Things that happened during the 1930-1970

1. Modernism in USA

2. American Modernism
An artistic and cultural movement in the United
States starting at the turn of the 20th century with
its core period between World War I and World War
II and continuing into the 21st century.

3. Armory show in New York (1913) -the
first opportunity for Americans to see
the new art that had been developing
in Europe.
The Centers of Modernism:
1. Artist's self-consciousness about
questions of form and structure.
2. Obsession with primitive material
and stylistic innovations.

4. Modernism was also revolutionary in the
sense that it challenged the issues that
blocked the human progress.
Rejections of the Modernism movement:
• Certainty of Enlightenment thinking
• Nihilism or rejection of religious beliefs
• Ideology of Realism
• Tradition
• It also reacts against historicism,
artistic conventions, and
institutionalization of Art

5.  By 1930, Modernism had entered popular
culture. Popular culture, derived from its own
realities (particularly mass production), fueled
much modernist innovation.
 Modern ideas in art appeared in
commercials, advertisements, and logos, being
an early example of the need for clear, easily
recognizable and memorable visual symbols.
 Modernism was also shaped through the
economic and technological progress in U.S.
which accelerated the daily life of an
individual.

6. Examples of Modernist magazine advertisements

7. Visual Arts

8. Marsden Hartley
(January 4, 1877 - September 2, 1943)
an American
Modernist painter, poet, and
essayist. Often combines a
thick brushstrokes and
vibrant colors.

9. Hartley's assimilation were both
Cubism (the collage like juxtapositions
of visual fragments) and
Expressionism (the coarse brushwork
and dramatic using bright colors and
black).
However, his purpose inclusion of
medals, banners, military insignia, the
Iron Cross, and the German imperial
flag does evoke a specific sense of
Germany during World War I as well
as a collective psychological and
physical portrait of a particular officer.
Portrait of a German Officer (1914)
Oil on canvas 68 1/4 x 41 3/8 in.

10. Other paintings of Hartley
The Ice Hole (1908)
Painting No. 48(1913)
Handsome drinks (1916)

11. Paul Jackson Pollock
(January 28, 1912 – August 11, 1956)
known as Jackson Pollock
was an influential American
painter and a major figure in
the abstract expressionist
movement. He was well known
for his unique style of drip
painting.

12. Pollock was introduced to the use of
liquid paint in 1936 at an experimental
workshop in New York City by the
Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros.
He later used paint pouring as one of
several techniques on canvases of the
early 1940s, such as Male and
Female and Composition with Pouring
I. After his move to Springs, he began
painting with his canvases laid out on the
studio floor, and he developed what was
later called his "drip" technique.
He uses synthetic resin-based paints
called alkyd enamels, which, at that
time, was a novel medium and hardened
brushes, sticks, and even basting
syringes as paint applicators. Pollock's
technique of pouring and dripping paint
is thought to be one of the origins of the
term action painting.

13. Male and Female (1942)
Oil on canvas
73.1” in x 49” in
Pollock was heavily influenced by fellow
painters, Joan Miro and Pablo Picasso. It
is obvious that the distortion of the human
form present in Male and Female stems
from the similar Surrealist and Cubism art
forms.
This painting portrays a man and woman
using bold colors and in an extreme
abstract form. The figure on the right
appears to have a blackboard type surface
as a body displaying numbers and
mathematical symbols. The image to the
left is less identifiable except for the
appearance of two long lashed eye
openings. They appear to be joined in the
center by a surface containing 3 triangles
and what looks like a partial, almost
ghostlike child figure.

14. Other paintings of Pollock
The Key (1946)
Oil on linen
59” x 82” inches
Convergence (1952)
Oil on canvas
93.5” x 155” inches

15. Other paintings of Pollock
She-Wolf (1943)
Oil, gouache, and plaster
on canvas
41 7/8 x 67"
The Deep (1953)
Oil and enamel on canvas
59.3 in × 86.8 in

16. Other paintings of Pollock
Number 8 (1949)
Oil, gouache, and plaster on
canvas
41 7/8” x 67“ inches
Number 11 (1952)
enamel & aluminium
paint with glass on
canvas
83.5” × 192.5” inches
Known also as “Blue
Poles”

17. Georgia Totto O'Keeffe
(November 15, 1887 – March 6, 1986)
The world’s famous female American modernist
that devoted to creating imagery that
expressed what she called “the wideness
and wonder of the world as I live in it.”
O’Keeffe’s images—instantly recognizable
as her own —include abstractions, largescale depictions of flowers, leaves, rocks,
shells, bones and other natural forms, New
York cityscapes and paintings of the
unusual shapes and colors of architectural
and landscape forms of northern New
Mexico.

