Modern Art

MODERN ART
Late 19th to early 20 th century
READ “BECOMING MODERN”
• Make a map of key ideas:
• Social
• Cultural
• Political
• Philosophical
changes that initiated the progress and developments in this movement
• Make note of these influences on specific artists and their work as we view
the images (could fit under ‘subject matter’ or ‘significance’, or in the case of
the futurists, ‘style’)
SYMBOLISM
• Modern artists were searching not only for new forms, but also a search
for content and new principles of synthesis
• Not a continuation of clichés taken from antiquity, history, or mythology
• Symbolism in literature and the visual arts was a popular—if radical–
reaction against Realism in art and materialism in life
• In literature, its founders were Charles Baudelaire and Gérard de
Nerval, in music- German Richard Wagner
• For the Symbolists the reality of the inner idea, of the dream or symbol,
was paramount, but could be expressed only obliquely, as a series of
images or analogies out of which the final revelation might emerge.
• We also have psychologist Sigmund Freud beginning his studies on
dreams and subconscious at this time
***GAUGUIN, WHERE DO WE COME FROM? WHAT ARE WE?
WHERE ARE WE GOING? 1897. (54.8 IN × 147.5 IN) MUSEUM
OF FINE ARTS, BOSTON
GAUGUIN, WHERE DO WE COME FROM?
WHAT ARE WE? WHERE ARE WE GOING? 1897
Style
Symbolism
• An abstraction from
nature- colour and
form to communicate
are more important
than imitating the real
world-merely copying
• Blue and yellow
dominate the colour
palette
• More intense saturated
colours
• Highly stylized
brushwork- flat and
constructed forms
Subject Matter
Significance
• Three ages of man;
• An inner idea as the
from infancy to old age
main subject for art!—
• Allegorical painting
Foreshadows
• Inspired from his
abstraction
travels to Tahiti- in
• Communication of an
search of something
idea visuallymore truthful or pure
symbolist/semiotics
than modern industrial
society
• Exposes the binaries
of
innocence/knowledge,
savage/civilized
PAUL GAUGUIN, VISION AFTER THE SERMON, OR JACOB WRESTLING
WITH THE ANGEL, 1888, OIL ON CANVAS, 2' 4 3/4" X 3' 1/2" (NATIONAL
GALLERY OF SCOTLAND, EDINBURGH)
***EDVARD MUNCH, THE
SCREAM, 1910, TEMPERA
ON BOARD, 66 X 83 CM (THE
MUNCH MUSEUM, OSLO)
EDVARD MUNCH, THE SCREAM, 1910
Style
Subject Matter
Significance
Symbolism
• Inspired by a real-life
• Artists inner anxieties
• Swirling bands of
experience the artist
and fears as the
colour and brushwork
had while walking
subject for fine art!
• Blues and
across a bridge with
complimentary oranges
friends- felt seized with
and reds make the
despair and felt nature
sunset
“scream”
• Translucent/ghostlike
• Artist was obsessed
figure
with themes of
• Contrast between the
sickness and death due
swirling landscape and
to his life experiences
diagonal line of the
• figure shrieking in fear
railing that draws the
or a moment of
viewers eye across the
madness; completely
canvas
ignored by the two
figures off in the
distance
EDVARD MUNCH, THE DANCE OF LIFE. 1899-90. OIL ON
CANVAS, 49 1/2 X 75 IN. NASJONALGALLERIET AT OSLO.
PUBERTY, 1894
EDVARD MUCH, VAMPIRE, 1902. WOODCUT &
LITHOGRAPH, 14 7/8X211/2” MUNCH-MUSEET, OSLO
***HENRI DE TOULOUSE-LAUTREC, AT THE MOULIN ROUGE,
1893-95, OIL ON CANVAS, 481/2 X 551/2 IN. (ART INSTITUTE OF
CHICAGO)
HENRI DE TOULOUSE-LAUTREC, AT THE
MOULIN ROUGE, 1893-95
Style
Subject Matter
Significance
Symbolism
•Artificial light
•Expressionistic/unnatural
colours
•Contrasting lines-strong
diagonals vs. curves of
the female postures and
clothing
•Diagonals come towards
the viewer- tipping our
perspective; gives
instability to the scene
•Parisian underworld
•Moulin Rouge- dance
club
•Dancers- La Goulue,
May Milton, etc.
