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 6

First published in the United States of America

in Ten Volumes by
GROLIER EDUCATIONAL CORPORATION
Danbury, Connecticut 068 1

/Pr AN EQUINOX
EQl ENCYCLOPEDIA

Planned and produced by

Equinox (Oxford) Limited
Mayheld House, 256 Banbury Road,
Oxford, England, 0X2 7DH

Copyright© 1983 Equinox (Oxford) Limited

This Ten Volume Edition Copyright © 1983 Grolicr Educational Corporation

Danbury, Connecticut 06816

Ail rights reserved. No part of this publication

may be reproduced, stored m
a retrieval system,
transmitted in any form or by any means electrical,
mechanical or photocopied, recorded or otherwise
without prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN 0-7172-7077-7

Printed and bound in Singapore by

Toppan Prmting Co.
 1 1

CIVIC CENTER
3 111 00855 5862

THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF VISUAL ART

VOLUME FIVE r^rr-^ n
HISTORY OF ART KlL..-
Lt V' : , ' - \
'

M Y
Realism - South African Art

Chapters Special Features

41 REALISM The Artist's Studio by Courbet Close Study ~~4-5 "69

42 IMPRESSIONISM Paintings of La Grenouillere Gallery Study 798-9 787

43 POST-IMPRESSIONISM Vision after the Sermon by Gauguin Close Study 810-11 803

44 SYMBOLISM AND ART Salome m Symbolist Art Gallery Study 824-5 817
NOUVEAU

45 FAUVISM AND Matisse in 1 905 Gallery Study 836-7 833

EXPRESSIONISM The Blue Rider Gallery Study 842-3

46 CUBISM AND FUTURISM The Impaa of African Art Gallery Study 852-3 .S4~

47 ABSTRACT ART Yellow-Red-Blue by Kandinsky Close Study 862-3 859

The Sculpturesof Brancusi Gallery Study 8^2-3

48 DADA AND SURREALISM The Menaced Assassin by Magritte Close Study 884-5 877

49 INTERNATIONAL STYLE The Barcelona Pavilion Close Study 892-3 889

50 LATIN AMERICAN ART 905

51 MODERN AMERICAN ART The Houses of Frank Lloyd Wright Gallery Study 920- 915
Cathedral by Jackson Pollock Close Study 926-7
The Sculptures of David SmithGallery Study 930-

52 POSTWAR EUROPEAN ART The tirst Marriage by David Hockney Close Study 954-5 941

53 AUSTRALIAN ART 961

54 SOUTH AFRICAN ART 4^1

GROLIER EDUCATIONAL CORPORATION

DANBURY, CONNECTICUT 06816 USA
 '

41

REALISM

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The Bathers by Courbet; oil on canvas; iiyx 193cm (89X76in); 1853
Musee Fabre, Montpellier (see page 770)
770 RF.A1.ISM

and then also the invention of film, as clinching cultural evi-

THE word "realism", imprecise in meaning and used
over the centuries for contradiaory purposes, here has dence of this. But not only was the century equally rich in
two roles: to indicate a period during which art poetic invention, it was also the period when music was at last

tended to be factual in its representations and references and, able to challenge the other arts and to some extent even

within that period, a particular tendency (it was never a achieve a dominant position. Also, it was a time when the
formal movement). For the latter we shall use the capital ini- middle classes began to look to art as an alternative to every-
tial: "Realism". The near identit>' of the two terms will day life, as an escape from reality, as entertainment. Many a
remind us how much the tendency and its general context realist artist learnt quickly how to sweeten facts by selection,

have in common, though the more extreme forms of Realism and by their employment to illustrate subject matter that
proved to be intolerable to a public happy to be regaled by would appeal to such a public. Exotic scenes, pleasing anec-
realistic art. And the vagueness and breadth of the basic word dotes, landscapes implying adventure or relaxation, still lifes

hints at the fact that some degree of realism — in the sense of signaling pleasure and plenty — all these could be factual and
cssaymg a convincing image relatable to common visual ex- yet elicit responses going well beyond the facts. This was es-

perience —has been common to many periods of art and basic pecially the case with representations of the naked figure,
to some. The breadth of our keyword comes from man's ina- whether they were called Samson and Delilah or The Turkish
lienable need to distinguish between fact and illusion and be- Bath or, as increasingly now, Nude Study or Nude. Also,
tween fact and fiction, without denying the potency of fiction, realism could almost imperceptibly be moderated in idealistic
the conscious and unconscious product of our imaginations terms derived from classicism. Compositional structures,
upon our minds and actions. types of physical beauty, poses and groupings of a time-
Dr Johnson's commonsensical dispatch of Bishop Berke- honored sort, can often be found beneath an apparently
ley's proof that matter does not exist — kicking large stone
a purely factual, observed surface. This is partly because all art

and saying to Boswell, "I refute it thus" — showed character- demands some process of transformation, partly because
istic firmness but raises the question whether the stone he some recourse to that great tradition assured public approval,
kicked was more material than all the stones he might have and partly also because tradition was not easily shaken off.
kicked but did not have within his reach. Questions of reality In this context the more radical ways of Realism were

are not answerable merely in terms of physical presence unless shocking. They were received by most critics and by the Salon-
we take so strict a reading of and what is not real that
what is going public as aggressive; to some extent they were meant to
the possibility of shared experience of communication — is — be aggressive: they were attacks on artistic convention, obvi-
removed. All artistic activit\' depends on a lenient attitude to ously, but also on proprieties that were as much social as
such questions, whilst changes in the major modes of art often artistic. A realist painter might show some naked figures in or

indicate shifting, corrective evaluations of them. All creativity, near water and call the result Bathers; he could thus be refer-
it can be argued, addresses itself to the sometimes painful gap ring to the real world and suggest ordinary pleasures, whilst
between the circumstances we call real and the potentialities also hinting at the long and primarily idealistic tradition of
our minds present to us in the form of ideals. classical figurative art. To represent a very fleshy woman
Nineteenth-century realism comes between two periods in walking away from a rather nondescript patch of water, past a
which the best art attended more to the ideal and the im- seated companion, both women gesticulating broadly but
agined. Romanticism, in the first decades of the century, was a without clear purpose, was an affront to thoughts both of
revolt against the reins of taste and reason that had generally classicism and of standard sensual satisfactions; on a large
been obeyed by Renaissance and post-Renaissance art [see scale, and painted very vigorously, it was an affront to the
Romanticism). In its last decades, the century saw a second expectations of well-educated art lovers. Courbet's The
wave of Romanticism in the guise of Symbolism, initiated in Bathers (Musee Fabre, Montpellier) was the scandal of the
poetry and producing an art happy to display its poetic aims 1853 Paris Salon. The police discussed removing it lest it give
{see Symbolism and Art Nouveau). In between came a period offence; the public, loving to be offended,crowded to see it;
when art, in France especially, gave particular attention to critics and caricaturists mocked it. Only lower-class females
recording the visible world of the present. This was something would be so ungainly and so meaningless in their gestures.
more than the recourse to data from the visible world With some it was the meaninglessness that weighed more
common to most or all periods of art: it tended to an exclu- heavily than the flesh — with Delacroix, for instance, who
sion of anything not classifiable and verifiable as fact and a thought Courbet's handling of paint masterly: "The vulgaritv'
denial of symbolic meanings. of the forms would not matter; what is unbearable is the
There are degrees of realism, of course. It is easy to present vulgarity and poindessness of the idea; what is more, if only
the 19th century —the century of commercial as well as politi- that idea, such as it might be, were clear!" The absence of a
cal empires, of vast historical researches and archives and discussable narrative or idea short-circuited the process of
statistics, of amazing technical advance and industrial har- appreciation and criticism instilled by the long tradition of
vests —as the century of facts. We could also adduce the rise of and broke the network of prepared references
intelligent art,
the increasingly naturalistic nove: the invention of the camera by which works of art drew significance and thus life from
UKmpia by Manet; oil on canvas; 130X 190cm (51 x 7510); 186?. Muscc du Jeu de Paume, Paris

broad sectors of inherited learning. To refute such Hnkages, Manet's intention. Worse, he had painted her without the
especially when working on the scale of this picture —7 ft 5 in inviting mien and proportions that might have made the pic-
by 6 ft 4 in (i.zy m by 1.93 m) and thus clearly a magnum ture attractively wicked. Instead, she was shown blankly,
opus —damaged art and the whole hierarchy of civilization. coldly. That Titian's painting too probably represented a
This helps us to understand also the fuss over Courbet's A courtesan could not shield him: Manet had jarred a tradition
Burial at Ornatis (painted 1850, shown at the Salon in 1851; close to the central concerns of art and beauty by jerking it

now Louvre, Paris). On

most grandiose history
the scale of the into the present, and what echoes of the past he had preserved
paintings (10 4 ft in 3.15 m by 6.68 m) it
by 22 ft 11 in, merely served to emphasize the loss.

shows the anonymous folk of Ornans, a faraway country When Manet was working on the picture, his mentor
town, taking rather mcomplete notice of an anonymous event. Baudelaire was writing that "for any 'modernity' to be worthy
—
That many of them the landscape too might be accurate — of one day taking its place as 'antiquity', it is necessary for the
portrayals merely stressed the lack of significance: truth mysterious beauty which human life accidentally puts into it

perhaps, but the truth of what? Ten years after C^ourbet to be distilled from it". Manet had distilled it very thoroughly,
Manet painted his version of the old
painted his Bathers, even from his brushwork and palette which, though marvel-
Venus theme {Olympia, 1863; Musee du Jeu de Paume, ously subtle, deprived spectators of the optical charms they
Paris) — received from Antiquity via Titian's Venus of Urbino expected as of right. He may thus be accounted, to some
(1538; Uffizi, Florence) and normally welcomed by 19th-cen- degree, as the urban counterpart to Courbet's largely and
tury taste in a myriad of guises as celebrations of ideal beauty somewhat insistently country-based campaign to bring art
and concurrently a pleasantly sensual encounter for those down to earth. (Parisians at this time encouraged each other in

with a taste for it. He seems to have been surprised by the fury disparaging the provinces, an attitude Courbet's friend the
it aroused when he showed it in 1865, yet he had severed socialist philosopher Proudhon was working to correct.) Yet
every possible link with that tradition except for the composi- Manet's open use of traditional antetypes at this period of his
tional one. The setting and the appurtenances — black servant career —
as also in the slightly earlier Dejeuner sur I'Herbe
with bouquet, black cat — were taken to indicate that the (1863; Louvre, Paris), a theme from Giorgione composed a la

woman portrayed was a prostitute: this had indeed been Raphael but again shot into the present —turns his realism
772- REALISM

into a way of processing tradition, of confronting tradition
without deference, not a wholehearted insistence on the pre-
sent and on ordinary farts. We must also ask, however, to
what extent even Courbet was able to elude the pull of time-
honored artistic fictions.
When Courbet set up his own one-man show close to the
entrance to the Paris World Exhibition of 1855, having re-
few months). In it he asserted that art could not be taught,
being essentially individual.
1 add that art or talent, in my opinion, can be for an artist only
the means of applying his personal faculties to the ideas and
things of the epoch in which he lives. Especially art in painting
can consist only in the representation of objects visible and
tangible to the artist ... It is a totally physical language which

fused an invitation to produce a major work for inclusion in uses for words all visible objects; an abstract object, not visible,
nonexistent, does not lie in painting's domain. Imagination in
the official exhibition because he would have had to submit it
art consists in knowing how to find the most complete expres-
to the judgment of a jury, he wrote over his door: "Realism.
sion of an existing thing, but never to suppose or create the
G. Courbet: exhibition of forty of his paintings." In his
thing itself . . . The beautiful, like the true, is a thing relative to
catalog he partly rejected the term:
the time in which we live and to the individual competent to
The "realist" has been imposed on me in the same way as
title conceive it.

the "romantic" was imposed on the men of 1 830 ... I have

title
And some length. In the year of A Burial at Ornans
so on, at
studied the art of the ancients and moderns without any dog-
he summarized his position more briefly in a letter to a news-
matic or preconceived ideas. I have not tried to imitate the
paper:
former nor copy the latter ... To achieve skill through know-
ledge—that has been my purpose. To record the manners, ideas I am not only a socialist but also a democrat and a republican;
and aspect of the age myself have seen them — to be a man
as I in brief, I support the entire revolution, and above all else 1 am
as well as painter,
a short to create
in —that has been
living art altogether a Realist . . . because to be a Realist means to be the
my aim. sincere friend of actual truth.

Six years later, encouraged by the success he had had outside That year, 1851, saw also another of his key works at the
Paris, Courbet wrote a fuller statement addressed to his stu- Salon, The Stonebreakers (formerly Dresden; believed de-
dents (he had opened a Courbet school, but it lasted only a stroyed), a model for other Realists for those who sought to —

The Stonebreakers by Courbet; oil on canvas; about 213 x312cm (84Xi23in); 1849. Formerly Gemaldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden; destroyed

4it.^'-
 REALISM 773

use more or less naturalistic images in support of progressive projection of personality, of the authentic expression of one
social and political campaigns. Courbet stressed that the pic- human being's experience of human society, and this insist-
ture sprang from a chance encounter; he did not say how ence is the main difference (leaving questions of quality aside)
much it owed to reconstruction. The youth and the old man between Courbet's kind of Realism and our own century's
seen on the road at work on their endless labors were not Socialist Realism. When art abandons established themes and
caught by him as in a snapshot; he had to interrupt their work ceases to support agreed values, personal authenticity be-
and pay them to come and pose
him in the studio, one at a
for comes the only available yardstick (and one very difficult to
time. The composition he used was decidedly classical like, — apply with certainty). The Impressionist alternative offering —
say, a section of the Parthenon frieze —with his figures in objective, almost scientific truth, at the expense of a more
profile, parallel to the picture-plane and also to the landscape personal delivery — remains quite ambiguous in its content,
which almost closes the picture-space like a backdrop. especially where values are concerned. Socialist and other
Proudhon called it the first socialist painting and "a satire on totalitarian countries, on the other hand, enrolling art as a
our industrial civilization which keeps on inventing a marvel- part of the system of government-controlled education and
ous machine to execute all sorts of labors . . . yet cannot Uber- exhortation, assume or pretend to assume that themes and
ate man from most backbreaking toil". Courbet spoke of
the values are once again firm common property, so that what is

it as a rare "expression of misery and destitution"; his re- called Realism immediately transforms itself into idealization.
sponse, he said later, was that of pity. Not, therefore, that of On the other hand, this individualism was clearly an inheri-
demanding change: it was others who turned the picture into tance from late Enlightenment sensibility and from Romanti-
a socialist manifesto. Art is notoriously bad at making polemi- cism's in-turned focus. In this respect, Courbet and those
cal pronouncements without ambiguity. Courbet seems to writers who championed him were heirs of Romanticism; they
have been more conscious of the endlessness of the men's could not have countenanced the objectivity of Im-
work and situation than of any clear sense of injustice. "In pressionism.
these jobs", he wrote while engaged on it, "this is how you Courbet's somewhat older contemporaries, Jean-Franqois
begin and how you end". Millet (1814—75) and Honore Daumier (1808—79), shared
If the picture was charged with classical dignity much — many The critic Castagnary was
of his aims and intentions.
more obviously so than contemporaries were willing to recog- thinking of Courbet and Millet when he wrote, in 1857, that
nize —
it was disconcertingly realistic in its detail, in the the aspirations of the day were well expressed through rural
clothing particularly. The figures were large, life-size, and so subjects because these were timeless in their significance in a
the holes in the man's socks were life-size also. Such elements way that urban subjects could not be. Choosing peasant sub-
m the picture, which was shown together with the Burial, jects for art could be taken to imply the rejection of more
were taken to prove that Courbet was a political extremist elevated subjects and thus of traditional values as upheld by
and a savage. He accepted the latter term at least: "In our the academies, but it also suggested a Rousseauistic penetra-
over-civilized society I must lead the life of a savage — I must tion through the facades of present-day society to its timeless
free myself from governments", and in 1853 there followed base. Thus Realism could be seen as an attack on civilization,
his refusal to produce a painting at the government's be- and equally as a statement of civilization's true nature. This is
hest. He produced it nonetheless, for his own exhibition: The particularly so when themes are generalized to bring out their
Artist's Studio (now Louvre, Paris), combining realism of timelessness. Behind Millet'sThe Sower (1850; Museum of
observation with a smattering of Realism in its social impli- Fine Arts, Boston; one of a series of paintings on thesame
cations in the context of an allegorical program. theme), which was shown in the same Salon as Courbet's
None of this — the ideas and the actions—was entirely new: Burial and Stonebreakers, stands not only Michelangelo and
for instance, Delacroix might aptly have called his 1830 paint- ancient sculpture but also the deep sense —voiced by various
ing. Liberty Leading the People (Louvre, Paris), a "realistic writers over the centuries —of humanity's continuing
allegory". Behind Courbet's questioning of civilization stood priorities. Millet's epic paintings of peasants at work represent
not only Proudhon the anarchist but also Jean-Jacques Rous- his response to the promises of 1848, but it was characteristic
seau (171Z-78), that pivotal figure between the Enlighten- of him that he turned not to contemporary texts for stimulus
ment and Romanticism; behind his thematic choices stood the but to the Bible and Virgil and perhaps to Homer. Far from
1 8th century's liking for genre subjects, and 17th-century limiting itself to verifiable facts of the time, Realism in his
Dutch painting. In turning down the official invitation in 1853 hands took on the form of fused archetypes.
Courbet had written to the Director of the Beaux-Arts that "I Daumier proved that an urban setting need not exclude this

alone, of all the French artists who are my contemporaries, kind of spiritually charged monumentality with his paintings

have had the strength to express and represent in an original of Paris washerwomen coming up the steps from the Seine and
way both my own personality and society itself." This was carrying their heavy burdens along the quay; the action is

claiming too much, but it is characteristic of Realism and of again and can be interpreted as metaphor.
archetypal
him that he should need to make such claims. He had a strong Daumier's paintings were little known during his lifetime; it
urge to dominate, but there is in Realism also an essential was his caricatures (today we would call them cartoons) that
 — 1 .

The Artists Studio bycourbet

In 8 5 5, Gustave Courbet ( 1 8 1 9-77)

1 sub- no obvious activity linking them but the fact On the other hand, he is dependent on the
mitted his most recent and ambitious work that they are assembled together in the studio group gathered behind him because they
a huge canvas measuring about iz ft by 20 ft of the artist. The individual characters seem sustain his existence as an artist. These are

(3.6 m by 6 m) —
to the committee of the unrelated, even lost in his or her own "the 'shareholders', that is my friends, the
Paris World Exhibition. It was rejected. His thoughts, almost suspended in a timeless workers, the art collectors". What is more, it

response was defiant: he mounted his own zone. Yet their dress is contemporary and, in is possible to recognize most of them as

exhibition. He had
temporary building
a spite of their rather dreamy air, Courbet portraits of actual people. The poet
constructed next to the main Exhibition portrays them very much as rea/ people, all Baudelaire sits reading; the hunting features
pavilion, in which he exhibited 40 of his firmly rooted on the ground in the frieze-like of Jeanne Duval, Courbet's black mistress,
paintings in a one-man show entitled "Re- composition. are now just visible through the layer of paint
alism. Gustave Courbet" which amounted to Many interpretations of The Artist's with which Courbet had covered her after the
a private retrospective of his own work. It Studio's allegorical meaning have been sug- affair ended. Champfleury is seated in front
was apt that The Artist's Studio (now in the gested, but aspects of the picture still remain of Max Buchon, Courbet's old friend, poet
Louvre, Paris) should be found in this con- mysterious. Why
Courbet chose the odd and activist 848 Revolution and
during the 1

text. The painting's full title is The Interior of selection of characters on the left is far from now in exile after the coup d'etat of 1 85 1
my Studio, a Real Allegory Summing up clear; what seems certain is that although he The bearded Socialist philospher, Proudhon,
Seven years of my Artistic Life; so the picture treated them as individuals, they were not also stands at the back and, next to him, in
was intended as a retrospective of sorts too, meant to be recognized as specific contem- profile, is Courbet's great friend and patron

as Courbet looked back over the years that poraries. In a letter to the Realist writer, Jules from Montpellier, Alfred Bruyas. Their social
followed the Revolution of 1 848. Champtleury, discussing The Artist's Studio and artistic thinking, and the financial back-
Courbet himself, at work on a landscape in some Courbet referred to them as
detail, ing of wealthy collectors, had enabled Cour-
painting and watched by a small peasant boy "types": "the others, the world of trivialities: bet to steer the path towards the new art of
and a nude model, is the focal point of the the common people, the destitute, the poor, Realism.
picture. From the early 1840s, Courbet had the wealthy, the exploited, the exploiters; Courbet represented this group as his rev-
produced a whole series of self-portraits iliose who thrive on death". On the far left, erent admirers, but they too were the objects
which showed not only a certain ii,iru--^i'viu ror example, a Jew stands next to a self- of his art. Though depicted here in his Paris
delight in depicting himself but aUo ,1 rc.il satisfied-looking cure, who represents the studio, Courbet was actually painting the
fascination with his own image in different hypocrisy of religion. A fine huntsman is picture in the Franche-Comte, his home in
roles and moods. After 1855, Courbet's seated with his dogs; a pedlar of cheap the provinces. This meant that his friends
interest in painting himself waned, as if he textiles is crouched before a clown and an were not available to sit for him. For the
were largely satisfied with The Studio as a undertaker's mute. Courbet also included a nude, or naked "truth", he worked from a
grand and final public declaration of his own reaper, a farm laborer, a proletarian, and a
role as an artist. But it is obviously a very poverty-stricken Irishwoman with her child,
different kind of picture from the small, often among his cross section of social types. The
intimate nature of the self-portrait. Courbet, artist is turned towards them: they are the
instead, presents us with what would at first objects of his art and for that reason he is

appear to be a disparate group of people with dependent on them.

4 Courbet and his works Courbet's self-portrait

were popular with in The Artist's Studio is

illustrators from 1 8 5 based on his Self-Portrait

—
onwards as objects ot 111 Striped Collar of
ridicule. "Quillenbois" 1854; oil on canvas;
(the Comte de Sarcus) 46X3-cm i8x ( i5in).
published this caricature Musee Fabre,
of The Artist's Studio in Montpellier
[.'Illustration on 2.1 July
1855
 CLOSE STUDY

photograph, but for the other figures Cour- A The Artist's Studio by
bet largely relied on portraits he had already- Courbet; oil on canvas:
;6i X 598cm
painted. So the visitor to Courbet's one-man
I4ixi35in); 1854-5.
show in 1855 would have noticed, for in-
Louvre, Pans
stance, his portrait Charles Baudelaire
(C1847; Musee Fabre, Montpellier), which Charles Baudelaire by

Courbet had closely followed in The Artist's Courbet; oil on canvas;

5;x6icm iixz4in);
Studio, hanging in the same exhibition. These
c 184-. .Musee Fabre,
references to earlier paintings run right .Montpellier
through The Artist's Studio; they become
much more explicit in the two pictures on the
back wall — hazy now but intended by Cour-
bet, at any rate at the time of his letter to
Champfleury, as his own paintings Return
from the Fair (Musee des Beaux-Arts, Besan-
qon) and The Bathers Musee Fabre, Mont-
pellier), both of which had previously caused

great controversy. And, of course, the land-

scape depicting the bit of the world Courbet
—
knew and loved the best the Valley of the
Loue in his native France-Comte takes the —
center of the stage. rather than "real". Indeed, Baudelaire, to be painted". They are portraved as real
The one-man show
lack of response to his Champfleury, and Proudhon all strongly ob- people, but at the same time they represent
disappointed Courbet and The Artist's jected to the picture in spite of their presence ideas in the artist's mind. Courbet is at once
Studio was not well received. It fell between within it. apart from society, fiercely independent in his
two camps. For the Establishment critics, it So The Artist's Studio is a painting about search for an artistic "truth", and yet im-
was yet another example of Courbet drag- the way Courbet saw his own role as an mersed in that society, dependent on and
ging Art into the gutter more provocatively artist: he is the pivotal point of the painting responsible to it.

than ever because of its pretensions as an and the assembled company make up, as BRIONY KER
allegory. And Courbet's former Realist allies Courbet described, "all the people who serve
felt there was no room in the new art for my cause, sustain me in my ideal and support
allegory at all, since by its nature it was ideal my activity the whole world coming to me
. . .
 —

776 REALISM

_ lis muni rrfuse ca Ifs lOnares

"And they have refused that . . . the ignorant fools", a lithograph

by Honore Daumier; 1859

The word "naturalism" was introduced into art criticism by

Jules Antoine Castagnary in 1862 and came to supersede
"realism" thanks to its suggestion of greater objectivity and
echoes of the activities of natural scientists. Zola used the new
label to indicate writing that presents man not as he might be
but as he is, "natural man, man as the subject of physico-

on canvas; loi x82Cin (4oX32in); 1850.

chemical laws, a being determined by the influence of his envi-
The Sower by Millet; oil
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston ronment". Yet he gave his anention to suffering humanity, to
the laboring classes and what the Daily News in 1881 de-
the world saw, and saw frequently: comments on political scribed as "that unnecessarily faithful portrayal of offensive
personalitiesand events and on bourgeois and working class incidents". He claimed a dispassionate interest in human be-
mores. These were self-evidently based on contemporary fact havior and in the "interior mechanisms" that direct it, yet his
and at times were close to objective reportage, yet Daumier concern with misery and the context of misery was neither
fed into them his awareness of the art of the past as well as his purely objective nor sensational in purpose. His too was an art
extraordinary skills as draftsman. An early work like the Rue of protest; his accumulations of observed detail were cor-
Transnonain lithograph (1834) is in the tradition of Caravag- roborative evidence behind which the author could hide his
gio and Gericault while appearing to be a factual account of a face. Zola's naturalism has a conscience, and it is much the
scene; Membres de la Societe de Secours du Dix Decetnbre same conscience as the Realists'.
dans I'Exercise de leur Philantropiques Fonctions (members, Impressionism, which Zola supported in his writings and
in effect, of the support group for the election of Louis-Napo- which is often seen as corresponding to his work as a novelist,
leon and his elevation to Emperor "exercising their philan- has neither the same subject matter nor the same purpose. It

thropic functions" on a disbeliever),shows Daumier using does not even tit the definition Zola produced (for dramatic
Baroque stagecraft in combination with the 18th century's art, to be exact, but his imphed meaning was broad): "a
interest in —
physiognomy studied perhaps in Goya's prints corner of nature seen through a temperament". For some
to produce a vivid image for transcending fact. The realist's years at any rate, the Impressionists avoided letting tempera-
assumption that fact alone could constitute worthy art was ment interpose itself between the scenes they chose to paint
not shared by the Realists. Daumier himself made occasional and the paintings in which they represented them. It was
sport of the attitude later expressed particularly tellingly by notoriously difficult to tell one man's work from another at
Zola's character, the painter Claude Lantier, who is made to the time; it can still be so today. Perhaps responding to their
exclaim: "the day is coming when a single original carrot will
be pregnant with revolution". Our Realists, and the writers
around them, condemned mere realism as an expression of Nana by Manet; oil on canvas; 151x116cm (59X46in); 1877.
Right:
materialism. Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg
 —
778 REALISM

example, Manet largely abandoned his challenging position. was associated with the Neo-Impressionists, particularly with

In 1877 he portrayed Nana, the anti-heroine of Zola's story of Signac who wrote in 1891 of using art as "testimony to the
a prostitute's revenge on the world, but quite without the great social contest which is beginning between workers and
sharpness her story (in L'Assommoir, "The Drunkard", 1877, capital". It will be recognized that art is a very contrary thing:

and Nana, 1880) called for: the cool aggressiveness of Olym- Neo-lmpressionism, the offspring of Impressionism and — like

pia had yielded to description of a lively, almost charming many another offspring — dissatisfied with its father, rejected

sort, in the same way Manet's and the younger Impressionists' his laconic ways to make art, once again, into a social

street scenes give no special significance to any part and draw
no drama from it as Zola would certainly have done, and that
—
very emptiness what came to be thought of as the purity of
their art —
was what people objected to. It was shocking to
find the human image accorded no more presence, physically
weapon. In other respects, it could hardly be more different
from Realism.
Degas (1834— 1 9 17) too was somewhat older than Monet,
Renoir, and Sisley (who with Pissarro formed the core of the
Impressionists). Moreover, he was steeped in the classical tra-

or spiritually, in a painting than any other light-catching and dition and was disinclined to deny the human image its central

light-reflecting substance such as clouds or foliage. Zola said role in art. He did produce some exquisite landscapes which

of Manet that "he knows neither how to sing nor how to few knew about, and his interest in horses as forms of ener-
philosophize; he knows how to paint and that is all". The getic motion was so intense that one wonders sometimes, es-

remarkable thing is that this (exaggerated) innocence in the pecially before the modeled figures that were his means of
artist, and this notion of a work of art as a purely visual studying horses and human bodies, whether he allowed them
product with conceptual content, has been mistaken as a differences of status. But then we may also ask whether he
norm by which the greater part of the public judges art to this distinguished — in his paintings, pastels, drawings, and mono-
day. Yet this concentration on pure visibility —unique in the types — between laundresses, middle-class women attended at
long story of art —could achieve significance through inten- their baths and dressing tables by servants, ballet dancers at
sity. Monet's fascination with the visible could lead him both rest or in motion, and naked whores unselfconsciously await-
to the extraordinary painting of his wife on her deathbed ing their everyday business. Objectivity of the coldest sort
done not as a loving memento but because he could not resist would seem to have been his only program, combined with a
the urge to capture the "succession of appropriate color gra- Monet-like appetite for working again and again from the
dations which death was imposing on her immobile face" same Degas was no revolutionary in matters of politics.
motif.
and to those series of repeated scenes under chaiiging con- His contemporaries accused him of misogyny. His taste for
ditions of light —again the immobile transformed by the observing as though (as he said) through a keyhole and for
mobile: Rouen Cathedral, the haystacks, the Palace of showing women "deprived of their airs and affectations, re-
Westminster, Monet's garden at Giverny. His Impressionist duced to the level of animals cleaning themselves", may sug-
colleagues by this time had found the Impressionist program gest a lust for truth that goes beyond objectivity and points to
too limiting pictorially and too detached from human con- animosity. But we should not forget his roots in classicism.
cerns; Monet alone pushed it to the paradoxical extreme His long pursuit of the female animal should perhaps be seen
where transient phenomena, noted and translated into paint as evidence of a solitary (but not entirely unique) program of
with unique acuity and persistence, turn into epic celebrations reform, not social or political or sexual but artistic. As a clas-
of visual experience. sicist he knew the value and the staying power of an inherited

In this there could be no room for social commentary, even repertory of proportions and positions. Once he decided to set
of an oblique sort. Monet does not claim equal social status that heritage aside he worked ceaselessly and with unequalled
for and haystacks, merely equal visual value.
cathedrals cunning to create an alternative repertory relying on person-
Monet was a grocer's son and some of his earlier paintings ally observed fact. By one of those splendid coincidences, the
(when he was under the influence of Courbet) had shown camera was to hand and so were Japanese woodblock prints;
scenes of labor and industry, but this practice did not continue they offered alternatives, one through the limited but objective
and it is difficult to wring much social significance out of his, means of the apparatus, the other through sophisticated pro-
or his friends', representations of the leisure activities of aver- cesses of observation followed by simplification and compos-
age Parisians. The one Impressionist who does remind us from ing. Both drew attention to the importance of the tensions the
time to time of his social allegiances is Camille Pissarro represented object makes with its surrounding spaces and ob-
(1830-1903), and it may be significant that he was markedly jects and with the framing edge of the total image. "Every-
older than the others, older even than Manet to whom the thing in a painting is the interrelationship", Degas said in
Impressionists looked as a sort of father figure. Pissarro was a 1 89 1, objecting to the superficial naturalism that strains to
socialist of the anarchist persuasion. He believed that human capture the truth of a detail but ignores the viability of the
excellence would surface world into universal
to guide the whole.
brotherhood if only oppressive systems of government and Degas was proving the efficacy —the beauty even— in art of
economics were swept away. During his later years he contri- activities such as washing, of resting after fatiguing motion,
buted illustrations to anarchist journals — this was when he and also of the conventional movements and positions of the
 —
REALISM 779

ballet (another repertory). His one exhibited sculpture, The similar desire for a new kind of figuration, but his aim was
Little Dancer of 14 Years (shown in 1881; one example in the primarily to widen the potential of the human body as a
Tate Gallery, London) was considered an affront to girlhood vehicle of emotional expression. His early figure. The Age of
and to art, partly because of the real clothes in which the Bronze (1875-6; Tate Gallery, London) was so lifelike that it

bronze girl had been clad; yet a few critics were well-read drew the charge of being merely a cast taken from the living
enough to know that this oddity was sanctioned not only by model (this process has proved its worth in the work of the
Neapolitan and Spanish traditions of sculpture but also by the American sculptor George Segal, 1924- ). Rodin's aim was
ancients" habit of paintingand dressing sculptures of which more ambitious than this scandal implied: it was the expres-
archaeologists were currently becoming aware. When Degas siveness of Michelangelo and of medieval sculpture he sought,
exhibited a series of pastels of women at their toilet, in 1886, and if he looked for foundations for this in observed nature,
the novelist J.K. Huysmans thought them so monstrous that he also studied the work of his predecessors with the greatest
he seemed almost to wish to enrol Degas among those who attention and was willing to charge what he learnt from both
were using distressing and sordid scenarios
naturalistic detail sources with passionate meaning through antinaturalistic
to entertain the public with shocksand horror. The pictures, means. Very extreme poses, gravitation-defying arrange-
he wrote, "reeked of the stumps of the maimed, the embrace ments, various forms of distortion and exaggeration — includ-
of the prostitute, the sickening gait of the legless cripple". ing the remarkable one of the incomplete figure — all this com-
Renoir, however — certainly no misogynist in art or in life bined with sharp contrasts of scale and with his use of a
called the series "a piece of the Parthenon", sensing perhaps broken, disruptive surface: Rodin was not concerned with
the birth of a new classicism in which realism has taken on the portraying the visible world of his own time or any other.
function formerly reserved to idealism. Nature and reality were merely a starting point. Degas, by
Rodin's incessant study of the moving figure suggests a contrast, accepted the datable contexts in which he found the

The Tub by Degas; pastel on cardboard; 60x830111 (24X33111); i886. Louvre, Paris
ySo REALISM
left: The Age of Bronze by Rodin; bronze; i8ox6ox6ocm (71 X24X24in); Above: The Little Dancer of 14 Years by Degas; bronze with added fabric;

1875-6. Musee Rodin, Paris height 90cni (39in); first exhibited in 1 881. Tate Gallery, London
 —
782 REALISM

motif he studied; he felt no need to remove period elements ten from Munich that "the young painters here work entirely

and to universalize his work. Neither did he wish to be the in my manner"; Germany, and Belgium too he felt, were avid
author of an encyclopedic treatment of the human theme. The to continue his work. One aspect of this influence is associated
scale of his work was modest and its tone was untheatrical; with Dutch 17th-century painting. Courbet's enthusiasm — in

behind Rodin's labors, especially that broad range of work Munich he painted copies of a Hals and a Rembrandt —gave
associated with the Gates of Hell (begun 1880; left unfinished additional force to a rebirth of interest in Dutch painting, and
at his death 191 7; preliminary drawings and models in the
in this, conversely, joined with and gave additional charge to his
Musee Rodin, Paris), was not only Dante but also Wagner. own Another aspect is more metaphorical and sug-
influence.

Outside France realism and naturalism came and went in gests the impact of Courbet's romantic character and Roman-

various guises, with and without stimuli from French ex- tic leanings. "My blood still roars through my veins to gush

amples. To repeat the point: the centurywas in pursuit of hotly into my paintings": the identification of a painter's per-

facts and of visions. In Germany the Romantic painters CD.
Friedrich (1774-1840) and P.O. Runge (1777-1810) based
their essentially religious paintings on long studies of particu-
lar natural phenomena {see Romanticism). As a method this
sonalityand passing emotions with the marks he makes on the
medium itself, was not unpre-
canvas, of his lifeblood with the
cedented but found particularly pointed expression in Cour-
bet's wake. The formulation quoted here was that of Karl

was not fundamentally different from many another painter's Schuch (1846—1903), a Viennese painter who had arrived in
before them; it is the intensity of their pursuit of visual truth Munich in 1869, just in time to meet Courbet, and who was to
and their trusting delivery of it to our eyes —vivid and clear work for a while in Leibl's studio. It encapsulates a notion
that makes their relationship to reality unusual. From this, that became fundamental to much German art and art criti-
and also from a more directly naturalistic, descriptive tra- cism as well as the essential basis of Expressionism.
dition of painting, associated with pictures of specific lo- The German tradition of naturalism had its own achieve-
cations —town, country, interiors —developed particularly in ments to offer, and at times these suggest an independent
Copenhagen (where Friedrich and other North Germans re- Impressionist or at least Manet-like focus on visible reality
ceived their training), continued a line of often modest but and vividness of rendering. Adolf von Menzel (181 5—1 905 is )

sprightly naturalistic painting, usuallyon a small scale and of still not well known outside his country. His image is perhaps

unexceptional subjects, detailed enough to please a novel and darkened by the series of brilliant but also essentially
travel-story reading public, and kept fresh by elements of nationalistic history paintings celebrating the court life and
Neoclassical tidiness. This direction was in part recharged and the wars of Frederick the Great, excellent works that join a
redirected by Courbet's example. warm sense of period to lively stagecraft in a way that only the
In 1852 Courbet showed The Stonebreakers and A Burial at most sensitive of film makers have been able to match. But
Ornans in an exhibition in Frankfurt. In 1858 four paintings Menzel was also the painter of townscapes and domestic in-
by him were on show at the Frankfurt Kunstverein and he was teriors that predate and in some instances outclass the best
invited to visit the city. He came and enjoyed himself paint- — that realism and naturalism can offer elsewhere, paintings in
ing, hunting, and feasting vigorously. In 1869 he had a room which the value of an ordinary experience held for ever is
to himself in a vast exhibition in the Munich Glaspalast [The made miraculously evident. These pictures, painted in the
Stonebreakers was again shown); he was awarded a gold 1 840s, were not known until the end of the century, but the

medal by Ludwig II and he arrived in person in October to predisposition to naturalism of this sort remained potent in
spend a month as the hero of a growing band of German Germany, showing itself in the readiness of painters such as
disciples. Chief among these was Wilhelm Leibl 1 844-1 900), ( Max Liebermann (1847— 1935), Max Slevogt (1868—1932),
for whose work Courbet expressed his lively admiration. and Lovis Corinth (1858—1925) to devote themselves to a
Leibl's most famous painting. Three Women in Church (Ham- German version of Impressionism, modified in Liebermann's
burger Kunsthalle, Hamburg), was painted in 1878-81, some case in terms of Millet and of Dutch painting of the Hague
years after his personal contact with Courbet. It shows a di- School — that is modified towards Realism — and in Corinth's
rectness that Courbet might have respected, but none of his case in terms of Romantic and Expressionist self-revelation. In
bravura. Much of the piety inherent in it comes from a degree the Low Countries the Hague School itself offered a sort of
of self-effacement on the painter's part. This makes Courbet fusion ofRomantic and Realistic ways. That is, Jozef Israels
look the more Romantic of the two, Leibl the more naturalis- (1824— 1911), Hendrik Mesdag (1831-1915), the Maris
tic, but there is no mistaking the artfulness of Leibl's presenta- brothers 1837—99; Matthys, 1839—1917; Willem,
(Jacob,
tion or the meaning of this icon of rustic decency at a time 1844— 1910) and Anton Mauve (1838—88) its leading mem- —
when cities were growing fast and Germany was undergoing bers —did not put naturalism before their desire to comment
galloping industrialization. Other German painters took in on the world about them but showed townscape, landscape,
aspects of Courbet, some more, some less blatantly and obvi- and often scenes of work in gentle, rather melancholic terms
ously, and some of these were to wield influence in their own
right: Franz Lenbach (1836-1904), Hans Thoma (1839-
Three Women in Church by Wilhelm Leibl; oil on canvas;
192.4)) Wilhelm Trubner (1857-1917) etc. Courbet had writ- 113 x77cm (44X3oin); 1878—81. Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg
784 REALISM

that literally discolored their representations, tending towards Millet had made it his overt theme. Judging by the revulsion of
rather foggy, monochrome effects. Van Gogh's early paintings Charles Dickens and others when Christ in the House of His
of peasants at work and at home were deeply affected by the Parents was shown, the painter had come close to being a

Hague School's example, and it was through Mauve that he Realist. In 1849 a critic had seen in Millais' work and in
knew of Millet whose art he drew on at many stages of his Holman Hunt's a regression to "the expression of a time when
development. art was in a state of transition or progression rather than
England too had strong naturalist traditions, associated accomplishment": this reference to their early Italian, pre-

with Constable and Turner, and these had been charged with Raphael, ways points up the contrast with Menzel whose his-

moral meanings in the writings of John Ruskin (1819-1900). torical paintings show
comparable fusion of natural detail
a

Pardy because of this, French Realism and Impressionism and historical accuracy yet start from an assumption that
made little impact, even though Impressionist paintings were painting cannot be too accomplished to capture the Rococo
repeatedly shown in London in the 1870s and 1880s. Artists world of Frederick II. Rossetti's Found, begun in 1854 and left

and public looked for significant themes and found the new unfinished (Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, Delaware),
French art lacking in them. In any case, if social commentary was an exceptional attempt at a socially relevant subject of the

was required, England had her tradition in that genre too, sort that might warrant talk of Realism; Holman Hunt's The
stemming from Hogarth and surviving even more vividly in Awakening Conscience (1853; Tate Gallery, London) was
novels than in paintings. The Pre-Raphaelites' originality lay another. In both, realism is directed towards symbolism, and
in combining the edifying content of serious history painting Realism damped down by the poetics of history painting.
is

with an astonishing degree of naturalistic truth. When John For Realism of a more direct, less sermonizing and archaiciz-
Millais (1829-96) painted Christ in the House of His Parents ing sort, yet oddly well received at a time when most honors
(1850; Tate Gallery, London) he filled the picture with details went to much more glamorous and sentimental confections,
that add up to a convincing carpenter's shop in a Middle one looked to the paintings of men such as Luke Fildes (1844—
Eastern country and light. In a sense he achieves a Millet in 1927), Frank Holl (1845-88), and Hubert von Herkomer
reverse, using the Bible as foreground, so to speak, where (1849— 1914), combining Millet's emotional warmth with a
Millet had used it latently, and human labor as support where reporter's insistence on informative detail. Fildes' Applicants
for Admission to a Casual Ward (Royal Holloway College,
Found, by Dante Gabriel Rossetti; oil on canvas; 91x80cm (36X3iin); Egham, Surrey), exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1874, was
begun 185^ or 18^9; unfinished. Delaware Art Museum, NX'ilmington a much worked-up version of a drawing first published in the
weekly The Graphic in 1869, almost literally a piece of repor-
tage processed to become a genre painting on a history paint-
ing scale. (Van Gogh admired printed drawings of this
greatly
kind, collected them, and referred to them frequently.) Her-
komer's On Strike (1891; Royal Academy of Arts, London),
confronts a social problem even more firmly, insisting on the
individuality of the persons represented and putting them
before us with an immediacy reminiscent of Leibl. In other
respects too, Herkomer links English Realism to Munich and
the legacy Courbet left there.

During the last third of the 19th century, Munich contested

Paris' domination of the Western art world. Already in 1858
an American art magazine referred to the Bavarian city as the
"Art Capital" of Europe, and it is noticeable that Realist ten-
dencies in American painting from that time on point first

towards Munich and to German examples until the last years

of the century, whenis a sudden swing towards Paris.
there
Frank Duveneck (1848-1919), William Merritt Chase (1849-
1916), and other subsequently influential painters studied
their art in Munich in the 1870s when the memory of Cour-
bet's visit was still fresh; what they brought back to America
was a naturalism heightened by expressive brushwork and
occasionally also troubled by socially disquieting subjects.
Compared with this, the vivid "slice-of-life" paintings of

Right:On Strike by Hubert von Herkomer; oil on canvas;

228 x126cm (9oX5oin); 1891. Royal Academy of Arts, London
786 REALISM

Winslow Homer 836-1910) are more purely naturalistic

(i with historical themes chosen for their polemical value or
and unrhetorical. The same applies to the scientifically pre- implied social criticism. Ilya Efimovich Repin's Bargemen
pared outdoor scenes by Thomas Eakins (1844-1916); it is (1870-3; State Russian Museum, Leningrad) is a major con-

only when he picks on a subject that challenges the mind and tribution to the Realist tendency with its firm concentration

stomach of the observer, as in his monumental The Gross on individual character while capturing the slavishness of the
Clinic (1875; Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia) that we team's task. His technical means at this time were thoroughly
can speak of Realism. In 1908 a group of Philadelphia pain- traditional; later, after he had spent some time in Paris, his

ters moved to New York and put on an exhibition of their palette lightened in partial recognition of the vividness of Im-

work at the Macbeth Gallery —and found themselves dubbed pressionism.

the Ashcan School. Robert Henri (i 865-1929) was the leader The question of what means were demanded by Realism, or
of this group. He and his friends looked to Eakins and to indeed by naturalism, was central to some artists and of no
Duveneck, Chase and other Munich alumni as their masters; concern to others. For some. Realism implied not only a close
in addition Henri had studied in Paris and had acquired, and attention to facts and the commitment of art to a polemical

now taught, a version of Manet's style, 40 years or so after it purpose, but also a new attitude to the processes of art itself
was first fashioned. Many of their paintings dealt with the and to the reality of the chosen medium. Courbet's handling
seamy side of city life, but they were not only insisting on the of paint, which many found merely clumsy, was the admir-
viability of this inelegant reality as matter for art; they were ation of those who understood him to be asserting the reality
bringing forward scenes and moments which spectators could of a painting qua painting, and of the process of painting as a
recognize as essentially American and also as of pronounced process of depositing colored stuffs on a surface. When the
regional character, just as Courbet, Leibl, and others had done Cubists, in 191 2., wanted to dissociate themselves from Sym-
for their homelands. bolism and decadence, and insisted that they were realists and
National self-awareness and Realism could, in fact, be pointed to Courbet as their essential forerunner, it was partly
fertile bedfellows. The Swiss painter Ferdinand Hodler this physicality they were referring to. Out of Courbet's ma-

(1853—1918), himself of simple origins, was able to move terial bluntness and also out of the traditions of sketchy paint-

from Realism through naturalism to a very persuasive form of ing for study purposes, usually connected with out-of-door
Symbolism which retained elements of both; much of his subjects, came the relatively systematic brushwork of Im-
work was nationalist and regional in its emphasis, yet his most pressionism and thence the thoroughly systematic procedure
mature paintings are allegories that could hold their own with of Neo-Impressionist pointillism, and this in turn served as a
the best Symbolist paintings Paris could mount, which exer- basis for the experiments of Delaunay, Severini, and others in

cized a profound influence on emergent modernism in Paris, the early 20th century. A concern for reality could thus lead
Berlin, and Vienna, and which to this day maintain remark- the way to the (in common parlance) unreality of Abstract art.
able power. When the students of the St Petersburg Academy NORBERT LYNTON
revolted against the imposition of specified subjects for their
competitions, in 1863, they were demanding not merely the Bibliography. Clark, T.J. Image of the People, London (1973). Cour-
right to choose their own subjects but also to make subject bet und Deutschland, Cologne (1978). Parr, D. English Art i8yo-
matter more relevant nationally and socially. They were in- 1940, Oxford (1978). Gombrich, E.H. Art and Illusion, London
(i960). Hamilton, G.H. The Art and Architecture of Russia, Har-
spired pardy by Nikolai Chernyshevski's influential thesis.
mondsworth (1954). Hamilton, G.H. Painting and Sculpture in
The Aesthetic Relations of Art to Reality (1855), which pro-
Europe: 1880— 1940, Harmondsworth (1967). Hanson, A.C. Manet
claimed not only that art should concern itself with the visible and the Modern Tradition, London and New Haven (1977). Nochlin,
world but also that artists should recognize the social role of L. Realism, Harmondsworth (1971). Novotny, F. Painting and Sculp-
their work. Much of the art that followed fused naturalism ture in Europe: ij8o-i88o, Harmondsworth (i960).
 42

IMPRESSIONISM

Impression: Sunrise by Claude Monet; oil on canvas; 48 xe)3cm u9^iS'n); 1872. Musee Marmottan, Paris (seepages 788 and 799)
788 IMPRESSIONISM

1874, 3 group of artists mounted an independently or- ognizable characteristics: it is comparatively small in scale and
IN ganized exhibition of paintings in Paris, in a deliberate informal in composition, and was normally largely executed
attempt to find another outlet for their work besides the out of doors; its colors are generally bright and contrasting, its

official Salon. One showed

of the participants, Claude Monet, brushwork free and intuitive. It is from discussion of these
a picture with the title Impression: Sunrise (Musee Marmot- factors, and from a consideration of Impressionism in its his-

tan, Paris); several reviews of the exhibition picked on this torical context, and against its intellectual and social back-

title as reflecting the dominant characteristic of the works ground, that we can define the true nature and extent of the
exhibited, and one critic, Louis Leroy, entitled his review movement.
"The Exhibition of the Impressionists". Though none of the The group exhibition of 1874 in-
participants in the first

artists wholeheartedly accepted the label —it was used to de- cluded Claude Monet (1840-1926), Camille Pissarro (1830-
scribe paintings of many varied types — the title stuck to the 1903), Pierre Auguste Renoir (1841-1919), Alfred Sisley
group, and what origmated as a critical quip has become the (1839-99), Edgar Degas (1834-1917), Paul Cezanne (1839-
name of one of the most significant art movements of the later 1906), and Berthe Morisot (1841—95). These seven artists,
19th century. along with Edouard Manet (1832—83), are generally regarded
It is impossible to find a single definition to cover the range as the principal Impressionist painters, though in their
of paintings often described as "Impressionist", but the methods and techniques Degas and Manet belong less closely
quintessential Impressionist landscape (for example, Monet's to the group. The links between the artists were forged in the
Sailing at Argenteuil, 1874; private collection) has certain rec- 1860s; Monet, Renoir, Sisley, and Frederic Bazille (1841-70)

Le Dejeuner surl'Herbe by Manet; oil on canvas; 215 x270cm (85X io6in); C1862-3. Musee dujeu de Paume, Paris
 IMPRESSIONISM 789

met in 1 86z in the studio of the academic artist Charles Gleyre

(1808—74); Monet had met Pissarro C1860, and Cezanne first

met this group ci863.Ini863,a rallying point was provided

for them by the Salon des Refuses (an officially sponsored
exhibition of the paintings rejected from the official Salon in
that year), and in particular by Manet's major work shown
there, Le Dejeuner sur I'Herbe (Musee de Jeu de Paume,
Paris). By the late 1860s, Manet and Degas were in close

touch with the other painters; the Cafe Guerbois became the
meeting place of the group, where they aired their opinions on
art. Until 1870 they all continued to submit their work to the

Salon, but, after some initial success, they were generally re-
fused by the jury; a project of Monet and Bazille for an inde-
pendent exhibition in 1867 came to nothing, but it was the
germ of the exhibition of 1874.
The group was broken up in 1870 by the Franco-Prussian
war; Monet and Pissarro took refuge in London, and Bazille Hoar-frost by Camille Pissarro; oil on canvas; 65x93001 (26x37111);
died at the front. After the suppression of the Paris Commune 1873. Musee du Jeu de Paume, Paris

in 1 87 1, they came together again and soon decided to

in Paris

cease exhibiting at the Salon; only Manet continued to submit examples of this, all of which were shown at the first group
his work to and he never participated in the se-
it regularly, exhibition in 1874, ^re Monet's Impression: Sunrise and Wild
quence of group exhibitions. These exhibitions which took — Poppies (Musee du Jeu de Paume, Paris), Renoir's Harvesters
place, under various names, in 1874, 1876, 1877, annually (Stiftung Sammlung E.G. Biihrle, Zurich), and Pissarro's
from 1879 to 1882, and in 1886 —were the focus of the joint Hoar-frost (Musee du Jeu de Paume, Paris).
activities of the group, but their artistic aims and their ideas However, outdoor work was not in itself anything
in oils

on exhibiting became increasingly divergent. The final show in new. Oil sketching of the motif had been a standard part of
1886 included only Degas, Berthe Morisot, and Pissarro of the the training of the French landscapist since at least the later
younger artists such as Gau-
original inner circle, alongside 1 8th century, as is shown by the small studies of Pierre Henri
guin, Seurat, and Signac. de Valenciennes made in the 1780s (Louvre, Paris); on oc-
Between ci868 and C1883 various members of the group casions, Valenciennes even sketched the same subject as it

frequently also worked together, particularly in the Seine appeared under several different weather conditions, as
valley to the northwest of Paris, where they often simul- Monet, in particular, was to do later. A similar tradition ex-
taneously painted the same subjects, notably at Argenteuil, isted in England by the early 19th century, as the oil sketches
where Monet lived from 1 872 to 1878, and at Pontoise, where of John Constable show (examples and Albert
in the Victoria

Pissarro lived from 1872 to 1882. Sisley, Renoir, and Manet Museum, London). However, these small oils were not meant
worked on occasion with Monet at Argenteuil; Cezanne, and for exhibition; they were notations of light and atmosphere
later Gauguin, with Pissarro at Pontoise. It was as much for the artist to use in making the ambitious composite studio
through these immediate working contacts, as through their paintings he showed in public. Only gradually did artists come
joint enterprises in Paris, that their painting acquired a certain to place a greater value on their outdoor studies; Corot on
coherence of style and purpose during the 1870s. occasion showed an outdoor study at the Salon, instead of his
Some of the artists remained linked by close personal usual studio compositions, and Daubigny in the 1850s and
friendship, notably Monet with Renoir and Pissarro, but in 1860S began to exhibit large landscapes on which he had
artistic terms they began to go their own way increasingly worked extensively out of doors, for instance Villerville-sur-
after 1880. Though all retained the basic aims that had guided Mer (exhibited in 1864; Hendrik Willem Mesdag Museum,
them in the 1870s, they increasingly followed their own The Hague). This French tradition supplies the background to
preoccupations, and most of them continued to expand and the Impressionists' outdoor work. It seems most unlikely they
develop their artistic languages until the end of their careers. would have known of the most thoroughgoing previous at-
Most of the smaller landscapes exhibited by the impression- tempts to execute exhibition paintings out of doors, those of
ists in the 1 870s seem to have been largely or entirely executed and 1856,
the Pre-Raphaelite group in England between 1848
out of doors, in front of the motifs they represent. Instead of which resulted in such paintings as Ford Madox Brown's
using the studio, as most previous landscapists had, to pro- Pretty Baa-Lambs, 1851-2 (City of Birmingham Museums
duce large, highly finished works for exhibition from small and Art Gallery).
preparatory studies, they treated their small outdoor oils as Pissarro and Berthe Morisot in their earliest outdoor studies
finished works m their own right, placing great importance on treated Corot as their model; Monet's immediate mentors
the spontaneity and directness of their record of nature. Good were Eugene Boudin (1824-98) andjohan Barthold Jongkind
790 IMPRESSIONISM

(i 8 19-91), both of had given him advice when they

whom
were working on the coast around Le Havre. Neither of them
worked exclusively out of doors, but Boudin advocated direct
work from nature or painting done "when the impression was
still fresh", and Jongkind regularly painted watercolors, and

on occasions in the 1860s small oils, on the motif. In 1864,

Monet proudly spoke of having painted "a study entirely from
nature", but his submissions to the Salon in the 1860s (for
example, La Pointe de la Heve, 1864-5; Kimbell Art
Museum, Fort Worth) were with one exception studio works.
His one attempt to execute a monumental canvas out of
doors. Women in the Garden (1866-7; Musee du Jeu de
Paume, Paris)had no successor, and when m 1880 he decided,
for the last time, again to submit to the Salon, he sent works
enlarged in the traditional way from smaller outdoor paint- Storm on BcUc-lsle by Claude Monti; oil on canvas;
65 x81cm (26x32111); 1886. Musee du Jeu de Paume, Paris
ings. In the 1860S, the other young Impressionists also sub-
mitted large canvases to the Salon, similarly enlarged from
small studies. eyes forced him to work in the studio or from the vantage
However, they became mcreasingly preoccupied with work- point of a window, but principally because, he stated in 1892,
ing on smaller canvases out of doors Sisley seems to have — it was only in the studio that he could give his canvases the
exhibited two outdoor works at the Salon of 1870 (including "intellectual unity" he was seeking.
The Canal Saint-Martin; Musee du Jeu de Paume, Paris) and — Monet continued to maintain the outdoor image of Im-
the independendy organized exhibitions of the 1870s pro- pressionism, and gave his interviewers the impression that he
vided the ideal outlet for such paintings. It was during the worked exclusively outside, but his letters show that he came
1870s, too, that Manet began, under the influence of Monet increasingly to use the studio for retouching his canvases. In
and his friends, to execute smaller oils out of doors, such as 1886, he insisted that his latest paintings (for instance Storm
Claude Monet on his Studio-boat (1874; Neue Pinakothek, on Belle-Isle; Musee du Jeu de Paume, Paris) needed to be
Munich); for his Salon-submissions, though, Manet continued worked over in the peace and quiet of his studio, and from the
to paint more ambitious studio works (for example. The Con- 1890S onwards most of his work was extensively revised in-
servatory, 1878; Nationalgalerie, Berlin), while Degas never doors. In part, this was the result of the impossibility of ren-
painted out of doors. None of the Impressionists, except dering on the spot the "instantaneity" of natural effects which
Sisley, confined themselves to smaller outdoor works; in the he declared himself to be seeking, but he, like Pissarro, came
group exhibitions, Monet also showed large decorative can- to look for a new sort of unity in his work, for "more serious
vases (for example, La Japonaise, 1876; Museum of Fine Arts, qualities", he said in 1892, than could be obtained in a simple
Boston), and Renoir exhibited important figure paintings such outdoor sketch. No art movement before or since Impression-
as the Moulin de la Galette (1876; Musee du Jeu de Paume, ism has set such store by outdoor work, but paradoxically it

Paris). Pissarro probably used his studio throughout the 1 870s was through their experience of it that the Impressionists
for his more ambitious oils (for example. The Cote des Boeufs came to see that making a picture, on a two-dimensional sur-
at the Hermitage, Pontotse, 1877; National Gallery, London). face, imposed demands that could not be met simply by trying
After 1880, several of the Impressionists came to realize to make quick sketches of transitory natural effects.
increasingly the limitations of outdoor painting, both because Allied to the Impressionist landscapists' outdoor work came
theysaw the anomaly of executing exclusively outside works a free, spontaneous handling of paint, used as a notation for
which were meant to be viewed indoors, and because their the varied textures of nature. In part, this freedom arose
experience of distinguishing the minutest changes in natural simply from the demands of outdoor working, but an em-
effects showed them the impossibility of making a direct and phasis on the value of the individual brushstroke became a
immediate record of what they saw while the effect lasted; one that owed much to Manet.
deliberate part of their aims,
Renoir lamented the constantly changing effects of cloud and Manet Thomas Couture (181 5—
inherited from this teacher
sunshine, Monet the difficulty of finding again the same com- 79) the European tradition of free, painterly handling, and
bination of weather and tide levels on the coast. Late in his even in his large exhibition paintings (for example Le De-
life, Renoir described how in the 18 80s the frustrations of jeuner sur PHerbe, 1863; Musee du Jeu de Paume, Paris)
outdoor working had led him to readopt Corot's methods of Manet left the individual strokes of the brush as distinct ele-
working from small studies in the studio to produce, for ex- ments in creating the rhythm and pattern of the work; in his
ample, Woman Arranging her Hair (1885); Sterling and smaller pictures, his bold, economical handling is very marked
Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown). Pissarro rarely (for example, Music in the Tuileries Gardens, 1862; National
worked outside after 1880, pardy because troubles with his Gallery, London). Delacroix, too, was an important influence
 IMPRESSIONISM 79I

on the Impressionists, for the flowing, expressive gestures of From this preoccupation with surface, Pissarro in 1886
the brush in his later work. adopted the even greater systematization of the Neo-lm-
The chief characteristic of Impressionist brushwork until pressionist "petit point". Cezanne's "constructive stroke" of
CI 877 was its flexibiht}-. Pissarro, Sisley, and Renoir adapted t: 1 877-83 (used in, for example, Zola's House at Medan,
their touch to convey natural textures of all sorts —compare, CI 880; Burrell Collection, Glasgow) developed into the net-
forexample, Pissarro's Hoar-frost, 1873, and Sisley's The works of colored planes of his late works (as in Mont Sainte-
Road to Sevres, 1873 (both Musee du Jeu de Paume, Paris). Victoire, c 1904/6; Philadelphia Museum of Art). Sisley and
Monet's handling was equally varied, and in his treatment of especially Monet began c 1880 to establish flowing patterns of
reflections in water, in particular, he began to adopt emphatic, brushstrokes across the canvas, not rigid like Pissarro's, but
separate brushstrokes which create fragmented paint-surfaces free and calligraphic. In works like Monet's Storm on Belle-
quite unlike those of previous French landscape painting, as in Isle(1886; Musee du Jeu de Paume, Paris) the brushwork is a
his sketches of La Grenouillere of 1869 (for example, that in means of uniting color and drawing in a single stroke, a type
the Metropolitan Museum. New York) and in Regatta at of handling which greatly influenced Van Gogh in 1887-8.
Argenteuil (1872 3; Musee du Jeu de Paume, Paris). After CI 890, though, when Monet became preoccupied with
From the later 1870s, all the Impressionist landscapists unified effects of atmosphere, he sought denser, more uniform
began to refine their brushwork, both to give a fuller render- paint-surfaces to convey his subjects (for example, Rouen Ca-
ing of the varier>' of nature, and at the same time to organize thedral, 189Z— 4; five examples in the Musee du Jeu de Paume,
more tightly the patterns of the brush on the picture-surface. Pans). In terms of handling, the most varied experiments were
Pissarroand Cezanne came to use small parallel brushstrokes made by Renoir, particularly c 1879— 8^, when he was deeply
which impose a structure on the picture-surface more rigid studying the old masters; his techniques varied between trans-
than any found in nature (as in, for example, Pissarro's Land- lucent glazes of color and an opaque, dense surface in which,
scape at Chaponval, 1880; Musee du Jeu de Paume, Paris). for a time, he tried to reproduce in oils the effects of fresco

Music in the Tuileries Gardens by Manet; oil on canvas; 76 x 11 gem (30x46111); 1862. National Gallery, London
 ;

IMPRESSIONISM 793

painting (for example, Woman

Arranging her Hair, 1885;
Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown).
The different directions the Impressionists took in their
handling after ci88o were in all cases attempts to emphasize
certain surface-qualities in their brushwork. But their painting

retained one of the most important innovations Manet and

the others had made in the 1860s: to leave the individual
strokes of the brush distinct and visible on the paint-surface.
This had two basic results: first, to undermme the demands
for smooth which dominated the Neo-classical tradition
finish

in French painting, and second, to establish the appearance of

spontaneity and directness as a positive aesthetic value in the

final appearance of a painting.

