Chapter 33: The Development of Modernist Art - The Early 20th Century
During the first half of the 20thcentury, rampant industrialization matured into international industrial capitalism, which fueled the rise of consumer economics. These developments presented society with great promise and significant problems. Change brought elation and anxiety, euphoria and alienation. These emotions would characterize Europe for the early decades. World War I, the Great Depression, the rise of totalitarianism, and World War II exacerbated this schizophrenic attitude. The arts reflected this same mind set in the lofty utopian vision of the Bauhaus and De Stijl, on one hand, and the scathing social commentary of the Dada artists, on the other.
New discoveries in many fields forced people and society to revise radically their understanding of the world. This change was rooted in the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment of the previous centuries. Artists precipitated in this reassessment, often acknowledging these new discoveries by shifting the theoretical bases of their work. Much of the history of early 20th century art is a history of a radical rejection of traditional limitations and definitions both of art and the universe.
One of the fundamental Enlightenment beliefs was faith in science. Because it was based on empirical or observable, fact, science provided a mechanistic conception of the universe which provided for many an alternative to traditional religious teachings. As promoted in the classic physics of Isaac Newton, the universe was a huge machine consisting of time, space, and matter. The early 20th century witnessed an astounding burst in scientific activity that challenged this model. The new theories espoused by Planck, Einstein, Rutherford and Bohr, shattered the existing faith in the objective reality of matter. Time and space were no longer thought of as absolute, rather, time and space are relative to the observer and linked to a four dimensional space time continuum. These new scientific theories and understandings of the universe changed the view of physical nature and raised the curtain on the Atomic Age.
In addition to physics, there were great advances in chemistry and biology that yielded knowledge of polymers, plastics, fertilizers, vitamins, antibiotics, and many others, which resulted in many products that improved life. Technological advances led to the development of radios, radar, television, cinema, municipal transport systems, electrical street lighting and home appliances.
Chemical technology led to great advance in fighting disease famine, food production, and processing.
Philosophy, psychology, and economic theory, underwent significant changes as challenges to the primacy of reason and objective reality emerged. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), a German intellectual rejected the rational. He believed that Western society was decadent and suppressed because of excessive reliance on reason at the expense of emotion and passion. He blamed Christianity as the reason for this and insisted that societies could attain liberation and renewal only when they acknowledged that God was dead.
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)examined the irrational mind and destabilized the long held belief in the rational nature of humanity. He developed the principles for what became known as psychoanalysis. He argued in his research that the unconscious and inner drives control human behavior. This unconscious control is due to repression of uncomfortable past experiences or memories. Making people aware of their suppressed memories could heal them.
Carl Jung (1875-1961) expanded on Freud’s theories. Jung believed therapists could understand behavior and personality of an individual by identifying patterns in his or her dreams. Jung further said that the unconsciousness is composed of two facets, a personal unconscious and a collective unconscious. The collective unconscious comprises memories and associations all humans share, such as archetypes (original models) and mental constructions. According to Jung, the collective unconscious accounts for the development of myths, religions, and philosophies.
Marxism
Industrialization greatly effected society in the 19th and 20th centuries. The owners and managers of the industrial giants wielded extraordinary economic and social power. Do to the widening gap between the leaders of industry and the laborers, the popularity of Marxism grew.
In the early 20th century people faced fundamental and revolutionary challenges in how they viewed the world. These changes would be reflected in the art that was produced.
World War I and the Russian Revolution
The development of advanced European and American societies led to expansion. This expansion has been called imperialism. This imperialism was capitalist and expansionist establishing colonies as raw material resources, manufacturing markets, and territories. This also brought on the great missionary thrusts into Africa and other places. The goal was to bring the “light” of Christianity and civilization to “backward peoples” and educating “inferior races.” Darwin’s influence was evident in the thinking that imperialism was also survival of the fittest.
The development of nation states did not lead to peace and harmony. Nationalism and the imperialistic spirit led to competition instead. Countries negotiated treaties and alliances to protect their interests. These alliances led to World War I, which lasted from 1914-1918. WWI destroyed any romantic illusions about war. Nine million people were killed in battle. The introduction of poison gas added to the horror of the inhumanity. The devastation of WWI brought widespread misery, social disruption, and economic collapse.
The Russian Revolution saw the collapse of the Czar and the triumph of the Bolsheviks, later called Communists, led by Lenin (1870-1924). Russia was officially namedthe Soviet Union in 1923.
