-20th century
-fragmentation- rodin, cezanne
-work of art is no long whole/unified/organic entity
-no longer easily communicates to us
-deconstructing past art to create new visions of the world = modern
-t.j. clark's view of modernity: sum of destruction
-breakdown rules of one point perspective into component parts
-focus on still life
-witnessed cezanne's work- spacial recession, discontinuity of space, rebuild visual structure
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| houses on a hill, horta de ebro- picasso 1909 |
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| houses at l'estaque- georges braques 1908 |
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| seated woman- picasso 1908 |
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| head of a woman- picasso 1909 |
- albert gleizes & jean metzinger wrote cubist manifesto
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| the bathers- albert gleizes 1912 kaleidoscopic |
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| the bathers- jean metzinger 1913 kaleidoscopic |
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| les demoiselles d'avignon- picasso 1907 proto-cubist african mask influences- visited ethnographic museum- social critique of colonialism? primitive flat, angular discontinuity challenged/influenced by matisse's joy of life prostitutes in barcelona? sexual/carnal activity; confrontational carefully planned- took more than a year to organize the image narrative is suppressed in final |
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| portrait of gertrude stein- picasso 1905-6 |
COMPARED TO:
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| iberian statuary: lady of elche 4th, c. BCE |
-reduction of palette to emphasize depth/space/illusionism
-analyzing structure
-hermetic: describing difficulty to read/discern; complicated
-dimensionality, angles, shading, built up surface
-volumetric space but not space that can be entered
-flicker btwn flatness & depth
-move away from representation: using tools (line, shadow, chiaroscuro, etc.) but breaking it down
-deconstructing
-cubic, geometric qualities
-approaching an object from shattered perspective
-not necessarily a systematic rendering of all angles on an object
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| still life w violin & pitcher- braque 1910 "pin" drawing & shadow to admit two-dimensionality |
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| the portuguese (the emigrant)- braque 1911 |
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| girl w a mandolin- picasso 1910 underattack/erasure figure prevails- can't do pure abstraction |
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| ma jolie- picasso 1911 |
- high culture --> mass culture
- collage: non-medium specific
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| still life w chair caning- picasso 1912 readymade materials rope acting as frame still life of glass, lemon "jou" = journal horizontal space |
- radical break: invitation of material of everyday life
- greenburg would say oil cloth is flat so it's sticking w flatness of work (medium-specificity)
- avant-garde mongrol multi-media quality
-creating clarifying structure
-play w collage elements to rebuild an object
-line, shading, shadow aren't doing what they're supposed to
-play of flatness & depth- using illusionistic perspective but defying it at the same time
-playing w representation, actual materiality
-illusionistic space
-text
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| guitar, sheet music, & glass- picasso 1912 shape is suggested through relationships of similarity & difference |
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| violin- picasso 1912-1913 cut newspaper cut into 2: one makes up positive space of violin other makes up negative space |
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| bottle of suze- picasso 1912 |
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| still life w violin, glass, & fruit- picasso |
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| grebo mask (ivory coast/liberia) |
COMPARED TO:
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| guitar- picasso 1912 play on structure's relationship proximity & space |
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| bottle of vieux marc- picasso 1913 chaotic composition |
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| siphon, glass, newspaper & violin- picasso 1912 chaotic composition |
- logical order of art being challenged through collage
creating form through arbitrary relationships & scraps, disavowing material & representational laws of painting, confusing realms of pos. & neg. space, breaking down medium specificity, borrowing from other fields, like literature, music, etc.
- clement greenburg: revise ideas on modern art by emphasizing the flatness of cubist collage
doesn't fit medium specificity but it makes people think about the two-dimensionality
- still life w chair caning opening art to concerns of everyday & society & politics; opening up art to a second wave of avant-garde practice
cubist collage forces a look at avant-garde's relationship to modernism; avant-garde was to get people to pay attention to underclasses & the people being left behind; modernism exists in tension btwn negation & accommodation
- "avant-garde is successful when it has found for itself a social location where this tension is visible & can be acted upon" -thomas crow
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