Portfolio Of Modern Art In The First Half Of 20th Century

Primitivism and Henri Matisse

Discuss about the Portfolio of the Modern arts in the first half of 20^th Century.

Modern art was born in the era of industrial revolution that survived from 18^th to 19^th century when there were alterations in the manufacturing, conveyance and technology that immensely influenced the social, economical and cultural state of the existence in North America, western part of Europe and finally the globe. Before 19^thcentury, art was like an assignment for the artists who were provided by rich patrons or the church and so most of the works were portrayal of religious or mythological scenes. However, from 19^th century many artists took the initiative to make those paintings that they find interest in like of people and places (Pallasmaa).

This report is actually a portfolio that explains the relationship to the theme and determines its importance and impact on 20th century art. The four pictures that are chosen from renowned artists of 20^th century. The works of Henri Matisse who is displaying the use of primitivism, then Gustav Klimt who explored the psychoanalysis of Freud,  Hannah Hooch who dealt with the changing role of art and mass culture followed by  Aaron Douglas works on social realism.

Figure 1: The Italian woman, Henri Matisse, 1916, Primitivism School of Paris. 

The first of the numerous images that Matisse painted was the Italian woman of a professional Italian model named Laurette. The pentimento visible is purely purposeful and labored intersecting of lines brings evidence to his struggle to interpret which states to extend that situation of abstract of sensations that comprises a picture. Matisse was not focused in apprehending short-lived impressions. Thus, he aspired to produce an enduring notion (Weiss).

Laurette’s portrait is less fleshly and more celestial. Using the custom of devout painting—a frontal model, self-examining profile, and horizontal background lacking any indicator of location—he generates an image of Woman. The vehement eyes and brow broaden nose, and tightened lips of her simplistic face mirror an African domino, signifying that Matisse just like many Modern originators, associated the design of Woman with the overseas, striking, and primitive (Pasztory).

The spatial ambivalence of this image is the way the arms emerge tranquil while the backdrop surpass a shoulder, for instance the disclose Matisse’s bond to Paul Cézanne through the daring experiments on Cubism. In a portrait of his wife in 1913, Matisse had engaged in the contrast between volume and plane by counting a flatter scarf that is encased around her arm. This presentation expected the shawl-like backdrop of The Italian Woman. These paintings recollect Cézanne’s sequence of paintings of Madame Cézanne, one of which Matisse possessed both formally and ichnographically. However, Matisse’s depictions are completely schematized and refined. The simplicity of colors and acute depletion of The Italian Woman is attributing of Matisse’s work from 1914 to 1918. The art annalist Pierre Schneider has expressed that these components represents the artist’s acceptance to the destruction of World War I (Guggenheim.org).

Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theories and Gustav Klimt

Figure 2Adele Bloch-Bauer I, Gustav Klimt, 1907, Psychoanalysis.

In 1907 Adele Bloch-Bauer I was initially displayed publicly. A remarkable position in oil and gold leaf, it manifests a delighted, bare-shouldered Adele in an artificial throne, staring at the spectator with susceptibility and gratification, her hands curiously griped in the forefront. One of her fingers was disfigured, which she frequently strived to hide in her many sessions with the creator, who produced around 200 articles for the portrait. The painting’s framework is a luxurious mass of sparkling Oriental and salacious symbolism – triangles, eyes, eggs. Tobias Natter, a Vienna based historian and custodian of the Neue Galerie exhibition that the golden picture of Adele Bloch-Bauer I throw a spell over him even as a student of art history. He further added that for him it was a symphony in gold, a distinctive symbolic victory. It is assessed as an Art Nouveau masterpiece (O’Connor).

The woman’s intellect was growing advanced, while erotic behaviors remained steady. Here the artist tried to portray the childless woman who does not fit into the reputable customs of society (Theguardian).

Figure 3: Heads of state, Hannah hooch, 1918-20, Mass culture

Heads of State was constructed around a portrait in a newspaper for the president of German Friedrich Ebert and his Defense minister, Gustav Noske. Having cautiously slashed out the men, Hooch moved to generate a structure with characteristically lacking connections and unanticipated consequences. The two public officials look distinctly silly out of setting in their bathing attire, and Hooch located them against a framework of an iron-on needlecraft design of flowers and butterflies enclosing a woman. At this point of time, she was however waged under magazines scheming homogenous patterns, and this work is witness to her capacity to intersect her different experiences to produce new and evident images. The outcome is intentionally witty, but it also spreads a powerful message. The President and his minister, who had lately put down for the Rebellion of the members of the Spartacus league, who are presented frolicking in a fanciful, as if they are ignorant of the enormous privation and problems that are political and financial which are faced by Germany and its citizens during this point of time (Hemus). The embroidery-pattern framework suggests to an origin of income and occupation for numerous German women at that time, incorporating Hooch herself, and obeys to difference in the role of women to that of men. The collage is displayed so that it looks like that both of the figures have been seized in the net of the needlework pattern, and it locates these paunchy heads of state dignitary of ridicule in the affair of peeling them of their uncommon tricks of masculinity. At that very time, the configuration pounding the patriarchy and questions the capricious values forecasted onto different forms of art in the society (Theartstory.org).

