1. Chapter 20
The Twentieth Century:
The Early Years

2. When people ask me to compare
the 20th century to older
civilizations, I always say the
same thing: “The situation is
normal.”
–Will Durant

3. Early 20th
Century Movements
• Fauves
• Expressionism
• Cubism
• Futurism
• Early Abstraction
• Fantasy and Dada
• Surrealism
• The Bauhaus

4. The Fauves
• The Salon d’Automne was an independent exhibition in 1903.
• Brought together the works of French avant-garde artists.
• A critic gave them the name The Fauves.
• Like the Postimpressionists, the Fauves rejected the soft palette
and delicate brushwork of the Impressionists.
• Their subject matter included traditional nudes, still lifes, and
landscapes.
• Color and brushwork was chosen on the basis of its emotive
quality.
• Fauvism did not last very long.

5. The Fauve continued…
• Their art was characterized by harsh, non-descriptive
color; bold linear patterning; and
a distorted perspective
The artists:
• André Derain -
– One of the founders of the Fauves.
• Henri Matisse
– Gained critical recognition for the Fauves.
– His reputation exceeded the movement.
– Thought paintings should be joyous.

6. Fig. 20-1 p. 470 ANDRÉ DERAIN. London Bridge (1906). Oil on Canvas. 26” x 39”.

7. Fig. 20-2 p. 471 HENRI MATISSE. Red Room (Harmony in Red) (1908-1909). Oil on
Canvas. 69 3/4” x 85 7/8”.

8. Expressionism
• Expressionism is the distortion of nature in
order to achieve a desired emotion or
representation of inner feelings.
• It differs from the imitation of nature by other
artists.
• The movement reacted against Realism and
Impressionism.
• Edvard Munch and Käthe Kolliwtz were also
expressionistic artists.

9. 3 Types of Expressionist
Movements
1. Die Brücke (The Bridge)
1. Founded in Dresden Germany
2. Short lived
2. Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider)
1. Emotionally charged subject matter, often
radically distorted.
2. Work focused on contrasts and combinations of
abstract forms and pure colors.
3. Neue Sachlichkeit (The New Objectivity)
1. Commented on the bureaucracy and military
with images of human torture.

10. Die Brücke
(The Bridge)
• The movement was founded to bridge
disparate styles.
• The subject matter was often radically
distorted.
• It was founded around the same time as
Fauvism.
The artists:
• Emil Nolde
• Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

11. Figure 20.3, p.472: EMIL NOLDE. Dance around the Golden Calf (1910). Oil on canvas. 34 3⁄8” x 41”.

12. Der Blaue Reiter
(The Blue Rider)
• This movement focused on the contrasts and
combinations of abstract forms and pure
color.
• Some of the artworks are non-objective, or
abstract.
The artists:
• Wassily Kandinsky
• Franz Marc
• Paul Klee

13. Fig. 20-4, p.473 WASSILY KANDINSKY. Sketch I for Composition VII. (1913). Oil on Canvas. 30
3/4” x 39 3/8”.

14. Neue Sachlichkeit
(The New Objectivity)
• A movement that reacted to the horrors and
senselessness of war.
• Its art commented bitterly on bureaucracy
and the military, with visions of human
torture.
The artists:
• Max Beckman
• George Grosz
• Otto Dix

15. CUBISM
• Second major art movement of the 20 century.
• Cubism can trace its heritage to
Neoclassicism and art of Cézanne.
• Cézanne’s geometrization of nature,
abandonment of scientific perspective, his
rendering of multiple views, and his
emphasis on the two-dimensionality of the
canvas influence cubism.
• Pablo Picasso was Cubism’s driving force.

16. Cubism continued…
Types of Cubism:
• Analytic Cubism
• Synthetic Cubism
The artists:
• Pablo Picasso
• Georges Braque
• Jacques Lipchitz
• Alexander Archipenko

17. Pablo Picasso
• The Blue Period
– 1901- 1904
– Picasso’s first major art phase.
– Characterized by an overall blue tonality.
– Distortion of the body through elongation
– And melancholy subjects
• The Rose Phase
– 1905 - 1908
– Subjects mainly from the circus life
– Used pink tones
• The Start of Cubism
– In 1907 Picasso saw 2 exhibit that influenced his work, the
Cezanne retrospective and an exhibit of ethnographic art
from Africa, Oceania, and Iberia.

18. Figure 20.6, p.475: PABLO PICASSO. Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907). Oil on canvas. 8’ x 7’8”.

