STEP 1: Understanding the Information

THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Historical Background

Welcome to “History through Art”. Today we’ll be looking at the history, art and culture of the 20^th century because it’s our contemporary time period. It may be the most difficult to explain. We can describe what has happened in the 20th century – the years of earth-shattering events, the ever-accelerating pace of change, the phenomenal improvement of all technology and so on. But it is impossible to know how all these things eventually will be viewed in relation to the past and the future.

On the positive side, a revolution in transportation has made all parts of the world accessible beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. The moon has been reached and distant lands are just a plane ride away. Telephone, radio, television, lasers, computers, and satellites have made communication and access to information almost instantaneous. The knowledge that has been gained during this Information Revolution has far exceeded all the knowledge acquired throughout the whole history of humankind.

Amidst these triumphs, we have suffered two catastrophic world wars plus several wars on a smaller, but still devastating, scale. Also in this century, the world’s population is fast exceeding its ability to feed itself. Massive social experiments, such as communism in the Soviet Union and other parts of Eastern Europe, have collapsed. And, in the name of progress, people have destroyed much of earth’s environment, in some instances to the point where the loss is irrevocable and may threaten our very existence.

As in all other periods of history, artists in the 20th century have tried to convey these positive and negative experiences in their work. Many different and often conflicting forms of creative expression have emerged. Aided by the century’s spectacular advances in communication, the Cubism and Expressionism of the early years of the century in Europe led to artistic styles with names such as Dadaism, Surrealism, and Futurism. In later years, American art movements with names such as Abstract Expressionism, Op, Pop, and Super-realism rose to prominence, only to be superseded by new ones with names like Modernism and Post-Modernism. At the same time, the legacy of Ancient Greece and Rome and all major artistic styles since then have continued and have been joined by influences from cultures in Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.

So as we study the artistic events of the 20th century in this program, we need to bear in mind that they reflect the events of a very turbulent period, a period in which people tried to find ways to express through art how the world – good or bad, troubled or serene – appeared to them.

Part I

During the 19th century, ideas and institutions which once had appeared so solid and real began to seem much less so. The traditional vision of world order disintegrated. The Industrial Revolution played havoc with the old divisions of social order. Large masses of people crowded together in urban centers. Isolated within crowds, these individuals began to weave the fabric of modern civilization.

Some artists reflected the new sensibility by dissolving their forms into fragments of vibrating dots. There were many new ways of seeing things. Objects were broken and displaced into multiple perspectives – as if we could see the objects from all sides. Sometimes artists transformed the world to reflect their inner visions. It can be said that to a certain extent the invention of photography freed the artist. For this and other reasons, the artist ceased to try to make his work into an illusion of the real world. Canvases were filled by flat color shapes which denied the existence of deep space. For many, doubt became a basic way of perceiving. Only those things that could be known or felt personally were considered real. The world had once been considered closed and orderly. Artists had expressed this world view in their work.

By the end of the 19th century, order was no longer perceived to be at the basis of existence. Life appeared to be a matter of chance happenings. Artists sought to communicate their experience of the accidental character of modern life. Here, the edge of the canvas cuts across figures. Life cannot be caught and framed in nice, neat, and complete segments.

Early in the 20th century, jazz became an important form of musical expression. Improvisation is an integral part of jazz, which at its best has a wonderful sense of spontaneity. Jazz is a musical form in which the uniqueness of the individual players is essential to the whole created by the group. It is also a form that has no predetermined end. In traditional Western European music, themes are developed; a completion is sought. In jazz the whole is opened and unresolved.

By the turn of the century, anxiety and despair often accompanied the loss of faith in stability and order. Values changed rapidly. Nothing was certain. Nothing was certain – not even a definition of art. Here, the painter sought to achieve what had been considered impossible: the representation of movement in painting. During the 20th century, artists have continually sought new ways of defining their terms. Is this a painting, a piece of sculpture, or both? Is this art? We are no longer certain about the limits of art. Change has been one of the fundamental ingredients of culture during the 20th century.

People have continually had to adjust to new technologies, new customs, new beliefs. People have had to redefine who and what they are. The old ways of doing and seeing things came to seem useless.