The bulk of the Impressionists' work was executed in oils

on canvas; this was the standard medium for their Salon ex-
hibits and for the smaller landscapes they painted out of

doors. However, many of the artists actively experimented in

other media —
an important element in their work. Pastel was
Degas' principal medium from the late 1870s; he found ways Terraceat Sainte-Adresse by Claude Monet; oil on canvas;

98xi3ocin (39x51111); 1867. Metropolitan Museum, New York

of using it in superimposed layers to achieve great richness of
color as in The Tub, C1885 (Hill-Stead Museum, Farmington,
Conn.). In Cezanne's later work, watercolor allowed him to such an approach to color that Pissarro taught Cezanne in the
exploit the luminosity of the white paper —seen through layers early 1870s, to "replace modeling by the study of colors" and
of translucent color —
which seems to have in-
a technique "justify this by reference to nature", in the belief that was ait

fluenced his handling of oil paint. Drawing was only occasion- more truthful way to represent the varied play of light and
ally of importance: for Cezanne, in his drawings after the color out of doors.
works of the old masters, for Renoir, in the preparatory However, this use of color evolved only gradually. Manet in
studies for his figure-compositions of the 1880s, for Manet the 1860s retained the traditional methods of tonal modeling,
and Degas, also for preparatory studies, and for Pissarro, for relieved only by a Music in the
few colored accents, as in

quick notations from nature. Of the reproductive media, etch- Tuileries Gardens (i86z; National Gallery, London), and it
ing became the most important for the Impressionists, after its was Monet who began to incorporate a wider range of color
revival in France C1850 and its popularization by the Societe into his work, introducing into pictures such as Terrace at
whose publications Manet
des Aquafortistes in the 1860s (to Sainte-Adresse (1867; Metropolitan Museum, New York)
and Jongkind contributed); Manet and Pissarro made most strong color-contrasts and some soft blue shadows. Effects
use of this graphic method of notating quick effects from such as these, though, initially appear only in some sunlit
nature. effects, and many Impressionist paintings of the early 1870s,
Most Impressionist outdoor scenes, from the 1870s on- for instance Pissarro's Penge Station (1871; Courtauld Insti-
wards, were quite unlike previous French landscape paintings tute Galleries, London), remain dominantly tonal in their

in their Whereas paintings of the Barbizon school

use of color.
(for example, Theodore Rousseau's The Oaks, c 1850— 2;
Louvre, Paris) were modeled by clear contrasts of dark and
light tones with a restricted range of subdued color and a few
small accents of stronger color, the archetypal Impressionist
landscape (for example Monet's Sailing at Argenteutl, 1874;
private collection) was predominantly modeled by contrasts
structure. Throughout the 1870s, indeed, the color-range of
individual paintings depended closely on the subject and type
of weather shown.
Artistic precedent played some part in this development.
Pre-Raphaelite painting in England shows a range of bright
color, but can have had no direct influence on the Impression-
ists; most important for them was Delacroix, whose later

and nuances of clear color which suggest the forms and space work (for example, Jacob Wrestling with the Angel, 8 5 6-6 1 1

within the picture. Yellow is used for sunlit highlights in foli- St Sulpice Church, Paris) and published views on color re-

age, blue often for shadows; the sharper contrasts in the fore- vealed the possibilities of composing scenes in terms of domi-
ground stand out from the softer colors in the distance. It was nant color contrasts. Japanese color prints, too, notably those
of Ando Hiroshige (1797-1858), when discovered in Paris in
the 1860S, supplied a sanction for using simple, juxtaposed
Left, above: The Road to Sevres by Alfred Sisley; oil on canvas; planes of clear color, such as appear in Monet's Regatta at
54X7jcm (2iX29in); 1873. Museedujeu de Paume, Paris
Argenteutl (1872/3; Musee du Jeu de Paume, Paris). But these

Left: Zola's House at Medan by Cezanne; on canvas;

oil
influences, on their own, did not create Impressionist color
59X72cin (23 X 28in); c 1 880. Burrell Collection, Glasgow practice. The basic stimulus was the artists' own study of
794 IMPRESSIONISM

possibility of making a literal record of nature, and of the

importance of composing their scenes in terms of the two
dimensions of the paint surface.
During the mid 19th century, great progress was being
made in the scientific study of color, pioneered in France by
Eugene Chevreul (1786— 1889), whose book On the Law of
the Simultaneous Contrast of Colors appeared in 1839. This
and other later treatises dominant influence on the
were a
Neo-lmpressionists, whose systematic approach to color was
enthusiastically espoused by Pissarro between 1886 and 1888.
However, the Impressionists themselves, though exploring the
effects of contrasts of colors, did not approach color from a
theoretical basis but founded their practices on their own em-
pirical experience of working from nature. Optical mixture, as
Regatta at Argenteuil by Claude Monet; oil on canvas; advocated by the Neo-lmpressionists, by which two colors are
48x7;cm igxigjn);'
1872/3. Museedu Jeu de Paume, Paris
juxtaposed in small dots to produce a resultant color, plays no
part in Impressionist painting; in Impressionist pictures, the
nature; artistic precedents only helped to show them how to juxtaposed touches of varied color are meant to be seen as
translate their experiences of nature into color in a fresh and distinct accentsand are used to suggest the constant variety of
direct way. natural hues and textures. Scientific color theory may have
In the later 1870s, as their brushwork became more com- created the background of interest in the potential of color out
plex, the Impressionists began to introduce a greater range of of which the Impressionists' color evolved, but this evolution
small colored touches to their paint-surfaces, even in less itself was in no sense theoretical or scientific.
brightly lit scenes, for instance Pissarro's The Cote des Boeufs Traditionally, Impressionist painting has been presented as
at the Hermitage, Pontoise (1877; National Gallery, London). wholly casual and unorganized in composition. In 1898, the
In part this was an attempt to refine their rendering of the Neo-Impressionist Paul Signac criticized it for its failure to

effects of nature, but it also served to accentuate the internal organize and arrange its forms on the canvas. However, its

color relationships on the picture-surface, and in Monet's apparent informality was part of a deliberate anempt to
work of the early 1880s (for example. The Douanier's Cot- convey the immediacy of man's perception of the world
tage at Varengeville, 1882; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) around him. Manet, and Courbet before him, favored loosely
sequences of small color-oppositions give the whole painting a structured groups of figures seen frontally, disposed in a shal-
structure of contrasts, of pinks and oranges set against greens low space across the canvas, as in Manet's Music in the
and blues. Tuileries Gardens (i86z; National Gallery, London), and
In some later works, from the mid 1880s onwards, Monet, both artists looked to the simple frieze-like compositions of
Renoir, and Sisley keyed up their color still further, emphasiz- French popular imagery and illustration for their inspiration.
ing broad complementary colors over the
contrasts of In the 1 860s, the arrival of Japanese prints in Paris provided a
whole picture-surface, and mixing their paints with white to fresh compositional stimulus; their high viewpoints, cut-off
heighten the overall luminosity of the scene. In Monet's and forms, and jumps in space suggested ways of presenting an
Renoir's work, this was, in part, caused by their attempts to image with great immediacy without using the traditional
paint the light of the Mediterranean: they had to find a way of European device of linear perspective to define space. Monet's
conveying the brightness of the South with the paints at their Terrace at Sainte-Adresse (1867; Metropolitan Museum, New
disposal. Late in his life, Cezanne said that one of his great York) is an early example of their influence, and Degas' t>'pi-

had been that "sunlight cannot be reproduced, but

discoveries cal compositional forms, with their strong diagonals and cut-
Itmust be represented by something else, by color". Monet off forms, as in The Ballet Rehearsal (1874; Burrell Collec-
and Renoir seem to have reached the same conclusion in the tion,Glasgow), owe much to the lessons of Japanese art which
South (for example, inMonet's Antibes, 1888; Courtauld In- Degas harnessed to the representation of the unexpected vistas
stitute Galleries, London). The effect of these adjustments is to and viewpoints characteristic of life in the modern city.
emphasize the overall color structure of the picture, and in Contemporary photography has been cited as an influence
Monet's later work, such as the Rouen Cathedral series on the urban scenes of Degas and the Impressionists, but for
(1892-4; five Musee du Jeu de Paume, Paris),
examples in the several reasons it seems unlikely that it played any great part
integrated color-harmonies become predominant. Renoir's in dictating the type of compositions they used. Its instantane-
later work, too, achieves a new warmth and luminosity, seen ous effects were quite alien to Degas' careful planning of his
in The Bathers (1918-19; Musee du Jeu de Paume, Paris).

This changing attitude to color was, in general terms, another

Rouen Cathedral by Claude Monet; oil on canvas; ii5X65Cin (45X26in);
symptom of the Impressionists' gradual realization of the im- 1894. Museum Folkwang, Essen
796 IMPRESSIONISM

monumental Water Lily deco-

prints. In his last canvases, the
rations (C1916— 26, Orangerie des Tuileries, Paris; other can-
vases in Museum of Modern Art, New York, and elsewhere),
the composition was reduced simply to the play of lily-pads
and reflected trees and clouds over a single continuous water-
surface. This created a type of surface which has seemed, in
retrospect, to anticipate some of the features of American
Abstract Expressionism.
In the 1 860s and 1870s, besides their similarities of
technique and method, the Impressionists shared another
characteristic: an interest in painting quintessentially modern
subjects. The tradition of modern-life painting was nothing
new; it could be traced back to 18th-century Venice, i^th-
century Holland, and beyond. But in a period whose official

tastes were dominated by various forms of historicism, young

was becoming alienated from the great
artists felt that art

The Ballet Rehearsal by Degas; oil on canvas; 6ox loocm (a4X39in); changes they saw taking place around them, notably the re-
1874. Burreli Collection, Glasgow building of Paris under the direction of Baron Haussmann
(1809—91) and the development of industrialization and the
compositions, and the effects of studied asymmetry, which railways.As early as the 1840s, Baudelaire had urged the
Degas favored, appear before any such devices became popu- artist to take up the theme of the "heroism of modern life",

lar in photography: indeed. Degas probably influenced the but it was not until the 1860s that modern urban subjeas
development of photography, not vice versa. Those urban gained any wide currency.
photographs that have been compared to such street scenes by The immediate background for many of the early themes of
the other Impressionists as Monet's Boulevard des Capucines the Impressionist group was another essay by Baudelaire, The
(1873; William Rockhill Nelson Gallery, Kansas City) and Painter of Modern Life (written 1859/60, published 1863)
Renoir's Pont Neuf {iSjz; National Gallery of Art, Washing- which concerned the watercolorist Constantin Guys.
ton, D.C.) are themselves dependent on a tradition of popular Baudelaire's concentration on fashionable Paris, and on the
urban prints, h was to this tradition —not specifically to anonymity of the individual in crowds, was immediately
photography — that the Impressionists looked when choosing echoed by \lanet —who knew Baudelaire well — in Music in

viewpoints for their canvases. the TuileriesGardens (1862; National Gallery, London and by ),

In their landscapes, the Impressionists created the composi- Boudin, who began to paint the habitues of the Paris boule-
tions of their paintings by their choice of viewpoint, which vards, as they appeared in summer on the fashionable beaches
dictated how the forms in front of them should relate to each of Trouville (for example. The Empress Eugenie on the Beach
other and to the edges of the canvas. Sisley, Renoir, and of Trouville, 1863; Burreli Collection, Glasgow). In 1868,
Pissarro in genera! favored a fairly clearly defined and Boudin wrote that he wanted to "find a way of making accept-
simple perspectival structure in their work, often showing able men in ulsters and women in waterproofs . . . The
views straight —
down roads or paths a type of composition bourgeois, walking along the jett\' towards the sunset, has just
which looks back to the work of Corot and Jongkind seen in — as much on canvas as the peasant." Monet
right to be caught
Pissarro's Penge Station, 1871 (Courtauld Institute Galleries, and Renoir, too, soon took up the themes of urban Paris and
London) and in Sisley's The Road to Sevres, 1873 (Musee du the suburban recreations of the bourgeoisie, showing the
Jeu de Paume, Paris). However,Monet and Cezanne tended to middle-classes on parade in the city, and at leisure in the parks
choose compositions that lacked any direct lead-in, and con- and the surrounding countrvside now easily accessible by —
centrated on the disposition across the canvas of forms in train from the capital —
for example, Renoir's Le Pont des
successive planes of space. Cezanne's landscapes are generally Arts (1866/7; Norton Simon Inc. Museum of Art, Los
builtup of such overlapping planes, which are linked together Angeles) and Pont Neuf (1872; National Gallery of Art,
by effects of color and brushwork on the paint-surface (for Washington, D.C), Monet's Women in the Garden (1866—7;
example, Mont Sainte-Victotre, c 1904/6; Philadelphia Musee du Jeu de Paume, Pans) and Boulevard des Capucines
Museum of Art), a type of close-knit structure which Picasso (1873; W'illiam Rockhill Nelson Gallery, Kansas City). The
and Braque made the basis of their Cubist paintings of 1908- work of Monet and his friends at Argenteuil falls into the
II. Monet in the 1870s favored simple forms, often seen same category, showing the boating and reganas of the outer
frontally across water (for example, Regatta at Argenteuil, suburbs of Paris. Manet, Monet, and Pissarro also treated the
1872/3; Musee du Jeu de Paume, Paris), but after 1880 he theme of the railway station and its trains in such paintings as
often used high viewpoints, with dramatic cut-offs and breaks Pissarro's Penge Station (1871; Courtauld Institute Galleries,
of space, which, as he acknowledged, owed much to Japanese London) and Monet's paintings of the Gare Saint-Lazare (ex-
 IMPRESSIONISM 797

amples in the Musee du Jeu de Paume, Paris, and the Art them Romantic views of man's insignificance in face of the
to
Institute of Chicago). Pissarro mainly focused on the small forces of nature, and are a far cry from the everyday world of
country towns around Paris, and the life of the peasants who their more human-scaled scenes. In his coastal scenes of the
worked there; often his themes echo Millet, though the Uto- 1880S, in particular, Monet showed natural forms at their
pian anarchist views Pissarro held, at least by the 1890s, were most dramatic, as in Storm on Belle-Isle (1886; Musee du Jeu
a far cry from Millet's fatalism. Only after 1895 did Pissarro de Paume, Paris) and increasingly planned his groups of paint-
undertake important urban themes, painting the port of ings to convey an overall mood; in his exhibitions, he played
Rouen and the boulevards and river in Paris. off contrasting groups against each other. Moreover, he and
Other aspects of the modern scene preoccupied Manet, Cezanne came to concentrate on
in long se-
single images
Degas, and Renoir during the 1870s, such as the world of quences of canvases, which gave some of their subjects an
urban entertainments, from the Opera to the working-class almost metaphysical force, such as Cezanne's views of Mont
cafe. Much of Renoir's and Manet's work concentrates on Sainte-Victoire (for example, the one in Philadelphia Museum
and their psychological situations, for example,
individuals of Art), and Monet's of Rouen Cathedral (five in Musee du
Renoir'sLa Loge (1874; Courtauld Institute Galleries, Jeu de Paume, Paris). Though Pissarro and Sisley also came to
London) and Manet's The Conservatory (1878; National- paint such series of related canvases, they remained more
galerie, Berlin), or at least includes a characterized principal specific in their recording of the varied play of light and
group, as in Renoir's Moulin de la Galette (1876; Musee du weather, while Monet used his series as the basis for elaborate

Jeu de Paume, Paris). Degas, treating in particular the ballet, and integrated color-harmonies, and Cezanne his for explor-
focused not on the sentiments of the participants, but on the ing the play of colored planes on the picture-surface.
intricate interweaving of figures in varied groupings, as in The A paradox is involved in any attempt to translate Im-
Ballet Rehearsal (1874; Burrell Collection, Glasgow); only pressionism into sculpture, because of sculpture's three-
rarely, as in L' Absinthe (1876; Musee du Jeu de Paume, Paris) dimensionality, its materials, and its absence of color. Of the
does characterization play an important part in his work. Impressionists, Degas alone, after ci88o, used sculpture ex-
The public world of modern Paris was not the Impression- tensively, exploring the problems of the representation of
ists' only sphere; in their treatment of the female nude, in movement by modeling inand wax. Auguste Rodin
clay
particular, a greater variety of approaches becomes apparent, ( 1 840-1917) is often associated with the movement, though
as a result of their attempts to harness the theme of modern the link can only be made in very general terms. Rodin, like

women to the old-master tradition of the female nude. the Impressionists, pursued a type of naturalism in his forms,
Manet's Olympia (1863; Musee du Jeu de Paume, Paris) is a and studied incessantly from nature; but in his concentration
nude Venus translated into the guise of a modern courtesan, on the human form, and in the allegorical and mythological
his Le Dejeuner sur I'Herhe (1863; Musee du Jeu de Paume, themes he favored, his concerns were far from theirs. Perhaps
Paris) a modernization of the theme of Giorgione's Concert closest to Impressionism among sculptors was the Italian
Champetre (Louvre, Paris). Degas, in his nudes of the 1880s Medardo Rosso (1858-1928), in his interest in the way light

and later (for example. The Tub, <ri885; Hill-Stead Museum, dissolved the solidity of forms. His characteristic work — basi-

Farmington, Conn.), and Gauguin in his Nude (1880; Ny cally relief modeling, not sculpture in the —
round allowed him
Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen), represented woman ex- to explore such effects more easily. However, in general terms.
plicitly in her everyday surroundings, while Renoir, in his Impressionism is essentially a pictorial style, devoted to the
bather paintings of the i88os and later, presented the nude in problems of translating experiences of nature into strokes of
a more traditional way, in Arcadian settings and without colored paint on a two-dimensional surface, and any attempt
modern references (for example, The Bathers, 1885-7; to define Impressionist sculpture will miss the basic qualities
Philadelphia Museum of Art). Cezanne, too, in the monumen- of the style.
tal imaginary "Bather" compositions of his later years (those In the broadest sense, the Impressionists belonged to the
in the National Gallery, London; Philadelphia Museum of period of Naturalism in their concern for making a record of
Art; Barnes Foundation, Merion, Pa., for example) avoided their experiences and of the characteristic scenes of the world
any modern details, while the erotic scenes in his earlier work, around them. At this level, their interests can be paralleled
though often modern in their setting, are highly personal in with contemporary developments outside the field of painting,

their imagery, A Modern Olympia (1873; Musee du Jeu de with trends in literature, political thought, and philosophy.
Paume, Paris) for example. However, the value of such comparisons lies asmuch in their
Similarly, in their landscapes the Impressionists did not limitations as in their overall validity: they show both the
confine themselves to overtly modern themes. Much of the importance of a shared intellectual background and the
landscape they painted is essentially man-made (roads, fields, uniqueness of the defining characteristics of Impressionism as
villages), but Monet and Cezanne,
in particular, were also a pictorial style.
fascinated by nature at most intractable (mountains and
its The modern scenes the Impressionists painted are precisely
rocks), and Monet by the forces of the elements (snow and ice, those described by Naturalist novelists and writers, such as
sea and wind lashing broken coastlines). These interests link Emile Zola, the Goncourt Brothers, and Guy de Maupassant,
Paintings of La Grenouill^re
Monet's and Renoir's paintings of La Gre-
nouillere of 1 869 have acquired an almost
legendary status in the history of Impression-
Claude Monet, Biographic et Catalogue
Raisonne, Lausanne and Paris, vol. one,
1974, no. 136).
painting of the bathing place of La Grenouil- The paintings which have since become
lere, for which I have done some bad sketches famous must be identified as those Monet
{mauvaises pochades). Renoir also wants to called "bad sketches". Two paintings by each

ism. Freely painted and boldly colored, they paint the same subject." La Grenouillere was artist clearly belong to this group. Monet's

anticipate many of the central characteristics a pleasure spot on the lie de Croissy, an canvas in the Metropolitan Museum, New-
of Impressionist painting of the following island in the Seine near Bougival. York, and Renoir's in the Nationalmuseum,
decade. However, their true importance can In the event, Renoir was represented at the Stockholm, both show the floating cafe on
only be assessed by seeing them in the 1870 Salon by a figure-subject, not a view of the right with, in the center, the camembert,
context of the two men's work of 1 869-70. the bathing place; but this painting. Bather an islet planted with a tree. The other pair,
Monet spent the second half of1 869 living with a Griffon (Museum of Modern Art, Sao Monet's painting in the National Gallery,
at St-Michel, on the edge of Bougival, a Paulo, Brazil), shows a river bank with a tree London, and Renoir's in the Sammlung
village on a loop of the River Seine down- and boat very like the setting of La Grenouil- Oskar Rcinhart "Am Romerholz", Winter-
stream from Paris. Renoir, meanwhile, was The landscape Monet submitted to the
lere.

living nearby, at Voisins near Louveciennes; 1870 Salon was rejected, but it may have Bathers at La
Grenouillere by Monet;
the two men spent time working together. In been his planned major painting of the place.
oil on canvas;
a letter to Frederic Bazille in September, It can probably be identified with a painting
73x92cm (i9X36in);
Monet described his plans for the next year's now lost, and known only from an old 1869. National Gallery,
Salon exhibition: "I have a dream of a photograph (reproduced in Wildenstein, D., London
 GALLERY STUDY

La Grenouillere by
Monet: oil on canvas;
La Grenouillere by
~5X 00cm (30x3 gin)
1
Renoir; oil on canvas; exist alongside quick sketches such as his
1869. Metropolitan
66x8icm (26X32in); Impression: Sunrise (Musee Marmottan,
Museum, New York
1869. Nationalmuseum,
Paris). But increasingly elements from the
Stockholm
sketch st>le of the La Grenouillere paintings
became an integral part of their completed
landscapes —notably the shorthand treat-
ment of forms and, in Monet's work, the
broken handling of reflections in water. It

was La Grenouillere paintings of 1869

in the

that these elements were first fully realized.

The La Grenouillere paintings have
another level of significance: in their subject
matter. To a 20th-century viewer, the scenes
shown have no obvious connotations, but an
audience at the time would at once have
recognized in La Grenouillere a celebrated
meeting place of the demi-monde, one of the
pleasure spots on the Seine where well-born
young men could entertain their mistresses.
The setting and clientele of the place are
< Bather with a Griffon A Impression: Sunrise by
by Renoir; oil on canvas; Monet; oil on canvas;
vividly described in Guy de Maupassant's
184X 1 1 5cm (72X45in); 48x63cm (i9Xi5in); story La Femme de Paul, written about a
18-0. Museum of 1872. Musee decade after Monet and Renoir had painted
Modern Art, Sao Paulo M.irmottan, Paris the place. Thus, in their intention of exhibit-
ing paintings of La Grenouillere at the 1 870
thur, show the view looking further to the setthem apart from both men's more finished Salon, Monet and Renoir were choosing a
left, with bathing huts on the left of the canvases of the period (for instance Monet's heavily loaded subject, one that told much
Monet's U)st painting was more
pictures. The Magpie, private collection), and suggest about the morals of the age. In the dispas-
panoramic, taking in most of the views seen that their original function was, as Monet sionateway in which they treated it, though,
in both his smaller canvases. suggested in his letter to Bazille, to be they were deliberately avoiding making any
The four surviving paintings all measure pochades — a term commonly used at the judgments about it. Renoir's Bather, shown
between i ft 8 m and 3 ft 3 in across (be- time to describe quickly, often boldly, ex- at the 1 870 Salon, raises just the same issue
1 —
tween 8 and 100 cm) sizes standard at the ecuted sketches. in a rather different way: her clothes and
period for easel paintings, but smaller than Thus, in the two men's work of 1 869, the context are modern, but her pose is that of
the usual paintings shown at the Salon exhi- surviving paintings were preparatory, not the Classical Cnidian Venus, goddess of
bitions. In them, forms are treated sum- final statements. However, in the early 1 870s Love. To understand the full significance of
marily, the reflections in the water in crisp both Monet and Renoir in their landscapes the Impressionists' landscapes it is important
individual strokes of paint. The touch is more concentrated more on smaller-scale, freely to study what the scenes themselves signified,
feathery in Renoir's paintings, broader and painted canvases. Even after 1 870, more as well as the ways in which the Impression-
more slab-like in Monet's, in which the highly finished paintings, such as Monet's ists painted them.
treatment of the water is particularly bold. Riverside Walk at Argenteuil of 1 872. (Na-
Their handling and the disregard for detail tional (jailery of Art, Washington, D.C.), JOHN HOUSE
 IMPRESSIONISM 8oi

though strictly working-class themes are rare in Impressionist by the artists was the traditional one of the Bohemian at odds
painting. Both writers and painters frequented the same social with a materialistic society, not that of the revolutionary at
circles — Zola in particular was at this time a close friend of war with capitalism.
several of the Impressionists — and they were trying, in their Certain broad parallels can be made between Impression-
own media, to create works of art which would be truly ism and some of the ideas of Positivist philosophy. On one
characteristic of the milieu in which they lived. But in no sense level, the Impressionists' interest in showing modern man in
is Impressionist painting literary; only very rarely, as in his characteristic everyday surroundings relates to Hippolyte
Manet's Nana (1877; Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg), is Taine's belief in race, environment, and point in time as the
there any reference to contemporary writmg or any suggestion factors that determine men's destinies — a theory which
of specific narrative content in the Impressionists' work. In- became the basis of Zola's literary ideas. Equally relevant, in a
stead, they were seeking ways of rendering the modern world different way, is the Positivists' interest in modes of perceiving
with the means at the disposal of the painter, by form and the world around us, and their contribution to the psychology
color within the confines of the canvas, just as the writers were of perception; they used the terms "sensation" and "im-
with their available means —the development of characteriza- pression" to describe the stimulus received by the senses from
tion and from novels can be
plot possible in the novel. Scenes the outside world, a vocabulary adopted by the Impression-
used to supply background information for paintings, and ists. Indeed the term "impression" itself had become a stan-
paintings can be used to help visualize scenes from novels, but dard term in art criticism by the 1860s, being used initially to

the Impressionists' pictures cannot be read in any sense as describe the effect a scene made on the viewer, and then, by
illustrations of the novels; the common element is the milieu transference, the quick record the painter made of this effect;
shared by the painters and writers. it was the latter sense that Monet adopted in titling his paint-

In the context of the conventions of the day. Impressionism ing Impression: Sunrise in 1874. But the Impressionists' basic
appeared as a radical and revolutionary form of art, both in concern was never to investigate the nature of perception as
technique and subject matter; but this is not to say that the such, but to find ways of recording their sensations pictorially.

artists held revolutionary political views. All of them, apart Comparisons with literary, social, and philosophical
from Degas and probably Cezanne, were broadly republican thought are necessary to understand Impressionism in its con-

in their sympathies, but only Pissarro — active in anarchist text, as an art movement that belonged to the period c:i86o-
circles in the 1890s — had any deep political commitment. Pis- 90. However, the nature of Impressionism itself cannot be
sarro's treatment of themes of peasant life shows a sympathy explained in terms of any other discipline. Against a shared
with a simple preindustrial form of society, but the ideological intellectual background, the distinguishing characteristics of
content in his art is never overt, and his work, along with that Impressionism are precisely those it does not share with other
of his friends, remained conspicuously unaffected by the activities — the pictorial qualities that make it an art form and
major political upheavals of the day. Even the cataclysmic not a theoretically based mode of expression. It was in pic-

events of 1870— i had no perceptible effect on either their torial terms that the Impressionists defined their own aims;
subject matter or their approaches to their art; only Manet, in Cezanne used to declare that his aim was to realize in paint his

a few small works, made any record of the year's happenings. sensations in front of nature, and Monet wrote in 1912: "I do
In general, in their treatment of themes of modern life, the what I think best in order to express what I experience in front
Impressionists showed an awareness of the structure and of nature ... to my sensations." Each
fix artist's painting was
social divisions of society, but recorded them in a detached, the result of his own explorations of the problem of translat-

dispassionate way which deliberately avoided any ideological ing these sensations and impressions into pictorial form.
comment. In rejecting the Salon as the principal outlet for their work,
One strand of opinion at the time felt that the revolutionary and concentrating on independendy organized group exhi-
artist should never be a political propagandist. For the an- bitions, the Impressionists initiated a total reappraisal of the

archist theorist Peter Kropotkin (184Z-1921), propaganda relationship between the artist and his public. Instead of de-

was the natural medium for the artistic revolutionary, but pending on officially sponsored exhibitions of works selected
even so committed an anarchist as the Neo-Impressionist by a jury, the artist gradually came to find a wide range of
Signac declared that the task of the anarchist artist was to outlets for his art. The foundation of the jury-free Societe des
overthrow the artistic establishment of his day, while his pol- Independants in 1884 provided the Post-Impressionists and
itical brother overthrew the State; by this criterion, he could later groups with a regular chance to exhibit, but the Im-
declare Monet and Pissarro to have belonged to the anarchist pressionists themselves relied principally on a different type of

cause by virtue of their art alone. But the artistic revolution outlet, smaller group exhibitions and one-man shows
achieved by the Impressionists in the 1870s and i88os con- mounted by art dealers.

spicuously lacked such a political dimension; the role adopted Independent had begun to play a greater part in
art dealers

the Paris art market in the 1850s and i86os, and men such as

La Loge by Renoir; oil on canvas; 80x64cm (31 X25in); 1874.

Martinet, Latouche, and Martin began to patronize Manet
(iourtauld Institute Galleries, London and the Impressionists in the 1860s. However, their principal
8o2 IMPRESSIONISM

was Paul Durand-Ruel, who met Monet and Pissarro in

dealer on avant-garde art, and its superficial characteristics gradually
London in 1870-1, and thereafter bought the work of the became the accepted conventions of the next generation of
whole group, whenever he could afford to. Durand-Ruel artists.

showed Impressionist paintings in exhibitions in London in This is not to say that the innovations of Impressionism
1870-5; in Paris, he mounted the group exhibitions of 1876 quickly lost their relevance: its discoveries have supplied the

and 1882, and from 1883 onwards held a sequence of one- seeds for many later developments in painting. In retrospect.

man and mixed shows of the Impressionists; in New York, he Impressionism can be seen to have undermined finally the

put on a number of larger exhibitions from 1886 which intro- traditional idea of the large, highly-finished exhibition picture

duced Impressionism to America. His Paris one-man shows in favor of a type of painting which was more informal, and a

seem to have been the first systematic attempt to convert the more immediate expression of the artist's personality. Various
public by exhibitions of single artists, a method that has aspects of the Impressionists' style were taken up by later
become fundamental to the art market today. Rival dealers groups of artists in France; the Fauves adopted the freedom of
took up the Impressionists in the 1880s, such as Georges Petit their brushwork, and the small, loosely structured canvases
and Boussod & Valadon (in the person of their branch man- they favored, while the dazzling color of Fauvism is a develop-
ager, Theo van Gogh, Vincent's brother), but Durand-Ruel ment from the accentuated color of later Impressionism, as
remained their primary oudet, and became a close personal transmitted by Van Gogh and the Neo-Impressionists. The
friend particularly of Monet, Renoir, and Pissarro. Cubists adapted Cezanne's treatment of the piaure-surface as
In the 1 870s, the Impressionists had only a few regular a close-knit sequence of colored planes, but made of it an anti-

buyers, all of whom were friends to whom the artists could naturalistic type of art quite opposed to Cezanne's basic aims.

turn in a crisis, and who bought what they could when they Impressionism's perceptual, empirical nature sets it apart
could, often at very low prices. Most belonged to the same from the formalist and surrealist traditions in 20th-century

Bohemian circles as the artists themselves: men such as the painting, but in general terms the concentration on the surface
composer Chabrier,
singer Faure, the painter Caillebotte, the qualities of the painting, found particularly in Cezanne and
the baker Murer, and the civil servant Chocquet. By the late Monet, have anticipated many of the central preoccupations
1870s, Renoir has been introduced by the publisher Charpen- of subsequent painting.
tier into a circle of art lovers, mainly from the fashionable Outside France, Impressionism had a very wide, but basi-
bourgeoisie and nouveaux riches, who effectively subsidized cally fragmented, influence. Artists of many sorts harnessed
his more experimental work by a sequence of portrait com- various aspects of it to their own ends, and it was in general

missions; the same group began to patronize Monet too. synthesized with the traditions of painting already current in

During the 1880s, Durand-Ruel introduced further buyers, each country. Impressionist color, handling, or subject matter
but it was only from the late 1880s that Impressionist painting appear widely in many contexts, but it was only rarely — for
began to command a wide following and high prices; aristo- instance, in some works by
Philip Wilson Steer (1860—1942)
cratic patrons seem only to have taken them up after their in England, Max
Liebermann (1847—1935) in Germany, and
success was assured. In the United States, where a large part of Childe Hassam (1859-1935) in America that all the French —
their work was sold after <:i889, their principal buyers were Impressionists' preoccupations appear at one and the same
the new generation of commercial and industrial magnates. time. Even these painters, though, belonged more, in general,
The critical response to Impressionism in France in the to their own national traditions than to the Impressionist
1 870s was generally hostile; only a few writers tried to under- camp. Impressionism itself was essentially a French phenom-
stand its innovations; otherwise it gave the art critics a chance enon, with its concentration on freshness, informality, detach-
to flex their muscles as satirists. Reactions became more sym- ment, and modernity, and it could only appear as a coherent
pathetic in the 1880s, but when, in the 1890s, Impressionist artistic movement in France.
paintings began to be exhibited widely abroad, the initial re- JOHN HOUSE
sponses were again critical or even abusive, as the critics of
each country tried to reconcile their features with the conven-
Bibliography. Francastel, P. L'lmpressionnisme, Paris (1937). Ley-
tions of their own national schools of painting. However, in marie, Impressionism, Geneva (1955). Pool, P. Impressionism,
J.
France in the i88os and all over Europe and the United States London (1967). Rewald,J. The History of Impressionism, London
in the 1890s, Impressionism became the dominant mfluence and New York (1973).
 43

POST-IMPRESSIONISM

Sunday Afternoon on the Island of the Grande Jatte by Seurat; oil on canvas; 207x308011 (SiXiiiin); 1883-5; completed 1886
Art Institute of Chicago (see page 806)
 —
8o4 POST-IMPRESSIONISM

THE term Post-Impressionism was 910 by

the English art critic Roger Fr\' (i 866-1 934). It aaed
first used in 1 (1863— 1935)
Seurat.
and the other Neo-Impressionists around
The time-span thus extended from <:i88o to C1906
as a convenient title, "Manet and the Post-Impression- (the death of Cezanne and the birth of Fauvism).

ists", to a rather mixed exhibition of modern French painters More recently, a revision of the hierarchy has taken place,

which Fry arranged in London. With the exception of iManet, as well as a reduction of the time-span. In 1956, John Re-
Cezanne, and Redon, the artists represented were younger waid's Post-Impressionism scrupulously charted the careers of
than the Impressionists and painted in styles that differed Van Gogh [ob. 1890), Seurat i.ob. 1891;, and Gauguin up to
from those of iMonet, Renoir, Pissarro, and Sisley. Fry had the end of his first visit to Tahiti in 1893). It ignored Cezanne,
originally proposed '"Expressionist" as the title for the exhi- Renoir, and Toulouse-Lautrec, but clarified the affairs of the
bition. He wrote later: "For purposes of convenience, it was Pont-Aven Group and the Neo-Impressionists. In 1959, Sven
and chose, as being
necessar> to give these artists a name, I Loevgren's volume, aptly entitled The Genesis of Modernism^
the vaguest and most non-comminal, the name of Post- confined its discussion to three artists: Seurat, Gauguin, and
Impressionist. This merely state their position in time rela- Van Gogh. In 1970, Mark Roskill, in his study Van Gogh,
tively to the Impressionist movement." Gauguin and the Impressionist Circle, felt obliged to devote a

Certainly, in 19 10, the term was vague and non-committal. chapter to Seurat, but able to exclude Cezanne from the main
Fry's exhibition included works by artists who would now be discussion. Emphatically, the enquiry was now concentrated
classed as Symbolists, Nabis, Fauvists, and Cubists. In its lit- on the 1 8 80s. The same triumvirate of painters formed the
eral, temporal sense, Post-Impressionism implies anything chapter on Post-Impressionism in .•Man Bowness's Modern
produced after Impressionism —that is, after 1886, the date of European Art (i9^z), although Gauguin's career was fol-
the last Impressionist exhibition, or even after 1880, when lowed through until his death in 1903.
already signs of personal and artistic disenchantment with the The exclusion of Cezanne, once the very foundation of the
movement were apparent. The problem is to define its chrono- Post-Impressionist edifice, does not imply a downgrading of
up to 1910, or 1900, or 1890?
logical extent: his historical position. He is now in massive isolation; his style
The chronological problem is inseparable from that of from 1 880 is as isolated as that of Degas or Monet, who were
constitution and membership. Which artists are Post- also erstwhile Impressionists. And historically, the image of
Impressionist, and what are the stylistic characteristics of Cezanne's exclusion and isolation is a just one. In the 1880s,
Post-Impressionism ? he withdrew from the Paris art scene: he did not exhibit there
In one sense, Post-Impressionism never existed; it was between 18^- and 1895 (apart from one painting, ironically
named posthumously. Impressionism, Fauvism, and Cubism now unidentifiable, at the Salon of i88z,. The only place his

all resulted from art critics' abuse and irony; Symbolism, paintings could be seen —and bought—was at the shop of the
Futurism, and Surrealism were all positively launched by artist's colorman, Pere Tanguy. Cezanne spent most of his
manifesto. In 19 10, Fry's fortuitous usage was wide and all- time in the South: his acute sense of alienation was increased
embracing in its implications. Yet it was the nature of the first by the break-up of his long friendship with Zola as a result of
Post-Impressionist exhibition to emphasize the achievements the latter's novel, L'Oeuvre, published in 1886.
of Paul Cezanne (1839— 1906), Paul Gauguin (1848— 1903) Cezanne summed up his position in a letter to Octave
and Vincent van Gogh (1853-90). And of these. Fry himself Maus, secretary of the Belgian artists' exhibiting society, "Les
saw Cezanne not only as the most significant artist, but virtu- Vingt". He wrote on 2- November 1889:
ally the "onlie begetter" of the movement. He more or less
ignored the contribution of Georges Seurat (1859—91) and I must tell you with regard to this matter (of exhibiting) that the
many studies I made having given only negative results, and
Neo-Impressionism.
dreading the critics who are only too justified, I had resolved to
Once launched, however, the term was quickly abused by
work in silence until the day when I should feel myself able to
the generally hostile English critics. And it lost any critical
defend in theory the results of my attempts.
validity it might have had. By the 1920s, both dealers and

critics —
were using the term regularly and indiscriminately. Cezanne's "Post-Impressionist" then, was achieved in
stv'le,

But a Post-Impressionist hierarchy slowly evolved and claimed deliberately chosen quarantine: it was not revealed to either
its rightful place in the evolution of modern was headed
art. It painters or public until the large one-man show at the galler>-
by a quartet of major artists, Cezanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh, of the art dealer Ambroise \'ollard in 1895. Historically — in
and Seurat, who were seen as the essential precursors of the the narrow sense of participating in the art world's events
main loth-century movements. To these were added (fairly Cezanne was not part of Post-Impressionism. Ironically, the
often) the name of Renoir (1841-1919), in his guise of classi- artist who had made no public contribution was claimed,
and constructive picture-maker, and (less fre-
cal revivalist posthumously, by Fr\' as the major progenitor of the move-
quemly) the name of Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901). Around ment. In actual fact, this period of public exposure and critical
two of the major names were ranged their followers and acclaim came after Cezanne's death in 1906. Fry's exhibition
associates: Emile Bernard (1868-1941) and the Pont-Aven in 9 10 took placewhen Cezanne's reputation was at its high-
1
Group (leading to the Nabis) around Gauguin, Paul Signac est: not unnaturally, Fr\- named him the most important single
 POST-IMPRESSIONISM 805

figure. Few would deny Cezanne that accolade. In 1910, he could be classed with the Symbolists. These divisions, while
was a potent, activating historical force; now, he is a massive not always avoiding overlapping and cross-references, will be
historical monument. followed here.
To confine Post-Impressionism to three major artists and In the early 1880s Impressionism had reached a crisis.

mainly to the decade of the 1880s still leaves some areas of There were three main reasons. First, its very perfecting of
overlap, for example, with Symbolism and Art Nouveau. For- naturalistic illusionism could not be maintained forever. It

mally, in content, and critically, Gauguin, Seurat, and Van was subject and decline as a style; while
to internal dissolution
—
Gogh have contacts with and indeed, made significant con- dissension among was also growing.
the artists themselves
tributions to —
Symbolism and Art Nouveau. There is a ten- Secondly, it was subject to external pressures: younger artists
dency to equate Post-Impressionism with form (structure, in particular would critically examine its achievement. Third-

composition, purely pictorial considerations) and to leave ly — a phenomenon that often troubles artists in their forties
questions of subject matter, content, and symbol to Symbol- and fifties — a period of self-doubt sets in, a sense of lost exu-

ism. This seems to be a false dichotomy, and no more so than berance and dissipated experimental fervor. Thus in 1884,
in the case of Gauguin, whose "body artistic" seems pulled Degas, aged 50, wrote:
apart by the battle between the Post-Impressionist formalists When
Ah! where are the times when I thought myself strong. I

and the Symbolist soul-searchers. As a compromise, a chrono- was full of logic, full of plans. I am sliding rapidly down the
logical split might be suggested: leave Gauguin of the 1880s to slope and rolling I know not where, wrapped in many bad
Post-Impressionism, and give Gauguin of 1890 onwards to pastels, as if they were packing paper.
the Symbolists. In so doing, the Pont-Aven Group, its essential
Renoir spoke of this period when he was in his mid forties:
ideology and practice being settled by 1890, could also be
confined to Post-Impressionism, while the Nabis, although Around 1883 had gone absolutely
I to the limit of "impression-
clearly owing a debt to Gauguin and the Pont-Aven Group, ism" and came to the conclusion
I that I did not know either

La Parade by Seurat; oil on canvas; loox i5ocin (39X59in); 1886-8. Metropolitan Museum, New York
8o6 POST-IMPRESSIONISM

how to paint or how to draw. In a word, I was in an impasse. 1944) coined the term Neo-Impressionism, which has gained
currency over Seurat's less felicitous "chromo-luminarism".
And Pissarro, in his early fifties, also found himself in an
Simply defined, Neo-Impressionism means "New Im-
impasse, discontented with his rough and rugged execution "Neo"
most recent or latest. Yet
in the sense of
pressionism",
and need to retouch his paintings.
his and reformed.
it also clearly implied Impressionism reshaped
Degas, with a self-sufficient fund of artistic reserves to call
And the extent of the reformation can be judged from some of
on, found his release in the concentrated series of female
the critical reactions to the Grande Jatte in 1886. Some critics
nudes that dominated his art from 1884 onwards. (For Gau- and Quattrocento painting, even to
referred to Egyptian art
guin, these nudes restored design when it was at its lowest
Kate Greenaway. Feneon wrote:
ebb.) For his part, Renoir deliberately changed his style, using

elements of ancient, Pompeian, Renaissance, and Neoclassical Seurat has treated his forty or so figures in summary and hiera-

art to sustain his pictorial thinking. Instead of looking back to tic style, setting them up frontally or with their backs to us or in

the achievements of older art, Pissarro threw in his lot with a profile, seated at right-angles, stretched out horizontally, or

to be called Neo-Impressionism, bolt upright: like a Puvis de Chavannes gone modern.

new movement which was
the first radical alternative to Impressionism.
Yet the picture had its oddities: it is not as simple and
In November 1886, Pissarro wrote to his dealer, Paul
unambiguous as it appears. There are changes in viewpoint;
Durand-Ruel, attempting to explain the nature of the new there is a curious diminution of figures from right to left; there
movement: are arbitrary shadows, especially the large area in the fore-

To seek a modern synthesis by methods based on science, that ground. It is not just a piece of startlingly modernized clas-
is,based on the theory of colors developed by Chevreul, on the sicism.
experiments of Maxwell and the measurements of O.N. Rood; Spatial and arbitrary elements increase in
ambiguities
to substitute optical mixture for the mixture of pigments, Seurat's later work. In 1886, he met Charles Henry (1859-
which means to decompose tones into their constituent ele-
1926), aesthetician and mathematician, and was greatly in-
ments, because optical mixture up luminosities more
stirs in-
fluenced by Henry's theories of the emotional character of
tense than those created by mixed pigments.
linear directions. Another critic reported Seurat as saying:

And Pissarro pointed out:

The Panathenaea of Phidias (the Parthenon frieze) was a pro-
It is M. Seurat, an artist of great merit, who was the first to cession. want to show the moderns moving about on friezes in
I

conceive the idea and to apply the scientific theory after having the same way, stripped to their essentials, to place them in

made thorough studies. With my confreres, Signac and Dubois- paintings arranged in harmonies of colors —through the direc-

Pillet, I have merely followed Seurat's lead. tion of hues — in harmonies of lines —through orienta- their
tion — line and color fitted for each other.
Pissarro was characteristically generous, as well as histori-
La Parade (Metropolitan Museum, New York) of 1886-8,
cally correct, in acknowledging Seurat's primacy in the forg-
and Le Chahut (Kroller-Miiller Museum, Otterlo) of 1889-90
ing of the new style. And it seems ironical that the first public
demonstrate his programmatic intentions. In addition to these
manifestation of Neo-Impressionism took place at the last
large "statement pictures", Seurat produced a series of land-
Impressionist exhibition in May 1886. In addition to works
scapes of the Channel ports. Le Font et les Quais a Port-en-
by Seurat and Pissarro, there were paintings by Pissarro's son,
Bessin of 1888 (Minneapolis Institute of Arts) is typical of the
Lucien (1863-1944), and by Paul Signac.
melancholic mood, the air of displaced reality, and the essen-
One painting, however, imposed itself on the rest: Seurat's
Sunday Afternoon on the Island of the Grande Jatte (now in
tial harmony that characterize them all. Seurat's method — as

the Art Institute of Chicago). For one thing it was by far the
it was applied to his later —
work was codified in a letter of
1890. It is worth quoting in full.
largest picture on view, 6 ft 6 in by 9 ft 10 in (2 m by 3 m).

—
Yet it was an Impressionist subject a casual Sunday afternoon Aesthetic: Art is harmony. Harmony is the analogy of con-
crowd taking their ease on a pleasure-island on the Seine. It traries, the analogy of similarities in tone (ton), color [teinte],

appeared also to owe something to Impressionist color and and line considered under the aspect of the dominant one and
brushstroke. But on closer inspection, it was proclaiming a under the influence of lighting in gay, calm, or sad combina-
radical reform of Impressionist technique and vision.
tions. The contraries are: in tone, a lighter, more lum.inous one
in place of a darker; in color, complementaries, that is, a cer-
Instead of a haphazard, variable brushstroke, there was a
tain red opposed to its complementary, red-green, orange-blue,
uniform dot of paint (hence, "Pointillism"). Instead of
fairly
yellow-violet etc; in line, those making a right-angle. Gaiety, in
mixing colors on the palette, they were juxtaposed on the
tone is obtained through the use of dominant luminosity; in
canvas: optical mixture gave much greater luminosity and in line, through those above the
color, of prevailing warmth;
vibration (hence, "Divisionism").
As Signac wrote later: "The horizontal. Calmness, in tone is the equality of light and dark;
technique of the Impressionists is instinctive and instan- in color, of warm and cool; and the horizontal for line. Sad-
taneous, that of the Neo-Impressionists is deliberate and ness, in tone is prevailing dark; in color, a prevailing cool one;
constant." In 1886, the young art critic Felix Feneon (1861- and in line, directions downward from the horizontal. Tech-
 ty^^^-i*'-''^^ -^ '^•'i^''^

Le Pont et Its Quais a Port-en-Bessin by Seurat; oil on canvas; 65 x 83cin (26 x 33in); 1888. Minneapolis Institute of Arts

nique:When we admit the phenomena of the duration of lumi- lection of Mr and Mrs Samuel Josefowitz, Switzerland). The
nous impressions on the retina, synthesis imposes itself as a pointiilist brushstroke is combined with a background based
result. The means for expression is the optic mixture of tones partly on the theories of Charles Henry and partly on the
and colors (according to the placing and the way the colors are Japanese print. The witty, stylized, anti-naturalist, and deca-
lighted, by sun, oil lamp, gas, etc), that is to say, the mixture of
dent feeling clearly puts it into an Art Nouveau ambience.
lights and their reactions (shadows) following the laws of con-
Support from Symbolist poets (several of whom were also
trast, diminution, and irradiation. The frame is in harmony
opposed to that of the tones,
made Neo-Impressionism the best organized avant-
art critics)
colors, and lines of the picture.
garde movement in Paris from 1886 to Seurat's death in 1891.
was Paul Signac (1863-
In Paris, Seurat's closest associate The Symbolist manifesto was launched in 1886. There was
away from Neo-
1935), 3s Camille Pissarro began to turn common ground in the refutation of the positivist ethic and
Impressionism by 1888. Other important members of the the Impressionist slice of nature, and, more positively, in the
Neo-Impressionist group were Charles Angrand (1854- search for the allusive sign and symbol, the emblematic pat-
1926), Henri-Edmond Cross (1856-1910), Maximilian Luce tern and the universal image. And politically, there was the
(r858-i94i), and Albert Dubois-Pillet (1846-90). growing attraction of anarchism. As a group the Impression-
Signac produced the occasional large figure-subject, but ists were apolitical. Monet had radical notions, but these
never as ambitiously as Seurat. He concentrated on landscape never penetrated his paintings. Only Pissarro had a more
and seascape — Mediterranean as well as Normandy coast. He active political consciousness, which crystallized into an-
did, however, produce one picture that neatly brings together archist views of a nonviolent nature. These formed another
the various threads of Neo-lmprcssionism. This is Against the bond with the younger Neo-Impressionists: Pissarro, Signac,
hnamel of a Background Rhythmical with Beats and Angles, and Luce contributed illustrations to the anarchist journals.
Tones and Colors, Portrait of M. helix Feneon in 1890 (Col- There is less direct evidence of Seurat's anarchist involvement;
 — .

8o8 POST-IMPRESSIONISM

but It would seem that he shared his colleagues' opinions. It 1908 to 1934. There were small group and one-man shows
makes an unlikely Trinity —Neo-Impressionism, Symbolism, held in the offices of the avant-garde magazines those held at —
and Anarchism. —
La Revue Independante, for example in enterprising dealers'
For other however, acceptance of this trinity was not
artists, galleries, in cafe and restaurant, and in the foyer of a theater,

essential. Rather, they looked at the luminous color effects, aptly called Le Theatre Libre.

the structured brushwork, the controlled surface, the deliber- In Paris, then, there was a coming together of the arts, a

ate composition. In varying degrees of intensir>- and duration,
Gauguin, Bernard, Van Gogh, and Toulouse-Lautrec went
through a Neo-Impressionist phase.
in Brussels, however, the effects of Neo-Impressionism
went deeper. Seurat was invited to exhibit with Les Vingt
avant-garde group of zo founded in 1884 on several
artists
occasions, in 1887, 1889, and 1891. In 1892, a small memo-
rial exhibition was arranged. Signac was invited in 1888 and
1890, Cross in 1889 and 1893. Belgian and Dutch artists
quickly adopted the Neo-Impressionist technique.
them were A.W. Finch (1854-1930), Georges Lemmen
(1865-1916), Theo van Rysselberghe (1862-1926), Jan
Toorop (1858-1928), and Henry van de Velde (1863-1957).
It was van de Velde who moved from a Neo-Impressionist
sharing of premise and of premises: a physical and theoretical
ambience in which Wagner, Baudelaire, Poe, Schopenhauer,
Ibsen, Dostoevski, Walt ^Tiitman, Carlyle, and Prince
Kropotkin formed the ideological melting-pot. (And the 30-
—an year-old Freud was studying with Dr Charcot 1885-6.)
— Symbolist poet becomes art critic; artist writes Symbolist
poetry; each is a confessed Wagnerian. Feneon can publish
Rimbaud's Illuminations in 1886 as well as coining the term
Neo-Impressionism. Edouard Dujardin, more Wagnerian
Among than most, applied the term "Cloisonnism" to a certain st>le
of painting of 1888. Albert Aurier was a Symbolist poet,
editor of a very small magazine, Le Modemiste (for which
Gauguin was invited to write) and the author of the first major
articles on both Van Gogh and Gauguin.

painting phase mto his historically more significant role as Art No sharply attuned artist could ignore all these proliferat-
Nouveau designer and architect. ing manifestations of jointly engineered "modernism". A shift

In the 1 890s, the impact of Neo-Impressionism lessened. in sensibilit}', a reorientation of intellectual ideas, a readjust-

The early death of Seurat in 1891 was a severe blow to the ment of the artist's social stance took place in the 1880s.
movement. Signac took over the leadership; he and Cross Post-Impressionism is the outward stylistic expression of this
modified Seurat's "dot" into a larger, rectangular stroke. Sig- fermenting inner change.
nac's book From Delacroix to Neo-Impressionism, published Gauguin's response was to search for expressive signs and
in 1899, was an attempt to demonstrate the greater scientific symbols whose synthesis would enlarge our spiritual
truth and the more fully achieved luminosity of the movement apprehension of reality'. He wished to refute the inherited

over its two important forerunners, the painting and theory of
Delacroix and the work of the Impressionists.
book influenced Matisse (1869— 1954) and Derain
Signac's
(1880-1954), and hence Neo-Impressionism was a formative
influence on Fauvism. It is reported that Braque had a repro-
European experience (which he felt had gone rotten with its
over-insistence on materialistic "progress"), and to go back to
primitive and non-European sources (Breton calvaries, Javan-
ese temple sculpture. Oceanic carvings) and to live in a primi-
tive, and preferably tropical, environment. In so doing,

duction of Seurat's Le Chahut in his studio C1907, and the Gauguin would eventually refute the Impressionist view of
example of Neo-Impressionism was not without its impact on nature.
the evolution of Cubism. Its influence, too, was felt by several As early as 1881, we find Gauguin asking Pissarro for the
early practitioners of Abstract art. secret of Cezanne's "sensation": "Has M. Cezanne found the
The avant-garde in the 1880s was a very small section of exact formula for a work acceptable to everyone?" And in

artists indeed. Their impact was confined to small coteries; 1885, he could write of the emotional effeas of line and color
this gave them a special, elitist feeling (deliberately cultivated) and the mystical relationship of numbers. But up to 1886,
on the one hand, or, on the other, an alienated and increasing- Gauguin can be classed with the Impressionists. He exhibited
ly anti-establishment stance. There was frequently a search to with them in their last five shows 11879—86). He collected
get at the public by unconventional, and sometimes untried their work. He was particularly friendly with Pissarro. And it
means. In many ways, the 20th-century view of the alienated was the example of Pissarro and Cezanne in landscape and
artist (not just the Bohemian in the attic) and the exaggerated still-life pictures and of Degas in figure-subjects that domi-

avant-garde posture have their roots in the late i88os. There —

nated his work. Even after 1886 indeed right up to his
is the manifesto. There is the astonishing increase in the —
death Cezanne and Degas continued to act as paradigms.
number mid 1880s La Vogue, Le
of small magazines in the Gauguin continued to paint in a modified Impressionist
Symboliste, La Revue Wagnerienne, La Revue Independante st\le during his first stay in Brittany in 1886. New signs ap-
There is the importance of the cafe as the intellectual exchange peared in his Martinique works of 188-': a much more aud-
mart for poet, critic, painter, and musician. There is the Salon acious viewpoint in his landscapes, a greater insistence on the
des Artistes Independants, founded in 1884, a juryless exhibit- presence and play of figures, and a more decorative treatment.
ing society, where the Neo-Impressionists regularly showed But the desired breakthrough occurred in the late summer of
their work, and where Signac was to rule as President from 1888. At Pont-Aven in Brittany, he painted the Vision after
the Sermon or Jacob Wrestling with the Angel (National Gal-
lery of Scotland, Edinburgh). He described it in a letter to Van
Gogh:

I believe I have attained in these figures a great rustic and

superstitious simplicity. It is all very severe ... To me in this
pamting the landscape and the struggle exist only in the imagi-
nation of the praying people, as a result of the sermon. That is

why there is a contrast between these real people, and the

struggle in this landscape which is not real and is out of pro-
portion.

This is not merely anti-naturalist in presentation, and anti-

Impressionist in technique; it is also asking painting to project
inner thoughts, private dreams, and visions. It is related to a
painting by Emile Bernard, Breton Women in the Meadow Night Late at Aries by Gauguin; oil on canvas; 72X92cni (28X36in);
(private collection). Both artists, in their use of arbitrary, 1888. State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow
flattish color and strong outlines, were illustrating Dujardin's
Cloisonnism, but their preferred nomenclature was "Synth- descriptive verisimilitude.Gauguin gave Serusier a painting
etism". lesson: "How do you They are yellow. Well
see these trees?
Something of Gauguin's attempt to extend the expressive then, put down yellow. And that shadow is rather blue. So
language of painting can be gauged from another letter, sent render it with pure ultramarine. Those red leaves? Use vermi-
to Van Gogh in September 1888. He was describing a recently lion." Serusier took the message, as from the new Messiah,
completed self-portrait, inscribed Les Miserables (himself and back to Paris, and the group who called themselves the
Emile Bernard) and dedicated to Van Gogh. Les Miserables is "Nabis" (Prophets) took heed.
an allusion to Victor Hugo's novel and its tormented hero, In Aries, Van Gogh welcomed Gauguin as abbot and in-

Jean Valjean. Gauguin saw in his own head structor in the matter of painting from memory ("ab-
stractions", as Van Gogh called them). The two artists end-
the mask and powerful ruffian like Jean
of a badly dressed
Valjean who has a certain nobility and inner kindness. The hot
lessly discussed and dissected the various elements of painting:
blood pulsates through the face and the tonalities of a glowing line and color, the role of shadow (if any), and the place of
kiln which surround the eyes indicate the fiery lava that kindles light expressed only by color. Gauguin continued his explora-
our painter's soul. The design of the eyes and nose, resembling tion of figure-subjects; his Night Cafe at Aries (State Pushkin
that of flowers in a Persian rug, sums up an abstract and sym- Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow) seems to be a deliberate
bolic art. The delicate maidenly background with its child-like answer to Van Gogh's picture of the same subject.
flowers is there to signify our artistic virginity. And this Jean In Brittany again in 1889, Gauguin exploited traditional
Valjean whom society oppresses, an outlaw, with his love, his Christian iconography in three paintings: the Yellow Christ,
strength, he not also the image of an Impressionist of today?
is
the Green Christ, and Gethsemane. In each Gauguin as Christ
By painting him in my own likeness, you have an image of
may be blasphemous, yet it also asserted his feeling of rejec-
myself as well as a portrait of all of us, poor victims of society,
tion by society. The Yellow Christ (Albright-Knox Art Gal-
who retaliate only by doing good.
lery, Buffalo) is based on a medieval crucifix Gauguin knew in

Gauguin had his own struggle with his own vision. The the local church, transferred to the outdoor landscape he also
ambitious complexity of his thought is clearly shown here. knew well.
Extra-pictorial considerations are brought into play —the He felt the need to invent new forms to contain his new
memories of his experiences as a potter, the decorative effects content. And in so doing, he often experimented in new
of a Persian rug. The anti-naturalist stance is described as media — lithography, pottery, and sculpture. Take the relief

"abstract" and "symbolic". Yet he still calls himself an Im- sculpture. Be in Love and You will be Happy (Museum of
pressionist. But in the late 1880s the term had not received its Fine Arts, Boston) which he carved and polychromed in the
art-historical refinement, and was still synonymous with a autumn of 1889. The spatial ambiguity, the curiously indeter-
rebellious, innovatory painter. When, during the Paris Inter- minate background, and the enormous differences in scale, all
national Exhibition of i 889, Gauguin, Bernard, and others set help —
indeed, may be intended —
to mystify the spectator as he
up their own exhibition in the Cafe Volpini (note the venue), tries to unravel the meaning of the injunction.
the title they used was "Impressionist and Synthetist Group". Gauguin's advance towards a private, esoteric symbolism
Gauguin was the leader of the group. In Pont-Aven, he continued in the decorations in an isolated inn at Le Pouldu
gathered young painters round him. Among them was Paul that he and the Dutchman Meyer de Haan (i85z-95) were
Serusier (i 863-1 92.7). Increasingly, Gauguin moved towards largely responsible for in the winter of 1889-90. (Serusier
an abstract use of color —color used for purely pictorial contributed, significantly, a motto on the ceiling from
reasons, color that can have musical analogies but no longer Wagner.) The iconography was strangely mixed, part de-
Vision After the Sermon manifestly renouncing his Impressionist style.

He is creating a new pictorial language no

longer based on perception and sensation,
There are several titles for this piaure (in the their picturesque headgear, are imagining the more on idea and symbol. The simplifications
National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh). scene of Jacob wrestling with the angel in the of style apparent in this picture concern line,

Gauguin called it Apparition and Vision of upper They have just left
part of the picture. color, and composition. The heavy enclosing
the Sermon. It is now generally called Vision church having heard the sermon given by the contour is firm and decisive, derived from
after the Sermon or Jacob Wrestling with the priest, who is seen in the lower right of the medieval enamels or stained glass hence, —
Angel. The very existence of these alternative picture. He looks dangerously like Gauguin the term "Cloisonnism, which Gauguin and
titles gives a clue to Gauguin's ambitious himself. These Breton peasants, in their his friends used to describe the technique.
intentions. He explained those intentions in a superstitious simplicity, are his modelsand Gauguin also used the term "Synthetism" as
letter of September 1888 to Van Gogh: "I his victims: two years previously, he had used a more comprehensive description of the
believe 1 have attained in these figures a great them in a more conventional genre scene, These cloisonnist lines enclose the
style.

rustic and superstitious simplicity. It is all chatting together outdoors (Four Breton color,which is simplified, but not yet flat and
very severe ... To me in this painting the Women; Neue Pinakothek, Munich). Now, monochromatic, especially in the modeling
landscape and the struggle exist only in the they are the starting point for his "ab- of the figures and the tree, where separate,
imagination of these praying people, as a stractions", answering to his primal need: to distinct strokes are still visible. But the unre-
result of the sermon. That is why there is a create. For the image of Jacob wrestling with ality of the scene is expressed most potently
contrast between these real people and the the angel is not merely a response to the in the vermilion ground on which the strug-
struggle in this landscape, which is not real Biblical story (or to a sermon), but is capable gle of Jacob and the Angel takes place. The
and is out of proportion." of more arcane interpretations, such as the two on two wrest-
fighting figures are based
This is a valuable testimony. It tells us that creative artist wrestling with his idea. lers taken from the Wangwa of the Japanese

the Breton peasants in the foreground, with In the Vision after the Sermon, Gauguin is artist Hokusai (i 760-1 849). The composi-
 CLOSE STUDY

tion as a whole owes much to Degas' dance

pictures, as if the foreground audience of
Breton peasants are watching a stage per-
Left: Vision after the Above left Jacob wrestles Breton Women at a T Four Breton Women
Sermon by Gauguin; oil with the Angel, a detail Pardon by Emile by Gauguin; oil
formance. But the picture is also said to owe on canvas; "74X9^cm from the top right-hand Bernard; oil on canvas; on canvas; 72x91cm
most to Emile Bernard's Breton Women at a (29X37in); 1888. corner of the Vision after 74 x92cm (29X ^6in); (28X36in); 1886. Neue
Pardon (private collection) which the zo- National Gallery of the Sermon by Gauguin 1888. Private collection Pinakothek, Munich

year-old artist brought to Pont-Aven and Scotland, Edinburgh

from which, he claimed, Gauguin stole his

ideas. Gauguin, however, was already
moving towards such a simplification of
means and technique: at most, Bernard's
picture acted as a catalyst. There is also the
story that Gauguin, together with Bernard
and other friends, took the picture to the
village of Nizon outside Pont-Aven to present
it to the parish priest as an altarpiece for his
church. The offer was refused.
Instead, the Vision after the Sermon has
become the altarpiece of Post-Impressionism.
The attempt to paint a vision contradicts the
Impressionists' struggle with rendering the
outward appearance of reality. So Camille
Pissarro, once Gauguin's mentor, lamented
not so much the vermilion ground, nor the
Japanese and what he called Byzantine bor-
rowings, but (iauguin's failure to apply his
synthesis to "our modern philosophy which
is absolutely social, anti-authoritarian, and
anti-mystical". Rut the young .Symbolist poet
and art critic Albert Aurier saw Gauguin as
"the uncontested initiator of Symbolist paint-
ing". The Vision after the Sermon openly
renounces Impressionism; it augurs Symbol-
ism in painting; and its pure pictorial simpli-
fications point the way to such zoth-century
manifestations as Fauvism and Ex-
pressionism.
RONAII) I'ICKVANCI
8l2 POST-IMPRESSIONISM

11

^ sq...-5-

J
 POST-IMPRESSIONISM 813

monic, part blasphemous, part still-life, part local landscape,

part philosophical. The latter may be seen in the presence of
books by Carlyle and Milton in Gauguin's portrait of Meyer de
Haan (private collection), where, additionally, the stylization
and simplification of the Synthetist style are fully developed.
In the winter of 1 890-1, Gauguin moved in Parisian Sym-
bolist circles. He painted portraits of both Mallarme and
Moreas. Aurier wrote his article on him. Gauguin arranged an
auction of his own work in Paris and left for Tahiti in April
1891. He had stretched pictorial language by his constant
searching for new, expressive devices. He had created a life-

style, an image of the artist, alienated, yet resilient and pro-

ductive, a Messiah figure. And he had shown an ingenious
inventiveness in technique and use of media. He would con-
tinue to develop these aspects in the remaining 1 2 years of his
life. His influence grew in the 1890s: it reached flood tide in

1906 at the large retrospective exhibition at the Salon

d'Automne.
Seurat and Gauguin had exhibited together at the last Im-
pressionist exhibition in 1886. The next occasion their works
appeared in the same exhibition was at Les Vingt in Brussels
in 1889. They were the respective leaders of the avant-garde in
Paris, whose paths never crossed after 1886. (Indeed, the only
close contact before then was their mutual interest in a
manuscript by a mysterious Turkish painter of the early 19th
century: each of them copied it, each, however, emphasized
And, by and large, their critical supporters
different aspects.)
seldom coincided (Feneon alternated between warm encour-
agement of Gauguin the potter and sculptor, and rather spiky
criticism of Gauguin the painter). But one person who knew
them both, greatly admired their work, and took much from
each without ever wholly subscribing to either, was Vincent
van Gogh.
Van Gogh's arrival in Paris in February 1886 launched him McNcr dc Haan b\ Gauguin; oil on canvas; ^o 52cm 51 -20111 : l^^9.
Private collection
on a two-year course in "modernism". He moved from a
dark-toned, Dutch palette to a bright, high-keyed Impression-
ism; from there, he tried Pointillism, painting with Signac
and the "Grand Boulevard" (Degas, Monet, Renoir, and Sisley).
the Pissarroes; but hemet Gauguin in November 1887, grew During his stay in Paris, Van Gogh had entered the fray. His
friendly with Bernard, and moved towards a Synthetist style brother, Theo, who ran a small gallery devoted to modern
of his own. painters, bought the works of the "Grand Boulevard" anists
On the day he left Paris for Aries in February 1888, Van and, less frequently, those of the "Petit Boulevard". Among
Gogh visited Seurat's studio. That visit left a deep impression. was Seurat's drawing A I'Eden-Concert, now in the
the latter
He recalled Seurat's calm and ordered temperament; he re- Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh, Amsterdam. To further the
called the impact of the large paintings he saw in the studio. cause of the "Petit Boulevard" artists, Van Gogh himself ar-
La Grande Jatte, Les Poseuses, and La Parade; he noted their ranged exhibitions in the unlikeliest of places, for example, in

colour, their "stippling" (as he was wont to call Pointillism), a restaurant known La Fourche. And he made exchanges of
as
and their grand, monumental design; he saw that Seurat was pictures with Gauguin, Bernard, and others.
so well-organized an artist that productivity would never be a Once in Aries, however, he was isolated from the exciting
problem for him. Finally, he defined Seurat's position in the stimulus of the Paris art world. The stage of Synthetism he had
Parisian avant-garde — as leader of the "Petit Boulevard", by reached there was not followed up immediately. There is a

which Van Gogh meant the younger, unattached artists (Gau- relaxation of physical stresses and artistic tensions in the series
guin, Bernard, Signac, Toulouse-Lautrec) as against those of of paintings of orchards, drawbridges, and wheatfields. Not
untilAugust 1888 did he attain what might be called a truly
Left: Yellow Christ by Gauguin; oil on canvas; 91x74cm (36Xi9in); Synthetic style. Three things happened. First he tried a simple
1889. Albright-Knox Art Gallery. Buffalo technique, "which is perhaps not Impressionistic. I would like
 .

