Artists continue their experiments in visual perception, using the picture plane as their laboratory. The advance of technology offers a promise of a progressive utopia but it will soon become clear that there is also a dark side to the beauty of the machine.

1. The Rise of Modernism
Part III:
The Fracture
of Space
and Time

2. Henri Matisse, The Green Stripe (Mme Matisse), 1905

3. Henri Matisse, Pastoral, 1905

4. Henri Matisse, The Red Studio, 1909

5. Henri Matisse, The Red Studio, 1911

6. Pablo Picasso, La Vie, 1903

7. Pablo Picasso, Family of Saltimbanques, 1905

8. Pablo Picasso, Desmoiselles d' Avignon, 1907

9. Pablo Picasso
Desmoiselles d' Avignon/African Mask Comparison

10. Pablo Picasso, Ma Jolie, 1911-1912

11. Georges Braque, The Portugese, 1911

12. Pablo Picasso, Still Life with Chair Caning, 1912

13. Marcel Duchamp, Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2, 1912

14. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Red Cocotte, 1911

15. Oskar Kokoschka, The Tempest, 1914

16. Giacomo Balla, Speed of a Motorcycle, 1913

17. Umberto Boccioni, Charge of the Lancers, 1915

18. George Grosz, Explosion, 1917

19. Marcel Duchamp, Fountain, 1917