Art of the 20th Century





A Revolution in the Arts


 

Art Styles in 20th century Art Map


 

The Great Avant-garde Movements

Year by Year - 1909 -1912


 

Futurism
 

In contrast with other early 20th-century avant-garde movements, the distinctive feature of Futurism was its intention to become involved in all aspects of modem life. Its aim was to effect a systematic change in society and, true to the movement's name, lead it towards new departures into the "future". Futurism was a direction rather than a style. Its encouragement of eccentric behaviour often prompted impetuous and sometimes violent attempts to stage imaginative situations in the hope of provoking reactions. The movement tried to liberate its adherents from the shackles of 19th-century' bourgeois conventionality and urged them to cross the boundaries of traditional artistic genres in order to claim a far more complete freedom of expression. Through a barrage of manifestos that dealt not only with various aspects of art, such as painting, sculpture, music, architecture, and design, but with society in general, the Futurists proclaimed the cult of modernity and the advent of a new form of artistic expression, and put an end to the art of the past. The entire classical tradition, especially that of Italy, was a prime target for attack, while the worlds of technology, mechanization, and speed were embraced as expressions of beauty and subjects worthy of the artist's interest.

Futurism, which started out as a literary movement, had its first manifesto (signed by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti) published in Le Figaro in 1909. It soon attracted a group of young Italian artists - Umberto Boccioni, Giacomo Balla (1871-1958), Carlo Carra (1881-1966), Luigi Russolo (1885-1947), and Gino Severini (1883-1966) - who collaborated in writing the "Technical Manifesto of Futurist Painting" and the "Manifesto of the Futurist Painters", both of which were published in 1910.

Despite being the sole Italian avant-garde movement. Futurism first came to light in Paris where the cosmopolitan atmosphere was ready to receive and promote it. Its development coincided with that of Cubism, and the similarities and differences in the philosophies of the two movements have often been discussed. Without doubt they shared a common cause in making a definitive break with the traditional, objective methods of representation. However, the static quality of Cubism is evident when compared with the dynamism of the Futurists, as are the monochrome or subdued colours of the former in contrast to the vibrant use of colour by the latter. The Cubists' rational form of experimentation, and intellectual approach to the artistic process, also contrasts with the Futurists' vociferous and emotive exhortations for the mutual involvement of art and life, with expressions of total art and provocative demonstrations in public. Cubists held an interest in the objective value of form, while Futurists relied on images and the strength of perception and memory in their particularly dynamic paintings. The Futurists believed that physical objects had a kind of personality and vitality of their own. revealed by "force-lines" - Boccioni referred to this as "physical transcendentalism". These characteristic lines helped to inform the psychology and emotions of the observer and influenced surrounding objects "not by reflections of light, but by a real concurrence of lines and real conflicts of planes" (catalogue for the Bernheim-Jeune exhibition, 1911). In this way, the painting could interact with the observer who, for the first time, would be looking "at the centre of the picture" rather than simply viewing the picture from the front. This method of looking at objects that was based on their inherent movement - and thereby capturing the vital moment of a phenomenon within its process of continual change - was partly influenced by a fascination with new technology and mechanization. Of equal importance, however, was the visual potential of the new-found but flourishing art of cinematography. Futurists felt strongly that pictorial sensations should be shouted, not murmured. This belief was reflected in their use of very flamboyant, dynamic colours, based on the model of Neo-Impressionist theories of the fragmentation of light. A favourite subject among Futurist artists was the feverish life of the metropolis: the crowds of people, the vibrant nocturnal life of the stations and dockyards, and the violent scenes of mass movement and emotion that tended to erupt suddenly. Some Futurists, such as Balla, chose themes with social connotations, following the anarchic Symbolist tradition of northern Italy and the humanitarian populism of Giovanni Cena.
 

Umberto Boccioni Giacomo Balla

The first period of Futurism was an analytical phase, involving the analysis of dynamics, the fragmentation of objects into complementary shades of colour, and the juxtaposition of winding, serpentine lines and perpendicular straight lines. Milan was the centre of Futurist activity, which was led by Boccioni and supported by Carra and Russolo. These three artists visited Paris together in 1911 as guests of Severini, who had settled there in 1906. During their stay, they formulated a new artistic-language, which culminated in works dealing with the "expansion of objects in space" and "states of mind" paintings. A second period, when the Futurists adopted a Cubistic idiom, was known as the synthetic phase, and lasted from 1913 to 1916.

At this time, Boccioni took up sculpture, developing his idea of "sculpture of the environment" which heralded the "spatial" sculpture of Moore, Archipenko, and the Constructivists. In Rome, Balla and Fortunato Depero (1892-1960) created "plastic complexes", constructions of dynamic, basic silhouettes in harsh, solid colours. The outbreak of World War I prompted many Futurist artists to enlist as volunteers. This willingness to serve was influenced by the movement's doctrine, which maintained that war was the world's most effective form of cleansing. Both Boccioni and the architect Antonio Sant'Elia, who had designed an imaginary Futurist city, were killed in the war and the movement was brought to a sudden end.

During the 1920s, some Futurists attempted to revive the movement and align it with other European avant-garde movements, under the label of "Mechanical Art". Its manifesto, published in 1922. showed much in common with Purism and Constructivism. Futurism also became associated with "aeropainting" a technique developed in 1929 by Balla, Benedetta, Dottori, Fillia, and other artists. This painting style served as an expression of a desire for the freedom of the imagination and of fantasy.

