Marsha K. Russell
St. Andrew’s Episcopal School, Austin, TX
Twentieth-Century Art, 1900 - 1950: The Historical Context
AND Modernism and Postmodernism
THE UNCONSCIOUS, BOTH PERSONAL AND COLLECTIVE: Freud’s model of the mind includes the irrational Unconscious. Freud’s former follower “Carl Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious holds that beneath one’s private memories lies a storehouse of feelings and symbolic associations common to all human.” Artists such as the Abstract Expressionists “sought the universal themes within themselves.” (Stokstad, 1088)
BELIEF IN PROGRESS: “As [the 20th] century dawned, many Europeans and Americans believed optimistically that human society would “advance” through the spread of democracy, capitalism, and technological innovation.” (Stokstad, 1020)
COMPETITION: “The competitive nature of both colonialism and capitalism created great instability in Europe, however, and countries joined together in rival political alliances.” (Stokstad, 1020)
WAR: WWI brings unprecedented death and destruction.
POLITICAL CHANGE: Russia becomes world’s first Communist nation in 1917; US emerges from WWI as “the economic leader of the West” (Stokstad, 1020)
ECONOMIC CRISIS: Crisis in Italy and Germany in 1920s gives head start to fascism, which accelerates with the Great Depression of the 1930s. ITALY: Mussolini and Fascism; GERMANY: Hitler and Nazism; SPAIN: Franco.
GERMAN AGGRESSION: Punitive nature of Treaty of Versailles plus economic crisis of 1930s create the situation in which Nazism, with its strong “us vs. them” philosophy, capitalizes on hatred of others to justify program of expansion and extermination .
WORLD WAR II: “The most destructive war in history, World War II claimed the lives of between 15 and 20 million soldiers and approximately 25 million civilians, including 6 million European Jews who perished in the Nazi Holocaust. “ (Stokstad, 1020)
TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATIONS:
· Military uses: tank, radar, fighter bomber, atomic bomb
· Civilian applications: electricity, antibiotics, x-rays, radio, telegraph, television, motion picture, automobile, airplane, computers, plastics
NUCLEAR AGE: US attack on Japan ends World War II with huge losses of civilian lives; USSR develops the bomb; the COLD WAR between the US and USSR is marked by the “constant threat of nuclear annihilation.” (Stokstad, 1021)
MODERNISM IN ART:
“Accompanying the momentous changes in politics, economics, and science were equally revolutionary developments in art and culture, which historians have gathered under the label of modernism. Although modern simply means “up-to-date,” the term modernism connotes a rejection of conventions and a commitment to radical innovation; animating modernism is the desire to ‘make it new’ (in the words of poet Ezra Pound). Like scientists and inventors, modernist artists engage in a process of experimentation and discovery, seeking to explore new possibilities of creativity and expression in a rapidly changing world.” (Stokstad, 1021) “Much of the history of early-20th-century Western art is a history of a radical rejection—the rejection of traditional limitations and definitions both of art and of the universe.” (Gardner’s 12th, 962)
Modernism has a huge variety of expressions, but three general tendencies are noted:
1. A tendency toward ABSTRACTION, either through
- The distortion of recognizable objects, or
- Nonrepresentation, depending only on formal elements like line, shape, color, and texture
2. “a tendency to emphasize PHYSICAL PROCESSES through visible brushstrokes and chisel marks.” (Stokstad 1021)
3. “continual questioning of the nature of art itself through the adoption of NEW TECHNIQUES AND MATERIALS, including ordinary, ‘nonartistic’ materials that break down distinctions between art and everyday life.” (Stokstad 1021)
Quotes from Gardner’s 12th edition on Modernism and Postmodernism
Modernism
“…intellectuals countered 18th- and 19th-century assumptions about progress and reason with ideas challenging traditional notions about the physical universe, the structure of society, and human nature. Artists participated in this reassessment. Modernist artists, in particular, often acknowledged these new discoveries and shifting theoretical bases in their work. Accordingly, much of the history of early-20th-century Western art is a history of a radical rejection – the rejection of traditional limitations and definitions both of art and of the universe.” 961-2
“Greenberg was instrumental in redefining the parameters of modernism. For Greenberg, late-20th-century modernist artists were those who refined the critical stance of the late-19th and early-20th-century modernists. This critical stance involved rejecting illusionism and exploring the properties of each artistic medium….In particular, Greenberg promoted the idea of purity in art….In other words, he believed artists should strive for a more explicit focus on the properties exclusive to each medium – for example, two-dimensionality or flatness in painting, and three-dimensionality in sculpture. To achieve this, artists had to eliminate illusion and embrace abstraction.” 1034