•Glum looking gentlemen
gathered around the
table
•Green evokes an
unhealthy atmosphere
•Depicting the inner
emotional/psychological
state of the artist in his
contemporary
environment
HENRI DE
TOULOUSE-LAUTRAC.
“A MONTROUGEROSA LA ROUGE”
1886-87. OIL ON
CANVAS.
281/2X191/4”.
ART NOUVEAU: “SYTHETISM”
• Liberating colour and linear explorations
• This synthesizing spirit, in last decades of the 19 th
century and first decades of the 20 th century became a
great popular movement that affected the taste of every
part of the population in both Europe and the United
States
• This was the movement called Art Nouveau, literally
meaning “new art”
HENRI DE TOULOUSELAUTRAC, MOULIN
ROUGE: LA GOULUE,
1891
LITHOGRAPH PRINTED
IN FOUR COLORS;
THREE SHEETS OF
WOVE PAPER; 74 13/16
X 45 7/8 IN.
TOULOUSE-LAUTREC, (VARIOUS POSTERS)
AUBREY BEARDSLEY
Salome with the Head of
John the Baptist 1893
The Peacock Skirt 1894
GUSTAV KLIMT (1862-1918)
• In Austria, the new ideas of Art Nouveau were found in
the 1897 movement known as the Vienna Secession
• Klimt was the major figure
• In many ways he was the most complete and talented
exponent of pure Art Nouveau style in painting
GUSTAV KLIMT, THE KISS, 1907-8, OIL AND GOLD LEAF ON
CANVAS, 180 X 180 CM (ÖSTERREICHISCHE GALERIE
BELVEDERE, VIENNA)
GUSTAV KLIMT, DEATH AND LIFE, 1910, REWORKED 1915, OIL
ON CANVAS, 178 X 198 CM (LEOPOLD MUSEUM, VIENNA)
TO SUM UP SO FAR…
MATISSE: FATHER OF THE FAUVES
Andre Derain, Portrait
of Henri Matisse, 1905
Matisse, Self-portrait
in a Striped T-shirt,
1906
FAUVISM: THE STARTING POINT OF FAUVISM
WAS LATER IDENTIFIED BY HENRI MATISSE
•
Male Reliquary Figure, 19th century
Gabon or Democratic Republic of
Congo; Ambete
Wood, pigment, metal, cowrie shells;
H. 32 1/2 in. (82.6 cm)
The Pierre and Maria–Gaetana
Matisse Collection, 2002
HENRI MATISSE
Male Model, 1900, Oil on Canvas, 39
1/8 x 28 5/8“, MoMA, NY.
***Henri Matisse Carmelina 1903 oil on
canvas 80 x 64 cm (Museum of Fine
Arts, Boston)
HENRI MATISSE CARMELINA 1903
Style
Fauvism
• Frontal view of
subject
• Model seems
sculpturally
molded
• Unmixed paint
colours of
yellows and reds
on the subject
Subject Matter
• Abandoned the
outdoors for the
inner world of the
artist (Matisse is
reflected in the
mirror on the
back wall)
• Everyday,
unromanticised
subject matter
Significance
• Abandoned the
traditional sense
of space and
content in
painting
• Elevated this
informal subject
matter; the artists
in the studio with
his model, to the
level of fine art
• Bold usage of
colours straight
from the paint
tube!
MATISSE, THE OPEN WINDOW,
1905. (21 3⁄4 IN × 18 1⁄8 IN).
NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART,
WASHINGTON
• Woman with the Hat, 1905.
(31 1⁄4 in × 23 1⁄2 in). San Francisco
Museum of Modern Art
MATISSE, PORTRAIT OF MME MATISSE/THE
GREEN STRIPE,
***MATISSE, LE BONHEUR DE VIVRE (THE JOY OF LIFE), 1905 (69.5 IN
× 94.75 IN), BARNES FOUNDATION
***MATISSE, LE BONHEUR DE VIVRE (THE JOY
OF LIFE), 1905
Style
Subject Matter
Fauvism
• Arcadian landscape
• Nearly 8 ft wide
filled with brilliantly
• figure groups are
colored forest, meadow,
deployed as separate
sea, and sky
vignettes; separated by • populated by nude
colour and scale
figures both at rest and
• Swirling outlines
in motion.
surround figures
• Pure, bold and warm
colours
• Major skew of
perspective- the view is
expected to engage and
‘enter the work’
Significance
• Statement piece for
Matisse!
