Seminar 4: Modern Times – The 20^th Century and Early Modernism (1900 – 1920’s)

The co-dependent relationship between man and machine was growing ever wider. A need for human intervention in the mechanical age was on the decline with advancements in technologies.Modernism brought about a general rebellion of historicism. Instrumental to its school of thought was Albert Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity (1905), addressing physics in terms of space, time (dilation – ‘the elapsed time between two events’) and light. It questioned science as we had known it.

Similarly Cubism (Analytical 1907 – 1912 and Synthentic  Cubism 1912 - 1919) questioned perspective as we had known it, showing it was not definitive but variable dependent upon the angle of the observer which lead to its three dimensional characteristics. Most closely associated with the works of Pablo Picasso (1881 - 1973), Henri Matisse (1869 – 1954), Marcel Duchamp (1887 – 1968), Paul Cezanne (1839 – 1906) and Georges Braque (1882 – 1963), it also expressed movement and considered mass, time and space. Images were expressed as if a life drawing or painting were overlaid with a further image from a different angle as you moved around the subject.

  Georges Braque, Violin and Candlestick, Paris, 1910

Pablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, 1907

Futurism (1909 – 1916), born out of Italy and influenced by Cubism, was an expression and an embracing of all things new. Abstract in its interpretation, it sought to celebrate speed, the technological age, violence and all things industrial. They wanted no part in nature. Nature was weak, while man was all powerful.

Kazimir Malevich, The Knife Grinder, 1912

Voticism was a British modernist movement, circa 1913 that took its lead from Cubism, favouring geometric shapes and abstract works. World War 1 is thought to have seen the movement run out of vigour.

Photography had begun to gain some artistic recognition for its purpose other than just a means to record but practitioners continued to feel the frustrations of a medium lacking credibility as an art form.

The painterly qualities of Pictorial Photography, championed by the Photo-Secessionists from 1902, had somewhat successfully elevated photography’s status but it still had a long way to go to be seen equal to art. In 1905 in New York, the Little Galleries of the Photo Secession opened its doors to the public. The tiny gallery on 291, 5^th Avenue, the brainchild of Alfred Stieglitz (1864 – 1946) and Edward Steichen (a former painter), saw hundreds pass through its doors in its first weeks. This gave the Photo-Secessionists a platform to enter the media and soon their works became a talking point and the topic for debate and discussion. Stieglitz went on to use this notoriety to invite all manner of artists to exhibit at what later became known simply as ‘291’. It was a collective of creative minds – not only photographers and painters but also musicians, critics and poets who would meet and exchange ideas. Most importantly to Stieglitz he saw this affiliation as a way to raise the profile and status of photography.

Picasso and Braque exhibition at 291 (Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession)

In doing so he is thought to have been instrumental in the introduction of Modern Art in the USA.

Providing a gateway into the art world of America, artists such as Cezanne, Matisse, Picasso, Paul and Duchamp held their first exhibitions at 291. Having first exhibited in Paris in 1901, Picasso didn’t think America would be accepting of his cubist works and confirming his thoughts, The Metropolitan Museum are said to have initially rejected Picasso’s pictures. Following an exhibition at 291 in 1911, only two pieces were thought to have sold - Stieglitz being one of the buyers, picking up the piece for between $20 - $40 dollars.

Stieglitz eventually negotiated with the All Bright museum and secured the inclusion of photography in to their gallery on the condition it was hung at regular intervals to other pieces of artwork. While Pictorial photography had opened doors, by this point Stieglitz and many others, influenced by the likes of Picasso, Cezanne and the realist philosophies of Modernism had begun to move away from the soft lines of pictorial imagery, in favor of much sharper images portraying life of the time.

Alfred Sieglitz, The Terminal, 1892

Dada (1915 – 1922), were an anti establishment group who rejected all rational thought and ideas, thinking it was this logic that had led to WW1. Its beginnings were in Switzerland then moving on to Berlin, Cologne, Paris and New York. Dadaism encapsulated many forms of art including literature, photography, film, sculpture and assemblage. In 1916, Dada established regular meetings at an underground club in Paris’s red light district. They eventually came to an end later the same year due to their reported excesses and wild behavior and to set up at a similar venue - Galerie Dada. 

Marcel Duchamp's, Fountain, 1917, replica 1964

Positioning itself as almost anti art, it claimed to be against art in the traditional sense and that which could be found in galleries, instead favoring the kind of art they expressed at The Cabaret Voltaire and examples such as Fountain, Marcel Duchamp, 1917 (photographed by Alfred Stieglitz). Dada works were described as being based on chance and random events and sometimes just to mock. It was highly influential on the Surrealist movement that followed.