Postmodernism
“The restrictiveness of modernist architecture and the impersonality and sterility of many of these rectilinear corporate buildings led to a rejection of modernism’s authority in architecture….In contrast to the simplicity of modernist architecture, the terms most often invoked to describe postmodern architecture are pluralism, complexity, and eclecticism. Where the modernist program was reductive, the postmodern vocabulary of the 1970s and 1980s was expansive and inclusive.” 1063
“The challenges to modernist doctrine that emerged in architecture have their own resolutions in other artistic media. As with architecture, arriving at a concrete definition of postmodernism in other media is difficult. Historically, by the 1970s, the range of art—from abstraction to performance to figuration—was so broad that the inclusiveness central to postmodern architecture characterizes postmodern art as well. Just as postmodern architects incorporate traditional elements or historical references, many postmodern artists reveal a self-consciousness about their place in the historical continuum of art. They resurrect artistic traditions to comment on and reinterpret those styles or idioms. Writings about postmodern art refer to Neo-Minimalism, Neo-Pop, and Neo-Romanticism, among others, evidencing the prevalence of this reevaluation of earlier art forms.” 1068
“Beyond that, however, artists, critics, dealers, and art historians do not agree on the elements comprising the vague realm of postmodern art. Many people view postmodernism as a critique of modernism. For example, numerous postmodern artists have undertaken the task of challenging modernist principles such as the avant-garde’s claim to originality. In avant-garde artists’ zeal to undermine traditional notions about art and to produce ever more innovative art forms, they placed a premium on originality and creativity. Postmodern artists challenge this claim by addressing issues of the copy or reproduction (already explored by the Pop artists) and the appropriation of images or ideas from others.” 1068
“Other scholars, such as Frederic Jameson, assert that a major characteristic of postmodernism is the erosion of the boundaries between high culture and popular culture—a separation Clement Greenberg and the modernists had staunchly defended. With the appearance of Pop art, that separation became more difficult to maintain. Jameson argues that the intersection of high and mass culture is, in fact, a defining feature of the new postmodernism. He attributes the emergence of postmodernism to “a new type of social life and a new economic order—what is often euphemistically called modernization, postindustrial or consumer society, the society of the media or the spectacle, or multinational capitalism.’” 1068
“Further, the intellectual inquiries of critical theorists serving as the basis for Deconstructivist architecture also impacted the other media. For many recent artists, postmodernism involves examining the process by which meaning is generated and the negotiation or dialogue that transpires between viewers and artworks. Like the theorists using deconstructive methods to analyze ‘texts,’ or cultural products, many postmodern artists reject the notion that each artwork contains a single fixed meaning. Their work, in part, explores how viewers derive meaning from visual material.” 1068
“Postmodern art, then, comprises a dizzying array of artworks. While some involve critiques of the modernist program, others present critiques of the art world, and still others incorporate elements of and provide commentary on previous art. A sampling of postmodern art in various media follows.” 1068
Quotes from Stokstad’s 2nd edition on Modernism and Postmodernism
Modernism
“…the term modernism connotes a rejection of conventions and a commitment to radical innovation; animating modernism is the desire to ‘make it new’ (in the words of poet Ezra Pound). Like scientists and inventors, modernist artists engage in a process of experimentation and discovery, seeking to explore new possibilities of creativity and expression in a rapidly changing world.” 1021
“Although modernism is characterized by tremendous aesthetic diversity, several broad tendencies mark many modernist artists. Foremost is a tendency toward abstraction. While some modernists presented recognizable subject matter in a distorted manner, others created completely abstract or nonrepresentational art, which communicates exclusively through such formal means as line, shape, color, texture, space, mass, and volume. Modernist architecture too moved toward abstraction and rejected historical styles and ornamentation in favor of simple geometric forms and undecorated surfaces. A second feature of modernism is a tendency to emphasize physical processes through visible brushstrokes and chisel marks, for example, and the materials used; this is especially true in modernist architecture, which often reveals rather than conceals the inner structure of the building, giving it a quality of ‘honesty’ seen in other forms of modernist art. A third feature is modernism’s continual questioning of the nature of art itself through the adoption of new techniques and materials, including ordinary, ‘nonartistic’ materials that break down distinctions between art and everyday life.” 1021