• Encompasses all his
current ideas about art
• Influenced by all the
great mastersCezanne’s Bathers of
1906, Ingres’ La Grande
Odalisque of 1814, and
Titian’s Bacchananal of
the Andrians of 1525
• a radical new approach
that incorporate purely
expressive, bright, clear
colors
ART SOURCE:
• Particularly the art of Sub-Saharan Africa.
Modern artists appropriated the forms of African
Art in the hope of investing their work with a kind
of primal truth and expressive energy, as well as
a touch of the exotic, what they saw as
“primitive,”
HENRI MATISSE, THE BLUE NUDE (SOUVENIR DE
BISKRA), OIL ON CANVAS, 1907 (BALTIMORE
MUSEUM OF ART)
ANDRE DERAIN
• Met the older Matisse in
1900
• Was encourage by him
to proceed with his
career as a painter
• Derain was a serious
student of the art
museums who, despite
his initial enthusiasm for
the explosive colour of
Fauvism, was
constantly haunted by a
more ordered and
traditional concept of
painting
***LONDON BRIDGE, 1906. OIL ON CANVAS, 26 X
39" (66 X 99.1 CM). MOMA, NY
DERAIN. LONDON BRIDGE, 1906
Style
Fauvism
• Bright bold,
complimentary
colours
• Broken brushstrokes create a
vibrating scene
• Repeated colours
• Diminished depth
Subject Matter
• Painting of London
England
Significance
• His use of repeated
colours and titled
perspective restricts
the space
• And the unnatural
use of colour
creates a landscape
that appears alive
and vibrant
***HARMONY IN RED (THE DESSERT), 1908-09, OIL ON CANVAS,
(180CMX2.2M) THE HERMITAGE MUSEUM, ST PETERSBURG,
RUSSIA
How has he
successfully created
the idea of space?
Style
• One unifying colour
• Repeating plant forms of
blue on the table and the
wall
• Flat areas of colour
‘outlined forms
Subject Matter
• Interior of a dinning room
Significance
• Emphasis on the flatness of
space
• Play with dimension and
draws our attention to the
flatness of the canvas
• What is “real”?
• The landscape in the
background- a window or a
picture?
• A new world has been
created through the use of
line and colour
MATISSE, DANCE II 1910-11, OIL ON CANVAS, 260 X 391 CM.
HERMITAGE COLLECTION ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIA
MATISSE, THE RED STUDIO, 1911, OIL ON CANVAS, 1911 (MOMA)
GERMAN EXPRESSIONISM
• The period of German Expressionism began in 1905
• With the establishment of the new artists’ alliance known as Die
Brücke (the bridge) in Dresden, and lasted until the end of
WWI, when radical Dada artists in Germany rejected all forms of
Expressionism in their turn.
• Many Expressionists artists welcomed World War I as a new
beginning and the destruction of an old, moribund order. But as
the horror of the trenches dragged on, the war took its toll on
artists: some died in battle; others suffered psychological
trauma and profound spiritual disillusionment
EMIL NOLDE, THE LAST SUPPER, 1909, OIL ON CANVAS, 86 X 107 CM,
STATENS MUSEUM FOR KUNST, COPENHAGEN, DENMARK
DIE BRÜKE
• Ernst Ludwiig
Kirchner, Manifesto of the
Brucke Artists' Group, 1906
(MoMA)
***ERNST LUDWIG KIRCHNER, STREET BERLIN, 1913. OIL ON CANVAS,
47 1/2 X 35 7/8" , MOMA
KIRCHNER, STREET BERLIN, 1913
Style
German Expressionism
• Crowded and jagged
composition
• Toxic use of colour
(greens, violets)
• Visible brushstrokes
• Unnatural perspective, or
lack of
• Anonymous faces
Subject Matter
• Berlin street scene
• Prostitutes and ‘business
men’
• Busy metropolis living
Significance
• Response of the busy
metropolis; capitalist life
• Everything, even sex, is for
sale,
• No one knows one another
• His emotional response to
living in this place
• Literally claustrophobic
• His psychological
experience as an individual
KIRCHNER, SELF-PORTRAIT AS A SOLIDER, 1915, OIL ON CANVAS,
27-1/4 X 24 INCHES, (ALLEN MEMORIAL ART MUSEUM, OBERLIN
COLLEGE)
EXPRESSIONIST PRINTS
• ***Emil Nolde, The Prophet,
woodcut, 1912, private
collection
Style
Subject Matter
Significance
German
Expressionism
•Woodcut print
•Black ink on
white
substrate
•Jagged
shapes
•High contrast
•Inspired by
late Gothic
woodcuts
•Portrait of a
‘prophet’
•Appears
down/depressed
• The medium,
with its dark
and bold
imaging, lent
itself perfectly
for the sinister
outlook on the
world held by
the German
Expressionists
NOLDE, DANCER, 1913, LITHOGRAPH, SHEET: 23 5/8 X 29 15/16" (60 X 76
CM); COMPOSITION: 21 X 27 1/16" (53.3 X 68.8 CM)
PAUL KLEE, TWO GENTLEMEN BOWING TO ONE ANOTHER, EACH
SUPPOSING THE OTHER TO BE IN A HIGHER POSITION (INVENTION 6).
