MashUp: The Birth of Modern Culture 4th FLOOR: Early 20th Century: Collage, Montage and Readymade at the Birth of Modern Culture Hannah Höch Untitled (Large Hand Over Woman's Head), 1930 photomontage Collection Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Purchase 2012 TEACHER’S STUDY GUIDE WINTER 2016 Contents Page Program Information and Goals .................................................................................................................. 3 Background to the Exhibition MashUp: The Birth of Modern Culture –4TH Floor ………...........................4 Artists’ Background ...................................................................................................................................... 5 Modern European Art Movements and Terms ........................................................................................... 8 Pre- and Post-Visit Activities 1. About the Artists ....................................................................................................................... 9 Artist Information Sheet ........................................................................................................ 10 Student Worksheet ................................................................................................................ 11 2. Cubist Perspectives ............................................................................................................... 12 3. Collage Portraits .................................................................................................................... 14 4. The Readymade: What makes it art? ................................................................................... 17 5. Image ConText ....................................................................................................................... 19 Vocabulary ................................................................................................................................................. 21 Resources .................................................................................................................................................. 23 Vancouver Art Gallery Teacher’s Guide for School Programs Taking over all four floors of the Vancouver Art Gallery, the groundbreaking exhibition MashUp will offer an international survey of mashup culture, documenting the emergence and evolution of a mode of creativity that has grown to become a dominant form of cultural production in the early 21st century. This tour will focus on the 4th floor of the exhibition: Early 20th Century: Collage, Montage and Readymade at the Birth of Modern Culture In the early 20th century, artists broke down barriers between disciplines, redefined “fine” art and embarked on collaborations that addressed the emergence of mass production and the changing nature of creativity in modern life. New art practices such as collage, photomontage and the readymade emerged as a result. Redefining the “everyday” by using found objects, images and words proved to be one of the major themes of artistic practice over the next century. Artists represented on the 4th floor include Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Hannah Höch, Joseph Cornell, Marcel Duchamp and others. DEAR TEACHER: This guide will assist you in preparing for your tour of the exhibition MashUp: The Birth of Modern Culture – 4th Floor. It also provides follow-up activities to facilitate discussion after your Gallery visit. Engaging in the suggested activities before and after your visit will reinforce ideas generated by the tour and build continuity between the Gallery experience and your ongoing work in the classroom. Most activities require few materials and can be adapted easily to the age, grade level and needs of your students. Underlined words in this guide are defined in the Vocabulary section. The tour of MashUp: The Birth of Modern Culture –4th Floor has three main goals: • to introduce students to the work of historical Modern artists, • to consider diverse artistic traditions and disciplines, • to explore individual artworks within historical, social and cultural contexts. THE EXHIBITION: MashUp: The Birth of Modern Culture –4th Floor The 4th floor of the exhibition MashUp features works from the early 20th century, including collage, photomontage and the readymade. Although mashup strategies now permeate nearly every creative discipline, this approach to cultural production is barely a century old. The emergence of mechanical reproduction technologies in the 19th century—such as steel engraving, offset lithography and photography—marked a fundamental shift in the public perception and circulation of images. This was particularly significant within the visual arts, where copies and reproductions had become ubiquitous. Early 20th-century Modernism was defined by the incorporation of found materials into art production, an innovation that can be traced to two artists. During a period of intense experimentation between 1912 and 1914, Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque invented collage and basic assemblage practices. Their introduction of found materials into drawings and paper constructions addressed questions raised by representing three-dimensional objects on a two- dimensional picture plane, and established a mode of representation that did not previously exist. Hannah Höch layered magazine images to construct fragmented figures that expose representations of race and gender in emergent mass media. Perhaps most significantly, by presenting mass- produced objects in a gallery context, Marcel Duchamp’s readymades exposed questions of originality and aesthetics in art. ARTISTS’ BACKGROUND The following background information highlights some of the artists whose work may be explored in the school tour. Georges Braque (1882-1963) Born in 1882 in Argenteuil, France, Georges Braque was a 20th century French painter who invented Cubism with Pablo Picasso. From 1897 to 1899, Braque studied painting at the École des Beaux-Arts in the evenings. Wanting to pursue artistic painting further, he moved to Paris and apprenticed with a master decorator before painting at the Académie Humbert from 1902 to 1904. Along with Cubism, Braque used the styles of Post-Impressionism, Fauvism and collage, and even staged designs for the Ballet Russes. Through his career, his style changed to portray somber subjects during wartime and lighter, freer themes in between. He never strayed far from Cubism, as there were always aspects of it in his works. Braque’s work between 1908 and 1912 is closely associated with that of his colleague Pablo Picasso. Their respective Cubist works were indistinguishable for many years, yet the quiet nature of Braque was partially eclipsed by the fame and notoriety of Picasso. Braque's cubist paintings reflected his new interest in geometry and simultaneous perspective. He conducted an intense study of the effects of light and perspective and the technical means that painters use to represent these effects, questioning the most standard of artistic conventions. Braque died in Paris in 1963. Joseph Cornell (1903-1972) Joseph Cornell was born in 1903 in Nyack, New York. From 1917 to 1921, he attended Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts. He was an avid collector of memorabilia and, while working as a woolen-goods salesman in New York until 1931, developed his interests in ballet, literature, and opera. From 1934 to 1940, Cornell supported himself by working as a textile designer in New York. During these years, he became familiar with Marcel Duchamp’s readymades and Kurt Schwitters’s box constructions. Cornell was included in the 1936 exhibition Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Always interested in film and cinematic techniques, he made a number of movies as well. His most famous and distinctive works are boxes he created out of wood, glass, and innumerable objects and photos he collected in New York City's antique and secondhand shops, which convey a poetic and magical aura. He is one of the pioneers and most celebrated exponents of assemblage. Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) Marcel Duchamp was born in 1887 near Blainville-Crevon, France. He became famous for his "readymades," which heralded an artistic revolution. In 1904 he joined his artist brothers in Paris, where he studied painting at the Académie Julian until 1905. Duchamp’s early works were Post- Impressionist in style. He exhibited for the first time in 1909 at the Salon des Indépendants and the Salon d’Automne in Paris. His paintings of 1911 were directly related to Cubism but emphasized successive images of a single body in motion. In 1912 he abandoned traditional painting and drawing for various experimental forms, and introduced his readymades—common objects, sometimes altered, presented as works of art—which had a revolutionary impact on many painters and sculptors. Largely ignored during his lifetime, Duchamp was in his seventies when he emerged as a master whose entirely new attitude toward art and society changed the future of visual arts. He died in 1968 in France. Hannah Höch (1889–1978) Born in 1889 in Gotha, Germany, Hannah Höch was a German artist and the only woman associated with the Berlin Dada group. She is known primarily for her provocative photomontage compositions that explored gender and ethnic differences in the Weimar period. The daughter of a painter and insurance company manager, Höch attended the College of Arts and Crafts in Berlin and studied glass design and graphic arts. She also studied calligraphy,