18. Cow’s Skull Red White and
Blue (1931)
39 7/8 x 35 7/8 inches
The painting depicts
a cow skull centered in front of what
appears to be a cloth background. In
the center of the background is a
vertical black stripe. On either side of
that are two vertical sripes
of white laced with blue. At the outside
of the painting are two
vertical red stripes.
O'Keeffe used a weathered cow's skull
to represent the enduring spirit of
America or depicting Jesus Christ on
the cross with touches on the strong
ties to Christianity. The painting
prominently displays the three colors
of the American flag behind the cow
skull. Although she said made it as a
joke on the concept of the "Great
American Painting," the picture has
become a quintessential icon of
the American West.

19. Other paintings of O’Keeffe
Georgia Ram's Head
White Hollyhock and
Little Hill (1935)
Oil on canvas
36 x 24 inches
Cow's Skull with Calico
Roses (1931)
Georgia Ram's
Head White
Hollyhock and
Little Hill (1928)
Oil on canvas
Oil on canvas
36 x 24 inches
29 7/8 x 39 7/8 inches

20. Other paintings of O’Keeffe
Sky Above Clouds IV (1965)
Oil on canvas
96 x 288 in
The Black Place II
(1944)
Oil on canvas
23 7/8 x 30 inches

21. John Marin
(December 1870 – October 1953)
was an early American modernist
artist. He is known for his
abstract landscapes and
watercolors.

22. The Sea, Cape Split, Maine
(1939)
Oil on canvas
Movement: Boats and Objects, Blue
Gray Sea (1947)
Oil on canvas
24 1/4 x 29 1/4 inches
29 x 36 1/4 inches
John Marin used oil paint as thinly as
he did watercolor, the medium for which
he is best known.

23. Mark Rothko
was an American painter of
Russian Jewish descent. He is
generally identified as
an Abstract Expressionist,
although he himself rejected this
label and even resisted
classification as an "abstract
painter."

24. No.5/No.22
Oil on Canvas
Untitled

25. Number 12 (1951)
Saffron (1957)

27. Robert Motherwell
was an
American painter, printmaker,
and editor. He was one of the
youngest of the New York
School (a phrase he coined), which
also included Philip
Guston, Willem de
Kooning, Jackson Pollock,
and Mark Rothko.

28. From the Lyric Suite, 1965

29. Elegy to the Spanish Republic, 54, 1957-61

30. Wall Painting with Stripes, 1944

31. Adolph Gottlieb
was an American abstract
expressionist painter, sculptor
and printmaker.

32. Rolling, 1961

33. Sentinel, 1951

34. Flotsam at Noon, 1950’s

35. Morris Louis
was an American painter. During
the 1950s he became one of the
earliest exponents of Color
Field painting

36. Point of Tranquility,1959

37. “DALET KAF”

39. 1958 Tet magna

40. Architecture

41. Modernist architecture emphasizes
function.
• The phrase ‘form follows function’ is
often used when discussing the
principles of modernism. It asserts
that forms should be simplified –
architectural designs should bear no
more ornament than is necessary to
function. Modernists believe that
ornament should follow the structure
and purpose of the building. Family life
and social interaction was at the
centre of the modernist dream for a
planned environment.

42. Modernist architecture has these
features:
•Little or no ornamentation
•Factory-made parts
•Man-made materials such as metal and
concrete
•Emphasis on function
•Rebellion against traditional styles

43. Louis Henry Sullivan
• (September 3, 1856 – April 14,
1924)
• was an American architect, and
has been called the "father of
skyscrapers" and "father of
modernism". He is considered
by many as the creator of the
modern skyscraper, was an
influential architect and critic of
the Chicago School, was a
mentor to Frank Lloyd Wright,
and an inspiration to the
Chicago group of architects who
have come to be known as
the Prairie School.