19. Analytic Cubism
• Term was coined by a hostile critic.
• This is a form of Cubism from c. 1910 that
used a faceting of form.
• Cubism was a new treatment of pictorial
space that hinged on rendering objects from
multiple and radically different views.
• Instead of presenting us with a single view,
the Cubists showed us many different sides
of an object.

20. Analytic Cubism
The Artist:
• George Braque
• Met Picasso in 1907
• They worked together on the same artistic
goals until 1914.
• First to begin inserting words and numbers in
his work.
• Also used trompe l’oeil on portions of his
Analytic Cubism.
See Georges Braque’s, The Portuguese (1911)

21. Synthetic Cubism
• This form of Cubism spanned from 1909–
1912.
• Papier collé - Artists pasted objects, such as
pieces of paper, found objects, rope, etc., to
their works.
• Some of their compositions consist entirely of
found objects.
• Guernica and Picasso’s 1937 return to
Cubism.

22. Synthetic Cubism
• See Pablo Picasso’s
• The Bottle of Suze
(1912-13)
• And Pablo Picasso’s
• Guernica
• (1937)

23. Cubist Sculpture
• Cubism began with two-dimensional surfaces, but it
was limited by the surface itself.
• With Cubist sculpture, one could walk around and
observe the many facets of a work of art.
The Artist:
• Alexander Archipenko
– one of the inventors of cubist sculpture.
– Use of void space as solid form.
– The figure is fragmented, the contours are broken and
dislocated.

24. Fig. 20-11 p. 478 ALEXANDER ARCHIPENKO. Walking Woman (1912). Bronze. H: 26 1/2”.

25. FUTURISM
• Futurism was a radical Italian movement that
began after a 1909 manifesto called for an art
of “violence, energy, and boldness”.
• Futurism owed much to Cubism.
• Dynamism is a word also used by the
Futurists, fond of technology.
• The futurists were obsessed with illustrating
images in perpetual motion.

26. Futurism continued…
• Futurism promoted nationalism to an extreme, plus
modern warfare, speed, and violence.
• The subject was less important then the portrayal of
the “dynamic sensation”.
• Although much of futurist work was abstract they
always had a start in representation.
The artists:
• Giacomo Balla
• Umberto Boccioni
• Gino Severini

27. Figure 20.12, p.479: UMBERTO BOCCIONI. Unique Forms of Continuity in Space (1913). Bronze (cast 1931).
43 7⁄8” x 34 7⁄8” x 15 3⁄4”.

28. Fig. 20-13, p.479 GIACOMO BALLA. Street Light (1909). Oil on Canvas. 68 3/4” x 45 1/4”.

29. EARLY TWENTIETH-CENTURY
ABSTRACTION
IN THE UNITED STATES
• Before World War I, American artists adhered
to Realism.
• Photographer Alfred Stieglitz brought the
European Modernism to American in his
exhibits in his, 291 Gallery.
• The 1913 Armory Show- the International
Exhibition of Modern Art held at the 29th
Regiment Armory in New York showcased
Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase and
created a stir.

30. Early Abstraction:
American Artists
• Abstraction reflected changes in American
culture and society
The artists:
• Georgia O’Keeffe
• Charles Demuth
– Part of a group of artists called “Cubo-Realists” or
“Precisionists”.
• Stuart Davis
• Charles Burchfield
• Arthur Dove

31. Fig. 20-14, p.480 GEORGIA O’KEEFE. White Iris (1930). Oil on Canvas. 40” x
30”.

32. Figure 20.15, p.481: CHARLES DEMUTH. My Egypt (1927). Oil on composition board. 35 3⁄4” x 30”
(90.8 cm x 76.2 cm).

33. EARLY TWENTIETH-CENTURY
ABSTRACTION IN EUROPE
• During the second decade, two art
movements were dedicated to pure
abstraction (or non objective art):
1. Constructivism
2. De Stijl
• Nonobjective art does not use nature or
visual reality as a point of departure.
• It has no subject other them that of the
forms, colors, and lines in it.

34. Early Abstraction
continued…
The artists:
• Wassily Kandinsky-
– First painter of pure abstraction.
• Naum Gabo
– Constructivist sculpture
– Created works with intersecting planes of metal, glass, plastic, and
wood to define space.

35. Figure 20.16, p.482: NAUM GABO. Column (c. 1923). Perspex, wood, metal, glass. 41 1⁄2” x 29” x 29”.

36. Early Abstraction
continued…
The Artists continued…
• Piet Mondrian
– Influences by van Gogh
– Started out as an Impressionist landscape painter.
– Studied cubist theory which lead him to his reduced forms and
primary colors.
• Constantin Brancusi
– Used extreme simplification in his sculpture.
– Used the simplest contour that when combined with a title would
create recognition.