8l4 POST-IMPRESSIONISM

/^
^^ ^[

is

I i&MH^ •
'•-
"'Ml'"" JkiAb^ f If* h .

Self-portrait by N'incent van Gogh; oil on canvas; 62 x52cm U4X2oin);

1888. William Hayes Fogg Art .Museum, Cambridge, Mass.

I have tried to express the terrible passions of humanity- by red

and green. The room is blood red and dark yellow with a green
billiard table in the middle; there are four citron-yellow lamps
with a glow of orange and green. Everywhere there is a clash
Sunflowers b\ \ ini^ent \an Gogh; oil un carnas; 92x73011 (36x2910); and contrast of the most disparate reds and greens in the figures
1888. National Gallery, London of the little sleeping hooligans, in the empty, drear\ room, in
violet and blue . .

to paint in such a way that everybody, at least it they have As a contrast to The Night Cafe, Van Gogh painted another
eyes, would see it." And of his Sunflowers (National Gallery, interior in October 1888.
London), he wrote: "I am trying to find a special brushwork
without stippling or anything else, nothing but the varied It's just simply my bedroom, only here color is to do every-
stroke." Second, he telt that Impressionism was too restrict-
thing, and giving by its simplification a grander style to things,
is to be suggestive here of rest or of sleep in general. In a word,
ing. He wrote to Theo in September 1888:
looking at the picture ought to rest the brain, or rather the
I am returnmg more to what1 was looking tor before I came to imagination.
Paris. I do not know anyone before me has talked about
if
Gauguin's two months" stay in Aries accentuated the pro-
suggestive color, but Delacroix and Monticelli, without talking
about it, did it. But I have got back to where I was in Nuenen, cess towards "abstraction". Imagination, or rather painting
when I made a vain attempt to learn music, so much did I
from the imagination, was discussed and practiced. If you
already feel the relations between our color and Wagner's have freed yourself from the demands of local, descriptive

music. It is true that in Impressionism I see the resurreaion of color, then you can also free yourself from dependence on
Eugene Delacroix, but the interpretations of it are so divergent nature and the model. Van Gogh could never quite make the
and in a way so irreconcilable that it will not be Impressionism break with nature; and however "suggestive" his color, how-
which will give us the final doctrine. That is why I myself ever simplified his technique, his Symbolism was based on a
remain among the Impressionists, because it professes nothing, continued contact with reality. He e.xpressed his vision
and binds you to nothing, and as one of the comrades I need
through portrait, still-life, and landscape, rather than through
not declare my formula.
a programmatic series of allegories or a set of self-revealing
Third, a simplified technique and the exploitation of myths.
"suggestive" color gave rise to Symbolist, and even Ex- In the last 18 months of Van Gogh's life, first at St-Remy,
pressionist interpretations. Of his painting. The Night Cafe then at .Auvers-sur-Oise, painting was partly a form of ther-
(Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven), he wrote: apy. Yet he remained very conscious of the stylistic implica-
 POST-IMPRESSIONISM 815

tions of what he was doing, aware of his sources and of the The notion of thought, as well as emotion, of ideas as well
relationship of his work to Gauguin's and Bernard's in Paris as passion, actually expressed m, as well as through., the paint
and Brittany. Moreover, his paintings could be seen in Paris. indicates the abstract-symbolist nature of Post-Impressionist
At the Salon des Independants in 1890, Gauguin thought one thinking in 1890. And Van Gogh himself touches the nerve
of these the most remarkable picture in the exhibition. He center of this thought when he writes a month before his

wrote to Van Gogh: suicide of his portrait of Dr Gachet (private collection).

Among those who work from nature you are the only one who What impassions me most —much, much more than all the rest
thinks. I have talked about it with your brother and there is one of my metier — is the portrait, the modern portrait. I seek it in
canvas that I should like to exchange with you for anything of color, and surely I am not the only one to seek it in this direc-

mine you choose. The one I mean is a mountainous landscape; tion ... I should like to paint portraits which would appear
two very small travelers seem to be climbing in search of the after a century to the people living then as apparitions. By
unknown. There is in it an emotion like in Delacroix, with very which I mean do not endeavour to achieve this by a
that I

suggestive colors. Here and there some red notes, like lights, photographic resemblance, but by means of our impassioned
and the whole in a violet harmony. It's beautiful and im- —
expressions that is to say, using our knowledge of and our
pressive. modern taste for color as a means of arriving at the expression
and the intensification of the character.
(The painting in question was Les Peyroulets: The Ravine,
now in the Kroller-Miiller Museum, Otterlo.) In Aurier's article on Van Gogh [Mercure de France, Janu-

Les Peyroulets: the Ravine by Vincent van Gogh; oil on canvas; 28x36cm (iiXi4in); 1889. Kroller-Miiller Museum, Otterlo
 —
8l6 POST-IMPRESSIONISM

ary 1890) the intensity of expression is subsumed in an exag- nation of antique and modern manners, Puvis de Chavannes
geratedly Symbolist iconography. So much so that Van Gogh pervades the art of the three Post-Impressionists.
protested his love of reality, his dependence upon nature, as Shared experiences and shared influences naturally led by
well as his debt to,and admiration for other artists Dela- — 1890 to something of a shared style. Inherent in their work
croix, Monticelli, Gauguin, and surprisingly the academic was the possibility of Art Nouveau. The fact that all three
painter Meissonier —
a protest that warns the pigeon-holmg exhibited with Les Vingt in Brussels helped assure the early
critic against a too sweeping and too simplistic categorization. manifestation of Art Nouveau in Belgium. The emergence of
And Aurier's exaggerated claims for Van Gogh's individual the small avant-garde periodical, in Brussels as well as Paris,
achievement provoked the response: "What encourages me in and the founding of Les Vingt and the Salon des Independants
my work is precisely the feeling that there are others who are in 1884 helped nurture Post-Impressionism. And the way
doing exactly what 1 do." criticstalked about art changed. In their interchange, Feneon
Van Gogh was clearly thmking of Gauguin and Bernard and Seurat, Aurier and Van Gogh, Feneon, Aurier, and
and the Pont-Aven Group, rather than Seurat, Signac, and the Gauguin grappled with a rapidly changing language that de-
Neo-Impressionists. Nonetheless, by 1890, the stylization of manded elucidation and definition. It released some of the
line and shape, the and arbitrary areas of color, and
flattened esoteric thought and convoluted writing that have come to be
the search for heightened emotional effects were common to associated with "modern" art criticism. But it also released
the work of Seurat, Gauguin, and Van Gogh, however differ- the "open", revealing letters of Van Gogh and Gauguin
ently each expressed them. Each had built on Impressionism, revealing not only personally and psychologically, but above
but each had rejected it for its apparent lack of interest in all in the discussion of painterly problems, technical proce-
pictorial construction and linear and coloristic expressiveness. dures,and artistic sources. This outpouring of creative com-
Each had rejected its narrowness of attitude to alternative ment on the work-in-hand provides a further distinction
artistic sources and its failure to exploit the symbolic potential between the letters of Degas, Monet, and Renoir and those of
of even everyday imagery. Japanese print and popular imagery Gauguin and Van Gogh.
had been used by the Impressionists; but Seurat, Gauguin, and The term Post-Impressionism is sometimes applied to the
Van Gogh them more fully. Egyptian,
exploited Classical, and work of artists whose style was created outside France: for
medieval sources were consulted and absorbed into their art. example, James Ensor (i 860-1 949) in Belgium and Ferdinand
Remarkably, too, they shared a deep admiration for certain Hodler (1835— 19 18) in Switzerland. And following Roger
19th-century French artists. Three in particular exercised an Fry's Post-Impressionist exhibition of 1910, we can talk of
enormous upon them: Delacroix, Millet, and Puvis
influence English Post-Impressionism in the work of Vanessa Bell
de Chavannes. In the early 1880s, Seurat and Van Gogh were (1879— 1961), Duncan Grant (1885-1979), the Camden
deeply affected by the example of Millet; Gauguin was not Town Group, founded in 191 1, and the London Group,
unaware of him then, but appears to have taken a renewed founded in 1913.
interest in Millet in 1889-90, as also did Van Gogh with his RONALD PICKVANCE
series of painted copies after Millet. Delacroix was a pro-
foundly formative influence on the young Seurat; Van Gogh
Bibliography. Herbert, R. Neo-Impressionism, New York (1968).
discovered Delacroix in 1885, and never ceased to praise his
Loevgren, S.The Genesis of Modernism, Stockholm (1959). Rewald,
use of "suggestive" color; Gauguin, too, expressed his high
J. Post-Impressionism from Van Gogh to Gauguin, New York
regard for Delacroix in letters, as well as in painted and drawn ( 1956). Roskill, M. Van Gogh, Gauguin and the Impressionist Circle,
copies. In his simple yet subtle compositions and in his combi- London (1970).
 44

SYMBOLISM AND ART NOUVEAU

A detail from Salome by Gustave Moreau; oil on canvas; full size 92x60cm (36xa4in); 1876. Musce Custave Moreau, Paris (see page 825)
8l8 SYMBOLISM AND ART NOUVEAU

SymboHst movement, like the the crystallization of a Symbolist Movement.

FOR the historian, the
Romantic beforeand the SurreaHst after it, appears
it Des Esseintes was based partly upon contemporary men
as a forest of contradictory achievements. Each of these investigated by Huysmans, and he directly reflects certain em-

three movements stressed the importance of the mdividual's ergent tendencies in Parisian painting and writing: a clear
imaginative life. In the case of Romanticism and Symbolism, Mallarme is evident, for example, and
interest in the poetry of

this exploration of the imagination was to occur expressly in on Des Esseintes' walls hung works by Gustave Moreau
response to sensual experience; in the case of Symbolism and (182.6—98) and by Odilon Redon (1840— 1916). In due course,
Surrealism the concept of a creatively potent dream {le reve) Redon repaid this sign of recognition by producing a litho-
serves to liberate the dreamer from the constraining disci- graphic portrait of Des Esseintes as a frontispiece for a subse-
plines of creativity, for if the artist dreamed in front of his quent edition of the book. In it the sickly hero, all but sinking
work, necessarily it was at once remote from the exigencies, from sight in his large armchair, stares wistfully and diffident-
and indeed the responsibilities, of daily life. ly before him, a fleeting raven-like appearance suggested by
Seen in this context, the Symbolists appeared to embody but the rich blacks of Redon's printand by the lugubrious arch of
one phase in the development of a broader loosening of the Des Esseintes' nose. In his great armchair, Des Esseintes, to
imagination from the mundane. Romanticism, Symbolism, the promptings of precious and obscure sensual experience,
and Surrealism appear as three distinct but related investiga- would undertake journeys of the imagination. His collection
tions of the relation of creativity to the imagination. was accumulated to this end: to show nothing of the mundane
For the Symbolists, le rive meant an escape from the mun- world shut off from him by the darkened casements of his

dane and the intolerably boring world of practicality, yet the
Symbolist dream had nothing to it of the Freudian dreams of
sleep: the Symbolist knew nothing of his subconscious.
Symbolist dream was a waking reverie, triggered by any sen-
sual experience that by aesthetic means could lift the
apartment, but to replace that world by exotic scenes and
terrifying visions,works not of description but of wonder and
The suggestion. The Symbolist work, be it poem or painting, was
to be above all suggestive, precious not commonplace, to
mind reflect and to evoke a journey of the imagination. Huysman's

from mundane preoccupations, to hint, suggest, and evoke book had established and made explicit criteria that were al-
experiences that were not chaotic and in need of ordering, that ready in existence but unfocused.
were not foreseen and planned, but which were unexpected, Very soon the apartment and the possessions of Des
ordered by human imagination, full of emotional and sensual Esseintes were widely admired and emulated. The book had
suggestiveness. Far from being asleep, the Symbolist was pain- provided a detailed list of his preferences and, by example, his
fully alert and thoroughly awake. criteria: it was for this reason that the book became known as

It is one of the ironies of the movement that the book that the breviary of the decadents. His sources, the literary and
effectively crystallized those tendencies which all around had visual artists cited and discussed, were increasingly dis-

been held in suspension, should be a novel in many respects covered, celebrated, and adopted by younger practitioners.
thoroughly of the realist school of Emile Zola. Its author was Mallarme, Redon, and Moreau all became part of the Symbol-
Joris-Karl Huysmans (1848-1907) who had closely studied ist movement in this way, both as precursors and con-
Zola's techniques — in the accumulation, for example, of pre- tributors. Huysmans' book A Rebours crystallized a complex
cisely observed and explicitly described detail and of his mixture of values and aims whose unifying feature relied not
studies of particular sentiments reacting to physical cir- upon stylistic coherence but upon the varied search for art
cumstance. A Rebours [Against Nature) was published by that was suggestive and an ordered imaginative assemblage of
Fiuysmans in 1884 and heralds the elucidation of a body of sensual experience, an art that was incomplete without the
Symbolist principles. It was a minutely descriptive novel, but imaginative and sensitive response of its viewer or audience.
its "hero". Due Jean Floressas Des Esseintes, was to provide a In this complex body of opinion, experience, and practice, 30
model for many Symbolists. Sickened by the common mun- years of increasingly material considerations in French art and
danity of daily life in Pans, Des Esseintes isolated himself literature met a forceful challenge and rebuttal. The Symbol-
almost totally within his apartment; he reduced his physical ists no longer wished to be explicit: they were eager not to be

activities to a remarkable degree to the predilection of sensual fully intelligible, and their works were to embody an experi-
experience, collecting — to alleviate the threat of suffocating ment in the sensual provocation of the imagination. Des
tedium — books, precious objects, paintings, prints, and li- Esseintes, an ultimate armchair traveler with his own exotic
queurs that provoked an inner life that for all its dependence tastes to which his sanctum was finely tuned and remote from
upon senses painfully tuned, turned
its aesthetic nerve toward daily life, provided a stimulating, influential example.
inner experience. Huysmans' meticulous descriptions of Des During the evolution of the Symbolist movement in art and
Esseintes' "Aladdin's Cave" were at once influential. Ironi- literature in Paris, a number of creative men whose essential
cally it was the matter-of-fact descriptive reporting that made stance had been known became increasingly
for several years
the emulation of so other-worldly a figure possible. Huys- influential and respected. Gustave Moreau and Stephane Mal-
mans' book was not suggestive; it was explicit. This made it larme, who experienced sudden popularity among Symbolists,
an axial work, not fully Symbolist in itself, yet a vital force in both dealt with the theme of Salome's dance before Herod,
 a

SYMBOLISM AND ART NOUVEAU 819

and both produced creative work that was not preoccupied sounds are noticed and explored. To restrain direct access to
with mundane descriptive matters. They were richly sugges- themeaning of a poem establishes a hiatus within which these
tive rather than expHcit, creative men, and despite the utter more material considerations begin to be heard and to make
dissimilarity of their work from many other viewpoints, this their presence felt.

very predilection for a suggestive art was to prove contagious. In seeking a painter whose control and awareness of his

Where Des Esseintes led, many were to follow. The art work means was comparably material-oriented and inexplicit in
was to be closely controlled and carefully measured in terms terms of access to a specific meaning, it is possible to turn to
of the clues divulged to its ultimate meaning. While it acted either Moreau or to Redon, as Des Esseintes had done; yet it is

upon the senses of its viewer, reader, or observer, it was possible, too, to find in an American artist who was for a
nevertheless complete in itself: it abandoned de-
increasingly period close to Mallarme something of just such an other-
piction in favor of a closer awareness of the means of the art worldly and evocative expertise. That was James Abbott
work. Be it the dense or ravishing textures of Mallarme's McNeill Whistler (1843-1903), whose study of Japanese art
poems, or the scratched paint of Moreau's paintings, the less in particular had ledhim by the 1860s to denounce his ow^n
art was explicitly descriptive of objects, the more it focused early realist phase and to commit himself instead to the perfec-
upon suggestive aesthetic sensation, and the only means to tion of canvases, etchings, and lithographs according, as far as
control and articulate this was to make increasingly sensitive possible, to their own internal demands, and to elude the
manipulation of the work's internal material and structure. commitment to laborious description that appeared so ardu-
With the abandonment of realism and its preoccupation with ous and yet so essential a feature of much 19th-century paint-
the description of objects came an increased awareness of the ing. Long before the Symbolists were to call the same tune,

means and techniques available to the artist. As a result, the Whistler had condemned nature for her lack of taste —
painting or poem more evidently acknowledged the rhythms viewpoint echoing Charles Baudelaire's. Beauty was the pro-
of colors and lines across a flat surface, or the rhythms of lines fessional field of the artist, and his approach to it could scarce-
and sounds in poetry. With Mallarme, words no longer func- ly be premeditated however much it demanded of lessons

tion as transparent and self-evident means to a descriptive learnt from experience. Whistler was attracted to the Thames
end: the words in Mallarme's poems are astutely tuned with in the twilight, when the hubbub of diurnal activity died and

an ear to their musical resonance as much as to their meaning. the jagged edge of the materialist w'orld was softened by cre-
The whole point of the Symbolist's poetry may well consist in puscular dim light. The love of twilight and the evocative
not going straight to the point for precisely this reason: the mystery of shadows all found responses among Symbolists in
advent to meaning is made circuitous and far from readily the I 8 80s, which reveals the extent to which Whistler's noc-
available in order that the more physical aspects of his words' turnes and his love of exotic Japanese interiors provided a

I Lock My Door Upon Myself by Fernand Khnopff; oil on canvas; 72X 140cm (28x55in); 1891. Neue Pinakothek, Munich
 —
820 SYMBOLISM AND ART NOUVEAU

precedent for the Symbolists, and provided, too, an honorary particularly in view of his reputation amongst Symbolists in
place for Whistler in their midst. To recall simply the musical Paris, Brussels, and elsewhere in 1880s and early
the late

tides that distinguished his works is to recognize Whistler's 1 890s, in view of his involvement with Mallarme, and, finally,
determination that the compositional arrangements of colors in view of his own manifest willingness to express his ideas,
in his paintings should be determined not by the kaleidoscopic aims, and criteria with devastating and unambiguous clarity.
and accidental juxtapositions of daily life but by paintings' In England, Whistler had been close to those Pre-Raphaelite
own demands of balance and harmony, as independent of painters who most consciously sought beauty. The exotic
subject matter and descriptive purpose as a sequence of notes medievalism of D.G. Rossetti (18x8-82) and Edward. Burne-
within a passage of music. Necessarily, illusion gave way to Jones (1833—98) to a degree complemented his own insistent

decorative effects, and material elements —the liquidity of Japanism. As exoticism and a wan, otherworldly renunciation
paint, for example, and the signs of its application to the of daily life's tribulations became increasingly a feature of the
canvas — became more emphatically evident. When such an Symbolist in Paris and Brussels, so Rossetti and Burne-Jones,
innovative artist turned his hand to the elaboration of a de- as well as Whistler, found there an appreciative and an appro-
corative scheme for a room, the results, not surprisingly, were priately aesthetic audience.

rhythmic, exotic, and brilliant: they were not mundane. at all In Fernand Khnopff's painting / Lock My Door Upon
Whistler's Harmony in Blue and Gold: the Peacock Room Myself (1891; Neue Pinakothek, Munich), all of these in-
(1876-7; Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.) comprised fluences are subtly and sensitively intertwined to produce an
an event of widespread cultural significance, yet its patron was evocative painting of beguiling stillness and mystery. Khnopff
barely satisfied with it and its clearest influence was not to be greatly admired the medievalizing Pre-Raphaelites and was
felt for almost a quarter of a century. The peacock itself is well aware of English art in the 1 890s. The title of his painting
exotic, but in Whistler's swirling and decorative wall decora- is borrowed from the poem by Christina Rossetti: its appeal
tions it takes on a glittering menace. The eyes of its tail billow to the Symbolist is clear, for it suggests an inner world of
across the blue walls, echomg their ultimate sources of inspi- emotional, spiritual, and aethetic events, cut off from com-
ration in Oriental porcelain and Japanese prints. Indeed, the munication with other human beings, a reverie akin to sleep
room was to house his patron's collection of blue and white yet stirred by sensitivity to beauty. Khnopff's model recalls the

china on that level the designs have an explanation that is designer William Morris' wife Jane, with her powerful jaw
rational enough. Yet Whistler goes well beyond so plagiaristic and luminous eyes. Above her, the bust of Hypnos, the god of
and self-effacing a response. In this room, the dominance of sleep, refers poetically to dreaming and to a life of the imagi-
rhythmic, decorative effect over descriptive anatomical preci- nation. The reverie depicted is lavish and exotic, reflecting
sion is so decisive as to render the peacocks no more than a Burne-Jones and Rossetti on the one hand and Whistler on the
theme upon which every variation is played in terms of rhyth- other in its frieze-like composition rhythmically divided by
mic repetition and cumulative display. The room is Hke no vertical intervals. The strangely colored lilies emphasize how
other in the precedence it gives to decorative painting, yet precious, artificial, and sensual is this locked-away interior. It

conversely it is like no other m the licence permitted to the isas remote in its way as that of Des Esseintes; indeed Fernand
decorative motifs which, far from remaining constrained Khnopff constructed an altar in his Brussels studio sur-
within firmly defined frames, have spread beneath Whistler's mounted by his cast of Hypnos and inscribed, "On ne a que
hand across walls and shutters, almost wilfully negligent of soi" ("One has but oneself"). No more succinct definition of
the surface beneath them. The ensemble comprises an exotic the Symbolist ethos could exist, if it were not for the Symbol-
and dynamic room that is a vital forerunner of Symbolist ists' simultaneous need to display their exotic sensitivity and
interiors in its domination by aesthetic criteria at the expense to indicate, at least, the existence if not the meanings of their
of practical criteria: within Whistler's Peacock Room no ele- secrets.
ment that is not art intrudes. Description is minimal and detail Khnopff's theme is close to the closeted world of Des
devoted to the rhythmic display of decorative motifs. Esseintes, yet his pictorial devices are not without an English
This decorative emphasis characterized in due course much flavor. Symbolist art had become thoroughly international.
Symbolist painting, and, appropriately transcribed, much Whistler and Burne-Jones were exhibited in Brussels, Paris,
Symbolist writing too. It also provided the common ground and Munich, London. Khnopff and many other
as well as in
for Symbolist art, with its search for significance in the action painters contributed both to the group exhibitions of Les
of colors and lines, with Art Nouveau, whose attenuated and Vingt and La Vie Moderne in Brussels and to the Rosicrucian
whiplash rhythms by the early 1890s had invaded every Salons in Paris. Many groups and journals flourished briefly,
branch of design from the book page to the drawing room, and even if they disappeared almost at once, internationalism
from the apartment block to the jewel upon a female neck. All was frequently amongst their policies. Furthermore, with the
of these developments occurred many years after Whistler's sudden flourishing of larger periodicals devoted to the latest
Peacock Room, which cannot therefore ultimately be con- decorative and fine art activities in many cities, influences
sidered part of them. On the other hand, Whisder's import- were very directly transmitted abroad whether in terms of
ance as a pioneer in both camps can scarcely be overstressed decorative motifs of Art Nouveau (variously renamed Jugend-
F'art of Harmony in Blue and Gold: the Peacock Room by J. A.M. ^XTiistler; 1 876—7. Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

and Stilo Liberty elsewhere) or the thematic heritage of

sttl Studio in 1893, led to echoes of his distinct blending of Art
Symbohst writing and painting. Such periodicals as Pan from Nouveau rhythms with Symbolist themes, as evident in

Munich, Ver Sacrum from Vienna, and The Studio from Barcelona as in Vienna, as much in the works of Picasso
London, assured in the 1890s a vivid awareness of artistic (1881-1973) as in those of Gustav Klimt (1862-1918).
developments many himdreds of miles from their first de- The new emphasis that Symbolist painting had placed upon
velopment. For the movement that so mtimately
first time a the suggestive qualities of artists' techniques was closely ex-
mvolved both writers and visual artists was able to publish plored in Paris where aspects of Post-Impressionist painting
effectively work in both fields. The new-found dominance of contributed to Symbolist developments. Gauguin's Pont-Aven
the decorative agitation of plane surfaces with fast-moving works were particularly important in this respect. On the
curvilinear formsmade Art Nouveau a phenomenon from other hand, Brussels and Munich remained more committed
Chicago Moscow, leaving no capital untouched between
to to academic trompe I'oeil illusionism, but turned to the service
them. The publication of Beardsley's work alone, by The of making credible the surprising events of the imagination.
8Z2 SYMBOLISM AND ART NOUVEAU

The Three Brides by Jan Toorop; black chalk and pencil heightened in white and color on brown paper; 78 x98cm (31 X39in); 1893.
Kroller-Miiller Museum, Otterlo

Franz von Stuck (1863-1928), and before him the Swiss, sense of jungle-thick associations, of poetic suggestiveness,
Arnold Bocklin (1827-1901), were brilliant exponents of this could evoke the femme fatale, the oblivion of sleep, or the call
approach. In Holland and in Scandinavia, the newly formed to a waking imagination.
rhythmic dominance in the painting, the new quality of Subject matter was of paramount importance and often, for
expressive exaggeration of line and color to provocative and all their apparently wild and uncontrolled dreaming, the Sym-

suggestive effect, found a richly enthusiastic response. bolists returned both in writing and in painting to particular
In Holland, Jan Toorop (185 8-1 928) and Jan Thorn-Prikker incidents of Classical mythology —
the sphinx and the Chim-
(1868-1932), in particular, carried to an extreme stage the aera, for example — —
or to biblical characters Adam and Eve,
rhythmic stylization of form without ever abandoning their —
Salome and John the Baptist often makmg blatant use of
essential commitment to a powerful subject matter. Within such themes to their own ends, as indeed had Des Esseintes,
the Symbolist fold, decorative elements were of use for their yet often, too, employing such themes to focus attention upon
expressive power, for the degree to which they permitted emo- a particular human dilemma, that of sin, for instance, or the
tion to be implied by the work. When Art Nouveau made less balance of animal instinct against emotional experience in the
of this link by deleting recognizable subject matter, much of act of love. Occasionally, by setting their subject beyond all

this expressive force was lost or at least endangered. As long reference to specific time, place, or person, Symbolist artists
as the link remained, however, even a brooch could impart a were able to evolve images that were effective without such
 SYMBOLISM AND ART NOUVEAU 823

inbuilt reference to the Classical or Biblical past. Such works sonal links with Munch or with Toorop there emerges a gen-
rely upon the clear evocation of emotional associations: in erally intelligible level of meaning. This in itself is no small
other words, to be intelligible they demand a subtle emotional achievement —Munch is further along this road than is

response from their observer to make up for specific and liter- Toorop. To abandon specific references, whether to religion
ary references which would otherwise have provided a context or to mythology, is to place maximum reliance upon the in-
of associations. For an image to function efficiently without herent properties of the means at the artists' disposal. Toorop
such props it needed to be stripped of superfluities and to be retains certain recognizable iconographic features, yet turns
acutely sensitive to the pictorial means available: maximum them to his own ends, while Munch has the power to evolve
use had to be made of the expressive resources of line, color, his own imagery entirely and without loss of intelligibility.

and rhythm, and their link with subject matter enforced not The two paintings have much in common despite a signifi-
neglected. cant difference in size: they are both Symbolist works in their
Two such paintings, and entirely successful ones in this dedication to the embodiment of ideas and emotions beyond
Toorop's The Three Brides (1893; Kroller-
respect, are Jan themundane description of daily existence. Indeed Toorop's
Miiller Museum, Orterlo] and The Dance of Life by Edvard work is distinctly exotic, Munch's less so. They may be taken
Munch (National Gallery, Oslo). In each of them a frieze as examples of the internationally widespread percolation of
composition, roughly symmetrical, obliges a series of com- Symbolist influences, techniques, and ideas. Without doubt
parisons upon the viewer. In neither case is the setting speci- Parisand Brussels were vital centers of Symbolist thought and
fically identifiable: both appear out of time and beyond place. work. Yet even there the Symbolist movement had crystallized
Despite the personal preoccupations that led each of these from diverse and often long extant principles, united and
artists to manipulate images of considerable potency and im- brought into focus to form a body of theory and practice with
portance to themselves, they have each so efficiently charged a new coherence. Outside Paris and Brussels, too, elements of
their images with emotional implications that beyond the per- Symbolist thought had been long maturing. The example from

The Dance of Life by Edvard Munch: oil on canvas; 125X190011 (49X75in); 1 899-1900. National Gallery, Oslo
Salome in Symbolist Art

As the dream provided a recurrent theme for

Symbolist writers and painters, the imagery
of dreams with its necessary commitment to

fantasy and to images of emotional potency

became characteristic of Symbolist work.
Salome was one such image, so popular
among Symbolists that for a span of ten years
she appeared throughout Europe in paint-

ings, sculptures, novels, and poems depicted

as convincingly as if she stood before them in
person:

under a bluish veilwhich concealed her

head and breasts, one could just make out
the arch of her eyes, the chalcedonies in her
ears, and the whiteness of her skin. A
square of dove-colored silk covered her
shoulders and was fastened to her loms by
a jewelled girdle. Her black trousers were
spangled with mandrakes, and she moved
uith mdolent ease, her little slipper of
hummmg-bird's down tapping the floor

The Huysmans follows

novelist Joris-Karl
closeupon this description of Salome by
Flaubert; Huysmans in turn made the Salome
theme—observed in the paintings of Gustave
Moreau — center of
the a symbolist cult for A Salome's triumph: The
painters and writers alike with the publica- Beheading of St John the
tion of A Rehours [Against Nature) in 1884. Baptist by Pierre Puvis de
Chavannes; oil on
canvas;1 24 x 1 66cm

{49X65in); 1869. Barber

Institute of Fine Arts,
Birmingham

< Head of a Martyr by

Odilon Redon; charcoal;
3-'X36cm ;i5Xi4in);
1877. Kroller-Muller
Museum, Otterlo

< Salome by Lucien

Levy-Dhurmer; pastel on
blue paper; 44 x 50cm
(i-'X2oin) ; 1896.
Collection of Michel
Perinet, Paris

Aubrey Beardsley's
image of Salome: The
Dancer's Reward; pen
and ink; 23 x17cm
(9X7in); 1893. William
Hayes Fogg Art
Museum, Cambridge,
Mass.
 GALLERY STUDY

< Gustave Moreau's Salome by Max

influential Salome; oil on Kiinger; marble; height
canvas; 92 X6ocm X8cmi",sin); 1893.
(^6xi4in); 1876. Musee Museum der Bildenden
Gustave Moreau, Paris Kunste, Leipzig

jeweled and barbaric palace and proving

deadly by her arbitrary destruction of a
spiritually pure and aspiring male. In this
context, the beheading of John the Baptist is

seen as a challenge to spirituality by the

The theme of Salome and Flaubert's de-
scription make clear the nature of the Sym-
bolist dream: for the work of art, be it
painting or writing, was to provoke by its
suggestive power an image primarily sensual.
The Symbolist sought to explore sensual
experience through the imagination, or, in
other words, by making his senses acutely
aware and painfully finely tuned, he sought
to escape the mundane world. There is no-
thing in this come with
of the dreams that
sleep: the Symbolist dream was delectation of
actual sensual experience provoked by arti-
ficial stimulus, be it art work, incense, or
eroticism. Against this background the figure
of Salome has special importance: she em-
amongst the most hypnotic of themes
other-worldly Symbolist, for she threatens
his rarified isolation with the twitching of her
hips, and challenges the Sym-
solitariness of
bolist experience with the supremacy of the
flesh over intellect. In this she becomes the
femme fatale, as dangerous to the artificially
constructed and cloistered world of the Sym-
bolists' imaginings as she was fatal to the
spiritual man whose head was demanded as
reward for her lascivious dance.
To the heightened sensual awareness of the
Symbolists, the image of Salome provided an
object both of horror and of fascination; she
appealed so directly to their innate and
repressed sexuality. She was a rich source of
demands of animal bodily instinct. Sensuality
and spiritual guilt are linked. The creative
work of the writer or painter is identified
with the spirituality of the Baptist. His death
istantamount to the loss of artistic potency.
Salome represents, for the Symbolists, the
embodiment of the male's image of female
sensuality, at once fascinating and deadly.
The sense of failure, of submission to base
for the and animal lust, the thralldom Salome im-
poses upon the male, is a theme rich in the
suggestion of fading strength, of magical
fascination and of lavishly beautiful failure
that so excited the Symbolist imagination
from Gustave Moreau to Aubrey Beardsley,
and from Gustave Flaubert to Oscar Wilde.
JOHN MILNER
Further reading. Flaubert, G. (trans. Baidick, R.)
"Herodias" in Three Tales, Harmondsworth (1970).
Jullian, P. The Symbolists, London (1973)-
Huysmans, J.-K. (trans. Baidick, R.) Against Nature,
Harmondsworth (1966). Milner.J. Symbolists and
Decadents, London (1971). Wilde, O. (trans. Doug-
las, Lord A., illustrated by Aubrey Beardsley) Salome,
London and Boston 894), republished in New York
( 1

bodies destructive female sensuality and is sensual speculation, inhabiting a densely (1967).
8x6 SYMBOLISM AND ART NOUVEAU

attendant females in the foreground. His imagery richly and

convincingly depicts the batde of good and evil for the inno-
cent human who hovers here between nun and femme fatale.
Yet there is much in the painting too that is emotionally ex-

pressive through the direct action of the lines and rhythms of

the painting, over and above the explicit theme depicted.
Toorop's painting is Symbolist because it evades the mundane
depiction of daily life and attempts to display a generalized
and spiritually significant theme; it does so by suggestive and
expressive means inherent in his medium and handling as well
as in his subject matter.
Edvard Munch developed this further. In his Dance of Life,
he depicted three ages of woman before a view of a beach
where a dance takes place beneath liquid moonlight. The
scene set is not located specifically and no attempt is made to
articulate a lucid or credible transition from foreground to
background. Instead of this, three contrasting figures are
I lit Angel ol Lo\L' b) Giovanni Segantini; oil on cdn\as;
2I0X i44cni (83X57in); 1894-7. Galleria d'Arte Moderna, Milan
placed against a backdrop of the hectic dance in progress, an
activity from which they are momentarily withdrawn for the
France and Belgium did much to trigger in other countries the observer's convenience. No specific religious imagery helps
formation of groups that were both thoroughly indigenous our interpretation of the scene, but the figures are charac-

and at the same time substantially Symbolist in their aims and terized by their pose, expression and, above all, by the color of
work. Edvard Munch provides an example of this: for all that their clothes —white and girlhood, red for love
for virginity
his work answers many of the demands of French Symbolist and mature womanhood, and black for death and widow-
theory, for all that he executed a lithographic portrait of Mal- hood. The work progresses from left to right and from light to
larme and was a visitor to Paris, his paintings and prints are dark in a frieze beyond the call of the temporal reality Munch
nevertheless an essentially Scandinavian phenomenon with as has characterized by the hectic dance upon the beach.
many links to Northern writers —among them Strindberg and By the time that both Toorop's The Three Brides and
Ibsen — as to French painters or writers. In this way, the crys- Munch's The Dance of Life were executed, the relation of
tallization of principles thatbecame the Symbolist movement subject matter to the expressive use of line and color had been
in Paris was enormously and internationally influential, but vigorously explored by many artists. The new suggestive
on two levels: it precipitated a comparable crystallization of rather than explicit credo had come as a revelation to many
ideas and attitudes in other countries within their own cul- writers and painters, and had opened up new vistas of explo-
tural contexts, and, secondly, it was influential through the ration. The basic core of principles had emerged by 1886 in
impact of particular works and artists directly through exhi- Paris at precisely the moment when Impressionism began to
bitions and periodicals. develop in surprising directions and when followers of
Toorop's The Three Brides presents a dense tangle of Impressionist techniques began both to adopt and explore
images of which a number are distinctly Christian in origin, Impressionist color and handling in new directions. Gauguin,
but he uses them to invoke a complex set of associations and Seurat, and Van Gogh all derived much from Impressionist
not to specifically Christian ends. The rhythmic organization painting, yet developed certain of its techniques further. All of
of the painting emphasizes its expressive role and suggests a them showed an acute sense of the importance of drawing,
pulsating chant which echoes to the corners of the work. The composition, and subject matter, all vital elements in the ren-
painting is substantially symmetrical: three brides face the dering of a painting expressive and suggestive and no longer
viewer. The central figure radiates suggestions of innocence; apparently casual, informal, or mundane.
to one side of her the Bride of Christ is received with lilies, to The search undertaken by both Van Gogh and Paul Gau-
the other a demonic bride with horned headdress and necklace guin into the emotional expressive qualities of art were of
of skulls receives a mysterious libation, her stance immovably sustained intensity. They depicted the inner as much as the
and hypnotically grim. Chanting choruses behind each of outer experience and the artist's awareness was as often
these two brides emit sounds characterized by linear patterns turned to the service of his emotions as his eyes. On the other
that are curvilinear for the blessed half of the painting, and hand, it was, for Gauguin and Van Gogh, always by visual
jagged for the damned half. The central bride is depicted in means that their pictorial compositions were to operate. That
her innocence caught between opposing forces. The top cor- is to say, that arising immediately from the first generation of
ners of the work reveal crucified hands and bells from which the Impressionists' followers came painters who sought to
flow hair-like lines which perhaps once more indicate sound. preserve the importance of handling and strong color of
Toorop's lines of sound flow also from smaller bells rung by Impressionist painting, yet who sought also to resolve these
 SYMBOLISM AND ART NOUVEAU 827

techniques with a commitment to expressive and suggestive composition — found an ideal arena for their activity, where
painting. This development was contemporarv' with the no intruding or banal irrelevance was able to distract the ob-
emergence of the SymboHst movement in art and Hterature, so server or interfere with his response to the suggestions of feel-
it is not surprising that Gauguin became concerned with Sym- ing that the work embodied and transmitted.
boHst artists and writers, or that Paris in the later 1880s Across so subtly adjusted a pictorial surface, color and line

should appear so dense a knot of conflicting groups, theories, could have maximum effect; detailed descriptive work would
and achievements. be more distracting than efficient as a prop to the whole.
It was a prolifically rich moment for French art and letters, Elision of detail between the presentation of essential imagery
and much of the subsequent 10 or 15 years was taken up with was characteristic of much Symbolist painting, whether in the
the elucidation and evaluation of ideas and tendencies initi- swirling mists of Carriere, the black and velvet gloom of
ated towards the end of the i88os. Gauguin's ties with the Redon's or indeed Seurat's graphic works, or by simple omis-
writers Charles Morice, Albert Aurier, and Mallarme did sion and replacement by flat areas of scarcely modulated
much to make his work a search for significance in the im- color, as in Gauguin's extraordinary Symbolist Self-Portrait
pressions of visual experience. By contrast with the disordered with Halo (National Galler\- of Art, Washington, D.C.), his

sensual impressions engendered by events in the mundane head floating above a plane of yellow, apparantly unattached
world, the Symbolist art work provided an instance of to the hand depicted at the base of the painting, and in no
material reality minutely and meticulously controlled. Within specific relation to the curvilinear decorative motif of plant-

the frame all could be, in the phrase that Matisse was to like derivation that fills the lower part of the painting. In
borrow from Baudelaire, "luxe, calme et volupte" (luxury, Symbolist painting of the kind evolved by Gauguin, owing still

calm, and voluptuousness). Under such circumstances, the a large debt to the strength of color Impressionist painters
otherworldly quality of the scenes and places depicted by initiated, color has forsaken the depiction of daylight, and
Munch, by Segantini, by Gauguin, or by Maurice Denis is not with enamel-like density and separation of its parts has been
surprising. Indeed, under such circumstances, the inherent ex- given over to juxtapositions at once decorative and expressive.
pressive potential of the artist's means — his colors, lines, or For the viewer, those relationships generate feeling: they are

April by .Maurice Denis; oil on canvas; 38x61cm (i5X24in); 1892. KroUer-Miiller Museum, Otterlo
828 SYMBOLSIM AND ART NOUVEAU

creasingly recognized. There were literary painters among the

Symbolists, but neither Gauguin nor those who followed his
lead were among them: indeed, they represented the most
strictly painterly element within the movement, as sensitive to
color relationships as Mallarme was to the musical cadence of
lettersand words.
Such awareness of the demands of the painter's means leads
to an exploration of those means. Increasingly, the flatness of
the picture surface, for example, is clearly recognized and lines
are read by the observer as moving across a surface and less
readily as moving illusionistically into The
picture-space.
painting no longer resembled a window looking out upon an
event or scene; increasingly the painting appeared, to use
Maurice Denis' phrase, "a flat surface covered with colors in a
particular sequence". Whisder's paintings had foreshadowed
something of this and had also led to decorative results. With
the variety of vibrant colors employed by Gauguin, his fol-
lowers from Pont-Aven, and the Nabis, such decoration
became vital, forceful, and expressive. Decoration and expres-
sion evolved hand-in-hand; as a result, no clear distinction
remained tenable between painting and a variety of applied
and decorative Gauguin executed ceramic sculptures and
arts.

painted ceramic pots. He produced mural decorations, as did

Serusier —
that vital link between Pont-Aven and the Nabis in
Paris. Among the Nabis, Bonnard and Vuillard designed

posters, Bonnard executed screens, Denis became engaged in

stained glass and mural painting, and Paul Ranson turned to
decorative hangings and paintings that emulated them. Any
consideration of the relation of Art Nouveau to Symbolist
painting must take the complexity of this development into
account.
Art Nouveau was not simply a fashionable style of design-
ing all manner of objects from wallpapers to brooches or beds
during the 1890s: it had, directly and actively at work within
Symbolist Self-Portrait with Halo by Gauguin; on wood;
oil
this flow of products, the Symbolist commitment to evocation
88x57cm (35X22in); 1889. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
and expression, and it was heir, also, to the whole range of
tuned one against another to reveal abruptness or harmony; Symbolist imagery, to the lily, the sphinx, and the vampire. It
they may be shrill or leaden, evaporating or dense. The whole is less fruitful to think of Symbolist artists being impressed by
construction of a painting, in support of its subject matter, has the florid visual fireworks of Art Nouveau and incorporating
become evocative and suggestive, as much concerned with them incidentally into their works, than to recognize that
feehng as with sight. Symbolist painting had within its own evolution arrived at an
With such means at his finger tips, Gauguin was able to increasingly decorative art, redolent with references, associ-
impress certain Symbolists enormously. Aurier in particular ations, and feelings. All of this by 1893 had become available
became a spokesman for him. Gauguin, on the other hand, to the designer, who attenuated those rhythms further with
even when painting far from the urbane Symbolist circles of astonishing indefatigability throughout Europe. In addition to
was sending from Tahiti paintings redolent of Symbolist
Paris, this, the Symbolist cult of the exotic, lavish, and esoteric in-
themes and achievements. The power of his Nevermore terior led to a demand for the consciously beautiful interior
(1897; Courtauld Institute Galleries, London) owes much to for clients who wished, as the Punch cartoonist George du
from Symbolists as well as from Impressionists,
lessons learnt Maurier showed often enough, to be thought hypersensitive to
as does the enormous painting Where Do We Come Fromf aesthetic thrills, capable of rapture before a vase or other
What Are Wef Where Are We Going? (1897; Museum of Fine man-made work of beaut}-. For a few years the artist and
Arts, Boston), a grave
and contemplative work full of personal designer shared a broad common ground: Beardsley (1872—
symbols, yet made approachable and intelligible by Gauguin's 98), for example, whose work in 1893 became so popular,
unparalleled expressive mastery. with unprecedented ease united in his work for Wilde's
Gauguin's contribution to French Symbolist painting is in- Salome elegance and economy in the design of a book, with
 SYMBOLISM AND ART NOUVF.AU 8z9

the interpretation of atheme revived a decade before by one hand involved themselves increasingly with the construc-
Flaubert, Huysmans, and Moreau. The artist and the designer tion and decoration of useful objects. In England, William
are here inseparable. Morris (1834-96), so closely involved in Pre-Raphaelite
The jewelry of R.-J. Lalique (1860-194 5) was pure Art literary and artistic developments, argued vociferously for the
Nouveau, yet his precious creature with female human head is reexamination of the comparative roles of artists and de-
a denizen of Symbolist writing and painting, a direct relative signers. His firm engaged the painters Ford Madox Brown
of the sphinx, the harpie, the vampire, and every other an- (1821—93), Rossetti and Burne-Jones in design work. Morris,
thropomorphic embodiment of the glittering and menacing believing the distinction between artist and craftsman to be a
femme fatale. modern error originating in the Renaissance, wrote convinc-
Both in England and on the continent crafts developed vig- ingly — his voice was heard and respected.
orously in the 1880s. Painters, sculptors, and architects on the As English Pre-Raphaelitism was increasingly admired in

Art .Nouveau furniture: a bed designed by Emile Galle; 1904. Musee de I'Ecole de Nancy
 —
830 SYMBOLISM AND ART NOUVEAU

continental Europe, and was works of

reflected in the ively flat areas of the printed surface. This is particularly clear
Khnopff, Delville, Point, Denis, Klimt, Thorn-Prikker, and in Toulouse-Lautrec's work. The almost ever-present later
many other painters, the commitment to design work was to 19th-century preoccupation with the Japanese wood-block
find an increasingly sympathetic audience. The poster and the print further spurred on this tendency, so that by the early
book lent themselves perhaps most readily to the painters' 1 890s a system of design began to emerge that was universally
abilities: Bonnard, Vuillard, Toulouse-Lautrec, Georges de applicable. The asymmetrical compositional techniques of the
Feure were all active painter-designers in this field. The liter- pictorial artist were introduced to flat and even non-represen-
ary wealth of the Symbolist also led to the collaboration of tational decorative schemes. The introspective, poetic, overtly
Mallarme had collaborated with
pictorial artists with writers. aesthetic, and often sinister imagery of Symbolist painting and
Manet on the translation of Poe's The Raven. Later, Mallarme writing provided a storehouse of references to which the
was to admire the intimate, strange revelations of Redon's designer could specifically refer or to which he could hint
portfolios of lithographs — both for the verbal poetry of their through whatever imagery the growing rhythmic boldness of
titles, as enigmatic as his own, and also for the revelations of his designs might permit. Lalique incorporated a woman's
each page, emulating the intimacy of the book format, in head upon his dragonfly brooches and others were based upon
preference to the public and simultaneous exposure offered by sphinxes, sea-nymphs, or harpies. The exotic and precious
the wall of a gallery. When Georges de Feure in 1 898 designed mystery of such jewelry was, by implication, transferred to the
La Porte des Reves ("The Door of Dreams") by Marcel wearer. As Khnopff had devised an altar surmounted by a
Schwob, his book's physical process of opening was imbued winged head Hypnos, the Greek god of sleep, visible in his
for
with significance and became a gateway or door to the dreams painting / Lock my Door upon Myself (1891; Neue
the text contained. De Feure executed, as well as books and Pinakothek, Munich), so a designer informed in depth of Sym-
posters, designs for screens, chairs, and other furnishings. A bolist imagery could incorporate the images of insects into his

prolific man, his talents scarcely distinguished between and

art vases, and gigantic moths, as denizens of the night, at the head
design: the highly suggestive imagery of his paintings was and foot of his bed. Sarah Bernhardt, the tragedian and theme
provided therefore with a direct route into his design work. of so many of Alphonse Mucha's posters, designed an ink
As in Beardsley's work, whose style de Feure occasionally stand comprising a bronze self-portrait with bats' wings, to
recalled, it is not a useful exercise to determine the extent to project her image as a femme fatale, the vampire so clearly
which the designer or the artist is in evidence, for there is no identified with the destructive power of female attraction by
distinction between them, and symbolic imagery is transferred Edvard Munch, Felicien Rops, and others.
directly to Art Nouveau design. The printed surface in particular led to the flourishing and
In printed works especially, the painter's tendency to even obsessive embellishments of Art Nouveau. Its charac-
employ flattened color areas with clear and rhythmic outlines teristic rhythmic device of a long, slow curve suddenly com-
was reinforced and emphasized by the necessarily and decis- pleted by a swift and tighter curve in a new direction appeared
universally on printed surfaces from book covers and spines,

ArtNouveau jewelry: a diadem with a siren; antique bronze, emerald, the layout of periodicals, the mass-produced poster, such
and opal. Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Paris ephemera as tickets and notices, printed materials and textiles

made into curtains, coverings, or dresses, and in wallpapers

dominating both public and private interiors. Throughout
Europe, its whiplash curve penetrated to the poorest and
grandest of settings. Its sources were diverse —Whistler,
Morris, Japanese prints, Gauguin, Burne-Jones — yet its extra-
ordinary popularity is undeniable. It was richly suggestive
Symbolist — recalling roots, rhythms of growth, and the heavy
scent of lilies; yet it was also primarily decorative and grew in

popularity as a system of stylistic distortions imparting

rhythm to all it encountered. For the first time in perhaps a
century, a rhythmic stylistic system had emerged that could be
learnt and adapted at ever\- level and for even.- detail.
This produced in the hands of its most accomplished mas-
ters a dynamic coherence, combining facility, complexity and

control. Horta in Brussels and Guimard in Paris carried its

swirling rhythms into every part of their buildings, at times
with astonishing structural severity and at other times with an
intimate facility that made clear the calligraphic resemblance
of the Art Nouveau hne to handwriting. Shape and rhythm
took precedence over material considerations and structural
 SYMBOLISM AND ART NOUVEAU 83 I

due course leading to an emphatic reaction amongst

clarity, in and of butterfly wings. Yet with Guimard and with Horta,
designers and architects especially to the excesses of Art such fantasy was underpinned by vigorous discipline. Horta's
Nouveau as applied to decoration. Hector Guimard had made buildings grew increasingly restrained and severe. Guimard's
of his Metro entrances in Paris structures that were vigorous, sculptural Metro entrances were reproducible and built from
extraordinarily rhythmic, and strongly suggestive of insects preconstructed sections.

The Kiss by Gustav Klimt; watercolor and gouache on paper mounted on wood; 180X i8ocm (71 Xyiin); C1909. Osterreichische Galerie, Vienna
832. SYMBOLISM AND ART NOUVEAU

There is no clear distinaion to be made between the Sym- room, a dynamic decorative motif that carries too the signi-
bolist Movement and Art Nouveau: they were interdependent ficance of its subject matter. In case this remained obscure,
in a complex way. Symbolists numbered many writers as well Klimt counterbalanced the tree of life motif by the figures of
as painters amongst their various groups; Art Nouveau an embracing couple, theman dominating and all but over-
evolved as a primarily visual phenomenon. As such, however, whelming the woman. The theme of love, of the fall of man, of
it owed a great deal to the suggestive and expressive sense of the tree of life, is explicitly revealed in brilliantly decorative
decoration essential to the Symbolists. terms that in their rhythm are distinctly Art Nouveau. Klimt,
The Palais Stoclet in Brussels illustrates this complex in- by means as much those of the designer as the painter, has
teraction. The building itself, by Josef Hofmann, is the work decorated the room. Simultaneously he has characterized the
of an Art Nouveau designer-architect who has abandoned all man with angular forms and massive shape, and the woman
repetitive and inessential decorative detail yet retained a pre- by slender shape and curving forms. Decoration and depiction
cise sense of rhythm and interval, a control of line and surface are at one. Such a balance did not last many years but it
in his elevations that is fully mformed by the rhythmic prece- Nouveau and the Sym-
clearly revealed the interaction of Art
dence of Art Nouveau at itsand fullest phase. Within
earliest bolist movement, and Klimt was an accomplished master of
the house, the Viennese Secessionist Gustav Klimt, a highly both.
cultured virtuoso and an internationally aware painter, ex- JOHN MILNER
ecuted a mural frieze that extends around the dining room
Bibliography. Huysmans, J.-K. (trans. Baldick, R.) Against Nature,
walls. The painted and applique frieze is perfectly poised be-
Harmondsworth (1966). Jullian, P. The Symbolists, London (1973).
tween Symbolist painting and Art Nouveau decoration: it re- Madsen, of Art Nouveau, New York (1975). Milner, J.
S.T. Sources
veals their interdependence and the debt of each to the other. Symbolists and Decadents, London (1971). Rheims, M. The Age of
The swirling tree of life sends its spirals right around the Art Nouveau, London (1966).
 45

FAU VISM AND EXPRESSIONISM

Landscape at Collioure by Matisse; oil on canvas; 59X73cin (23X29in); 1906. Hermitage Museum, Leningrad (see page 834)
834 FAUVISM AND EXPRESSIONISM

THE term Fauves, meaning "wild beasts", is said to

have been coined by the French critic Louis Vaux-
works by the Fauve group as having "nothing
with painting". Evidently, what caused greatest offence was
whatever to do

At the Paris Salon d'Automne of 1905, paint-

celles. the strident, non-naturalistic use of color which appeared to
ings by a number of younger artists including Matisse, — be the common characteristic of the group as Con-
a whole.

Detain, Manguin, Marquet, Vlaminck, and Rouault were — temporary critics made little attempt to distinguish between

hung in the same room, paintings characterized by vivid use of works by different artists, although, if we look at the various

color and startling abbreviations of form. In the middle of this paintings shown at this "Fauve Salon", the differences are
room was displayed a small. Quattrocento-like bronze by the often as striking as the resemblances.
sculptor Albert Marque. Vauxcelles, so the story goes, was so Matisse had come to his heightened colorism by experi-
struck by the contrast between this piece and the surrounding menting with the pure colors of Neo-Impressionism; Vla-
canvases that he exclaimed: "Ah, Donatello au milieu des minck was closer to Van Gogh than to any modern French
fauves!" The name and the 1905 exhibition became
stuck, painter; Derain showed a greater interest in the structural use
famous as the "Fauve Salon", the room in which the paintings of color than any of his contemporaries. Rouault, somewhat
by Matisse and his companions were exhibited being dubbed on the periphery of the Fauve group, was more interested in
"la cage centrale". distortions of form than of color, and his palette remained
If this story is true, Vauxcelles can claim to have christened somber, "a Fauve seen through dark glasses", in Alfred H.
two of the most important movements in early-20th-century Barr's striking phrase. Apart from Rouault, however, the
art, Fauvism and Cubism, although Fauvism can be described other Fauves did share a delight in pattern-making, and in the
as a "movement" only m a limited sense. The Fauve painters, decorative effects of color. In this period up to 1907, they
unlike, for example, the artists of the Briicke, did not formally obviously regarded color as the painter's prime vehicle of ex-
constitute themselves as a society or association. They had no pression.
manifesto, no coherent aesthetic. It was, rather, an informal The years 1906—7 marked the high point of Fauvism. At the
circle of friends, with Matisse as the acknowledged leader. Independants of 1906, Matisse showed his major canvas of
The earliest members
of the group —
Matisse, Rouault, Man- this early period, the/oy of Life (Barnes Foundation, Merion,
guin, Marquet, —
and Camoin had been fellow students in Pa). At the Salon d'Automne that year, the Fauve painters
Gustave Moreau's studio between 1891 and 1897. In 1901, were out force, among them two relative newcomers,
in

Matisse met two more future Fauves, Vlaminck and Derain, Othon and Raou! Dufy, representing the "school of Le
Friesz
who had been working together at Chatou. The following Havre". The following year, 1907, the group was further en-
year, this loosely knit group, the composition of which was larged by the presence of what might be termed "passing
constantly changing, began exhibiting at the gallery run by the Fauves", Le Fauconnier, Metzinger, and Braque. That
Parisian dealer, Berthe Weill. During the years 1903-7, autumn, Matisse sent more paintings to the Salon
five

Matisse and his friends exhibited together fairly frequently, d'Automne, among them two highly important works. La
both at the newly founded Salon d'Automne and at the older Musique (Conger Goodyear Collection, New York) and Le
Salon des Independants. in April 1904, Berthe Weill showed a Luxe I (Musee National d'Art Moderne, Paris). By now, how-
collection of works by Matisse, Camoin, Manguin, Marquet, ever, his position as leader of the avant-garde was already
and Jean Puy; spring of 1905, virtually all the members
in the threatened by the rising tide of Cubism. We remember the
of Matisse's circleshowed together at the Independants, al- Salon d'Automne of 1907 not so much for Matisse's contribu-
though it was not until the autumn of that year that critics tions as for the large retrospective showing of Cezanne's
began to speak of them as a group and to recognize an under- work, which produced a profound impression upon the future
lying similarity between their works. Also at the 1905 Inde- Cubists. Many of the younger painters who, like Braque, had
pendants, Matisse showed his major figure-painting of this been temporarily seduced by the coloristic charms of Fauvism,
period. Luxe, Calme et Volupte (private collection), with its now began to devote principal attention to form, rather than
obvious debt to the Neo-Impressionism of Signac and Cross. color (it is, in any case, tempting to decide that Fauvism was
Despite a certain amount of adverse criticism, this painting essentially a transitional style, since the ever-greater intensi-
was immediately bought by Signac himself, evidently delighted fication of color could scarcely be regarded as a permanent
to have gained, as he thought, another convert to the Neo- goal for painting). And Matisse himself, despite his suspicion
Impressionist doctrine. He did not realize how short-lived that of the Cubists, was developing away from the apparent spon-
conversion was to be. taneity of his early Fauve manner towards the more calculat-
The lack of enthusiasm which greeted the showing of Luxe, ing structural logic characteristic of his painting during the
Calme et Volupte was, however, nothing compared to the years 1908—14.
storm that broke at the opening of the Salon d'Automne later Curiously, the Fauve painters, especially Matisse, enjoyed a
the same year. Leo Stein, soon to become one of the artist's far higher reputation outside France than they did at home.
most important patrons, called Matisse's Woman with the Before the First World War, one of the finest collections of
Hat (Walter A. Haas Collection, San Francisco) "the nastiest Fauve painting in the world was in Russia, that belonging to
smear of paint I had ever seen". One reviewer described the the Moscow merchant Sergei Shchukin. The impact of the
rhe Pool of London by Andre Derain; oil on canvas; 66 x99cm (26x39in); 1906. Tate Gallery, London

movement was widespread; although there were no important German artists. Writing in the periodical Der Sturm in August
group exhibitions of Fauve painting outside Paris before the 1911, the art historian Wilhelm Worringer alluded to contem-
end of the decade, numerous foreign artists were in Paris porary French "Synthetists and Expressionists". And at the
during the crucial years 1905-7. Kandinsky, for example, Sturm exhibition in Berlin in the spring of 1912., the organizer,
would have seen both the Salon d'Automne of 1906 and the Herwarth Walden, again labeled the works of the French con-
Independants of 1907. Paintings by Matisse were shown, tributors "expressionist", but not those of the "Blue Riders",
albeit reluctantly, by the art dealer Paul Cassirer in Berlin in Kandinsky and Franz Marc. Not until the Sonderbund exhi-
the winter of 1908-9. Also in 1909, Matisse's Notes d'un bition inCologne in the summer of 1912, the most important
Vemtre appeared in German translation in the periodical prewar manifestation of avant-garde art, was any attempt
Kunst und Kunstler. And in April 191 i, artists including made to define the new movement. Writing in the foreword to
Manguin, Marquet, Derain, Puy, Braque, Friesz, van Dongen, the exhibition catalogue, Richard Reiche described Ex-
Vlaminck, and —strangely— Picasso were shown at the XXII pressionism as striving "for a simplification and enhancement
exhibition of the Berlin Sezession under the title "Expression- of forms of expression, a new rhythm and color". And not
ists". until the war years was the term used to refer to a specifically
German movement in the visual arts, a movement having its

Beginnings of Expressionism. The origin of the term Ex- own positive aims and ideals.
pressionsim is uncertain. By it, we mean a movement of revolt That the word became used in this way was due largely to

and music which reached its climax with the

in art, literature, two writers, the critic Paul Fechter and the playwright and
First World War. Today, we regard this movement as being essayist Hermann Bahr. In his book Expressionismus, first

specifically German in character. There is, however, no doubt published in 19 16, Bahr emphasized that the origins of the
that the term was earlier used to refer to French rather than Expressionist movement lay in German 19th-century aesthe-
Matisse in 1905 Each year, Matisse would show major paint-
ings at one or other of the Paris Salons,
usually at the Independants (held each
spring) or the autumn Salon d'Automne.
These exhibitions are the milestones of his
early career.
Matisse sent eight paintings to the 1905
Independants. Of these, the large picture
called Luxe, Calme et Volupte (private col-
lection) created the greatest stir. Its title
derived from a poem by Baudelaire. Its

subject, nudes in a landscape, is, however,

much older, recalling Renaissance treatments
of the same theme, such as Giorgione's Fete
Champetre {c\ 510; Louvre, Paris).
Luxe, Calme et Volupte was the fruit of
Matisse's studies the preceding year. He had
spent much of the summer of 904 at St 1

Tropez, in the South of France, together with

the painter Paul Signac. Signac was the
leading representative of the movement
known as Neo-Impressionism, and had gath-
ered around him a circle of like-minded

T Madame Matisse:
< Luxe, Calme et the GreenLme by
Volupte by Matisse; oil Mahsse; oil on canvas;
on canvas; 98 x iiSctn 41x32cm (i6x i3in);
(^9X46in); 1904—5. 1905. State Art Museum,
Private collection Copenhagen

.k

A Open W'mdow, (iiXiSm); 1905.

