This document discusses the evolution of modern art in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It explores how modern art shifted from traditional subject matter and styles with the rise of photography. Artists experimented with abstraction, collage, found objects, and non-representational forms. Figurative works also simplified forms and blurred spatial relationships. Artists questioned the definition of art and increasingly focused on the material aspects of painting over representation. Modern art reflected the technological changes and uncertainties of the time.

1. ART 100
Summer 2016
MODERN ART

2. what makes it modern?
I. In terms of subject matter, there is an ongoing shift to
representing the lives of ordinary people. In this regard
the world of art gets a big assist from the invention of
photography, because it is increasingly likely that an
ordinary person may live to see an image of his or herself.

3. what makes it modern?
II. In terms of style, there is a serious reckoning with
the photograph. Now that likenesses can be made
mechanically, cheaply, and quickly, where does that
leave the traditional fine arts? Different artists
answer this challenge in significantly different
ways.

4. what makes it modern?
III. In terms of how art is made and sold, the "art
market" replaces the traditional system of
patronage. As a result, the artist's ability to make a
living becomes vastly more uncertain. At the same
time, art becomes a bit more independent. How
much it still serves the interests of the powerful
becomes an open question.

5. J.M.W. Turner, The Burning of the Houses of Parliament, 1835

6. When the Houses of Parliament in London burn to
the ground in 1835, artist J.M.W. Turner rushes to
the scene with his brushes. This event occurs just
before the invention of photography. There is no
way to "document" the scene with a photograph,
but Turner chooses the subject precisely for its
momentary quality—much like a typhoon or
thunderstorm that creates dramatic visual effects
before subsiding into calm weather. The heat,
smoke, and confusion of the fire on the far bank of
the Thames are mirrored by the agitated crowds
thronging the near bank,. Even the boats on the
river, jammed with curiosity seekers, are rendered
in choppy, excited strokes.

7. "A picture, before being a war horse, a nude
woman, or some anecdote, is essentially a flat
surface covered by colors in a certain order.”
—Maurice Denis

8. James Abbott MacNeill WHISTLER
Nocturne in Black and Gold: The
Falling Rocket
1875
Notice that Whistler also chooses
a momentary visual effect for this
painting: as the fireworks slowly
fade into embers and fall to earth.
Sparkling touches of gold on a
dark green ground create the
effect in paint.

9. Claude MONET, Water Lilies (The Clouds) 1903, oil on canvas, 29 3/8 x 41 7/16 in

10. Claude MONET, Water Lilies (The Clouds) 1903, oil on canvas, 29 3/8 x 41 7/16 in
In his late paintings, Claude Monet treasures the motif of the lily pond for its
ability to generate ambiguous reflections. Are we looking at an actual object, its
reflection, or both? In this way he insists that we are in the realm of the image
now.

11. "A picture, before being a war horse, a nude
woman, or some anecdote, is essentially a flat
surface covered by colors in a certain order.”
—Maurice Denis
In this comment, art critic Maurice Denis
points out that whether the image
resolves into a set of a figures in space—
to create what is known as a figural or
representational painting—or does not
resolve—remaining an abstract series of
shapes, it is made in the same way.

12. Once art is freed from its unique duty to represent the world
around us (as photography can now do the heavy lifting in a
variety of contexts), the artist has different choices before
her.

13. She can:
Keep painting in a representational manner. Many artists do
continue using the same techniques developed during the
Renaissance, employing oil paint, perspective construction,
and detailed study of the human form.
Keep painting, but allow her style to become more simplified
and abstracted, putting the direct focus on color and form on
canvas rather than subjugating those formal elements to the
depiction of recognizable forms in space.
Forget painting. Why bother? Anything that needs to be
represented can be photographed. Art now is free to discover
fresh possibilities, no longer enslaved to the representational
image.

14. Vincent van GOGH
La Berceuse (Woman
Rocking a Cradle), 1889
oil on canvas
36 1/2 x 29 inches
In this picture, we can
see a woman seated in
a chair with a faraway
expression on her face.
Her hands, which are
folded in her lap,
loosely hold a rope to
rock an infant's cradle.
Behind her is an
extravagantly
patterned wall that
contrasts boldly with
the red carpet on the
floor.

15. Although we can
recognize and name all
of these details—
making this a figurative
or representational
painting—van Gogh is
clearly compelled by
many other artistic
ideas here. Bold fields
of red, white and green
are juxtaposed in a
way that cannot be
entirely explained by
contemporary
convention of interior
decor and fashion.

16. Some areas receive
precise detailing (her
carefully combed hair,
callused hands, the
twisted cords of the
rope) while others are
suggested in a far
more simplified way,
such as the flat
expanse of red carpet,
the visible portions of
the chair, and the dark
green of her jacket).