The end of WWI was followed ten years later by the Great Depression of the 1930’s. The Great Depression was devastating to Western economies. By 1932 25% of the British workforce was unemployed, 40 % of the German workers, and production in the United States had fallen to 50 %.
This all created a fertile breeding ground for the totalitarian forces that came to the forefront in some European countries and Japan: Mussolini in Italy, Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union, and Adolf Hitler in Germany and Tojo in Japan. These ruthless seizures of power evolved into WWII.
Millions died in the fighting and the attempt to extinguish the Jewish race in what has been termed the Holocaust. There was also the dropping of the Atomic bombs on Japan. WWII ended in 1945. The war’s economic, physical, and psychological devastation tempered the elation people felt at the conclusion of the global hostilities.
The Evolution of Modernism and the Avant-Garde
Artists, like others were deeply affected by the devastating events of the early 20th century. Some responded with energy and optimism and others with bleak despair. Changes in the art world also influenced artistic developments. The challenges of Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, and the various renegade and alternative exhibitions diminished the academies’ authority, thought they remained a presence.
For artists working within the crucible of historical turmoil, contending with shifting institutional structures with in the art world, and acknowledging the significance of Modernism led to an incredibly fertile period for the evolution of art, especially the avant-garde. Early 20th century avant-garde artists were in the forefront of aggressively challenging traditional and often cherished notions about art and its relations to society. As the old social order collapsed and new ones ( such as communism and corporate capitalism) took their places, one of the self-imposed tasks school after school of avant-garde artists embraced was the search for new definitions and uses for art in a radically changed world. The term avant-garde emerged in art after it was in use in politics. This prompted the general public to associate the avant-garde artists with radical political thought and anarchism. While this was so, in contrast, other avant-garde artists in essence withdrew from society and concentrated their attention on art as a unique activity, separated from society at large. These artists pursed an introspective examination of artistic principles and elements (continuing the modernists’goals), resulting in an increasing focus on formal qualities of art.
Expressionism in Early 20th Century Art
Aspects of all the avant-garde movements contributed to the emergence of expressionism. Expressionism refers to art that is the result of the artist’s unique inner or personal vision that often has an emotional dimension. This contrasts with art focused on the visual description of the empirical world. This was a rejection of Renaissance sensibilities that had governed the western art world for the previous 500 years.
The term expressionism was popularized in the avant-garde journal Der Strum. The editor Herwarth Walden proclaimed: “We call art of this century Expressionism in order to distinguish it from what is not art. We are thoroughly aware that artists of previous centuries also sought expression. Only they did not know how to formulate it.”
There are several movements of the 20th century that are classified as expressionist. Some of this expressionist art evokes visceral emotional responses from the viewer, whereas other such artworks rely on the artist introspective revelations. Often the expressionists offended viewers and even critics, but the sought empathy – connection between the internal states of artists and viewers – not sympathy.
Fauvism
In 1905, at the Salon d’Automne in Paris, a group of young painters under the leadership of Henri Matisseexhibited canvases so simplified in design and so shockingly bright in color that a startled critic described the artists as fauves (wild beasts). The Fauves were totally independent of the Academy and the official Salon. The fauve movement was driven by the desire to develop an art that had the directness of Impressionism but that also used intense color juxtapositions and their emotional capabilities, the legacy of artists such as Van Gogh and Gauguin. The Fauves had seen the work of these artists in retrospective exhibitions in Paris in 1901 and 1903, but went even further in liberating color from its descriptive function and using it for both expressive and structural ends. They produced works of great spontaneity, rich surface textures, lively linear patterns and above all bold colors. The fauves went beyond any earlier artists by using contrasting colors applied in sweeping brushstrokes and bold patterns. They combined outwardExpressionism, in the form of bold release of internal feelings through wild color and powerful brutal brushwork, with inward expressionism, awakening the viewer’s emotions by these very devices.
The fauves were never officially organized and disintegrated within five years. While short lived, the movement had tremendous influence in the direction of art by demonstrating color’s structural, expressive, and aesthetic capabilities.
Henri Matisse (1869-1954) was the dominant figure of the group. He realized that color could play a primary role in conveying meaning and focused his efforts on developing this notion. Women with a Hat is composed in a traditional manner; however the seemingly arbitrary colors immediately strike the viewer. Matisse explained, “What characterized fauvism was that we rejected imitative colors, and that with pure colors we obtained stronger reactions – more striking simultaneous reactions, and there was also the luminosity of our colors.” Matisse’s reference to luminosity linked him to Cezanne, who argued that painters could only represent light by color and not reproduce it. Color therefore became the formal element most responsible for pictorial coherence and the primary conveyer of meaning.