Collioure by Matisse; oil Collection of John Hay
on canvas; 55 x46cm Whitney, New York
 GAI.LKRY STUDY

T Joy of Life by Matisse; A Dance by Matisse; oil

oil on canvas; oil on canvas; on canvas; 160x288cm
73x92cm (29X36in); 174x238cm {69X94in); (102X I I3in); 1910.
Musee de Peinture et de 1905-6. Barnes Hermitage Museum,
#*N Sculpture, Grenoble Foundation, Marion, Pa Leningrad

A Ute C.hantpetre by
(iiorgione; oil on canvas;
I lox 1 38cm (43X54in);
CI 5 10. Louvre, Paris

followers. St Tropez and its environs pro-

vided them with picturesque opportunities
for landscape studies in a Neo-lmpressionist
manner, such as The Customs Path (Musee
de Peinture et de Sculpture, Grenoble).
For a time, Matisse became preoccupied
with Neo-lmpressionist color theory. The nean sunlight became translated into the use to the theme of nudes in a landscape, but
Neo-Impressionists juxtaposed small dots of of vivid color as an autonomous, expressive with its ring of dancing figures, /oy of Life
pure color on the canvas instead of mixing element. Matisse sentsome of his colorful conjures up the image of a bacchanal rather
colors on the palette, hoping in this way to experiments of that summer to the 1905 than some Arcadian vision. This circle of
achieve greater luminosity in their works. Salon d'Automnc, among them the portrait dancers also prefigures one of Matisse's most
Luxe, Calme et Voluptc shows how Matisse, Madame Matisse: the Green Line (State Art important commissions of the post-Fauve
too, experimented with this idea. Signac was Museum, Copenhagen) and Open Window, period, Dance (Hermitage Museum, Lenin-
so delighted with the painting that he bought Collioure (Collection of John Hay Whitney, grad). Joy of Life wasfirst shown at the

it for his own collection. He did not realize New York). These two paintings particularly Independants of 1906, and later purchased
how short-lived Matisse's commitment to outraged both critics and public, mainly by the American collector Albert Barnes.
Neo-lmpressionist doctrine would be. because of their apparent crudity. PETER VERGO
Matisse was in many ways a late de- By this time, Matisse was already working
Further reading. Barr, A.H. Matisse, his Art and hts
veloper: 1 905 was his year of liberation. He on the most important of all his early com- Ptihlic, New York (1977). Diehl, C. The fauves. New
spent the summer at the seaside resort of positions, /oyo/^LZ/ie (Barnes Foundation, York (1975). Elderfield,J. The "W ild Beasts" : Fauv-
(^ollioure, and this time the bright Mediterra Merion, Pa). Here Matisse turned once more ism and its Affinities, New York (1976).
838 FAUVISM AND EXPRESSIONISM

tics, especially the writings of Goethe, further developed in
modern times by such writers as Worringer, Alois Riegl, and
Theodor Lipps. He also interpreted Expressionism as a move-
ment giving primary importance to the inner world of the
emotions, by contrast to Impressionism, which remained "en-
slaved" to the external world of nature or of the senses. But
beforethis, in 1914, Fechter had published a monograph, also
under the tide Expressionismus, in which he distinguished
between two different kinds of Expressionism: "intensive Ex-
pressionism", which derived its inspiration from inner experi-
ence, and "extensive Expressionism", which depended upon a
heightened relationship with the external world. For Fechter,
the most important representative of the former "school" was
Kandinsky, of the latter, Max Pechstein.
opposed to the 19th century, the "century of the external".
Art aimed to express the soul, not the skill of the artist.
Fechter wrote that art "not only derives from ability, but also
depends upon a certain spiritual disposition, desire, or rather,
necessity". His remarks echo the composer Arnold Schoen-
berg's famous dictum, which became one of the slogans of
Expressionism: "Art comes from necessity, not from abilitv".
As a result of this insistence upon the artist's inner vision,
coupled with a disdain for mere technical prowess, the distinc-
tions between different art forms became blurred. Artists,
writers, and composers tended to regard the differences be-
tween and therefore un-
their respective arts as only external,
important. Most of the leading Expressionists experimented
in a number of different media. Ernst Barlach made sculptures

In most of the artists who are today labeled Ex-

fact, and graphic works and wrote plays; his prose play Der Tote
pressionists would have agreed on the importance of inner Tag ("Dead Day") is one of the earliest examples of Ex-
experience. Kurt Pinthus, who edited a collection of Ex- pressionist theatre. Kandinsky produced and
paintings
pressionist verse published 1920 under the title
in graphics, poetry, criticism, and drama. Kokoschka made
Menschheitsddmmerung ("Twilight of Mankind"), demanded paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures, and wrote plays and
that "in art, the process of realization must proceed from the essays. Schoenberg both composed music and painted. Artists
internal to the external, not from the external to the internal; frequently turned to their contemporaries working in different
it is a question of realizing inner reality through the resources media for inspiration. Often, the results of such experiments
of the spirit". And as early as 191 1, Kandinsky characterized are surprisingly similar. There is an evident relationship be-
the dawning zoth century as the "century of the internal", as tween Kandinsky's stage composition Der Gelbe Klang

Composition IV by Kandinsky; oil on canvas; 1 60 x 250cm (63 x 98in) ; 1 91 1 . Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Diisseldorf
("Yellow Sound") and Schoenberg's music drama Die Gliick-
liche Hand ("The Lucky Hand"). This relationship may be
due in part to their common ancestry in the works of Strind-
berg, whose late plays, like the paintings of his contemporary
Edvard iMunch, exerted a decisive mfluence upon the early
Expressionist movement.
To Fechter's "intensive Expressionism" and "extensive Ex-
pressionism" we should add a third category: political Ex-
pressionism. By 1 9 14, the "heightened relationship with the
world" Fechter describes had been largely supplanted by a
heightened political consciousness, made more acute by the
crisis of the First World War. In literature, what had started as
a revolt against society became, in its most extreme form, a
kind of anarchistic pacifism. In the visual arts, this political

consciousnessis reflected in the works of such artists as Bar-

lach. Max
Beckmann, and Kathe Kollwitz. Beckmann's large 1 he Night by Max Beckmann; oil on canvas; 133 >< 154cm ,52 xbiin);
1918-19. Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen. Diisseldorf
painting The \ight (Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen,
Diisseldorf), or his later triptychs, are symbols of the artist's Dostoevski, and Nietzsche. Heckel's woodcut Tm^o Men at
anguish in the face of war and its aftermath. The war itself Table (an illustration of a scene from The Idiot by Dostoevski)
also claimed a heavy toll among Expressionist artists, most reveals the importance of the influence his early literary ex-
significant of those killed in action being August Macke (ob. periences exerted upon his later pictorial work. Heckel was
1914; and Franz Marc (ob. 1916). the most intellectual of the Briicke artists. Kirchner later re-
called that, at their first meeting, Heckel bore down on him,
Die Briicke. In Pechstein and Kandinsky, Fechter had singled quoting aloud from Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra.
out representatives of the two most important groups of Ex- Nietzsche's ideas, like those of Dostoevski, profoundly in-
pressionist artists: Die Briicke (The Bridge) and Der Blaue fluenced the painters of the Briicke, especially in their choice
Reiter (The Blue Rider). Of these, the earlier group was the of subject matter.
Briicke. It was founded in 1905 in Dresden by four friends, all For a time, the four artists worked together in the studio of
students of architecture: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner 1880— 1938),
( either Kirchner or Heckel. Their first exhibition came about
Erich Meckel (1883-1970), Karl Schmidt-Rotduff (1884- almost by chance. Heckel was employed in the drawing office

1976), and Fritz Bleyl. The only founder member of the group of the architect Wilhelm Kreis, one of whose designs, for the
who had trained as a painter was Kirchner, having studied in country house of a collector, was seen by the Dresden lamp-
Munich under Wilhelm von Debschitz and Hermann Obrist factory owner Seifert. Seifert was impressed by the design for
during 90^5-4. His graphic work of this period is clearly
1 the picture gallery of the house, which was in fact by Heckel,
influenced by jugendstil, the prevalent Art Nouveau manner and had it built as a setting in which to exhibit his lamps.
of turn-of-the-century Germany. In Munich, Kirchner became Heckel designed several new lamps for Seifert, and hung the

acquainted with the technique of Divisionism. In a letter of walls with pictures by himself and his companions. The exhi-

1937 to Kurt Valentin, he recalled: bition opened in Seifert's factory in the Lobtau quarter of
Dresden in October 1906, and attracted little attention.
An exhibition of French Neo-Impressionists gave me pause. !
At about this time, the four founder members were joined
found the drawing weak, to be sure, but studied the science of
by the young Max Pechstein, then a student at the Dresden
I

color based on optics in order to arrive at the opposite: not

Academy, the Swiss painter Cuno Amiet, and the Finnish
complementary colors, but to let complementaries be created
artist Axel Gallen-Kallela. In February 1906, Schmidt-
by the eye, according to Goethe's theory.
Rottluff wrote to Emil Nolde inviting him to join the group:

Kirchner is almost certainly referring to the tenth exhibition of Nolde accepted, but left the group again the following year.
the Munich society Phalanx, organized by Kandinsky, at Also in 1906, the group was enlarged to include "passive
which works by Seurat, Signac, Luce, Cross, and van Ryssel- members" who, for an annual subscription of 12 Marks, re-

berghe, as well as ones by Toulouse-Lautrec and Vallotton, ceived a yearly report, and a portfolio of three or four original
were to be seen. graphics. The painters formulated a manifesto of the group,
Kirchner, who began studying in Dresden in 1901, met and Kirchner cut the text in wood. It began:
Bleyl the following year. At about the same time, Hcckel met
Schmidt-Rottluff at a performance,it is said, of Hauptmann's
Putting our faith in a new generation of creators and art lovers,
The Weavers. Both were students at the high school in (Chem- we call upon all youth to unite. And being youth, the bearers of
nitz, and both became members of a progressive literary club, the future, we want to wrest from the comfortably established
immersing themselves in the writings of Ibsen, Strindberg, older generation freedom to live and move. Anyone who di-
840 FAUVISM AND EXPRESSIONISM

rectly and honestly reproduces that force which impels him to autumn from 1906 to 1910, Schmidt-Rotduff and Heckel
create belongs to us. painted together at Dangast on the North Sea; in the summer
It is difficult to identify a coherent Briicke style before of 1 9 10, Heckel and Pechstein joined Kirchner at Moritzburg.
CI 907, the year the group first showed at the Gaierie Richter Their favorite subject was nudes in a landscape, which they
in Dresden. Moreover, the way in which that style developed studied repeatedly; the similarity of their work during this

is obscured by problems of chronology. Kirchner especially, in period permits us to speak of a "group style". Different mem-
later years, misdated his own early works, probably quite bers of the group experimented extensively with graphic tech-
consciously, putting them sometimes as much as three or four niques; the woodcuts of Kirchner and Heckel, especially, are
years too early. At this time, the desire of younger artists to extremely powerful. The artists cut their own blocks, and
appear more original or avant-garde than they really were allowed the grain of the wood to appear as a decorative ele-
often led to falsifications of this kind. Up until 1906, Kirchner ment in Munch.
the finished print, a technique also favored by
was still experimenting with a divisionist technique, albeit in Schmidt-Rottluff made both woodcuts and lithographs. The
his own highly personal interpretation [Lake in Dresden Park, most lasting monuments to these experiments are the Jahres-
1906; private colleaion). The early work of the other Briicke mappen, the annual portfolios produced for the "'passive
painterswas also eclectic in manner, owing an evident debt to members" of the association. In later years, each portfolio was
Post-Impressionism in general, and to Van Gogh and Munch devoted to the work of a single artist: in 19 10 Kirchner, in
in particular. Meckel, Kirchner, and Schmidt-Rottluff all 191 1 Heckel, in 191 2 Pechstein.
denied such influences, claiming that the works of these artists and by Nolde were
In 1 910, paintings by the Briicke artists
were unknown to them during the crucial years before 1908; rejected by the Berlin Sezession. Nolde mounted a public
but Nolde put his finger on the nub when he wrote, in a letter attack on Max Liebermann, the president, and the refuses
to Hans Fehr: '"They ought to call themselves Van Goghians". founded their own association, the Neue Sezession, under
Even if they had not seen any of the important French Salons Pechstein's chairmanship. The painter Otto Miiller, whom
(and Pechstein had been in Paris in 1907—8), works by foreign Kirchner later credited with having introduced his fellow ar-
artists could be seen with comparative ease in Germany. As tists to the technique of painting in tempera, joined the group.
early as 1905, the Gaierie Arnold in Dresden held an exhi- In 191 1, the remaining Briicke artists moved to Berlin Pech-
bition of 50 paintings by Van Gogh; the following year, the stein had been living there since 1908;, and Kirchner and
Sdchsischer Kunstverein showed zo works by Munch, and the Pechstein opened a painting school, the MUi.vi institute. At
Gaierie Arnold paintings by French Neo- and Post-Im- about this time, the Czech painter Bohumil Kubista also
pressionist artists including Seurat, Gauguin, and Van Gogh. joined the Briicke. This shift in the group's center of gravit>",
In May 1908, the Gaierie Richter had a retrospective exhi- from Dresden to Berlin, coincided with a far greater formalit>',
bition of 100 works by Van Gogh, and also showed Fauve and a noticeable change of subject matter. It was now the big
paintings by van Dongen, Marquet, Vlaminck, Friesz, and city that occupied most of their attention, especially the
others. And Kirchner's trip to Berlin in January 1909 coin- seamier side of city life, the twilight world of the drunk, the
cided with Cassirer's exhibition of works by Matisse. nightclub artiste, and the prostitute, seen in Kirchner's Five
Equally difficult is the problem of knowing exactly when Women on the Street (191 3; Museum of Modern Art, New-
the Briicke artists first interested themselves in primitive art. York). In 191 2, the Briicke participated in the second Blaue
Kirchner's claim that he discovered Negro sculpture and the Reiter exhibition, returning the visit of the Munich artists to

art of the South Seas in 1904 is scarcely plausible. Certainly Berlin, when representatives of the Neue Kiinstler-Vereini-
no trace of exotic influences can be detected in the work of gung Miinchen, among them Kandinsky and Jawlensky, had
any of the Briicke painters before 1906--. By this date, both shown at the fourth exhibition of the Keue Sezession. In the
the Fauves and Picasso had discovered primitive art. In Les same year, the group exhibited at the great Sonderbund-aus-
Demoiselles d' Avignon (1907; Museum of Modern Art, New- stellung in Cologne, where Kirchner and Heckel decorated the
York), Picasso explored the formal consequences of the dis- chapel with frescoes.
tortions of human physiognomy characteristic of certain kinds By this time, however, a rift was beginning to develop
of African sculpture. The Briicke artists, however, were in- within the Briicke. Pechstein, who exhibited with the Berlin
terested in primitive art for different reasons: they admired its Sezession in defiance of a resolution that the group would
expressive power, often employing primitive sexual imagery participate collectively, or not at all, was expelled from the
in their own works. They wished their way of life to be primi- Briicke. The following year, matters came to a head when
tive, too; they not only surrounded themselves with examples Kirchner prepared for circulation a "Chronicle of the
of primitive art, but decorated the walls of their studios, and Briicke", which provoked violent disagreement among the
even objects of everyday use, in a primitivizing manner some- other members. In May, the group disbanded, the "passive
what reminiscent of Gauguin. Negro sculptures feature in members" being informed by a letter signed by Amiet, Heckel,
studio interiors by both Kirchner and Heckel after 1907. Miiller, and Schmidt-Rottluff. The artists themselves, how-
From 1906, members of the group worked closely together, ever, continued to exhibit with the Berlin Sezession, the newly
especially during the holiday months. Each summer or founded Freie Sezession, and at the private gallery owned by
 —

FAUVISM AND EXPRESSIONISM 841

creation is totally different. The artist . . . has to invent forms,

they can only arise from his mind ... To be deciphered, these
pictures require a key which only the artist or the art historian
can supply . . . But is this a development worth striving for.''

Might not art in this way cease to be art, and become merely a
school discipline, like geometry and algebra?

Der Blaue Reiter. If the Briicke artists were Nietzscheans in

their philosophical outlook. Naturalists in their choice of sub-
ject, and more interested in the practical than the theoretical,
the Blue Riders were the exact opposite. Owing philosophical
allegiance to Schopenhauer, rather than to Nietzsche, they
manifested an evident penchant for theory, as well as a ten-
dency towards abstraction.
The leading Blue Riders were the Russian Kandinsky and
the German painter Franz Marc. Regarding the name, Kan-
dinsky wrote: "We both loved blue: Marc —horses, myself
riders. So the name invented itself." The Blaue Reiter was,
however, neither an exhibiting society nor a formal associ-
ation. The name was originally devised as the title for an
almanac or yearbook which Kandinsky and Marc were pre-
paring for publication during the summer and autumn of
191 1, a conspectus of contemporary art, which aimed to de-
monstrate the unity of the arts in general, and of "primitive"
and "modern" art in particular. In a letter of 1930 to Paul
Westheim, Kandinsky recalled:
At that time, there matured in me the desire to compile a book
(a kind of almanac), to which only artists would contribute as

authors. dreamed of painters and musicians in the front rank.

I

Street, Berlin by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner; oil on canvas; The harmful separation of one art from another, of "Art" from
120 x90cm (47X35in); 191 3. Museum of Modern Art, New York folk art or children's art, from "ethnography", the stout walls
which divided what were, to my eyes, such closely related,
the dealer Fritz Gurlitt. often identical phenomena — in a word, their synthetic rela-
Today, the artists of the Briicke are considered part of the tions — all this gave me no peace.
mainstream Expressionist movement, perhaps because of their
The Blaue Reiter Almanac was eventually published in May
contempt for the "comfortably established older generation"
1 9 1 2 by the firm of R. Piper and Co. in Munich, who had also
and their disdain of merely technical skill. But in other ways, it
produced Kandinsky's treatise On the Spiritual in Art (191 2).
may be asked to what extent this nomenclature is convincing.
among them Kan-
It contained a number of important articles,
Neither the savage allegories of a Beckmann, nor the apocalyp-
dinsky's "On the Question of Form", Marc's "Two Pictures",
tic visions of a Meidner have any place in the Briicke's work;
and "The German 'Fauves'", August Macke's "The Masks",
and, unlike the other leading Expressionists, they confined
and Schoenberg's "The Relationship to the Text". The editors
themselves largely to painting and graphics, and made few
had originally wanted no less than eight articles on music,
excursions into other media. Given the literary sources upon
which proved ultimately impossible, but the Almanac is still
which they drew (works by Nietzsche and Dostoevski) it
remarkable for the amount of musical material it contains,
seems that they might more accurately be called "Naturalists"
including as it does articles on Skryabin and modern Russian
rather than Expressionists. In his choice of subject matter, an
music, as well as a musical "supplement", consisting of fac-
artist like Kirchner appears more closely related to such liter-
similes of short pieces by Schoenberg and his pupils Alban
ary Naturalists as Ibsen or the early Strindberg (Scandinavian
Berg and Anton von Webern. Most remarkable of all, how-
literature had a powerful mtkience upon many German artists
ever, were the illustrations, which in the end numbered over
at the beginning of the century), rather than to, for example,
140. Children's drawings, Easter Island sculptures, African
Georg TrakI or Stefan Heym. Moreover, by comparison with
carvings, Alaskan textiles, Russian folk prints. Bavarian glass
the artists of the Blaue Reiter, the art of the Brikke remains Greco
paintings, German Gothic sculptures, paintings by El
essentially representational. Kirchner wrote with evident dis-
as well as by the
and Cezanne, Henri Rousseau and Picasso,
trust about abstract painting:
artists who contributed articles to the Almanac — Kandinsky,
There is no gradual development from increasing unintelligi- Marc, Macke, Schoenberg were all reproduced. On the —
bility right up to the abstract image, rather ... the manner of other hand, examples of what we might consider the main-
The Blue Rider
The Blue Rider was, first and foremost, a the Briicke. These exhibitions, like the Alma-
book or almanac, Der Blaue Reiter. It was nac, were intended to show the diversity of
published in Munich in May 191 2, edited by contemporary trends in art.
Kandinsky and Franz Marc. It included im- For this reason, it would be misleading to
portant theoretical statements by both ar- speak of a Blue Rider "movement" or
tists. Kandinsky had also made a number of "style".There was no group, because the
preparatory studies for the cover of the Blue Rider was not an exhibiting society nor
almanac, showing a rider figure with flying an association of artists sharing an agreed
cloak. In the end, he abandoned this rather program. Moreover, if we look at the works
traditional image in favor of a far more of Kandinsky, Marc, and Macke, they are
abstract design for a three-color woodcut, stylistically very different. Kandinsky, at this
based on the subject of St Martin and the date, was moving ven*' close to pure ab-
Beggar. straction; where his paintings still have a
Before theAlmanac was actually pub- recognizable theme, it is usually of an
two editors had already organized
lished, the apocalyptic or eschatological kind, for ex-
two exhibitions to which they also gave the ample, his watercolor-over-pencil study for
name Der Blaue Reiter. The first, which the volume Kldnge, judgment Day (191 2;
opened in Munich in December 1911, was a Stadtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus,
relatively small affair, consisting mainly of Munich). Marc, by comparison, made rela- A frontispiece from Reiter by Kandinsky;

paintings by Kandinsky, Marc, and artists of tively few abstract experiments. Animals
Der Blaue Reiter; a watercolor; iSXiicm
drawing by Kandinsky 1
1 1 x8in;; 191 1.
their immediate circle such as August Macke played an important role in his paintings, after a Bavarian mirror- Stadtische Galene im
and Heinrich Campendonck. The second while stylistically, his work shows the in- painting; 2.8 x 1 1 cm Lenbachhaus, Munich
(spring 1 9 1 2) was more elaborate, though fluence of Italian Futurism, especially in the 1 1 x8m ; 1911.
Stadtische Galene im
limited exclusively to graphic work. Most of translucent colored facets and strong diagon-
Lenbachhaus. .Munich A woodcut design for
the major figures of European avant-garde alswhich cut across the composition, as in
the cover of Der Blaue
painting were represented, among them Deer in a Forest II (191 3— 14; Staatliche Below left .\ design tor Reiter by Kandinsky;
Picasso, Braque, Delaunay, and the artists of Kunsthalle Karlsruhe;. Macke's work is more the cover of Der Bhue 2ZXi-cm 9X-in';i9i2
 ; 3

GALLERY STUDY

A Deer m a forest II An important

by Franz Marc; oil influence on the Blue
on canvas; i lox loocm Rider painters was the
(43X39in); 1913-14. work ot Robert
Staatliche Kunsthaile, Delaunay; from 191
Karlsruhe comes his Circular
Forms, Sun and Tower;
Above right A work oil on canvas;
from August Macke's 1 10x90cm (43 X35in).
visit North Africa in
to Private collection
1914: Market in Tunis I

watcrcolor
29x13cm (i I X9in).
Private collection

gentle and lyrical — especially the watercolors

he brought back from a trip to North Africa
which he made in spring 19 14, together with
his painter friends Louis Moilliet and Paul
Klee. His paintings after 1912 also reveal the
influence of Delaunay's Orphism — a kind of
colorful, highly personal version of Parisian
Cubism which much impressed the Munich
painters. Admiration for Delaunay, an inter-
est in naive and primitive art, and a similarity
of philosophical outlook arc the most impor-
tant features which unite this otherwise
rather loose-knit coniunction of per-
sonalities.

PETER VERGO

Further reading. Abstraction: Towards a New Art,

Painting if 10-11)10 London ( 1980). Lnnkheit, K.
(ed.) I be Hlaue Reiter Ahnanac, London and New
York (1974). Vergo, P. The Blue Rider, Oxford

(1977)-
 .

844 FAUVISM AND EXPRESSIONISM

Stream tradition in Western art, paintings by Renaissance and Reiter style. Not only was there no association, no manifesto,
post-Renaissance masters, were conspicuous by their absence. but since the aim of the exhibitions was to demonstrate the
The object of the often carefully-calculated juxtapositions of variety of forms of expression employed by contemporary
visual material was to demonstrate the "inner identity" be- artists, we are more likely to be struck by the differences than
tween primitive forms of expression and those utilized by con- by the similarities between the works of the different con-
—
temporary artists a directness of approach, a communicative tributors. At this time, Kandinsky's work was by far the most
power which had, Kandinsky felt, been overlaid in Renaissance abstract, although he never entirely abandoned references to
and Baroque art by representational or narrative concerns. reality in his paintings before 19 14. Marc also experimented
That the name Der Blaue Reiter strayed beyond the with abstraction in some of his highly colorful works from
confines of the Almanac itself was due to political rather than immediately before the war; Macke's work was no less color-

purely artistic circumstances. Kandinsky and Marc, together ful, but mostly remained true to representational aims. Klee,
with Gabriele Miinter and Alfred Kubin, were members of a who hovered on the fringes of the group, found color a strug-
society called the Neue Kiinstler-vereinigung Munchen (New gle, displaying in his early works a far greater aptitude for
Artists' Association of Munich) which had been founded in line. We may, however, recognize works of these last
in the

1909 under Kandinsky's presidency. Before long, tensions three artists acommon interest in the paintings and especially
began to be felt. The members coalesced into opposing in the theories of Delaunay, whose essay on light was trans-

groups, the conservatives led by the German painters Alexan- lated into German by Klee and published in Walden's period-
der Kanoldt and Adolf Erbsloh, the radicals by Kandinsky and ical Der Sturm in 191 3.

Marc. As early as August 191 1, Marc wrote to his friend

Macke: "I can foresee clearly, with Kandinsky, that the next Other Expressionists. A number of other artists worked
jury (in the late autumn) will bring about a dreadful alterca- independently, often without affiliating themselves to any or-
tion, and then, or the next time, a split, or the resignation of
one or other party; and the question will be, who stays .
."
Right, above: The Embrace by Egon Schiele; oil on canvas;
The split came in December that year, when Kandinsky's I lox 170cm (43X67in): 1917. Osterreichische Galerie, N'ienna
Composition Five (private collection), one of most ad-
his
Right, below: Reclining >Xoman by Egon Schiele; oil on canvas;
vanced works of this period, was rejected by the jury which
96X 171cm (38x67in); 191-'. Collection of Dr Rudolf Leopold, Vienna
had been called upon to judge works submitted for the
society's third exhibition, scheduled to take place in the Below: Auguste Forel by Kokoschka; oil on canvas; 71 X58cm (28x2310);
Thannhauser Gallery in Munich. At this declaration of war, 1910. Stadtische Kunsthalle Mannheim
Kandinsky and his friends resigned, and immediately started
to organize a rival exhibition of their own, to which they gave
the name of their still unpublished Almanac. Thanks to pro-
digious efforts, the "first exhibition of the editorial board of
Der Blaue Retter'' opened concurrently with the third exhi-
bition of the Neue Kiinstler-vereinigung, in an adjacent gal-
lery. As foreword to the catalogue, Kandinsky wrote:

In this little exhibition, we do not

seek to propagate any one
precise or special form. We
aim to show, by means of the
different forms here represented, the variety of ways in which
the artist's inner wishes manifest themselves.

For the most part, was those artists who had already
it

collaborated in preparing the Almanac who contributed to the

first exhibition, although they were not "members" of any

association, but simply invited to participate by Kandinsky or

Marc. The exhibition went on tour after it had closed in-
Munich, forming an important part of the second "Jack of
Diamonds" show in Moscow in 191 2, and ending up at Her-
warth Walden's Sturm galleries in Berlin. The second exhi-
bition (spring 19 1 2), confined to graphic work, was far more
international in character, featuring work by French and Rus-
sian, as well as by German artists; it offered a significant
resume of the latest tendencies in European art prior to the
First World War.
It seems foolish to try to define the characteristics of a Blaue
FAUVISM AND EXPRESSIONISM 845
846 FAUVISM AND EXPRESSIONISM

ganization. In Vienna, the young Egon Schiele (1890-19 18) We must organize, courageously and deliberately, the optical

scandalized the bourgeoisie by the overt eroticism of his impressions we have absorbed in the great world outside,

works; he was actually imprisoned for a time durmg 191 z for organize them into compositions.

disseminating indecent drawings. The Viennese public were

equally incensed by the work of Oskar Kokoschka (1886- It will be clear by now that the term "Expressionist" is of
1980), who made his debut at the first Kunstschau exhibition, little use, either as a declaration of intent, or as a stylistic label.

organized by Gustav Klimt (186Z-1918) and former members Most artists have been concerned in one way or another with
of the Vienna Secession, in the summer of 1908. At this exhi- "expression", which is why certain historians have lumped
bition,Ludwig Hevesi, one of the most perceptive critics of his together such diverse personalities as Bosch and Griinewald,
day, dubbed him "Oberwildling", which might be translated Klee and Jackson Pollock, calling them all "Expressionists".
as ''super-Fauve\ It is, however, doubtful to what extent But how much credence can be given to any definition that
either artist can correctly be described as an Expressionist. It is tries to reconcile such evident differences of artistic purpose?
true that Kokoschka, in his portraits, is more interested in the On the other hand, while most of the artists more usually

inner life of his sitters than in details of physiognomy, in a way termed Expressionists shared at least some aims and ideals,
reminiscent of the desire of many Expressionist writers to lay the differences are often as striking as the resemblances. Nor
bare the "inner man", without concerning themselves about are comparisons between Expressionism in art and literary
such trifles as milieu or even plot. Kokoschka wrote: "I look Expressionism, which seems in some ways a more unified
for the flash of the eye, the tiny shift of expression that betrays phenomenon, entirely satisfactory. If Expressionism had a
an inner movement." But as far as his dramatic works were center, it was probably Berlin; if Expressionist artists and
concerned, he denied they had anything to do with that "rejec- writers sought a focus, it was to be found in such periodicals
tion of society or plans for the improvement of the world as Walden's Der Sturm or Franz Pfemfert's Die Aktion. In the
which characterize the literary breakthrough and change in visual arts, the heyday of Expressionism was short-lived; its
style called Expressionism". Schiele, on the other hand, de- period of greatest influence is circumscribed by the early exhi-
spite his evident desire to shock, at times reverted to an almost bitions of the Neue Sezession, the Cologne Sonderbund-aus-
mathematical manner of composing, and some of his late stellung, and Walden's Erster Deutscher Herbstsalon of 191 3.
works, for example the Reclining Woman of 1 917 (Collection The War roused some Expressionists to a creative fury; but by
of Dr Rudolf Leopold, Vienna), combine erotic subject matter the early 19ZOS Expressionism, or what remained of it, had a
with extreme intricacy of composition. It might be thought very different face. Artists like Beckmann, formerly hailed as
that an Expressionist artist should attend primarily to expres- Expressionists, now termed themselves "Objectivists", and
sive rather than formal considerations; and yet several other Kandinsky, Feininger, and the other artists of the Bauhaus
so-called Expressionists, Kirchner and Feininger among them, now pursued an entirely new direction.
emphasized the importance of painstaking composition, of PETER VERGO
Even Ludwig Meidner, whose works of the
discipline in art.
immediately prewar years in Berlin appear as if painted in an New York
Bibliography. Barr, A.H. Matisse, his Art and his Public,
apocalyptic frenzy, wrote in his essay "An Introduction to (1977). Gordon, D.E. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, New Haven (1968).
Painting Big Cities": Gordon, D.E. "The Origins of the Term 'Expressionism' ", Journal of
the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes vol. XXIX, (1966). Roethel,
We cannot record instantaneously all the accidental and disor- H.K. The Blue Rider, London and New York {1971). Verge, P. Art in
ganized aspects of our motif and still make a picture out of it. Vienna 1898—1918, London and New York (1982).
 46

CUBISM AND FUTURISM

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon by Picasso; oil on canvas; 244x234cm (96X92in); 1907

Museum of Modem Art, New York (see page 848)
 —

848 CUBISM AND FUTURISM

THE name "Cubism" originated from hostile criticisms

some land-
of the angular and volumetric style of
painting and brought a more aggressive objectivity' to the
problem of painting's duality. His early work had involved a
The style was
scapes by Braque, exhibited in 1908-9. ruthless questioning of European stales, past and present. He
evolved simultaneously by Picasso and Braque and was rap- was closely interested in art with Symbolist leanings —the
idly adopted by other Parisian painters including Delaunay, painting of Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Munch, for example
Leger, Gris, Gleizes, Metzinger, Villon, and Duchamp and — and, like many of the Cubists, in Symbolist literature. Symbol-
by sculptors, including Lipchitz, Laurens, Duchamp-Villon, ism's departure from traditions of nature-transcription and its

and Archipenko. By 1910— 11 it had become the dominant proposal of a more oblique imagery made important contribu-
avant-garde idiom in Paris and during the next two years tions to Cubist thinking. The influence of writers with whom
exerted such widespread mfluence that it virtually trans- Picasso associated in the 1900s —Gertrude Stein, Alfred Jarry,

formed the face of progressive pamting throughout Europe, in and the great Cubist apologist and theoretician Guillaume
Russia, and to some extent in America. It became, briefly, an Apollinaire —
was to encourage a belief in change as the most
international modern style, its angularity in tune with the vital impulse of the
artist. For the Cubist this also found an

modern technological world. The extreme example of its in- echo wide circulation of contemporary ideas of Henri
in the

fluence was Futurism in Italy. Although the Futurists had been Bergson (on reality) and of Einstein (on relativity), as well as
positively committed in their socio-political ideology, they in the dramatic technological changes affecting urban experi-
lacked a suitably modern pictorial language until the advent ence. Absolute values were being widely questioned: Gertrude
of Cubist influence C1911. Stein compared the monotonous normality of former times
As a progressive style Cubism did not outlive the First with the marvelous new century in which "everything cracks,
World War and in this sense its name, which more or less is destroyed, isolated". Picasso's appetite for radical new ex-
describes the appearance of early Cubist painting, is mislead- periences drew strength from this mood.
ing. Its theoretical and technical propositions may now be By 1906—7 Picasso was looking outside Europe's heritage at
seen as a central thread in the subsequent history of painting the tribal masks and carvings of Africa. In this primitive art he
and sculpture. and all its innovations con-
All Cubist thinking recognized principles of image-making that had little to do
cerned a closer equation between art and "the real", introduc- either with European traditions of naturalism and classical
ing new senses, expressions, and experiences of realit)' into beauty or with the illusionistic conventions by which Western
art. Although it was highly influential upon the early experi- artists had for centuries depicted the external world. In

mental years of Abstract art, Cubism itself was always con- Picasso's own words: "a head is a matter of eyes, nose, mouth,
cerned with readable images of reality. which can be distributed in any way you like the head —
It is no surprise, then, that the Cubists identified with the remains a head." This liberated and conceptual attitude to
great 19th-century tradition of French Realist painting and imagery underlines all the subsequent thinking that Picasso
saw Courbet, Manet, Impressionism, Cezanne, and Seurat as contributed to Cubism.
pioneering ancestors in a campaign against artificialit\' in art, In Les Demoiselles d' Avignon (1907; Museum of Modern
against any thoughtless conservation of artistic conventions Art, New York), often called the first Cubist painting, images
for their own sake. Between them, Realism and Impressionism from the external world are subjected to ruthless conceptual
had eliminated from the modern painter's concerns all those redistribution. The compression of space so characteristic of
historical, literary, symbolic fields of subject matter that had much post-Impressionist painting is now extreme and the sur-
underpinned the body of traditional European art. The subject face alive with a heated exchange of angular lines, curves, and
was now the object seen, and the painter's interest was con- disjointed planes. Other paintings of the period by Picasso
centrated on radical innovations of technique in pursuit of also show this vital sense of formal energy that he valued so
rendering the object seen. Post-Impressionism gave a new highly in primitive art.

meaning and order to these innovations, most clearly in the At this point Picasso and Braque were introduced to each
work of Cezanne and Seurat. In their refined sequences of other by Apollinaire and for the next five or six years they
color contrast and color analogy and their use of a consistent were to work in close partnership. While this partnership
technique of regular marks, we see posed the sort of questions formed the watershed of Cubist art and thinking, Picasso and
about painting that were to be early Cubism's main concern. Braque did not exhibit in any of the annual Salons after 1909
Each of Cezanne's late paintings was both a full-blooded rep- many
or in the group manifestations of Cubism by which the
resentation of external nature and an independent fabric of movement became publicly known.
colors, marks, and values with its own internal logic. Braque's Braque's interest in the structural properties of Cezanne's
Fauve paintings (1905-6) already show allegiance to this atti- late work drew Picasso into an increasingly self-conscious and
tude and in the next few years he focused increasingly on the analytical investigation of painting itself, particularly in its

dual nature of painting. "The new painting seeks to represent poise between a flat internal identity and a representation of
not the object, but the new unity," he wrote, "it is a lyricism the external world. Together they sought new ways of expres-
achieved entirely by pure pictorial means." sing three-dimensional objects on a two-dimensional surface.
Picasso was less committed to a tradition of modern French Out of this radical exploration of the forms of painting many
Still Life with Violin and Pitcher by Braque; oil on canvas; Portrait of Vollard oil on canvas; 92x65cm
by Picasso; (36X26in);
1 17x74cm (46x29in); 1909—10. Offentliche Kunstsammlung, 1910. State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow
Kunstmuseum Basel

Other ideas about visual imagery were thrown up. The complexity of early Cubist painting is commonly ex-
Landscapes painted in 1908-9, by Braque at I'Estaque, by plained in terms of assembling together different viewpoints
Picasso at Horta del Ebro, are powerful arrangements of of the objects depicted. Certainly it was central to the col-
angular volumes spread across the surface. The motifs of trees laborative intention of Picasso and Braque to expose and
and houses, while clearly identifiable, are brutally reduced to reject the artifice of naturalistic illusionism, which was con-
simple elements of a visual language. While the mass of the cerned with painting an object or objects from one fixed view-
buildings is clearly represented and their relative positions in point at one fixed moment in time. In a painting like Braque's
space suggested by overlap and by changes of scale, the most great Still and Pitcher (1909—10; Offentliche
Life with Violin
coherent reality to emerge is that of the painting itself. Its Kunstsammlung, Kunstmuseum Basel), we do see the pitcher
image is of a densely crowded relief, all of whose forms relate as if from several angles simultaneously: its inside and outside,
clearly to each other, even down to the vigorously hatched its hard, straight silhouette, as well as the full softness of its

brushmarks with which the paint is applied. Braque's Houses curves. There is indeed something of a plan-section-elevation
at I'Estaque (1908; Kunstmuseum, Basel) is a good example. fusion of its attributes. But it is probably more rewarding to
In 1909 to 191 1 Picasso and Braque painted
the years see the intention less simply or mechanically.
mainly and figure paintings in a manner that became
still lifes The Cubists intended painting to take account of the shift-
increasingly identifiable as a Cubist "style" and was rapidly ing, sometimes irrational and random, nature of human ex-
taken up by other painters in Paris. The color scale was grad- perience of things and places and of time and space. The
ually reduced from a basically green-to-brown palette to an major painters, at least, did not evolve one particular system
almost monochromatic range of warm grays: "color disturbed of painting: they were neither scientific nor consistent in their
the space in our paintings", Braque wrote later. Drawing approach to motifs. Systems were artificial, out of touch with
became progressively a linear, often rectilinear scaffolding, the intuitive reality they wanted painting to encompass.
—
and paint now very closely related to the consistent regular "Cubism, which is accused of being a system, condemns all

fabric of late Cezanne —was spread like a protective skin from systems" (Gleizes and Metzinger, Du Cubisme, 19 13).
edge to edge of the canvas. The fragmentary planes in Picasso's Portrait of Vollard
 CUBISM AND FUTURISM 85I

(State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow), the first of his

three great portraits of 1909-10, are not hterally an accumu-
lation of multi-viewpoint observations. Many of them might
seem to contribute little to our knowledge of the sitter's

characteristic forms. But the image as a whole appears both a

stable physical presence and to be full of allusions to time,
movement in space, shifts of light —indeed to all the complex,
often simultaneous perceptions and circumstances that affect
our experience of things. In the Portrait of Kahnweiler (Art
Institute of Chicago) it is even clearer that early Cubism was
as much and conceptual as concerned with visual
intellectual
analysis. Still painted from a sitter and (just) a recognizable
likeness, it is a highly refined poise between the painting of a
presence in space and the ordering of marks on a flat surface.
In this manipulation of marks, the spaces between and
around the objects are as physically articulate as the objects
themselves. (Braque wrote later: "There is in nature a tactile
space, might almost say a manual space
I This is the space . . .

that fascinated me so much —

that is what early Cubist paint-
ing was, a research into space.") There was a precedent for
this system of painting in Cezanne's passage, the means by

which he held together the spatial composition of his late

landscapes. But in the monochromatic context of Analytical
Cubism, the homogeneity of the whole surface fabric seems
more complete. Kahnweiler's presence is elusive; clues to it are
scattered and compressed within a very shallow continuum of
planes and tonal modulations. In this way, form-space re- Contrast of Forms by Femand Leger, from the series Contrasts of Forms;
oil on burlap; 130x98cm (5iX39in); 1913. Philadelphia Museum of Art
lationships are repeatedly created without compromising the
flat surface of the canvas.
A year later in Picasso's Toreador Playing a Guitar (Nation- and in later writing made it clear that Cubism was a transition
al Gallery, Prague) or in Braque's Man with Violin (Siftung between the 19th-century and Abstract art. Others, like
Sammlung E.G. Biihrle, Zurich) of 191 1, the ostensible sub- Picabia, flirted temporarily with abstraction. Leger recalled
ject matter has gone. The poise between the external reference that he had to "go almost as far as abstraction to free myself
and internal identity has tipped in favor of the internal. With- from Cezanne's influence": see his Contrasts of Forms paint-
out titles, we are faced with a rectangle or an oval covered in ings of 1912—13. The Abstract tendencies in the work of
marks, lines, and tones. They have become a succession of Larionoff, the Italians Balla and Russolo, and the English Vor-
allusive painterly events across a surface: intuitive and impro- ticists (Lewis and Bomberg) also derive from Analytical
visatory in execution, seductively sensual to the eye. The Cubism.
painting is essentially a painting, itself part of external reality For Mondrian, who was working in Paris at the time, as for

in its own right. Malevich in Russia, the implications in Cubism seemed finite.

was this late phase of Analytical Cubism sometimes

It — He wrote later that "Cubism did not accept the logical conse-
called "Hermetic Cubism" since visual analysis was now of quences of its own discoveries: it was not developing
—
marginal significance that was so influential for Abstract art. abstraction towards its ultimate —the expression of pure
It seemed an incentive for a type of painting derived from — reality." In fact he misinterpreted the basic intention of the
the divisionist tradition of Impressionist and Post-Impression- Cubists.The reality that they were ultimately concerned with
ist painting —concerned with the abstract properties of the expressing was not the reality of abstract forms. Many of
medium at the expense of any recognizable subject matter. them made subsequent refutations of Abstract art's validity.
Many painters moved from this transitional formal stage to a ("Abstract art is just painting," Picasso said. "But what about
point of pure abstraction, some only briefly but others as an drama?") The pioneers of abstraction saw the value of 1911
irrevocable step. Cubism as discrediting the object in painting. The develop-
In Paris, Robert Delaunay (1885-1941) painted the first ments in Cubism after 191 1 were all very consciously con-
French Abstract painting [The Disk, 1912; private collection) cerned with reinstating the reality of the object into painting.
Since 191 1 both Picasso and Braque had been experiment-
Portrait of Kahnweiler by Picasso; oil on canvas; 1 10x73cm (43X29in); ing with various devices to emphasize the surface reality of a
1 9 ' o. Art Institute of Chicago painting. Sand, sawdust, plaster, metal filings, even ashes had
The Impact of African Art
Among the zoth-centun- Parisian painters it

was probably Maurice de Vlaminck (1876-

1958) who first looked seriously at African
art. He acquired a small collection of carved
figures and masks —some bought, some given
to him —CI 904— 5 and later claimed to have
shown them to Derain and then to Matisse
and Picasso. Others have laid claim to "the
discovery", claims now impossible to prove
or disprove. Matisse too started coUectmg
African objeas C1905; so did Picasso a year
or two later. Independently and simul-
taneously the German Briicke painters (not-
ably Ernst Kirchner) were looking at African
and Oceanic carvings in Dresden's ethno-
graphical museum.
Why African art? Why at this time? Part of
the answer to these two questions lies toward
the fringes of art history —
the outcome of
political and economic histor\': colonial ex-
pansion and the opening up of intercontinen-
tal trade. Just as Japanese art reached 1 9th-
century Europe as a chance by-product of
East-West trade, so the artifacts of primitive A An .\shanti akuaba, -A Bakota mbulu-
cultures were first collected in the context of earned by a pregnant ngulu guardian figure)
colonial trading and of a generalized ethno- woman as a charm; from Zaire; wood
height 36cm (1410). covered with brass and
graphic curiosit)-. European collectors had
Dallas Museum of Fine copper. Friede
made isolated acquisitions since the i6th
Arts Collection, New York
century — more than as
as travelers' curios
art —
but, reflecting the pattern of European
colonization, Africa was less well represented
in their collections than the South Seas.
The 50 years of the 1 9th century- saw
last

the successive foundation of ethnographic

museums throughout Europe and America,
and large ethnographic sections in all the
great Universal Exhibitions. The 1878 foun-
dation of the Trocadero Museum in Paris
(now the Musee de I'Homme), for instance,
was largely inspired by the ethnographic
section of the Paris Exposition Untverselle of
the same year. When Picasso visited the
Trocadero in the late 1900s, it was an
uncatalogued collection of ethnic objects,
very casually displayed.
During the zoth century — largely because
artists recognized primitive masks and carv-
ings as "art" —the quasi-scientific character
of these museums has been transformed and
replaced by the aesthetic priorities of the art
gallery. In a parallel way, many modern
private patrons have collected and exhibited
African art objects alongside modern paint-

Top left A fang mask The lasting influence

that once belonged to of African art on
Andre Derain; wood sculpture: Appeasement
whitened with kaolin; (or Reassurance) by Max
height 48cni Ugin). Ernst; bronze; height
Musee de I'Homme, 68cm (i7in); 1961.
Paris Private collection
 GALI.HRY STUDY

ings and sculptures. Many artists, too, have too, questioned the sophisticated artifice of made occasional stylistic references at first, it

huilt up their own collections. European "high art", particularly its il- is in the confident scale of freedom — brilliant
Up to a point then, African art just lusionistic naturalism, its adherence to Clas- color and violent, apparently artless, execu-
"became available" to the modern artist. But sical ideals of beauty, and its art-for-art's tion —of the Fauves and Expressionists that
the motives for his interest were particular. sake concept of the objet d'art. The fact that we should look for its assimilation. "We felt

Gauguin's attitude to Kanaka art in Tahiti African art was uninhibited by these con- no need to protect ourselves from foreign
had set the pattern. He asserted that primi- cerns focused their interest. Although they influences," Matisse wrote, "for they could
tive Oceanic cultures were superior to the only enrich us, and make us more demanding
debased and decadent state of the Classical- The Dancer of of our own means of expression."
Avignon by Picasso; oil
based European traditions. The avant-garde The influence of African art is most explicit

of the 1 900s—conscious of being the "primi-

on canvas; 382X256cin
(i5oXioiin); 1907.
in the art of Picasso and the young Cubists,
tives of a new age" —sought the principles of Collection of Walter P. and of early- zoth-century sculptors. The
a new and modern language for art. They, Chrysler Jr, New York willful distortions of the repainted figures in
Picasso's Les Demoiselles d' Avignon (1907;
Museum of Modern Art, New York) are a
clear instance; as is his Dancer 1907 (Collec-
tion of Walter P. Chrysler Jr) — its surfaces
scored and savaged with scratches and inci-

sions into the paint. More lastingly, the

influence of African art liberated his attitude
to image-making. "A head is a matter of eyes,
nose, and mouth", he now
Leo Stein, told
"which can be distributed in any way you
like; the head remains a head". Picasso

penetrated the "noble savage" romanticism

that had clouded most earlier thinking about
primitive cultures and looked objectively at
primitive imagery as a valid alternative to the
European tradition — as simply another form
of art. The animistic qualities of his later
constructions, from 1 9 1 5 onwards, also ex-
press the appeal for him of the fetish-like
properties of tribal masks.
In modern sculpture, too, there are clear
examples of direct stylistic influence at first

(in works by Epstein, Modigliani, the

Brikke), but the more oblique assimilation of

African forms and concepts is of lasting
importance, as works of Brancusi, Arp,
in the

Moore, Hepworth, the young Giacometti,

and Ernst. The massive revival of carving was
partly inspired by this source, as were a new-
scale of vigorous formal invention and an
experimental approach to media: the inces-
sant use of totemic and mask-like images
owes everything to it.
Artists at the start of the zoth century
sought new ways of image-making, new
references to reality more in keeping with the
radical innovations in modern consciousness.
African art seemed most radical, offered
alternativemeans that were most different
from the European norms. Its formal free-
doms and inventions have become deeply
subsumed into modern art's imagery and its
influence has also paved the way to a very
open-minded attitude to the art of other
cultures.

NICHOLAS WADLtY

Further reading. (Joldwater, R. Primitwism m

Modem Painting, New York (1938). Willett, F. Afri-

can Art, London (1971).

854 CUBISM AND FUTURISM

The letters can also be read as words and were a non-

illusionistic, non-naturalistic way of referring to the subject or
meaning of the painting. They form the title of Picasso's Ma

i Jolie (191 1 ;

subtitle to Braque's
Museum of Modern
York) and a sort of
Art,
Le Portugais (1911; Offendiche Kunst-
sammlung, Kunstmuseum Basel), where they are letters and
figures from a poster in a painting of a cafe entertainer.
New

The pasting of papers (patterns, printed images, newsprint)

.^ and other materials or objects on to the surface dramatically
achieved the same dual proposed freedom from the
effect. It

inhibitions of traditional paint on canvas and from the

illusionistic representation of nature. These were not painted
signs that coalesced to represent things: these were things
themselves. Taken together, these two properties of collage
emphasized the independent reality (often called the "object
quality") of the work of art.
Sometimes the pasted elements were ready-made illusions.
Examples are wood-grained wallpaper to represent wood as
in Picasso's Still Life with Violin and Fruit, 191 3 (Philadelphia

Museum of Art). In other collages, the colle element repre-

sents itself: newspaper, matchboxes, a visiting card. Gris even
pasted a piece of mirror in a painting called The Washstand
(191 2; private collection) and in another an engraving —by
someone else — in an illusionistically drawn frame. In yet other
collages, the extraneous elements are purely abstract in func-
tion like a painted area of color or tone.
A humor and witty allusions to the condition of
playful
painting abound in these early collages, particularly in those
of Picasso and Gris. Among the newspaper headlines that Gris
incorporated into paintings were "the true and the false"
and "works of art will no longer be forged". Gris, who
had hitherto been in the shadow of Picasso and Braque,
emerged to make a major contribution to later Cubism, from
1911. He exerted considerable influence on other Cubist
Still Life with Harp and Violin by Braque; oil on canvas; painters in Paris.
1 1 6X8 1 cm (46 X 3 2in) ; 1 9 1 2. Kunstsammlung
Collage also emphasized Cubism's ambition to bring art
Nordrhein-Westfalen, Diisseldorf
closer to everyday reality. The objects used are commonplace,
been mixed with pigment to exaggerate the paint's material often life-worn and disposable trivia. Their character is inti-

presence on top of the canvas; the first collage (from the mate, urban, or domestic, and their concerted effect is of an
French coller, "to paste") was probably Braque's Fruit Dish immediate art far from the remote "high art" of the museums.
and Glass of 19 iz (Douglas Cooper Collection, France). The Cubists themselves were enthusiasts for popular art and
Braque had used the wood-graining and marbling effects of culture —they were great and Picas-
circus-goers, for instance,
commercial house-decorators (in whose trade he had served as so at least was an ardent American comic strips and
fan of —
an apprentice) and both he and Picasso had introduced letters something of this taste emerges from the collages. This aspect
and figures into some paintings. of collage was fully exploited later by the Dadaists, especially
The association of letters with flat surfaces is fixed and by Kurt Schwitters. The abrupt posing of oblique and unex-
permanent. Picasso has said that he used them "to force the pected relationships between images that recurs in Picasso's

painted surface to measure up to somethmg rigid"; Braque collages was to be richly influential for Dada and Surrealism.
said that "these were forms which being themselves flat were Cubist painting from c 1 9 1 2—1 3 is full of the implications of
not in space, therefore by contrast, their presence in the pic- collage. Paintings like Picasso's Violin and Guitar (191 3;
ture made it possible to distinguish between those forms Philadelphia Museum of Art) have a simple, concrete reality- in

which were in space and those which were not." In practice, stark contrast to the elusive abstraction of 191 1. Braque used
the letters were drawn in various ways into the spirited dia- collage elements only in drawings, though many of these were
logue between surface and depth: atmospheric paint was often large and some on canvas (for example. Guitar 1913-14;
dragged across them, compromising their flatness. Museum of Modern Art, New York). He transcribed collage's
 5
3 2

CUBISM AND FUTURISM 855

principles directly into contemporary paintings

191 like the stronger allegiance to narrative, as well as a
more dynamic
Composition with the Ace of Clubs (Musee d'Art Moderne de physical energy than in and Braque's analytical
Picasso's
la Ville de Paris). Colors, textures, and lines are arranged and paintings. The same energy pervades his more abstract works
"applied" to the surface. of 1913-14 and reappears in clearly figurative images of
If Analytical Cubism was a sophisticated and extreme re- heroic modern man by 19 17, such as The Card Players
finement of traditional painterly techniques, Synthetic Cubism (Kroller-Miiller Museum, Otterlo). The subject matter of
rejected outright some The surface was now
of its principles. Delaunay 's figurative paintings is almost insistently modern,
immutable and absolute. In no sense was it any longer a trans- forexample the Eiffel Tozi'er series (19 10— 11; examples in the
parent window on to an illusion. The image's own reality was Offendiche Kunstsammlung, Kunstmuseum Basel, and the
also now absolute: a part of the real world. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York), the Window
Gris later described Analytical art as starting from the par- on the City series (191 2; one example in the Tate Gallery,
ticular (a seen motif) and moving to a generalization (the London), and Homage to Bleriot (Musee de Peinture et de
painting), art started from the generality of
whereas Synthetic Sculpture, Grenoble).
the surface and the artist's materials and created a particular Gleizes, Metzinger, and the Duchamp brothers were the
and unique image from them. In general terms this distinction principal movers behind collective activities —
exhibitions,
holds true for Cubism at large. The monochromatic and tex- meetings. A Cubist section was a regular feature of annual
tural style of early Cubism was abandoned by both Picasso Paris Salons from 19 10. The Section d'Or group founded in
and Braque in favor of flat, often highly colored paintings, 1911 included the Duchamps, Gleizes, Metzinger, Leger, Le
with unequivocally exposed surfaces. The paintings originate Fauconnier, Gris, de la Fresnaye, Lhote, Picabia, Delaunay,
from ideas if not just from the materials: they were no longer Archipenko, the architect Mare, and the writers Apollinaire,
based on the visual analysis of the 1908—10 still lifes. Allard, Mercereau, and Salmon. It met twice weekly. In 191
For Picasso, this was a resumption of his natural method of there was a Section d'Or exhibition in Paris: probably the
working as shown in the early period. Perhaps not fortuitous- most representative Cubist exhibition ever, with 30 con-
some of his early subjects reappear, as in Harlequin, 191
ly, tributors. Additionally, numerous exhibitions were sent
(Museum of Modern Art, New York). In the aftermath of the throughout Europe, by 1914 as far afield as Moscow, New
invention of collages the distinct personalities of Picasso and York, and Tokyo. By this means the Cubist style was dissemi-
Braque reemerged after a period of partnership in which indi- nated among the avant-gardes of Moscow, St Petersburg,
viduality was deliberately suppressed. Picasso reverted — in Prague, Berlin, Munich, Milan, and London. The poet Apol-
pamtings, drawings, collages, and constructions (of paper, prominent among the writers who supported Cubism,
linaire,

wood, metal, and other materials) —to the sort of prodigal (forexample in his essays The Cubist Painters published in
outburst of inventive energy that had characterized his earlier 1913) also became involved with the divergent tendencies that
work. Even still-life paintings, for example Green Still Life, emerged within the movement.
1914 (Museum of Modern Art, New York), and Still Life in Delaunay 's experiments in "pure" painting, based on the
a Landscape, 191 5 (private collection), exploit to the full simultaneous contrasts of color, were christened "Orphism"
the expressively disquieting and magical qualities of Cubist by Apollinaire. Its followers included Sonia Delaunay, Bruce,
juxtaposition. Frost, and the American "Synchromists" Russell and Mac-
The close collaboration between the two major Cubists donald-Wright. Chagall and Archipenko were also associated
(Picasso called it a marriage; Braque compared them to two with Orphism as were the poets Canudo (editor of the Orphist
mountaineers roped together) was at an end by 1912.. By review Montjoie) and Cendrars (writer of the first simul-
1 9 14 — not least through the outbreak of the World War
First taneiste poem —
on a scroll 6 ft, 2 m, long with type printed
in which many Cubists served — the wider Cubist movement in in various colors and sizes against an abstract design by
Paris was also losing its collective identity. Sonia Delaunay. Delaunay's painting was also gready ad-
In general, the other Cubist painters in Paris did not mired by the Blaue Reiter Expressionists in Munich (Klee,

conduct such an intensive exploration of the mechanics of Macke, Marc). By 1913, Marcel Duchamp, close friend of
painting. Although Leger and Delaunay were led towards ex- became increasingly involved in intellectual resol-
Apollinaire,
perimental Abstract works c 191 2- 13, most Cubist painting utions about art, issues largely arising out of Cubism. Virtual-
was more concerned with subject matter. (It is some measure ly rejecting painting, he turned, with Picabia, into an area of
of this that collage as a medium was not taken up by anyone activity that closely anticipated Dada.
other than Picasso, Braque, and Gris.) The Cubist idiom pion- Cubist sculpture fell into two general categories. First there

eered by these three became the basis for explicit images of were works in the traditional media of bronze or stone that

—
modern city life, with subjects and sometimes technical de- interpreted painting's new attitude to image and form in three

vices — reflecting the heritage of Post-Impressionism. dimensions. Archipenko made the first "sculpture with a hole
On movement was more con-
the whole, this outer (aibist in it", his Walking Woman of 19 12 (Denver Art Museum)

cerned with "modernism" per se. Leger's Nudes in a Lorest and he and Duchamp-Villon were concerned with the form-
(1909-10; Kroller-Miiller Museum, Otterlo) shows the space dialogue thrown open by early Cubist painting. Laurens
856 CUBISM AND FUTURISM

and Lipchitz made still lifes and figures of austere and angular is still very alive in Europe and America.
formal relationships that are close to the simple planear forms Apart from its transitional influence on early Abstract art,

of Synthetic Cubism. the angular stvle of early Cubism made a massive impact on
The second category — in the wake of collage —was more art and design at large, from Expressionist painting to Purist
concerned with new materials. Picasso was the most prolific art and architecture and product design. It replaced the seduc-

maker of multimedia constructions, often painted. Construc- tive curvilinearin- of Art Nouveau as a modern international

tions like the pamted wood 5^/7/ Life with Upholstery Fringe, language.
1914 (Tate Gallery, London) relate to particular primitive The wider influence of Cubism revised standards of reality
masks (wobe, from the Ivory Coast) in which he was m- in art: both with the independent realitv' of the art work itself,

terested at the time. Generally, his three-dimensional pieces and with art's proximity' to the everyday real world. Concepts
have a fetish-like, animistic quality which had lam dormant in of time and space in art bore more relationship to real life than
his painting since 1908. Laurens and Archipenko also made they had in the static closed world of traditional art. Cubism's
inventive polychrome constructions, uninhibited in their free- central historical relationship is clear, both to 19th-century
dom from conventional media. As in Synthetic Cubist pamt- Realism and to much subsequent art in a century obsessed
ing, the particular image emerges very much from the nature with "the real".
of the materials themselves. Cubism also proposed a generous freedom of access for the
Cubism's influence on later sculpture can be related to these artist, both to any materials and to any source of imagery. The
two areas of activity. The Constructivist tradition, stemming free associationand correspondence of images or part images
from Tatlin, Gabo, and Pevsner, is in direct descent from the and of objects or materials characteristic of much modern art
Cubists' reductive analysis of form and their concern with originated in Cubism. Miro, Klee, or Chagall provide varied
interactions of form and space. For the Constructivists, a tot- examples from the 1920s and 1930s; much American and
ally Abstract sculpture was the logical outcome — they viewed European art of the 1950s and 1960s lies as clearly in the
the decorative and animistic qualities of Cubist constructions same tradition.
as degenerate. Modern sculpture's general concern with space It has been thought that the freedoms proposed by Cubism

(with linearity and transparency; must also be seen in relation have subsequently been abused: that ultimately they have
to Cubism. spelt the death of painting. But in hindsight, considering the

What has become known as the "art of assemblage" is challenges to painting as a living medium thrown up by film,

essentially derived from collage's loosening of the boundary photography, and other audio and visual media of the modern
between painting and sculpture and from its new dimension of world, the major painters associated with Cubism (Picasso,
reality of the art object. Picasso's constructed objects, of 19 12 Braque, Leger) can be seen — like Matisse — to have sustained
to 1915, and Duchamp's "ready-mades" from 1914, are an- and revitalized the faith and the principles of great art.
cestors to a new genre exploited fully by the Dadaists and
Surrealists (particularly by Miro, Ernst, and Schwitters) which Futurism. The foundation manifesto of Futurism was pub-
lished by F.T. Marineui in 1909. It was the first modern art

Life with Chair Caning by Picasso; oilcloth and

Still oil on canvas; movement to choose its own name. Sociopolitical in its im-
29X37cin {iixi5in); 1912. Musee Picasso; Paris pulse, Futurism was a movement embracing all the arts and in

the course of the next five years, manifestos were published on

subjects from Geometrical and Mechanical Splendor to The
Futurist Art of Noises. In a country that stood as a symbol for
the very traditions in art that were being universally over-
thrown by the avant-garde, the Italian Futurists were more
anxious than most to disclaim the classical past. Their mani-
festos proclaim the glory and beauty of modern dynamism,
youth, speed, originality, danger, energy, the expendable; they
call for the destruction of museums, libraries, and academies,
of dreams, traditions, and morals. The movement was cen-
tered on Milan, heart of the belated industrialization of
modern Italy. The movement as a whole survived the First
World War (which in principle it welcomed as a potential
purifying force on society), but was widely discredited for its
endorsement of the Italian Fascist Party C1919. In the visual
arts, its significant lifespan was C1909 to 191 5.