17. The floral wallpaper is
alternately highly
detailed and almost
sketchy, which creates
a strange effect where
we cannot decide if
these flowers are
printed on paper, or
actually popping off the
surface in the artist's
mind. Similarly, an odd
spatial effect is
creating by the fact that
wall meets the floor
quite a bit lower on the
left side of the picture
than the right, causing
a spatial wobble in the
picture.

18. Eventually, artists like Mark Rothko will forego the figure altogether, focusing instead on the
bold fields of color and curious spatial effects that van Gogh kept in the background.

19. Vincent van Gogh
Portrait of Joseph Roulin
1889
Oil on canvas
25 3/8 x 21 ¾”
Depth becomes less
important as surface
and background seem
to melt together. Once
again van Gogh uses
floral wallpaper to
confuse the eye about
spatial relationships, and
enjoys the rhyme
between the
postmaster's lushly curly
beard and the
extravagant floral motifs
of the paper.

20. Georges SEURAT, Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, 1884

21. Georges SEURAT, Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, 1884
Though Seurat uses conventional perspective to create the illusion of spatial depth,
his figures seem to lack volume and appear to be cutout shapes.

23. Paul GAUGUIN, Vision after the Sermon, 1888
oil on canvas, 28 ¾ × 36 ¼ inches
National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh
Painters like Paul
Gauguin depict the white
bonnets of faithful
worshipers as a mosaic
of white shapes against
a surprising red
background. A tree
branch twists across the
canvas, creating curious
spatial effects that
suggest a spiritual world
may be closer than we
think.

24. Paul Cézanne, Gulf of Marseilles seen from L’Estaque, c.1885, oil on canvas, 31.5 × 39.2 in

25. Paul Cézanne, Gulf of Marseilles seen from L’Estaque, c.1885, oil on canvas, 31.5 × 39.2 in
In contrast, Cézanne sees the French landscape as in terms of earthy geometric solids,
bringing a new sense of structure and solidity to the bright French landscape.

26. Paul Cézanne, Mont St. Victoire seen from Bellevue, c. 1885, 37.5 × 51.3 inches) Barnes Foundation

27. Paul Cézanne, Mont Sainte-Victoire and Château Noir, 1904-6, oil on canvas, 25.8 × 31.9 inches

28. Picasso, Portrait of Wilhelm Uhde, 1910
Catalan artist Pablo PICASSO
had no difficulty painting
representational pictures,
abstractions, and everything in
between. Here he fragments the
portrait of one of his art dealers
into rectangles and triangles.
Over time he will oscillate back and
forth between styles in a seemingly
effortless manner.

29. Picasso, Still Life with Chair Caning, 1912

30. Pablo PICASSO, Still Life with Chair Caning, 1912
For this collage, Picasso used wallpaper that imitated chair caning, and wrapped
the whole canvas in real rope. The other portions are painted in imitation of
various objects that might be found on a tabletop.

31. Picasso, Bottle of Vieux Marc, Glass, Guitar and Newspaper, 1913,
Picasso, Bottle of Vieux Marc, Glass, Guitar and Newspaper, 1913
In collages like this one, Picasso uses a newspaper to represent a newspaper, and
cut and pasted paper to represent the guitar, glass, and bottle.

32. Duchamp, Nude Descending a Staircase, 1912 Duchamp, Bottle Rack, 1914

33. Marcel Duchamp realizes that the dynamic forms that interest him can be
found in actual objects just as well as in painting.
The bottle rack on the left was a common object in French life, used for
drying out empty wine bottles before reusing them.

34. Duchamp, Tu M’, 1918
This painting of Duchamp's plays with illusion and reality, including a found object that
sticks directly out of the painting. The question Duchamp asks here: why paint a
representation of the object if you could just use the real thing?

35. Duchamp, L.H.O.O.Q., 1919 Duchamp, Rotary Demisphere (Precision Optics),
1925

36. Duchamp, Rotary Demisphere (Precision Optics),
1925
Duchamp creates his own "moving
pictures" in this work. The machine gets
plugged in and a series of different plates
can be selected.

37. Duchamp's last work is located behind a closed door, with only
a peephole allowing viewers to look inside.

38. This is what you see
through the peephole.
Now the viewer's real
body—and their desire to
see the work—is brought
into the realm of art,
further conflating the
represented and the real.

39. Marcel DUCHAMP
Fountain
1917/1964
glazed ceramic, paint
15 x 19 1/4 x 24 5/8 inches
Can "art" be nothing more than a framing device to get us to look at reality differently?

40. René Magritte, The Treachery of Images, 1928-9
In his own way, Belgian artist René Magritte asks a similar question, declaring
that a painting of a pipe can never be a real pipe.

41. Artists begin to feel a great freedom to use paint in different ways, or even to forget
about painting and use pictures clipped from magazines to express their ideas.
There are many different ways to put a recognizable figure together, and artists are
drawn to the challenge of finding new methods rather than relying on the old ones.