1903. ETCHING, (11.8X20.7CM). SOLOMON R GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM, NY
***KÄTHE KOLLWITZ,
DEATH SEIZING A
WOMAN, 1934, FROM
THE SERIES ‘DEATH’.
LITHOGRAPH,
COMPOSITION: 20 X 14
7/16” MOMA
KÄTHE KOLLWITZ, DEATH SEIZING A WOMAN, 1934, FROM
THE SERIES ‘DEATH’. LITHOGRAPH,
Style
Subject Matter
Significance
German Expressionism
• Black and white print
• Sensitive use of line in
the print
• Concerned with the
problems of the
suffering
• The industrial poor of
Berlin became her
subjects
• Here we have a figure
‘death’ literally grasping
and terrified woman in
his embrace
• Protest of social
criticism
• Here we have personal
tragedy-lost her son in
WWI
DER BLAUE REITER: VASILY KANDINSKY
• The Blue Rider
• A movement germinating in Munich
• A name taken from a book published
by Marc and Kandinsky,
“Concerning the Spiritual in Art”
1911
• Called into question the realities of
the world of tangible objects
• Art had to be concerned with the
expression of the spiritual rather
than the material
KANDINSKY, BLUE MOUNTAIN, 1908-09, OIL ON CANVAS, 41
¾”X 37 7/8” SOLOMON R GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM, NY
***KANDINSKY, COMPOSITION VII, 1913. OIL ON CANVAS
(2X3M) TRETYAKOV GALLERY, MOSCOW.
KANDINSKY, COMPOSITION VII, 1913
Style
Subject Matter
German Expressionism
• Composition revolves
• Colours, shapes and
around musical
lines colliding across a
compositions, cosmic
large canvas
conflict and renewal
• Carefully prepared with • Limited recognizable
preliminary sketches; yet
subject matter
maintains a spontaneity
in the finished execution
Significance
• First fully abstract artist!
• One can read into the
colours, shapes, and
lines and discover
recognizable imagery,
but the artist did not
intend this to be there; or
carefully hid them within
a mass of marks and
paints
FRANZ MARC, BLUE HORSES, 1911, (41 5⁄8 IN × 71 5⁄16 IN)
WALKER ART CENTER, MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA
FRANZ MARC, FIGHTING FORMS, 1914, OIL ON CANVAS, (91.1X131.4
CM). BAYERISCHE STAATSGEMÄLDESAMMLUNGEN, MUINCH
EXPRESSIONISM IN AUSTRIA: EGON SCHIELE
• Drawing a Nude Model Before
Mirror, 1910. pencil on paper,
(55.2 x 35.2 cm)
***EGON SCHIELE, THE SELF SEER II, (DEATH AND THE MAN), 1911. OIL
ON CANVAS. (80.3 X 80CM). PRIVATE COLECTION
Style
Austrian Expressionism
• Central figure
• Staring out at viewer
• Muted/neutral palette-ocher,
red, and green
• Jagged brushstrokes
Subject • Figure of death hovers behind
Matter
the figure
• The man stares out at us in a
mask of fear/evil
Signific • Emotional state of the artist
ance
• Not symbols of death and life,
but the feeling/fear of death
as a ‘real’ psychological
experience-expressed on the
canvas
EGON SCHIELE, SEATED MALE NUDE (SELF-PORTRAIT), 1910, OIL AND
GOUACHE ON CANVAS, 152.5 × 150 CM (LEOPOLD MUSEUM, VIENNA)
ANALYTIC CUBISM: PICASSO & BRAQUE
• Developed jointly by Picasso and Barque between 198\08-1914
• Cubism altered forever the Renaissance conception of painting
as a window into a world where 3-dimensional space is
projected onto the flat picture plane by way of illusionistic
drawing and one-pint perspective.
