1. Modernism

2. Historical Context
World War I– The Great War: Technology of destruction
Communism—Stalin’s industrialization of the Soviet Union: 20 million dead
Social realism in the arts
Fascism-Nationalism and racism: Hitler’s institutionalization of genocide Radio and film used for propaganda

3. Mass Media in the U.S. Documentary arts: Commercial film
Radio programs
Posters
Photography

4. Science
Einstein’s Theory of Relativity
Quantum mechanics

5. Picasso Mastered traditional techniques “blue period” “rose period”
Abandoned Renaissance tradition: new rules
Les Demoiselles D’Avignon

6. Influences on Picasso Cézanne’s Bathers African and Polynesian masks
Primitivism

7. Cubism
Revolutionary departure from representational art. The area around painted objects became part of the abstract geometric forms.
Presented the object from many angles simultaneously.
Georges Braque

8. Stages of Cubism
Analytical phase: browns and grays. Colors should not distract from lines and planes
Synthetic phase: collage

9. Abstraction Pure line, shape and color: non-objective
Sculpture: Boccioni’s Unique Forms of Continuity in Space Brancusi’s Bird in Space
Painting: Piet Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie Woogie

10. Anti-Art Dada: rejection of reason and order in art
Marcel Duchamp’s ready-mades: L.H.O.O.Q. mobile sculpture, urinal
Later influenced performance art, pop art

11. Expressionism Henri Matisse: fauvism
The Blue Window, Issy-les-Moulineaux
German Expressionism: Die Brücke
Emil Nolde’s Dance Around the Golden Calf
Der Blaue Reiter
Wassily Kandinsky’s Improvisation 28 (Second Version)
Paul Klee’s All Around the Fish

12. Freud
The Interpretation of Dreams influenced the humanities of the Twentieth Century
Psychoanalysis: freeing unconscious desires repressed by parental and societal taboos
Georgio de Chirico’s The Mystery and Melancholy of a Street

13. Surrealism André Breton: automatism
Surrealist painters sought to release the images of the subconscious
Joan Miró’s The Birth of the World
Salvador Dalí’s The Persistence of Memory

14. Modernism in Literature
Poets discarded meter and rhyme: vers libre
Prose: Virginia Woolf’s interior monologues or stream of consciousness reveal the characters’ inner thoughts.
Mrs. Dalloway: A single day
James Joyce’s Ulysses: A single day

15. Modernist Literature T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land
New hero: ironic, frustrating, disappointing, self-doubting, anxious.
Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis
Character becomes a giant insect

16. Music/Stravinsky Le Sacré du Printemps shocked the music world
Russian folk tradition
Diaghilev: artistic director
Nijinsky: dancer-choreographer
Stravinsky’s music introduced multiple meters, or polyrhythm, and multiple simultaneous keys or polytonality
Creates disturbing dissonance

17. Music/Schoenberg Rejected the classical tradition of orchestral music
Atonal music: not composed in a key: expressionistic
Pierrot Lunaire
Twelve-tone method: not popular with audiences

18. Modernist Architecture
Bauhaus School (German) Walter Gropius: Clean, functional design
Le Corbusier (French) functional glass and metal designs
Art deco: sleek, simple shapes with decorative forms, like the “gargoyles” of the Chrysler Building

19. Bertolt Brecht Epic theater The Threepenny Opera
The disparity between the ruling class in Germany and the working classes

20. Political Paintings
Orozco, Siqueiros and Rivera: murals on public buildings in Mexico
Rivera’s The Enslavement of the Indians: criticism of Spain’s oppression of the indigenous people
Kahlo’s The Broken Column
Picasso’s Guernica: decimation of the town of Guernica by German bombs during Spanish Civil War

21. Cinema D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation
Silent film: Charlie Chaplin
Soviet film: Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin
Montage technique: “Odessa Steps”
Leni Riefenstahl’s The Triumph of the Will, Nazi propaganda

22. The U.S.A./ N.Y. Photography: Alfred Stieglitz
Painter: Georgia O’Keeffe
The Harlem Renaissance: Countee Cullen Langston Hughes Zora Neale Hurston

23. U.S.A/Other Artists Edward Hopper Nighthawks Willa Cather
William Faulkner: Absalom, Absalom!

24. American Dance
Modern Dance: freedom from classical ballet Isadora Duncan
Modern Ballet: classical training/freer expression George Ballanchine Martha Graham

25. American Music Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring
Charles Ives’ Three Pieces in New England

26. Architecture
Frank Lloyd Wright: incorporate nature
“Fallingwater”

27. Jazz! Improvised melodies, “swing” rhythm African-American origins
George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, Rhapsody in Blue: concert music
Large dance bands
Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Charlie “Bird” Parker, John Coltrane, Miles Davis