Modern Art

I

Surrealism

The dadaists’ radical critique of art and reason had a strong appeal for an artistic and literary movement that was founded in 1924: surrealism. The surrealists, however, wanted to put a more positive spin on dada's pessimistic message. They were inspired by the writings of Freud, who had argued that the human mind was split between the conscious mind and the inaccessible unconscious mind, where a person’s innermost thoughts, feelings, and desires lay repressed. The surrealists set out to gain access to these private wishes and feelings through dream imagery, random association of words, and art. The artists seeking ways of accessing the unconscious mind included André Breton, André Masson, and Yves Tanguy of France, René Magritte of Belgium, Joan Miró and Salvador Dalí of Spain, and Max Ernst of Germany.

Two distinct styles emerged within surrealism. Some artists, such as Dalí and Magritte, attempted to suggest dream imagery by depicting objects accurately, but juxtaposing them in an irrational manner. An example of this strategy is Dalí’s The Persistence of Memory (1931, Museum of Modern Art, New York City). In this painting, pocket watches hang limply from a dead branch, while insects, a tabletop, and a distorted face lie in a barren landscape that leads back to a seashore and cliffs. The merging of these incongruous elements suggests an alternative, or a sur-reality, as the movement’s name implies.

Other surrealists attempted to allow the hand to wander across the canvas surface without any conscious control, a technique they called automatism. The automatists reasoned that if the conscious mind were allowed to relax its hold, the unconscious could begin to manifest itself. The lines of the painting would then be motivated not by the conscious mind, which conforms to social convention and training, but by the powerful store of emotions hidden in the unconscious. Automatism began with Paris surrealists, such as Picabia, Arp, and Masson, but in the 1940s gained a strong following in New York City and in Montréal, Canada. André Masson’s Panic (1963, Musée Nationale d’Art Moderne, Paris) is more abstract than the dream imagery of Dalí, though it nonetheless invites the viewer to examine its complex surfaces in search of visual clues to hidden meanings. These are meanings that Masson may not have intended but that he believed were nonetheless connected to his innermost emotions and desires.

J

Sculpture in Europe

Although many 20th-century sculptors attached themselves to various movements, such as cubism and constructivism, others tended to carve their own paths. Constantin Brancusi, a Romanian who had settled in Paris, helped pioneer abstraction by simplifying forms into the most elemental shapes. Moreover, in pieces such as Bird in Space (1919, Museum of Modern Art, New York City), Brancusi polished the bronze surface of the sculpture to a highly reflective finish, contrasting the smooth metal with the textures of the stone base and wooden pedestal. Each material, in other words, became important in its own right and celebrated for its individual, natural properties.

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Not all modern sculpture, however, was dedicated to abstraction. Surrealists such as Swiss sculptor Méret Oppenheim chose to render everyday, utilitarian objects using unexpected combinations of materials. For Object (Breakfast in Fur) (1936, Museum of Modern Art, New York City) Oppenheim lined an ordinary tea cup and spoon with fur. Although startling combinations like this are typical of surrealism, her piece is particularly disturbing because she manipulates viewers into imagining how a fur-lined spoon would feel and taste, forcing them into a disagreeable experience that engages multiple senses.

Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti was also associated with surrealism and often exploited its delight in ambiguity and multiple readings. His early work was deeply influenced by African sculptures from the Dan people of Liberia and Côte d’Ivoire who made ladles and spoons with handles shaped like small human feet. Giacometti’s forms could likewise be viewed as either representations of the human body or as utilitarian objects. By the late 1940s and 1950s Giacometti had moved away from the visual puns of surrealism and begun to create extremely thin, elongated figures with rough, irregular surfaces. Man Crossing Street (1949, Kunsthaus, Zürich, Switzerland) is typical of such pieces, with its stark images of human beings isolated from both their environment and other individuals.

Another sculptor whose works wavered between figural references and abstraction was Englishman Henry Moore. Among his most common subjects was the reclining female form, as in Recumbent Figure (1938, Tate Gallery, London). This work combines the reclining nude motif of Western art with the Aztec tradition of depicting horizontal figures. Moore took liberties with human anatomy by carving deep holes in the figure, thus making the form more abstract and drawing attention to colors and shapes visible through these punctured areas. The organic and undulating shape of the figure recalls the curvilinear language of surrealism and plays upon the similarity between the curves of the female form and the undulation of the earth, reinforcing the idea of fertility usually associated with each.

