled out Jews as target ethnic group (but Roman Catholics, gypsies, homosexuals, handicapped also killed)

B.     Official: it was the law

C.     Systematic: technology, bureaucracy, industry all work toward this goal

D.    Effective: 2/3 of Jewish population of Europe murdered

        Elie Wiesel at Auschwitz (with Oprah Winfrey)  

YouTube - Oprah and Elie Weisel at Auscwitz Part 1

End of WWII

Krzysztof Penderecki,
Threnody in Memory of the Victims of Hiroshima (1960)

A.    10 min. lamentation, written for 52 stringed instruments

B.     Begins with screaming tone at highest pitch of violins  

YouTube - Krzysztof Penderecki - Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima

Works Cited

Fiero, Gloria K. The Humanistic Tradition. Vol. 2. 6th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2011.