 

Futurism

(Encyclopaedia Britannica)

Italian Futurismo, Russian Futurizm, early 20th-century artistic movement that centred in Italy and emphasized the dynamism, speed, energy, and power of the machine and the vitality, change, and restlessness of modern life in general. The most significant results of the movement were in the visual arts and poetry.

Futurism was first announced on Feb.20, 1909, when the Paris newspaper Le Figaro published a manifesto by the Italian poet and editor Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (q.v.). The name Futurism, coined by Marinetti, reflected his emphasis on discarding what he conceived to be the static and irrelevant art of the past and celebrating change, originality, and innovation in culture and society. Marinetti's manifesto glorified the new technology of the automobile and the beauty of its speed, power, and movement. He exalted violence and conflict and called for the sweeping repudiation of traditional cultural, social, and political values and the destruction of such cultural institutions as museums and libraries. The manifesto's rhetoric was passionately bombastic; its tone was aggressive and inflammatory and was purposely intended toinspire public anger and amazement, to arouse controversy, and to attract widespread attention.
Painting and sculpture

With the support of Marinetti, the painters Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Luigi Russolo, Giacomo Balla, and Gino Severini published several manifestos on painting in 1910. Like Marinetti, they glorified originality for its own sake and despised inherited traditions of art. Although they were not as yet working in what was to become the Futurist style, theybegan to emphasize an emotional involvement in the dynamics of modern life, and toward this end they called for rendering the perception of movement and communicating to the viewer the sensations of speed and change. To achieve this, the Futurist painters adopted the Cubist technique of depicting several sides and views of an object simultaneously by means of fragmented and interpenetrating plane surfaces and outlines. But the Futurists additionally sought to portray the object's movement in space, and they tried to achieve this goal by rhythmic spatial repetitions of the object's outlines during its transit, producing an effect akin to that obtained by making multiple and sequential photographic exposures of a moving object. The Futurist paintings differed from Cubist ones in other important ways. While the Cubists favoured still life and portraiture, the Futurists preferred such subjects as speeding automobiles and trains, racing cyclists, dancers, animals, and urban crowds in movement. The resulting paintings had brighter and more vibrant colours than Cubist works and revealed dynamic, agitated compositions in which rhythmically swirling forms reached crescendos of violent movement.

Boccioni also became interested in sculpture, publishing a manifesto on the subject in the spring of 1912. Soon afterward, he began working in this medium, creating the highly original “Development of a Bottle in Space” (1912) and “Unique Forms of Continuity in Space” (1913). Antonio Sant'Elia formulated a Futurist manifesto on architecture in 1914. His visionary drawings of highly mechanized cities and boldly modern skyscrapers of the future prefigure some of the most imaginative 20th-century architectural planning. Sant'Elia was killed in action in 1916 during World War I.

Boccioni, who had been the most talented artist in the group, also died during military service in 1916. This event, combined with dilution of the group's daring as a result of expansion of its personnel and the coming of war, brought an end to the Futurist movement as an important historical force in the visual arts.


Literature

After his initial broad manifesto of 1909, Marinetti wrote or had a hand in creating a whole series of manifestos dealing with poetry, the theatre, architecture, and other arts. He founded the journal Poesia at Paris in 1905, and he later founded a press with the same name to publish Futurist works. On proselytizing visits to England, France, Germany, and Russia, Marinetti influenced the work of the English founder of Vorticism, Wyndham Lewis, and the French poet Guillaume Apollinaire.

In Russia the Marinetti visit took root in a kind of Russian Futurism that went beyond its Italian model in a revolutionary social and political outlook. Marinetti influenced the two Russian writers considered the founders of Russian Futurism, Velimir Khlebnikov (q.v.), who remained a poet and a mystic, and the younger Vladimir Mayakovsky (q.v.), who became “the poet of the Revolution” and the popular spokesman of his generation. The Russians published their own manifesto in December 1912, entitled Poshchochina obshchestvennomu vkusu (“A Slap in the Face of Public Taste”), which echoed the Italian manifesto of the previous May. The Russian Futurists repudiated Aleksandr Pushkin, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and Leo Tolstoy and the then-current Russian symbolist verse and called for the creation of new techniques of writing poetry. Both the Russian and the Italian Futurist poets discarded logical sentence construction and traditional grammar and syntax; they frequently presented an incoherent string of words stripped of their meaning and used for their sound alone. As the first group of artists to identify wholeheartedly with the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the Russian Futurists sought to dominate post-Revolutionary culture and create a new art that would be integrated into all aspects of daily life of a revolutionary culture. They were favoured by Anatoly Lunacharsky, the first Soviet commissar of education, and given important cultural posts. But the Russian Futurists' challenging literary techniques and their theoretical premises of revolt and innovation proved too unstable a foundation upon which to build a broader literary movement. The Futurists' influence was negligible by the time of Mayakovsky's death in 1930.
 

Manifesto of the Futurist Painters

Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Luigi Russolo, Giacomo Balla, Gino Severini

TO THE YOUNG ARTISTS OF ITALY!

The cry of rebellion which we utter associates our ideals with those of the Futurist poets. These ideals were not invented by some aesthetic clique. They are an expression of a violent desire which boils in the veins of every creative artist today.

