Modernism  Modernism  The generation of artists active before WWI created  “The innovations of Picasso and Kandinsky in painting, and of Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky in music rank as major breakthroughs in cultural history  Famous rebel artists from this period classified as masters of modern art  Cultural Lag  the period of time between innovations and popular acceptance

Beginning of Modernism  Early 20 th century artists allied themselves with what they perceived to be basic trends and promises of contemporary life  Embraced the swift pace of the present  Attempted to make art that responded to it and enlarged its implications  Some found it necessary to ridicule and destroy the concepts and practices of the past  Wanted to invest their work with shocks and surprises

Shocks and Surprises  Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending the Staircase No. 2  exhibited at the 1913 Armory Show in New York  People outraged  One critic compared it to an explosion in a shingle factory

Marcel Duchamp Nude Descending the Staircase No. 2

Shocks and Surprises  Igor Stravinsky’s ballet Rite of SpringRite of Spring  Critics called it ugly and perverse  The tempo of change continued its acceleration to a point where the audiences had difficulty keeping pace with artists and scientists

Solid Accomplishments  Pablo Picasso and Wassily Kandinksy  painters  Arnold Shoenberg and Igor Stravinsky  Music

Modern Materials  Ferronconcrete, structural steel, glass and laminated wood  Bricks and mortar  Welding  Complicated metal alloys

Expressionism  Looked inward to a world of emotional and psychological states rather than outward to a world of fleeting light and shadow  Turned away from naturalistic representation  Invested their forms with emotionally provocative colors and shapes

Edward Munch; The Scream

Van Gogh; Starry Night