Chapter 9 European art after Cubism

1. Chapter 9
EUROPEAN ART
AFTER CUBISM

2. • Industrialization and colonization characterized the beginning of 20th
century, contributed to a dark mood in Europe and North America.
• In addition, in 1912 the “unsinkable” ship Titanic left Southampton,
England, with great fanfare. Four days later it sunk, after hitting an iceberg.
• More than 1,500 were killed in the disaster.” (Elizabeth Mansfield, History of
Modern Art, 7th ed. Pearson 2013).
RMS Titanic. British
passenger liner. Sank
in the North Atlantic
Ocean in the early
hours of 15 April 1912,

3. • Chagall arrived in Paris at the time
cubism debuted publicly at the
1911 Salon des Indépendants.
• He spend more time with poets
than with fellow artists.
Chagall
• was born in the Belorussian city of
Vitebsk in 1887.
• the city was mostly built of wood;
little survived three years of Nazi
occupation and destruction during
World War II.
Fantasy Through Abstraction: Chagall and
the Metaphysical School
Marc Chagall. Homage to
Applinaire. 1911-12. Oil on, gold
and silver powder on canvas.
Stelijk von Abbe Museum,
Eindhoven, the Netherlands.

4. Mark Chagall.
The Cattle Dealer,
1912. Oil on canvas.
Harvard Art Museums
Chagall has been described two ways,
• as a major artist of the 20th century, the last of the modernists;
• as a painter of Jewish themes that depict, in highly poetic and
haunting, if not unreal images, life in the Russian city of Vitebsk at
the turn of the twentieth century.

5. Marc Chagall
• moved to Paris from Russia in 1910.
• Soon after, his paintings started to
reflect the latest Paris avant-garde
styles.
• Paris Through the Window, shows
influences of Orphic Cubism
represented by Robert Delaunay,
• The Eiffel Tower, which appears in the
painting – a frequent subject in
Delaunay’s work.
• refused literal interpretations of his
paintings.
Marc Chagall, Paris Through
the Window 1913. Oil on
canvas. Solomon R.
Guggenheim Museum, NY.

6. • In May 1915, Chagall
married his first love,
muse and inspiration,
Bella Rosenfeld, the
daughter of a wealthy
jeweler in Vitebsk.
• She would become the
model for his famous
series of paintings that
showed flying figures. In
1916 the Chagalls had a
daughter, Ida, which
would be their only
child. Mark Chagall. The Birthday, 1915.
Oil on cardboard. Museum of
Modern Art, NY.

7. Giorgio de Chirico and the
Metaphysical School
Giorgio de Chirico
• was a pioneer in the revival of Classicism
that flourished in the 1920s.
• was influenced by his experiences of
being raised in Greece by Italian parents.
• in Paris in the 1910s, he painted the
classically-inspired pictures of empty
town squares for which he is best known.
• he formed the short-lived Metaphysical
Art movement, along with the painter
Carlo Carrà.
• de Chirico’s considered by Surrealists
their precursor.
Giorgio de Chirico. The
Soothsayer's Recompense.
1913. Oil on canvas. Philadelphia
Museum of Art.

8. de Chirico
• rejected the formal innovations of
modern art since Impressionism
• opted for realistic representations.
• From 1915 to 1925 de Chirico painted
faceless mannequins and juxtaposed
wildly unrelated objects
• From 1924 to 1930 de Chirico gave
great impetus to the surrealist
movement
• influenced such surrealists as Yves
Tanguy and Salvador Dalí.
Giorgio de Chirico. Mystery
& Melancholy of a Street,
1914. Oil on canvas. Private
collection.

9. Futurism was an international art movement founded in Italy in 1909.
The movement has often been erroneously considered an offshoot of
Cubism. Both its roots and its goals were very different. Initiated by the
Italian writer Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876 – 1944). A part of the
confusion arose from the insistence of the Paris painters in reading the
Technical Manifesto with the analytical procedures of Cubism in mind.
The Futurist Manifesto was published in the Italian newspaper Gazzetta
dell'Emilia in Bologna on February, 5 1909, and in French as "Manifeste
du futurisme" in the newspaper Le Figaro on February 20, 1909. Though
the Futurists had parallels in several countries, Futurism was mainly an
Italian phenomenon
The Manifesto initiated an artistic philosophy, Futurism, that was a
rejection of the past, and a celebration of speed, machinery, violence,
youth and industry; it was also an advocation of the modernisation and
cultural rejuvenation of Italy.
“Running on Shrapnel”:
Futurism in Italy

10. The Futurists loved speed, noise, machines, pollution, and cities; they
embraced the exciting new world that was then upon them rather than
hypocritically enjoying the modern world’s comforts while loudly
denouncing the forces that made them possible.
Henri Matisse’s and Leo Stein’s reaction at first seeing Pablo Picasso’s
“Demoiselles D’ Avignon” (1907) at the “Bateau Lavoir” was to half
jokingly exclaim that the painter was trying to create a fourth dimension.
The art of Painting is considered as a pathway across dimensions,
squeezing the three dimensional world perceived by humans onto a two
dimensional surface. Yet any discussion about a fourth dimension in
Painting appears paradoxical: Painting is about reducing dimensions
rather than expanding them

11. The Futurists
• insisted on maintaining
their independence from
the school of Paris and its
artistic dominance.
• The confusion persisted
because several of the
Futurist painters,
appropriated aspects of
the formal language of
Cubism, using them to
serve their own ends.
Umberto Boccioni States of Mind I: The
Farewells. 1911. Oil on canvas. Museum
of Modern Art, NY.