The maturation of these color discoveries can be seen in Matisse’s Red Room (Harmony in Red). The viewer is confronted with the interior of a comfortable prosperous household with a maid placing fruit and wine on the table. The color selections and juxtapositioning generate much of the feelings of warmth and comfort. The objects are depicted in simplified, fattened forms. The table and wall are painted the same, bringing about separation only by a dark line. The front edge of the table is eliminated. The painting was originally painted in green, then blue, before Matisse final settled on red. The blue patterning contrasts greatly with the red. Matisse said, “Color was not given to us in order that we might imitate Nature. It was given so that we could express our own emotions.”
Andre Derain (1880-1954) shared many of Matisse’s goals. In The Dance, perspective is flattened and color delineates space. Here, Derain indicates light and shadow not by value, but by contrasts in hue. Color does not describe the local tones of objects; instead it expresses the pictures content.
German Expressionism: Die Brucke (The Bridge)
The boldness and immediacy of the fauves appealed to The German Expressionists. Although color plays an important role in their work, the expressiveness of their images is due as much to the wrenching distortions of form, ragged outline, and agitated brushwork. This resulted in savagely brutal, powerful, and emotional canvases in the years leading up to World War I.
The first of the German Expressionist artists gathered in Dresden in 1905 under the leadership of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880-1938). The group thought of themselves as paving a way for a more perfect age by bridging the old age and the new. Their name Die Brucke (The Bridge) is derived from this concept. Kirchner’s early studies had instilled in him a deep admiration for German medieval art. Like the British artists with the Arts and Crafts movement, members of this group modeled themselves on their ideas of medieval craft guilds by living together and practicing all the arts equally.
These artists protested the hypocrisies and materialistic decadence of those in power. Kirchner, in particular focused on the detrimental effects of industrialization, such as the alienation of individuals in cities, which he felt fostered a mechanized impersonal society. The later move to Berlin by most of the group furthered this belief.
Street, Dresden, provides a glimpse into the frenzied urban activity of this German city before WWI. Rather than offering the distant panoramic urban view of the Impressionists, this street is jarring and dissonant. The women coming toward the viewerare almost confrontational and menacing as they are forced upon the viewer by the steep perspective. Harshly rendered, the women’s features seem ghoulish and garish due to the clashing colors, and add to the expressive impact of the image. These expressive uses of the formal elements would influence the work of Edvard Munch.
Emil Nolde (1867-1956) was older than other Bridge artists and was invited to join the group in 1906 because he was pursuing similar ideas in his work. The content of Nolde’s work was centered mainly on religious imagery. In contrast to the quiet spirituality and restraint of traditional themes, Nolde’s paintings are visceral and forceful. SaintMaryof Egypt among Sinnersdepicts her before her conversion to Christ. She is shown entertaining lusty men groping her. Far from an enticing scene it displays a brutal ugliness. The distortions of form, color contrasts, and raw brushstrokes amplify the harshness of the figures.
Borrowing ideas from Van Gogh, Munch, the Fauves, and African and Oceanic Art, Die Brucke artists created images that derive much of their power dissonance and a seeming lack of finesse. The harsh colors, aggressive brushwork, and distorted forms expressed the painter’s feelings about the injustices of society and their belief in a healthful union of human of human beings and nature. Their use of such diverse sources reflects the expanding scope of global contact from colonialism and international capitalism. By 1913 the group dissolved and each member worked independently.
German Expressionism: Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider)
The Blue Rider was a second major German expressionist group formed in Munich in 1911. The two founding members were Vassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) and Franz Marc (1880-1916), whimsically selected this name because of their mutual interest in the color blue and horses. This group of artists produced paintings that captured their feelings in visual form while also eliciting intense visceral responses from the viewer.
Kandinsky was born in Russia and moved to Munich in 1896 and soon developed a spontaneous and aggressive avant-garde style. Kandinsky was one of the first artists to explore complete abstraction as evidence in Improvisation 28. Kandinsky’s motivation to eliminate representational elements stemmed from his interest in
Theosophy(a religious and philosophical belief system that incorporates a wide range of tenets from other sources, Buddhism and mysticism) and the occult, as well as advances in science. Kandinsky was a true intellectual, widely read in philosophy, religion, history, the arts, and music. Kandinsky was one of the few early modernists to understand the new scientific theories of the era. Rutherford’s exploration of atomic structure convinced Kandinsky that material objects had no real substance, thereby shattering his faith in the world of tangible things.