The two 1 9 10 manifestos of Futurist painting were signed

by Boccioni, Balla, Carra, Russolo, and Severini. Their early
work reflects universal trends in turn-of-the-centurv art: Art
 CUBISM AND FUTURISM 857

A Girl Runs along the Balcony by GiacomoBalla; oil on canvas; I28xiz8cm (50X5010); 1912. Galleria d'Arte Moderna, Milan

Nouvcau, Symbolism, and Post-Impressionism. The only shown in the 1911 Milan exhibition of Futurist painting were
native contributor to modern Kuropean art had been the images of the great modern metropolis, such as building sites,

sculptor Medardo Rosso, whose work (particularly its tran- rioting crowds, and night clubs.The techniques were either
sient urban qualities) is repeatedly acclaimed in the mani- loosely impressionist (broken brushwork to convey the shift-
festos. ing light, movement, and vitality of city life) or they still

By 1910 Boccioni was painting self-consciously modern echoed the symbolic, languid arabesque of Art Nouveau. Boc-
images: The Outskirts: Factories of Porta Romana (1908-9; cioni 's The Laugh (C1911; Museum of Modern Art, New
Collection of the Banca Commerciale, Milan), The Modern York) expresses well both the manifestos' aim to "put the
Idol (t9io; Collection of K. Estorik, London). Paintings spectator at the center of the picture" (here he is assaulted by
 —
858 CUBISM AND FUTURISM

an array of simultaneous highly colored fragments of a night- sant'Elia in 1914 was equally prophetic and influential. It

club image) and the closeness to 19th-century urban Im- stressed the new needs of modern city life — functionalism and
pressionism. expendability. His visionary drawings of La Cttta Nuova,
In 1911-12 matured under the influence
Futurist painting 1912—14 (factories, flats, generators, airship hangars, rooftop
of Analytical Cubism, known through periodicals and par- aerodromes, multi-level railway terminals) have been echoed
ticularly from a group visit to Paris in 191 1. The Futurists' repeatedly in the subsequent theory and practice of modern
palette, while still gaudy by comparison with the Cubists', was architecture.
reduced and less literal, their style is more abstract, angular, Futurists actively participated in the political demonstra-
and schematic. The Cubism was
crystalline structure of early tions and 914-15, and with Italy's entry into the war
riots of 1

adapted to kinetic and environmental images of the city. The in 191 5 Boccioni, Marinetti, Russolo and sant'Elia enlisted.

multi-viewpoint fragmentation lent itself readily to the Futur- Boccioni and sant'Elia were both killed in 1916.
dynamic vision of a total and simultaneous interaction of
ists' The influence of Futurism —through exhibitions, publica-
urban sensations: see Boccioni's States of Mind series (191 1- tions, and, not least, Marinetti's propagandist lecture tours
12; one example in the Museum of Modern Art, New York), was considerable. Its influence is clearly discernible in the later
Carra's Funeral of the Anarchist Galli (191 1; Museum of phases of Parisian Cubism —
works by Leger, Oris, De-
in

Modern Art, New York), and Severini's Dynamic Hieroglyph launay, Gleizes, and Duchamp-Villon although there were—
of the Bal Tabarin (191 2; Museum of Modern Art, New some heated disputes between artists in Paris and Milan about
York). Boccioni's Forces of a Street (191 1; private collection) who initiated Futurist ideas. Elsewhere the influences of
is the archetypal Futurist image of a city street at night. Head- Futurism and Cubism often acted in concert, for example on
lights, street lights, and house lights are abstracted into the Vorticism of Wyndham Lewis and others in England,
symbolic lines of force and energy. An exhibition of these on the city paintings of Marin, and Weber in America,
Stella,

paintings was shown in Paris, 191 2, which then toured on Expressionist art in Germany and Prague, on the "Cubo-
Europe and was internationally very influential. Balla, whose Futurism" of the Russian avant-garde (Larionoff, the Burliuk
earlier Neo-Impressionist works were influenced by chrono- brothers).
photography (for example, A Girl Runs along the Balcony, The importance of Futurist influence lay in its spirit of
1912; Galleria d'Arte Moderna, Milan), moved in 1913 into aggressive and anarchic modernism. It was the most succinct
uncompromisingly Abstract paintings in which Futurist dy- expression of a widely felt romantic concept of modern artists

namics were interpreted as simultaneous color contrasts. as the primitives of a new world. The Futurists' ambition to
Boccioni's Manifesto of Futurist Sculpture, published in engage in all artistic media and their pioneering activities in

1912, was the first clear statement of Cubism's implications free-form typography, a primitive musique-concrete, and a
for sculpture. It emphasized the abolition of "closed" statues, wide range of demonstrations, performances, and happenings,
the expression of movement and atmosphere, and the use of were all taken up by the Dada movement and absorbed into
all available materials in any combination. His bronzes. the mainstream of modern art.
Unique Forms of Continuity in Space (191 3) and Evolution of NICHOLAS WADLEY
a Bottlein Space (191 2), rank among the most original and

influential Futurist works. Exhibitions of his sculpture were

Bibliography. Fry, E. Cubism, London (1966). Golding, J. Cubism: a
held in Paris and elsewhere 1913— 14. These and his manifesto
History and Analysis i^oj—14, London (1968). Martin, M. Futurist
were probably more instrumental in transmitting the radical
Art and Theory i<)o<)—i^, London (1968). Rosenblum, R. Cubism
ideas of Cubist sculpture than anything produced in Paris. and 10th Century Art, New York (1968). Taylor, J. C. Futurism, New-
A Manifesto of Futurist Architecture published by Antonio York (1961). Wadley, N. Cubism, London (1972).
 47

ABSTRACT ART

Improvisation 1 3 by Kandinsky; oil on canvas; liox 140cm (47x55'"); 1910. Neuc i'lnakothek, Munich (see page 864)
86o ABSTRACT ART

and warm colors gave a feeling of

ABSTRACT Art is the generally accepted term for cer- cending lines, light tones,

tainworks of zoth-century painting and sculpture gaiety and excitement. was widely considered that particu-
It

which have no representational or symbolic func- lar feelings could be associated with particular colors; it was
tion and yet are not simply pattern making. The adjective certainly expected then that with further research this equival-

"abstract" is not altogether appropriate, but nor are such ence could be put on a proper scientific footing.

alternatives as "nonobjective", "nonrepresentational", and Gauguin, perhaps more daring and imaginative than Seurat,
"concrete". Abstract art is not an artistic style as such, and began in 1888 to use colors in an abstract way, advising his
within this general heading more explicit categories, Neo- friends to paint a field, for example, not the way it looked, but
Plasticism and Abstract Expressionism, for example, have the way they felt. His friend and associate, Vincent van Gogh,
been defined in stylistic terms. also accepted liberated color in his paintings: he remained
The first completely Abstract paintings appeared in Paris firmly attached to a linear depiction of the object he was
and Munich in 191Z, and within a year or two comparable painting —be it landscape, still-life, or figure — but felt free to
work was being produced in Moscow, Milan, New York, choose whatever colors seemed appropriate. The lessons of
London, and elsewhere. Much of this pioneering Abstract Seurat, Gauguin, and Van Gogh were perhaps too far-reach-
painting was experimental in character, representing a short- ing for their younger contemporaries, though one of them,
lived phase in the careers of such painters as Larionoff, Leger, Maurice Denis, was prepared in 1890 to say: "Remember that
Delaunay, Picabia, Marc, Balla, and Wyndham Lewis. For a picture — before being a battle horse, a nude, or some anec-
others, however. Abstract painting was a total commitment, dote — is essentially a flat surface covered with colours ar-
and here four major artists must be named: the Dutchman, ranged in a certain order". It was, however, not until 1 5 years
Piet Mondrian, working in Paris and in Holland, the Russian, later, at the Salon d'Automne of 1905, that Matisse and his
Wassily Kandinsky, working Munich, another Russian,
in friends produced the restatement of these post-impressionist
Kasimir Malevich, working in Moscow, and the Czech, Frank ideas that we know as Fauvism [see Fauvism and Ex-
Kupka, working in Paris. None of these four artists was young pressionism).
when they painted their first Abstract pictures; all had passed Fauvism was primarily about color; the movement that fol-

through a long period of developing their ideas in relation to lowed, Cubism, was more concerned with the creation of a

the pictorial innovations of the time. Kandinsky, in his theor- new kind of pictorial space, in the pursuit of which respect for
etical text of 1 9 10, Concerning the Sprititual in Art, discerned appearances was slowly abandoned. A search for the perma-
two main ways to abstraction: the painterly way of the Im- nent qualities of things led Picasso and Braque to pass from a
pressionistsand Post-Impressionists which led to Fauvism and perceptual to a conceptual vision. Pictures were constructed
Cubism, and the route of the Symbolist painters which led to a out of the very simple forms of very simple objects. The first

more religious art of "inner necessity", which, for Kandinsky, marks made on the canvas were like signs that would slowly
was the essential quality that made Abstract art meaningful. come together to represent an object: it was not an inventory
It is certainly true that the general tendency in late- 19th- of the world of appearances that the painter was presenting,
century art can be described as an increasing abstraction of but things as they exist in the mind — in Platonic terms, not the
the means of painting. Impressionism was a late phase of shadows in the cave but the thing itself {see Cubism and
realism, in which the artist's aim remained an objective ren- Futurism).
dering of the thing seen. But the greatest of the Impressionists, In this belief in a transcendental reality, the Cubists had
Monet and Cezanne, were equally aware of the artist's role as something in common with the artists who represent Kandins-
a picture-maker; slowly the emphasis shifted to a concern ky's other way to abstraction — the Symbolists. Successive gen-
with the very nature of perception, and the problem of how erations of painters in France and England had cast doubt on
those "little sensations before nature" (in Cezanne's words) the need for painting to be enslaved to the pursuit of appear-
can be rendered in terms of paint on canvas (see Impression- ances, and had preferred instead to paint an imagined world.
ism). Both Monet and Cezanne were, in different ways, In many cases they offered this as an alternative to the ma-
obsessed with the structural nature of picture-making, and the terialism of the time. D.G. Rossetti and Edward Burne-Jones
magic and mystery of creating space on a flat surface. In their in England, Puvis de Chavannes, Gustave Moreau, and
hands, the whole development of painting seems to turn in- Odilon Redon in France had all by the 1880s made it clear
wards, with momentous consequences for the zoth century. that art could concern itself with the dream and the vision.
The new generation of painters at work in Pans in the Inevitably such painting presumed to appeal to some spiritual
took these ideas further. Here the leaders were Seurat
1 8 80s reality, considering itself superior to any art based on the
and Gauguin, both of whom can be seen as important precur- pursuit of appearances alone [see Symbolism and Art
sors of Abstract art. Seurat analyzed the art of painting into its Nouveau).
component parts — line, color, tone, composition —believing There was, furthermore, a certain widespread feeling that
that within each division emotional moods could be expressed the values of Western society were hollow, that scientific prog-
by formal means alone. For Seurat, descending lines, dark resswas an illusion, and that the whole capitalist system
tones, cool colors suggested sadness and despair, whereas as- which had flourished since the industrial revolution was essen-
 ABSTRACT ART 86 I

tially self-destructive, despite enormous wealth and pros-

the sociates, were all touched by these ideas, and in many cases
perity that had been created. Europeans were prepared to look responded directly to them. Making a viable Abstract art was
outside their own society' and its historical sources for inspira- seen as a heroic, even promethean activity, and immense
tion in thought and art. Far from being dismissed as inherently claims were made for its implications. In the case of Mondrian
inferior to Christianity, Eastern religions were now studied for they were perhaps justified, because the kind of Abstract art
what seemed to be their superiorwisdom, and such pan-religi- he produced had greater possibilities of development than that
ous faiths as Theosophy became immensely attractive to of his fellow pioneers: its influence on architecture, design,
thinking men. The art of the East and, more dramatically, that and the applied arts in general is incontrovertible.
of black Africa and of Polynesia, seemed to have those qual- some respects the primacy in the concep-
Nevertheless, in
ities of strength and vitality that Western artists were on the must go to Wassily Kandinsky (1866—
tion of an Abstract art
point of losing. Gauguin's flight to Tahiti, and his recreation 1944). He remembered seeing one of Monet's Haystack paint-
in his own paintings of a lost and paradisiacal society, exem- ings in Moscow in the late 1890s, and, as he later wrote "deep
plifies in an extreme form this loss of confidence in Western inside me there was born the first faint doubt as to the import-
values. Art simultaneously seemed to become both less impor- ance of an 'object' as the necessan.- element in painting". It

tantand more important: less important because of its periph- was, however, not until C1910 that Kandinsky 's own logical
of no direct consequence to the masses, but
eral, elitist nature, development as a painter brought him to the verge of the
more important because with the decline of religion and the object-less picture. He had left Munich, but
Russia, settling in
loss of faith in material progress art alone could aspire to made long study and to France where he saw
visits to Italy,

contain a message for the future. and was profoundly impressed by Matisse's work at the so-
This then is the artistic and philosophic climate out of called Fauve Salon of 1905. His own painting at this time was
which Abstract art emerged. The four pioneers, and their as- for the most part expressionist landscape, with simplified and

Landscape with Houses by Kandinsky; oil on canvas; 70X97cni (28X38in); 1909. Kunstmuseum, Diisseldorf
Yellow-Red- Blue byKandinsky

Yellow-Red-Blue (19Z5; Musee National motion. Generally the background is a soft specific things. The curved line on the right of

d'Art Moderne, Paris) is a large painting (4 ft yellow, but blue appears in the background Yellow-Red-Blue, for example, may echo the
z in by 6 ft 6| in, 1.27 m by 2 m) intended by on the left whereas on the right that color "whiplash" line favored by some Jugendstil
the artist as a major statement. (His second belongs to the circle. We sense a formal designers around 1900; more specifically, it

book, an analysis of forms and composition- dialogue between left and right, echoed ma recalls the wavy Kandinsky had come to
line

al methods and their inner meaning, was counterchange in the disposition and func- use as a sign for horse and rider and may thus
published as a Bauhaus book the following tion of colors. A cloudy margin of purple have been charged with special meaning for
year: Point and Line to Plane.) It is an adds to the sense of lightness and space. him in the 1920s. Yet a preparatory drawing
Abstract painting. Its geometrical style, a Something akin to an occluded sun at the for the painting shows a pair of similar

more controlled and precise version of the top, left of center, shines mysteriously on waves, and here they suggest water to sup-
free style Kandinsky had used before his both groups from, perhaps, further back. port a geometrically summarized sailing
return to Moscow in 1 9 1 4, is typical of his During the years 1910— 14 Kandinsky boat.
work 1920s and can be associated with
in the painted pictures, conventionally called Ab- It seems that Kandinsky never drew a firm
the styleand aspirations of Bauhaus pro- stract, that incorporated recognizable if and final line between full abstraction and
ductions of the same period. Its title, listing much simplified motifs from his previous figuration, but was more concerned to follow
the three primaries which appear in the work, combined with more purely instinctive whatever pictorial suggestions his subcon-
painting accompanied by many other colors, nonrepresentational forms. Both sorts of scious and his working process produced.
is actually less suggestive than Kandinsky's motif would carry their sensory appeal and Indeed, he stated repeatedly that the intensely
titles often are, and again has a Bauhaus ring associational values (for example, red sug- representational art of primitives and Ab-
about it. gests warmth and strength) but insofar as we stract art of the sort he proposed were
Everything in the painting floats: colored are able to recognize in Kandinsky's sum- alternative paths towards spiritual, as op-
shapes and black signs hover in front of a mary notations the images of horse and rider posed to material, expression. Only realism
luminous space. Some shapes are transparent or mountain-top church or boat with rowers, could be defined as "the antithesis of art".
and relate ambiguously to each other; others we are additionally affected by the meaning In his earlier book. Concerning the Spiri-

suggest a clear spatial sequence, especially on such references have for us. During 1914— 21 tual in Art, published in December 191 1, he
the left. The left group of forms is assertive, Kandinky began to use clearer forms, more had quoted Delacroix to this effect, from the
with sharp silhouettes and accents, and lumi- consciously predetermined and tested for the French painter's /oMrna/ entry for 22 Febru-
nous; the right group is softer, made up of response they evoke, and it was as a painter ary 1 860. In 1 862, a year before his death,
more and suaver colors and less clear forms of geometrical Abstract paintings that he Delacroix painted a small picture, Hercules
ranging from vague veils of pink and purple returned to Germany at the end of 1921. We and Alcestis (The Phillips Collection,
to a large blue circle, all set off by the little need not assume that this development re- Washington, D.C.), illustrating one of the
checkerboard forms that seem to be in moved from his idiom all references to labors of Hercules in profoundly poetic

Above, right: Yellow-

Red-Blue by Wassily
Kandinsky; oil on
canvas; liyXioocm
(soxygin); 1925. Musee
National d'Art Moderne,
Pans

< Hercules and Alcestis

by Delacroix; 46 x 50cm
(iSXioin); i86z. The
Phillips Collection,
Washington, D.C.

A detail from Yellow-

Red-Blue by Kandinsky
showing part of the
right-hand group of
forms
 CLOSt STUDY

terms. His pictorial stage shows, on the left, bringing Alcestis back to her grateful hus- them, but they will respond to the longing
attendants making a sacrifice on an altar, on band, Admetus. Delacroix has chosen the and melancholic mood expressed by
the extreme right the mouth of Hades satisfying culmination of a complex narra- Delacroix's figures and staging, to the colors,
marked by fire, an infernal being, and ser- tive. Today even "educated" people looking the light and shadow, and to the soft tex-
pents (which recall an earlier event m the at this pamting arc not likely to know the tures. That response we can all make, and
Alcestis story), and center right, Hercules story, and in this sense it will be obscure to Kandinsky asks that we should make it to his
painting. This, larger than the Delacroix and
lighter in tone and arrangement, is remark-
ably similar to the Delacroix in its major
dispositions. Kandinsky would claim that the
Delacroix, though a most moving contribu-
tion to the continuing life of antique themes
in art, makes demands of the spec-
divisive
tator,whereas his own painting, com-
municating through responses to form and
color innate in everyone, can address itself
mankind. He did not quote, but
directly to all
would support, another sentence from that
entry in Delacroix's /owma/: "For what is the
supreme purpose of every type of art, if it is
not effect?"
NORBERT LYNTON
 . —
864 ABSTRACT ART

distorted forms and liberated color. It was such a picture as that this does not mean it lacks meaning, only that it conveys a
the Landscape with Houses of 1909 (Kunstmuseum, Diissel- different sort of meaning. Why should painting not be a kind
dorf) that gave Kandinsky the necessary revelation. He tells us of visual music, the argument proceeds, rather than the visual
what happened: poetry of, for example. Romantic art? Already in the 1870s
Whistler had called the portrait of his mother an Arrangement
I was returning, deep in thought, from my sketching, when on
in Grey and Black, arguing that its formal qualities made the
opening the studio door I was suddenly confronted with a
painting of unbelievable incandescent beauty. I stopped, bewil- picture a masterpiece, not the fact that it portrayed his
dered, gazing at it. The had no subject, it depicted no
picture mother. Kandinsky followed this example of using musical
recognizable object but was entirely composed of patches of nomenclature by calling major paintings "Compositions",
his

bright color. I approached closer, and then 1 recognized the and his less ambitious works "Improvisations" and "Im-
—
painting for what it really was one of my own works, placed pressions".
on its side on the easel . .
By 1 9 14 Kandinsky had evolved a language of regular
One thing was now clear to me: the depiction of objects, of forms — circles, wedges, triangles —which he used in his pic-
the objective world, had no place in my own paintings, and was
torial compositions. Color was free, with an expressive power
indeed actually damaging to them.
of own; line had been
its liberated from its traditional role as
The importance of such a chance event should not be exag- contour, and was equally free; the horizon line had long since
gerated. In any case, Kandinsky's problem was how to create been destroyed, so that pictorial space was directly related to
the object-less picture in such a way that it could be seen as the surface of the picture. His paintings were increasing in size
something more than decoration or pattern. He decided to and scale, yet it might be argued that Kandinsky was still not
pursue a two-fold course: to carry on the abstracting process absolutely sure about the self-sufficiency of the Abstract paint-
in his painting so that slowly all recognizable forms would ing. The four Campbell panels of 1914 are each given the title

disappear, and at the same time to provide a philosophical of a season, as if some extra-pictorial reference was still re-

justification for such art. quired to explain that they were not simply decoration.
The latter came first. Kandinsky wrote in the summer of At this point the logical development of Kandinsky's art
1910 at Murnau, near Munich, a long essay which he called was interrupted by the outbreak of war. He left Germany, and
Uber das Geistige in der Kunst (Concerning the Spiritual in after spending some time in Switzerland and Sweden returned
Art). Kandinsky was no philosopher, his argument was emo- in due course to Russia. After the 191 7 Bolshevik Revolution,
tional rather than rational. He was forced to postulate an Kandinsky was for a time in a position of considerable auth-
artistic driving force of "'inner necessity" to justify his artistic ority, reorganizing the artistic life of the country. He had little
experiments, always implying that if the artist can "go time for painting, and when he started again it was under the
beyond" the reality of external appearances he will somehow influence of such younger Abstract artists as Malevich. The
be able "to touch the beholder's soul". He was very interested lyrical, soft, free-flowing forms of his prewar paintings were
in the physical and psychological effects of color one of the — now hardened and geometricized. In 19Z1 Kandinsky left

painter's means of making the required direct contact. Russia forever to return to Germany.
In his paintings of 19 10-14 Kandinsky moves progressively The artistic career of Piet Mondrian (187Z— 1944) parallels
away from representation. W/f/7 the Black Arch of 19 12 Kandinsky's very closely, though the Abstract art that emerges
(Musee National d'Art Moderne, Paris) represents the is in many respects the antithesis of Kandinsky's painting
midway position. If we know that the artist has been painting more intellectual than emotional, more geometric than or-
pictures of armed knights on horseback locked in combat, we ganic, more classical than romantic. It is the contrast between
can immediately recognize the source of certain configurations the simplicity of the square and that of the amoeba.
of lines and colors. Indeed, the trained eye can distinguish the Mondrian was another slow developer. He began as a
starting point of every single line and patch of color in the naturalist painter, then flirted with Symbolism a strong force —
picture.What Kandinsky has done, however, is to use this as in Dutch and Belgian art. In 1909 he passed through a spiri-
raw material in the development of his own pictorial lan- and for a time he was, like Kandinsky, deeply
tual crisis,
guage. Here this has reached the stage where he can see the impressed by theosophical ideas, and by the then leader of the
picture as the meeting of three colored masses, "like the thun- German theosophical group, Rudolf Steiner. Mondrian was
derous collision of worlds". Thus his art takes on a cosmic familiar with theosophical literature, with its illustrations of
quality, reflected in the quasi-atomistic organization of the spiritual aura as seen by clairvoyants and of abstract pictorial
composition, and in the taste for apocalyptic subjects, pro- symbols offered as aids to meditation. He could see that paint-
phetic of the impending 1914 war and the destruction it ing might have a significant role to play; his ambitious trip-
involved. r\ch. Evolution {191 1; Haags Gemeentemuseum, The Hague)
Kandinsky was also much concerned with a musical anal- was probably conceived as a theosophical altarpiece. A figure
ogy. There is a long prehistory here: artists have frequently is depicted in a state of spiritual illumination: the triadic struc-
compared painting with music, making the obvious point that ture, the yellow and blue coloring, the stars and passion
music has, for the most part, no representational function, but flowers all remind us of Mondrian's close links with Symbol-
 ABSTRACT ART 865

any doubt the center of the artistic world. Within months he

had established himself in the French capital, and had
achieved a remarkably perceptive understanding of the very
latest developments in painting. He realized in particular that
Cubism had reached a crucial stage: Braque and Picasso had
taken the analytical process to the point where the ostensible
subject of the picture — a nude girl, a man with a guitar or
whatever —was in danger of disappearing into the geome-
tricized structure of the painting itself, a sort of scaffolding
which was totally dominating the subject on which it was
superimposed.
Neither Picasso nor Braque was willing to lose contact with
however minimal its importance
the subject in their paintings,
had become. For them an Abstract art was simply decoration,
without any deeper meaning, and to this position both Cubist
painters adhered for the remainder of their long careers. They
chose in 191 2 to forge a new link with external reality, by
introducing objects directly into their paintings — sticking a
piece of newspaper on to the canvas rather than painting it,
using the simulated textures of house decorators' papers (oil
cloth, chaircaning, and the like) to represent at one remove the
thing depicted. Thus were the papier colle and, by further
extension, the collage and the ready-made, invented.
Some of the contemporaries of Braque and Picasso persisted
in their attempt at taking Analytical Cubism up to and beyond
the hermetic stage. Mondrian actually chose scaffolding on a
Autumn, Panel II of the four Campbell panels by Kandinsky;
Parisian wall as a motif, as well as continuing to paint church
oil on canvas; i6oX 121cm (65X48in); 1914.

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York facades where the regular pattern of doors and windows im-
posed an architectural structure on his compositions. Yet all

his paintings of 1912—14 are abstracted and not Abstract pic-

ism. The painter suggests an explanation for the strange and
tures, in the same way that Kandinsky's are: once again, if we
cryptic title in a 19 14 diary entry:
know the artist's work, we can trace back the figurative origin
Two roads lead to the spiritual: the road of doctrinal teaching, of every form, however completely abstract it may appear at
of direct exercise [meditation, etc] and the slow but certain first sight.
road of evolution. One sees in art the slow growth of spiritu- Mondrian was not the only painter in Paris in 191 2 whose
ality, of which the artists themselves are unconscious. To ap-
work verged on complete abstraction. Robert Delaunay
proach the spiritual in art.
(1885— 1 941) sought to introduce color into Cubism, with the
TTius, apparently in complete independence of Kandinsky, incitement (and perhaps at the prompting) of a friend, the
Mondrian too is emphasizing the need for a spiritual basis in poet and critic Guillaume Apollinaire (i 880-1 91 8). For sev-

art, associating the idea with the increasing abstraction of his eral years Delaunay had been painting pictures of the Eiffel
own work. Tower seen across the rooftops of Paris from a balcony
The Ei'olutiori triptych was a dead end for Mondrian: an window. By 191 2 the window dominated the composition,
attempt to find the new spiritual art by a leap forward, where- and colors were applied and divided according to the precepts
as what was needed was a slow and steady progression. He of the early- 19th-century color theorist, Eugene Chevreul. De-
had realized that he must take into account the innovations of launay used Chevreul's expression "simultaneous contrasts"
modern painting; that the language of art must be completely to describe his own paintings in which he broke up and re-
renewed if it was to carry the message he wanted it to convey. assembled Braque and Picasso had treated
light itself, just as

So Mondrian went back to the works of Monet and Cezanne, the figure or the It was perhaps inevitable that
still-life object.

and concentrated on a restricted range of subjects a church — Delaunay should choose the source of all light, the sun, and its
facade, a tree, a landscape of sand dunes —
exactly as Monet reflected counterpart, the moon, as appropriate subjects for

had done, subjecting them to the kind of searching pictorial his work, and the First Disk of 1912 (private collection) might

analysis that he observed in Cezanne. be considered as a pioneer Abstract painting, except for the
Mondrian realized that other painters,some younger than element of cosmic symbolism certainly present. In any case,
himself, were working from similar starting points; early in Delaunay does not appear to have considered the window and
19 I z he left his native Holland to move to Paris, still without disk paintings as completed work suitable for exhibition in
866 ABSTRACT ART

linaire first used the term Orphism (or Orphic Cubism). Frank
Kupka's work will be discussed shortly; the Abstract period of
Francis Picabia (1879— 1953) lasted for only a few months in

1912—13 and is, statistically, another late Cubist derivation,

as canvases such as Udnie of 1913 (Musee National d'Art
Moderne, Paris) make plain. Picabia could not see his way
forward to a and began instead to experi-
totally Abstract art,
ment with collages and drawings of fantastic machines,
which, like the contemporary work of Marcel Duchamp, con-
tributed to the genesis of Dada.
Delaunay's closest associate in these years was his wife, the

Ukrainian-born Sonia Terk (1885-1980), whom he married

in 1 9 10. She was perhaps more committed to Abstract art in
1912 than her husband, calling her canvases of the period
"simultaneous rhythms", and producing book illustrations
and cover designs of uncompromising abstraction. With the
outbreak of war in 19 14, however, the Delaunays fled to neu-
tral Portugal, and both returned to figurative painting. It was

not until 1930 that Robert Delaunay painted Abstract pic-

tures again.
Two young American painters working in Paris were in-
spired by Delaunay's Orphism of 1912 to create their own

Synchromy to Light by Morgan Russell; oil on canvas;

33 X24cm (13 xgin); 1913. Los Angeles County Museum of Art,
Los Angeles

TTie Cardiff Team by Delaunay; oil on canvas;

196X i32cin (77X52in); 1913. Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven

Paris,and he continued to plan more complex pictures such as

The Cardiff Team (191 3; Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven)
while working on the disks.
This same consciously experimental status was given to a
comparable series of paintings by Delaunay's great friend,
Fernand Leger (1881-1955), the Contrastes de Formes of
191 3 (one example in the Philadelphia Museum of Art). Al-
though the forms themselves derive from the highly abstracted
figures and landscape features of Leger's slightly earlier

Cubist-influenced work, these paintings are very close to

complete abstraction. But this was not in fact Leger's aim in
producing them; he seems to have regarded Abstract art as
something suitable for large-scale mural decoration, but es-

sentially inferior to the subject picture. This distinction, estab-

lished in 19 1 3, persists in Leger's work in the 19ZOS.

Other painters were experimenting

in Delaunay's circle
with 191 2—13. The most important were
abstraction in
Kupka and Picabia, and it is of these three artists that Apol-
Udnic by Picabia; oil on canvas; 300X ^oocm ( i i8x i i8in); 191 ^. Musee National d'Art Modcrne, Paris

movement: Synchromism. They were Morgan Russell (1886- sequence. A third American in Paris, Patrick Henry Bruce
195^) and Stanton Macdonald-Wright (i 890-1 973). Their (1880-1937), was a member of Delaunay's Orphist group in
pamtings of 19 13 were, strictly speaking, abstracted rather 191 3-14; he too lost heart after a few years and stopped
than Abstract, except for the enormous Synchromy in Deep exhibiting his work, destroying much of it in a fit of de-
Blue Violet (Los County Museum of Art, Los
Angeles pression in 1933.
Angeles) which Russell showed at the Paris Salon des Indepen- All the Paris-based Abstract artists found that, after the
dants in March 191 4. Macdonald-Wright was slower in euphoric excitement of 191Z-14, they were working in an
reaching complete abstraction, with his Synchromies of 1 9 1 5- environment profoundly unsympathetic to Abstract art.

18. He returned to the United States in 1916, and thus his are Nobody knew this better than Frank Kupka (1871-1958).
the earliest Abstract paintings executed in America.The re- Czech-born, Kupka's early work is Symbolist in character: of

ception both painters received in New York in 1916 was dis- particular interest are the paintings and drawings that show
couraging, however, and shortly afterwards they abandoned the influence of Odilon Redon. The First Steps of 1909
abstraction altogether, returning only much later in their (Museum of Modern Art, New York) has sometimes been
careers when their work was of comparatively little con- called the first Abstract painting, but it is a picture about the
 —
868 ABSTRACT ART

Abstract up to a point, are really a curious kind of organic

symbolism. The Symbolist origin of Kupka's abstraction is

confirmed by the fact that he, too, likeMondrian and Kan-

dinsky, was interested in Eastern thought and religion; indeed
he sought to show the mystical way to abstraction in yet
another group of paintings called Cathedral, The Way of
Silence (or Sphinxes; National Gallery, Prague), and Hindu
Temple Motif (Musee National d'Art Moderne, Paris).

A fair assessment of Kupka's contribution to Abstract art is

very difficult to make. Despite the extraordinary imagination

which the paintings of 1910-14 display, they seem to have
been received with complete incomprehension by the Parisian
public, and after 1914 Kupka was forgotten until the very last
decade of his long life. During the years of obscurity he con-
tinued to work on earlier canvases, sometimes repainting
them completely, so that we do not always know for certain
what a picture originally looked like.
Repercussions of the new painting of Delaunay and his
friends were quickly felt outside Paris, especially in Germany.
It is a fact that Delaunay showed the Abstract Disk paintings

at the Berlin Autumn Salon of 191 3, but never in Paris, where

he preferred to appear in public as the author of subject pic-
tures. Delaunay's Orphism was of considerable interest to the
young German painters of the Munich Blaue Reiter (Blue
Rider) group. Through their close association with Kandinsky
they were prepared to accept an Abstract art, and Delaunay's
color experiments stimulated the relatively few abstractions of
August Macke (1887-1914) and Franz Marc (1880-1916),
quite as much as did the work of Kandinsky. Marc in particu-
Color Planes in Oval by Piet Mondrian; oil on canvas; lar left behind an album of studies for Abstract pictures which
107x79cm (42X3iin); C1914. Museum of Modem Art, New York
make it particularly regrettable that he did not survive the
war. The color-square pictures of another Munich Blue Rider
origins of the universe, and is thus better described as cosmic (1879— 1940), are virtually Abstract works,
painter, Paul Klee
symbolism. Another early work, Girl with a Ball of 1908 though Klee always retained a link with nature which makes it
(Museum of Modern Art, New York), was the source of a impossible to categorize him as an Abstract artist.

long series of drawings and paintings in which Kupka progres- Further east, in Russia, a major contribution to the develop-
and forms until he reached the two
sively abstracted the colors ment of Abstract art was taking place, especially in the years
large pictures Amorpha, Warm Chromatics (private collec- after 19 14, when came to an end in the
general experiment
tion) and Amorpha, Fugue for Two Colors (National Gallery, West because of the First World War. Here the important
Prague) which he showed at the Paris Salon d'Automne in figure is Kasimir Malevich (1878-1935), but two precursors
191 z. They are perhaps the first Abstract paintings to be pub- must first be mentioned. One was the Lithuanian composer,
licly exhibited anywhere. Kupka was simultaneously develop- Mikolojus Ciurlionis 1 875-191 1), a
( contemporary of
ing other series of pictures: a painting of a girl turning against Scriabin and subject to similar philosophical and mystical in-
the light exhibited earlier in 191Z is the prototype for the fluences. Untaught, he turned to painting in 1905, seeking in
Vertical Planes pictures; a moonlit scene develops into the such works as Sonata of the Sea to find a visual parallel for his
Abstract Nocturne of 1912 (private collection). musical ideas. Ciurlionis died insane in 191 1; his paintings

Musical analogies were important for Kupka, and, as we remained unexhibited, but it seems probable that Kandinsky
have seen, played an important role in providing a justifica- and others knew about them and about Ciurlionis' conception
tion for the assumed pure inventions of Abstract He had a
art. of art.

taste for musical titles Amorpha, Fugue for Two Colors, The other Russian pioneer was Michail Larionoff (1881-
Solo of a Brown Line (both National Gallery, Prague), for 1964), always closely associated with his wife Natalia Gon-
example. Another group of Kupka's pamtings have such titles charova (i 881-1962). Larionoff launched his own modern
as Creation,Cosmic Spring (both National Gallery, Prague),
A Tale of Pistils and Stamens
Right: a painting in the series
and A Tale of Pistils and Stamens (National Gallery, Prague, by Franz Kupka; on canvas; 85x73cm (33X29in); 1919.
oil
and Musee National d'Art Moderne, Paris), and, though Musee National d'Art Moderne, Paris
ABSTRACT ART 869
Syo ABSTRACT ART

top of a vestigial Cubist analysis, and it is these rectangles that

he isolates and uses on their own in the first Suprematist com-
positions.
It would nevertheless be wrong to see Malevich's Supremat-
ism as a totally Abstract The Symbolist element remains,
art.

in two distinct forms. Sometimes the shapes are arranged in

such a way that they recall views of buildings from the air

(Malevich was deeply impressed by the first aerial photogra-

phy or the formation of aeroplanes in flight. At other times
Malevich was concerned to emphasize the essentially spiritual
nature of his art, as if to demonstrate that he was not just

arranging regular shapes in simple compositions. Thus he de-

manded a transcendental significance for his paintings, as is

demonstrated by the culmination of Suprematism, the White

Square on a White Background (Museum of Modern Art,
New York), or more obviously perhaps by the white cross on
a white ground.
This stage, reached by Malevich in 191 8, meant for him the
end of art, and he stopped painting altogether. Other Russian
artists who had watched his development but did not share his

unorthodox Christian beliefs did not feel bound to follow his

example. Alexander Rodchenko (1891-1956) declared his
theoretical opposition to Malevich when he showed a Black
Circle on a Black Background fStaatsgalerie, Stuttgart) in the
Hindu Temple Motif by Franz Kupka; oil on canvas; iz^xizicm
(49X48in); 1921-3. Musee National d'Art Modeme, Paris
1 919 Tenth State Exhibition in Moscow at which Malevich
showed the White Square. Two years later Rodchenko
showed three pure colors —three squares of red, yellow, and
art movement with the Rayonist Manifesto, written in June blue, called The Last Painting; this marks the end of non-
1912 and published in Moscow in 191 3. Rayonist paintings, objective painting in the ussr. The political atmosphere was
characterized by their patterns of diagonal parallel lines, were now hostile to anv form of Abstract art and demanded a more
shown in Paris at Paul Guillaume's gallery early in 1914: how
much earlier they were painted is still a matter of dispute, White Square on a ^Xhite Background by Malevich; oil on canvas;
though the dates of 1909 and 1910 suggested by Larionoff for 79 x79cm (31x3 1 in); 1918. Museum of Modem Art, New '^'ork
the most Abstract examples are not likely to be correct. After
1914 both Larionoff and Goncharova concentrated on de-
signing sets and costumes for opera and ballet, in particular
for Diaghilev's company, and they made no more Abstract
paintings.
The dating of Malevich's first Abstract works is also uncer-
tain, as is the exact chronology of his artistic development in
the years 1913-18. Malevich's manifesto, From Cubism to
Suprematism, was published in Moscow in 191 5; he was cer-
tainly executing Abstract pictures by this date, but nothing
had been exhibited. If Suprematism may be said to begin in

191 3, it is with Malevich's stage designs for Victory Over the

Sun, which have a somewhat equivocal status as Abstract art.
Malevich's own earlier paintings show him absorbing the
lessons of French Symbolism and Post-Impressionism, of
Fauvism and Cubism (especially the work of Picasso and
Leger), and of Italian Futurism. By 1912 he was recognized as
the leader of a Russian Cubist, proto-Abstract group, whose
members included Ivan Puni (1894-1956), Alexander Exter
(1882— 1949), and Liubov Popova (1889— 1924). In the
Woman at a Poster Column of 19 14 (Stedelijk Museum, Am-
sterdam), Malevich imposes plain, flat rectangles of color on
Woman at a Poster Column by Malevich; oil on canvas; 71x64cm (28X25in); 19 14. Stcdclijk Museum, Amsterdam

useful, practical role from the artist. Rodchenko turned from three-dimensional corner reliefs from 1915 onwards —the ear-
pamting to typography and photomontage, as did another liest Abstract sculptures. Despite his admiration for Malevich,
gifted artist of this same generation, Klizier (El) Lissitzky Tatlin opposed his mystical conception of art, and sought a
(1890-1941). direct social and political role for the new abstraction. His
Contemporaneously with Malevich's Suprematism, Vla- own work developed towards an ideal architecture, exem-
dimir Tatlin(1885-1953) was exploring the formal pos- plified by the projected Monument for the Third International
sibilities of the Cubist relief constructions of such objects as of 1919, a glass and iron tower 1,300 ft (395 m) high. The
guitars that he had seen in Picasso's studio in Paris in 191 3. brothers Antoine Pevsner (1886-196Z) and Naum Gabo
Using metal sheet, rods, and wire as well as wood, he made ( 1 890—1977) also moved from figurative relief construction to
The Sculptures of Brancusi
Constantin Brancusi (i 876-1957) was both In the relationship of man to the unknown,
a Rumanian peasant and a sophisticated and in his conception of the nature of his
intellectual, at the heart of the Parisian avant- existence, the symbol had always played a
garde during the first decades of the zoth central role. The symbolic art of early and of
century. His formal expression has its roots primitive societies, living in an essentially
both in his native environment and in con- hostile and obscure world, helped to estab-
temporary artistic concerns. lish a degree of equilibrium within man's
In comparison with Western Europe his alienation. Western them-
artists, finding

early environment was primitive and super- odds with its self-created
selves in a society at
stitious. The peasants of his native Carpa- environment, and in need of a vocabulary of
thian mountains retained a rich folkloric expressive and symbolic form, found inspira-
tradition of beliefs, customs, and myths from tion in the arts of Africa and the East.
which Brancusi drew inspiration throughout The influence of African negro art upon
his life. As he grew older his native belief in some of Brancusi's fellow artists was funda-
the occult evolved, under the influence of mental. For the sculptor himself, the relation-
Eastern philosophy, into a personal philos- ship is more complex. Unusual among his
ophy rich in mysticism.
Working in Paris at a time when artists
were seeking inspiration and confirmation
in the art of less technically advanced
civilizations, the dual nature of Brancusi's
experience made his work fundamentally
important in the evolution of modern art. For
Brancusi himself, the reconciliation of peas-
ant and intellectual milieu was central to his
artistic statement; the balance and unit\- it

implied were constant concerns.

During the early years of the zoth centurv'
there was a movement within the arts that
responded to the insecurity and uncertainty
of the external world by turning for inspira-
tion to the internal. Renouncing pure rep-
resentation, artists created forms which
stood as symbols for inner feelings and
responses. Because the experience of the
artist was common to all men, such primarily
individual statements would he of universal
relevance. An artistic vocabulary was sought
which might embody a sense of security, of
permanence, vitality, and unity — all the qual-
ities felt to be lacking in the external world.
Gate of the Kiss by
Brancusi; stone; height
Si-'cm (20-in); 193".
Tirgu Jiu Public Park,
Rumania

Above, right: Birdin

Space by Brancusi;
bronze; height193cm
Musee
(76in); 1941.
National dArt Moderne
Pans

< The Kiss by Brancusi;

stone; height 28cm
(iiin); 1908. Craiova
Museum of Art

Beginning of the
World by Brancusi;
bronze on metal dish;
height 30cm (iiin);
1924. Musee Nationa
d'An Moderne, Pans
 GALLERY STUDY

contemporaries, he carried an element of the statement within a series of forms which

primitive within himself. In the superstitious began as a representational head, and moved
environment from which he came, the progressively towards the "egg" of the pre-
symbol had retained its key role in day-to- sent work. The philosophical significance of
day living. King of Kings (early 1930s; Sol- the form, symbolic or original unity, is

omon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York) reflected in the title. Brancusi relies in part
undoubtedly bears a strong resemblance to upon the association of an egg with life in an
African tribal forms, but equally convincing unborn state to reinforce the symbolism.
parallels exist between its component ele- Throughout his life Brancusi sought to
ments and examples of traditional Rumanian attain in his work something of the harmony
wood carving. The repeated units of the and balance implicit in the concept of primal
motif of the Endless Column (1937; Tirgu oneness. He expressed the need to create
Jiu Public Park, Rumania), initially thought unity from the duality of man's physical and
to be an invention of Brancusi, have since spiritual condition in the Kiss series, first
been convincingly compared to carved poles explored 1907-8. Locked in embrace, the
from his native region. In his work, elements lovers are a monolithic form. As the series
from Rumanian folk art were transformed evolves, they merge and become a single
into vehicles of artistic innovation. being with a central unifying eye. They reach
As wooded country, Rumania's
a heavily their ultimate expression in the Gate of the
primary material for construction, decora- Kiss (1937; Tirgu Jiu Public Park, Rumania):
tion, and household articles was w ood. set in a garden of remembrance, they sym-
While the raw material was often used in a bolize the unification inherent in death.
frank and simple manner, Rumanian crafts- For Brancusi, reality was not the external
A Endless Column by T K;?;;,' c! Kings by men were also capable of producing highly appearance of things, but rather their es-
Brancusi; iron and steel; Brancusi; oak; height
intricate and decorative designs. Brancusi sence, which could not be expressed by
height 29.30m (96ft); 300cm (1 i8in); early
1937. Tirgu Jui Public 1930s.Solomon R. believed that only the Rumanian peasant and imitating outward appearance. The essence
Park, Rumania Guggenheim Museum, the African tribes, which had escaped the of an object consists of what remains invari-
New York influence of Mediterranean civilization, had able in all the variants of that object, and is to
preserved the art of wood carving. The role be discovered by subtraction. As Brancusi
of African art in Brancusi's development was eliminated dispensable and individual detail,
essentially that of memory trigger. By focus- so the permanent, essential character of his
ing attention upon the symbolic potential of subject emerged and its ultimate form was
form, tribal art served to confirm Brancusi's achieved. In his Bird in Space sculptures, he
own native tradition. It also reinforced the sought to express the essence of flight in the

artist's personal conviction that by working ascending form. In their feather or flame-like
directly upon his material he could endow shape they contain also the essential aspects
the final form with a profound expressive of the original Maiastra or Firebird theme
quality, or presence. In abandoning the use of from which they evolved. Symbolic of resur-

scale models and technical assistants, Bran- rection, the Rumanian Maiastra legend in-

cusi made sculpture once more an art of spired Brancusi's exploration of the potential
direct statement, thereby profoundly affect- of the bird form to express a spiritual con-
ing the course of its development. cept. As the form evolves through the Maiast-
Brancusi's ideals of simplicity, purity, vi- ra, Golden Bird, and Bird in Space series, so

tality, and harmony were gradually realized the bird becomes integrated and streamlined.
in the series of formal themes he explored. The progression towards spiritual awareness,
With their inspirational source in the natural and the ultimate attainment of unity, is
world, the forms he chose were often sym- symbolized in physical form.
bolic of the life forces. The quality of semi- Bird in Space exemplifies Brancusi's strug-
pagan, quasi-religious mystery they possess gle with the limitations of mass and weight.
was clearly apprehended and stressed by He pushes his material almost to the limit of
Brancusi himself. Influenced by Buddhist and its structural capacity and exploits the ability

Hindu philosophy, his understanding of of a highly reflective bronze surface to incor-

existence was transcendental. His simplifica- porate light and surrounding movement. He
tion of form — no mere exercise in plastic seeks to create a form as insubstantial as the
design — gave expression conception of
to his concept it embodies.
the metaphysical foundation of life. His LYNNE MITCHELL
desire was to express ultimate reality in
essential —
form the spiritual being implied in Further reading. Elsen, A.E. Origins of Modem Sculp-

the almost totemic presence of his work. ture: Pioneersand Premises, London (1974). Geist, S.
Brancusi: the Kiss, New York (1978). Geist, S.
By a process of distillation and abstraction,
Brancusi, a Study of the Sculpture, London 1 968). (

Brancusi moved from descriptive to symbolic Spear, A.T. Brancusi's Birds, New York (1969).
object. Beginningof the World {1914; Musee Tucker, W. The Language of Sculpture, London
National d'Art Moderne, Paris) is a mature (1974)-

I
874 ABSTRACT ART

Suprematist Composition by Alexander Rodchenko; lino cut; Tallin's model for a projected Monument for the Third International;
17X iicm (7X4in); 1919. Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart 19 1 9; a photograph in the Modern Museum
(National Museum), Stockholm

a completely Abstract art which they justified in the Realist buildings at Dessau in 1925.
Manifesto published in Moscow in 1920. They demanded an Another stream of Abstract had already helped to shape
art
art based on space and time, and the result was the invention Bauhaus thinking: that associated with the Dutch movement
of what has been called "Constructivism", an abstract three- De Stijl. To appreciate the genesis of De Stijl we must retrace
dimensional art which now has an international history of its our steps a little. When Mondrian returned to Holland from
own. Gabo made the first Abstract Kinetic construction in Paris in 19 14 he found himself working in isolation, and at
1920, a vertically mounted thin steel blade, driven by a motor, one moment in 1916 was almost ready to abandon Abstract
which describes a simple form in space. art. His discovery of the work of the Dutch mathematician
Both Pevsner and Gabo left Russia in 1922, the year in and philosopher, M.H.J. Schoenmaekers, led him to change
which all experiment in Soviet art was suppressed in favor of his mind however, because Schoenmaekers provided a spiri-
socialist realism. Pevsner settled in Pans in 1923, but Gabo tual justification for the kind of art Mondrian was on the
went first to Berlin, moving to Paris in 1932, on to England in point of inventing. Using visual metaphors to express religious
1936, and finally to the United States in 1946. During the ideas, Schoenmaekers propounded a system of Positive Mys-
Berlin years he was closely associated with Lissitzky and the ticism, or Plastic Mathematics. This depends on the resolution
Hungarian Laszlo Moholy-Nagy (189 5-1 946) in spreading of fundamental contradictions — active and passive, male and
Constructivist ideas in Germany. These were particularly in- female, space and time, darkness and light — in the geometrical
fluential in the Bauhaus, the design school established by form of a meeting of horizontal and vertical. These in turn
Walter Gropius at Weimar in 1919 which moved to new were related to cosmic forces —the vertical to ravs from the
 ABSTRACT ART 875

sun, and the horizontal to the earth's constant movement began to win public acceptance. Between the wars the ideas
around the sun. The three primary colors were also given were kept alive only by the determined conviction of isolated
cosmic meaning: yellow is the sun's light, blue the infinite pioneers, like Mondrian in Paris and Kandinsky, who taught
expanse of space, red the unifying color. at the Bauhaus from 1922 until 1933, when Hitler prohibited

These ideas gave Mondrian something none of the other Abstract art, and Kandinsky too moved to Paris. Small groups
pioneer Abstract artists had been able to discover: a way of of younger Abstract artists formed themselves in Paris under
investing painting with a spiritual significance but without such titles as Cercle et Carre ("Circle and Square", 1930) and
external reference. There is a symbolic meaning Ab-
in the Abstraction-Creation (1932—34). A prominent member of
stract work Itself which makes it more than decoration and both groups was the Strasbourg-born sculptor, Jean (or Hans)
pattern, because the spiritual is best expressed in such pure Arp (1887—1966), who C1930 began to make three-
plastic terms as the primary colors, and the contrast of dark dimensional sculptures which he called "human concretions".
and light, of vertical and horizontal. It took Mondrian a few Arp had experimented with Abstract collages in Switzerland
years before he had worked out new Ab- a grammar for the during the 1914— 18 war, often in collaboration with Sophie
stract art, declared triumphantly Com- in such pictures as the Taeuber (1889— 1943); he was equally active in Surrealist
position with Red, Yellow, and Blue of 1921 (Haags Gemeen- circles and denied that his sculptures were Abstract. In much

temuseum. The Hague). For the rest of his life Mondrian con-
sistently developed the language of Neo-Plasticism, as he Composition with Red, Yellow, and Blue by Mondrian; oil on canvas;
called it, working in Paris from 1919 to 1938, then in London 80x50cm (
^ I xioin); 1921. Haags Gemeentemuseum, The Hague
until 1940, when he moved to New York where he died. In
each of the three cities Mondrian's example was a talismanic

one: without achieving much public success, he nevertheless

had a profound effect on practicing artists who spread his
ideas, often transforming them in the process.

Mondrian's first significant collaborator, in Holland during

the 1914— 18 war, was Theo van Doesburg (1883-1931). In

October 1917 they planned and launched the review De Stijl.

Van Doesburg was quick to see that the new Abstract art of
Mondrian embodied principles that could be applied beyond
painting; he used his magazine De Stijl as a mouthpiece and,
with the help of collaborators, revolutionary theories of archi-
tecture and of every field of design were propagated. Van
Doesburg's personal impact on the development of the
Bauhaus is of particular importance: his activities in Weimar
in 1920-1 mark a turning point that the influence of Russian
Constructivism confirmed.
The expansion of Abstract art was greatly hindered by the
1914-18 war. In Paris and Munich abstraction was effectively
crushed: only in neutral Holland and in revolutionary Russia
could a natural development continue. Countries that came
late to Abstract art —
like Britain and Italy witnessed only a —
brief flowering which quickly died out. In London Percy
Wyndham Lewis (i 882-1 957) and his Vorticist associates
drew and painted Abstract compositions, some of which were
reproduced in the pages of their magazine. Blast (1914 and
1915). In Rome Giacomo Balla (1874-1958) had painted a
series of "iridescent interpenetrations" in 1912-13, and in
March 191 5 declared himself a Futurist Abstractionist in his

manifesto. The Vuturtst Reconstruction of the Universe. Plan-

ning transparent structure as symbols of a new world, Balla
expressed the Utopian idealism that is never far below the
surface in Mondrian's writings. His own work, Mercury Pass-
ing the Sun of 1914 (Gianni Matteoli Collection, Milan), for
example, is often not so much Abstract as cosmic symbolism.
By 1918 the theoretical and practical basis of Abstract art
was complete, but it took another 40 years before Abstract art
876 ABSTRACT ART

the same way the work of Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957) Stimulated by the presence in the city of many European
is, strictly speaking, never Abstract, though his search for the exiles, young American painters seized an opportunity to
essentialform underlying appearances results in such pure create a recognizably new kind of art for which the labels
shapes as The New Born of 191 5 (Philadelphia Museum of Abstract Expressionism and Action Painting were invented
Art). There are obvious parallels between Brancusi's artistic (see Modern American Art).
development and that of Mondrian, for example, but despite In the second half of the 20th century the existence of Ab-
the metaphorical overtones Brancusi's The New Born remains stract art is accepted: its viability is no longer disputed and
a severely abstracted head and not Abstract art. Apart from dismissed as it was in the years from 1910 to i960, it is seen
Gabo's Constructivism, the earliest true Abstract sculptures to represent a new dimension in art, comparable with the
would seem to be the quasi-architectural compositions of the invention of portraiture and landscape painting in earlier
Belgian Georges Vantongerloo 886-1 965) and a group of
(i periods. Now that Abstract art manifestly exists as something
sculptures made between 193Z and 1940 by Barbara Hep- more than just pattern or decoration, artists no longer feel

worth (1903-1975) in which no figure references are appa- obliged to claim a spiritual justification for their work. Nor is

rent. there any longer the feeling that to paint an Abstract picture is

The series of white reliefs by Hepworth's husband, Ben a sort of conversion, and that to paint anything else subse-
Nicholson (1894— 1982) began in 1933 and marks a new be- quently is a renegade step. An artist can produce Abstract
ginning for Abstract painting in England. With the help of work, or work with a symbolic or figurative reference as he
Gabo and the architect Leslie Martin, Nicholson published a pleases. The range of art has been substantially widened: and
book, Circle (1937), which served as an international survey this in itself makes the invention of Abstract art one of the

of Constructive art, stressing the interrelationship between great artistic developments of our time.
Abstract art and architecture. Once again, however, the natur- ALAN BOWNESS
al progress of a regrouped Abstract movement in France and
England was restricted by the outbreak of war, and in 1939
much activity in Europe simply came to a stop. Bibliography. Seuphor, M. Abstract Painting: Fifty Years of Accom-
The final, and ultimately triumphant, stage in the develop- plishment, London and New York (1961). Seuphor, M. Dictionary of
ment of Abstract art was centered on New York in the 1940s. Abstract Painting, London and New York (1958).
 48

DADA AND SURREALISM

Amorous Parade by Picabia; oil on canvas; 97x74cm (38X29in); 1917

Collection of M.G. Neumann, Chicago (see page 879)
878 DADA AND SURREALISM

ANIMATED initially by opposition to the First World freedom. In particular they disparaged reason and logic,
War, Dada was a movement committed to the de- which Tzara identified as "an enormous centipede stifling in-

struction of all existing values in life and art. The dependence", and sought to demonstrate the primacy of the
movement can be said to date from 191 5, but it was not until anti-rational forces. Taking negation as their starting point,
early in the following spring, in Zurich, that it received its the Dadas asserted that only after the tabula rasa could the

name. Confusion surrounds the actual circumstances, but ac- work of reconstruction begin; in Tzara's words:
cording to the most probable of the rival accounts, Hugo Ball
There is a great negative work of destruction to be accom-
(1886-1927) and Richard Huelsenbeck (1892-1974) were plished. We must sweep and clean ... I proclaim bitter struggle
leafing through a German—French dictionary when they were with all the weapons of dadaist disgust.
struck by the French word dada, meaning hobbyhorse. Partly
because of its nonsensical sound, partly because of its associ- Reacting against traditional aesthetic standards, the Dadas
ations with the freedom of childhood, they immediately rarely employed the usual media of painting, drawing, or
adopted it. Dada flourished until ci^zz in New York, Zurich, sculpture; instead, they used assemblage techniques such as
Berlin, Cologne, Hanover, and Paris, and was succeeded in collage and photomontage. In order to tap the rich funds of
Paris by the more philosophical, systematic, and positive the unconscious, they invited the intervention of chance and
movement. Surrealism. The word "surrealism" had been pioneered automatist techniques. They sabotaged grammar
coined in 191 7 by the poet and critic Guillaume Apollinaire and language in their phonetic poems and in the poems they
(1880— 1918), and was appropriated by the Surrealists be- collaged together from scraps of printed material, or by recit-
cause it expressed their preoccupation with a world beyond ing severalpoems simultaneously. They created "noise music"
the "real" world. Under the continuous leadership of Andre from cacophonous and random juxtapositions of sounds.
Breton (i 896-1 966), Surrealism survived as a major force in Their typography was equally startling: different typefaces
European art until 1939, and during the Second World War were mixed freely together, while lines of print were often
was vital in the American avant-garde. organized into eccentric patterns. The Dadas also used the
periodical as a weapon with which to attack the enemy or
Dada. Dada was established first in the liberal and neutral attract support: their reviews were numerous and usually
territories of New York and Zurich, and only after the war ephemeral.
was over Germany and Paris. Ball,
in writing in Zurich in Group was regarded as more important than individ-
action
19 1 6, explained that Dada intended to cross "the barriers of ual work, for it undermined the status of the artist as "solitary
war and nationalism". George Grosz (1893-1959) and Wie- genius" and made more impact on the public. In typical Dada
land Herzfelde (1896-j, both members of the Berlin group, soirees, against a background of jarring noises, poems were
described the original political motive behind the formation of recited, dances performed in outrageous costumes, mani-
Dada and its anti-art aesthetic: festoes declaimed, and individuals made provocative gestures
to stirup the audience, as when in New York in 191 7, Arthur
Dada was not a "made" movement, but an organic product Cravan (i887-?i9i9) arrived drunk to give a lecture on
originating in reaction to the head-in-the-clouds tendency of
modern art and began stripping on the stage. Successful Dada
so-called holy art, whose disciples brooded over cubes and
soirees ended in uproar and sometimes fighting. Dada exhi-
Gothic art, while the generals were painting in blood . . . The
bitions were organized in a similar spirit.
shooting goes on, the profiteering goes on, hunger goes on,
lying goes on; why all that art? Wasn't it the height of fraud to
Many of these provocative techniques were indebted to

pretend art created spiritual values? Futurism, although the Dadas rejected Futurist attitudes to
contemporary society and politics. From Cubism, which they
Among targets for Dada attack was what they considered to otherwise deplored as retrogressive in its concern with aesthe-
be the whole inhibiting and corrupting apparatus of the art tic problems, the Dadas inherited collage: certain papiers
world: the bourgeois who identify art with good taste and colles made in 19 12— 14 by Picasso anticipated the Dada disre-
pleasant decoration, the connoisseurs with their academic pre- spect for fine materials and painstaking execution. Popular art

judices,the dealers and collectors with their concern for also influenced them: for instance, photographic techniques
market values. The Dadas retaliated by producing works that used World War picture postcards were acknowledged
in First
deliberately flouted the accepted standards of beaut\' and were by the Berlin Dadas as the source for the photomontage tech-
unsaleable, either because of their subject matter and style or nique. The most immediate precursor was, however. Marcel
because of the materials and techniques used: "Let it [art] then Duchamp (1887-1968). In 1913 he abandoned oil painting
be a monstrosity that frightens servile minds and not a and assembled out of a stool and a bicycle wheel his first
sweetening to decorate the refectories of animals in human "ready-made" (The Bicycle Wheel; original lost, third version
costume", wrote Tristan Tzara (i 896-1 963) in his Dada 195 1 Museum of Modern Art, New York). The iconoclasm
;

Manifesto of 191 8. The rigid code of morality instilled into of both gestures is genuinely proto-Dada.
the individual by the combined forces of family. Church, and A still nameless group began to forgather in New York in

State was rejected; the Dadas demanded absolute personal 191 5 in the home of the wealthy collector Walter Arensberg,
 DADA AND SURREALISM 879

and in the avant-garde gallery run by the photographer,

Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946). Duchamp and Man Ray (1890-
1976) were prominent members, Francis Picabia (1879-1953)
an occasional participant, while Arthur Cravan, who com-
bined poetry with amateur boxing, created Dada legend with
his scandalous behaviour and his mysterious death. Probably
because of its geographical isolation from the realities of the

European war. New York Dada was less political, less ag-
gressive, less tightly knit and more frivolous than Dada else-
where, but the anti-art views expressed in periodicals like 291,
}9i, and New York Dada are typical of the whole movement.
Picabia's wry drawings of people as machines perfectly
reflect the mood of the New York group: in the dead-pan,
informative style of technical drawings, he depicts, for in-

stance, Stieglitz as a camera {Portrait of Alfred Stieglitz, in

291, nos. 5 and 6 191 5), and an American girl as an electric

light bulb that flashes up the sign "Flirt-Divorce", (title page,

}9i, no. VI, 1917).
Duchamp's ready-mades epitomize Dadaist irony: a snow
Fountain by Marcel Duchamp; sanitary ware and enamel paint; shovel is distinguished only from other identical tools in that
height 30cm iiin); a replica made in 1964 of the original of 19 17
I

Duchamp chose it and entitled it In Advance of the Broken

(now lost). Galleria Schwarz, Milan
Arm, 191 5, (original lost, reconstruction, 1945; ^3.\e Univer-
sity Art Gallery, New Haven), while his notorious Fountain of
Gift by Man Ray; a flatiron with tacks; height 17cm (6i5in); 1917 is a urinal exhibited upside down and signed R. Mutt in
a replica of the original of 191 7 (now lost).
ironic tribute to the manufacturer, Mott Works Company
Collection of M.G. Neumann, Chicago
(original lost, third version, 1964; Galleria Schwarz, Milan).
Man Ray's Dada career was divided between New York
and Paris where he settled in July 1921. A close friend of
Duchamp's, he too created some witty and disconcerting
Dada objects, such as The Enigma of Isidore Ducasse of 1920
(destroyed) — apparently a bulky parcel, in fact a sewing
machine wrapped up in cloth and tied with string —and the
ironically named Gift (replica in the Collection of M.G.
Neumann, Chicago) — a flatiron with a row of tacks glued to
the bottom, which he made soon after he moved to Paris in
1921. Man Ray frequently experimented with new techniques
in order to break down the conventional barriers between
"Fine Art" and modern technology; in 1 917 he made his first

"Aerographs", pictures executed with an airbrush, while in

Paris in 1921 he made his first "Rayographs", photographs
created in the darkroom without a camera. His permanent
removal to Paris signaled the end of Dada in New York.
Early in February 1916, Hugo Ball, a pacifist poet and phil-

osopher and a refugee from Germany, founded the Cabaret

Voltaire in Zurich. He was joined by the Rumanians, Marcel
Janco (1895-) and Tristan Tzara, the Alsatian Hans Arp
(1 887-1966), by Huelsenbeck, the future founder of Berlin

Dada, and by the German, Hans Richter (1888-1976). The

name Dada was found, and on 14 July 19 16 Tzara read aloud
in public the first Dada Manifesto. Early in 1917, Ball, "en-
cased in a tight-fitting cylindrical pillar of shiny blue card-
board", intoned a lengthy and unintelligible phonetic poem,
composed of invented words and syllables organized into

rhythmic patterns. At first baffled, the audience quickly

became vociferous, and thus the pattern for future Dada
88o DADA AND SURREALISM

soirees was established. Afterwards, Ball withdrew from With the war over, the Dadas left Zurich and the initiative

Dada, alarmed by its increasingly anarchic tendencies. Tzara passed to Germany and Paris.
assumed leadership, writing manifestos, masterminding In April 1918, Huelsenbeck founded the Club Dada in

events, and editing Dada, the chief Zurich review. Berlin. He was most important
the principal editor of the
In contrast to the nihilistic views of Tzara and of Picabia, reviews. Club Dada, Der Dada, and Dada Almanack, and
who visited Zurich in 1919, Arp, Janco, and Richter foresaw guided the group until it split up in 1922. The other leading
the creation of a new order on the ruins of the old by means of members were Johannes Baader (1876— 1955), George Grosz,
was dependent on the use of auto-
a kind of Abstract art that Raoul Hausmann (1886-1971), Hannah Hoch (1889-), and
matism and chance and on the exploration of the uncon- Helmut Herzfelde (i 891— 1968), who anglicized his name to
scious. In reliefs like Plant Hammer (1917; Collection of John Heartfield in protest against German nationalism. After
F. Arp, Paris), with their organic, biomorphic forms, Arp ex- the War, Berlin was in a state of acute political, social, and
pressed his faith in spontaneity and instinct. He used abstract economic crisis, and to the Berlin Dadas, some of whom
terms not in order to analyse or widen the means of art, but to joined the Communist Party, political revolution was a central
purge it of "vain and dead" illusionism and "to find another issue; to Huelsenbeck, for instance, a realist art that "presents
order, another value for man in nature". He allowed the play the thousandfold problems of the day" alone seemed relevant.
of line to develop "automatically", while some of his collages Condemning the preoccupation with abstraction of the Dada
were constructed "according to the laws of chance": he would artists in Zurich, they specialized in political and social satire.
scatter scraps of paper and allow the pattern formed when Grosz's brilliant collection of drawings and watercolors ex-
they settled on the ground to dictate the basic design. Richter ecuted between 191 and 1922, and published in 1923 as
5

pioneered films composed entirely of abstract elements in pur- Ecce Homo, is a scathing comment on the hypocrisy and cor-
suance of the ideal of a pure new art language, and Janco ruption rife in "respectable" society.
incorporated the hitherto despised debris of everyday life into The photomontage technique —a collage of fragments of
his reliefs. photographs, often supplemented by printed slogans —was
"invented" independently by Hausmann and Heartfield in
The cover of the first issue of Der Dada, published in Berlin in 1919 19 1 and constitutes the most significant artistic contribution
8,

of Berlin Dada. In the hands of Heartfield especially, it became

Direktion hausmann
r.
the perfect vehicle for political satire. Hausmann and Hoch,
Steglitz zimmermann
on the other hand, often used photomontage to suggest, as
strasse 34
Hoch says, "a new and terrifying dream world", by playing
on the dichotomy between the precision of industrial or scien-
tific photographs and the fantasy released through unexpected
juxtapositions. home, (1920; Modern Museum,
Tallin at
Nationalmuseum, Stockholm) by Hausmann is a fine example
50 Pfg. of this, while a sceptical attitude to human intellect and
modern technology is suggested in his The Spirit of our Times,
HLTD [Mechanical Head) of C1919 (Musee National d'Art Mod-
CO
CO
CO
O
10"
erne, Paris) —a wooden hatmaker's dummy to which various
CO objects have been attached.

CO "The Dada Conspiracy of the Rhineland" was founded in

CO 1919 by Max Ernst (1891— 1976) and Alfred Griinwald, alias
CO
CO Johannes Baargeld (1891-1927); they were joined shortly by
Arp. Wayward humor and bizarre fantasy characterize their
CO collages, constructions, and photomontages, especially those
by Ernst. For instance, The Hat Makes the Man, (1920;
in his
CO New
Museum of Modern Art, York), four "gendemen" are
CO assembled from illustrations of hats linked by transparent,
k colored cylinders; other works, like Tivo Ambiguous Figures,

(1919-20; Collection of Mme M. Arp-Hegenbach, Meudon),

Jahr des Weltfriedens. Avis dada
1

Hirsch Ktipfer schwachcr. Wird Deutschland verhungern?

Die neue Zeit beginnt testify to Ernst's admiration for de Chirico and Carra.
Daiin muB es unterzcichnen. Ftsche junge Dame, zweiundvier-
ziger Figur (Ur Hermann Loeb. Wenn Deutschland nichl unter-
mit dem Todesjahr The Cologne Dadas published their own reviews, including
zeichnet. so wird es wahrscheinlich unterzcichnen. Am M^rkl des Oberdada
dcr Emheitswerte Oberwiegen die Kursrljckgange. Wenn aber
Deutschland unterzeichnet. so ist es wahrscheinlich, daS es
Bulletin D and Die Schammade (a word invented by Ernst),
unterzeichnet urn nicht zu unterzcichnen. Amorsaie. Achluhr-
abcndblattmitbrausendeshimmels. Von Viktorhahn. Loyd George and in 1920 organized a tv'pically provocative exhibition
mcint, da6 es mOgtich ware, daB Cifmenceau dcr Ansicht ist,
daS Wilson glaubt. Deutschland mQsse unterzcichnen, weil es which could only be entered through a public urinal; inside, a
nicht unterzcichnen nicht wird kOnnen. Infotgedessen erkiart der
ctub dada sich fUr die absolute Prebfreiheit, da die Presse das
Kullurinstrumcnt ist, ohnt das man nie erfahrcn wurde, daB
DeulschUndendgdllignichtunteaeichnet.blosura zu unterzcichnen.
(Club dada, Abl.fUrPreBIrciheil.suweit die guten Silten e$ erlauben.) k Mitwirkende: Baader,
Hausmann, Hueisenbtck,
Tristan Tzara.
girl in her first communion dress recited obscene verses, and

Ernst exhibited an object supplied with a hatchet which the

 DADA AND SURREALISM 88 I

Vache (1896-19 19) who, although not part of

friend Jacques
any Dada group, professed a violent anti-art aesthetic and a
doctrine of provocation. Nevertheless, the sober presentation
of the first numbers of Litterature, and the veneration ac-

corded to certain Symbolist and post-Symbolist writers, indi-

cate clearly enough the emotional and aesthetic gulf that really
existed between Breton and his friends and the old-guard
Dadas.
Meanwhile, however, the arrival of Tzara in Paris at the
end of 19 1 9 was the signal for the outbreak of typical Dada
activities; for example, in May 1920, 23 manifestos were

published in Litterature —by now committed officially to

Dada — and during the Festival Dada of the same month, bal-
loons bearing the names of eminent people were released, and
It was announced that "all Dadas will have their hair cut on
stage".
But in the following year, Breton, who was by nature too
autocratic, serious-minded, and idealistic to tolerate Tzara's

supremacy and buffoonery for long, began to organize rival

events and to call for the development of a new positive phil-
osophy. The mock
trial of the popular writer, Maurice Barres,

which he arranged in 1921, and his proposals for an Interna-

tional Congress for the Determination of Directives and the
Defense of the Modern Spirit in 1922, led to a rupture with
The WurLtr ['icturc by Kurt Sch witters; collage; 125 ^ ^icm ,49X36111);
Picabia and Tzara, and to the disengagement from Dada of
19 19. Modern Museum National Museumj, Stockholm
the original Litterature group.
Despite the antagonisms of the transitional period. Surreal-
spectators were invited to, and did, destroy. On the instigation ism inherited much from Dada that was crucial to its theor-
of the Parisian Dadas, Ernst moved to Paris in 1922, and etical structure — for instance, the rejection of the Western
Cologne Dada broke up. cultural traditionand attitude to art, the pattern of political
In Hanover in 1918, Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948) de- agitation and involvement in contemporary issues, the defense
veloped his idiosyncratic brand of Dada which he called Merz. of the claims of the unconscious and irrational forces. Dada
He rejected the political bias of Berlin Dada and, contrary to also bequeathed many of its techniques to Surrealism — auto-
orthodox Dada, insisted that ''Merz always strives towards matism, collage, object making —and all its machinery of pub-
art". His collages and constructions, whether miniature in licity, from pamphleteering to the organization of group
scale or environmental, as in his Merzhau ("Merz-House"; events.
1918—38; Hanover; destroyed during the Second World Dada readily accepted its own extinction: even in 1920
War), were all assembled into a consciously aesthetic abstract Huelsenbeck had written, "Dada foresees its end and laughs".
design out of junk and rubbish. It was in his choice of ma- Yet despite its self-mockery and its nihilistic doctrines, the

terials that Schwitters came closest to the spirit of Dada. His impact of Dada has been anything but negative, for it has also
Merz artivities involved poetry, music, and editing a review, direcdy marked such post-Second World War developments
which he also called Merz. Schwitters' ultimate aim was to as Pop art, Action painting. Conceptual art, and "Happen-
create the "total work of art", his Merz-Stage, but this project ings" {see European Art Since 1945). '" general, it has stimu-
was never realized. lated a radical revision of artistic values.
The Dada movement did not survive the recrimination and
discord that characterized its later stages in Paris, and in retro- Surrealism. Although always international in outlook. Surrea-
spect, it seems inevitable that the ideological differences divid- lism was at first based in Paris with a subsidiary group, from
ing the leading participants should have resulted in the forma- 1925 onwards, in Brussels. In the 1930s a series of exhibitions
tion of a —
new movement Surrealism. During the course of held in New York, London, Tokyo, Copenhagen, Tenerife,
1919, Picabia, Duchamp, and Tzara arrived in Paris and were and elsewhere, led to the formation of other groups and to the
enthusiastically welcomed by Breton, l.ouis Aragon (1897—), wide dissemination of Surrealist ideas.