We will fight with all our might the fanatical, senseless and snobbish religion of the past, a religion encouraged by the vicious existence of museums. We rebel against that spineless worshipping of old canvases, old statues and old bric-a-brac, against everything which is filthy and worm-ridden and corroded by time. We consider the habitual contempt for everything which is young, new and burning with life to be unjust and even criminal.

Comrades, we tell you now that the triumphant progress of science makes profound changes in humanity inevitable, changes which are hacking an abyss between those docile slaves of past tradition and us free moderns, who are confident in the radiant splendor of our future.

We are sickened by the foul laziness of artists, who, ever since the sixteenth century, have endlessly exploited the glories of the ancient Romans.

In the eyes of other countries, Italy is still a land of the dead, a vast Pompeii, whit with sepulchres. But Italy is being reborn. Its political resurgence will be followed by a cultural resurgence. In the land inhabited by the illiterate peasant, schools will be set up; in the land where doing nothing in the sun was the only available profession, millions of machines are already roaring; in the land where traditional aesthetics reigned supreme, new flights of artistic inspiration are emerging and dazzling the world with their brilliance.

Living art draws its life from the surrounding environment. Our forebears drew their artistic inspiration from a religious atmosphere which fed their souls; in the same way we must breathe in the tangible miracles of contemporary life—the iron network of speedy communications which envelops the earth, the transatlantic liners, the dreadnoughts, those marvelous flights which furrow our skies, the profound courage of our submarine navigators and the spasmodic struggle to conquer the unknown. How can we remain insensible to the frenetic life of our great cities and to the exciting new psychology of night-life; the feverish figures of the bon viveur, the cocette, the apache and the absinthe drinker?

We will also play our part in this crucial revival of aesthetic expression: we will declare war on all artists and all institutions which insist on hiding behind a façade of false modernity, while they are actually ensnared by tradition, academicism and, above all, a nauseating cerebral laziness.

We condemn as insulting to youth the acclamations of a revolting rabble for the sickening reflowering of a pathetic kind of classicism in Rome; the neurasthenic cultivation of hermaphodic archaism which they rave about in Florence; the pedestrian, half-blind handiwork of ’48 which they are buying in Milan; the work of pensioned-off government clerks which they think the world of in Turin; the hotchpotch of encrusted rubbish of a group of fossilized alchemists which they are worshipping in Venice. We are going to rise up against all superficiality and banality—all the slovenly and facile commercialism which makes the work of most of our highly respected artists throughout Italy worthy of our deepest contempt.

Away then with hired restorers of antiquated incrustations. Away with affected archaeologists with their chronic necrophilia! Down with the critics, those complacent pimps! Down with gouty academics and drunken, ignorant professors!

Ask these priests of a veritable religious cult, these guardians of old aesthetic laws, where we can go and see the works of Giovanni Segantini today. Ask them why the officials of the Commission have never heard of the existence of Gaetano Previati. Ask them where they can see Medardo Rosso’s sculpture, or who takes the slightest interest in artists who have not yet had twenty years of struggle and suffering behind them, but are still producing works destined to honor their fatherland?

These paid critics have other interests to defend. Exhibitions, competitions, superficial and never disinterested criticism, condemn Italian art to the ignominy of true prostitution.

And what about our esteemed “specialists”? Throw them all out. Finish them off! The Portraitists, the Genre Painters, the Lake Painters, the Mountain Painters. We have put up with enough from these impotent painters of country holidays.

Down with all marble-chippers who are cluttering up our squares and profaning our cemeteries! Down with the speculators and their reinforced-concrete buildings! Down with laborious decorators, phony ceramicists, sold-out poster painters and shoddy, idiodic illustrators!

These are our final conclusions:

With our enthusiastic adherence to Futurism, we will:

1.Destroy the cult of the past, the obsession with the ancients, pedantry and academic formalism.

2. Totally invalidate all kinds of imitation.

3. Elevate all attempts at originality, however daring, however violent.

4. Bear bravely and proudly the smear of “madness” with which they try to gag all innovators.

5. Regard art critics as useless and dangerous.

6. Rebel against the tyranny of words: “Harmony” and “good taste” and other loose expressions which can be used to destroy the works of Rembrandt, Goya, Rodin...

7. Sweep the whole field of art clean of all themes and subjects which have been used in the past.

8. Support and glory in our day-to-day world, a world which is going to be continually and splendidly transformed by victorious Science.

The dead shall be buried in the earth’s deepest bowels! The threshold of the future will be swept free of mummies! Make room for youth, for violence, for daring!

 

FUTURIST SCULPTURE

Umberto Boccioni published his "Technical Manifesto of Futurist Sculpture" in 1912, despite having completed only two sculptural works at the time. He had developed his new theories after coming into contact with Duchamp-Villon, Archipenko, Brancusi, and Picasso while in Paris. Boccioni's ambition was to make sculpture capable of expressing the dynamic structures of modern society. To this end, he aimed to capture the totality of reality, including psychological and emotional dimensions, and all its varied facets in their continual condition of change. The resultant work would be "sculpture of environment", in which he could "fling open the figure and let it incorporate within itself whatever may surround it".
 