44. Guaranty Building

45. Frank Lloyd Wright
• (June 8, 1867 – April 9, 1959)
• American architect, interior designer,
writer and educator, who designed more
than 1000 structures and completed 532
works.
• Wright believed in designing structures
which were in harmony with humanity and
its environment, a philosophy he
called organic architecture.
•His work includes original and innovative
examples of many different building types,
including offices, churches, schools,
skyscrapers, hotels, and museums.
•Was recognized in 1991 by the American
Institute of Architects as "the greatest
American architect of all time."

46. Falling water
(1935, Southwestern
Pennsylvania)

47. The Solomon R.
Guggenheim Museum
(New York City 1959)

48. Hickox/Brown house
(Illinois, United States)

49. Richard Neutra
•(April 8, 1892 – April 16, 1970) was
an Austrian American architect .
•He came to be considered among the
most important modernist architects.
• Neutra had a keen appreciation for
the relationship between people and
nature; his trademark plate glass walls
and ceilings which turn into deep
overhangs have the effect of
connecting the indoors with the
outdoors.

50. Kaufmann Desert House
(1947, Palm Springs,
California)

51. Kronish House
(1955, Beverly
Hills, California)

52. Walter Gropius
•(May 18, 1883 – July 5, 1969)
was a German architect and
founder of the Bauhaus
School who, along with Ludwig
Mies van der Rohe, Le
Corbusier and Frank Lloyd
Wright, is widely regarded as
one of the pioneering masters
of modern architecture.

53. Gropius House (1938) in
Lincoln, Massachusetts

54. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
•(March 27, 1886 – August 19, 1969)
was a German-American architect.
•He is widely regarded as one of the
pioneering masters of modern
architecture

55. 860–880 Lake Shore
(1951,Drive Chicago, Illinois)

56. Fashion

57. Fashion
In the early 1920s, the ready-to-wear fashion
began to spread America. More women earned
their own wages and didn’t want to spend time on
fittings. Fashion as the status symbol was no
more important as class distinctions were
becoming blurred. People especially women called
for inexpensive fashion. In the aspect of mass
production of contemporary style clothing for
women, America went ahead of other countries.
Several designers of this fashion including Jane
Derby made a stage pose.
Jane Derby
(May 10, 1895 –
August 9, 1965)
a top-of-the-line ready-to-wear
American fashion designer
from the 1930s to 1965.

58. Women
By 1921 the longer skirt,
which was usually long
and uneven at the bottom
was out of date. The short
skirt became popular by
1925. No bosom, no
waistline, and hair nearly
hidden under a cloche
hat.
The manufacturing of
cosmetics also began from
this decade. Powder,
lipstick, rouge, eyebrow
pencil, eye shadow,
colored nails, women had
them all. Moreover, pearls
came in fashion as well.

60. Men
In this period, clothing for
men was more
conservative. Trousers
widened to 24 inches at the
bottoms. Knickers,
increased the width and
length, were called plus
fours.
In summer, white linen
was popular, while in the
winter an American coat—
the raccoon coat—was in
fashion. The slouch hat,
made of felt, could be rolled
up and packed into a
suitcase. These were very
popular with college men.

62. Children

63. Music

64. Armies of men … have turned to a
better life by first hearing the sounds
of a Salvation Army band. The next
time you hear a Salvation Army band,
no matter how humble, take off your
hat.
-John Philip Sousa

65. Is an American composer
and conductor of the late
Romantic era, known
primarily for American
military and patriotic
marches, known as “the
march king”.
o The Liberty Bell
oThe Thunderer
o The Washington Post
o Semper Fidelis
o The Stars and Stripes Forever
John Philip Sousa

66. The Salvation Army is a Christian denominational church and
international charitable organization structured in a quasi-military
fashion.
The organization reports worldwide membership of over 1.5
million,[1] consisting of soldiers, officers and adherents known as
Salvationists. Its founders Catherine and William Booth sought to
bring salvation to the poor, destitute and hungry by meeting both
their "physical and spiritual needs".

67. Charles Edward Ives
He is one of the first
American composers of
international renown, though
Ives' music was largely
ignored during his life, and
many of his works went
unperformed for many
years. Over time, Ives came
to be regarded as an
"American original"

68. Ives drew on the music of his New
England childhood—hymns, patriotic songs, brass
band marches, and dance tunes—which he set in a
very modern style, using
polytonality and polyrhythms.
•Poly tonality musical use of more than
one key simultaneously.
•Polyrhythms simultaneous use of two or
more conflicting rhythms

69. The Country Band March
•Written in 1903 after Ives graduated in Yale.
• He setcompositional path for the future by
using many well-known musical quotations—
fromchildren’s songs, patriotic tunes, hymns, and
even two marches by John Philip Sousa.
•The work is not actually in a march form (which
resembles a rag) but rather a five-part sectional
one that brings back the opening march theme in
various guises .