Paul Hluard (1895-195 2), and Philippe Soupault (1897—), the Although painting was mentioned only in a footnote in
young poets associated with the ironically named new review Breton's Manifesto of Surrealism of 1924, it quickly came
first

Litterature. They had been introduced to Dadaist ideas in to be recognized as a primary means of Surrealist expression,

1917 by Apollinaire (a close friend of Picabia) and by Breton's and in 1 928 Breton published his crucial essay Surrealism and
 — . —
882 DADA AND SURREALISM

Painting. Among the artists who belonged to the movement at sociations, in the omnipotence of dreams, in the disinterested

one time or another were the ex-Dadas Arp, Man Ray, play of thought.

Picabia, and Ernst, and Masson, Miro, Tanguy, Magritte, By inducing trance-states, the Surrealists found they could
Giacometti, DaH, Brauner, Bellmer, Dominguez, Matta, and obliterate the outside world, and, unhampered by reason, in-

Lam. Delvaux worked in a Surreahst manner but did not habit a marvelous realm of heightened reality denied to the
participate directly; Picasso and Duchamp were close associ- conscious mind and equivalent to the dream world. Speaking,
ates; Chagall and Klee shared certain preoccupations with writing, drawing, like automatons, their texts and pictures
Surrealism. seemed to them unequaled in their imaginative freedom.
Periodicals played a vital role in the Surrealist movement, These revelations of a hitherto repressed psychic life were not
the most important being Litterature, new series, 1922-4, La credited to any superhuman power, but were recognized as
Revolution Surrealiste, 1924-9, Le Surrealisme au service de consistent with a truly integrated personality. From this point
la Revolution, 1930—3, and Minotaure, 1933—9. on, the ultimate aim of Surrealism, in the words of the Mani-
If the theory underlying the Surrealist attitudes to art, the festo, was "the future resolution of these two states, dream
artist, and artistic tradition was inherited directly from Dada, and reality, which are seemingly so contradictory, into a kind
the emphasis was very different. The Dadas were satisfied to of absolute reality, a surreality\ The dream and the irrational
curse or poke fun at the hallowed periods of art and the Great impulses and images constantly experienced when awake
Masters; the Surrealists, by contrast, were not only more sys- not the "objective", ordered world of fact —were defined as
tematic in their condemnation of the "classical" tradition, of the source and proper subject matter of creative expression.
the ideal of "truth to nature", and of any art-for-its-own-sake Breton's definition of beauty follows directly from this: "the
aesthetic (it was on the last charge that they criticized most marvelous is always beautiful, anything marvelous is beauti-
Abstract painting), but they also sought to draw attention to ful, in fact only the marvelous is beautiful".
the "alternative" tradition in world art which had been over- Despite the neglect of painting in the Manifesto, an authen-
looked by art historians and connoisseurs and with which tic body of Surrealist painting did, in fact, exist by 1924. In
they felt in profound sympathy. Intending to effect a complete the winter of 1923-4, Andre Masson (1896-), who had re-
revolution in taste and to demonstrate that the "surreal" had cently met Breton and knew about the experiments of the
always been an integral part of human consciousness, they epoque des sommeils, made his first automatic drawings. Al-
freelyacknowledged their numerous and varied sources. Chief lowing his pen to travel uninhibitedly across the paper, he was
among these were painters of fantasy such as Bosch (C1450— able to free himself from the conventions of composition and
1516), Uccello (1397-1475), and Arcimboldo (1530—93), subject matter and, in theory, to release the "marvelous"
Romantic and Symbolist painters and writers such as Rim- images buried in his subconscious. His automatic drawings
baud, Lautreamont, Goya, Moreau, Redon, Seurat, and Gau- became, in this way, a visual equivalent of the mind itself.

guin, "Naive" painters such as Henri Rousseau, the art of the Ernst's paintings of 1921— 4, like Woman, Old Man, and
insane, of mediums and of children, the art of "Primitive" Flower II, 1923 (Museum of Modern Art, New York) are
peoples, especially the Pacific Islanders, the Eskimos, and the records of his dreams and fantasies, rendered in a factual,
American Indians, and the more eccentric manifestations of descriptive style influenced by de Chirico. Later Surrealist
popular art from picture postcards to silent comedy films. painting can be seen to divide into these two basic types,
Sigmund Freud's writings, especially The Interpretation of defined as early as 1923—4 by Masson and Ernst: the more
Dreams (published in 1899), were also crucial to the develop- abstact, spontaneous, "automatic" works, and the illusionis-
ment of Surrealism in the 1920s. The more immediate visual tic, carefully executed, irrational "dream-images".
sources, apart from Dada, were certain Cubist works by Picas- Joan Miro (1893—) began to make the transition to Surreal-
so, works by Duchamp that lie outside Dada, including the ism in 1923 in a series of minutely detailed paintings full of

Large Glass, 1915-23 (Philadelphia Museum of Art), and, fantastic imagery, which relate stylistically to both these t>'pes.
above all, the "Metaphysical" paintings of de Chirico. The Hunter: Catalan Landscape (1923—4; Museum of
The two years following the break with Dada, 1922—4 Modern Art, New York) is a fine example.
known as I'epoque des sommeils ("the period of trances") The emphasis on automatism in the first Manifesto pro-
were devoted to intense experimentation with hypnosis, foundly affected Surrealist painting for the next few years.
dream-analyses based on the work of Freud, and automatism. The freedom of line of Masson's drawings also dominated the
These and the theories and aims of the group were
activities fluid, organic structures of his oil paintings, which were, how-

summarized in the first Manifesto, published in October 1924, ever,still labored in execution. In 1927, wishing to carry over

in which Breton gave the classic definition of Surrealism: automatic techniques into painting, he began a series of sand

pure psychic automatism, by which one proposes to express paintings — for example. Battle of the Fishes (1927; Collection
the actual functioning of thought. Dictated by thought, in the
. .

of E.A. Bergman, Chicago) —in which the composition, tex-

absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any ture, and hue were established by throwing handfuls of sand
aesthetic or moral concern Surrealism is based on the belief
. . .
at a canvas pasted here and there with glue; meandering lines
in the superiority of certain forms of previously neglected as- and color were then added "automaticallv".
 DADA AND SURREALISM 883

U'oman.Old Man, and Flowers 11 by Max Ernst; oil on canvas; 97 x 130cm (38x5iin); 1923. Museum of Modern Art, New York

Ernst developed new automatic techniques in 192,5, frot- with their poetic titles, always recall the real world, however
tage (rubbing) in his drawings, and grattage (scraping) in his remotely.
paintings. Exactly as children take rubbings from coins, Ernst In 1923 Yves Tanguy (1900—55) decided to become a
took rubbings from a variety of surfaces, including wood and painter when he was struck by a painting by de Chirico in a
leaves, and then organized them into delicate and evocative dealer's window. His earliest work often echoes de Chirico's
images of birds, trees, flying monsters, and so on. A selection haunting scenarios, while the spontaneity of the execution and
of his frottages were published in 1926 as Histoire Naturelle. the enigmatic, abstract or biomorphic shapes depicted show
His grattage paintings, mcluding the series of Doves, Hordes, the influence of Miro and Arp.
Forests, and Shell- or Snow-Flowers (1925-8), contrast The Surrealists' interest in collective action and their belief
greatly with his earlier illusionistic paintings. The technique that art should be made by everyone found expression in the
involved applying several coats of color to the canvas, placing cadavre exquis ("exquisite corpse") game: a sentence or draw-
objects underneath, scrapmg off the raised portions, thus ing was composed by three or four people working in

revealing the underlying layers of color, and then interpreting rotation, who could not see the contributions of the other
the forms which emerged — a spool, for instance, often be- collaborators. The astonishing images that resulted are,

comes the head or eye of a bird. arguably, the most thorough-going fulfilment of Surrealist
In 1925 Miro's work also became more "automatic" in a aesthetic theory. The Surrealist ideal was peinture-poesie
number of extremely free, rapidly executed canvases, for in- ("painting-poetry") and the close collaboration between poets
stance. The Birth of the World (1925; Museum of Modern and painters at this time is seen in these cadavres exquis and
Art, New York). Although highly abstracted, these paintings. also in the vivid visual quality of Surrealist poetry, in the use
 ^

The Menaced Assassin

The "Whodunit", the genre Rene Magritte so As a boy, Magritte first savored the
wittily exploits in The Menaced Assassin episodic Fantomas novels written collabora-
( 1 92.7; Museum of Modern Art, New York), tively in theperiod 1 9 1 2—1 4 by AUain and
is instantly familiar. But it is a popular genre, Souvestre, the silent films based on them
not one we expect to encounter in a paint- directed by Feuillade, and the serialized thril-
ing — especially in a painting on the grand lers which had an American detective Nat —
scale of this one. In its subject, the crime —
Pinkerton or Nick Carter as hero. (In the
passiomtel, and in its relationship to popular 19ZOS and 1930s, he himself tried his hand at
culture. The Menaced Assassin reflects two writing Fantomas and Nat Pinkerton stories.)
abiding preoccupations of the Surrealists: the A still from one of Feuillade's Fantomas films
criminal's supremely intransigent attitude to may have directly influenced the composition
law and order, and the belief that the im- of The Menaced Assassin, while the bare
aginative riches of the human psyche find floorboards and blank walls, the stiffly posed
uninhibited release more readily in popular figures and carefully placed furniture, and the
than in "official" art forms. As Magritte here severely frontal view of the steeply raked, — -rwr
drew upon and modified the detective story, stage-like space, echo settings typical of all T I he Ml'U.UlJ A,, j.^,1)! A collage scene from
so slightly later Max Ernst pillaged popular the Fantomas films. The gaudy, melodram- by Magritte; oil on La Famnte 1 00 Tetes, a
19th-century weeklies for their illustrations, atic covers of novelettes of the Nick Carter canvas; 4ft iiiinX3ft collage novel by Max
Sjin (1.5 X 1.93m); 1917. Ernst published in 19Z9,
which he then converted into images of type are another possible source.
Museum of Modern Art, two years after Magritte
unforgettable oneiric strangeness by means The film and the covers have a narra-
still
New York pamted The Menaced
of collage. tive context which explains the meaning of Assassin
 CLOSE STUDY

NICK CARTE
IE GRAND DETECTIVE AMERICAII

fi- 35 J •
J t t • I I \ J i I

\ (i i

The cover of issue

no. 3 5 in the French Nick
Carter novelette series;
undated

that selected, frozen moment. The Menaced Colconda by The Heart of the enigmatic suitcase reappears in another
Assassin is like a still and has a deceptively Magritte; oil on canvas; Matter by Magritte; oil painting (The Heart of the Matter, 1928;
iftTjinx^ft 3|in on canvas; 3 ft 9|in x
informative title. We are tricked into believ-
2ft
Collection of Marcel Mabille, Rhodes St
(o.Sxim); 1955. Private ylin (i.i6Xo.8ini);
ing that we can "read" the painting, that
collection 1928. Collection of
Genese, Belgium) redolent with sinister
despite the expected presence of red herrings .Marcel Mabille, Rhodes drama, teaming up with a tuba reminiscent
the mystery of the murder can be solved. But St Genese, Belgium of the phonograph and a woman, alive but
the clues offered remain irreconcilable; the threatened. A much later painting The Grape
title is the principal red herring. We cannot, Harvest (1959; private collection) isolates
for instance, assume that the meditative and develops the motif of the row of identikit
figure apparently listening to the phonograph men staring through the empty window. The
is the assassin: the hat and coat on the systematic stereotyping of figures, furniture,
chair — if they are his — resemble the arche- —so noticeable The
and buildings in

typal detective's uniform. We cannot assume Menaced Assassin— becomes the hallmark of
that the bowler-hatted are on the right men Magritte's mature work, for example Gol-
caveman's club that one
side of the law: the conda (1953; private collection).
of them brandishes could have killed the girl, Magritte's habitual style a form of sim- —
and the net clutched by his twin recalls the plified realism, seemingly impersonal in its

net used to bag a naked girl in another early avoidance of painterly bravura — is so frank it

painting. Magritte's homtnage to the detec- makes us believe that the horrifying or
tive story takes the form of irony: his mystery absurd events depicted are true. It is peculiar-
endlessly eludes solution; the delicious, nag- ly appropriate in The Menaced Assassin, for

ging uncertainty that makes detective fiction It is the style neither of the academy nor of
addictive remains perpetual. A touch of the avant-garde, but of advertisements, signs,
mockery may also be detected in another of illustrations in children's primers: a popular
his open references to the genre, The style comparable to the popular imagery of
Backfire (194^; Collection of Emile Langui, the painting.
Brussels): it is a replica of the cover of the ELIZABETH COWLING
first Fantomas novels, but the hero/
of the
villain's dagger has become a rose. Further reading. Gablik, S. Magritte, London (1970).
Passeron, R. Rene Magritte, Paris (1970). Scutenaire,
The Menaced Assassin calls to mind many
L. Avec Magritte, Brussels (1977). Sylvester, D. Mag-
other paintings by Magritte. Thus, twinned
ritte, New "Ifork 1 969). Waldberg, P. Rene Magritte,
(

bowler-hatted figures occur in a work of the Brussels (1965).

same period (The Meaning of Night, 1927;
private collection), but they are there like
somnambulists in an enchanted world. The
886 DADA AND SURREALISM

The Birth of the World by Joan Miro; oil on canvas; 245 x 195cm Lengthy Days by '^'ves Tanguy; oil on canvas; 92x73cm (36X29in);
(96x77in); 1925. Museum of Modem Art, New York 1937. Musee National d'Art Modeme, Paris

of evocative, poetic titlesby all the painters, in Miro's and created from elements cut out of popular magazines. He re-

Ernst's introduction of words or phrases into some of their composed these originally bland images into fantastic, dis-
pictures, and in the allusive, metaphorical approach to imagery turbing, or humorous scenes.
of the painters. In Tanguy's work the early tendency towards biomorphism
About 1928-9 the illusionistic manner of de Chirico and of was confirmed and, indeed, all identifiable references to the
Ernst in the early 19ZOS reasserted itself, and automatism outside world were eradicated. Yet his work from <:i929 on-
went temporarily out of favor, because, as Breton said in the wards became increasingly precise in detail and labored in
Second Surrealist Manifesto of 1929, it could too easily degen- execution, and the biomorphic forms that inhabit the seem-
erate into aestheticism. It was also felt that dreams and fan- ingly endless space of his paintings became more and more
tasies, and the Surrealist image —
defined as the meeting of two tangible and three-dimensional; he seems, indeed, to give an
different realities on a plane foreign to them both could be — exact and "real" transcript of the landscape of his dreams or
rendered more directly and precisely by means of illusionistic his imagination.
description. In 1927, Rene Magritte (1898-1967), who had been one of
Miro now reverted to a detailed and linear manner in paint- the founder members of the Surrealist group in Brussels,
ings which, while remaining extremely spontaneous in feeling, moved to Paris. All his work is executed in a taut, precise

were crowded with incident. In the 19^05, his subject matter "realistic" style. The bizarre happenings he depicts — for in-
example, Man and Woman in front of a Pile of Excre-
in, for stance, a man and woman are kissing but their heads are
ment (1936; Joan Miro Foundation, Barcelona), became in- swathed in cloths (The Lovers, 1928; Collection of R. Zeisler,
creasingly dramatic,and is characterized by trauma, violence, New York) —are rendered more shocking and disturbing be-
eroticism, and savage humor. cause the style is completely deadpan and objective. In many
Ernst's work also became more figurative, and in 1929 he of his paintings he calls into question our assumptions about
published the first in a series of "collage-novels". La Femme the nature of our universe, and suggests that the forces of
100 Tetes ("The 100-Headed Women"), which were entirely unreason hold secret sway: for instance, our faith in language
 —

DADA AND SURREALISM 887

and the axiom that "art imitates nature" are chal-

favorite Modern Art, New York). The cult of the object, which in-

lenged The Treason of Images (1929; Los Angeles County

in cluded collecting objects as well as making them, reached its

Museum of Art, Los Angeles), in which a copybook image of a climax in 1936 when a "Surrealist Exhibition of Objects" was
pipe carries underneath it the legend Ceci n'est pas une pipe organized in the Galerie Charles Ratton in Paris.
("This is not a pipe"). The considerable success and notoriety Surrealism, es-

Salvador Dali (1904—) made his debut at the end of 1928 pecially Surrealist painting, began to enjoy in the 1930s
when Vn Chien Andalou ("An An-
the Surrealist-inspired film thanks to the many international exhibitions — led to a certain
dalusian Dog") which he had made with his compatriot Luis and daring of the "heroic" 1920s. The
dissipation of the rigor
Buiiuel was shown privately in Paris. The years 1928 and new recruits did not equal the first generation of painters and
1929 had been ones of considerable internal strife in the poets. Victor Brauner (1903-66), a Rumanian, joined the
movement, occasioned partly by dissent over the vexed ques- group in 1932, and in an illusionist manner developed a per-
tion of Surrealism's relationship to the Communist Party, and sonal mythology in nightmarish scenes that are usually ag-
partly by the autocratic idealism of Breton who refused to gressively sexual and peopled with monstrous beings.
tolerate any compromise with Surrealist principles and did not Although the German artist, Hans Bellmer (1902-75) did
hesitate to expel backsliders. Dali was exactly the tonic that not move 1937 or 1938, photographs of his Doll
to Paris until
Breton and those who were still faithful to him needed, for his were published in Minotaure in 1935. Seen from provocative
small-scale, minutely detailed, trompe-l'oeil paintings, such as angles and in erotic poses, her limbs and organs grotesquely
The Lugubrious Game (1929; private collection), with their rearranged, Bellmer's "articulated minor" epitomizes the Sur-
obsessive sexual content, epitomized the Surrealist mission realist interest in sadomasochism.

defined by Breton, in the Second Surrealist Manifesto, as a

"total recuperation of our psychic powers by means ... of the Titanic Days by Magritte; oil on canvas; i i6cmX8icm (46X32in); 1928.
dizzying descent into ourselves, the systematic illumination of Private collection

the hidden regions . . . the perpetual excursion into the midst

of the forbidden zone". Dali's theory of double images, which
he called "the paranoiac-critical method", gave a Freudian
extension to the concept of the Surrealist image and was in-

fluential in the 1930s, but his sympathy with Fascism and his
eagerness for material success led to his eventual exclusion
from the group.
hi 1929, the sculptor, Alberto Giacometti (1901-66), made
the transition to Surrealism, and for the next six years he
worked entirely from the imagination. In cage-like structures

enclosing enigmatic objects, in intestine-like plaster corridors,

in constructions resembling curious board games, in insect-
like figures, Giacometti exteriorized sensations of anxiety and
persecution, and an unsettling ambivalence towards violence.
In slightly later, more conventional sculptures of women, such
as The Invisible Object (1934-5; Collection of A. Maeght,
Paris), an apparitional presence is evoked.

The 1930s were distinguished by a new activity, object-

making, which recommended itself to the Surrealists because

no special technical skill was required. As early as 1924,
Breton had called for the fabrication of "certain of those ob-
jects that one sees only in dreams", but it was not until 1930-
I, when Giacometti began to make his object-like sculptures

and Dali to construct his so-called "objects of symbolic func-

tion", that Breton's idea was realized. Conceived of as "the
objectification of desire", and as a means of liberating the
object from the slur of functionalism. Surrealist objects were
composed from any bric-a-brac that, through some subcon-
scious mechanism, had attracted the maker. Often extremely
elaborate, sometimes involving the use of poetry (as in Bre-
ton's "poem-objects"). Surrealist objects are private fetishes.
Among the most famous is the Fur-covered Cup, Saucer, and
Spoon by Meret Oppenheim (191 3-) of 1936 (Museum of
888 DADA AND SURREALISM

Oscar Dominguez (1906-57), from Tenerife, was the Meanwhile, Surrealist automatist theory and painting sig-

creator of many striking objects, and "rediscovered" in 1936 nificantly influenced the young American avant-garde pain-
the process, used by children, and known as "decalcomania". ters: Arshile Gorky (1904-48) was actively supported by
Spreading gouache on a sheet of paper, laying another sheet Breton, while others such as Motherwell, de Kooning, Still,

on top, applying pressure, and then peelmg the top sheet off, Rothko, and Pollock were deeply indebted to Surrealist tech-
Dominguez was able to create "automatically" impressions of niques, and particularly to the work of Miro and Masson and
strange landscapes and exotic natural growths. Ernst took the Surrealist-inspired work of Picasso.
over the technique during the Second World War and used it Thus, Surrealism's immediate influence was on the develop-
to remarkable effect. ment of Abstract Expressionism, while its example lies more
Paul Delvaux (1897—) worked in Belgium from 1937 or less directly behind those artists, who since the war, have
onwards in a Surrealist-inspired, illusionistic manner. His been opposed to geometrical abstraction. So, for instance. Art
pictures of desirable but unapproachable naked women and Brut, pioneered in 1948 by Dubuffet with the support of
anxious, ineffectual men, suggest unconsummated erotic en- Breton, sought to direct attention towards areas of art the
counters and a sexuality so inhibited that its only outlet is in Surrealists had advocated in the —
19ZOS the art of children, of
voyeurism and fantasy. the insane, of the self-taught, and of "primitive" peoples.
The outbreak of war
1939 disrupted the art world in
in The Surrealist concept of beauty has also undoubtedly af-

Paris and the Surrealist group split up. Many of the Surrealists fected contemporary taste, in its emphasis on the value of the
took refuge in New York, and there a new group formed .fantastic and the esoteric tradition in European and non-Euro-
around Breton. In 1942 a Surrealist-oriented review, VVV, pean art. If the lofty political, social, and moral ideals of

began publication with Breton and Ernst as editorial advisers. Surrealism have not been realized, the movement has, at least,
Of the painters who joined at this time, Roberto Matta helped to stimulate a broader and richer approach to culture
Echaurren (191 1—) and Wifredo Lam (1902—) are the most and an alternative way of thinking and looking.
important. After a period of sensuously lyrical abstraction
when he used automatist techniques and rich and rhythmic ELIZABETH COWLING
contrasts of color and tone, Matta began to introduce first
linear elements, and then science-fiction-like personages into
his work, which became, as a result, more aggressive and Bibliography. Ades, D. Dada and London
Surrealism Reviewed,

sinister in effect. (1978). Breton, A. Surrealism and London (1972). Jean, M.

Painting,
The History of Surrealist Painting, London (i960). Motherwell, R.
Lam's work is characterized by a greater concern with
(ed.) The Dada Painters and Poets: an Anthology, New York (1951).
formal structure and is deeply influenced by his admiration for
Nadeau, M. (trans. Howard, R.) The History of Surrealism, London
Picasso and African tribal sculpture, while his imagery sug-
(1968). Picon, G. Journal of Surrealism 1919-^9, Geneva (1976).
gests primitive rites conducted in tropically abundant under- Richter, H. Dada: Art and Anti-Art, London (1965). Rubin, W.S.
growth. Dada and Surrealist Art, London (1969).
 1

49

INTERNATIONAL STYLE

The sanatorium at Paimio, Finland, designed by Alvar Aalto;

1928-33 ( see page 90
890 INTERNATIONAL STYLE

THE was
International Style: Architecture Since 1922
the title of a study by Henry-Russell Hitchcock and
portioned and above
nology which was international:
all they were in tune with the new tech-

Philip Johnson published in New York in 1932. It was

written in conjunction with an exhibition of architecture of The uniformity of the appearance of modern buildings, bred of
world travel and world technology, overrides the natural fron-
the past decade organized by the authors at the Museum of
tiers which continue to restrain individuals and peoples and
Modern Art, New York. The book illustrated and briefly as-
beats a path through all cultural regions.
sessed buildings of many 72 architects from
different kinds by
15 different countries, most weight being given to Mies van Gropius' stress on the international qualities of the new archi-
der Rohe (1886-1969) and Walter Gropius (1883-1969) tecture was to lead later to confrontation with the National
from Germany, J.J. P. Oud (1890—1963) from Holland, and Socialists.

Le Corbusier (1887-1965) from France. It was a book written In the following year Adolf Behne, a close colleague of
to prove a point: that a contemporary architectural style, Gropius in the left-wing association Arbeitsrat fiir Kunst
which ignored national boundaries, had been evolved to ("Working Group for Art"), published a book called Der
satisfy not only functional considerations but aesthetic ones Moderne Zweckbau ("Modern Utilitarian Building"). In this
as well. The Director of the Museum of Modern Art, Alfred the sources for the new style were seen in industrial and office
Barr, remarked in his preface that the authors had proved buildings by men such as H.P. Berlage, Peter Behrens, F.L.
"that there exists today a modern style as original, as consis- Wright, Tony Garnier, and Auguste Perret. Although the
tent, as logical, and as widely distributed as any in the past". practitioners of the International style rejected all the "Salon"
The buildings and
selected did have a certain stylistic unity, architecture of the past, they were anxious to establish their
Hitchcock and Johnson were able to characterize the main pedigree in great and often anonymous engineering structures,
features of the style. The buildings were conceived in terms of such as exhibition halls and American grain silos, and in the
volume rather than mass. They were supported by regular work of those few pioneers who were active in many different
skeleton frames which were undisguised. They were covered countries before the First World War. The Dutchman H.P.
with a thin surface or skin, often of smooth stucco painted Berlage (1856— 1934) was admired for his reduction of orna-
white, and their windows, usually with light standardized ment and his interest in geometry and unbroken planes. The
metal frames, were an integral part of this skin. There was no Viennese Adolf Loos (1870— 1933) was also singled out for his

surface ornament, but windows and doors were often placed vehement dislike of ornament — it is interesting that his
according to a proportional system. Axial symmetry was famous essay of 1908 on this subject. Ornament and Crime,
avoided, and, because of the load-bearing frame, internal was republished by Le Corbusier in the magazine L'Esprit
walls could be placed to form a free plan and external ele- Nouveau ("The New Spirit") in 1920. The German Peter
ments could be composed asymmetrically. Roofs were flat for Behrens (i 868-1 940), in whose office Le Corbusier, Mies van
functional and aesthetic reasons. There was a stress on the der Rohe, and Gropius all worked for a short time, showed
rectangle and on the horizontal. The new architecture was them the importance of total design and the power of industry
Gothic in ideology but Classical in feeling. to create standard types and a new classicism. His monumen-
Although the International style was thus first explicitly talit)' was offset by the dynamic visionary drawings of La

characterized and codified by Hitchcock and Johnson, there Citta Nuova by the Italian Futurist Sant'Elia. The project for a
were in fact earlier publications written by the architects who Cite Industrielle (1917) by the Lyons architect Tony Garnier
were themselves responsible for the style. These earlier works also impressed them, especially Le Corbusier.
were full of idealism, exhortations, and excitement indeed, if — Perhaps their most important source was the architecture of
architects such as Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius had not the American, Frank Lloyd Wright. His work was known
been such skillful propagandists for their cause, the Museum through two volumes published in Berlin by Wasmuth in 19 10
of Modern Art would not have been attracted to their archi- and 191 1 (Frank Lloyd Wright, Ausgefiihrte Bauten und
tecture and we would pay less attention to it today. Avant- Entwiirfe), and through Berlage, who had visited Wright and
garde architects in the 1920s had to fight strongly against was a keen admirer. In Wright they found a bold use of
reactionary forces to prove that their buildings would satisfy modern materials such as concrete to create wide, horizontal
new and urgent needs. cantilevers and block shapes, the repeated use of standardized
In 1925 Walter Gropius' book Internationale Architektur elements, and above all a ready acceptance of the power of the
was published as the first Bauhaus book. This too contained a machine to form a new style. Significantly, they chose to
selection of buildings of varying types — factories, houses, ignore for the most part his fondness for abstracted ornament
flats, offices —drawn from many different countries and de- and his insistence on unifying his houses with the landscape.
signed by architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Cor- International style houses are usually clearly separated from
busier, Oud, and Gropius himself. Gropius stated that their the landscape although nature is often important as a foil.

buildings were stylistically linked because they were all con- When Hitchcock and Johnson's book was published, the
ceived logically and all used materials, space, time, and money style had been established for about a decade. Despite the
economically. They were functional but also well pro- authors' claims, the International style was mainly a European
 INTERNATIONAL STYLE 89 I

parts, looks back to Gropius and Meyer's pre-War industrial

buildings, the Alfeld shoe-last factory for example, but the
strong asymmetric pattern of the balconies is characteristic of
the International style. These characteristics are more de-
veloped awkward project of the same year for the
in the less

Kappe Machine Factory at Alfeld.

Brothers'
Gropius had founded the Bauhaus in 19 19 and during its
early years there was a great stress on the crafts, but by 1923
the problem of machine production was being tackled. At an
exhibition in the summer of that year at Weimar, a prototype
mass-produced house, the Haus am Horn, was erected and
equipped with furniture by Marcel Breuer of simple, basic
shapes. The house, designed by Georg Muche, was square and
white with an almost flat roof, but it was symmetrical and
rather heavy in appearance. A project by Gropius and Meyer
for an International Philosophy Center at Erlangen of 1923—4
is much more advanced and forms a prototype for the
Bauhaus building at Dessau itself. The Philosophy Center was
to have been a large building of varying heights, flat-roofed
with horizontal strips of standardized windows, and a boldly
asymmetrical plan. Gropius illustrated it in his Internationale
Architektur.
The Bauhaus moved to Dessau in 1925 and the new build-
ing —Gropius' masterpiece and one of the most famous ex-
amples of the International style — was opened in December
1926. The different functions of the school are reflected in the

form and grouping of the parts of the building. The students'

!:!n;in- own rooms form a tall block, each room with its own bal-

cony; the administrative offices are placed in a low bridge

spanning a road, with the Director's office in the very center;

the workshops have a skeleton frame from which hung a is

large, glazed curtain wall with an industrial metal frame. The

^ building'sasymmetry and the balanced relationship of the

parts are best appreciated in aerial views in fact it was

photographed from the air soon after it was built. Gropius

—

The Bauhaus building at Dessau, designed by Walter Gropius;

opened in 1 926; an aerial view taken soon after the opening

A competition dra.Mnj; tor an ofHtc tower for the Chicago Tribune,

submitted by Walter Ciropius and Adolf Meyer; 1 922

Style, the product of a few forceful personalities, in Germany

it centered on the group of architects of Der Ring, founded in
1925 in Berlin. Here, immediately after the First World War,
architects went through an Expressionist period, designing
exciting, visionary, and Utopian projects. It was only in 1922
that a stress on orthogonal structure replaced prismatic and
organic forms. In dropms' case the timber house for Adolf
Sommerfeld designed with Adolf Meyer in 920-1 is an ex- 1

ample of this Expressionist phase, while their project of 1922

for an office tower for the Chicago Tribune shows that the
change in style has taken place. The Tribune tower with its

clearly exposed, regular frame, its repeated standardized

The Barcelona Pavilion
planted a few feet from the southeast corner
of the pavilion, announced its origin and
purpose, the flag pole drawing a fine vertical

The Barcelona International Exhibition of

1929 was a large and bustling affair on the
scale set by its predecessors in Paris, London,
^m i
across the repeated horizontals of the build-
ing.
to
The chaste and narrow steps leading up
itspodium were not designed to draw-
and Chicago. A specially built National crowds.
Palace, massive and multi-domed, dominated Architecturally, the pavilion represents an
4
the exhibition with its display of govern- extreme statement of modernist logic. The
mental power and the exhibition itself in- elements necessary for a building (a quasi-
cluded much rhetorical architecture, most of domestic building, but untrammeled by the
it classical m idiom and stuffed with atten- -' coarser needs of living —thus a distant
tion-seeking items, along its imposing av- descendant of the primitive hut on which
enues.The German contribution was easily » Vitruvius and others since had based their
overlooked in this context. Even the words architectural theory) were clearly and dis-

spoken at the opening by the German com- cretely displayed: base, roof, supporting col-
n iiiin
missioner were not designed to cause a stir: umns, dividing and articulating screens. The
"We want nothing more than
plicity, and The German pavilion
integrity".
clarity, sim- 11 eight cruciform columns make a legible grid
related to the rectangle of the roof slab,
itself, designed by Mies van der Rohe of leaving the screen walls to be placed ac-
Berlin (i 886-1969), echoed these words. cording to aesthetic and functional purpose.
Never has an exhibition building been less These could thus be non-loadbearing, of
J_
\
encumbered with explicit messages and dis-
plays, and never has an architect had fuller
control over a national building and its
1 glass — clear, etched, or colored
stronger material.
less, in
They
—or of
are placed, nonethe-
exclusively rectangular relationships,
contents. Mies himself chose the site, backed The ground plan of in accord with the idiom followed by every
by the tall, plain wall of the Palace of Alfonso the German Republic's part of the building in which the human
XIII. He designed every part of the pavilion
pavilion at the Barcelona
being —the and his artistic surrogate
visitor,

and the sparse furniture it contained, and

International Exhibition
of 1929, designed by
selected the sculpture (by Georg Kolbe, Mies van der Rohe
1 877-1 947) which stood above the inner
pool. Only the flag of the German Republic, T A view along the back
of the pavilion
Below right
Barcelona chair,
The
in the sculptured nude —
alone represents or-
designed by van der —
ganic nature. The furniture the famous Bar-
Rohe; a reproduction; —
celona chair and stool serves an intermedi-
.•\shmolean Museum, ate function with its exquisitely cur\'ed
Oxford
frames, and so probably did the water in the
two pools sunk into the podium.
The logic and language of this design look
to American architectural invention of the
last years of the 1 9th century, particularly to
L.H. Sullivan {1856-1924) and Frank Lloyd
Wright (1869-1959I, and to the aesthetics of
Dutch De Stijl paintings and architectural
projects which combined a system of straight
lines and right angles with this separateness.
 )

CLOSK S7UUV

A A view of the A preliminarv' sketch

Barcelona pavilion, seen for the Barcelona
across the open pool pavilion by Mies van der
Rohc

I I

integrity of elements, allowing space and

light to flow between them. These stimuli
fused perfectly with the innate love of order
and precision which had earlier led Mies to
base himself on the Neoclassicism of c 1 800,
more particularly on the work of the great
German architect K.F. Schinkel ( 1 78 i-i 84 1
whose influence is seen also in the work of
other German architects of the modern
movement, but Mies' fusion of this tradition thought to advertise the dollar-backed Its historical prototypes are thus not to be
with the structural logic and spatial flow of Wirtschaftswunder ("economic miracle") found among exhibition buildings but among
the Americans and Dutch was unique. that had followed Germany's economic col- the temples and other pleasure pavilions with
Unique also was, and remained, Mies' lapse of 1923—4. Germany's mood was, which gentlefolk of the 1 8th century and
sense of quality and visual splendor in ma- however, more hard-headed than this would after, emulating Antiquity, articulated their
terials. Here considerations of fine but mini- suggest, and there were many who, while extensive gardens: ideal constructions, as
mal design met his taste for luxury. The admiring the succinctness of Mies' design, much for looking at as for resting in, images
podium of the pavilion and the walls that complained that he had not used for his walls of taste and tranquillity. Behrens, in whose
appear light in photographs were built of some of the many man-made materials being design office Mies had worked for a while,
Roman travertine, the beautiful grainy stone developed which stood for indus-
at the time, prophesied that the Barcelona Pavilion
of which, for instance, G.I. Bernini (1598-
. trial prowess as well as a modernism intent would "one day be called the most beautiful
1 680) built the colonnades of the piazza of St on independence of nature's ready-made building of the century"; the architectural
Peter's in Rome. The walls framing the inner materials, however exquisite. These confec- critic Raymond McGrath in 19 ^z called it an
pool were of green Imian marble; the short tions would not have satisfied Mies' epoch-making work. Long before that, how-
freestanding wall inside the pavilion was of ambition: he seems to have recognized fully ever, it had been taken down. We can know
solid onyx. The generously proportioned, the opportunity offered by the commission to it only from visual and verbal documents.

largely handmade furniture combined the represent a Germany whose civilization, as NORBERT [YNTON
finest polished steel with kid leather cush- much as economy, appeared to be resurgent
ions.The columns were cased in polished after a disastrous war, and also a Berlin that Further reading. Blaser, W. Mies van der Rohe,
chrome. The pools were lined with black London (1965). Bonta,J.P. An Anatomy of Architec-
appeared to have become the cultural capital
Review of the Criti-
tural Interpretation: a Seiniotic
glass. of the Western world, with a building whose cism of Mies van der Rohe's Barcelona Pavilion,
This discreet luxuriousness, exercised for prime function was to exhibit classical per- Barcelona {1975). Johnson, P. Mies van der Rohe,
such a representational occasion, may be fection in modern terms. London and New York (1978).
894 INTERNATIONAL STYLE

was probably influenced dynamic composition by the

in this became fully apparent. Thirty-one buildings by architects
Russian artist El Lissitzky (1890-1941) who had come to were erected under the supervision of Mies van der Rohe,
Berlin in 1921, bringing with him Suprematist and Construc- vice-chairman of the Werkbund. Most of the architects were
tivist ideas. In his paintings called Prouns, described as "the members of the Berlin Ring —
Mies himself, Gropius, Behrens,
interchange station between paintmg and architecture", Lis- Poelzig, Maxand Bruno Taut, and Ludwig Hilbersheimer
sitzky suggested an architecture that "revolves, swims, flies". (who published his book Internationale Neue Baukunst,
His "Skyhook" project of 1924-5 for a raised horizontal sky- "International New Architecture", at this time). Other Ger-
scraper also looks forward to the Dessau Bauhaus. Gropius mans were A.G. Schneck, R. Docker, A. Rading, H. Scharoun,
ends his Internationale Architektur with the Lissitzkyan state- while from abroad there were J. Frank (Austria), Oud (Hol-
ment that buildings are striving to hover above the ground. land), Stam (Holland), and Le Corbusier (Switzerland/
One of the major characteristics of the International stv'le in France). The Werkbund stipulated that the houses should be
general —one that Hitchcock and Johnson underplay — is its sold or let after the exhibition. Mies himself specified that the
dependence on painting, but this is very important. At the roofs should be flat and he produced an overall layout for the
Bauhaus, painters determined the appearance of many of the estate consisting of a sculptural series of interrelated blocks on
three-dimensional, "utilitarian" objects. As well as Lissitzky, the hillside.
the Dutch nonfigurative artist Theo van Doesburg (1883- Methods of assembly varied and individual contributions
193 1) was influential there from C1921. Johannes Itten, Kan- could be distinguished. Oud and Stam, for example, produced
dinsky, Klee, and — —
from 1923 Laszlo Moholy-Nagy were small, simple row houses, Gropius two semi-prefabricated
members of the staff, and from them derives the Bauhaus houses, Le Corbusier three reinforced concrete houses partly
concern for experiment with different materials, for balanced raised on pilotis with novel interior spaces and roof terraces,
designs, for easily understood (and therefore democratic) while Mies himself designed a steel-framed block of flats. But
basic shapes and primary colors. It was largely through the a visual unity was achieved through the use of white render,
painters' influence that unified interiors were produced with horizontal bands of windows, and the predominant rectangu-
lights, tables, ashtrays, and floor covermgs all closely relating larity of the buildings —
characteristics which later led the
to each other. Moholy-Nagy, who took charge of the Prelimi- National Socialists to compare the estate to a north African
nary Course and the Metal Workshop when he arrived, was village. That architects from several different countries had

particularly influential in his research into new materials, produced works similar in style was remarked on at the time;
exercises in balance and tension, and the use of kinetic Professor Paul Schmidtthenner, for example, wrote: "We are
and artificial lighting techniques offered by 20th-century tech- on the point of getting a prescription for the international
nology. His Bauhaus book Von Material zu Architektur style of the 20th century".
(1929) is one of the most thrilling source books of the period Mies van der Rohe's block had 24 flats with a variety of
and suggests an architecture that would make more use of plans, but regular and carefully proportioned elevations. It
glass and artificial lighting effects than existed in any building well justified its important site at the top of the estate. The
actually built, except perhaps the Van Nelle Factory at Rotter- block was his first building in the International style, although
dam which Moholy does in fact reproduce. earlier works pointed the way. In 1922 or 1923 he designed a

The Doesburg is evident in

influence of artists such as van
the house Gropius built for himself at Dessau which has an The block of flats designed by Mies van der Rohe for the Deutscher
entrance front composed like a De Stijl painting. This was one Werkbund exhibition at the Weissenhof Siedlung, Stuttgart; 1927
of seven houses put up for members of the Bauhaus faculty
and equipped with fitted cupboards, mechanized kitchens,
and light, metal-tube furniture by Breuer. The Torten Estate at
Dessau was completed in 1927, and in the same year Gropius
was responsible for a prototype prefabricated house at the
Weissenhof Siedlung at Stuttgart. The Dammerstock Siedlung
at Karlsruhe followed in 1927—8, and then, from 1929 to

193 1, the very large blocks of flats at Siemensstadt in Berlin.

All are good examples of International style housing: by the
late 1920s the style, in Germany at least, had become strongly
identified with low-cost housing.
"Minimum housing" was the subject of the second congress
of the association Congres Internationaux d' Architecture
Moderne (C.I. A.M.)
held in 1929 in Frankfurt, while the
famous Deutscher Werkbund exhibition at the Weissenhof in
Stuttgart of 1927 was also devoted to low-cost housing. It was
at this exhibition that the international quality of the style
 INTERNATIONAL STYLK 895

concrete office block with unbroken, horizontal glazed and banded appearance. Mendelsohn left Germany in 1933 and
solid bands in front of a concrete frame. Another project of went to England where the De la Warr Pavilion at Bexhill-on-
192^ for a brick villa can be compared to the nonfigurative, Sea, which he designed with Chermayeff, is a good example of
strictly horizontal- and vertical-based compositions of van his work.
Doesburg or Moholy-Nagy and this despite the fact that Mies Like Mendelsohn, the Luckardt brothers, who also prac-
wrote in the magazine G in July 1923, "We reject all aesthetic ticed in Berlin, passed through an Expressionist phase before
speculation, all doctrine, and all formalism". His flats in the adopting the Internationa! style. Their houses at the
Afrikanische Strasse in Berlin, of 1926-7, are again beauti- Rupenhorn, Berlin (1928) are good examples of the style but
fully proportioned but much solider and heavier in appear- are mounted on widely sweeping, wing-shaped terraces which
ance than the Weissenhof block. are decidedly unclassical. Hans Scharoun also used curves and
Mies van der Rohe's best-known European work post-dates wing shapes, which make his work relate uneasily to the style.
the Weissenhof. His German Pavilion for the International He contributed a house to the Weissenhof estate —one that
Exhibition at Barcelona in 1929 was a luxurious but function- has two firmly rounded corners. His hostel for the Home and
less building of carefully related beautiful materials — traver- Work Exhibition at Breslau (1928), although it has pilotis,
tine, marble, onyx, opaque and clear glass —used with start- ribbon windows, a flat roof, and a sense of lightness, throws
ling simplicity. The flat roof slab was held above the level off startling arc shaped extensions. One of his large blocks of
podium by slim chrome-plated pillars and the screen walls Siemensstadt (1930) was illustrated by Hitchcock and
flats at

were clearly separated from these supports. The overlapping Johnson, but even these have balconies projecting at less than
rectangles of the roof, pools, and screens and the play with a right-angle with curved, nautical screens for privacy.
opaque and translucent materials again recall Moholy's paint- Outside Berlin, Ernst May, who was City Architect for
ings. The Tugendhat House of the same date at Brno in Frankfurt from 1925 to 1930, produced the largest Interna-
Czechoslovakia uses similar materials and ideas. The plan of tional style contribution to minimum housing. In the new
the large, open ground floor with curved and straight dividing estates around Frankfurt he successfully fused ideas learnt
screens resembles Kandinsky's Bauhaus paintings. The long, from the English Garden City movement with the latest mass
drawn-out base, the terraces and the low white upper story of production methods of building. He thought deeply about the
this house tie it in more closely with the landscape than most needs of the inhabitants of his houses, gave them large living
International style houses. Before emigrating to America in rooms, fitted storage space and packaged equipment. At
1937, Mies directed the Bauhaus, from 1930 to 1933, when it Frankfurt he supervised a competent team of designers who
was closed by the National Socialists, and designed buildings left with him for Russia in 1930 in the hope of building mass
for the silk industry in Krefeld which are his last works in the housing under Communist rule.

international style. Architects from France and Holland made major aesthetic
Although Mies van der Rohe and Gropius are given pride of contributions to the International style, but were perhaps less

place among the German contributors in Hitchcock and John- concerned with function than Germans such as May. In

son's book, other architects active in that country, especially France the contribution came from one man, Le Corbusier,
in Berlin, made important contributions to the style. Two of although the style was popularized —and misunderstood—by
Erich Mendelsohn's buildings were reproduced by Hitchcock less able architects such as Mallet-Stevens. Before the First
and Johnson: the Schocken Department Store at Chemnitz World War, Corbusier had made contact with many of the
( 1 928-30) and the German Metal Workers' Union Building in great pioneers — Behrens, Loos, Berlage— as well as with Gar-
Berlin (back view, 1929-30). Mendelsohn was clearly a major nier and Perret in France. He had also traveled extensively
figure, but his relationship to the style was suspect and he did around the Mediterranean and been deeply impressed both by
not contribute to the Weissenhof exhibition. His Einstein the simple, vernacular block houses painted in white and
Tower (1920— r) at Potsdam had been one of the very few pastel colors and by Classical remains such as the Acropolis.

Expressionist designs to be built, and something of its stream- His ideas came to fruition in Paris immediately after the
lined. Futurist quality was retained in many of his later works. War. Once again, painting was a vital stimulus. In November
But a group of villas in suburban Berlin built shortly after the 1918 he and an artist friend, Amedee Ozenfant (1886-1966),
Einstein Tower, in —
1922-3 the house for Dr Sternfeld in to whom he had been introduced by Perret, published a book
Hecrstrasse for example — are cubic and Wrightian and show about contemporary painting titled Apres le Cubisme. With
that Mendelsohn could accept elements of the new fashion. In this they launched "Purism", a post-War, post-Cubist, two-
the Schocken Store for Stuttgart (1926-8; later demolished) man movement signifying a "recall to order" after the years of
Mendelsohn used repeated, flowing horizontal lines and a destruction. The subjects of their Purist paintings were ohjet-
glazed wrap-around corner tower to which purists of the types, everyday cafe utensils, standard bottles, glasses and
International style probably objected. The Schocken Store at plates, which had evolved their shapes over a long period,

Chemnitz has a gently curved facade with uninterrupted through a process of natural selection. Corbusier and Ozen-
ribbon windows alternating with bands of stone facing, and fant painted these objects in elevation and bird's-eye view,
the back of the Metal Workers' Building has a similar light. with contours clearly outlined and brought together like parts
 —
896 INTERNATIONAL STYLE

Le Corbusier spread his ideas through the magazine L'Es-

prit Nouveau (1920—5) and several very forceful books which
were largely drawn from it Vers une Architecture (1923),
L' Art Decor atif d'Aujourd' hut (1926), Urbanisme (1926). His
writing is declamatory, urgent — in Vers une Architecture he
writes:

We must create the mass-production spirit.

The spirit of construcnng mass-production houses.

The spirit of living in mass-production houses.

. the mass production house, healthy (and morally so too)

. .

and beautiful in the same way that the working tools and in-
struments which accompany our existence are beautiful.

We claim, in the name of the steamship, of the airplane, and of

the motor-car, the right to health, logic, daring, harmony, per-
fection.

Illustrations of grain silos, the superstructure of liners, aero-

planes, details of motor engines are juxtaposed with Classical
buildings to make a startling equation between the ancient
and modern worlds: "the airplane mobilized invention, intelli-

gence, and daring: imagination and cold reason. It is the same

spirit that built the Parthenon." The machine had established
a new spirit and set up international standards which were
exact, precise, ordered, pure. Engineers could teach architects
aesthetic as well as practical lessons. In Vers une Architecture
Corbusier's famous definition of architecture is printed below

a photograph of a Canadian Pacific liner.The Empress of

Asia: "Architecture is the masterly, correct and magnificent
play of masses brought together in light."
In1920 Corbusier designed a "mass-production" house,
the Maison Citrohan. This had load-bearing lateral walls, a
flat roof terrace, and a double-height living room lit by a large

studio window. It resembled a Mediterranean block house but

was also inspired by vernacular cafes and workshops in Paris.
The tiny Mai>>on Ozenfant in Paris, designed by Le Corbusier; At the Salon d'Automne of 1922 he showed a plaster model of
probably 0192^-4
the house which was now partly raised on "pilotis": an inven-
of a machine. Compositions were based on proportional sys- tion he thought to be of great value as it freed the ground
tems such as the Golden Section so that chance was excluded beneath the house and when carried through as a supporting
and a mathematical, ideal harmony conveyed. frame enabled interior partitions and exterior elements, such
Le Corbusier, who painted under his real name C.E. Jean- as windows, to be composed at will.
neret, and Ozenfant produced these clear, concise pictures The Citrohan house was finally built in a further revised
from C1919 to CI 926: Le Corbusier's buildings of this period version on a conspicuous site at the Weissenhofsiedlung. From
owe much to their compositions. His architectural plans from outside, it, and the two semidetached neighboring houses
1922 usually show a rectangular exterior frame enclosing which Corbusier also designed, appeared as light, white, rec-
curved and straight interior partitions which bear a startling tangular boxes partly raised above the ground with roof decks
resemblance to the profiles of bottles, bowls, and cups! His and windows which were either of the studio type or else
elevations often made use of a proportional system. The idea grouped into long narrow ribbons like those in a train car-
of objet-types, of a selective evolutionary process at work riage. The interior spaces were also influenced by liners and
among machine-made products, was also very important for trains; the living rooms were large and open, whereas passage-
his choice of furnishings. It determined as well the sources ways, lavatories, and kitchens were pared down to the
from which Corbusier derived his architectural style the — smallest practical dimensions. In the Citrohan house the two-
latest ocean liners, trains, aeroplanes, industrial buildings story-high living room had an open mezzanine at the back
whose forms had been evolved to suit the needs of 20th-cen- forming a sleeping area and the bathroom was separated from
turv man. this space by a curved partition which stopped several feet
 —
INTERNATIONAL STYLE 897

short of the ceiling. rooms of the two semidetached

The living form exciting sculptural shapes in the open, unified interior
houses had movable partitions which could be closed at night spaces.
to turn the space into "sleeping-cabins" connected by a cor- Although these unique houses are Le Corbusier's best-
ridor with dimensions based on those in Wagon-Lits Cie known buildings in the International style, much of his time in
Internationale (The International Railway Sleepers Co.). the 1920s —
was taken up with for the most part unrealized
Similar characteristics are found in Corbusier's other schemes for mass housing. As well as the Citrohan house, he
houses of most of which were built in or around
this period, showed at the Salon d'Automne of 1922 his plans for Une
Paris. Some, for artists, were on small, restricted sites; others, Ville Contemporaine de Trois Millions d'Habitants and in the

for wealthy but artistically minded patrons, enjoyed rural
views. The Villa at Vaucresson (1922—3) is one of the earliest.
It has a "nautical" facade composed according to a pro-
portional system, large, open living areas, and a central bath-
room. This is enclosed in partly curved walls, following the
curve of the bath, but the other interior walls and the exterior
ones, which are load bearing, form rectangles. The tiny
Maison Ozenfant, usually dated 1922 but more likely to be
1925 International Decorative Arts Exhibition in Paris he pre-
sented his L'Esprit Nouveau pavilion as an ideal living cell
for machine-age man. The cell was intended as one of
many which, when stacked together, would form a block of
Immeubles-villas (villas-flats). It was equipped with standard
mass-produced furniture, such as Thonet chairs and labora-
tory glassware. With these objet-types the Purists cocked a
snook at the frivolous Art Deco in the official pavilions in the

1923—4, is more advanced. Its interior plan resembles a Purist Exhibition. But the only mass housing that was actually built
painting composition —the large studio space is broken into was an estate at Pessac near Bordeaux, financed by M. Fruges,
by a shelf-likeopen loft and a crow's-nest bibliotheque ac- a sugar refiner. Thewas opened in 1926, but aroused
estate
cessible by metal companion ways. The saw-tooth roof, now considerable controversy and remained empty for several
altered, resembled that of a factory, and the industrial glazing years. The houses, basically of two different types, had flat
was again disposed according to a proportional system. The roofs and were built of reinforced concrete painted white,
linked La Roche and Jeanneret houses of the same date are brown, green, and blue. They were likened to sugar lumps and
also on a restricted site in Auteil, Paris, but they are larger the estate was nicknamed la ville de Maroc.
with enjoyable roof terraces and a gallery — for La Roche's In Holland as in France the formation of a new style of

Purist paintings — raised on pilotis and resembling the bridge architecture depended on an aesthetic derived from avant-
of a ship. garde painting. Here it was produced by the De Stijl group,

Nautical elements are also important in the Villa Cook at founded in 1 9 1 7 and consisting of the painters Mondrian, van
Boulogne-sur-Seine (1926), the Villa at Garches for the Steins Doesburg, Huszar, and van der Leek with the architects Oud,
(1927) and in the well known Villa Savoye (1928-30). These Wils, and van t'Hoff. Their magazine, De Stijl, was launched
are luxurious houses; in them Le Corbusier was able to realize in October of that year and continued until 193 1 when van
fully his aesthetic ideas. All have regular reinforced concrete Doesburg, who was largely responsible for it, died. It ex-
frames of free standing pilotis which enabled him to compose plained their ideas and reproduced their work, and after the
elevations and interior plans as he wished. Ribbon windows First World War was extremely influential outside Holland,
run without interruption along the framing facades; balconies especially in Germany.
or viewing terraces are punched out or slotted in creating an Mondrian was the most important painter and, with van
asymmetric balance; curved partitions, stairways, and ramps Doesburg, the main theorist of the group. He had been paint-
ing Abstract pictures with compositions based exclusively on
The Villa at Garches, designed by Le Corbusier; 1927
the horizontal and vertical since C1914, but was only in
it

1921 that his style was fully mature. Then he composed his
pictures on an asymmetrically balanced grid of black horizon-
tal and vertical lines and restricted his palette to the primary

colors with gray and white. Van Doesburg produced similar,

though not identical work. They thought that these basic
angles and colors expressed fundamental reality, that the uni-
verse was formed from opposing By painting harmoni-
forces.

ous, balanced pictures they were showing these forces in an

ideal equilibrium. The balance had to be asymmetric, ac-
cording to Mondrian, as symmetry marked things as being
apart, separate, and therefore against the universal {see Ab-
stract Art).
The architecture of the De Stijl group lagged behind their

painting; it was only in 1923 that their ideas started to in-

fluence buildings, or rather projects for buildings because very
little was actually built. But earlier work by van t'Hoff and
 ;

INTERNATIONAL STYLE 899

Oud must be mentioned. In 191 6 van t'Hoff built a concrete 1923 showed models for three De Stijl houses at Leonce
villa at Huis-ter-Heide outside Utrecht. It has a flat roof with Rosenberg's gallery in Paris, "L'Effort Moderne". He was
wide cantilevered eaves and form which
a blocky, rectangular helped with these by Cor van Eesteren, a fully qualified Ecole
betrays the strong influence of Frank Lloyd Wright whom van des Beaux-Arts architect. With van Eesteren and Rietveld,
t'Hoff had met in Chicago. But it is symmetrical and rather who had built one of the models, van Doesburg issued a mani-
monumental, and in this way differs from later De Stijl build- festo presenting his ideas; a fuller statement, signed by van
ings. Doesburg alone, was published in De Stijl in the following
In the following year (1917) Oud produced a project for a year.
terrace of holiday houses at Scheveningen which resembles The new architecture shown in the models —particularly the
Garnier's repeated housing units. Then C1919 Oud designed a one for a private house — consisted of a balanced composition
project for a factory at Purmerend which again has Wrightian of rectangular planes linked at right angles to each other. The
parts and an asymmetric central element recalling paintings of planes appeared to float, forming positive 'negative, open and
a slightly earlier date by Mondrian and van Doesburg. closed spaces which broke down the usual separation between
Another unrealized project of 19Z1, for the Kallenbach house inside and As the planes were of unequal size, and
outside.
in Berlin, was extremely advanced with a flat roof and planar colored with De
colors, they were clearly distinguished
Stijl

walls, but his only executed buildings that show the influence from each other: van Doesburg stressed that this clear distinc-
of De Stijl theory are a temporary builder's shelter \i92.3J and tion gave movement, and with it time, a new importance. De
the facade of the Rotterdam cafe De Unie (1925; destroyed). Stijl architecture was anti-cubic, and as it consisted of "a bal-

Oud had been appointed City Architea for Rotterdam in anced relationship of unequal parts" it "rendered front, back,
19 1 8, and by the mid 19ZOS was designing low-cost housing right, left, top and bottom, factors of equal value".
in the International style. His work of this kind of C1925 to was unable to realize these ideas
Regrettably, van Doesburg
CI 930 features prominently in Hitchcock and Johnson's in a By 1926, when he started to decorate the
building.
book. A short street of small row houses at the Hook of Aubette in Strasbourg, his style had changed, and he had
Holland (19Z4— 7) are rendered white, have horizontal win- adopted the more dynamic 45-degree angle; in 1929, when he
dows, mass-produced metal door frames, and decidedly nauti- designed his own studio at Meudon, he used a mathematically
cal curved elements. The KiefTioek estate Rotterdam (1925—
at based plan relating to the most recent Concrete art. He was
9) is much larger but built in a similar style. For the not invited to contribute to the Weissenhof Exhibition nor to
Weissenhof Exhibition Oud designed a row of five houses the Decorative Arts Exhibition in Paris, although an associate,
which are again very small, but practical, with carefully Frederick Kiesler, did show there, in the Austrian Pavilion, a
worked out plans and functional, metal furniture. A single "System of Tension in Free Space" which was De Stijl in

living room faces the garden in front, while services are at the conception.
back on the street. In their scale there is something tra- But in the year following the exhibition of models at Rosen-
ditionallyDutch about these houses. berg's gallery, one De Stijl house was built by Gerrit Rierveld,
For Oud the new aesthetic meant primarily an acceptance who had joined the group in 19 19. This was a small house for
of the machme. He welcomed industrialized techniques and Mde Schroeder attached to the end of a row of conventional
new materials. In this he opposed the ideas of the Amsterdam houses in Utrecht. Although it was not freestanding and the
school of Expressionist architects, such as de Klerk, who used primary colors were restricted to the supporting metal "I"
brick and tile, but agreed with his De Stijl colleagues van beams, it resembled the models in its balance of planes and of
Doesburg and Mondrian. Van Doesburg used the term "'the closed and open spaces. The interior could be transformed, by
mechanical aesthetic" in a lecture he gave at Weimar and means of screens, from an open to a closed plan, and it was
elsewhere in 1922. He considered that the machine liberated equipped with furniture, by Rierveld, unified with the archi-
man from material concerns, led to the universal from the tecture by means of its color and form.
particular, and was thus a major unifying force. Mondrian Despite the originality of this house, Rierveld, like van
welcomed the artificiality of modern life and preferred the Doesburg, was not invited to contribute to the Weissenhof
city, where nature had been straightened out, to the country. Exhibition. Nor does his work appear in Hitchcock and John-
In December 1920 van Doesburg visited Berlin, where he son's book. was probably
It felt that the true De Stijl architec-

met Gropius, and during the next two years he established ture of CI 923-4 was too anti-cubic, too asymmetric, too

contacts with other architects and artists working in Ger- much lacking a regular supporting skeleton to be classed as
—
many I.issitzky, Hans Richter, and Feininger. His influence International style. Neither did Hitchcock and Johnson
at the Bauhaus was considerable. Perhaps in turn influenced wholly approve of the use of bright colors, as they thought it

by the Bauhaus he became increasingly interested in applying made "too sharp a contrast with natural surroundings". Riet-

De Stt/l ideas to architecture and in October and November veld's later work, his row houses at 5— n Erasmuslaan,
Utrecht (1930-1) and at the Wiener Werkbund Siedlung

The Villa Savoye at Poissy designed by Le Corbusier; 1919-3 i

(1930-2), for example, have simple rectangular oudines, hori-
above, a roof terrace; below, an interior view zontal bands of windows, and white stucco, and so can be
900 INTERNATIONAL STYLE

Houses at the Hook of Holland designed by J.J. P. Oud; 1924-

classed more easily than the Schroeder house as International same city. All are astringently functional buildings: skeletal,
style buildings. light-weight,and tough. In them the conventional division
Two other Dutch architects must be mentioned: Mart Stam between industrial and public or civic buildings seems to have
(1899—) and Johannes Duiker (1890— 1935). Stam is a truly completely disappeared.
international figure who worked in Holland, Germany, Swit- The International style pioneered in Germany, France, and
zerland, and Russia. He had met and been impressed by both Holland had spread to a great many other countries by 1932
Lissitzky and Mies van der Rohe in Berlin in the early 19ZOS; as Hitchcock and Johnson showed. In the ussR some of the
Russian and German influences can be seen in his early pro- architects who had come forward after the Revolution used
jects. Two designs for schools, the St Wendel Boys' Grammar The group
the style for large-scale socialist building schemes.
School (192.4) and the Thunn Boys' Grammar School (1925) most open to Western ideas was the "Association of Contem-
were already in the International st\'le. To the Weissenhof porary Architects" (O.C.A.) founded in 1925 by M. Guinz-
Siedlung he contributed a terrace of three houses composed bourg and the brothers A., V., and L. Vesnin with M. Bartch,
into a rectangular block in such a way that some aesthetic A. Gan, I. and P. Golossov, and M. Kolly. In their magazine
choices must have been made, although Stam thought of him- Contemporary Architecture they reproduced works by
self as a pure functionalist. Hitchcock and Johnson remarked Gropius, Mies, Le Corbusier, and other Western architects: Le
defensively of his Budge Home for Old People at Frankfurt Corbusier seems to have been particularly admired by them.
(1929—30), which they illustrate, that though built by an ar- His influence can be seen, for example, in the Vesnins' project
chitect who claimed "to be guided solely by considerations of for the Lenin Library (1929), Guinzbourg's Narkomfin Flats
economy and function, the building has real aesthetic merit as (1928—9) and his Government Buildings for Alma-Ata, and in
well." Stam worked at this time with May in Frankfurt and he the many communal living projects of the late 1920s by
went with May to Russia in 1930. Bartch, Vladimirov, and others. The influence was
in fact a

J. Duiker is even less well known than Stam and as unde- two way one; Corbusier later used some of their ideas, such as
servedly neglected. He designed at least three buildings of the "interior street" with communal facilities. His Centro-
very high quality indeed: the Zonnestraal Sanatorium (1926- soyus building in Moscow —conceived in 1928 but only
8) near Hilversum, an open-air school in Cliostraat, Amster- finished several years later with the help of —
N. Kolly was
dam (1928-30), and the Handelsblad-Cineac (1934) in the the largest of his works until the Marseilles Unite was built
 INTERNATIONAL STYLE 901

after the Second World War; it too seems to reflect earlier track. Their work in turnwas influential for a body of young
O.C.A. group projects. architects called the Gruppo 7 founded in 1926. The most
In Finland Alvar Aalto (1898-1976) passed through an talented member of this group, G. Terragni, tried to give a
International style period. His editorial offices for the Turun more three-dimensional quality to his architecture than he
Sanomat (1927-9) at Turku are in the style, and so is the more found in that of the French and German International style
photogenically impressive sanatorium at Paimio (1928-33). architects. He also tried to link the new sense of classicism
The clear articulation of parts in this building, the tall stack of with Fascist ideology. That he was successful in both these
sun-decks cantilevered from a narrow spine rising above the aims can be seen in, for example, his Novecomum flats (1927)
forest,and perhaps the sense that the style relates well to the and the Casa del Fascio (1936) at Como.
building's purpose, make it one of the most attractive in the In Switzerland, examples of International style architecture
period. are surprisingly scarce, but a large estate (1930-2) at Neubiihl
The other Scandinavian countries had no architect with as outside Zurich by E. Roth, Haefeli, H. Schmidt, and others is

much conviction as Aalto, but in Denmark Arne Jacobsen modeled on Ernst May's estates at Frankfurt, and two
clearly

(1902-71) used the Style with great restraint in the Bellavista apartment houses on the Doldertal in Zurich (1933-6) for
Housing Estate (1933) near Copenhagen. In Sweden Gunnar Siegfried Giedion —the secretary of C.I.A.M. and one of the
Asplund (1885—1940) introduced it with a tremendous principle apologists of modern architecture — are indebted to
flourish at the Stockholm Exhibition of 1930. Le Corbusier. These were designed by Marcel Breuer and the
Several interesting International style buildings were erected Swiss architects A. and E. Roth. Their pilotis, roof terraces,
in Czechoslovakia, particularly in Brno where Mies van der and rectangular framing skins recall the Villa Cook and the
Robe's Tugendhat house was built. Hitchcock and Johnson Villa Savoye. Le Corbusier himself and the other major Swiss
illustrate other buildings in Brno in the style by O. Eisler, B. architect of this period, Hannes Meyer, found little work in