Alexander Archipenko

The Cubists had already tried a fresh approach to reality, interrupting the continuity of line and breaking up the rhythm of forms according to analytical and geometric conceptions. However, they did not alter the static perception of reality. Futurists aimed to convey all the changes that an object undergoes during movement. After demonstrating the sculptural motion of an everyday object in his famous "bottles" series (Development of a Bottle in Space, 1912), Boccioni tackled the theme of movement in the human body, constructing aerodynamic, compressed compositions with a succession of concave and convex shapes. By stretching and distorting his figures, he created "syntheses" of "internal plastic infinity" and "external plastic infinity", as seen in his Unique Forms of Continuity in Space (1913). The most conclusive work of Boccioni's sculptural experimentation was his inspired composition Horse + rider + buildings (1913-14). The materials chosen for this work, including wood, tin. copper, and cardboard, represented the need to progress from traditional sculpture made in a single material to the use of a multiplicity of colours and materials. Picasso's assemblage of various materials for his sculptures in 1911 and 1912 had already started to change the course of plastic art in Europe. The Horse (1914) by Duchamp-Villon showed a remarkable affinity with Boccioni's work, which was also discernible in Lipchitz's solid three-dimensional structures, and in Constructivist works.

 

I. Avant-garde sculpture (1909–20)

(Encyclopaedia Britannica)

In the second decade of the 20th century the tradition of body rendering extending from the Renaissance to Rodin was shattered, and the Cubists, Brancusi, and the Constructivists emerged as the most influential forces. Cubism, with its compositions of imagined rather than observed forms and relationships, had a similarly marked influence.

One of the first examples of the revolutionary sculpture is Picasso's “Woman's Head” (1909). The sculptor no longer relied upon traditional methods of sculpture or upon his sensory experience of the body; what was given to his outward senses of sight and touch was dominated by strong conceptualizing. The changed and forceful appearance of the head derives from the use of angular planar volumes joined in a new syntax independent of anatomy. In contrast to traditional portraiture, the eyes and mouth are less expressive than the forehead, cheeks, nose, and hair. Matisse's head of “Jeanette” (1910–11) also partakes of a personal reproportioning that gives a new vitality to the lessmobile areas of the face. Likewise influenced by the Cubists' manipulation of their subject matter, Alexander Archipenko in his “Woman Combing Her Hair” (1915) rendered the body by means of concavities rather than convexities and replaced the solid head by its silhouette within which there is only space.

Brancusi also abandoned Rodin's rhetoric and reduced the body to its mystical inner core. His “Kiss” (1908), with its twoblocklike figures joined in symbolic embrace, has a concentration of expression comparable to that of primitive art but lacking its spiritualistic power. In this and subsequentworks Brancusi favoured hard materials and surfaces as wellas self-enclosed volumes that often impart an introverted character to his subjects. His bronze “Bird in Space” became a cause célèbre in the 1920s when U.S. customs refused to admit it duty free as a work of art.

Raymond Duchamp-Villon began as a follower of Rodin, but his portrait head “Baudelaire” (1911) contrasts with that by his predecessor in its more radical departure from the flesh; the somewhat squared-off head is molded by clear, hard volumes. His famous “Horse” (1914), a coiled, vaguely mechanical form bearing little resemblance to the animal itself, suggests metaphorically the horsepower of locomotive drive shafts and, by extension, the mechanization of modern life. Duchamp-Villon may have been influenced by Umberto Boccioni, one of the major figures in the Italian Futurist movement and a sculptor who epitomized the Futurist love of force and energy deriving from the machine. In “Unique Forms of Continuity in Space” and “Head + House + Light” (1911), he carried out his theories that the sculptor should model objects as they interact with their environment, thus revealing the dynamic essence of reality.

Jacques Lipchitz came to Cubism later than Archipenko and Duchamp-Villon, but after mastering its meaning he produced superior sculpture. In 1913, after several years of conservative training, he made a number of small bronzes experimenting with the compass curve and angular planes. They reveal an understanding of the Cubist reconstitution of the bodies in an impersonal quasi-geometric armature over which the artist exercised complete autonomy. Continuing towork in this fashion, he produced “Man with a Guitar”, and “Standing Figure” (1915), in which voids are introduced, while in the early 1920s he developed freer forms more consistently based on curves.

Lehmbruck's mature style emerged in the “Kneeling Woman”(1911) and “Standing Youth” (1913), in which his gothicized, elongated bodies with their angular posturings and appearance of growing from the earth give expression to his notions of modern heroism. In contrast to this spiritualized view is his “The Fallen” (1915–16), intended as a compassionate memorial for friends lost in the war.


Constructivism and Dada

Between 1912 and 1914 there emerged anantisculptural movement, called Constructivism, that attacked the false seriousness and hollow moral ideals of academic art. The movement began with the relief fabrications of Vladimir Tatlin in 1913. The Constructivists and their sympathizers preferred industrially manufactured materials, such as plastics, glass, iron, and steel, to marble and bronze. Their sculptures were not formed by carving, modelling, and casting but by twisting, cutting, welding, or literally constructing: thus the name Constructivism.

Unlike traditional figural representation, the Constructivists' sculpture denied mass as a plastic element and volume as an expression of space; for these principles they substitutedgeometry and mechanics. In the machine, where the Futurists saw violence, the Constructivists saw beauty. Like their sculptures, it was something invented; it could be elegant, light, or complex, and it demanded the ultimate in precision and calculation.

Seeking to express pure reality, with the veneer of accidental appearance stripped away, the Constructivists fabricated objects totally devoid of sentiment or literary association; Naum Gabo's work frequently resembled mathematical models, and several Constructivist sculptures,such as those by Kazimir Malevich and Georges Vantongerloo, have the appearance of architectural models. The Constructivists created, in effect, sculptural metaphors for the new world of science, industry, and production; their aesthetic principles are reflected in much of the furniture, architecture, and typography of the Bauhaus.

