The Age of Modernism

Francisco Pesante HUM-102

Industry, Empire, and the Realist Style

Industry, Empire, and the Realist Style

Great technological development (steam power, coal, iron), cleared the path of romanticism into Realism (social and economic consequences of industrialism).
Popular demands for greater access to material wealth Denunciation of the sentimental and nostalgic view of the past Artists social consciousness and commitment to contemporary problems
3

Industry, Empire, and the Realist Style

The Global Dominion of the West Economic and military superiority over nations: source of strength and identity Control of market through the world
Nationalism + industrialism + colonialism Imperialism
4

Industry, Empire, and the Realist Style

Advancing Industrialism Great technological development (steam power, coal, iron ) First steam railway (1804): major mode of transportation
1850: 23k miles of railway track in Europe North America

Industry, Empire, and the Realist Style

Advancing Industrialism Other technological advancement:
internal combustion engine telegraph telephone camera electricity
6

Industry, Empire, and the Realist Style

Colonialism and the New Imperialism Before 1800s trading post in Africa, China and India. Transformation from foreign countries to colonial possessions in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Economic, political and cultural dominion of the West over much of the world.
7

Industry, Empire, and the Realist Style

Colonialism and the New Imperialism Social Darwinism. White population burden:
Care, protect, rule nonwhite peoples of the earth. The sun never set on the British Empire. United States acquire more than half of Mexico, Philippines, Puerto Rico and influence in the hemisphere.

Industry, Empire, and the Realist Style

Colonialism and the New Imperialism

9

Industry, Empire, and the Realist Style

The Radical View of Marx and Engels
Karl Marx (1818-1883) The history of humanity is the history of class struggle Social nature of production; private nature of profit (added value) The state is the oppressive machine of bourgeois against proletariat. The state should be overtaken by the proletariat by revolutionary ways.
Meanwhile by labor unions and political organizations. Classic expression of 19th century social consciousness.
10

Industry, Empire, and the Realist Style

Realism in Visual Arts The Birth of Photography Fundamental in the development of the materialistic mentality. An authentic record of a moment vanished in time Writing with light

11

Industry, Empire, and the Realist Style

Realism in Visual Arts The Birth of Photography Fox Talbot (1800-1877) & Louis J. M. Daguerre (17871851). Other uses rather than artistic:
Topographical studies Records of architectural monuments Exotic sites

Affordable in comparison with artist service.

12

Industry, Empire, and the Realist Style

13

Industry, Empire, and the Realist Style

Use of new structural medium: cast iron. Strength without the bulk Span broader widths and raise structures to great heights

14

Industry, Empire, and the Realist Style

15

The Move Toward Modernism

16

The Move Toward Modernism

Nietzsches New Morality Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900) is considered one of the most provocative thinkers. Radical moralist:
Christianity and institutionalized religions are the foundations of a slave morality Critical of liberal institutions, because of the rule by mediocrity Anticipated the darker side of modernism.
17

The Move Toward Modernism

Nietzsches New Morality
Mankind does not represent a development towards a better, stronger, or higher type, in the sense in which this is supposed to occur today. "Progress" is merely a modern idea-- that is to say, a false idea. The modern European is still far below the European of the Renaissance in value. The process of evolution does not by any means imply elevation, enhancement, or increasing strength. The Antichrist (1888)
18

The Move Toward Modernism

In France as the capital of the arts, many artist neither idealized (romanticism), neither pursue to described it (realism). Focused on the sensorial experience: art for arts sake (Walter Pater, 1868)

19

The Move Toward Modernism

Painting in the Late Nineteenth Century Impressionism
Luminosity, interaction of light and form, subtlety of tone, and a preoccupation with sensation. Claude Monet (1840-1926), Impression Sunrise (1873).
Pioneer Impressionist How, not what. Brushstroke, unmixed colors, no lines (like in nature), forms by means of color.
20

The Move Toward Modernism

Claude Monet, Impression Sunrise (1873).

21

22

Postimpressionism
New emphasis to color and compositional form. Their expression transcended the momentary impression. Embraced an art-for-arts sake aestheticism that prized pictorial invention over pictorial illusion. They brought order to the world of pure sensation.
23

Postimpressionism

24

25

The Modernist Assault

26

The Modernist Assault

Early Twentieth-Century Art New discoveries in natural science (the speed of light is a universal constant Michelson and Morley, 1880 -, or that light sometimes behaved as separate and discontinuous bundles of energy quanta, by Planck) were not explainable by Newtons laws of physics.

27

The Modernist Assault

Early Twentieth-Century Art New approaches to times, space, motion, and light add up to the developments of scientific knowledge (Einstein special theory of relativity). Challenges to the established ways of viewing the external world.

28

The Modernist Assault

Picasso and the Birth of Cubism Camera capture the lifelike images. New explorations of reality were mean to evoke rather than describe. Pablo Picasso (1881-1973). Influences by impressionist and postimpressionist painting. Urban life of Paris (1903). Blue and rose epochs. Influence by Cezanne (The Large Bathers, 1906) and African Art (Mark from Etoumbi, Congo)
29

30

Pablo Picasso Man with a Violin (1911

31

The Modernist Assault

Matisse and Fauvism Henri Matisse (18691954) art was characterized by the use of color to evoke a mood or symbolic image, that featured spontaneity and instinctive application of pigment. Madame Matisse (1905)
32

33

The Modernist Assault

Early Twentieth-Century Architecture The Architecture of Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright (1869-1959) style combined new technology (steel and glass) and aesthetic principles of Asian architecture (respect for natural materials and relationship between setting and structure).
Horizontality Movables walls Cantilever (voladizos) Prairie School
34

35

References: Fiero, G. K. (2011). The humanistic tradition, Book 5 & 6: The European renaissance, the Reformation, and the global encounter (6th. Ed). New York, NY: McGraw Hill. Sherman, D & Salisbury, J. (2008). Civilizaciones de occidente. Vol II desde 1600. Mxico: McGraw Hill.

36