Fuchs, and J. Kranz. In Prague, L. Kysela's Bata Shoe Store Switzerland. Tragically Le Corbusier's design for the League
(1929), also illustrated by Hitchcock and Johnson, had of Nations building in Geneva (1927) was not accepted and
remarkably advanced glazed facade: an International style his only building of this period in Switzerland is a very small
version of the great Art Nouveau store fronts in Paris and house on Lake Leman (1925).
Brussels. Of a later date but still in the style is the very large From America, Hitchcock and Johnson illustratedtwo sky-
cruciform office block, also in Prague, of the General Pensions — the McGraw-Hill building New
scrapers in York (1931) and
Institute Fleadquarters (1932—4), by J. Havlicek and K. Bank
the Philadelphia Savings Philadelphia (193 1—2) by
in

Honzik. Howe and Lescaze— laboratory, an experi-

a filling station, a

Although Italy produced nothing as avant-garde as Futur- mental aluminum house and Richard Neutra's Lovell Health
ism after the First World War, the founders of the Internation- House, in Los Angeles (1927-9). They criticize the Lovell
al style, such as Gropius and Le Corbusier, greatly admired House for being "complicated", but Neutra's buildings and
Matte-Trucco's Fiat factory (1923) with its rooftop testing those of the other West Coast architects, Irving Gill and

The house at Utrecht designed by Gerrit Rietveld for Houses built on the Weissenhof Siedlung at Stuttgart designed by
Mdc Schrocder; 1924 Mart Stam; 1927
 "

The reception desk in the sanatorium at Paimio, Finland, designed by Alvar Aalto; 1928—33

Rudolph Schindler, really have very litde in common with had to overcome considerable opposition which at its most
European International style works. Gill's white, rectangular extreme resembled that of the German National Socialists. In

Dodge House, in Hollywood, built as early as 1916 (now 1933 Sir Reginald Blomfield, for example, remarked that the
demolished) was indebted to vernacular Spanish buildings in new architecture "is essentially Continental in its origin and
California and possibly to a knowledge of Loos' houses in inspiration, and it claims as a merit that it is cosmopolitan. As
Vienna. Both Schindler and Neutra had actually trained m an Englishman and proud of his country, I detest and despise
Vienna, and after their arrival in America both worked with cosmopolitanism.
Wright. Wright taught them how to destroy boxy space, to from the Yacht Club, one of the earliest English
x-^part

admire Japanese post-and-beam building, and above all to buildings in the International snle was a house at Amersham,
establish a dramatic dialogue between their buildings and the "High and Over" (1929—30), by Amayas Connell, a young
landscapes in which they are sited. Schindler's Beach House at architect with a conventional training; he had won the Rome
Newport Beach, California (1926), Neutra's Lovell House, Prize. This house has a Y-shaped plan that looks back to Arts

and Wright's own Falling Water House at Bear Run, Pennsyl- and Crafts country houses, but it was built of white concrete
vania (1935—7), in which the influence of the European mas- and had horizontal bands of windows and a flat roof. Connell,
ters has been detected, use steel, glass, and whitened concrete, soon joined by Basil Ward and Colin Lucas, continued to
but not in the way of the International style. Their white, design houses which often have adventurous, picturesque
rectangular, cantiievered elements form ledges, beneath which plans. New Farm at Grayswood, Surrey (1932), for example,
are dark and mysterious horizontals of deep shade. has a fan-shaped plan and International style elevations. Le
Only one English building, Joseph Emberton's Royal Corbusier seems to have been particularly influential for their
Corinthian Yacht Club at Burnham-on-Crouch (1931), found houses at Parkwood Estate, Ruislip, London (1933-5) ^nd at

a place in Hitchcock and Johnson's book. The stvle in fact 66 Frognal, Hampstead, London (1938), which againcaused
came late to Britain and was only practiced in the 1930s. It great opposition.
 INTERNATIONAI STYLE 903

The reluctance of local councils to accept modern architec- Highpoint One by the Tecton firm is a large double-cross
ture limited the style to a middle-class market in Britain, al- shaped block, beautifully and justifiably admired by Le
sited
though some low-cost housing was built: Kent House, Chalk Corbusier. Tecton had been set up in 1933 by the Russian
Farm, London (1935) by Connell, Ward, and Lucas and Sas- refugee Berthold Lubetkin with a group of young English ar-
soon House, Camberwell, London (1934) by Maxwell Fry are chitects — Drake, Skinner, Chitty, Dugdale, Harding, Samuel,
examples. The well-known flats at Lawn Road, Hampstead and, later, Lasdun. With the help of the structural engineers

(1933-4) by Wells Coates and at Highpoint, Highgate, Arup and Samuely the firm used reinforced concrete excitingly
London (1933—5) by the Tecton firm were for middle-class and sensitively: their Penguin Pool at London Zoo with its
residents. The Lawn Road flats is a sculptural, rather Russian- spiral ramps (1934) is well known. As with Connell, Ward,

looking building with cantilevered access balconies leading to and Lucas, Le Corbusier was the Tecton firm's mam inspira-
minimum flats equipped with fitted furniture. Wells Coates tion; his influence can be seen not only in Highpoint One but
thought modern people should travel light. He was an en- in theirHealth Centre at Finsbury, London (1939) and in the
gineer by training and was, of all the avant-garde architects in houses by Lubetkin and Pilichowski in Genesta Road, London
England, the one most in tune with recent Continental ideas. (1934), in Six Pillars, Crescent Wood
Road, London (1935)
At the 1933 C.LA.M. congress he represented the newly by V. Harding, and in }z Newton Road, London (1938) by
founded English branch who called themselves the Modern Lasdun.
Architectural Research Association (M.A.R.S.). Hitchcock and Johnson end their book optimistically: "We

Flats at Highpoint, Highgate, London, designed by the Tecton firm; 1933-5

mmn
904 INTERNATIONAL STYLE

have an architecture still", but ironically by 1932 the Interna- were put up cheaply and their white stucco finishes have not
tional style was almost unused in its countries of origin. In been well maintained, they have become shoddy. Today the
Germany the National Socialists disliked the style because it optimistic belief in the machine has almost vanished. We are
was "The new dwelling is an instrument for the
international: also more aware of the work of other architects who practiced
destruction of the family and the race." When they came to at the same time but with very different approaches, such as

power, the architects who had founded the style emigrated: it Buckminster Fuller and Pierre Chareau. But International
did not survive transplantation. Similarly in Russia the politi- style buildings are still studied today because they were built
cal situation prevented International style building after as answers to problems that are still with us, and because, at
<:i932. In Holland Duiker died young (in 1935), while van their best, they are beautiful.
—
Doesburg who had anyway settled in Paris by the mid
ALASTAIR GRIEVE
—
1920s had also died young in 193 1. In France Le Corbusier
abandoned the style. His Maison Suisse in Paris incorporates a
random rubble wall and is raised on massive central pilotis left Bibliography. Banham, R. Theory and Design in the First Machine
textured from the grain of their wooden shuttering. Age, London (i960). Benton, T. and C. History of Architecture and

The International style had been a movement of tremen-
dous excitement and optimism, full of the belief that the new
technology would enable architects to provide healthier,
lighter, more functional, and enjoyable buildings than ever
before, but because it was a style, the International style only
lasted a short time. Moreover, because many of the buildings
Design i890-i9}9, Milton Keynes (1975). Conrads, U. (ed.; trans.
Bullock, M.) Programmes and Manifestoes on 10th Century Archi-
tecture, London (1972). Hatje, G. (ed.) Encyclopaedia of Modern
Architecture, London (1963). Hitchcock, H.-R. and Johnson, P. The
International Style: Architecture since 1922, New York (1932), re-
printed in paperback (1966). Sharp, D. A Visual History of zoth
Century Architecture, London (1972).
 50

LATIN AMERICAN ART

A detail of the Prophet Ezckiel, a sculpture byO Aleijadinho, one of the 1 2 prophets he carved

to stand in front of the church of Bom Jesus de

Matozinhos,
Congonhas do Campo, Brazil; 1800-5 (see pages 909-10)
 —
906 LATIN AMERICAN ART

THE itself needs some explana-

term "Latin American" Portuguese lands — now Brazil — for two main reasons: first,

and qualification. It was during the Independence

tion the cultures of Spain and Portugal at the time of the conquest
movements in Central and South America in the early were very different despite frequent cross-fertilization, and
19th century that people were encouraged for political these differences became exaggerated in America; second, the
reasons to think of themselves as "Americans". The desire to lands given to the Spaniards included those already populated
sever connections with the old colonial powers, Spain and by the most sophisticated indigenous cultures — the Aztec,
Portugal, effectively ruled out terms like New Spain, although Maya, and Inca peoples, already skilled in techniques such as
linguistic and cultural links are maintained through the use of metalwork, stone-carving, and fresco painting, and quick to
the term "Latin". For some this remains an unsatisfactorily understand and adapt to their conquerors' artistic needs. Indi-
vague term, and "Ibero-American" or "Hispano-American" genous and mestizo (mixed race) craftsmen in Spanish Ameri-
are both also in common use. ca played an important part in the development of a style
The term's fundamental inadequacy, however, is that it fails easily distinguishable from its European counterpart, al-

to account for the original and surviving inhabitants of the though the always relied heavily on
arts of colonial Brazil
continents, the Maya of the Yucatan and Guatemala, for ex- European sources.
ample, or the Quechua speakers of the Andes, as well as the Throughout the colonial period the most important func-
considerable African population of the Caribbean and parts of tion of the arts was the service of the church; of the arts
Central and South America. The term "American Indian" architecture played a more important role than painting or
itself depends entirely on the Old World, deriving from a sculpture. Initially, the successful conversion of the Indians
geographical error, and from the name of one of the earliest depended on the rapid establishment of suitable centers for
explorers, Amerigo Vespucci (1454-151Z), who happened to worship, and during the i6th century thousands of simple,
be first into print with the account of his travels, Nuevo barn-like churches were built to accommodate the neophytes.
Mundo, in 1503. The name "America" first appears on a In some areas, in Mexico in particular, a new architectural
German map of the then known world in 1507. form known as the open chapel developed, consisting of no
Neither the political nor the cultural consciousness of the more than a small, usually vaulted shelter for the altar and the
native inhabitants was extinguished overnight. Native civic officiants, which was open on one or more sides, so that the

and religious stone architecture ceased to be built, although Indians gathered in the sunshine in front could hear the
ordinary dwellings in many places have remained as they preaching and witness the rituals.

always were. But mural painting in the i6th century still But once an architectural framework was established, then
occasionally and startlingly —drew on native stylistic conven- paintings and sculptures were needed to illustrate and rein-
tions and imagery (compare the church at Ixmiquilpan, or the force the lessonsand sermons of the priests. The first mis-
cloister at Cuauntinchan where the Jaguar and the Eagle assist sionarieswere well aware of the importance of replacing the
at the Annunciation). iconography of the indigenous belief-systems with that of
Native pictorial books were still produced during the i6th Christianity-, and, to start with, the enormous demand for
century (though possession of these ritual or genealogical suitable works of art was met in two ways: first, by the impor-
manuscripts was punishable by the Inquisition) and even up to tation from Europe of large numbers of religious images, hur-
the 1 8th century, in the deliberately archaic Techiacloyan riedly and often shoddily made specifically for the American
manuscripts produced to substantiate land claims. The Maya, market; and second, by the establishment in monasteries of
the only people to possess hieroglyphic writing, quickly schools in which Indian craftsmen would be instructed in the
adopted the Roman which they continued
script in to write principles of European-style representational art, and in the

their own history into the 19th century, and indeed until the rudiments of Christian symbolism.
present day. In Mexico and Peru in the i6th century, for example, the
It is important to raise these problems, because they help to monks trained the Indians to paint in fresco, because it was a
explain why "Latin American" does not automatically corres- cheap and effective way of simulating architectural details as

pond with any kind of cultural homogeneity, and they suggest well as illustrating the Christian story. These frescoes general-
the problems of identity experienced in the region during the ly use European prints as sources of inspiration, and interest-
post-Independence period, when Indian culture and society ing examples survive in several churches and monasteries (for

was rediscovered and explored as an essential element in a example, Actopan, Mexico, 1570s, and Andahuaylillas, Peru,
new national identity. C1600). In these two countries in particular the large output of
Christian works of art is paralleled by the vigorous survival of
Colonial Art. In 1493 the as yet largely undiscovered ter- many native artistic traditions. In Mexico, painted books con-
ritories of America were divided by papal decree along a line tinued to be produced long after the conquest, modified by
of latitude 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands, the contact with European art; in Peru, private houses were built
lands to the west of this line being given to the Spaniards, and by Inca-trained masons in the traditional style, and the mes-
those to the east to the Portuguese. The art that developed in tizo Guaman Poma de Ayala illustrated his history of Peru
the countries settled by the Spaniards differs from that of the with drawings that display a pleasing synthesis of European
 LATIN AMERICAN ART 907

A Ranch-owner and his Foreman, a hthograph from "A Journey . . . through the Republic of Mexico"; 1828. Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

forms with indigenous motifs and ideas (C1613). while the Indians and mestizos produced works of art for an
Meanwhile, throughout the i6th century, artists, especially audience initially wholly ignorant of Christianity and of
painters, emigrated to SpanishAmerica from several Euro- Christian imagery, and so could deviate more from European
pean countries. From Antwerp came Simon Pereyns (fl. 1566— models.
88) who settled in Mexico, and used northern European Thus, during the i^th century and later, the distinction
engravings for mspiration, as, for example, in his retable at between art produced by and for the European elite and that
Huejotzingo (1586), while, also in Mexico, the elegant works produced by and for the Indians remains fairly clearly
of Andres de la Concha {fl. 1575-16 12) and the St Cecilia marked. Painters emerge, for example, who, while born in

Master demonstrate their Sevillian training. Several Italians South America, are nevertheless always orientated towards
settled in South America: Bernardo 548— <:i6zo) and
Bitti (i Europe: Mexican examples include Luis Juarez (//. 1610—33),
Mateo Perez de Alesio (i 547-C1628) worked in Peru, and Baltasar de Echave Ibia, and Alonso Lopez de Herrera (1579—
Angelino de Mcdoro in Columbia. In Tunja in Colombia sev- 1648). The work shows the influence of imported
of the latter
eral mansions have richly frescoed ceilings (of C1590-C1628) paintings by Zurbaran, whose influence was also felt in Lima,
which betray French influence. In Quito in Ecuador the in Peru. The influence of Rubens, Murillo, and Valdes Leal is

Dominican Pedro Bedon (ci 556— 1621) derived his Italianate evident in later- 17th-century painters such as the Mexican
style from his master Bitti, while, in contrast, the Franciscan- Cristobal de Villalpando (^1652-1714), particularly in his

trained Indian craftsmen formed the basis of a strong Flemish- important allegorical works in Mexico City Cathedral. Muril-
influenced school of painters. lo was also influential in South America, especially in the art
From about the beginning of the 17th century the Indian of the mestizo Miguel de Santiago {fl. in Quito, c 1625-1706)
and mestizo craftsmen begin to set up workshops of their whose soft, mystical style in turn influenced Colombia's
own, and craftsmen's guilds were founded. In the major cen- Gregorio Vaquez Ceballos (1638-1711).
ters ofLima, Bogota, and Mexico City, these guilds had a In Peru, Diego Quispe Tito, unusually for a mestizo [fl. in
monopoly and membership was restricted to those of Euro- Cuzco, mid 17th century) followed Mannerist norms, using
pean blood. Working for patrons culturally orientated to- Flemish prints as sources, while the rest of the Cuzco mestizo
wards Europe, guild members received the most valuable school developed in different directions. The series of paint-

commissions and were dependent on Europe for inspiration, ings The Procession of the Corpus (S. Ana, Cuzco, ci66o) for
908 LATIN AMERICAN ART

example, used untraditional spatial arrangements, while also

providing useful information about the role of religious
images in processions. Generally speaking, in the Cuzco
school, figures are rigid and full frontal, colors strong, and
decorative patterns are often applied in gold leaf over the
garments. In Bolivia, strong schools of painting emerge in
Sucre and Potosi which draw heavily on Cuzquenan models.
Melchor Perez de Holguin, for example (ci66o— 1724), suc-
cessfully combined details of indigenous inspiration with a
European sense of depth and contour.
But despite the obvious dependence of the metropolitan
schools on European models, all colonial art differs to a greater
or lesser extent from that being produced contemporaneously
in Europe: intially there is a simplification of both style and

subject matter, and this allows room for later expansion in

new, untraditional directions. The repeated copying of im-
ported works of art and of engravings tends towards a simpli-
fication of style. This is particularly noticeable in the cult
images of the Virgin or of Christ which flourished all over
Latin America —the phenomenon deserves attention. An origi-
nal image, such as the 17th-century wooden crucifix known as
the Crista de los Temblores ("Christ of the Earthquakes") in
Cuzco Cathedral, was attributed with miraculous powers, in
this instance the cessation of an earthquake; it became widely
renowned, and was copied by other artists so that its venera-
tion could continue elsewhere. In many cases a cult-image in
wood or stone was copied on to canvas or panel, complete
with the curtains, candles, and flowers which decorated the
altar. These copies then often acquire miraculous power them-
selves,becoming copied in turn, and at each stage they
become flatter and more hieratical in style, especially when the
copy involves a change in medium such as from sculpture into
paint. This loss of contour is balanced by an elaboration of
decorative elements, producing a style quite distinct from
The Plateresque cloisters of the Acolman Convent, Mexico; 1 560
anything in Europe.
Subject matter becomes radically simplified in America: fanciful decorative detail wreathing the architectural mem-
only the Virgin, a few favored saints, and scenes from the bers, while niches contain relatively simple, realistic statues. In
birth and death of Christ occur with any regularity in the early Mexico, the Acolman facade (1560) is pure plateresque, while
colonial years, and this is at least partly because the newly the retable of San Francisco, Mani, Yucatan, where columns
converted Indians would have been confused by too great a are replaced by stiff, flat caryatids while the niche statues
variety of imagery. Gradually, new elements are introduced remain three-dimensional, shows the direction of local de-
into the traditional vocabulary: the Virgin, for instance, may velopments. Other examples are the facades at Tlamanalco
forsake her accustomed blue robe in favor of a skirt made of (early 1560s) which includes Aztec motifs, and at Yuririapun-
multicolored feathers, or a fashionable riding hat, while her daro, an interesting, less classical version of Acolman {post
pose remains unchanged, easily traceable to its European 1560).
prototype. And in South America in the i8th century, rows of During the 1 7th century, church facades become increasing-
archangels in magnificent contemporary costumes and carry- ly highly decorated. In Mexico, at La Soledad, Oaxaca (1689),

ing firearms decorate many of the churches: here the artists, many fine statues survive, and a comparison of the reliefs from
seeking something new, invented a genre without precedent in the Augustinian churches in Mexico City (1677-92) and
Europe, finding inspiration in engravings in manuals of in- Oaxaca shows the continuing trends of classicism in the
struction for musketeers. former, as against stylization in their animated derivatives at
Throughout the colonial period the most important sculp- Oaxaca.
turalforms were church facades and retables, but the names In South America the early church portals are generally very
of their creators are rarely preserved. In the i6th century, the simple, but some fine figure-sculpture survives in Quito and
plateresque style was dominant, typified by a profusion of Lima. In Bolivia towards the end of the i6th centurv, fine
choirstalls were produced for Sucre Cathedral (1592—9) by
Cristobal Hidalgo, based on Flemish engravings, and a richly
polychromed altar (1583) survives in La Merced, by Gomez
de Hernandez de Galvan (fl. 1572— 1602) and Andres Hernan-
dez (/Z. 1583-92).
During the i7th century, as in church facades, the architec-
tural structure of retables becomes more decorated: twisted
columns entwmed with vines support friezes overflowing with
grotesques, and all are richly gilded and polychromed. Church
interiors, too, become increasingly ornate, especially in Quito
where several were decorated throughout with red, white, and
gold sculpted stucco.
Durmg the fth century, Peru produced a wealth of fine
figure sculpture m retables, pulpits, and especially choirstalls,
such as those in Lima Cathedral (1624—6), designed and ex-
ecuted by Pedro de Noguera (i 592-1655) —
architect as well
as sculptor —with the help of several assistants. In Lima, as in
Central America, figure-sculpture, generally polychrome, was
strongly influenced by the Sevillian Martines Montahes, and
even in Cuzco the work of the Indian Juan Tomas Tuyru
Tupac displays Sevillian tendencies. In Quito. Manuel Chili,
known as Caspicara (later i8th century) is memorable for the
translucent quality of the white flesh of his long-limbed
Christs.
During the i8th century the architectural structure of ret-
ables and church facades all but disappears under a riot of
decorative detail, in Mexico, good examples are Zacatecas
Cathedral facade, and the facade of the Sagrario, Mexico City
(1749J, where the fantastically sculpted pillars are scarcely
distinguishable from the statues between them. In southern
Peru and Bolivia, the wealth of flat decorative details of flora
The facade of the Jesuit church of the Company of Christ, Quito,
and fauna on church facades and retables is very distinctive; Ecuador; i8th century
good examples are the facades at San Lorenzo, in Potosi, San
Pedro in Zepita, and Puno Cathedral. America, most i7th-centur)- painting is religious, but in the
In South America, religious painting remained the domi- 1 8th century, portraits and battle scenes occur. Cult-images of
nant genre throughout the colonial period, but from the early Christ and the Virgin were widely venerated but they never
1 8th century until the Revolution it was fashionable for well- inspired the lively local adaptations produced, for example, by
to-do Mexicans to have their portraits painted: viceroys, the Cuzco school in Peru.

bishops, army generals, and be)eweled noblewomen appear in Unlike in the Spanish colonies, externally Brazilian architec-
paint. The portraits of nuns are particularly interesting: often ture remains relatively austere, although the 1 8th-centur\'
they are young girls about to enter the order, as in the painting facade of Sao Francisco, Bahia, is an exception. Lavish ret-

of Sor Maria Ignacia de la Sangre by Jose de Alcibar (fl. i ^ i 5- ables tend increasingly to be built into the overall sculptural
1801) where the girl's serious face contrasts with her sumptu- decoration of a church interior. Examples include, in Rio, Sao
ous robes. Miguel Cabrera (1695— 1768) was the most impor- Bento and the Carmen, on which Luiz da Fonseca Rosa, Val-
tant Mexican artist of the time, who painted both portraits entim da Fonseca e Silva and others worked from the mid
and large-scale works for churches and convents. 1 8th century until 1855, and in Bahia, Sao Francisco, also
The Spaniards were quicker to settle in America than the I 8th century, where the decoration is gilded throughout, and
Portugese; only after the mid 6th century were proper towns
i the distinctions between retable and wall are blurred.
established m Brazil; artists are rarely recorded before the end The most important individual in the history of Brazilian
of the century. During the 17th and i8th centuries the main colonial art is the sculptor Antonio Francisco Lisboa (1738-
were Bahia, Recife,
artistic centers and Rio de Janeiro on the 18 14), a mulatto known as "O Aleijadinho" from Minas
coast, and towns m the province of Minas Gerais in the in- Gerais, whose sensitivity to the dramatic power of spatial
terior. Brazilian painting, always very dependent on Europe arrangements in both his architecture and his sculpture is un-
for inspiration, was specifically influenced by Holland in the matched in Latin America. Of his huge output he is best
17th century and by France in the early 19th. As in Spanish known for the series of 12 grim Old Testament prophets that
9IO LATIN AMERICAN ART

Stand in front of the church of the Bom Congonhas do

Jesus, academy was renamed the National Academy of San Carlos.
Campo, overlooking the monumental staircase and the valley During the 19th century, painting was largely dominated by
below (1800-5). theAcademy, with one or two exceptions, including the gifted
and self-taught Francisco Eduardo Tresguerras (1759— 1833),
Post-colonial art. The struggle for independence throughout who was born in Guanajuato, western Mexico. An architect,
the Spanish Colonies in Central and South America from mural painter, poet, and musician, he rebuilt the church of El
1810 to 1820 led to a century of turbulence but not to the Carmen, Celaya, Guanajuato, in neoclassical style, and deco-
cultural blossoming that followed the Mexican Revolution of rated it with frescoes containing figure scenes and landscapes
1910. The church remained powerful, and although it lost its of delicate and unusual realism.
stranglehold on art, it was still responsible for a number of Mural painting witnessed a revival during the second half of
major mural paintings. the century, notably in the fruitful rivalry between Cordero
Throughout the 19th century, Europe remained the cultural and Clave. Juan Cordero (1824—84) trained at the San Carlos
mecca for most Latin American writers and artists. There Academy and then independently in Europe, where he painted
were, however, weak and fitful signs of a search for an Ameri- Columbus before the Catholic Monarchs (1850), and the Re-
can art. American history was accepted as suitable subject deemer and the Woman taken in Adultery (1853) which won
matter for academic painters, with scenes drawn not only him instant fame when exhibited in the Academy in 1854.
from incidents of the discovery of the New World, and the Resenting the director of the Academy, the imported Catalan
Conquest, but from native history. There had, broadly, been Peregrin Clave, Cordero initiated a series of grand mural
two forces working for independence: the Creole families, schemes to demonstrate his superiority, of which the most
who, although Spanish, were barred from responsible official famous are the dome of Santa Teresa and San Fernando in
posts which were all reserved for Spaniards born in Spain, and Mexico City. Executed in tempera, a medium considered
who also resented the unnecessary financial drain imposed by coarse by Clave compared with oil paint, they are robust and
colonial status, and the more or less landless Indians and highly colored, mingling smooth and solid neoclassical flesh
peasants. with exuberant rococo skies. In 1872 he painted The Triumph
The first uprising in Mexico was led by the parish priest of Science and Labor over Ignorance and Sloth on the stair-
Hidalgo in 18 10, who disguised his true goal of national inde- case of the National Preparatory School (an Institute of
pendence as a crusade to save New Spain from the atheistic Higher Education, formerly the Regal College of San Ildefon-
monster Bonaparte (Spain being at this period a satellite of so) in support of a positivist as opposed to a church-domi-
France). He was followed by thousands of Indians, on whose nated education program. It was destroyed in 1900, but was
behalf he called for the abolition of the tribute they had paid an important precedent for the revolutionary muralists of the
since the Conquest, and for land reforms. Independence was 20th century. Santiago Rebull {ob. 1902), a "belated Ingrist",
finally supported by Mexicans, afraid of suffering from any was briefly director of the Academy i860 Revolution
after the
last ditch liberal reforms imposed by Spain; this set the pattern of the Zapotec Indian, Juarez. He was commissioned by the
for the struggle between reactionary and liberal forces that Emperor Maximilian (1864-7) to paint mural panels in
lasted throughout the century. In art, the new power of the Chapultepec Castle. His most famous canvas was the Death
Creole families led to a flourishing portraiture, usually in the of Marat (1875). Jose Maria Velasco (1840— 1912) was the
style of David or Ingres, although there were also numerous finest plein-air landscape painter of this period, painting many
portraits of heroes of the liberation like Simon Bolivar and the scenes of the country round and south of Mexico City , includ-
Peruvian Jose de San Martin. ing a panoramic view of the Valley of Mexico.
In the second half of the century, Indianism began to make The most notable sculpture of this period is the monument
an impact. In 1889, the Mexican national pavilion at the Paris in Mexico City to Cuauhtemoc, last of the Aztec kings. It was

World Fair was a "restoration of an Aztec temple sur-
mounted by strange and forbidding statues of kings and di-
vinities". The Mexican dictator Porfirio Diaz, who held power
for nearly30 years until 1910, firmly turned cultural attention
back to the Old World, but towards the end of the century a
number of landscape painters, notably in
began to turn their attention towards
forged a distinctive style independent of Impressionism.
. . . constructed between 1878 and 1887 by Francisco Jimenez
(architect-engineer), Miguel Norena, who was the sculptor of
the statue, and Enrique Guerra, who made the bas-reliefs
round the base.
The 20th century in Latin America, as also in Europe, was
Lima and Mexico, marked by the reaction against academic painting. Artists
their own land and turned for inspiration more and more to popular and primi-
tive sources, and to the radical modernist movements in

The Royal Academy of San Carlos was founded in Mexico Europe. Because of the richness of popular and folk art in

City in 1785, dependent financially on the Royal Academy of Latin America, and because of its importance for the post-
Madrid and on Spain for the artistic directors of all its depart- revolutionary mural Renaissance in Mexico, it will be discussed

ments. Founded to refine the arts of Mexico, it presided over a here briefly as a separate theme.
neoclassical revival in building and painting, which formed
the background to and survived independence, after which the Popular arts. The term "Popular arts" is used to cover a mul-
 LATIN AMERICAN ART 911

titude of different kinds of objects and paintings, from the

most naive copies of the Virgin or Christ to the noble geomet-
rical patterns on painted pots and woven textiles, which,
throughout iMexico, Peru, Bolivia, and Columbia, still belong
to the long, native American tradition. The popular arts have
been remarkably tenacious of ancient forms while at the same
time devouring or adapting themselves to new mediums or
images. They form probably the first genuine mestizo culture,
and for this reason objects like the brightly painted tin ex-
votos — offered as receipts by grateful worshipers to beneficent
saints and piled high in their shrines —were admired by 20th-
century artists in search of the roots of their national culture.
This tradition goes back to early colonial times. Impossible to
date too—though most of the surviving examples are prob-
ably of 19th or
the late century— the
early 2,0th are mural
paintings that adorn the walls of countless small commercial
establishments, butchers' shops, restaurants, pulquerias
A Mexican bark painting: an example of popular art

(shops selling the native drink pulque), vividly depicting

America, artists and intellectuals have been in the vanguard of
popular sports, pastimes, and legends (subjects taken from
political struggle, and, in many countries, founder and execu-
academic official art in the 19th century), and figures in land-
tive members of Communist and Socialist parties. Many ar-
scapes whose tentative perspective and strong sloping profiles
tists believed that art should have a direct and public role; in
still echo the earliest post-Conquest Indian manuscripts. Par-
Mexico, with State patronage now replacing the Church, and
ticularly popular was the mundo al reves ("world upside
in the absence of a commercial art market, it was natural that,
down") imagery, long familiar in Europe and America, which
under favorable governments, the walls of public buildings
might show the butcher strung up like an ox, with the ox
should be their adopted sites.
grinning beside him, cleaver in hand. Folk and popular arts
The Revolution of 1910 and the following 11 years of civil
are often but not necessarily anonymous: Dr Atl described the
war sharpened artistic ideals and fostered a cultural national-
potter, Zacarias Jimon, and Jean Chariot told of the admir-
ism inevitably stronger in Mexico than elsewhere. In 1921
ation the revolutionary muralists felt for the humble and in-
Jose Vasconcelos, Secretary of Education in the newly
spired craftsmen like the serape weaver Leon Venado from
Texcoco, or the master potter Amaco Galvan from Tonala. A caricature by J.G. Posada of General Victoriano Huerta as a spider
The production of popular and satirical prints reached a crushing the bones of his victims: a print from a relief zinc engraving;
peak c 1 880 with the enormously successful publisher Antonio Z2X22cm (gxgin); C1910. Tlie University of Michigan Museum of Art,

Vanegas Arroyo, who produced penny pamphlets, corridos Ann Arbor, Michigan

(rhymed ballads), children's stories, recipes, fashions, and sat-

irical broadsheets. The most famous of his journalist-illus-

trators was Jose Guadalupe Posada (i 851— 1913) a self-taught

mestizo whose engravings and woodcuts accompanied the
sensational news items ("The man who eats his own chil-
dren"), or anti-Diaz satires. Often using the traditional skull
or skeleton calavera for his anti-hero, Posada cut his pictures
to tell a story fast, making it graphic for a largely illiterate

public. His simple, powerful images were admired by the

revolutionary muralists searching for alternatives to an elitist

and moribund academic art, alternatives also to European

modernism.

Latin American art of the 20th century. Latin American art of

this century has been dominated by Mexico, and it is there
that, at least in painting, two of the most marked qualities in
modern Latin American culture are most in evidence: an inter-
est b(nh political and cultural in the past civilizations and
present life of the original inhabitants, with an attempt to
revive native forms (Indianism or indigenismo), and an intense
concern for the social role of the artist. Throughout Latin
 .-^^^ '^VW«K

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A detail from ilic t.K.uic ot HI Ieuro de los Insurgentes, Mexico City, painted by Diego Rivera in 1953, later covered with Italian mosaic: the leveler of the
economy taking from the rich and giving to the poor

Stabilized government, commissioned Diego Rivera (1886— distinct from Rivera's, with dark, even monochrome, paint-
1957) and subsequently a number of other young Mexican ings, heavy, bold outlines and sweeping, dramatic, expression-
painters, to decorate the walls of the National Preparatory ist forms.
School. They included Ramon Alva de la Canal, Fernando The National Preparatory School offered the muralists the
Leal, Fermin Revueltas, Jean Chariot, Amado de la Cueva, chance to put their ideal of working communally mto prac-
Carlos Orozco Romero, Emilio Garcia Cahero, as well as tice: an ideal encouraged by their mentor Dr Atl (Gerardo
David Alfaro Siqueiros and Jose Clemente Orozco. Rivera Murillo), a revolutionary and landscape painter who in his

began painting a humanist allegory, Creation, in the Audi- brief reign as Director under Carranza in 19 14 tried to turn
torium; the others up their scaffolds on the staircases and
set the Academy workshop". After years of de-
into a "popular
in the courtyards. They searched for formal inspiration in fending their walls against hostile and sceptical students, the
their own country, bypassing the years of bad academic art to muralists were finally ejected in 1924. But the mural move-
look at the 16th-century frescoes in the monastery at Actopan, ment continued to grow in strength, and remained most con-
at pulqueria paintings, 19th-century popular and satirical cerned with the three topics, often interwoven, of Indianism,
prints, more rarely the great mural feats of the Italian Renais- Mexican history, and Marxism. The complex phenomenon of
sance. Jean Chariot (1898-) used Uccello (1397-1475) as his indigenismo has probably been more successfully explored in

model for his Conquest scene Massacre in the Great Temple; Latin American literature than in painting. Too often in art it

Siqueiros (1898-1974) looked back to Masaccio (i40i-?28) became a formal archaism, or purely decorative and symbolic,
for his Elements. The simplified planes and expressive outlines like the use of Aztec symbols in Juan O'Gorman's mosaic for
of Rivera's Creation, a synthesis of Cubism and Giotto, were a the Library building of the National University in the 1940s;
strong influence. But above all, they longed "to come closer to Orozco was the only painter to reject Indianism.
the works of the ancient settlers of our vales" (Siquieros); "I The first murals were often inconsistent and even contradic-
could tell you much concerning the progress to be made by a tory in their attitudes to Mexican history: the Conquest, the
pamter, a sculptor, an artist, if he observes, analyzes, studies, coming of Christianity, Indian survivals, 19th-century surviv-
Mayan, Aztec, or Toltec art, none of which falls short of any als, and the recent Revolution were open to and were given

other art in my opinion." (Rivera, 1921). Rivera even tried to different interpretations. Rivera hardened in his attitude to the

rediscover the ancient native techniques of preparing and ap- Conquest, and his Cortes became an increasingly brutal
plying pigments. Orozco, however, formed a style completely figure; Orozco's remained highly ambiguous.
 The ma)or murahsts were Rivera, Orozco, and Si-
three
queiros. Both Rivera and Orozco executed major mural
schemes not only in Mexico but also in the United States,
where they had a substantial mfluence in the 1930s and
1940s. After the National Preparatory School, Rivera's next
project was the decoration of the court>'ard of the Ministry of
Education {1923-8), which consisted of 168 fresco panels
painted on three stories and stairways, including scenes from
daily life and and the Revolution. Before com-
labor, fiestas,
pleting the cycle, Rivera visited Moscow, and returned with a
sharper dialectical method and an even more pronounced
commitment m his paintings to the class struggle, forwhich he
begins to use a caricaturist's satirical weapons. In the \ight of
the Poor, white-clad, brown-skinned Indians contrast with the
pasty capitalists of the Night of the Rich (1923-8; Secretariat
of Public Education, Mexico Cit\). The Agricultural School at
The Chamber of Deputies and administrative offices of Brasilia,
Chapingo (1925-7) treats the subject of land reform; in the designed by Oscar Niemeyer and built in the 1960s
chapel, Rivera painted symbolic frescoes of fruitfulness, in-
cluding one of the dead revolutionary heroes Zapata and al panorama
Palace frescoes (1929—35) are a massive, peopled
Montanos, from whose bodies spring sunflowers. The Nation- of Mexican history in dialectical form, which at least partly
A
borrows its narrative pattern from native pictographic books.
detail of a mural in the Palace of the Governor, Guadalajara, .Mexico,
painted by Orozco in 193'': Father .Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla raises On the right is pre-Conquest America, leading across to the
the torch of rebellion against Spain in 18 10 Conquest, Inquisition, Slaver)- of the Indians, colonial rule,

struggle for National Independence, ending with a vision of

the future triumph of Socialism over Capitalism (frequently
represented by North America). He was a massively prolific
painter; other works include the Palace of Cortes at Cuer-
navaca (1930), the Sunday Dream in Alameda Park (1947-8)
at the Hotel del Prado in Mexico Cit\-, which includes a por-
trait of himself as a boy beside Posada, and a mural for the

Detroit Institute of Arts, U.S.A., (1932). His murals are in-

creasingly didactic, using a precise and brilliantly colored
realism.
Jose Clemente Orozco (1883-1949) was an eyewitness to
the violence of the Revolution and Civil War, and was incap-
able of Rivera's political optimism, although he believed in the
mural as the "highest, the most and the
logical, the purest

strongest form of painting". Despising Marxism, Indianism,

and the very idea of a "national" art, Orozco displays an
ironic humanism in his works together with a convinced anti-
clericalism. Among his major works are Prometheus (1930),
Pomona College, California, and the murals in the Palace of
the Governor (1937) and the Hospicio Cabanas (1938-9) in
Guadalajara. Hidalgo, a mural in the Palace of the Governor,
is characteristically paradoxical: the powerful figure of the
priest who led the uprising in 1810 lights the torch of the

Revolution but brings fraternal strife rather than liberation.

David Alfaro Siqueiros (1896-1972) was the most politi-
cally active of the muralists. In 1921 he published an
important manifesto: Three Appeals of Timely Orientation to
Painters and Sculptors of the New American Generation,
(Vida Americana, Barcelona). From 1923 to 1930 he worked

actively as a trades-union leader. Returning from exile in

1939, he painted Portrait of the Bourgeoisie, with Jose Renau,

Antonio Pujol, and Luis Arenal. In 1945 he painted New
914 LATIN AMERICAN ART

Democracy and theme of Cuauhtemoc in

three panels on the Torres Garcia (1874— 1948) ^'^s born Uruguay and spent
in

Mexico Cit\'. He veers in his murals be-

the Palace of Fine Arts, many years in Paris; his highly individual paintings show an
tween elaborate allegory and simpler, more dramatic scenes. affinitywith Joseph Cornell or Max Ernst in their taxonomic
The Auditorio Siqueiros, begun in 1964, was a specially built arrangement of symbols. Fernando Botero (193 2-; born at
auditorium for the gigantic mural The March of Humanity. Medellin, Colombia) is also a highly individual painter whose
Siqueiros advocated the use of modern technology in murals, grotesque, overblown portraits are in the tradition of Grosz
and experimented with plastic paints and spray guns. He and Otto Dix.
increasingly simplified his style, using strong black outlines for In architecture, from the beginning of the 19th cenfur\-
his figures. there was a greater technical simplicit>, and an architecture
Rufino Tamayo (1899—) was of the same generation as the with its origins in academic models began to take the place of
muralists, but used Indian subject matter m a more for- the exuberant traditional forms. In Brazil, where the develop-
malized, abstract style. The individuality of younger painters ments in architecture have been the most interesting, there
in Mexico makes it hard to classify in groups or movements, were two main trends: firstly the Portuguese background, and
although there has been a notable influence of both Dada and secondly one that became stronger after 1822, a more sophis-
Surrealism. Among the most interesting are Pedro Coronel ticated French-derived neoclassicism. "A stv'le begins to
(1922—), Enrique Echevarria, (1923—), Jose Luis Cuevas appear which reflects the rigid and severe social structure of

(1933—), and Alberto Gironella (1929—). the time, the supremacy of man, the almost Oriental segrega-
Latin America has increasingly attracted the attention of tion of woman, the exploitation of the negro and the Indian".
European avant-garde poets and painters. Indianism coin- In this century, there has been a long and fruitful inter-
cided with the new taste m the Old World for "primitive" art, change with European modernism, which began with the
and the New World offered a rich ground for artists in search "Modern Art Week" of 1922 in Sao Paulo. After the Revol-
of more expressive forms outside the outworn European clas- ution of 1930 there was a new impetus to building, and Le
sical tradition. Secondly, it attracted left-wing artists search- Corbusier came to Brazil in 1935 to advise on plans for the
ing for a model for a public, non elitist art. Surrealism in new Ministry of Education, and a Cite Umversitaire. He in-
particular found natural affinities with America. In 1940 the fluenced a group of architects headed by Lucio Costa —includ-
international Surrealist Exhibition was held in Mexico City; ing Carlos Leao, Jorge Moreira, and Alfonso Eduardo
Rivera and his wife Frida Kahio (1910—54), who painted inti- Reidy —which was later joined by Oscar Niemeyer and Ernani
mate, imaginative, dreamlike pictures, both exhibited, to- Vasconcelos. With the inauguration and construction of the
gether with the fine photographer Manuel Alvarez Bravo capital city, Brasilia, from i960 by Lucio Costa and Oscar
(1904—) and the Guatamalan Carlos Merida (1893—). Surreal- Niemeyer, modern architecture in Brazil has itself become a
ist groups were established in the 1930s and 1940s in Chile major world influence. More idiosyncratic in terms of mod-
("Mandragora"), Argentina, and Martinique. Just
Peru, ernism, but functionally dramatically effective, are the tvvo
before the Second World War, Surrealist painting in Europe major buildings Mexico Cit\' by
in the architects Pedro
received an infusion of new blood from the Americas, with Ramirez Vazquez and Rafael Mijares, the Museum of An-
Roberto Sebastian Matta Echaurren (191 2—, Santiago, Chile), thropology and the Aztec Stadium.
and Wifredo Lam (born in Sagua la Grande, Cuba, in 1902).
Lam joined the Surrealists in 1939 and was the first to trans- DAWN ADES and VALERIE ERASER

late the Surrealist interest in primitivism and magic into strik-

ing totemic images with strong African affinities.
Outside Mexico, on the whole, there has been a greater
internationalism in painting, sculpture, and architecture and a
greater openness to abstraction, although there have also been
Bibliography. Angulo Iniguez, D. Historia del Arte Hts-
panoamericano ,3 vols.), Barcelona (1945). Chariot, J. The Mexican
Mural Renaissance 1920—), New Haven (1963). Edwards, E. Painted
Walls of Mexico. Austin (1966). Franco, J. The Modern Culture of
Latin America: Society and the Artist, London ^1967;. Kelemen, P.

other notable muralists, like Candidos Portinari (1903—) in Baroque and Rococo in Latin America, New York (1967). Kubier, G.
Art and Architecture of Spain and Portugal and their American
Brazil, and an interesting burst of mural activity in Chile
Dominions, Harmondsworth (1959). Rodriguez, A. (trans. Corby,
under .\llende's socialist government in the early 1970s,
M.) A History' of Mexican Mural Painting, London (1969). Tous-
which was influenced by Siqueiros. Pedro Figari (1861— 1938) saint, \L Arte Colonial en Mexico, Mexico Cit>' .1948'. Wethey. H.
was the most influential of the Argentinian River Plate School, Colonial Architecture and Sculpture in Peru, Cambridge, Mass.
a painter of intimate local scenes and a fine colorist. Joaquin (1949)-
 51

MODERN AMERICAN ART

C lift Dwellers by George Bellows; oil on canvas; 100x105cm (39X4iin); 1913

Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles (see page 917)
9l6 MODERN AMERICAN ART

FOR many years, students of modern American

artist's isolation from
too readily taken for granted the
art have loosely, in a reference to their humble content,
School. Led by Robert Henri, they shared his passionate con-
as the Ashcan

Europe and have emphasized the existence of compel- viction that painting must reflect the artist's involvement with
ling native traditions of a vernacular character, in opposition life as lived, rather than with some polite, unreal pictorial
to long-established visual traditions and the cultivated Euro- surrogate. Although their paintings represented an abrupt de-
pean sense of art. The issue is complex and a balanced view parture from academicism, the new direction of The Eight lay
must be sought. It should take into account the special virtues more in content than in style. No more advanced than pre-
of American art — its particular qualities of energy and innova- Impressionist French painting, their formally unsophisticated
tiveness —as well as its persistent provincialism, at least up to pictures did not change the course of American art, but they
1945. At the same time, the American debt to Europe es- — did manage to discredit and break the hold of the National
pecially the revival of the cosmopolitan spirit at the time of the Academy by opening up art to contemporary life.
—
Armory Show (191 3) must be given due weight, for it has Henri's band of progressive artists made known their or-
become increasingly clear in recent years that modern Ameri- ganized opposition to academic domination with a group
can art of the early 20th century could not have developed in a exhibition at the Macbeth Gallery in New York in 1908. The
culturalvacuum, or flourished merely on the basis of compla- Eight, in fact, were not entirely united in their aims, nor did
cency. The issue of making an invidious choice and commit- they share a homogenous group style of realism. The refined
ment between the opposing forces of European modernism post-Impressionism of Maurice Prendergast, the poetic fan-
and a less demanding native realism was firmly joined in the tasy of Arthur B. Davies, and the naturalism of Ernest Lawson
United States in the years between 1908 and 191 3. were far removed from the vigorous, fresh realism of John
At the turn of the zoth century, the American art reflected Sloan, William Glackens, George Luks, and Everett Shinn.
in exhibitions and publications appeared predominantly aca- Nor did they ever exhibit as a group again after their first

demic. Art and literature aped the graces of the "genteel tra- They did, however, succeed in bringing a novel
collaboration.
dition",which in painting and sculpture took the form of immediacy and honesty of vision into American art. Their
watered-down versions of outmoded European styles: a com- realism, considered daring in 1908, consisted simply in paint-
bination of American idealism, French Impressionism, Whist- ing what they saw with strict attention to the character of the
lerian and Sargent's bravura brushwork. This
aesthetics, actual scene.
painting combined a maximum of social unreality and polite Philadelphia was the cradle of Henri's new realism. A re-

genre with an enfeebled aestheticism. The city was seldom markable teacher and stimulator of ideas, he gathered Luks,
painted, landscape art focused on an idyllic nature, and histor- Glackens, Shinn, and Sloan about him and furnished them
ical painting and sculpture mirrored the escapist fantasies and with the intellectual drive that turned these young newspaper
shallow values of the Gilded Age. There was a basic assump- Henri may have been more important
illustrators into artists.
tion that culture was something derived from Europe of the as a leader than he was as a painter. He urged his young men
grand epochs. During the last years of the 19th century, the to "forget about art and paint pictures of what interests you in
historicist beaux-arts attitude, in its most derivative sense, life." Aeshetic truth was considered part of social truth, and a

dominated three generations who characteristically made fight against the tyranny of the Academy was just another

their foreign studies most conservative ateliers of

in the aspect of the perpetual struggle of the young against old-
Munich, Dusseldorf, Paris, and London. fashioned and reactionary ideas. The brotherhood of man was
Around 1905, this academic calm was rudely shattered by a Henri's ethical ideal, supported, in varying degrees, by his
group of young realist painters centering around the Philadel- followers.
phia artist Robert Henri (1865-1929). Rebelling against a Although many of The Eight avowed their interest in urban
pompous European academicism and its out-of-date "life", following Henri's dictums and reportorial instincts,
mythologies, they turned for inspiration to the teeming life of they also conspicuously emulated the styles of early- mid-
the modern city, which they painted with a new energy, i9th-century French realists, drawing on both Daumier's sen-
humor, and social conscience notably absent from the vapid timental anecdotes of lower-class life and Manet's more

academic confections of the period. As early as 1886, the sophisticated boulevard scenes. Despite their obvious debt to
literary critic William Dean Howells had predicted a speci- a somewhat outmoded European heritage, many of the
fically American and "democratic art", an art capable of deal- American realists uttered pronouncements which openly
ing with the urban casualties of industrialization in a more scorned cultivated European style in art as effete. A tone of
humane spirit. Howells called
for an end to the charade of the stridency later also marked the utterances of regionalist
genteel traditionand demanded a more insurgent art that American scene painters of the 1930s, Grant Wood, Thomas
would "front the everyday world and catch the charm of its Hart Benton, and John Steuart Curry, all of whom affected
workworn, careworn, brave, kindly face". the pose of the artist-primitive —
even though some had a
The first group of American artists to advocate a new sophisticated European training in —
a defensive and provin-
"democratic art" and to explore the everyday life of ordinary cial spirit reminiscent of some members of The Eight. Earlier,

people in large cities came to be known as The Eight or, more George Luks had boasted: "The world has but two artists,
 MODERN AMERICAN ART 917

Frans Hals and little old George Luks." And he would fume
when people spoke of painting as an end in itself: "Art — my
slats! Guts! Guts! Life! Life! 1 can paint with a shoestring
dipped in pitch and lard."
Although he did not officially exhibit with The Eight,
George Bellows (1882— 1925) was associated with them as a
realist, and some of his better-known themes resembled those

of Luks in their celebration of manly virtue and %iolent physi-

calcombat. His Cliff Dwellers (191 3; Los Angeles Count>-
Museum of Art, Los Angeles) is a powerful and richly painted
evocation of life in the vital, ramshackle New York slums: it

captures the essence of a street scene jammed with tenement

dwellers seeking relief from their sweltering apartments. He
defines his human characters as slovenly but good-natured
figures with an earthy, gamin charm. Their energies spill out
of the frame, matched by an appropriately loose, exuberant
brushwork.
Maurice Prendergast (1859— 1924), on the other hand, can
only nominally be described as a realist. His The Promenade

(i 9 1 3 ; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York) recalls

Puvis de Chavannes' idealized processions as much as it does The Promenade b> Maurice Prendergast; oil on canvas; T6x86cm
the European Impressionists and realists. He was probably the l30X34in); 1913. >S'hiiney .Museum of .\merican Art, New York
most original painter of The Eight, despite archaisms, which
derived from Bonnard, the Nabis, and the tapestry-like color Stieglitz was the first forceful advocate of photography as a
surfaces of their painting. In the medium of watercolor, how- fine art,and of the collective artistic revolution we now call
ever, he was undoubtedly the first true American modernist, a Modernism. But he was also the outspoken champion of a
painter who understood Cezanne's color theory and general modern aesthetic distinctly and uniquely American. So impor-
aims before the French master was even known in the U.S.A. tant a role did he play in introducing the American public to
The new urban realists were primarily concerned to develop avant-garde European art that he can justly be compared with
American subject matter. Their vision was limited,
a typically Gertrude Stein as one of the two crucial figures in establishing
however, by a rather undemanding mood of reportage and by European modernism in America. Miss Stein (i 874-1 946)
their ignorance of the revolution of form erupting simul- was the first to admire and buy the paintings of Cezanne,
taneously in Europe. Nonetheless, their interest in contempor- Picasso, and Matisse when those artists were either unknown
ary life did establish one of the dominant realists strains in or despised in Paris. In New York, Stieglitz, with similar
20th-century American art. later echoed work of an
in the acuteness, singled out new .American talent, crusaded for
American scene painter of more astringency, Edward Hopper rigorous critical standards in his publications, and provided a
(1882-1967). sympathetic atmosphere for innovation. His efforts infused
Almost simultaneously, the European modern movements new vitality into the fine arts and photography in America in

of Fauvism. Cubism, and Futurism, among others, began to the first two decades of the new century.
reach the United States. The year 1980 marked a critical The list of Stieglitz exhibition "firsts'" is still impressive:
moment of transition and conflict in American art. Just as The among others, he first America the work of Matisse,
showed in

Eight established itself, Alfred Stieglitz (i 864-1 946), the pho- Henri Rousseau, Cezanne, Picasso, Picabia, Brancusi, and
tographer and art dealer, inaugurated his exhibitions of the .African Negro sculpture. But Stieglitz also believed in the

radical new European moderns. future of American art, and specifically in certain young mod-
Stieglitz has a special place in the history of American art: a ernists: he was the first to give one-man shows to Maurer,
photographer of genius, he was the founder, the central figure, Marin, Hardey, Dove, Carles, Bluemner, Nadelman, O'Keeffe,
and the spokesman of the Photo-Secession, a group of pic- and Macdonald-Wright. His Younger American Artists ex-
torialist who dominated artistic photography
photographers hibition in 19 10 was probably the first all-modern group
in two decades of this century. He also operated
the first show. Stieglitz liked to describe 291 as a "laboratory". Here
"291", the most progressive art gallery in pre-First World the new American modernists could meet and, with Stieglitz
War America, The Intimate Gallery (1925-9), and An Ameri- as a catalyst, engage in the endless talk that is the essential

can Place (1929-46); all were devoted exclusively to artists of accompaniment of any new movement.
his circle, including Georgia O'Kceffe, Marsden Hartley, Most of the artists whose works Stieglitz showed after 1908
Arthur G. Dove, John Marin, Max Weber, and Charles had been living and painting in Europe, and were familiar
Demuth. with the work of Cezanne, Van Gogh, the Fauves, and the
9l8 MODERN AMERICAN ART

Cubists. While the Henri reaHsts were engaged by urban sub- its development had not stopped with Impressionism.
ject matter and used a dated pictorial style, these young artists Generally speaking, the Armory Show opened up for
had begun to establish direct contact with the most emanci- American artists the exciting prospect of meeting the chal-
pated expressions of their time. Max Weber and Arthur Bur- lenge of a new world — born of the machine age— by develop-
dett Frost, Jr joined Matisse's painting class, which started in ing radically revised intellectual attitudes and artistic

1907, followed later by Morgan Russell and Patrick Henry methods. The modernist painter and
Oscar architect
Bruce. During 1900—13, nearly every significant modern Bluemner declared: 'it is a vision of things and of their rela-
American artist traveled to Europe where Paris was a manda- tion to one another and that of ourselves to them, in which
tory stop if not their primary destination. Arthur B. Carles, modern life and art differs from the past." Artists will have to
Arthur G. Dove, Marsden Hartley, John Marin, Charles learn "to see and to feel the world as science reveals it today.
Sheeler, Abraham Walkowitz, and many others lived there for In this way originates the new vision of external objects and of
long or short mtervals. Other Americans who directly ex- imagination. There is a necessary analogy between the im-
perienced European innovation included Charles Demuth, pressions of the artist and the scientific and philosophical
Stanton Macdonald-Wright, Andrew Dasburg, William and evolution going on." On the other hand, the results of decades
Marguerite Zorach, Thomas Hart Benton, Morton Scham- of philistinism were not to be undone overnight, and the less

berg, Joseph Stella, Oscar Bluemner, and John Covert. progressive artists with realist training were unprepared to
In Europe, the Americans felt at first hand the impact par- absorb the shattering blows delivered to academicism by
ticularly of Abstract art and the influence of such new move- Matisse and Picasso. As William Glackens frankly, and rueful-
ments as Fauvism, Cubism, Futurism, Der Blaue Reiter (The ly, admitted some time after the show took place, "We have
Blue Rider), and Orphism. As they began to drift back home no innovators here. Everything worthwhile in our art is due to
in the years precedmg the First World War and to exhibit the influence of French art. We have not yet arrived at a

paintings that revealed new Continental derivations, the National art."

whole center of gravity of the new American art shifted. The The impact of European art on the American avant-garde
insurgent realists survived, but even their forms assumed the was, however, mixed and unpredictable. Max Weber (1881—
traits of French modernism. One of the boldest experiments in 1 961) absorbed and subscribed fully to Cubist principles in

Abstract art was the color paintmg invented by Stanton Mac- his early exhibitions at 291. John Marin (1870— 1953), on the
donald-Wright, Morgan Henry Bruce, and
Russell, Patrick other hand, retained a more individual voice in such soaring
Andrew Dasburg. Macdonald-Wright and Russell were living transcriptions of New York City as Lower Manhattan (1922;
in Paris, and there they created an abstract style of their own, Museum of Modern Art, New York), combining Cubist struc-
which they named "Synchromism". This was based on combi- ture with a native expressionism and a special grace in the
nations of colors planned in dynamic rhythms, a style fluent watercolor medium. Arthur Dove (1880— 1946) was
which, according to Wright, would refine art "to the point one of the first artists in the world to experiment with ab-

where the emotions of the spectator will be wholly aesthetic." straction in 1910, possibly under the influence of Kandinsky.
Although Stieglitz's gallery 291 became a focus for the new Dove showed himself to be an effective ironist: the in-
also
artistic forces, exercising a unique influence on the avant- fluence of Picabia and Dada probably explains the wit and
garde of the day, the larger public had still been given little irreverence of his collage. The Critic (1925; Whitney Museum
opportunity to see European Modernism. This opportunity of American Art, New York) —
a subject whose attributes in-
was to be furnished by the famous Armory Show of 191 3. The clude an evening hat and pince-nez, and also roller skates
Armory Show brought modern European art to America both (suggesting only a fleeting perception of gallery offerings) and
physically and intellectually. For the first time, Americans an attached vacuum cleaner for venting his shallow pontifica-
gained a comprehensive view of the work not only of contem- tions. Georgia O'Keeffe (1887—), who later married Stieglitz,

porary Cubists and Fauves but also of the great high priests of became famous for her magnified details of flowers, cactuses,
modernism, Cezanne, Gauguin, and Van Gogh. The Show and aspects of the Southwest landscape, which she sublimated
was predominantly French. This m itself was a revelation to into a mysterious kind of organic abstraction suggesting the
native artists who were dissatisfied with old styles but unable universe in microcosm. She was also capable of painting crisp
to develop their talent along new lines. The impact of the edges and visual detail of a magical clarity, linking her art to
Armory Show on the general public was mixed. Their re- the sharp-focus, meticulous photography of Paul Strand,
sponse was more or less hostile but, nonetheless, filled with Edward Weston, and, later, Charles Sheeler.
curiosity. They made fun of the more extreme paintings and Charles Demuth (1883-193 5) presents himself as an
sculptures, particularly Marcel Duchamp's celebrated Nude urbane and reserved modernist dandy when compared with
Descending a Staircase (Philadelphia Museum of Art) and John Marin's impetuousness. / Saw the Figure Five in Gold
Brancusi's suavely geometrical figure sculpture. Public con- (1928; Metropolitan Museum, New York) was inspired by a
servatism reflected the enmity of die-hard traditional artists poem of William Carlos Williams, and combines a spare and
and critics. But, hostile or not, the average citizen became elegant Cubism with the kaleidoscopic effects of Futurist
aware that modern art was a compelling public issue and that motion. Many of Demuth's paintings also contain allusions to
 MODFRN AMI-RICAN ART 919

Dada. It was a period when the iconoclasm of Picabia and

Duchamp offered stiff competition, as a formative influence
on American avant-garde art, to the formulaic abstraction of
the geometric tradition.
The spirit of Dada flourished vigorously, if briefly, in New
York with the presence of Picabia, from 191 3, and of
Duchamp, in 19 15, providing the main impetus. In a period of
ferment, reform, and progress, the bloody and violent inter-
ruption of the First World War cast serious doubts on the
efficacy of a machine civilization —
now apparently intent on
destroying itself. The Dadaist puns, social outrage, and nihil-
ism made a case for a newly disenchanted generation, even
though American disillusionment never matched the bizarre,
fantastic, and savage forms of European Dada (see Dada and
Surrealism). Man Ray (1890—) undoubtedly became the first
and most enduring Dada convert, after making contact with
Duchamp in 191 5. By the following year, in The Rope Dancer The Rope Dancer Accompanies Fierseif with Her Shadows by Man Ray:
oil on canvas; 132X i86cm (52X73in); 1916.
Accompanies Herself with Her Shadows (Museum of Modern
Museum of Modern Art, New York
Art, New York), his work reflected Duchamp's interest in
movement and states of change. Painted entirely in oils, the
picture is also a transposition of ideas that Man Ray had been Picabia's and Duchamp's machinest imagery and their
developmg in a series of colored-paper collages influenced by polemics, together with Man Ray's mechanical techniques in
Cubism. From 1917 until the end of the Dada period, C1922, photography, became in the 1920s an important source of the
he was primarily an object-maker and an explorer of new American Precisionist movement, which included such artists
mechanical methods of image-making, which included a new as Demuth, Sheeler, O'Keeffe (briefly), Niles Spencer, and
kmd of lensless photography. others. The Precisionists painted the American industrial land-
scape — factories, grain elevators, high-rise buildings, steam-
I Saw the Figure Five in Gold by Charles Demuth; on board;
oil ships — in a combined "immaculate" surfaces, a
style that
91 X76cm (^dx ^oin); 1928. Metropolitan Museum, New York
Cezannesque and Cubist formal vocabulary, and meticulous
drawing which utilized geometric angles, curves, and clean
lines.

Like painting, American sculpture passed through a vigor-

ous experimental phase in the first two decades of the century,
although the impact of European modernism was less deci-

sive,and there were far fewer modernists. In the hands of

Gaston Lachaise (1882-1935), the classic theme of the nude
acquired an air of overpowering sensual glorification. With
consummate craftsmanship, he fashioned figures of gargan-
—
tuan voluptuousness earthy and swelling with opulent
curves that often approached a purely Abstract configuration
and expression, as in floating Figure (1927; Museum of
Modern Art, New York). French-born, Lachaise left Paris per-

manently for America in 1906. Among the many other Euro-

pean-born who enriched American sculpture was the
artists

Polish-born ElieNadelman (i 882-1946). He emigrated first

to Paris, where he came into contact with Picasso's circle,
before going to New York in 1914. His virtuoso style com-
bines classic elegance with witty sophistication. Nadelman's
simplified formal geometries have led to extravagant and un-
warranted claims by some of his critical supporters who feel

that the style predicted and influenced the development of

European Cubism.
The realist vein of American painting was too strong to be
overwhelmed by the currents of modernism. After 1920, when
the first effects of the Armory Show were over, the American
 9

The Houses of Frank Lloyd Wright

The career of Frank Lloyd Wright ( 1 869-
1959) spanned seven decades. Ahhough he
designed buildings of almost every type, his
major preoccupation was the single-famiK
house. He planned villas for the very rich,
houses for the middle class, and cottages for
clients who did much of the construction
themselves. These evolved a new sense of
domestic space, innovations of lighting and
heating, and a vocabulary of functional sym-
bols that stressed Wright's ideas about
American family life.
The house that Wright designed for him-
self in Oak Park, Illinois (1889), was a

simple, gabled structure of compact, but

semi-open plan. It followed the Colonial
Revival of the previous decade, as the large
window and cladding of cedar shingles indi-
cate. Yet it was more severe and abstract
than any of its predecessors.
In the early years of the new century,
Wright perfected what was to become known
as the "Prairie" house. It usually sat on a
heavy plinth, with some symmetrical ele-
ments in plan and elevation. But it reached
out dramatically into the landscape with
wings in several directions, its porches ex-
tending the limits of the inhabitable, pro-
tected space. All of this was capped by a
massive hipped roof of low pitch and wide
eaves. Captured in one complex gesture were
feelings of movement, of protection, and of
permanence.
The Ward W. Willits house in Highland
Park, Illinois (1902.— 3) —Wright's first

thoroughly integrated masterpiece — illus-

trates the "pin-wheel" plan, centered on a

massive chimney with adjacent fireplaces in

the living and dining rooms. Integral seating

with semitransparent, spindled half-walls
screened the passages from one main space to
another. The dining room, with its pointed
prow, was lit from above — a space almost
ecclesiastical, that revealed Wright's concept
of the family's evening meal as a religious
ritual.

The prairie house imagery was borrowed

quickly by other architects in the Chicago
area,and was varied and restated by Wright and dining rooms are on the second level, Abuie La .\liniatura, the .^ version of the

himself. One of his most eloquent versions with bedrooms on the third. house in Pasadena, praine house, the
Cahfornia, designed by Frederick C. Robie house
was the Frederick C. Robie house, Chicago Wright designed much of the Robie
Franlc Lloyd Wnght for by Frank Lloyd Wnght;
(1907—9). The narrow Roman bricks, the house's furniture, as he did for many clients
-Mrs George .Millard; Chicago; 190-—
copings of the long balcony, the bands of throughout his career. A drawing of the 1923
doors and casement windows, as well as the interior of the Avery Coonley house in River-
extended eaves, join in a romantic sweeping (1907—9), for example, shows
side, Illinois
—
ode to the prairie and to the street. For the not only Wright's unusual conception of a Falling\^ater, the

Robie is a city house built on a narrow lot. weekend house designed

tent-like space, but also reminds us that he
by Frank Lloyd Wright
We enter from behind and circulate via a was a late- 19th-century architect who en- for Edgar Kaufmann Sr,
stairway that forms a vertical core in tandem tered the zoth century in the spirit of the Arts near Pittsburgh, Pa;
with the fireplaces and chimney. The living and Crafts movement. 1935-7
 GALLERY STUDY

Wright's flight to Europe in 1909, and the crete, its superimposed, boxed balconies
interruption of life caused by the First World reach out from a vertical mass of stone
War, brought a disorienting hiatus. In the quarried nearby. "Fallingwater" is one of the

19ZOS his practice was small and his pro- most famous houses in the world, owing to
duction erratic; yet it took on national, even the dramatic photographs of these interlock-
international, dimensions. For sites in south- ing forms hovering over the falls of the Bear
ern California he designed several houses of Run. It is a bold but private retreat, inextric-
concrete "textile blocks", the first and finest ably placed in a memorable site.

of which was "La Miniatura" for Mrs During the Depression years of the 1930s
George Millard in Pasadena (19Z3). In the Wright gave attention to designs for a repeat-
lush vegetation of a small ravine, Wright able Utopian town, "Broadacre City", and to
created a textured and shadowed sanctuary single-family houses buildable for as little as
...... •
-''Jk.
of three levels. Gone, for a while, was his $5,000. The latter he called "Usonian"
obsession with the roof. houses, and some of them, despite their
When Wright was commissioned to design comparative modesty, were extremely eleg-
aweekend cottage near Pittsburgh for Edgar ant. The one for the Misses Goetsch and
Kaufmann, Sr (1935-7) he revealed affinities Winckler in Okemos, Michigan (1939), in-
with the International Style —the cubic, ab- vites comparison with Mies van der Rohe's
stract language which he had earlier helped Barcelona Pavilion of ten years before {see f-i
to inspire. Built mainly of reinforced con- The International Style). It is clear, however.