A second important offshoot of the Cubist collage was the fantastic object or Dadaist assemblage. The Dadaist movement, while sharing Constructivism's iconoclastic vigour, opposed its insistence upon rationality. Dadaist assemblages were, as the name suggests, “assembled” from materials lying about in the studio, such as wood, cardboard, nails, wire, and paper; examples are Kurt Schwitters' “Rubbish Construction” (1921) and Marcel Duchamp's “Disturbed Balance” (1918). This art generally exalted the accidental, the spontaneous, and the impulsive, giving free play to associations. Its paroxysmal and negativist tenor led its subscribers into other directions, but Dadaism formed the basis of the imaginative sculpture thatemerged in the later 1920s.

Conservative reaction (1920s)

In the 1920s modern art underwent a reaction comparable to the changes experienced by society as a whole. In the postwar search for security, permanence, and order, the earlier insurgent art seemed to many to be antithetical to these ends, and certain avant-garde artists radically changed their art and thought. Lipchitz' portraits of “Gertrude Stein” (1920) and “Berthe Lipchitz” (1922) return volume and features to the head but not an intimacy of contact with the viewer. Tatlin and Alexander Rodchenko broke with the Constructivists around 1920. Jacob Epstein developed some of his finest naturalistic portraiture in this decade. Rudolph Belling abandoned the mechanization that had characterized his “Head” (1925) in favour of musculature and individual identity in his statue of “Max Schmeling” of 1929. Matisse's reclining nudes and the “Back” series of 1929 show less violently worked surfaces and more massive and obvious structuring.

Aristide Maillol continued refining his relaxed and uncomplicated female forms with their untroubled, stolid surfaces. In Germany, Georg Kolbe's “Standing Man and Woman” of 1931 seems a prelude to the Nazi health cult, andthe serene but vacuous figures of Arno Breker, Karl Albiker, and Ernesto de Fiori were simply variations on a studio theme in praise of youth and body culture. In the United States adherents of the countermovement included William Zorach, Chaim Gross, Adolph Block, Paul Manship, and Wheeler Williams.



II. Sculpture of fantasy (1920–45)


One trend of Surrealist or Fantasist sculpture of the late 1920s and the 1930s consisted of compositions made up of found objects, such as Meret Oppenheim's “Object, Fur Covered Cup” (1936). As with Dadaist fabrications, the unfamiliar conjunction of familiar objects in these assemblies was dictated by impulse and irrationality and could be summarized by Isidore Ducasse's often-quoted statement, “Beautiful . . . as the chance meeting on a dissecting table of a sewing machine with an umbrella.”

Of greater artistic importance was the sculpture of a second group that included Alberto Giacometti, Jean Arp, Lipchitz, Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Picasso, Julio González, andAlexander Calder. Although these sculptors were sometimes in sympathy with Surrealist objectives, their aesthetic and intellectual concerns prohibited a more consistent attachment. Their art, derived from visions, hallucinations, reverie, and memory, might best be called the sculpture of fantasy. Giacometti's “Palace at 4 A.M.”, for example, interprets the artist's vision not in terms of the external public world but in an enigmatic, private language. Moore's series of “Forms” suggest shapes in the process of forming under the influence of each other and the medium of space. The appeal of primitive and ancient ritual art to Moore, the element of surprise in children's toys for Calder, and the wellsprings of irrationality from which Arp and Giacometti drank were for these men the means by which wonder and the marvelous could be restored to sculpture. While their works are often violent transmutations of life, their objectives were peaceful, “. . . to inject into the vain and bestial world and its retinue, the machines, something peaceful and vegetative.” ([Jean] Hans Arp, On My Way, Documents of Modern Art, vol. 6, p. 123, George Wittenborn, Inc., New York, 1948.)


Other sculpture (1920–45)

The sculpture of Moore, Gaston Lachaise, and Henri Laurens during the 1920s and '30s included mature, ripe human bodies, erogenic images reminiscent of Hindu sculpture, appearing inflated with breath rather than supported by skeletal armatures. Lachaise's “Montagne” (1934–35) and Moore's reclining nudes of the '30s and '40s are identifications with earth, growth, vital rhythm, and silent power. Prior to Moore and the work of Archipenko, Boccioni, and Lipchitz, space had been a negative element in figure sculpture; in Moore's string sculptures and Lipchitz' transparencies of the 1920s, it became a prime element of design.

Lipchitz' figure style of the late 1920s and '30s is inseparable from his emerging optimistic humanism. His concern with subject matter began with the ecstatic “Joy of Life” (1927). Thereafter his seminal themes were of love and security and assertive passionate acts that throw off the inertia of his Cubist figures. In the “Return of the Prodigal Son” (1931), for example, strong, facetted curvilinear volumes weave a pattern of emotional and aesthetic accord between parent and child.

The American sculptor John B. Flannagan rendered animal forms as well as the human figure in a simple, almost naive style. His interest in what he called the “profound subterranean urges of the human spirit in the whole dynamiclife process, birth, growth, decay and death” (quoted in Carl Zigrosser, Catalog for the Exhibition of the Sculpture of John B. Flannagan, p. 8, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1942) resulted in “Head of a Child” (1935), “New One” (1935), “Not Yet” (1940), and “The Triumph of the Egg” (1941).