37. Fig. 20-19, p.484 CONSTANTIN BRANCUSI. Bird in Space. (c1928). Bronze (unique
cast). H: 54”.

38. Early Abstraction:
European Artists
• See Piet Mondrian’s Composition with
Red, Blue, and Yellow (1930)

39. Figure 20.18, p.483: GERRIT RIETVELD. Schroeder House, Utrecht (1924).

40. FANTASY AND DADA
• Before the 20th century, only a handful of artists had
ventured into the world of dreams or supernatural
fantasies.
• The word “fantastic” has its origins from the Greek
word phantastikos meaning “the ability to represent
something to the mind” or “to create a mental
image.”
• Fantasy is further defines as “unreal, odd, seemingly
impossible, and strange in appearance.”
• Fantastic art, then, represents incredible unreal
images from the artist’s mind.

41. Fantasy continued…
• Fantasy art includes images that may be
joyful reminiscences, horrific nightmares,
capricious thoughts, or grotesque thoughts or
memories
The artists:
• Paul Klee
– Whimsical and sardonic
– Used ethnographic and children’s art
• Giorgio de Chirico
– Odd juxtaposition of familiar objects.

42. Fig. 20-20 P.484 PAUL KLEE. Twittering Machine (1922). Watercolor, pen and ink. 25 1/4”
x 19”.

43. Fantasy and
Its Artists
• Also See Giorgio de Chirico’s The
Mystery and Melancholy of the Street
(1914)

44. DADA
• In 1916, during World War I, an international
movement arose that declared itself against art.
• Dadaists declared that art- a reflection of the sorry
state of affairs - was stupid and must be destroyed.
• Ironically, the movement against art actually created
its own art.
• They created art that is meaningless, absurd and
unpredictable.
• Dada is a random, made up word.
• Dadaism would provide the basis for Surrealism that
started in the 1920s.

45. Dada and Its Artists
• Dada included collages, works mocking the
masters, and irrational themes.
The artists:
• Marcel Duchamp
• Max Ernst
• Hannah Höch
• Francis Picabia
• Kurt Schwitters

46. Dada and Its Artists
• See Max Ernst’s Two Children Are
Threatened by a Nightingale (1924).

47. Compare and Contrast
• Leonardo’s Mona Lisa, Duchamp’s
Mona Lisa (L.H.O.O.Q.), Odutokun’s
Dialogue with Mona Lisa, and Lee’s
Bona Lisa
• Discuss “Mona Lisa: The Icon”
• and revisionist art that takes on one of
the most famous works of art

48. Figure 20.23, p.486: MARCEL DUCHAMP. Mona Lisa (L.H.O.O.Q.) (1919). Rectified readymade; pencil on a
reproduction. 7 3⁄4” x 4 7⁄8”.

49. Figure 20.24, p.487: G. ODUTOKUN. Dialogue with Mona Lisa (1991). Gouache on paper. 30” x 22”.

50. Figure 20.25, p.487: SADIE LEE. Bona Lisa (1992). Oil on board. 23” x 19”.

51. SURREALISM
Surrealism began after World War I as a literary
movement.
Surrealism used 2 different methods to create art:
1. Illusionistic Surrealism - rendered the irrational
content, absurd juxtapositions, and metamorphoses
of the dream state in a highly illusionist manner.
2. Automatist Surrealism - use similar to automatic
writing and was used to open the mind and show
the subconscious through abstraction.

52. Surrealism continued…
The artists:
• Illusionistic Surrealism
– Salvador Dalí
– Yves Tanguy
– René Magritte
• Automatist Surrealism
– Joan Miró
– Andre Masson

53. Surrealism
• See Salvador Dalí’s The Persistence of
Memory (1931)
• See Joan Miró’s Painting (1933)

54. THE BAUHAUS
• Early part of the 20th century saw numerous
of inventions in architecture.
• Walter Gropius
– German architect
– started the expression, “form follows function”
and “less is more”.
– Emphasis on simplicity and economical use of
space, time, materials, and money.

55. Discussion Questions:
• Why were there so many artistic movements
in the first half of the 20th century? Will this
be revised?
• Is there a cohesive element in any of these
movements?
• Do these movements reflect the historical
periods of wars and devastating depression?
• What were these artists and movements
trying to convey?