• The cubists concluded that reality has many definitions, and that
therefore objects in space-and indeed, space itself-have no
fixed or absolute form.
• Although Cubism itself was never a completely abstract style \,
the many varieties of nonobjective art it helped use\her in
throughout Europe are unthinkable without it.
• Examples: Italian Futurism, Dutch Neo-Plasticism, Russian
Constructivism
PICASSO & BRAQUE: THE COLLABORATIVE AFFAIR
• The invention of cubism was truly a collaborative affair, and the close,
mutually beneficial relationship between Picasso and Braque was arguably
the most significant of its kind in the history of art.
• Braque was a Frenchman, Picasso a Spaniard
• Their temperaments, both personal and artistic, could not have been more
opposite
• Whereas Picasso was impulsive, prolific, and rebellious, Braque was slow,
methodical, and meditative.
• Braque had little of Picasso’s egotism and magnetism, and his tendency
toward lyrical painterliness in his work stood in stark contrast to Picasso’s
Expressionist sensibility.
• Their close working relationship was brought to an end by WWI. In August
1914 Braque was called to active military duty; as a Spaniard expatriate,
Picasso was not called and remained behind, staying mostly in Paris and
southern France during the war.
PABLO RUIZ PICASSO (1881-1973)
PICASSO, END OF THE ROAD,
1898-99. OIL WASHES AND
CONTÉ CRAYON ON LAID
PAPER, (45.4X29.9CM).
SOLOMON R GUGGENHEIM
MUSEUM, NY
PICASSO, LA VIE (LIFE), 1903 197X128 CM
OIL ON CANVAS, CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF
ART, OHIO
Style
Subject Matter
Significance
Expressionism
•Blue Period
•Expressionistic
use of colour
•Allegorical
composition
• Casagemas
and his lover
(left)
• A stern woman
holding a baby
(right); draped
like the
Madonna
• Women as
Madonna or
women as
whores
• Adam and Eve
(shamed
couple)
•From events in
his own life
(poverty, mortality,
death of his friend
Casagemas)
caused him to
build powerful
images around
the universal
themes of love,
life, and death
• The use of blue
hues creates a
melancholy –
power of colour to
express (similar
to Gauguin’s
work)
PICASSO: ROSE PERIOD (1905-06)
• Family of Saltimbanques,
1905, oil on canvas, (212.8 x
229.6 cm). Chester Dale
Collection
PICASSO- END OF 1905
• Two Nudes, 1906.
oil on canvas,
(151.5x93 cm).
MoMA, NY
PABLO PICASSO. LES DEMOISELLES D'AVIGNON. 1907. OIL
ON CANVAS, 8' X 7' 8« . MOMA, NY
LES DEMOISELLES D'AVIGNON. 1907
Style
Subject Matter
Significance
• Shattered pictorial
space (birth of Cubism)
• Mask-like portraits
• Angular forms
• 5 forms; flattened and
simplified shapes
• Contradictory points of
view
• Erotic
• 5 prostitutes, some in
sexualized, power
positions, others in
Venus-like positions
• They stare grimly at the
viewer
• Two has masks
substituted for facesinspired by exposure to
African & Oceanic art
• Basically shattered
every pictorial and
iconographical
convention that
preceded it- perspective,
shape, Venus allegory,
the a-typical nude,
representation of the
figure/gender
• African masks and
frontal poses- women
appear aggressive and
sexually powerful;
almost threatening
• Distortion in order to
express his inner most
anxieties
GEORGE BRAQUE, LARGE NUDE,
1908. OIL ON CANVAS, 55 1/4 X 39
1/2 IN. COLLECTION ALEX MAGUY,
PARIS
Picasso, Three Women , 1908, oil on
canvas. (200 x 178 cm.)
The Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg
PICASSO, HOUSES ON THE HILL, HORTA DE EBRO. 1909. OIL
ON CANVAS, (65X81CM). MOMA, NY
HEAD OF A WOMAN, 1909
BRONZE; 16 X 10 1/4 X 10 IN. MOMA, NY
ALEKSANDR ARCHIPENKO,
WALKING WOMAN, 1918-19,
BRONZE, (67CM).
JACQUES LIPCHITZ,
MAN WITH GUITAR, 1915.
LIMESTONE, MOMA
ANALYTIC CUBISM
Braque, Violin and Palette, 1909. Oil
on canvas, (91.7 x 42.8 cm).