Somewhat more mystical are Brancusi's “Beginning of the World” (1924), “Fish” (1928–30), and “The Seal” (1936). As with Flannagan, the recurrent egg form in Brancusi's art symbolizes the mystery of life. Nature in motion is the subject of Alexander Calder's mobiles, such as “Lobster Trapand Fish Tail” (1939) and others suggesting the movement of leaves, trees, and snow. In the history of sculpture there is no more direct or poetic expression of nature's rhythm.


Developments after World War II

“The modern artist is the counterpart in our time of the alchemist-philosopher who once toiled over furnaces, alembics and crucibles, ostensibly to make gold, but who consciously entered the most profound levels of being, philosophizing over the melting and mixing of various ingredients” (Ibram Lassaw, quoted by Lawrence Campbell in Art News, p. 66, The Art Foundation Press, New York, March 1954). While work in the older mediums persisted, it was the welding, soldering, and cutting of metal that emerged after 1945 as an increasingly popular medium for sculpture. The technical and expressive potential of uncast metal sculpturewas carried far beyond the earlier work of González and Picasso.

The appeal of metal is manifold. It is plentifully available from commercial supply houses; it is flexible and permanent; it allows the artist to work quickly; and it is relatively cheap compared to casting. Industrial metals also relate modern sculpture physically, aesthetically, and emotionally to its context in modern civilization. As the American sculptor David Smith has commented, “Possibly steel is so beautiful because of all the movement associatedwith it, its strength and functions. Yet it is also brutal, the rapist, the murderer and death-dealing giants are also its offspring” (quoted in Garola Giedion-Welcker, ContemporarySculpture, Documents of Modern Art, vol. 12, p. 123, George Wittenborn, Inc., New York, 1955).

The basic tool of the metal sculptor is the oxyacetylene torch, which achieves a maximum temperature of 6,500° F (3,600° C; the melting point of bronze is 2,000° F). The intensity and size of the flame can be varied by alternating torch tips. In the hands of a skilled artist the torch can cut or weld, harden or soften, colour and lighten or darken metal. Files, hammers, chisels, and jigs are also used in shaping themetal, worked either hot or cold. The sculptor may first construct a metal armature that he then proceeds to conceal or expose. He builds up his form with various metals and alloys, fusing or brazing them, and may expose parts or the whole to the chemical action of acids. This type of work requires constant control, and many sculptors work out and guard their own recipes.

Other sculptors such as Peter Agostini, George Spaventa, Peter Grippe, David Slivka, and Lipchitz, who were interested in bringing spontaneity, accident, and automatism into play, returned to the more labile media of wax and clay, with occasional cire-perdue casting, which permit a very direct projection of the artist's feelings. By the nature of the processes such work is usually on a small scale.

A number of artists brought new technique and content to theDadaist form of the assemblage. Among the most important was the American Joseph Cornell, who combined printed matter and three-dimensional objects in his intimately sealed, often enigmatic “boxes.”

Another modern phenomenon, seen particularly in Italy, France, and the United States, was the revival of relief sculpture and the execution of such works on a large scale, intended to stand alone rather than in conjunction with a building. Louise Nevelson, for example, typically employed boxes as container compartments in which she carefully disposed an assortment of forms and then painted them a uniform colour. In Europe the outstanding metal reliefs were those by Alberto Burri, Gio and Arnaldo Pomodoro, César, Zoltán Kemény, and Manuel Rivera.

Development of metal sculpture, particularly in the United States, led to fresh interpretations of the natural world. In the art of Richard Lippold and Ibram Lassaw, the search for essential structures took the form of qualitative analogies. Lippold's “Full Moon” (1949–50) and “Sun” (1953–56; commissioned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, to hang in its room of Persian carpets) show an intuition of a basic regularity, precise order, and completeness that underlies the universe. Lassaw's comparable interest in astronomical phenomena inspired his “Planets” (1952) and “The Clouds of Magellan” (1953).

In contrast to the macrocosmic concern of these two artists were the interests of sculptors such as Raymond Jacobson, whose “Structure” (1955) derived from his study of honeycombs. Using three basic sizes, Jacobson constructed his sculpture of hollowed cubes emulating the modular, generally regular but slightly unpredictable formal quality ofthe honeycomb.

Isamu Noguchi's “Night Land” is one of the first pure landscapes in sculpture. David Smith's “Hudson River Landscape” (1951), Theodore J. Roszak's “Recollections of the Southwest” (1948), Louise Bourgeois's “Night Garden” (1953), and Leo Amino's “Jungle” (1950) are later examples.

In the 1960s a number of sculptors, particularly in the United States, began to experiment with using the natural world as a kind of medium rather than a subject. Among the more notable examples were the American Robert Smithson, who frequently employed earth-moving equipment to alter natural sites, and the Bulgarian-born Christo, whose “wrappings” of both natural and man-made structures in synthetic cloth generated considerable controversy. The name environmental sculpture has come to denote such works, together with other sculptures that constitute self-contained environments.


