The Modernist World the Arts in an Age of Global Confrontation
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The Modernist World The Arts in an Age of Global Confrontation THINKING AHEAD How would you define modernism, and how do Cubism, Fauvism, Futurism, and Expressionism reflect its spirit? What were the effects of the Great War on the Western imagination? f the rhythm of life had long been regulated by the physi from the top of the Eiffel Tower, seen towering over Delau ology of a man or a horse walking, or, on a sailing voyage, nay's work, establishing worldwide Standard Time. By 1903, Ihy the vagaries of weather (calm, storm, and wind direc Orville Wright had been airborne 59 seconds, and by 1908, tion), after 1850 it was regulated by the machine- first by he would fly for 91 minutes. A year later, Bleriot crossed the the steam engine and the train; then, in 1897, by the auto English Channel by plane (though it would be another 18 mobile; and then, finally, hy the airplane. At the dawn of the years until Charles Lindbergh would cross the Atlantic by twentieth century, the wo rld was in motion. As early as 1880, air). The airplane in Delaunay's painting is a "box-kite" de one Fn.: nch aJverti~ in g company boasLeJ that it could post sign built in a Paris suburb beginning in 1907 by the Voisin a hillhoard ad in 35,937 municipalities in five days' time brothers, Gabriel and Charles, the first commercial airplane a billboard of the kind advertising Astra Construction in manufacturers in Europe. Finally, the signboard "MAGIC" The Cardiff Team (Fig. 14.1), a painting by Robert Delaunay refers to Magic City, an enormous dance-hall near the Eiffel [duh-lawn-AY] (1885-1941). The painting depicts the men Tower. Delaunay's Cardiff Team captures the pulse of Paris in of the Cardiff (Wales) rugby team leaping up at a rugby ball the first decades of the twentieth century, and the heartbeat in the center of the painting. They represent the interna of modern life. tionalization of sport; the first modern Olympic Games had Delaunay called his work "Simultanism," a term derived taken place in 1896 in Athens, followed by the 1900 Games from Michel Eugene Chevreul's 1839 book on color The in Paris, staged in conjunction with the Exposition Univer Principle of Harmony and Contrast of Colors-in the original selle, and rugby was a medal sport in each. The rugby ball is French title the word translated as "harmony" is simultanee framed by the famous Grande Roue de Paris. Built for the but the term signified more than just an approach to color 1900 Exposition Universelle, at 100 meters (328 feet) in theory. The name referred to the immediacy of vision, and height, it was the tallest Ferris wheel in the world, surpass suggested that in any given instant, an infinite number of ing by 64 feet the original Ferris wheel, built for Chicago's states of being existed in the speed and motion of modern Columbian Exposition in 1893, and although it would be life. Everything was in motion, including the picture itself. demolished in 1920, the Grande Roue remained the world's The still photograph suddenly found itself animated in tallest Ferris wheel until it was surpassed by three Japanese the moving picture, first in 1895 by the Brothers Lumiere, Ferris wheels in the 1990s. On July 1, 1913, the year that in Paris, and then after 1905, when the Nickelodeon, the Delaunay painted The Cardiff Team, a signal was broadcast first motion-picture theater in the world, opened its doors <4 Fig. 14.1 Robert Delaunay, The Cardiff Team. 1913. Oil on canvas, 10'83/s'' x 6'10" . Musee d'Art Moderne de Ia Ville de Paris. Everything in the painting seems to rise into the sky as if, for Oelaunay, the century is "taking off" much like the airplane. Even the construction company's name. "Astra," refers to the stars. {<•• Listen to the chapter audio on myartslab.com 439 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. By 1925, Russian fi lmmaker THE RISE OF MODERNISM IN THE ARTS Sergei Eisenstein would cram 155 separate shots into a four-minute sequence of his film The Battleship Potemkin-a In other words, over the course of the last two decades of the shot every 1.6 seconds. In 1900, France had produced 3,000 nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth, the automobiles; by 1907, it was producing 30,000 a year. The way we understood the physical universe radically changed. technological advances represented by the automobile were The arts responded. In painting, those who fo llowed upon the closely connected to the development of the internal com Impressionist generation-the Post-Impress ionists, as they bustion engine, pneumatic tires, and, above all, the rise of were soon known-saw themselves as inventing a new future the assembly line. After