“Greenberg argued that modern art since Édouard Manet involved the progressive disappearance of narrative, figuration, and pictorial space because art itself—regardless of what the artists may have thought they were doing—was undergoing a ‘process of self-purification’ in reaction to a deteriorating civilization….In the ensuing decades, belief in the concept of the mainstream gradually eroded, partly because of the narrow way it had been defined by Greenberg and his followers. Because their mainstream omitted so much of the history of recent, observers began questioning whether a single, dominant mainstream had ever existed.” 1086
Postmodernism
“The 1960s were a watershed period in the history of modern art….little of the earlier modernist faith in the transformative power of art is evident in the works produced during the decade. Although the Minimalists continued to believe that the history of art had a coherent, progressive shape and that art represented a pure realm outside ordinary ‘bourgeois’ culture, the purity, honesty, and clarity of their art were not meant to change the world but to retreat from it. To the next generation, by contrast, the concepts of artistic purity and the mainstream seemed naïve. In fact, the generation that came to maturity around 1970 had little faith in either purity or progress. The optimism that had characterized the beginning of the modernist era and had survived both world wars gave way to a growing uncertainty about the future and about art’s power to influence it. The decline of modernism in the arts was neither uniform nor sudden. Its gradual erosion occurred over a long period and was the result of many individual transformations. The many approaches to art that have emerged from the ruins of modernism are designated by the catchall term postmodernism.” 1113-1114
“Much of the art being made by the end of the 1970s was widely considered to be postmodern. Although there is no universal agreement on what the term postmodern means, it involves rejection of the concept of the mainstream and recognition of artistic pluralism, the acceptance of a variety of artistic intentions and styles. Many critics insist that pluralism applies to modernism as well and has been a characteristic of art since at least the Post-Impressionist era. Others argue that the art world’s attitude pluralism has changed. Where critics and artists once searched for a historically inevitable mainstream in the midst of pluralistic variety, many now accept pluralism for what is probably always was—a manifestation of our culturally heterogeneous age. “ 1129
KEY TERMS IN MODERN AND POSTMODERN ART CHAPTERS
Marsha K. Russell
St. Andrew’s Episcopal School, Austin, TX
Abstraction AND non-representation
Appropriates (as a verb)/Appropriation
Armory Show
Art “Matronage” of the 20th century
Assemblage
Automatism
Avant garde AND mainstream
The Bauhaus
Biomorphic
Collage
Collective unconscious
Conceptual art
Consumer culture
Counterculture
Curtain wall
“Degenerate art”
Earthworks
Eclecticism
Existentialism
Expressionist
Feminist art
Formalism
Found objects
Freud AND Jung
Gender
Geometric AND Organic forms
Gesturalism/ action painting
Graffiti
Harlem Renaissance
Kinetic
Installation
“Machine Esthetic”
The “Male Gaze”
Manifestos
Modernism
Multiculturalism
Nihilism
Performance art
Photomontage
Pluralism
Postmodernism
“Primitivism”
Readymades
Site-specific sculpture
Utopian ideals
Marsha K. Russell
St. Andrew’s Episcopal School, Austin, TX
Twentieth-century female and minority artists, and who appears in multiple texts: (I used Gardner’s, Stokstad, and Adams)
Marsha K. Russell
St. Andrew’s Episcopal School, Austin, TX
Magdalena Abakanowicz S, G
Laurie Anderson A
Diane Arbus S
Judith Baca S
Jean-Michel Basquiat A, S
Louise Bourgeois G
Emily Carr (preWWII) S
Judy Chicago A, S, G
Mel Chin S
Sonia Delaunay-Terk (preWWII) S
Aaron Douglas (preWWII) A, G, S
Marisol Escobar A
Melvin Edwards G
Audrey Flack G
Helen Frankenthaler A, S, G
Natalia Goncharova (preWWII) S
Nancy Graves A
Wenda Gu S
Guerilla Girls
Ann Hamilton S
David Hammons S, G
Barbara Hepworth (preWWII) G
Eva Hesse A, S, G
Hannah Hoch (preWWII) G, S
Nancy Holt A
Jenny Holzer S, G
Valerie Jaudon A
Frida Kahlo (preWWII) A, G, S
Käthe Kollwitz (preWWII) A, G
Lee Krasner S
Barbara Kruger S, G
Dorothea Lange (preWWII) A, G, S
Marie Laurencin (preWWII) A
Jacob Lawrence (preWWII) A, G, S
Sherrie Levine S
Maya Lin A, S, G
Agnes Martin A
Ana Mendieta S, G
Paula Modersohn-Becker (preWWII) S
Julia Morgan (preWWII) S
Yasamasa Morimura S
Vera Mukhina (preWWII) G, S
Elizabeth Murray S
Shirin Neshat S
Alice Neel S
Louise Nevelson A, S, G
Isamu Noguchi A
Chris Ofilli S, G
Georgia O’Keeffe (preWWII) A, G, S
Meret Oppenheim (preWWII) G, S