The human figure since World War II

Since figural sculpture moved away from straightforward imitation, the human form has been subjected to an enormous variety of interpretations. The thin, vertical, Etruscan idol-like figures developed by Giacometti showed his repugnance toward rounded and smooth body surfaces orstrong references to the flesh. His men and women do not exist in felicitous concert with others; each form is a secret sanctum, a maximum of being wrested from a minimum of material. Reg Butler's work (e.g., “Woman Resting” [1951]) and that of David Hare (“Figure in a Window” [1955]) treat the body in terms of skeletal outlines. Butler's figures partake of nonhuman qualities and embody fantasies of an unsentimental and aggressive character; the difficulties andtensions of existence are measured out in taut wire armatures and constricting malleable bronze surfaces. Kenneth Armitage and Lynn Chadwick, two other British sculptors, make the clothing a direct extension of the figure, part of a total gesture. In his “Family Going for a Walk” (1953), for example, Armitage creates a fanciful screenlike figure recalling wind-whipped clothing on a wash line. Both Chadwick and Armitage transfer the burden of expression from human limbs and faces to the broad planes of the bulk of the sculpture. Chadwick's sculptures are often illusive hybrids suggesting alternately impotent De Chirico-like figures or animated geological forms.

Luciano Minguzzi admired the amply proportioned feminine form. Minguzzi's women (e.g., “Woman Jumping Rope” [1954]) may exert themselves with a kind of playful abandon. Marini's women (e.g., “Dancer” [1949]) enjoy a stately passivity, their quiescent postures permitting a contrapuntal focus on the graceful transition from the slender extremities to the large, compact, voluminous torso, with small, rich surface textures.

The segmented torso, popular with Arp, Laurens, and Picasso earlier, continued to be reinterpreted by Alberto Viani, Bernard Heiliger, Karl Hartung, and Raoul Hague. The emphasis of these sculptors was upon more subtle, sensuous joinings that created self-enclosing surfaces. Viani's work, for example, does not glorify body culture or suggest macrocosmic affinities as does an ideally proportioned Phidian figure; his torsos are seen in a private way, as in his “Nude” (1951), with its large body and golf ball-sized breasts.

Among the most impressive figure sculptures made in the United States in the late 1950s were those by Seymour Lipton. Their large-scale, taut design and provocative interweaving of closed and open shapes restore qualities of mystery and the heroic to the human form.

The American George Segal emerged from the Pop movement of the 1950s and '60s as a major figurative sculptor. His plaster casts from live models, usually left white and indistinctly featured, are often situated in mundane settings of actual furniture or other objects.

The works of the French-born American artist Marisol contrast sharply with Segal's in their boxlike forms, onto which highly individualized features are usually painted. In the 1970s and '80s, Duane Hanson, another American, took Segal's live-model casting technique a step further with his startlingly naturalistic, fully pigmented cast fibreglass figures.


Archaizing, idol making, and religious sculpture


After World War II several sculptors became interested in theart of early Mediterranean civilizations. The result was a conscious archaizing of the human form with the intent of recapturing qualities of Cycladic idols, early Greek and Egyptian statuary, and some aspects of late Roman art.

Moore's admiration for archaic Greek sculpture produced “Draped Reclining Figure” (1952), which shows his return to the solid form and the suggestion of power and force by using drapery as a tense foil for the volumes that press against it. His “King and Queen” (1952–53) resulted from further excursions into the archaic Greek myth world.

The interest in recreating idols or totems was continued by Arp in his “Idol” (1950) and by Noguchi in his Stone Age-type sculptures for the Connecticut General Life Insurance Company (Hartford). By creating presences that elude rational definition, these artists restored to art its ancient aura of myth, mystery, and magic in an age that consistently disclaims their existence.

The argument that modern sculpture is inappropriate for religious requirements is disproved by works of Lipchitz, Lassaw, and Herbert Ferber. In keeping with the Jewish preference for nonfigural art, Ferber's “. . . and the bush was not consumed” (1951), commissioned by a synagogue in Millburn, New Jersey, comprises clusters of branches and boldly shaped weaving flames, invisibly suspended in a powerful and intimate vision that absorbs its viewers with itshypnotic rhythm. Lassaw's “Pillar of Fire,” for the exterior of a synagogue in Springfield, Massachusetts, also has a mesmerizing pattern recalling the illusory images sometimes seen in flames. Lipchitz' sculpture of the “Virgin of Assy” (1948–54) was commissioned for the Catholic church at Assy, France.

Moreover, an increasing number of gifted sculptors are providing handsome liturgical objects and decorations, such as Harry Bertoia's shimmering reredos, Lipton's work for a synagogue in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Roszak's sculptured spire for Kresge Chapel on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge.

 

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Nieuwe beelding [Dut. ‘new imagery’].

Term used by Piet Mondrian and other artists associated with DE STIJL in the 1910s and 1920s. The search for the ‘new imagery’ was characterized by the use of the most basic elements of image-making: straight lines (horizontal and vertical), the primary colours and rectangular forms. The theosophist M. H. J. Schoenmaekers also used the term in writing about his central concepts in Het nieuwe wereldbeeld (‘New world image’; 1915) and Beeldende wiskunde (‘Visual mathematics’; 1916). The two uses of nieuwe beelding are not, however, related.

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Der Sturm

Magazine published in Berlin from 1910 to 1932 which promoted the avant-garde in Germany. It is particularly well known for its reproduction of original Expressionist graphics and woodcuts. It was founded and edited by HERWARTH WALDEN, who had worked for brief periods as editor for the journals Der neue Weg and Das Theater (1908–10), before founding Der Sturm, the Sturm-Galerie (1911–27) and the Sturm publishing house. Der Sturm was an important carrier of the work and ideas of leading German and European modernist writers and painters before World War I and introduced the work of the Italian Futurists and French Cubists to Germany; it also, however, included articles on a wide variety of topical issues, including birth control, women’s rights and legal cases. The use of daily-newspaper format (three columns in bold Roman type) meant that artistic affairs appeared as ‘news’, allowing Der Sturm to play a polemical role in contemporary debates. Walden’s own editorials were mostly satirical, including vicious attacks on German cultural nationalism, the parochial tastes and prejudices of the German bourgeoisie, and, above all, art criticism.

