Continuing our journey in Art Media: History and Theory, we are now in the 20th century. The year is 1909 to be exact with the Manifesto for Futurism being published. This social movement was originated in Italy in the early 20th century and later also developed in Russia. Futurism made sure to not include the past. They supported the ideals of the fascist dogma, including violence and conflict. The Manifesto was intended to be aggressive and inspired public anger and arouse controversy. The movement was created by Marienetti. This movement adapted and used Picasso's Cubism. This allowed them to use this technique of using fragmented and intersecting planes and outlines to show several simultaneous views of an object. It used geometric shapes. The movement also amplified the industrial revolution. It glorified the technology of the automobile. There were a few key figures of the movement, including Carlo Carra, and Umberto Boccioni. The goal of Futurism was for it to abolish the Italian Renaissance and it's old concepts of religion. Futurism followed the Fascists agenda.
Fascists wanted to destroy everything. They believed war was the world's cleansing. Filippo Marinetti believed art is violence and war is a concept. Fascists tried to infiltrate people's lives including how they cooked and what they ate. It was during this time that the start of performance art began.
The artist Boccioni created Unique Forms of Continuity in Space in 1913. The piece shows motion. It is a sculpture of a running man but it's all movement based. This separated from hard materials to soft materials and from molded to crafted.
The artist Giacomo Balla created the piece Dynamism of a Dog on a leash in 1912. Kind of like Etienne-Jules Marey chronophotographic studies of animals in motion. Balla's piece is on of the most important works in Futurism. They both made the invisible - visible in order to create movement in their artwork. Another Futurist, Russolo published his revolutionary manifesto The Art of Noises in 1913. The Art of Noises called for the integration of a range of different sound effects into musical compositions. Russolo wanted to show off sounds. He created noise intonarumori which showed off the Industrial Revolution. The Futurism influenced various art forms including painting, architecture, sculpture, literature, theatre, music, fashion, and even diet. People complained about this movement and the involvement of Mussolini but Marinetti didn't care because the art movement was doing well.
In 1922 came the beginning of Constructivism. A Russian artist named Aleksei Gan wrote a manifesto that that began with "We Declare Uncompromising War on Art!". Vladimir Tatlin is the father of Constructivism. He visited Piscasso in France and started using different materials to create sculpture. This creates a difference between statues and sculptures. From 1919 to 1920 Tatlin's Tower was created and stood as a symbol of communism. It was suppose to be like France's Effiel Tower but the project never went past a few models of the project.
Naum Gabo discovered that empty space could be used as an element of sculpture. He would make things open, airy and light and yet still make things that included movement. Included in his sculptures, one could push a button that causes the sculpture to move. He created Linear Construct #1 from 1942 to 1943. In 1921, he created Construction in space.
Suprematism came to be in 1915. It included just shapes, geometric shapes. They took war and politics out of art. Maleviche created the Black Square. It wasn't a perfect square. It caused us to disconnect from the past. It was a metaphor for a blank slate, an endless pit/void. The goal of the piece was to be seen as empty space. It also didn't have to mean a lot. This is when art started to be interpreted. The Black Square was hung up in a corner in a sacred spot. Russians hung sacred items in the top corner of the house. This caused artists to see the Black Square as sacred.
To correctly interpret art one has to 1. know Artist, 2. know the time period outside of the painting, 3. where the are was made, 4. when the art was made.
In 1919, Bauhaus was founded in the city of Weimar. It was create by a German architect Walter Gropius. The goal of Bauhaus was for everything to be the same, everything was art. It was a school in Germany. It was radical, culty, and people were kind of scared of it. At Bauhaus everyone created art and were seen at the same level. It was kind of like an art school but the teachers viewed themselves as prophets. They would have costume parties since play was a way for them to be creative. Hitler didn't like what Bauhaus stood for and got rid of it. It was shut down by police.
Returning back to Gabo, Kinetic Sculpture gained popularity from 1920 to 1960. Calder created Avant-Garde sculptures where they moved on their own. Calder had a degree in mechanical engineering. It had a limited color palette. The artwork were interactive with each other.