12. Giacomo Balla, Street
Light. 1909. Oil on canvas.
Museum of Modern Art. NY
• Giacomo Balla’s Street Light. seems
to allude at the same time to a
possible new perspective and to the
necessity of considering time as an
additional dimension.
• The best known work combining both
the Cubist simultaneous multiple
views and the Futurist world volume
slicing technique is Marcel
Duchamp’s “Nude Descending a
Staircase No. 2” (1912), a geometric
depiction of a human form in motion.

13. Giacomo Balla with “Dynamism of a
Dog on a Leash” (1912)
• provides first a conventional
pathway from the ordinary 3D
space to a 2D image and then a
leap towards 3D space-time by
allowing the time dimension to
enter the scene and thus breaking
the dimension limits of the painting
surface:
• his dog, formed by overlaid
slices of the corresponding
world volume, appears
smudged and multi – legged
Giacommo Balla. Dynamism of a
Dog in a Leash. 1912. Oil on
canvas. Albright-Knox Gallery,
Buffalo, NY.
Balla

14. • sought to amplify the aesthetic
value of kinetic movement.
• Music was a common medium
to express Futurism.
• He wanted to replace the static
appearance of a photograph
with an illusion of motion.
• He left his camera’s shutter
open to capture the movement
of the hand across the strings
of the cello.
• The effect is very convincing.
Anton Giulio Bragaglia. “The Cellist”
1913, Silver Gelatin Print.
Bragaglia

15. Gino Severini. Red Cross Train
Passing a Village. Summer 1915. Oil
on canvas.
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum,
New York
• In 1906, Severini moved from
Rome to Paris
• he came into close contact with
Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso.
• He also stayed in touch with the
Futurist group who remained in
Italy.
• In 1910 Severini signed the
“Futurist Painting: Technical
Manifesto” with four other Italian
artists,
• Giacomo Balla,
• Umberto Boccioni,
• Carlo Carrà,
• and Luigi Russolo.
Severini

16. Carra
• had a great impact on Italian art as
both a painter and writer.
• he explored both Italian
Divisionism and Futurism prior to
the First World War.
• After the war he emerged as an
active participant in the school of
Metaphysical
• Despite criticism, he focused on
Classical Revival and the values of
early Renaissance art, as a way to
• 'Return to Order' Carlo Carra, The Drunken
Gentleman. 1916. Oil on
canvas.

17. Boccioni
Umberto Boccioni. Unique
Forms of Continuity in Space.
1913. Bronze. The Museum of
Modern Art, NY.
• sought express dynamism and
energy in this sculpture. This
marching figure seems
unstoppable.
• Despite the futurist connection,
the sculpture resembles the
winged Victory of Samothrace.
• This sculpture was the fourth in a
series of striding plaster figures
he made at the same time,
• This is the only that survived. The
other three were accidentally
destroyed..

18. Sant’Elia
Industrialization
• had transformed the old European cities.
• Inspired Antonio Sant’Elia to develop
projects that manifested
• a grand, poetic vision for the future
• anapprehension about moving too
far away from the past.
• His architectural training didn’t match
the modern technological and
engineering knowledge necessary
• Sant’Elia he had left behind only two
built architectural projects: a house and
two tombs.
Antonio Sant'Elia. Train and
Plain Staition for 'Città
Nuova. 1914. Musei Civici.
Como.

19. “Our Vortex Is Not Afraid”:
Windham Lewis and Vorticism
• Vorticism was a brief artistic movement
cut short by the World War I.
• Lewis was more of a writer than an
artist. His career was typical of of the
English Vorticist artists.
• He started his own aesthetic school,
named Vorticism.
• In 1914 Lewis established the short-
lived Rebel Art Centre. 1916, when
Lewis went into the Army, was the end
of the Vorticist Movement.
Percy Windham Lewis. Blast
cover, July 1915. Harvard
University Museum.
Cambridge, MA.