The Cubists reacted against the traditional use of perspective. They felt that the creation of the illusion of three-dimensional space on a flat surface was false. Painting was to be about painting. The artists sought to find ways in which to represent volume on the flat surface by purely visual means. They no longer employed shadows or vanishing lines to communicate depth. They felt instead that overlapping shapes and differences in color tone were the most honest means of conveying an image of space.

The Eiffel Tower was a symbol of optimism and the faith in industry of the late 19th century. To many, the George Washington suspension bridge is a symbol of our civilization. Yet, as it stands, the bridge is unfinished. Here is a sketch of the original design worked out by engineers and architects. The heavily encased towers were very much in vogue at the time. As the 635 foot steel skeletons of the towers rose from the shores of the river, something unprecedented happened. The public cried out against covering up the structural elements. These very elements expressed the purpose or function of the bridge. Although the engineers had no intention of making them “beautiful” or “artistic”, they were seen as such. The form and dynamics of the bridge give visual symbolism to an element of modern experience.

The meaning of the machine might be understood as the crux of 20th century culture. When man learned to harness great amounts of energy to be used for his own ends, he began to create what many historians and thinkers called the mechanized world. The machines and attitudes that make up this world affect all of us. Our artists respond openly to much of modern experience. The forms reflect the clean geometric shapes of modern machinery. The artist takes pleasure in these forms. His handling of them expresses a basic optimism. A machine is an object with a clearly defined purpose. It is the product of man’s attempt to solve specific problems reasonably and with the greatest efficiency.

The 20th century has been a time when men have found that they can no longer believe in absolutes of good and evil. During the Renaissance, men assumed that there were such standards. What was good for one man was good for all. The Industrial Revolution brought about a climate in which much less could be assumed to be certain. One’s life appeared to take on a much more haphazard structure. Individuals came in contact with many more people and these people had different points of view. It was no longer easy to generalize about experience. It was often difficult to be certain of anything. The material world became more meaningful than the spiritual one. But man could solve some problems with his machines. He would even make life easier. Science and technology became something to believe in. The short-lived Futurist movement in Italy exemplified this.

In 1910, its founders issued a manifesto violently rejecting the past and exalting the beauty of the machine. In this sculpture, anatomical structures have been transformed into quasi-mechanical shapes. The mechanized mass killing of World War I made people rethink the possibilities for the machine. Some artists had become disenchanted before the war.

This is Marcel Duchamp’s painting called The Bride. In it we can see no resemblance to the human form. We see a mechanism that seems part motor, part distilling apparatus. It is beautifully engineered to serve no purpose. Did the artist intend to satirize the scientific outlook on man by “analyzing” the bride until she is reduced to a complicated piece of plumbing? But, no matter. The machine is of the age. None of us can escape its influence. As the machine exemplifies purity of purpose – there is nothing extraneous here – so, too, have our artists sought to purify their means.

Abstraction literally means “to draw away from, to separate”. If we have twelve pieces of candy and separate the number twelve from the things themselves, we get an “abstract number”. When we talk about abstraction in terms of art, we usually mean the process of analyzing and simplifying observed reality.

Through the process of abstraction, the Cubists transformed the classical conception of form. Not only the proportions, but also the wholeness of the human body are denied here. The destruction is quite methodical: everything is fragmented into angular wedges or facets. In this comparison we have visualization of the concept of the break-up of the traditional view of the world. This canvas does not attempt to be an image of the external world. Instead the artist has created an abstracted world within the surface of his canvas. It is a world constructed according to the language of painting and the artist’s eye.

Out of Cubism emerged the rectangular forms of much abstract art. Like a mathematician, the artist assembled forms into neat and orderly structures. There is an impersonal and objective flawlessness. Reduce and simplify.

Piet Mondrian eliminated all color except the three primaries: red, yellow and blue. He eliminated curves and diagonals. He eliminated perspective. He attempted to eliminate human imperfection. His paintings have a machine perfect surface. But we have to stop and consider the fact that only the proportions of the canvas itself are exact. Mondrian had to arrive at the rest “by feel”. Imagine the agonies of trial and error. Other artists have had to face similar problems.