Dada was a huge movement that came in the early 20th century. Founded by Hugo Ball and Emmy Hemmings in Switzerland. They created Cabaret Voltaire in 1916. This allowed various artists to work together and show off their work. The music that was played was avant-garde. It allowed dancing to become more modern in style. Performance art was becoming more popular. People at Cabaret Voltaire had the freedom to do all types of art. This was all during the war and as the war continued their art became more aggressive. Dada led to a Metaphysical attitude. This allowed artists to get away from cliches and go against politics. They also thrived over the shock factor. Their work included satire, whimsical and comical. One of the Dada artists was Tristan Tzara. Tzara created art by chance and at random. He would tour up paper and let pieces fall by chance and create how they fall. The paper he would tour up were from articles and used words and put them down at random to create dadaist poem. This was the creation of the collage. The collage questioned the rules of art and was used to bring a message out to the people through art form. One of the main concepts of Dadaism was that art did not have to be beautiful if it wasn't about a pretty subject.
This influenced Marcel Duchamp. Duchamp was a painter and well established in art. Duchamp used cubism to create Nude Descending a Staircase. It doesn't show any nudity but the movement of the human body. He submitted Fountain in 1917 to an art show. It was a urinal with a fake signature on it. He had turned it upside down, getting rid of it's usefulness and rebranding the urinal to be a Fountain. He wanted to prove that the art show people didn't see anything as art like they advertised. The reason Duchamp viewed his urinal as art was because Duchamp is the artist and the artist said it's art. He submitted the urinal to the "all accepting" art show under a fake name. Only for the "all accepting" art show people to shut down submissions because it was vulgar and a functional object so it couldn't be art. Duchamp was making his point that there was an idea to be shown and to get the idea of the piece across. It was the conceptual matter of the art piece that was important not the art itself.
Conceptual Photography by Prasad Naik has five people standing as if their a prisoner line up with a projection of the barcode on the subjects. The photo was taken by a Vogue Photographer and a fashion photographer. It shows how humans are captive to consumerism. He used the image to express his frustrations and thoughts. Another example is the photo of Prague Josef Koudelka took in 1968. Koudelka is a Czech-French photographer. At this time the Cold War was coming to Czechoslovakia, specifically Prague. The photo is a document of the exact time the Soviet Union invaded Prague. This image portrays the calm before the storm.
We go back to Duchamp to show off what he's doing with his Readymades. The idea of Readymades takes the new technology advancements and altered already made items and art. He took a bike wheel and attached it to a stool and created art. It was art because he's an artist and he says it's art. This is a step into accepting technology and to advancements making life easier and not working as long. The use of technology in made art conceptual to make you think while paintings were seen as retinal art and were based on what you see.
In 1921, came the Bricolage by Merz. The Bricolage was like a collage but used items found on the streets and put those items together to create. Then in 1924, Surrealism took a stance. When it came to Surrealism, art came from the mind. It was a cult philosophies and seances. These ideas weren't part of the environment but the inner brain.
The 20th century had multiple important art periods. This including Dada and Surrealism. This also included the Anti-Modernist movement. Anti-Modernist movement changed everything. They were against authoritarian and who can tell them what's considered good or bad art. At this point, performance art took off here. Performance art was funny and confrontational. The past can be included in artwork and you have to make a point with the way of the past and put juxtaposition into it. It could also include nature too. Post-modernism found new and more controversial ways to show their belief. They used appropriation and performance in the modern context. They were against modernism and their rules. The artwork Appropriation and Repetition by Andy Warhol in 1962. He did this with Campbell Soup Cans and with a portrait of Marilyn Monroe. He even made up the David statue to look like Ronald McDonald. This was to show how society idealizes a fast food icon and a note on capitalism comparing it to David and how he was idealized.
There were Modernists, Anti-Modernist and now Post-Modernists. The Post-Modernist artist Rauschenberg created Bed in 1955. He combined paint and sculptures together to create one art piece. Andy Warhol created a video of him eating a hamburger for 4 minutes.
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