70. jazz

71. Early in the 20th century, jazz evolved from the blues
tradition, but also incorporated many other musical
and cultural elements. In New Orleans, often
considered the birthplace of jazz, musicians benefited
from the influx of Spanish and French colonial
influences. In this city, a unique ethnic cultural mix
and looser racial prohibitions allowed African
Americans more influence than in other regions of the
South.

72. Jazz
music of integration
as a central element of American culture, has its roots in Black slave
culture. The music combined elements from African call and response
patterns into its instrumentation and riffs. In its beginnings jazz was
looked critically upon by parts of the white population
During the 1920s and 1930s jazz gained considerably in popularity and
aroused increasing interest in young whites who were attracted by the
artistic, personal as well as cultural freedom of expression this new
musical form had to offer.

73. White Musicians
Benny
Goodman
Gene
Krupa
Milton
Mezzrow
Louis
Armstrong

74. Today, jazz music is regarded as an
integral and vibrant part of American
culture, the unique native music of
America, a worldwide representative
of Afro-American culture.

75. Literature

81. • John Steinbeck (1902–1968) was born in Salinas,
California , where he set many of his stories. His
style was simple and evocative, winning him the
favor of the readers but not of the critics.
Steinbeck often wrote about poor, working-class
people and their struggle to lead a decent and
honest life.
• The Grapes of Wrath, considered his
masterpiece, is a strong, socially-oriented novel
that tells the story of the Joads, a poor family
from Oklahoma and their journey to California in
search of a better life.

82. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962.

83. Nathanael West
• born Nathan Weinstein
(October 17, 1903 –
December 22, 1940),
was an American
author, screenwriter
and satirist

84. • A contemporary of Steinbeck, Nathanael West is most
famous for two short novels.
• The first, Miss Lonelyhearts , plumbs the life of its
eponymous antihero , a reluctant (and, to comic effect,
male) advice columnist , and the effects the tragic
letters exert on it.

85. • The second, The Day of the Locust , introduces a cast of Hollywood
stereotypes and explores the ironies of the movies. Both are now
considered classics of American literature.
• Hollywood The center of the American motion picture industry.

86. Henry Miller
• Henry
Valentine
Miller
(December 26, 1891 – June 7,
1980) was an American writer.
• He was known for breaking with
existing
literary
forms,
developing a new sort of semiautobiographical novel that
blended character study, social
criticism,
philosophical
reflection, explicit language, sex,
surrealist free association and
mysticism, always distinctly
about and expressive of the reallife Henry Miller and yet also
fictional.

87. • Henry Miller assumed a unique
place in American literature in
the 1930s when his semiautobiographical novels, written
and published in Paris, were
banned from the U.S. Although
his major works, including Tropic
of Cancer and Black Spring ,
would not be free of the label of
obscenity until 1962, their
themes and stylistic innovations
had already exerted a major
influence
on
succeeding
generations of American writers,
and paved the way for sexually
frank 1960s novels

88. Gertrude Stein
• (February 3, 1874 – July
27, 1946) was an
American writer of
novels, poetry and
plays that eschewed
the narrative, linear,
and
temporal
conventions of 19thcentury literature, and
a fervent collector of
Modernist art.
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas is a 1933 book by Gertrude Stein,
written in the guise of an autobiography authored by Alice B. Toklas, who was
her lover.

89. • In 1933, Gertrude Stein published the memoirs of her
Paris years, entitled The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
, which became a literary bestseller. The advent of this
book elevated Stein from the relative obscurity of a cult
literary figure into the light of mainstream attention.

90. Ernest Hemingway
• Ernest Miller Hemingway
(July 21, 1899 – July 2,
1961) was an American
author and journalist. His
economical and
understated style had a
strong influence on 20thcentury fiction, while his
life of adventure and his
public image influenced
later generations.