20. Mikhail Larionov, Rayonist
Composition: Number 9, 1913
Kunsthistorie, Moderne Kunst
Natalia
Goncharova
Linen, 1913. Oil on
canvas. Tate,
London.
Lorionov, Goncharova, and
Rayonism
• The Russian Avant-Garde covers the
period of artistic innovation between
1912 and 1935.
• Key developments include
Suprematism and Constructivism.
• Mikhail Larionov and his lifelong
partner Natalia Goncharova, were
the earliest exponents of abstract art
in pre-Revolutionary Russia.
• Together they developed Rayonism
which drew from scientific
discoveries.
A World Ready for Change:
The Avant-Garde In Russia

21. • The improved communications kept
avant-garde artists in Russia well-
informed about activities in the West.
• Although they worked independently
of their western colleagues, their
influenced the developments of
Russian Cubo-Futurism in 1912-13.
• For Malevich, Cubo-Futurism was an
intermediary state between Cubism
and dynamism.
• The Russian avant-garde included a
high proportion of prominent female
artists.
Lyubov Popova, Subject from a
Dyer's Shop (circa 1914). Oil on
canvas. Museum of Modern Art,
New York, ,
Popova and Cubo-Futurism

22. Malevich and Suprematism
Russian artist Kazimir Malevich
• believed that Suprematist art
would lead to the "supremacy of
pure feeling or perception in the
pictorial arts."
• Was influenced by avant-garde
poets; Malevich believed that
the links between words and the
objects they denote, created
possibilities for a totally
abstract art.
Suprematism was important in
shaping Constructivism.
Kazimir Malevich. Morning in
the Village after Snowstorm.
1912.Oil on Canvas.

23. El Lissitzky’s Proun
• Between 1919 and 1927 El
Lissitzky produced a large
number of paintings, prints,
and drawings titled Proun.
• Lissitzky's style reflects his
training as an architect in
Germany before World War I.
• Lissitzky's artworks are
metaphors for the
fundamental transformations
that he thought would result
from the Russian Revolution
El Lissitzky Proun 19D 1920 or 1921.
Gesso, oil, varnish, crayon, colored
papers, sandpaper, graph paper,
cardboard, metallic paint, and metal foil
on plywood. Museum of Modern Art.

24. Kandinsky and the early Soviet Period
In his art, Kandinsky strove to use abstraction to
give painting the freedom from nature that he
admired in music. His discovery of a new subject
matter based solely on the artist’s “inner
necessity” occupied him throughout his life.
The pressure of socialist ideology upon the art,
determined Kandinsky to leave Moscow in
December, 1921. After returning to Germany,
Kandinsky accepts an invitation of Walter Gropius,
the founder of the well-known Bauhaus. In 1925,
due to the right wing parties' attacks Bauhaus in
Weimar was closed.
Between 1926 and 1933 Kandinsky painted 159 oils
and 300 water colors. Many of them have been lost
after Nazis declared Kandinsky's and many other
artists' paintings to be "degenerate"
Wasily Kandinsky.
White line, 1920. Oil
on canvas. Museum
Ludwig, Cologne.

25. Constructivism
• was the last and influential modern art
movement developed in Russia in the
20th century.
• borrowed ideas from Cubism,
Suprematism and Futurism,
• was concerned with composition with a
focus on construction.
Tatlin
Tatlin's Counter-Reliefs – vital part of his
developing ideas that form a bridge
between the influence of Cubism on his
work, and the birth of Constructivism.
Utopian Visions:
Russian Constructivism
Vladimir Tatlin. Counter-Relief.
1915. Iron, copper, wood, and
rope. State Russian Museum,
St. Petersburg.

26. Tatlin’s Model for the Monument to the Third
International 1920:
• viewed by Tatlin as restoring of the
essential unity of painting, sculpture and
architecture”
• intended to be a functioning building - an
administrative and propaganda center
• iron and glass intended to express the
new social order
• the strong diagonal + two encircling
spirals are a symbol of the dynamic forces
of historic progress.
Vladimir Tatlin, 1885-1953
Model for the Monument
to the Third International
1920. State Russian
Museum, Petrograd.

27. Rodchenko
• has put his art in the service of political
revolution.
• conventional painter at the beginning of
his career.
• encounters with Russian Futurists helped
him become an influential founder of the
Constructivist movement.
•
• photography was important to Rodchenko
in the 1920s
• experimented with an extraordinary array
of media, from painting and sculpture to
graphic design and photography.
Alecsnadr Rodchenko.
Untitled Advertising Poster.
1924. Rodchenko-Stepanova
Archive. Moscow.

28. Stepanova and Rozanova
Varvara Stepanova
• born to a peasant family in 1894,
• was one of the greatest creative
forces of the revolutionary years
• by her 20s, she played an
important role in the Russian
avant-garde, alongside Olga
Rozanova and the cutting-edge
photographer – also her life
partner – Alexander Rodchenko.
• Her work remains influential
today, if under-recognised.
Varvara Stepanova. Design for
Sportwear. 1923. Guache and ink
on paper. Collection, Alexander
Lavrentiev.

29. Pevsner, Gabo and the Spread of Constructivism
Naum Gabo:
• Russian-American Sculptor, Designer,
and Architect
• Gabo was born Naum Pevsner in the
small Russian town of Bryansk
• closely associated with Constructivism
• sought to blur the boundaries between
creative and functional processes
• settled in the United States after the
Second World War
• believed that art should have an explicit
and functional value in society
Naum Gabo. Column
(enlarged version of 1923
original)
1975 Steel 194 x 154 in
Courtauld Institute of Art