42. Ferdinand Léger
Woman with a Cat, 1921
Hannah Höch, The Beautiful Girl, 1920

43. Fernand LÉGER, The Red Table, 1920. AIC
While some artists experiment with different ways
of breaking down a scene and putting it back together,
others question the need for a subject altogether.
Why not just paint colors and shapes, for their own
intrinsic appeal?

44. Wassily KANDINSKY, Composition IV
1911
Oil on canvas, 62 7/8 x 98 5/8 inches

45. Sonia DELAUNAY, Simultaneous Colors, 1913

46. Paul KLEE, Castle and Sun, 1928

47. “There is no such thing as
‘abstract,’ or ‘concrete’… There is a
good picture and a bad picture.
There is the picture that moves you
and the picture that leaves you
cold… A picture has a value in
itself, like a musical score, like a
poem.”
—Fernand Léger
Here French artist Léger tries to explain that it doesn’t really matter whether a
picture has a subject matter.

48. Frantisek KUPKA, Self Portrait (The Yellow Scale) 1907
Sometimes the same
artist will move back and forth
between representational
and abstract modes of painting.

49. Frantisek KUPKA
Red and Blue Discs
1911
39 3/8 x 28 ¾" inches

50. Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge, painted signboard, 1919

51. El Lissitzky, Proun Room, 1923

52. El Lissitzky
The New Man,
from a portfolio of 10
lithographs,
published 1923
As it turns out the
abstract language of
color and shape can
transform back in
recognizable human
forms.

53. Grosz and Heartfield
Dada Picture
c. 1919
collage

54. Raoul HAUSSMAN
Mechanical Head (Spirit of Our Time)
1920
And assemblages of found objects
can produce a recognizably human
head.

55. First International Dada Fair, Berlin, June 1920, with participating artists

56. John Heartfield
Those Who Read Bourgeois
Newspapers Become Deaf and Dumb
1930

57. John Heartfield
Adolf, the Superman, Swallows
Gold and Spouts Junk
1932
John Heartfield uses found images
from published photographs, cuts
and pastes them back together to
create figurative images with a
political edge.

58. Hannah Höch
Bourgeois Wedding
Couple (Quarrel)
1919

59. In Dada works like this
one, and Surrealist works
as in the next 2
examples,
there is an interplay
between the "real" and
the represented, as found
objects and images are
embedded into the work.
Kurt SCHWITTERS
Merz 32A (Cherry
Picture), 1921
collage of colored papers,
fabrics, printed labels and
pictures, pieces of wood,
etc., and gouache on
cardboard background
36-1/8 x 27-3/4 inches

60. Max Ernst (French, born
Germany. 1891-1976)
Two Children Are Threatened
by a Nightingale (Deux enfants
sont menacés par un rossignol),
1924.
© The Museum of Modern Art,
New York

61. Max Ernst
Les Pleiades
1920

62. Salvador DALI, Lobster Telephone, 1936
“I do not understand why, when I ask for a grilled lobster in a restaurant, I
am never served a cooked telephone; I do not understand why
champagne is always chilled and why on the other hand telephones,
which are habitually so frightfully warm and disagreeably sticky to the
touch, are not also put in silver buckets with crushed ice around them.”

63. Meret Oppenheim
Object, 1936
Fur-covered cup, saucer, and spoon
© 2014 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / Pro Litteris, Zurich

64. Arshile GORKY
The Artist and His Mother
c. 1926-36
Some surrealists, like
Arshile Gorky, move between
more representational works, like
this portrait of the artist with his
mother...

65. Arshile GORKY (American, born Armenia. 1904-1948) Garden in Sochi c. 1943.
and more abstract ones, like this evocation of his lost childhood, now that he
is in exile.

66. I don’t like that word, “finish.” When
something is finished, that means it’s
dead, doesn’t it? I believe in
everlastingness. I never finish a
painting—I just stop working on it for a
while.
—Arshile Gorky, 1948
Gorky has an enormous influence on Willem de Kooning, who becomes a
premier American abstract painter.

67. Willem de Kooning
(American, b. The Netherlands,
1904-1997).
Woman, I, 1950-52
Oil on canvas
75 7/8 x 58 inches

68. Willem de
KOONING
Two Women at the
Beach
1953

69. “…if you pick up some paint with your brush and
make somebody's nose with it, this is rather ridiculous
when you think of it, theoretically or philosophically. It's
really absurd to make an image, like a human image,
with paint, today, when you think about it, since we
have this problem of doing it or not doing it. But then
all of a sudden it was even more absurd not to do it.
So I fear I have to follow my desires.”
—Willem de Kooning, in a 1962 radio interview
Born in Holland, emigrated to the US
Well-known abstract painter, active 1940s-80s
As de Kooning points out, it's somewhat absurd to make paintings,
whether they are figural OR abstract. He never makes a concrete decision,
alternating between both modes of making at different times in his
career and even in the same painting.