91. • The popularity of
Hemingway's work to a
great extent is based on
the themes, which
according to scholar
Frederic Svoboda are love,
war, wilderness and loss,
all of which are strongly
evident in the body of
work.[174] These are
recurring themes of
American literature, which
are clearly evident in
Hemingway's work

92. • T.S. Eliot (1888-1965),
American-British poet and
literary critic, author of
Prufrock and Other
Observations (1917) won
numerous awards and honours
in his lifetime, including the
Nobel Prize for Literature in
1948. His early and
experimental poetical works
depict a bleak and barren
soullessness, often in spare yet
finely crafted modern verse

93. The Hollow Men
• The Hollow Men (1925) is a
poem by T. S. Eliot. Its
themes are, like many of
Eliot's poems, overlapping
and fragmentary, but it is
recognised to be
concerned most with postWorld War I Europe under
the Treaty of Versailles
(which Eliot despised:
compare "Gerontion"), the
difficulty of hope and
religious conversion

94. William Faulkner
• William Cuthbert Faulkner
(born Falkner, September 25,
1897 – July 6, 1962), also
known as Will Faulkner, was an
American writer and Nobel
Prize laureate from Oxford,
Mississippi. Faulkner worked in
a variety of written media,
including novels, short stories,
a play, poetry, essays and
screenplays. He is primarily
known and acclaimed for his
novels and short stories

95. A Rose for Emily
• Faulkner's most famous, most
popular, and most anthologized
short story, "A Rose for Emily"
evokes the terms Southern gothic
and grotesque, two types of
literature in which the general
tone is one of gloom, terror, and
understated violence. The story is
Faulkner's best example of these
forms because it contains
unimaginably dark images: a
decaying mansion, a corpse, a
murder, a mysterious servant who
disappears, and, most horrible of
all, necrophilia — an erotic or
sexual attraction to corpses.

96. F.Scott Fitzgerald
• Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald
(September 24, 1896 –
December 21, 1940) was
an American author of
novels and short stories,
whose works are the
paradigmatic writings of
the Jazz Age, a term he
coined. He is widely
regarded as one of the
greatest American writers
of the 20th century.

97. • Tender is the Night was
published in 1933 by Francis
Scott Key Fitzgerald, better
known as F. Scott Fitzgerald, the
American author famous for his
novel, The Great Gatsby. Set
between 1913 and 1930, mostly
in
Southern
France
and
Switzerland, the novel tells the
story of what happens when the
extremes of love, madness, and
ambition play out against a highglamour backdrop, in a physical
and psychological landscape torn
apart by World War I.

98. • The
Great
Gatsby
explores themes
of
decadence,
idealism,
resistance to change,
social upheaval, and
excess,
creating
a
portrait of the Jazz Age
or the Roaring Twenties
that has been described
as a cautionary tale
regarding the American
Dream.

99. Margaret Mitchell
• Margaret Munnerlyn
Mitchell (November 8,
1900 – August 16, 1949)
was an American author
and journalist. One novel
by Mitchell was published
during her lifetime, the
American Civil War-era
novel, Gone with the
Wind. For it she won the
National Book Award for
Most Distinguished Novel
of 1936 and the Pulitzer
Prize for Fiction in 1937.

100. Dashiell Hammett
• Samuel Dashiell Hammett May
27, 1894 – January 10, 1961)
was an American author of
hard-boiled detective novels
and short stories, a screenplay
writer, and political activist.
Among
the
enduring
characters he created are Sam
Spade (The Maltese Falcon),
Nick and Nora Charles (The
Thin
Man),
and
the
Continental Op (Red Harvest
and The Dain Curse).

101. The Maltese Falcon
• The Maltese Falcon is a
1930 detective novel by
Dashiell Hammett. The
main character, Sam
Spade, appears only in
this novel and in three
lesser known short
stories, yet is widely
cited as the crystallizing
figure in the
development of the
hard-boiled private
detective genre.

102. Jerome David Salinger
• Bornrn on January 1, 1919, in
New York, J.D. Salinger was a
literary giant despite his slim
body of work and reclusive
lifestyle. His landmark novel,
The Catcher in the Rye, set a
new course for literature in
post-WWII
America
and
vaulted Salinger to the heights
of literary fame. In 1953,
Salinger moved from New York
City and led a secluded life,
only publishing one new story
before his death.

103. • The Catcher in the Rye is
a 1951 novel by J. D.
Salinger.
Originally
published for adults, it
has
since
become
popular with adolescent
readers for its themes of
teenage
angst
and
alienation

104. THE END ☺