Mass culture and Hannah Hooch

Figure 4: Aspects of Negro Life: Songs of the tower, Aaron Douglas, 1934, Social realism

Numerous large-scale mural shave been produced by Douglas that depicts subjects from the history of African America and modern life in legendary parable. He was commissioned in 1934 beneath the backing of the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP), to color the sequence of murals for 135th Street branch of the New York Public Library, now the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Amid his most famous efforts, the four groups of features of Negro Life are attributes of the styles of Douglas, with graphically acute design and the spirited inclusion of such impact as African sculpture, jazz music, dance, and conceptual geometrical configurations. Song of the Towers that is one of the murals illustrates a figure escaping from the hand of feudal laborer. It is representative of the relocation of humankind of Africa from the rustic region of South and the Caribbean to the urban industrial pivot of the North just after World War I. Standing on the wheel of life at the middle of the constitution, a saxophonist conveyed the imaginations of the 1920s and the independence it managed the New Negro. Douglas in 1937 united the department of Fisk University and remained there through his retirement in 1966. A loyal explorer has his creative perceptions, which had an enduring impact on the history of American art and the nation’s educational heritage, and is evidence to the subject of heritage of Africa and national pride (Wall, Cheryl A).

Being the associate of the Communist Party, Douglas’s fourth panel from a sequence awning the change between slavery of human and contemporary industrial subjugation; the final and fifth panel was to manifest Karl Marx between workers of African-American guiding them for a better plebeian future. At the work’s peak, a saxophonist sets triumphantly with his tool held elevated over his head, much above the green greedy hands that would move him back into enslavement. Yet his victory is brief, as the cog of the industry on which he supports will take him back into the profundity of the city and society. Industrialism and mechanization are not companions of the American worker. Afar from the reach of the man, in the greater distance, locates the Statue of Liberty exemplifying the incomplete assurances of universal independence. Song of the Towers portrays Douglas’s patent style of concentric, discharging circles that are pierced by courageous outlined figures (Tate.org.uk).

Conclusion

However to conclude this portfolio we can say that Primitivism, Psychoanalytical Theory, Mass culture and Social realism all are relevant subjects that spread into the modern art of the 21st century. It is evident when debating the topics that they leak into each other; the advanced instances and efforts of Dadaist Hannah Hooch elicit not only Primitivism but also Freud’s Psychoanalytical Theory, Mass Culture, but also that of liberating women. Thus, this demonstrates that these untimely movements made path. Eventually, artwork is a continual fitting of what had formerly come ahead in an endeavor to analyze and generate original discourse, and an enquiry of what art is. In addition, Primitivism, Psychoanalytical Theory, mass culture and social realism are all suitable themes to contemporary art, because art of the 21st century is diffuse in themes of interrogation.   

References

Guggenheim.org. “The Italian Woman.” Guggenheim.org. N.p., 2017. Print.

Hemus, Ruth. “A life in parts: the first UK exhibition dedicated to Hannah Hoch is a revelation.” Apollo.Vol. 179.No. 618. Apollo Magazine Ltd., 2014.

O’Connor, Anne-Marie.The Lady in Gold: The Extraordinary Tale of Gustav Klimt’s Masterpiece, Bloch-Bauer.Vintage, 2012.

Pallasmaa, Juhani. The eyes of the skin: architecture and the senses.John Wiley & Sons, 2012.

Pasztory, Esther. “From Primitivism to Multiple Modernities and Beyond.”Visual Culture of the Ancient Americas: Contemporary Perspectives (2017): 237.

Tate.org.uk. “Social-Realism.” Tate.org.uk. N.p., 2017. Print.

Theartstory.org. “Hannah Höch Biography, Art, And Analysis Of Works.” Theartstory.org. N.p., 2017. Print.

Theguardian. “How Freud’s Taste In Art Reflects His Theories.” Theguardian. N.p., 2017. Print.

Wall, Cheryl A. The Harlem Renaissance: A Very Short Introduction.Vol. 479.Oxford University Press, 2016.

Weiss, Catherine C. Bock. Henri Matisse: a guide to research.Routledge, 2014.