V

Modern Art After World War II

Although Europe had been the acknowledged center of modern art in the first half of the 20th century, most critics now agree that after World War II (1939-1945), the center tended to shift to the United States. In the 1920s and 1930s, many American artists—including Charles Demuth, Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, and John Marin—had tried to adopt elements of cubism or futurism into their works. But these movements were construed as being of European origin, and were considered essentially foreign to the United States.

In the 1930s some American artists staged a strong rebellion against European influences in American art. Grant Wood's American Gothic was typical of a movement called regionalism, whose agenda was to celebrate what was typically American, and to do it in a style that avoided any references to European modernism. But for other American artists the regionalists’ embrace of nationalism could only hinder the arts.

A

Abstract Expressionism

During the late 1940s a movement called abstract expressionism began to develop in the United States under the influence of surrealist ideas, especially the desire to tap into the unconscious through the technique of automatism. Abstract expressionists emphasized the process of painting, by allowing evidence of the artist’s gestures to remain visible on the canvas surface. Among the leaders of this movement were Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell, and Hans Hofmann. Abstract expressionist paintings such as Pollock's Autumn Rhythm (1950, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City) give the impression of unprecedented spontaneity and physical energy. They also introduced all-over composition, in which visual marks are distributed in such a way as to produce no visual center of attention. In addition to surrealism, the abstract expressionists were influenced by Kandinsky’s ideas about similarities between abstract art and music and the ability of abstraction to communicate meaning and emotional content.

Other abstract expressionists, including Mark Rothko, Adolph Gottlieb, Clyfford Still, Ad Reinhardt, and Barnett Newman, chose a different approach. Instead of emphasizing the act of painting, they created images composed of large expanses of color and simplified forms. Barnett Newman, for instance, used a single vertical stripe to divide an otherwise solid field of color in his Onement I (1948, Museum of Modern Art, New York City). The image seems simple, but Newman saw it as symbolic of the vulnerability of humanity (the stripe) before nature (the field).

Another group of abstract expressionists, called color-field painters, combined Pollock's interest in gravity and pouring paint with Rothko’s and Newman's interest in the visual effect of color. Americans Helen Frankenthaler, Morris Louis, and Kenneth Noland diluted acrylic paint so that it approximated watercolor in fluidity. When applied on the canvas the pigment was absorbed into the weave rather than remaining on its surface, leading to the descriptive term stained painting. In Point of Tranquillity (1960, Hirschhorn Museum, Washington, D.C.), Louis folded and tipped the canvas, allowing gravity to guide the liquid colors across the surface. With this technique the artist intentionally gave up a certain amount of control over the resulting work of art.

B

Postwar Developments in Europe

As abstract expressionism gained prominence in America, similar movements emerged in Europe. Art informel, the term used to distinguish gestural abstraction from geometric abstraction in Europe, is associated primarily with French artist Pierre Soulages, along with Hans Hartung and Wols, two artists who were born in Germany but worked in France. Like the abstract expressionists, these artists emphasized the painter’s gesture, or brushstroke, and the physical qualities of the paint, especially its texture. In doing so, they sought to give the impression of pure spontaneity without artistic preparation or calculation.

Within art informel was a group called tâchistes (from the French word tâche, meaning 'stain' or 'spot”). Belgian poet and painter Henri Michaux and French painter Georges Mathieu were among the leading tâchistes. Mathieu’s large canvases combined intense color with an abstract style based on line, gesture, and an interest in Asian calligraphy. Mathieu executed his works rapidly, sometimes even in public, celebrating the artist's freedom to act without preconceived ideas or a predictable outcome. Some critics connected this quality with existentialism, a contemporary philosophical movement that also stressed the issue of personal freedom within the confines of a sometimes irrational world.

The concern for physical texture evident in art informel and tâchisme is also found in works by French painter Jean Dubuffet. But unlike his abstract colleagues, Dubuffet usually focused on the human figure, and drew inspiration from the art of children, the insane, and others whom he saw as free from corrupting cultural influences. He chose the term art brut (French for “brutal art”) for this art and it has since come to refer to the work of Dubuffet himself. Like many earlier modern artists, Dubuffet drew inspiration from sources outside the Western tradition. He rejected the view that art must be aesthetically pleasing or that it should illustrate visual reality. His deliberately crude drawing style emphasized a slow and difficult artistic process. Thus he rejected the facility and impulsiveness of the abstract painters in favor of an art that was more primal, raw, and brutal.