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum,
New York
Picasso, Girl with a Mandolin, 1910.
oil on canvas, (100.3x73.7cm),
MoMA, NY
Picasso, Accordionist, 1911. Oil on canvas,
(130.2 x 89.5 cm). Solomon R.
Guggenheim Museum, New York
Georges Braque, The Portuguese, o/c,
1911 (Basel)
GEORGES BRAQUE, THE PORTUGUESE, O/C,
1911
Style
Analytic Cubism
• Fractured pictorial
space- interacting
planes
• Form is broken downalmost like shattered
glass
• Descending diagonal
lines
• Stippled, brokenbrushstroke
• Colours-muted grays
and browns
Subject Matter
Significance
• Guitar player and a dock • Object of vision rather
• The diagonal lines form
than just an object in
the elements of the
space
fragmented figure
• Eliminated out natural
sense of fore-ground,
mid-ground, and
background
PICASSO, STILL-LIFE WITH CHAIR CANING, 1912 (MUSÉE
PICASSO)
PICASSO, STILL-LIFE WITH CHAIR CANING, 1912
Style
Subject Matter
Analytic-Synthetic Cubism
• A table-setting- fragmented
• Oil, cloth, rope and wood
and broken apart into cubist
grain pattern
elements
• Perspective-looking down
• Handle of a knife, fruit,
and through objects- as
napkin, wine glass, JOUopposed to at them
which means “game” in
• Elliptical shaped canvasFrench- also the first 3
our view of a table as we sit
letters of “daily” journalaire
down
(newspaper)? All on a glass
table- why we see the
chair-caning
• Questioning what art istechnical skill or craft? Or
both?
Significance
• One of the 1st collages!
• Used “low” industrial
materials to create “high”
culture ART!;
questioned/challenged the
elitism of the art world
• Rope- ship’s portal or
simply a table’s edge?provides two ways for us,
the viewer, to read the
work- looking down-on the
table, or looking throughlike a portal
• Picasso wanted us to
remember that a painting is
something different from
that which it representsSEMEOTICS
Braque, Fruit dish and glass, 1912.
papier collé and charcoal on paper.
(62 x 44.5cm). Private Collection
Picasso, Guitar, sheet music, and
wine glass. 1912. pasted papers,
gouache, and charcoal on paper.
(47.9 x 37.5 cm). McNay Museum,
San Antonio, Texas.
BRAQUE, FRUIT DISH AND GLASS, 1912
Style
Synthetic Cubism
• Paper colliés (pasted
papers) and charcoal
• Cubist style- opening
up and fracturing of
forms
• Juxtaposition of
elements to create
meaning
Subject matter
• Style-life- Fruit dish &
Glass
• Vision quest-again!
Significance
• The sign language is
completely based
upon what is glued
down to the surface;
simulating the “real”
SYNTHETIC CUBISM
• The inventions in 1912 of the
collage and papier collé, as well
as cubist sculpture, essentially
terminates the Analytic Cubist
phase and initiated a second
period in Braque and Picasso’s
work called SYNTHETIC
CUBISM; this new phase lasted
into the 1920s.
The Card Player, 1913-1914. Oil on Canvas,
(108 x 89.5 cm). MoMA
CONSTRUCTED SCULPTURE
• Picasso, Guitar, 1912. Construction of sheet metal, and wire. (65.1 x 33 x 19 cm).
MoMA.
PICASSO, GUITAR, 1912
Style
Cubist Sculpture
• Constructed Sculpture:
assembled from
disparate,
unconventional
materials
• Sheet metal, wire
• Forms constructed by
‘holes’ containing
space-rather than
building-up or carving
down
Subject Matter
• Guitar (representation
of)
Significance
• New way of creating
sculpture
• Use of metal- highly
unorthodox materiallatter to become
common sculptural
medium
• Not merely representing
a guitar by imitating it,
but creating a
sign/symbol for it
(mediating its meaning)
PICASSO, GLASS OF ABSINTHE, 1914.
PAINTED BRONZE WITH ABSINTHE
SPOON, 8 1/2 X 6 1/2 X 3 3/8“. MOMA
Style
Subject
Matter
Significance
Cubist
•AbsintheSculpture
a highly
•Sculpture in addictive
the roundliquor
bronze
•Real/found
objectsspoon
•Paint
• Picasso
adapts
objects
from the
real world
for
expressive
purposes
in the
realm of art