all, building 30,000 automobiles a for painting, one that reflected the spirit of innovation that year required an efficiency and speed of production unlike defined modernity. In Paris, the studio of Spanish-born Pablo any ever before conceived. Henry Ford (1863- 1947), the Picasso [pee-KAH-soh] (1871-1973) was quickly recognized American automobile maker, attacked the problem. Ford by artists and intellectuals as the center of artistic innova asked Frederick Taylor (1856-1915), the inventor of "scien tion in the new century. From around Europe and America, tific management," to determine the exact speed at which artists flocked to see his work, and they carried his spirit the assembly line should move and the exact motions work and the spirit of French painting generally- back with them ers should use to perform their duties; in 1908, assembly- line to Italy, Germany, and America. New art movements-new production as we know it was born. "isms," including Delaunay's Simultanism-succeeded one Amid all this speed and motion, the world also suddenly another in rapid fire. Picasso's work also encouraged radical seemed a less stable and secure place. Discoveries in sci approaches to poetry and to music, where the discord ant, ence and physics confirmed this. In 1900, German physicist sometimes violent distortions of his paintings found their Max Planck (1858-194 7) proposed the theory of matter and expression in sound. energy known as quantum mechanics. In quantum mechanics, the fundamental particles are unknowable, and are only hypo Post-Impressionist Painting thetical things represented by mathematics. Furthermore, the Among the Post-Impressionists were Paul Cezanne, Pau l very technique of measuring these phenomena necessarily Gauguin, and Georges Seurat, all of whom exhibited at var alters their behavior. Faced with the fact that light appeared ious Impressionist shows, but rather than creating Impres to travel in absolutely contradictory ways, as both particles sionist works that captured the optical effects of light and and waves, depending upon how one measured it, in 1913, atmosphere and the fleeting qualities of sensory experience, Danish physicist Niels Bohr (1885-1962) built on quantum they sought to capture something transcendent in their phys ics to propose a new theory of complementarity: two act of vision, something that captured the essence of their statements, apparently contradictory, might at any moment be subject. equally true. At the very end of the nineteenth century, in Cambridge, England, ] . ] . Thompson detected the existence of separate compo nents in the previously indivisible atom. He called them "electrons," and by 1911, Ernest Rutherford had introduced a new model of the atom-a small, positively charged nucleus containing most of the atom's mass around which elec trons continuously orbit. Suddenly matter itself was understood to be continually in motion. Meanwhile, in 1905, Albert Einstein had pub lished his theory of relativity and by 1915 had produced the Gen eral Principles of Relativity, with its model of the non-Euclidean, four dimensional space-time continuum. Between 1895 and 1915, the tradi tional physical universe had liter Fig. 14.2 Georges Seurat, A Sunday on La Grande Jatte. 1884. Oil on canvas. 5'1Hf' x 10'114" Helen Birch ally been transformed-and it was Bartlett Memorial Collection, 1926.224. Combination of quadrant captures F1 , F2, G1 . G2 . Photograph © 2006. The not a universe of entities available Art Institute of Chicago. All rights reserved. Capuchin monkeys like th e on e held on a leash by the woman on the right to the human eye. were a popular pet in 1880s Paris. ~View the Closer Look for Georges Seurat's A Sunday on La Grande Ja ffe on myartslab.com 440 CHAPTER 14 The Modernist World Pointillism: Seurat and the Harmonies of Color One of the Seurat's emphasis on contrasting colors appealing. It became most talented of the Post-Impressionist painters was Georges another ingredient in his synthesis of techniques. He began Seurat [suh-RAH] (1859-91), who exh ibited h is master to apply complementary colors in richly painted zones using piece, A Sunday on La Grand]atte, in 1886 when he was 27 dashes and strokes that were much larger than Seurat's years old (Fig. 14.2). It depicts a Sunday crowd of Parisians /)Ointilles. enjoying the weather on the island of La Grand ]atte in Color, in van Gogh's paintings, becomes symbolic, the Seine River just northeast of the city. The subject mat charged with feelings. To viewers at the time, the dashes of ter is typically Impressionist, but it lacks that style's sense of thickly painted color, a technique known as impasto, seemed spontaneity and the immediacy of its brushwork. Instead, La thrown onto the canvas as a haphazard and unrefined mess.