1. Today’s Essential Questions
What characteristics are inherent in Modernist texts? (art, poetry, novels)
How is modernism a reaction to romanticism?
What is art?

2. In your table groups, discuss:
What is art?
Why is art made?
How do you know when something isn’t art?

3. Rough Progression of European Literary Eras
Bible-focused literacy
Dante: Formal writing in vernacular about religion (1300s)
Renaissance: Shakespeare (1600s)
Celebration of collective understanding and literacy
Focus on Christianity and humanity
Enlightenment (late 1700s)
Erudite focus on reason, reality
Romanticism (middle 1800s)
Focus on the ideal and a return to nature
Modernism (early 1900s)
Lament for the loss of meaning a modern world

4. Rough Progression of Western Painting Trends
“Madonna and child” circa 1230
B. Berlinghieri
Raphael’s “School of Athens” 1510
Picasso’s 1912 Les Demoiselles
D’Avignon
Friedrich’s “Wanderer
over a Sea of Clouds” 1818
Pollock’s 1947 “Lucifer”

5. Modernism: Characteristics
Themes/Ideas
Literary Techniques
Disjointed narratives
Lack of central heroic figure
Pessimism about human nature
Focusing on inner world of reality, not outer
Fragmentation, juxtaposition of events, narrators, etc.
“Open” endings; lack of resolution
Intensive use of allegory, metaphor, allusion, symbol
Questioning the reliability of any individual’s experience/perspective
Critiquing traditional cultural values
Mourning the loss of meaning and hope in the modern world
exploration of how this loss may be faced

6. In your table groups, discuss:
Compare and contrast romanticism and modernism.
How is modernism a reaction to romanticism?

7. Introduction to Modernism
Yves Klein Blue

8. Modernism: Texts
For tomorrow, print out the packet attached to my website.
Modern Art in today’s lecture
“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
“The Wasteland” (excerpt)
Eliot, poetry
“The Hollow Men”
“Tradition and the Individual Talent”
Eliot, essay

9. [Pedantic Distinctions Between] Genres of Modern Art
Cubism: Pablo Picasso
Expressionism: Edvard Munch
Futurism: Umberto Boccioni
Supremitism: Kasimir Malevich
Dada: Michel Duchamp
Kinetic Art: Alexander Calder
Surrealism: Salvador Dali

10. Pablo Picasso “the father of cubism”

13. “Ma Jolie” by Pablo Picasso, 1911-1912

14. “Guernica” by Pablo Picasso 1937

15. Expressionism

16. “The Scream” Parody

17. Suprematism– Kasimir Malevich
His work was suppressed in Soviet Russia in the 1930s and remained little known during the following two decades.
The Stalinist regime turned against forms of abstraction, considering them a type of “bourgeois” art, that could not express social realities.
Eight Red Rectangles, 1915

18. Suprematism– Kasimir Malevich
The style of severe geometric abstraction with which he is most closely associated, Suprematism, was a leading force in the development of Constructivism, the repercussions of which continued to be felt throughout the 20th century.
Russian painter, printmaker, decorative artist and writer of Ukranian birth. One of the pioneers of abstract art, Malevich was a central figure in a succession of avant-garde movements during the period of the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917 and immediately after. The style of severe geometric abstraction with which he is most closely associated, Suprematism, was a leading force in the development of Constructivism, the repercussions of which continued to be felt throughout the 20th century. His work was suppressed in Soviet Russia in the 1930s and remained little known during the following two decades. The reassessment of his reputation in the West from the mid-1950s was matched by the renewed influence of his work on the paintings of Ad Reinhardt and on developments such as Zero, Hard-edge painting and Minimalism.
Black Square, 1923

19. “Glass Painting with Sun” by Wassily Kandinsky

20. “The Street Enters the House” by Umberto Boccioni, 1911

21. Dada & Kinetic art

22. “East Wing Mobile” by Alexander Calder, 1976

23. Spanish Surrealists

24. “Harlequin's Carnival” by Joan Miro, 1924-1925

25. “The Persistence of Memory” by Salvador Dali, 1931

26. Post-modern art

27. Today’s Essential Questions
What characteristics are inherent in Modernist texts? (art, poetry, novels)
How is modernism a reaction to romanticism?
What is art?