Early and Mid 20th c. Art - Modernism

There is no must in art because art is free.   Wassily Kandinsky

Key Ideas

• Early Modernism developed out of political unrest in all parts of the world.
• Artists had really developed their own styles and were quick to accept new technologies
• Rise in the Avant-garde
• Armory Show of 1913
• Gallery 291
• Many artists published their own manifestos about their artworks and philosophies of their movement.

​Movements, Dates, and Major Artists

• Fauvism (c. 1905)
• Expressionism (1905-1930s)

1. Die Bruke (1905)
2. Der Blaue Reiter (1911)

• Cubism (1907-1930s)
• Futurism (1909-1914)
• Suprematism (1913-1920s)
• Constructivism (1914-1920s)
• Dada (1916-1925)
• DeStijl (1917-1930s)
• Bauhaus (1919-1933)
• Precisionism (1920s)
• Surrealism (1924-1930s)
• Art Deco (1920-1930s)
• Organic Art (1920s-1930s)
• Depression Era (1930s)

History

• Imperialist Expansion:                   

1. Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Portugal --> Africa
2. Britain --> India
3. Dutch --> Indochina
4. Russia --> Central Asia and Siberia
5. Japan as its own rising formidable power in the Pacific                  

• 1917             The US entered World War I
• 1930s           Great Depression: Huge economic difficulties in the US and other Western countries
• 1920s-1930s  Rise of Totalitarianism: Mussolini in Italy, Stalin in the Soviet Union, Hitler in Germany
• 1941              The US entered World War II with the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese
• 1945              WWII ends: The Allied forces defeated Germany, US dropped atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Additional Resources

Artists and Movements Review 
* SmartHistory through Khan Academy
* World Wide Arts Resources, has information on most movements that we've covered, including medieval. Check this site out and click on a movement for this chapter on the left side in blue
* What's going on in the world politically during the early 20th century - World History Chronology, World War I.
* Collection of images on F.L. Wright's Fallingwater architecture
* Article from Huffington Post about Benton's work and influence in America
* Have Instant Netflix? Watch The Rape of Europa and learn about Hitler's and the Nazi's involvement in the thievery of the world's most significant Artworks
* YouTube video: Kirchner's Street, Dresden
* YouTube video: Picasso's Guernica
* YouTube video: Salvador Dali: Destino
* YouTube video: Gelatin Silver Print

ADDITIONAL READINGS: 
​     -African Influences in Modern Art
     -Heilbrunn Timeline Thematic Essay: Cubism
     -Bauhaus school in Germany 
     -CALDER

Vocabulary

abstract
action painting
assemblage
biomorphism
cantilever
collage
color field painting
documentary photography
earthwork
ferroconcrete
frottage
Happening
Harlem Renaissance
installation
mobile
ready-made
silkscreen

Artwork List

Goldfish
Kandinsky's Untitled
Kirchner's Self Portrait as a Soldier
Memorial Sheet for Karl Liebknecht
Les Demoiselles
Guernica
The Portuguese
Brancusi's The Kiss
The Steerage
Fountain
The Persistence of Memory
Object
The Two Fridas
The Jungle
The Results of the First Five-Year Plan
Composition with Red, Blue, Yellow
Kaufmann House
Villa Savoye
The Migration of the Negro, Panel no. 49
Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in the Alameda Park

Notecard Images