The simplicity and purity these artists have sought surround us. The architect Le Corbusier called houses “machines to be lived in”. He admired the clean, precise shapes of machinery. Modern technology has surrounded us with the products of the machine. But much more important, it has surrounded us with the spirit and values of technology and industry. Art reflects our world.

Part II

In the 20th century, mechanization has given form to much of man’s experience. Our arts hold up a mirror to our values. The machine has replaced the human being and his natural world as the motif and theme of much art. Technology’s success in solving many problems has led civilization to its doorstep. Modern man has committed himself to machines. He demands more and more from them. In turn, machines and machine-thinking dominate our lives. Technocrats can only assimilate material that can be understood, analyzed, and pigeon-holed. The unique, irrational, and unexpected don’t have much place in this world.

During the 20th century, science has defined man in terms of chemicals, electrical impulses, and predictable patterns of behavior – in short, a very complicated machine. Mechanization has replaced humanism as the driving force for man.

The electronic music you hear was composed by a composer using complex electronic devices without the use of any musical instruments. As is true of many modern artists, the composer is mainly interested in the manipulation of his materials. In a mass-production system, it is the process of production itself which becomes the center of interest, rather than the product.

As the machine is made up of countless interchangeable parts, so society is made up of countless anonymous people. Man has become merely a number which fits into a cell called home or office. These cells have little individuality. They appear to be disdainful of the human condition. It is not easy to find where we fit in such a world. But we are given numbers and this should help. The effect of such a mechanistic world upon individuals is the subject of much of modern art. One trend of modern art is labeled Expressionism.

The expressionists were concerned with the inner feelings and emotions of individuals – their tensions and anxieties. The paintings can be seen as images or symbols of man’s reaction against an impersonal and anti-human world. By using violent colors, the artist creates a deeply emotional experience. Driven by their own emotional needs, the expressionists take liberties with nature through distortion and abstraction. I

n this portrait, the splintered contours suggest the tense restlessness of the sitter. They also give us the feeling that we see him caught in a moment of changing thought. Stimulation of primitive urges which live deep within us – this is the object of Expressionism. The forms make us conscious of our feelings. Spontaneity and un-machinelike techniques make us conscious of the fact that we are human beings. The human form is not always needed to express the depth of our inner disquiet. Painting itself – the lines and colors that make up the language of the artist – speak directly to us. Action painting is an extreme phase of Expressionism. The paint is the subject. The act of painting itself here becomes part of the artist’s message. The artist incorporates chance happenings into his composition. He looks at splattered paint and decides whether to keep it or not. In an age of technical perfection, when human imperfection is looked upon with contempt, this painting cries out against the oppression of the machines.

Much of modem art is a reaffirmation of the irrational, the unique, and the mystery of creativity and life itself. In this painting, the figure is strangely ambiguous. Form is dematerialized both psychologically and physically. The figure seems lost and vulner­able. In recent art, man seldom wins.

Many modern individuals have moved back in upon themselves to find peace and a form of victory. The journey of the self is the subject of much of psychedelic art. Release and peace sometimes come. The old moral values have been destroyed. Can the vacuum be filled by something other than “malignant materialism”? Many people, both young and old, ask themselves these questions: “Have men become increasingly prone to cruelty, to causing suffering and death? More efficient at terror? Torture? War?”

Modern history is a testimonial to the increased efficiency of man’s destructive power. For many people, the modern world holds no hope or purpose. Life has become meaningless and aimless: on street comers, in bars, hurrying through the streets, or sitting and waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting.

Modern man has become alien and alone. His naked loneliness is a major theme of modern literature and art. Such loneliness fills us with profound despair. With the loss of man as the measure of all things, the world has, for many, become an empty place. One key word in modern literature and philosophy is nothing.

Т. S. Eliot wrote:

We are the hollow men

We are the stuffed men

Leaning together

Headpiece filled with straw, Alas!

Our dried voices, when

We whisper together

Are quiet and meaningless

As wind in a dry grass

Shape without form, shade without colour

Paralyzed force, gesture without motion

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

STEP 1: Understanding the Information

Дата добавления: 2015-10-29