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Moderne Kunstkring [Dut.: ‘Modern art circle’].

Group of Dutch artists founded in November 1910 on the initiative of Conrad Kikkert (1882–1965), a Dutch painter and critic, who had moved to Paris in the same year. The objective was to convey to the Netherlands the latest developments in painting in Paris. Its members included a large number of Dutch painters who either had connections with Paris or lived there. Kikkert financed the venture. The first exhibition was held between 6 October and 5 November 1911 at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. It was a great success, attracting 6000 visitors. Of the 166 works shown, half came from abroad. As ‘father of Cubism’, Paul Cézanne was well represented by 28 works from the Hoogendijk collection; also exhibited were 19 works by Auguste Herbin, 7 by Pablo Picasso and 6 by Georges Braque. The Paris-based painter Lodewijk Schelfhout (1881–1943), one of the first Dutch artists to paint in a Cubist style, submitted 12 works; other Dutch artists, such as Jan Sluyters, Kees van Dongen  and Piet Mondrian, were mainly influenced by Fauvism. Mondrian showed the triptych Evolution (1910–11) and Red Mill (1910), in which, in addition to a vivid use of colour, he first divided the surface in a schematic manner; after December 1911, when he went to Paris at Kikkert’s insistence, he came under the influence of Cubism.

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White Birch Society [Shirakabaha].

Japanese society of literary figures and artists formed in Tokyo in 1910 by, among others, the novelists Saneatsu Mushanokoji (1885–1976) and Naoya Shiga (1883–1971), and the painter and critic Muneyoshi Yanagi. The society produced an eponymous monthly journal, the first issue of which appeared in April 1910. The aim of the journal was to discuss ideas on Western literature and art and to introduce to Japan the work of such major Western artists as Cézanne, van Gogh and Rodin. The society greatly influenced young Japanese artists, such as Ryusei Kishida, whose early work was inspired by late Impressionism, and who was a founder of the Grass and Earth Society of Western-style painters. The society also held exhibitions of Western art (principally reproductions), including a show of Western prints (Tokyo, 1911) and another showing the work of Rodin, Renoir and Bernard Leach. The society’s journal ran for 160 issues, until August 1923.

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Jack of Diamonds [Rus. Bubnovy Valet].
 

Group of Russian avant-garde painters active in Moscow from 1910 to 1917. It was founded by Mikhail Larionov, Natalia Goncharova, Aristarkh Lentulov, Pyotr Konchalovsky, Robert Falk, Ilya Mashkov and Aleksandr Kuprin, young artists who found membership of existing art societies no longer compatible with their experimental styles of painting. Regular participants included Alexandra Exter, David Burlyuk and Vladimir Burlyuk. The name ‘Jack of Diamonds’, chosen by Larionov, suggested not only the roguish behaviour of the avant-garde but also their love of popular graphic art forms such as old printed playing cards.

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Jack of Diamonds

(Encyclopaedia Britannica)

also called Knave Of Diamonds, Russian Bubnovy Valet, group of artists founded in Moscow in 1909, whose members were for the next few years the leading exponents of avant-garde art in Russia. The group's first exhibition, held in December 1910, included works by the French Cubists Albert Gleizes, Henri Le Fauconnier, and André Lhote; other paintings were exhibited by Wassily Kandinsky and Alexey von Jawlensky, both Russian artists then living in Germany. The Russian members of the group themselves—Robert Falk, Aristarkh Lentulov, Pyotr Konchalovsky, and Ilya Mashkov—displayed portraits and still lifes that were strongly influenced by the French artists Paul Cézanne and Henri Matisse. Other Russians participating in this first exhibition were Mikhail Larionov and Nathalie Goncharova, as well as Kazimir Malevich.

In succeeding Jack of Diamonds exhibitions, works by the German painters Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Erich Heckel, and Max Pechstein were shown, as well as works by the French artist Fernand Léger. Also exhibiting with the group was Vladimir Tatlin, who later founded Russian Constructivism.
 

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Donkey’s Tail [Rus. Oslinyy Khvost].

Russian group of painters active in 1911–15. It was led by Mikhail Larionov and Natal’ya Goncharova. The name was chosen by Larionov and recalled a famous artistic scandal in Paris, when a picture, painted by tying a brush to a donkey’s tail, was exhibited without comment at the Salon des Indépendants of 1905. The Donkey’s Tail group was the result of a difference in aesthetic ideology within the Jack of Diamonds group. While most of their colleagues in Jack of Diamonds preferred to rely on the example of contemporary French and German painting, Larionov and Goncharova adopted the view that their art should evolve from the stylistic traditions of popular Russian art forms, such as the icon and lubok (a type of wood-engraving). A few, such as Kazimir Malevich and Alexsey Morgunov (1884–1935), shared their views and resigned in order to help found Donkey’s Tail in 1911. The official launch of the group took place in early 1912 at the Jack of Diamonds conference, when Goncharova and Larionov interrupted the proceedings and, ‘in a halo of scandal’ (Livshits), proclaimed the formation of Donkey’s Tail and their secession from Jack of Diamonds.

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