Above The Ward W. An interior ot the

house in
Willits second house designed
Highland Park, llhnois; by Franl< Lloyd Wright
1901-3 for Herbert Jacobs, at
Middleton, Wisconsin;
1943-8

that the basic forms were already present in

Wright's own work before 19 10.
Throughout his domestic oeuvre, as well as
in his corporate and ecclesiastical buildings,
Frank Lloyd Wright's conceptual and struc-
marked a fascinating trail.
tural innovations
Perhaps even more interesting now than
when appeared in the 1940s is the
it first

second house for Herbert Jacobs in Middle-

ton, Wisconsin. Built against a berm of earth
to protect from harsh winds in the winter
it

and to cool it in the summer, Wright's solar

hemicycle embraces the low winter sun. At
once a cave-like shelter and a curved pavilion
opened with glass towards a sunken garden,
it sums up many of the architect's favorite
themes: it is protective, yet open, modern, yet
respectful of the traditions of pioneer life on

the mid-western plains. Despite such Ameri-

canisms, however, Wright's contributions to
modern domestic architecture must be mea-
sured on an international scale. He was the
most influential architect of his generation,

anywhere.
ROBERT JUUSON CLARK

Further reading. Hitchcock, H.-R. In the Nature of

Materials, New York (1942). Manson, d.C. hrank
Lloyd Wright to 1910, New York (1958). Scully, V.,
]r Frank Lloyd Wright, New York (i960). Smith,
N.K. Frank Lloyd Wright: a Study in Architectural
Content, Englewood Cliffs (1966).
9ZZ MODERN AMERICAN ART

tury American artists. Regionalists such as Benton, Wood,

and Curry returned to their native Midwest and became
champions of the old-fashioned virtues of what they con-
sidered to be the heartland of America. At the same time,
many Hopper and Burchfield Re-
Eastern painters besides —
ginald March and Raphael Soyer, among others pictured the —
city and small town with a more drastic realism, a full accept-
ance of their ugly aspects, but also with a deep emotional
attachment. The American Scene painters continued the inter-
rupted tradition of 19th-century genre painting and the 20th-
century realist revival of The Eight.
After the Great Depression of 1929, American Scene re-
alism became more socially conscious. It was the prevailing
style of work done under the Federal Government's W.P.A.

(Works Progress Administration) program to assist artists,

which operated from 1934 to 1939. Some of the more directly
political artists also benefited by the Federal Art Project.
Painters Philip Evergood, Ben Shahn, and Jack Levine all

worked in a sharp and allusive communicate in

realist style to

art their strong feelings about social justice. The work of such
Mexican muralists as Jose Clemente Orozco and Diego Rivera
was an evident source both of imagery and design.
Ben Shahn (1898— 1969) was a prolific W.P.A. muralist who
combined the social themes and fervent radical political be-
liefs of the Mexican nationalist painters with a new cogni-

zance of the importance of modern abstraction. His edgy,

nervous line and condensed, flat space probably derived from
Klee, as did his chromatic brilliance. He was also a practicing
photographer, close to Walker Evans, whose documentar\'
visual accounts of the rural South created some of the most
haunting imagery of the Depression years. Shahn's Handball
(1939; Museum of Modern Art, New York) departs from an
actual photograph made by the artist, combining a sense of
actuality with the elliptical formal devices of modern tra-
dition. Shahn frequently painted in tempera to obtain effects
of dry incandescence with a metallic luster. Both his medium
Floating Figure by Gaston Lachaise; bronze (cast in 1935); and his pictorial effects demonstrate a magical clarity of detail
131 X96cni (52X38in); 1927. Museum of Modern Art, New York that may have been a formative influence on another notable
realist emerging in the 1940s —Andrew Wyeth. Wyeth (19 17—)
Scene returned vigorously both as an inspiration for artists adapted Shahn's precision of flat detail and sense of human
and as a most prominent figures were
popular subject. Its solitariness to his own quirky vision. He linked the theme of
Edward Hopper (1882— 1967) and Charles Burchfield (1893— human loneliness to rural and outdoor settings, often against

1967). The former romanticized the unpicturesque loneliness the background of a malign Nature. Despite a modern
of American town and country life, the latter dreamed up "psychological" note in his closely observed studies of human
near-fantasies of similar subjects, first in his imaginative personality, Wyeth shows clearest affinities with the spirit of
watercolors and later in dramatic oil paintings. No American the Thirties regionalists, who turned away from the "corrup-
realist has been able to capture the vacancy and frustration of tion" of urban life to celebrate the homespun virtues and
modern urban existence with more evocative pictorial means nostalgic myths of the farm and countryside.
than Hopper. Eleven A.M. (19x6; Joseph Hirshhorn Abstract art led a precarious existence during the years of
Museum, Washington, D.C.) is a haunting expression of his the Depression when all cultural values were necessarily af-

unique combination of bleakness of vision, austere geometric fected by material needs. It was not until 1937 when the —
structure, and a surprising undercurrent of sexual tension. American Abstract Artists (A.A.A.) was founded by
Societ)^ of

By the mid 1920s, in reaction against international modern- painters George L. K. Morris and Balcomb Greene, and sculp-
ism, there was a wave of Nationalism: a conscious rediscovery tor Ibram Lassaw, among others —
that a new chapter began.
of America —
still an unexplored continent for most 20th-cen- A distinguished contribution to this movement was made in
 MODERN AMFRKAN ART 923

Eleven A.M. by Edward Hopper; oil on canvas; 71 X9icni (28x36in); 1926. Joseph Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C.

the refined Abstract painting of A. E. Gallatin, who was also tilityto modernism. Davis' painting mixes Cubist structure
known as a collector. Among its earliest supporters were Carl and fragmentation with such nativist elements as a cursive
Holty, Charles Shaw, and Stuart Davis. Arshile Gorky, script of lettering fragments taken from American signs and
Willem de Kooning, and the sculptor David Smith established — —
images shopfronts, houses, and streets depicted in strong,
close ties with the A. A. A., but did not subscribe entirely to its personal color combinations. Despite his dependence upon
more and Constructivist aesthetic viewpoints, or of-
purist European examples, particularly upon Fernand Leger (whom
ficially join the group. However, the sculptor Theodore he once described as "the most American painter painting
Ros/ak and the painter Ad Reinhardt were early members, today"), Davis achieved a special ligh.tness of touch and a
and their participation later provided one basis for the flower- whimsical humor that were distmctly American.
ing of American art in the 1940s in the quite different form of in sculpture, Alexander Calder (i 898-1976) was another
Expressionist abstraction. American of stature, who maintained unshakable ties with
Undoubtedly the most influential Abstract painter of these European innovation. By 192.3 he had produced his first
transitional yearswas Stuart Davis (i 894-1 964), who cour- motorized, freestanding sculptures in Paris, and by 1934 had
ageously maintained some sense of continuity with interna- made the first in a long series of suspended, air driven mobiles,
tional abstraction at a time when realism dominated the with all the characteristic insouciance and lyrical invention of
American scene and when there was considerable public hos- his maturity. During the late 19ZOS and 1930s Calder spent
924 MODERN AMERICAN ART

conceptions of art as action, performance, and idea, and by

the exploration of a varietv- of new technologies including
videotape and film. Like the earlier revolutionary tendencies
of 20th-century art, the succession of trends from 1940 to the
1980s —from Abstract Expressionism to environmental sys-
tems, performance, and Conceptual Art —has been motivated
by the ingrained experimentalism endemic to 20th-centur)-
art.

The artistic energies, and in a sense, too, the social anxien-

released by the onset of the Second World War, lent special

urgency and impetus to the new American movement of Ab-
stract Expressionism, or, to adopt Harold Rosenberg's sugges-
tive epithet, Action Painting. The rwo terms cover a loose
association of artists guided by common aims who emerged in
New York at the close of the Second World —
War a period
WNYC Studio B Mural by Stuart Davis; oil on canvas; when most progressive American artists felt that the formerly
213x336cm (84X132™); 1939. Metropolitan Museum, New York
dominant school of Paris was vacant of new ideas and dying
(on loan from the Arts Commission of the Citv of New York)
for lack of skill. As Americans turned to Paris for direaion
after the war, they found a tasteful and unchallenging t>pe of
most of his time in Paris, and there estabhshed friendly rela- painting whose familiar and predictable formula usually com-
tions with Miro and Mondrian, among others. was the
It bined Pierre Bonnard's hot palene with loose variations on the
American temper of his plastic genius, his tinkering and inven- Cubist and Orphist formal structures of Jacques Villon or
tive resourcefulness, that first won him recognition in the de- Robert Delaunay, exemplified by the innocuous, decorative
manding international art world. He also became known as work of Lapique, Bazaine, and Manessier. The decline in
an inspired toy-maker, for his famous mmiature circus whose European innovation in the 1940s —except in the work of
expressive wire-and-wood figures of big-top performers en- Jean Dubuffet, Alberto Giacometti, Francis Bacon, and a few
chanted Miro and a wide circle of artists in Paris when it was artists of the art informel group —and catastrophic events on
shown there in the years 1927—30. the Continent, however, had the paradoxical effect of
Calder's art bridges the period not only between early mod- stimulating an episode of experimentalism among the young
ernism and the 1930s, but berween the reemergence of moder- American vanguard.
nist experiment in the early 1940s and the decade of the For a moment it even seemed that the major impulses of
1960s. Until i960 Calder seemed to be moving along estab- modernism had been expatriated and driven underground in
lished and predictable paths in his elegant and ingenious art. America, for the emerging progressive American artists drew

However, in the last decade of his life his magnificent support and inspiration in their complex beginnings from the
"stabiles" grew to environmental scale, and today they must presence in New York during the war years of a number of
rank among most impressive monumental sculpture in
the Europe's leading artists and intellectuals. Leger, Tanguy,
steel La Grande Vitesse (1969), now the pride
of the century. Mondrian, Breton, Ernst, and Matta, among others, came to
of Grand Rapids, Michigan, shows a characteristic enlarge- New York in the early 1940s, and maintained warm, influen-
ment of biomorphic, Miroesque forms, inevitably pamted a tial relationships with many of the younger Americans who
sizzling orange. The combination of large-scale forms in were thus able to bridge the intimidating distance berv\'een
metal, his illusionist richness and reduced means gave the themselves and European modernism. A number of these
public a foretaste of the Minimalist sculpture movement of the European artists began to show at the Pegg>- Guggenheim
same period initiated by members of a younger generation of Gallery, Art of This Century, and it was there that the pioneer
sculptors. —
American Abstract Expressionists ^Jackson Pollock, Mark
Rothko, Clyfford Still, Hans Hofmann, Robert Motherwell,
From the Second World War to the present. The decades since —
and \X'illiam Baziotes held their first revolutionary one-man
the beginning of the Second World \X'ar have seen prodigious shows between the years 1943—46.
activity among painters and sculptors. The upheaval of the The Surrealist group became a major catalyst in enabling
war disturbed what continuiU" of tradition there was in the new American generation of artists to express their sense
American art; the artists who have since come to the fore have of crisis in pictorial form with direaness and immediac}'.
established new traditions of their own. In the first postwar Robert Motherwell 11915— was an eloquent spokesman for
)

decade abstraction was the dominant style of members of the the new generation, and conveyed their concern to move to-
avant-garde. But in the 1960s and the 1970s the hegemony of
abstraction, particularly of an expressionist charaaer, was Right:La Grande Vitesse by .lyexander Calder; Steel; 1969;
sharply challenged by Pop Art, photographic realism, new Nandenburg Plaza, Grand Rapids, Michigan
MODERN AMERICAN ART 9Z5
 —

Cathedral byjackson Pollock

Painted in 1 947, Cathedral (Dallas Museum able to exploit to the full the expressive first appearance here. As the light changes or
of Fine Arts) is representative of a crucial potential inherent in the freedom of paint the spectator moves, so its tone varies,
phase in the development of the unique dribbled from sticks and wornout brushes, making it an effective spatial device. It shim-
artistic statement of Jackson Pollock ( 1 9 1 2- and applied direct from the tube or with a mers, the tone is lightened and heightened, its

56). Together with hull Fathom Five syringe. delicate scaffolding pushing the picture-plane
(Museum of Modern Art, New York) of the In Cathedral, Pollock's abstract line, re- forward, and so creating depth. Dull, static,
same year, marks the point at which his
it lieved of its delineating role and independent and opaque, the silver recedes and assumes
mastery of the poured and dripped paint of form, is set free. Now an equal participant the unified tone of the other colors. The
technique was reaching its height. The con- in the unfolding drama, it acts as an enliven- transient nature of line and color in motion
trol and precision of the mature works that ing element upon the picture-plane. Wiry breathes life into the painting, the structure
followed was the result of concentrated effort lines are woven into sculptural networks, of which constantly resolves into rhythmic
and experiment, the fruits of which are independent of the background. In the dense accents and dissolves into a harmony of
already evident in the closely organized struc- scries of planes of which the painting is integrated color and line.
ture of Cathedral. constructed, webs of unmixed color are In the contrast between the strongly articu-
During 947, his first year
1 in Long Island formed and spatial depth achieved. As the lated areas of black, silver, and white, and
remote from the pressures of New York, eye moves and is caught by the shimmer of the delicate crossing and recrossing of line.
Pollock relinquished the literal imagery he red, yellow, or blue, so each plane advances Pollock introduces a visual texture which, at
had contmued to explore despite increasingly or recedes. times, becomes physically real on the picture
unconventional working methods. In aban- The silver of aluminum paint, which was surface. .Mways conscious of the nature of his
donmg an imagery dependent for its realiza- to play an even greater and more integral materials, he exploits their tactile quality and
tion upon a directly marked contour, he was part in many of the later canvases, makes its creates a frontal plane constantly in motion.
The texture of impasto and thick lines of
paint, direct from the tube, increases the
ambiguity of the painting's spatial depth.
Together with the "drip" technique, the
use of silver, and, in other paintings, of
enamel paint, freed Pollock's work from
traditional associations within painting of
weight, mass, and the physical properties of
bodies. Cathedrals indeterminate gravita-
tional and spatial system is expansive and
cosmic. Transcending the limits imposed by
the traditional spatial boundaries of the pic-
ture frame, Pollock's forms are not confined
by the dimensions and shape of the canvas.
Pushing outwards, they imply an infinite
extension of pictorial space.
The strong vertical emphasis, carried in
two distinct movements which thrust up and
outwards, may in part account for the title

uncharacteristic in Pollock's work. In the

concept of a cathedral as the physical em-
bodiment of man's faith and spiritual aspir-
ation,and in the glorification implicit in its
ascendant form. Pollock may have found an
echo of the mystical nature he believed art to
possess.
During the late 1930s and early 1940s,
young New York artists had rejected both
the narrow chauvinism of American Re-
gionalism and the formal limitations of cur-
rent Abstract art. In an alienating world, in
which the individual suffered isolation and

Or/jeiirj/ by Jackson
Pollock; mixed media on
canvas; 179x89cm
•* A detail from the (7oX35in); 194-. Dallas
center of Cathedral Museum of Fine Arts
 CLOSE STUD^

fmmi^^^Mm'^ dislocation, it was must be

felt that art
concerned with the universal, the elemental.
In his personal expression of the collective
experience, the artist might act as a represen-
tative individual, creating an art universal in
its relevance. Unifying mankind on a funda-
mental level, it was to the unconscious and its

exploration that artists turned for the source

and medium of their communication. To
express the energy of the inner forces, new
means of expression, new techniques were
required.
Pollock's "drip" paintings, and their
method of execution, confirmed a place for
him in the mythology of 20th-century art.
They became a metaphor for the wild, primi-
tive forces within modern man, unleashed
upon the canvas. His approach to painting
epitomizes the belief in the automatic bodily
gesture: in the significance of the act itself as
the medium Under the
of communication.
influence of Surrealist and psychoanalytic
doctrine, the artistic act is acknowledged as
the artist's personal mark, in the same sense
that handwriting can be indicative of charac-
ter. Pollock did not illustrate his feelings: he
delivered them directly on to the canvas.
Rejecting the conventional detached, exter-
nal relationship of the artist to his painting,
the canvas was for Pollock an arena in which
to perform.
The immediacy of Pollock's technical ap-
proach exemplified the contemporary avant-
garde emphasis upon painting as a direct
statement. Preoccupied with the need to
express his inner world. Pollock sought to
lose the conscious self in a spontaneous
dialogue between the fluency of paint, de-
veloping form, and the unconscious gesture.
In the expressive application of pigment,
feeling is transformed into pictorial sen-
sation. Charged with the intensity- of his
emotion. Pollock's paintings communicate
the sense of urgency with which he ap-
proached his medium of self expression. In

each expansive stroke of Cathedral, each

flick of the paint-laden stick. Pollock is

present. The length of his arm determines the

extent of the stroke, each instinctive response
to the unfolding statement leaves its mark
upon the whole. Each work is an autobio-
graphical statement: Pollock is the paint-
ing — the painting, Pollock.
LYNNE MITCHELL

Further reading. Friedman, b.H. Jackson Pollock:

Energy Made Visible, London (1971). O'Connor, F.V.
and Thaw, E.V. Jackson Pollock: A Catalogue
Ratsonne of Paintings. Drawings, and Other Works
(4 vols.), London and New Haven (1978). Robertson,
B. Jackson Pollock, London (1968).
 —
92.8 MODERN AMERICAN ART

wards a new aesthetic that allowed the artist to express him- tween controlled draftsmanship and a Dionysian outburst of
self more freely and subjectively. As he put it: "The need is for great expressive power. The distinctions between scrolling
felt experience — intense, immediate, direct, subtle, unified, lines of paint and phantasmagoria, and between symbolic al-
warm, vivid, rhythmic." Many painters began to concentrate lusions and the plastic accents dissolve into an overall rhyth-
on the act of painting itself for its own sake, giving an almost mic pulsation.
moral urgency to their decision to paint. During the late 1940s and early 1950s, Willem de Kooning
Particularly influential was Andre Breton (1896— 1966), (1904-) became the acknowledged leader of American pro-
who took his cue for an unprecedented "automatist" artistic gressive painting, providing a dictionary of vital pictorial
strategy from the procedures of psychoanalysis — especially ideas and a departure for new explorations. Although Pol-
the device of exploiting free association to release personal lock's liberating energies had given him the status of a culture
fantasies. Breton cultivated and directly encouraged Arshile hero for young artists — his untimely death in 1956 expanded
Gorky (1904—48), with whom he was in close contact; his the legend — his direct influence was negligible until color-field
intellectual leadership also influenced many other Americans, painting came into vogue and the optical vibrancy of his all-

including David Hare, the sculptor, and Robert Motherwell. over style became a focus of artistic interest. De Kooning's
It was Motherwell who coined the phrase "plastic automat- painterliness, with its aggressive incorporation of traditional
ism" in place of Breton's "psychic automatism", as defined in figuration and its equally compelling Abstract invention, most
the first Manifesto of Surrealism. An important distinction decisively affected a new generation of younger artists of the
was thus established between the Surrealist art of subcon- 1950s. Woman, Sag Harbor (1964; Joseph Hirshhorn
scious imagery and the young Americans' more physical in- Museum, Washington, D.C.) reveals the artist in a moment of
volvement with the "act of painting". transition from figuration — reminiscent of Soutine perhaps
Jackson Pollock's one-man show held in 1943 at Peggy
first to an even more fragmented and aggressive painterliness, set
Guggenheim's gallery became symbolic of the new wave of in a tensely structured, depthless space. His characteristic pic-
Abstract Expressionism in painting. Indeed, it took on some- torial formula fuses improvisational surface, gesture, and
thing of the character of a visual manifesto for the new points event into a new, unified structure.
of view. In the beginning, Pollock was, in fact, mistakenly If any artist deserved Harold Rosenberg's epithet of
identified with the artistic productions of the European Sur- "Action Painter", it was Franz Kline (1910— 6z) who trans-
realists who showed in the same gallery, and his rather lated gesture into a lattice of broad black bands like the en-

narrow, violent early painting reveals obvious relationships to larged strokes of a house-painter's brush. At its best, Kline's

Surrealist automatism. At the same time, Motherwell was also work conveys a sense of tensely controlled excitement in the
testing automatic painting, and Gorky worked directly under actand gesture of painting. Many of the other Action Painters
the influence of Matta's abstract Surrealism. Matta was the in Kline'sand de Kooning's tradition of excited paint marks
youngest member of the group of refugee Surrealists, who ar- and energetic handling were clustered together by critics as
rived in the United States during the war years. More than any "gestural" painters, in opposition to a radically different style
of the others, he acted as a liaison between the older Surrealist of color-field or chromatic abstraction which was also emerg-
generation and the emerging American avant-garde. ing in the 1950s, in New York. Bradley Walker Tomlin, Lee
By 1947, most of the European Surrealists had returned to Krasner (Pollock's window), and Conrad Marca-Relli were
France, their influence on the wane in the face of a strongly among the more distinguished gesture painters of the older
independent American accomplishment. Pollock's break- generation. Two women, Grace Hartigan and Joan Mitchell,
through into his so-called open "drip" style or poured paint- extended the Action Painters' discoveries among the younger
ings was symbolic of the change, and helped to establish the generation, with distinctive personalizations of idiom, either
new-found authority of the American avant-garde. His paint- in the direction of realism, or towards an ambitious "all-over"
ings were achieved by spilling liquid paint on unstretched can- field painting.

vases laid flat on the floor —

thus taking Breton's automatism Hans Hofmann (1880-1966) was a special case, making his

to its logical conclusion in an apotheosis of lyrical abstraction. early reputation primarily as the academic teacher of many of
But Pollock's paintings from 1947 until his death in 1956 the second-generation Abstract artists. Actually, Hofmann in-
became increasingly remote from their Surrealist inspiration. vented the pour and splash technique, as if anticipating Pol-
working with the exigen-
In the end, the actions of the artists lock, but did not push his invention into the now-familiar
cies of the moment determined their outcome and visual codified method or use it, as Pollock did, to extend the
character. Existentialist engagement with the canvas, and self- frontiers of art. Hofmann's finest paintings summarize the
definition through the act of painting, replaced the Surrealist conflicting achievements of early-zoth-century art within the
commitment to dreams and the unconscious. Pollock's context of an individual manner, combining German Ex-
Number One of 1950 (Museum of Modern Art, New is York) pressionist exuberance, Cubist structure, and the expressive
one of his most important large-scale "poured" paintings. The color of Matisse and Delaunay.
fantastic anatomies and mythic figures of his Surrealist-in- In a significant reaction to the gestural painters, the chro-
fluenced paintings have evaporated in a powerful tension be- matic abstractionists —Barnett Newman, Clyfford Still, Mark
 MODERN AMERICAN ART 9Z9

Sublime in art (see Romanticism). Although all of these artists

Woman, Sag Harbor by Willcm de Kooning;
(8oX36in); 1964. Joseph Hirshhorn
oil on board; io? X9icm
Museum, Washington, D.C.
set themselves the goal of purifying the act of painting in order
to assert the Sublime, they were also in touch with the firm,
concrete sensuous color of Matisse and with modern Abstract
overweighed the elaboration
tradition: these influences clearly
of a calculated romantic atmosphere in their work.
Reinhardt's enigmatic icons are even more single-minded in
their purity; they approach monochromism, providing
perhaps the most extreme example of formal rigor in contem-
porary American painting. After a primitivist phase of making
pictographs —which resemble Indian of the Northwest
art
Coast —Adolph Gottlieb (1903—73) turned from mythic figu-
ration to Abstractemblems like a number of others of his
contemporaries, among them William Baziotes (1912-63). In-
terestingly, a new generation in the 1960s took as their point
of departure the more impersonal pictorial invention of
Newman and Reinhardt rather than the works of Rothko or
Gottlieb with their obvious evidence of a more poetic sensi-
bility. The Minimalists of the recent past are more interested
in the reductive character of color-field painting than in the
romantic rhetoric of the Sublime. The new generation found
themselves most in accord with Reinhardt's insistance on
anonymity and the absence of emotion in his work.
There was considerable diversity among other Abstract Ex-
Guston (1913-80) brought to the New
pressionists. Philip
York school a searching intellect and probing brush. His
loaded, slow-moving brushstroke suspends and visibly pro-
longs the Action Painting gesture, creating strongly felt meta-
phors for doubt and certainty, chaos and order, disquiet and
calm. Robert Motherwell provided an interesting exception to
the "either/or" pattern of gestural and non-gestural color-field
paintingamong the Abstract Expressionists. Between 1965
and 1980 he associated himself with the field paintings of
Newman and Rothko to a surprising degree, rather than with
the more emotive, gestural style of Abstract Expressionism.
The postwar period produced major innovations in sculp-
ture close in spirit to Action Painting. An idiom of fluid metal
construction appeared shortly after the war as the common
bond between notable sculptures of diverse character by
David Smith, Ibram Lassaw, Theodore Roszak, David Hare,
Herbert Ferber, Seymour Lipton, and others. Borrowing from
the Surrealists their addiction to accident and the random
mark, the new sculptors worked in a fluent welded steel and in
metal alloys, synthesizing open linear space drawing and Con-
structivist formalism. Like the Abstract Expressionists, they

Rothko, Ad Reinhardt and others —created great unvaried ex- discovered that their first ventures were subjective, fantasy-
panses of alternately bright and somber hue in color fields ridden, and aggressive in handling. The new sculpture, how-
rather than stress linear detail, agitated surface, and formal ever, was not all barbed form and exasperated, strident

diversity. Their large canvases were intended to subdue the feeling. It ranged in mood from the luminous serenity of

spectator's ego and to create a sense of tranquil awe. The Ibram Lassaw's delicately fused cages to the nature-derived
awesome scale of Rothko's Four Seasons Restaurant mural imagery of Seymour Lipton's hybrid organic-machine forms.
cycle of paintings ( i9<;8-9;now in the Tate Gallery, London), The major innovator in sculpture was inarguably David
with their unrelieved color sensation ot homogenous red Smith (1906-65), who came to steel sculpture after assimilat-

fields, were meant to assert the boundlessness and the mystery ing the work of Picasso and Gonzalez, and after working in a
of being, in keeping with Edmund Burke's concept of the factory during the war years as a welder of army tanks.
 . '

The Sculptures of David Smith plane, line,and volume; without it the state-
ment would be incomplete. Like intervals in a
painting, the voids of the Cubi series can be
David Smith (1906—65) recognized no de- the two-dimensional picture-space. Grad- as significant as the stainless steel volumes,
marcation between painting and sculpture. ually, as the three-dimensional nature of his which in their apparent weightlessness defy
His sculptural expression grew naturally out work developed, the canvas became the base, gravity. Smith's approach to gravity as a
of hiswork as a painter: even after sculpture and the painting was sculpture. limiting concept, one that must be challenged
had become his central means of expression, The calligraphy of i4Msfra/w (195 1; Collec- and transcended, is characteristic. His work
his output of drawings and paintings con- tion of Professor William Rubin, New York), as a whole is the product of repeated encoun-
tinued unabated. Everything he produced Zig II {1961; Des
the integral role of color in ters with, and liberation from, accepted

was part of a cohesive statement: his activity Moines Art Center, Des Moines, Iowa), and boundaries and criteria.
as draftsman, never subsidiary to that of a in the deployment in Cuhi XIX 1 964; Tate (
Smith's first welded steel structures of
sculptor, was merely executed in a different Gallery, London) of form in the shallow 1932 were influenced by those of Picasso and
dimension. space of a Cubist picture, all testify to Smith's Julio Gonzalez. During the years that fol-
By attaching materials, "found" and exploration of sculpture as drawing and lowed, he explored the vocabulary of most
shaped objects, to the surface of his paint- painting in three dimensions. In the monu- contemporary art movements without com-
ings. Smith had achieved increased textural mental Zig series, color is essential to the mitting himself to any one of them: he took
effects and liberation from the restrictions of realization of form. It reveals and enforces from each only what was useful to him.
Intensely individualistic, he was cosmopoli-
tan in his taste and eclectic in his sources. He
was as capable of gaining inspiration from a
Sumerian cylinder seal as from a painting by
Kenneth Noland (19Z4-). In consequence he
achieved a synthesis that encompassed the
Constructivist idea, elements of the Cubist
tradition, and a Surrealist tendency to allow
the free play of subconscious imagery. But
Smith's essential source of development and
invention was within his art itself. From
experimentation and the spontaneous dia-
logue between the artist and his materials,
new forms emerged and were explored.

wm.
m

k k
1^

N '
'

m
Zig II by David Smith;
< Cubi XIX by David polychromed steel;
Smith; stainless steel; height 255cm ( I coin);
height 287cm (H3in); 96 1. Des Moines Art
1

1964. Tate Gallery, Center, Des Moines,

London Iowa
 GALLERY STUDY

commitment to iron and steel

Smith's A Sculpture by David
resulted from both his early experience as a Smith in the artist's
garden at Bolton
metalworker m an automobile factory, and
Landing, New York
from his search for a new and vital vocabu- State
and the
lary. Utilizing his industrial skills

materials and techniques symbolic of modern Australia by David

society, he sought to anchor his work firmly Smith; painted steel;

width zSocm i loin);
in his own time. He identified himself as a
(

1 95 1. Collection of
workman; his creative process was one of Professor William
construction: he cut profiles, welded together Rubin. New York
a sequence of elements; he seldom carved or
modeled. Delightmg m the progress of indus-
trial technology and the new techniques it

offered the sculptor. Smith was a pioneer in

open, freestanding metal form. The charac-
teristics of metal offered the choice of rapid,
spontaneous invention and clearly articu-
lated structure, or solid, consideredform
which could assert inherent qualities of
toughness and durability. By exploiting the industrial hardware, steel offcuts, and stock equipment. The iron wheel hub from a
malleability of steel. Smithdrew in space the components, as the equivalent in an indus- wagon, for example, is a circle, a sun, and is

open, linear forms of Australia, and con- trialized society of the found objeas that endowed with romantic association stem-
structed the geometric volumes of Cubi XIX. have always played a part in man's creativity. ming from its past use.
Permitting greater freedom of expression, the In his workshop store of metal scrap, even At Bolton Landing, in the mountains
combined strength and fragility of iron and the stock he ordered or had made to his above Lake George, New York State, Smith
steel was, to Smith, symbolic not only of the specification became "found" objects: lived in a landscape filled with his accumulat-
potential of mans industrial achievement for searching for a particular formal configura- ing work. Initially through lack of space, the
construction and destruction, but also of the tion, he would rediscover them. placing of sculpture outdoors became an
dual forces inherent in man himself. When forms are seldom appreciated
in use, integral part of his original conception. The
For Smith a machine environment was a for anything other than their mechanical burnished surface of Cubi XIX, intended to
natural one. He en)oyed the scale and power performance. When they are separated from assume sky and environmental color, makes
of industry, and wished ultimately to create a and
their past use or established function the sculpture a living, responsive part of the
sculpture as large as a locomotive. In his employed with other forms, a metamor- natural scene. It is this quality that Smith
desire to create a wholly contemporary artis- phosis takes place which creates a new, sought to achieve in all his work.
tic statement, he consciously duplicated in- purely visual, unity : yet the formal elements
dustrial processes and equipment in his retain an associational charge. Although his LYNNE MITCHELL
workshop, constantly utilized new tech- found objects were chosen primarily for their
niques, and incorporated factory-made com- basic geometric form, they were required to
Further reading. Gray, C. (ed.) David Smith by David
ponents and industrial found objects in his fit a particular formal relationship: Smith
Smith, New York (1968). Krauss, R.E. Terminal Iron
work. Regarding everything in the natural exploited this inherent ambiguity. In the Works: the Sculpture of David Smith, Cambridge,
world as objects to be discovered and utilized Agricob (from the Latin "farmer") series, Mass. (1971). McCoy, G. (ed.) DavidSmith, Har-
by the artist, Smith looked upon discarded Smith utilized the forms of discarded farm mondsworth (1973).
932. MODERN AMERICAN ART

Smith's art of the 1940s and 1950s was highly diverse and Joseph Cornell (1903-72) who began to make his Surrealist
crowded with personal symbols; it varied in style from deli- box constructions in the mid 1930s. His work combined the
cate linear detail to strong, rugged volumes of joined metal structural stringencies of Constructivism with subconscious
sheets. He alternately evoked Surrealist totems and Construc- sources of imagery m Surrealist fantasy, and embraced an
techniques and methods. As early as 1956,
tivist rationalist entrancing assortment of romantic bric-a-brac. Jasper Johns'
Smith began to experiment with modular sculpture and made plastermolds in his target paintings, and Lucas Samaras'
stacks of box-like shapes which led to his most significant rather menacing boxes of pins, taxidermy objects, and
sculpture series during the last five years of his life, the Cubi bright-colored yarns can be considered direct descendants of
series. These precarious ensembles of welded cylinders, disks, Cornell's bizarre inventions. The work of Louise Nevelson
and rectangular boxes in asymmetric alignment, burnished (1899—) represents another sharp departure from the typical
and ground with a wire brush until their surfaces reflected artistic product of the sculptor-welders of the 1950s. Her
light like fish scales, are among the most origmal and powerful walls in wood and other constructions, large and small, invar-
plastic inventions of 20th-century American art. They directly iably contain commonplace "found" objects — newel posts,
anticipated the unadorned metal boxes, modular composi- discarded funiture parts, and the like —which she assidu-
still

tions, and geometric severity of the rising Minimalist genera- ously collects today. The flotsam of the street is stacked and
tion of sculptors in the 1 960s in the work of Don Judd, Robert composed in rigorous Abstract compositions. She has worked
Morris, and others. successfully in recent years in large-scale fabricated metal
Curiously, another sculptor of Smith's own generation pre- sculpture, though here her works are perhaps less poetic than
dicted even more clearly, and directly influenced, the course of her wooden constructions but more assured and controlled in
Minimalist sculpture. It was Tony Smith (1912-80), who in- formal terms.
itiated the practice of having his severe geometric forms in In the 1960s the interaction of art and technology captured
plywood fabricated into large-scale metal constructions in the popular imagination as artists began to experiment
1962, well in advance of the cult for anonymous metalwork throughout the world with such new materials as synthetics
manufacture which became the rule later in the decade. and plastics, and embarked on collaborations with scientists.

A unique and mysterious figure in American sculpture was The new paths had been opened by the activation of optical

Black on Maroon, one of .Mark Rothko's Four Seasons Restaurant mural cycle; oil on canvas; 267 x457cm (105 x i8oin); 1959. Tate Gallery, London
 MODERN AMERICAN ART 933

One of its most remarkable exponents has been the New Zea-
land-born Len Lye (1901-). He made programmed machines
constructed of exquisitely fine metal components of stainless
steel; in motion, their violently activated forms move so
quickly that they give the impression of dematerialized form
and flickering tongues of light. The sculptor George Rickey
(1907-) creates more slowly moving, stainless-steel or painted
metal blades of great length, balanced precariously on a ful-
crum and other egg-beater forms which he
like heroic shears,

calls "space churns". His refined sculptures gently swing and

rotate, driven by air currents. Their burnished, highly reflec-

tive surfaces give off light in a way that denies solid form and
volume and is thus related to the energy release in Len Lye's
motion sculpture.
In Light art, Chryssa (1933-) was the first American to use
emitted electric light and illuminated neon tubes. She com-
bined elements of neon with fragments of lettered commercial
signs taken from the urban environment. In the late 1960s,
light and neon were also utilized by artists as dissimilar as Dan

Flavin, Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, and Keith Sonnier to

realize a quite different goal of environmental expansiveness,
and to define a specific site in purely formal terms.
By the late 1960s a more factual rather than an expression-
ist or romantic account of the artistic process prevailed in
Smoke by Tony Smith; x 10.36X 14.63m (24x34x48ft);
steel; 7.3 i both painting and sculpture. As an example of the changes
1967-79. Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. that occurred, the painting Lilac Frost (1977; Collection of
Hanford Yang, New York) by Helen Frankenthaler (1928-)
illusion and other perceptual phenomena in so-called "Op offers a mixture of gestural abstraction with color-field scale
Art", which preceded the investigation of more complex in- and brightness. She has, however, significantly transformed
dustrial techniques and electric technology in art. The Ameri- her Abstract Expressionist sources. Her richly loaded pigment
can pioneer in Op art was the German-born Josef Albers surfaces are more optically active and yet less substantial in

(1880— 1976) who had created and introduced at the Bauhaus, texture. The wandering edges of her forms are determined by
as early as 1930, a new, dynamic perceptual element in paint- gravity and the drying process, a method she shared with the
ing with a variety of optical devices and color contrasts. exquisite color painter, Morris Louis (1912—62). Color,
Albers was among the first to discover the emotive potential of shape, and edge speak for themselves as pure physical and
complex visual stimuli. He left Germany to teach at Black optical phenomena in the art of both Louis and Franken-

Mountam College North (Carolina in 1933, and from that

in thaler, released from romantic rhetoric about the "abstract
date until his death he became the leading figure in a current sublime". Such paintings no longer suggest a sense of urgent
of purist abstraction. In the 1960s his earlier color experi- moral purpose, or of difficulties overcome, as did those of the

ments were recognized for their prophecy of optical art. In the first "heroic" generation of American Abstract artists. They
years after 1949 he painted modular nests of color squares in are openly more hedonistic and propose an impersonal ap-
different dominant hues and sizes and almost identical for- proach to artistic activity, characteristic of the 1960s and
mats. His celebrated Homage to the Square series was the first 1970s. Such talented and facile successors of the Abstract
example of serial and optical art in America. Although his Expressionists as Frankenthaler, Kenneth Noland, and Ells-
influence as a teacher at both Black Mountain College and worth Kelly paid the Abstract Expressionist pioneers the
—
Yale University was considerable he taught, among others, respect of formal emulation, at least in terms of scale, but
Robert Rauschenberg, Kenneth Noland, and Richard Anus- something of the old sense of adventure and social iconoclasm
kiewicz —only Anuskiewicz pursued and extended his investi- was lost in the art of the new generation.
gations of an art of activated perception within a rigorously One of the most influential younger artists of the 1960s was
geometric format. the painter Frank Stella (1936-). Beginning with his unpre-
While optical art did not have nearly so pervasive an in- cedented black-striped paintings of the period 1958-60, con-
fluence in America as it did in Kurope, a number of sculptors tinuing in his vividly chromatic, grand-scale "protractor"
allied themselves with the related international interest in segmented color shapes of the 1960s, and then in his
series of

motion sculpture, or Kineticism — a movement that similarly constructed reliefs, Stella managed to reverse the customary
expressed a sympathy for the world of modern technology. roles of geometry and Bauhaus design in modern art. He ere-
 —

MODERN AMERICAN ART 935

ated a new balance between the concepts of the painting as

pictorial illusion and as an object — a thing of literal and de-
notative meaning. Surprisingly, paintings of the late 1970s
expressionist high relief — revived the emotionalism of Ab-
stract Expressionism, despite their adherence to preordained
rulesand the used of standard French curves and other devices
taken from the engineer's drafting board. In their different
ways, Robert Ryman, Brice Marden, and Robert Mangold
have respectively extended definitions of the pictorial field as a

nearly blank environmental wall, and have integrated it with a

physically tangible color surface, or have established a new
kind of equilibrium between atmospheric color space and the
sense of the pamting as an architectural structure.
To an extraordinary degree, however, the last years of the
1960s saw idea rather than physical mass or visual definition
become the controlling feature of art. The sculptor and
painter Sol LeWitt (1928—) described the idea as "the machine
that makes the work". The artist's aim, he wrote in the first

published declaration on Conceptual art, is "not to instruct

the viewer, but to give him information. Whether the viewer
understands this information is incidental to the artist."

Despite the value placed on cerebral process, the character of

the end product, nevertheless, remained, in LeWitt's words,
"intuitive". Although he is undoubtedly best know-n for his
austere, Minimalist sculptures and for the invention of Con-
ceptual art, LeWitt began in the late 1960s to design influen-
tial wall drawings, executed by other hands, projects in which
the conceptual clarity of his ideas dominated. Even though the
governing ideas were stringent and methodical, the results
demonstrated sensibility as well as theoretical considerations.
While both Abstract and Conceptual art have continued to
flourish since the first postwar explorations, many other
idioms of a less narrowly formal character have also since
emerged, and expanded their domain in the 1960s and 1970s.
Notable among these are new forms of realism, including Pop
art and Photo-Realism, autobiographical forms of Conceptual
art, varieties of performance art, and an unprecedented genre
of large-scale environmental sculpture.
One of the most important innovators who succeeded in

wedding objective realism to Abstract form following the de

Kooning generation was Jasper Johns (1930-), best known
for his early paintings of targets and his paintings of the
American flag. Both these series managed to raise serious
questions about the nature of the art object, even as Johns
elaborated his subjects in almost loving, and obviously skilled
painterly terms. These paintings demonstrated that was it

possible to make pictures from forms which were both com-

plex and so familiar that they could be seen as a complete unit,
without parts or a functioning relationship between the parts.

Since the image in question either filled the canvas entirely or

was centrally placed, no relationship between the image and
Bed by Robert Rauschenberg; combine painting; 187x79cm (74X31111);
1955. Leo Castelli Gallery, New York
Left: Target with Plaster Casts by Jasper Johns; encaustic and collage

on canvas with plaster casts; 129X 1 12 x9cm (51 X44X4in); 1955.

Leo Casiclli Gallery, New York
93^ MODERN AMERICAN ART
 —

MODERN AMERICAN AKT 937

the field was activated. Yet Johns' targets and flags were rep-
resented as "fine art" by reason of their execution in the most
palpable, sensuous paint medium imaginable.
Johns' deliberate choice of two-dimensional subjects chal-
lenged the viewer, who could not be sure whether he was
looking at a picture of an object or the Hteral object itself

albeit an object made of paint. To achieve this effect, the

forms had to be so familiar that the painter obviously could
not have invented them. By this stratagem Johns restored im-
agery to painting without becoming a representational paint-
er, which had been for Pollock and de Kooning almost an
unresolvable dilemma. Johns was clearly aware of the para-
doxes and visual puns of Duchamp's art, and of his anti-art

ruses. He more than once directly paraphrased this fertile

source of his own metaphysical speculations on artistic and
common-day realities.

Johns and his friend Robert Rauschenberg (1925—) shocked

the public of the late 1950s by presentmg commonplace ob-
jectsand imagery taken from popular culture as works of art.
Their bold new tactics opened the door directly to Pop art.
Unlike their precedessors, the work of the Pop artists was not
dominated or veiled by seductive paint quality. Even more
vehemently, they rejected both the notion of art as the elitist

property of the Abstract Expressionists and their presumed

monoply of high culture and qualities of moral purity. Pop art
scandalized the American art world by extending art into the
realm of Kitsch and bad commercial art which the champions
of "high art" had been educated to despise. One of the critical
messages of Pop art was, in the words of Roy Lichtenstein
(1923—), that good art could actually be made of such "de-
spicable" and debased subject matter as the comic strip, or the
billboard.
For James Rosenquist (193 3-) the large billboard format
inspired an original example of American Pop art. Rosenquist
has a taste for the marvels of technology. His commercial
icons, often painted on mural scale, as in Flamingo Capsule
(Leo Castelli Gallery, New York), which measures 10 ft by
32 ft (3 m by 9.7 m), account for his major stature in Ameri-
can art. The imagery is somewhat obscure, and even invites a
reading as a poetic comment on technique itself, suggesting
constant change, dissolution, and metamorphosis in the bril-

laint, rippling reflections and changeful color surface. His

large paintings are visually dazzling and subjective at a
euphoric level of sensations.
An interesting aspect of Pop art, now that its offending
shock has been dulled by distance in time, is its narrative
method. Narration may seem at first glance a misnomer for
imagery as static and repetitive as that of Pop art, but it can
also offer an illuminating approach in relation to other, more
recent contemporary artistic developments. In the case of the Clothespin by Claes Oldenburg; Corten steel; height 13.7m (45ft);

most notorious Pop artist, Andy Warhol, his alternatively 1977. Centre Square, Philadelphia, Pa

bland and violent scenarios are plotless, lacking beginning,

middle, or end. The familiar narrational devices of anecdotal
or realistic art are also absent. Nothing actually happens in Left: Sixteen Jackiesby Andy Warhol; acrylic and silkscreen enamel on
the sense of conventional story-telling. The point of his paint- canvas; 203 x 163cm (8ox64in); 1965. Walker Art Center, Minneapolis
938 MODERN AMERICAN ART

ings is, at least in part, to confront us with boredom as an ists more faithful simulacrum of the media
create an even
issue rather than to elicit specific responses to subject matter, world of and hype than Pop art, relying on hauntingly
illusion
which an unrelenting, mechanical presentation has neut- exact duplications of actuality as viewed through the camera
ralized. No matter how gruesome Warhol's imagery for ex- — lens. The blatant, elephantine humor of Claes Oldenburg's
ample, in his familiar Disaster series of mangled bodies and Pop imagery of giant food replicas and monumental object
—
crushed automobile chassis a cool, detached stance effective- sculptures, or Rosenquist's montages of popular culture and
ly thwarts emotional involvement. Despite the iconography of commercial icons were transformed by the Photo-Realists into
blankness and impassivity, he also operated in the area of cool, double-edged visual ironies by their precise and detailed
public myth and parable in the 1960s. It is impossible to rendering of anything from a model bathroom to the neon
forget his haunting images of Jacqueline Kennedy at the Presi- signs and facades of New York's Times Square.
dent's funeral. Warhol may, in fact, be taken as a modern Translating the photographic image direcdy on to canvas,
history painter, because his dominant imagery and visual the Photo-Realists emphasize the gleaming artificiality of con-
ironies are so intimately linked with the conditions and social temporary life. The favorite subject maner of Ralph Goings

meanings of contemporary mass urban culture, and with the and a number of other realists has become the motor car.
communications media of newspapers and T.V. journalism. They paint it today with a discerning sense of its character as a
Photography made itself felt in the 1960s through a new art status symbol. Curiously, however, the intense emotion that
style known as Photo-Realism. Paintings by the Photo-Real- so often goes into the ordinary consumer's acquisition of the

Canadian Club by Richard Estes; oil on canvas; 122 x152cm {48x60111); 1974. Collection of M.G. Neumann, Chicago
 MODERN AMERICAN ART 939

automobile as a mark of social caste is contradicted by the

artists' dispassionate manner of paint handling when repre-
senting this and related banal consumer objects. Through the
painters' understatements, the glamorous automobile subject
matter of color advertising is rigorously neutralized. This is

one of the many ironies of Super-Realism, for it treats the

highly charged, erotic symbolism of the American's hunger for
the latest model of automobile, or for the consumer goodies of
the department store and supermarket, in a banal and offhand
manner. But even these images often reveal a curious com-
plexity and incongruity in the abstract patterns of their reflec-
tive surfaces; in the canvases are mini-worlds and holes which
strongly resemble contemporary painterly abstraction.
Inevitably the obsession with visual data, based on the
photographic medium, opened the way for a similar tran-
scription of the world of sight into three dimensions. The
polyester humanity created vby Duane Hanson appears to be Spiral Jetty by Robert Smithson; earthwork; 1970. Great Salt Lake, Utah
simultaneously real and bizarrely unreal, and thus parallels
the manimate subject matter of related paintings by the Photo- puff of cigar smoke. The cloud scene is visible in the form of a
Realists. His figures and those of John de Andrea closely re- small-scale color snapshop stuck to his forehead, permitting
semble Madame Tussaud's waxworks with their accurate us to judge the success or failure of his visual experiment. The
mimicry of human gesture. A fascination with duplications of work thus and forth between the sense of past time
plays back
human beings in convincing life-size replicas is an age-old and the present, raising questions about identity and the artis-
obsession, dating back in modern times to Mary Shelley's tic process even though at first glance the idea of a comparison

Frankenstein. Today, when originals and reproductions are may seem preposterous or arbitrary.
no longer so easily distinguishable because of the impact of In the late 1960s and early 1970s as the sociopolitical ten-

the mass media, at a time when consumers are increasingly sions in America eased, the Zeitgeist began to change, moving
manipulated by advertising, sinister overtones can attach towards populism and away from the emotional involvements
themselves to these counterfeit three-dimensional human and commitments of the Vietnam War period. New kinds of
lifenesses. The more exact the anatomical replicas and the academic realism emerged as dominant styles, lacking the im-
clothes they wear, the more they gain a monstrous quality, plicit criticism of the culture which even Pop art's deadpan

reminding us of the Walt Disney World Hall of programmed, mode could scarcely disguise. Where the spirit of the 1960s
automated American Presidents, or more ominously, of the was expansively and inclusive, the spirit of the art
creative
robot killer of the film Westworld played by Yul Brynner the — scene in the 1970s was quite the opposite. A new kind of
surrogate human being socially out of control. narcissistic and "loner" mentality was evident; it permeated

Another fascinating development stemming from tra- many other areas of American culture. It was reflected par-
ditional realism and narrative art forms has been "Story Art". ticularly in solitary video and performance art events. Anal-

The epithet was coined to characterize an offshoot of Concep- ogies can be drawn with the popularity of contemporary
tual art which mixes its verbal and visual means but discards forms of meditation, withdrawal, and self-realization. There
much of the philosophical pretensions of standard Conceptual was an evident impulse to seek detachment from shared social
art in favor of light-hearted autobiographical observation and experience, a turning away from public issues; this produced
fantasy. Instead of exploring theoretical ideas primarily, in artists who prefer to work away from the crowd. Much of the

order to challenge the traditional sensuous concerns of paint- art of the early 1980s is of a private rather than a public
mg, narrative artists Peter Hutchinson, John Baldessari, Bill nature, and the phenomenon is particularly apparent :n the

Beckley, and other have made their art a vehicle for their own emphasis on artistic biography in video art.
wry, quixotic perceptions. An indication of their hedonistic The lively "Happenings" of the 1960s, involving masses of
approach is a new emphasis in the 1970s on glossy, lustrous enthusiastic participants, have now been succeeded by soli-

color photography, rather than the more arid black-and-white tary, static, and often voyeuristic performances of which Vito
film of the past. Acconci's "Body Art" is a representative example. Innumer-
John Baldessari's photograph series, Cigar Smoke to Match able artists have retreated from conceiving and executing the
Clouds that are Different (1971) consists of two quite separ- large-scale, bold paintings and sculptures of the 1960s in

ate and unrelated visual events, one based on memory and the favor of a more controlled, even portable microcosm. One of

other on sight. Kach contains

two kinds of ephemera, in three the most unusual has been Joel Schapiro, who makes tiny

color photographs, clouds and cigar smoke. The artist, sculptures that, in effect, miniaturize the universe —obsessive
perhaps absurdly, tries to duplicate cloud formations with a expressions just large enough to be seen and handled.
940 MODERN AMERICAN ART

On the other hand, in formalist sculpture there is still a and environmental art remind us of man's indissoluble bonds
trend toward a more public confrontation and orientation, with nature.
with the proliferation of large-scale steel works by such fine With the forms of art change continuously, it seems clear
artists as Mark di Suvero, Class Oldenburg, Louise Nevelson, that one aspect of the dialogue in the American visual arts
and Tony Smith. A surprising number of contemporary remains constant: the debate between the artist's private im-
monumental sculpture productions have been government- aginative needs and public communication. Art since 1970
sponsored commissions. For the most part, they are generally has been radically eclectic, and pluralistic, and we cannot
amphfications of ideas and styles staked out in the 1960s, and claim such impressive creative personalities as those of the
have little relationship to the introspective object-making of 1960s: Johns, Oldenburg, Stella and others. It is clear, how-
many of the most promising young artists. However, there are ever, from the energy level in the early 1980's and from the
moments when the artist's private and public faces do merge. vast number young artists working in a variety of
of talented
The great Japanese-American sculptor, Isamu Noguchi tendencies, that America is continuing to make a major and
(1904—), is a case in point. In the 1940s Noguchi was best indispensable contribution to the vital evolutionary process of
known for his private Surrealist-inspired sculptures and for modern art.

his public stage sets which he designed for the dance company SAM HUNTER
of Martha Graham. In the 1980s, he continues to synthesize
his private, imaginative world with a more conventional, ex-
Bibliography. Brown, M.W. American Patntmg from the Armory
symbolism in the form of public monuments; two
ternalized
Show to the Depression, Princeton (1955). Brown, M.W. The
of the most recent are the Landscape in Time in Seattle, Modern Spirit: American Painting 1908— i9)j, London (1977).
Washington, and his most ambitious public project to date, Greenberg, C. Art and Culture: Critical Essays, Boston (1961).
the Dodge Fountain and Plaza in Detroit. Hunter, S. and Jacobus,
American Art of the Twentieth Century:
J.

The public environment has also lent itself to such private Painting, Sculpture, Architecture,New York (1973). McCoubrey,
and fanciful constructions as Robert Smithson's earthworks. J.W. American Art iyoo-1960: Sources and Documents, Engiewood
Cliffs (1965). McCoy, G. Archives of American Art: a Directory of
Spiral Jetty in the Great Salt Lake,and to Christo's 13-mile
Resources, New York (1972). Pincus-Witten, R. Post-Minimalism,
(37 km) long moving like a river of light in the
strip of cloth,
London (1978). Rose, B. American Art since 1^00: a Critical History,
California landscape, his Running Fence, which was erected New York (1975). Rose, B. (ed.) Reading in American Art, New
for a week in 1977 and then dismantled. At a time of material York (1975). Sandler, 1. The Triumph of American Painting: a His-
glut and ecological danger to the environment, earthworks tory of Abstract Expressionism, New York (1970).
 52

POSTWAR EUROPEAN ART

Upright Motive no. (The Glenkiln Cross) by Henry Moore; bronze

i

height 33?cni diiin); 1955-6. Tate Gallery, London (see page 944)
 — —
942. POSTWAR EUROPEAN ART

WE owe one of the first comprehensive definitions of

modern art to Hitler's government in Germany,
when they collected all that is now admired as the
Strangely, it was in Britain that metamorphism, though never
formulated as such, was most important after 1945. ^ ^yp^ of
vitalistic, animistic nature-worship already marked two lead-

best and most revealing expression of its time under the head- ing English artists, Henry Moore and Graham Sutherland,
ing of "degenerate art". In so doing they also did the best they before the war. The English sculptors whose angst-ridden
could have done to ensure its postwar survival, for modern work had such success in the 1950s, such as Lynn Chadwick
art, proscribed by tyranny, became an apt symbol of freedom. (1914-), Kenneth Armitage (1916-), and Elisabeth Frink
Apt to the historical situation, too, was the adoption of con- (1930-) achieved their ends by metamorphic fusion of crystal-
spicuously —
modern art in the U.S.A. the bastion of freedom. line, crustacean, or anthropoid forms together in the bonding

The power that had escaped from Europe was beamed back medium of rough, rebarbative materials. Francis Bacon's
across the Atlantic, magnified by American sense of scale and greater renown was equally based on metamorphism, never
supported by that specially American alliance between wealth greater than in his Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a
and avant-gardism. In the symbolism of German regeneration Crucifixion of 1944 (Tate Gallery, London), the painting that
and American free wealth, modern art found a new import- established his reputation and mature style. The metamorph-
ance and, from being a poor survivor in 1945, grew to a ism of Henry Moore has survived the main change in his
powerful estate in the West in less than two decades. work, from form elicited from materials by carving, to
In 1945 this development could not have been confidently biomorphs abstractly conceived and built up. The vigor of this
foreseen. There were those who, in spite of its validation by morphology in postwar Britain muffled the appear-
vitalistic

Nazi persecution, associated modern art with the castastrophe ance of informal abstraction here as the dominant modern art
of the Second World War. Postwar art was pulled in contrary of the West.
directions by conflicting hopes and fears in the uneasy peace The art that came rapidly to dominate the exhibitions and
after the Nuremburg trials and the Yalta Conference. An un- art magazines of the postwar period did not adopt any one of
precedented need for inward expression found the available the three tendencies described. This painting, just described as
visual forms inadequate. For those artists with historical con- "informal abstraction",had various other names which
sciousness, there were broadly three tendencies to which they betrayed different critical attitudes as well as wide variations
could feel attached: Surrealism, Constructivism-abstraction, within the art itself. The nomenclature stressed its capacity for
and a loose complex of metamorphic styles associated with poetry ("lyrical abstraction"), its inner motivation ("psychic
the school of Paris. Surrealism should have been well equip- improvisation" or art autre), or its procedures (tachisme or
ped to deal in the psychopathology of the aftermath of war, "gestural painting"). Action Painting and Abstract Ex-
given its interest in extreme situations and its connections pressionism were terms coined to describe the American
with Freudian theories of the subconscious. But although its counterpart, with which European informal abstraction must
leaders had survived the war and had many years to live. inevitably be measured. The meteoric rise of informal ab-
Surrealism was compromised socially and politically; simi- straction may well seem baffling, but it met an urgent need in

larly, its reliance on specific kinds of imagery made its con- Western postwar society. What seemed to underlie informal
tinuance after the war unlikely (see Dada and Surrealism). abstraction was freedom, or at least spontaneity. Representa-
Compared with Surrealism, abstraction had had an unre- tional forms came under attack through disillusion with all
marked existence in the years just before the war. Its early received symbolism, but also because representation limits
idealistic force had faded. The Russian nonfigurative move- spontaneity. The conceptual basis of geometric or ordered
ment and the Bauhaus in Germany had lost political credence abstraction did so equally. Informal abstraction allowed the
in the late 1920s; both were to be extinguished in the early artist, as never before, to "speak" directly through manipu-
1930s. The Dutch group De Stijl broke up from internal lation of his materials. Hence the term Abstract Ex-
causes in 193 1. These movements were reborn in Paris in the pressionism. But such freedom raised more acutely than ever
looser, less fiercely ideological groupings of Cercle et Carre the problems of ensuring authenticity and avoiding empty
(1930) and Abstraction-Creation (1932.) which served as ral- contrivance and rhetoric.
lying points for artists of different nationalities with tenden- In retrospect, the most important source of informal ab-
cies to geometric abstraction. In spite of the urgent need for straction seems to have been Surrealism. The Surrealists had
actual constructive and environmental harmony, manifest in sought authenticity through the idea of psychic automatism
Europe after 1945, the Constructivist and Abstract stance had trying to yield as far as possible to the promptings of the
little appeal in the early postwar years. It may be inferred that unconscious —and through the exploitation of chance. With
the need for psychic expressionism was even more urgent. the European Surrealists, conscious control, leading to the
Between the extremes of Surrealism and Constructivism is a development of images, soon intervened in this process. The
wide space in which a varied morphology of art had de- younger Americans tried to push automatism further and
—
veloped by 1939. Metamorphism the presentation of some-
thing belonging to one form-family in the guise of another Composition, 1954 by Hans Hartung; oil on canvas; 130 x97cm
was the device that united diverse artists of the school of Paris. (5 1 X 38in). Musee National d'Art Modeme, Paris

£
944 POSTWAR EUROPEAN ART

finally, prompted by the needs of their generation and by Jorn (1914—73) among them, whose methods were more ges-
contingent history, into the elimination of images. Thus Sur- tural,and also brash, iconoclastic, and expressionist. Within
realist ideas received a powerful new expression m the paint- the developed and near-universal Western style of informal
ings of Arshile Gorky (1904—48) and above all Jackson Pol- abstraction —
it still dominated the international Documenta

lock {1912—56), which was quickly relayed to Europe. Once exhibition at Kassel in 1959 —
there were national variants
the impulse was generated, other sources were to hand. Kan- and individual eddies. In Paris, Nicolas de Stael (1914— 1955)
dinsky's paintings before 1914, taken together with his writ- and Serge Poliakoff (1906—69) represented a controlled,
ings, provided a theoretical and spiritual justification for free nongestural abstraction using planes and slabs of color which,
abstraction. The very late Monet, with his rejection of bound- in de Stael's case, had an intensely material aspect, and which
aries, offered a historical antecedent for informal art. As time he began to match up with external appearances to produce a
went on, it became fashionable to ransack the art of the past semi-figurative painting. His delight in the material splendor
in search of validation, aided by a burgeoning art-publishing of paint as he applied it links him loosely with the so-called
industry. One class of material was specially relevant to the matiere painters (those using highly tangible and textural sur-
emerging character of informal abstraction in Europe: any- faces, often built up in relief) of which the best known is the
thing that had a strong element of handwriting or which de- Spaniard Antoni Tapies (1923—). Tapies prepared canvases
pended on the effect of calligraphic, ideogrammatic signs. with sand, plaster, or other materials to receive traces of his

The order of precedence (in date or merit) between Ameri- activity which, given the revelation of aerial photography,
can and European Abstract Expressionism is a sensitive area could often appear like the traces of natural or human activity
for historians. Hans Hartung (1904—) practiced gestural or on the surface of the earth itself.

calligraphic abstraction from 1935. The artist who has been In Britain, Abstract Expressionism was grafted on to the
called "the primitive of art informel'', Wols (191 3— 51), still strong tradition of metamorphic imagery and nature-wor-
showed pure psychic improvisations in Paris in December ship, and was no more than one factor in the development of
1945. The Venice Biennale of 1948, when the new American the St Ives school around Roger Hilton (191 1—75) and Peter
painting had hardly begun to reach Europe, already showed Lanyon (1918—64) who were also influenced by the construc-
the tendency firmly established. The revelation of the Ameri- and lyrical abstraction of Ben Nicholson (i 894-1 982). In
tive

cans did not, in reality, swing European painting behind their Italy, abstraction allowed an untraditional expressionism to
kind of informal abstraction. The European version remained enter the work of Emilio Vedova (191 5—) and others. Alberto
far more diffuse. The postwar scene could embrace a con- Burri (191 5—), linked with the matiere painters, used stitched
sciously French group round Alfred Manessier (191 1-) and sacking, iron, and burnt materials to extend the expressive
Jean Bazaine (1904—) who were not gestural painters but who powers of abstraction, discharging thereby the horrors of war-
aimed to extract evocative sensations from late Impression- time experiences as a medical orderly. Many other examples
ism, Orphism, or the late Braque. On the other hand, it could of manipulation of materials formed a subculture within in-
include the CoBrA group of artists from Copenhagen, Brus- formal abstraction. Their existence side by side with ideo-
sels, and Amsterdam, with Karel Appel (192.1—) and Asger grammatic abstraction pointed to a dilemma: should art move
towards a closer identirv- with the physical world and human
interaction with it, or should it move towards a language of
Le Bateau by Nicolas de Stael; oil on canvas; 46x61cm (i8X24in); 1954.
Scottish National Gallen- of Modem .^rt, Edinburgh signs capable of an abstract life? And should "'Abstract"
painting present itself as a material presence, or a disembodied
principle? The dangers of this impasse are aptly illustrated by
the frozen gestural abstractions of the prominent Parisian,
Georges Mathieu (1921— ).
Europe was slower than America to find a way out of the
impasse of Abstract Expressionism. The material of reaction
was present within American abstraction itself, especially in
the work of Barnett Newman (1905-70), as early as 1948.
British art, by the mid 1950s, was in an intermediate position.
British artists born in the 1920s and 1930s began to look to
the U.S.A. rather than follow the traditional alignment to
France, and some were quick to see the implication of
Newman and of younger Americans such as Kenneth Noland
(1924—). Through easy travel and American-orientated inter-
national art magazines, British artists joined in the American
critical dialogue which at this time —the late 1950s and early
1960s — was assuming a strongly reactive character, testing
artists' new formulations as responses (often negative) to what
 POSTWAR EUROPEAN ART 945

r:

^fm^ *

m^rynesKSTVfi'm.

Great Painting, 1958 by Antoni Tapies; oil and sand on canvas; 200x260cm (79 x io2in). Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

had gone before. The underlying reaction was the one that Turnbull (1922-), and others could not have been further
replaced Abstract Expressionism with a less personalized from the ideogrammatic, quasi-symbolic basis of much gestur-
medium. A clue to the character of the new phenomenon is the al painting. Their paintings denied the possibility of direct
term "Post-I'aintcrly abstraction" coined in America in 1964. psychic interpretation, offering a self-referential aesthetic
While yielding nothing to Abstract Expressionism in size or system in which the work itself is fact and what is required
ambition, the artists grouped under this term repressed from the spectator is primarily adaptation to this fact. The
"handwriting" in favor of flat areas and hard edges, avoiding large size, the straight edges and unbroken planes, the strict

spatial illusionism and detailed tonal contrasts. The atmos- subordination of parts to whole which insistson the work as a
phere of this art was attractive to young British artists, who total fact, make it quite difficult for spectators to empathize
had their own "cool" reaction to assert against the with the artist, to put themselves in that situation. To do so
metamorphism or the lyricism of their seniors. requires that innate coolness with regard to art and life which
One way in which the reaction was expressed was in the is fundamentally the content of this post-gestural abstraction.

large size of the paintings of the young British artists, brought A similar trend in British sculpture was even more striking
out at an exhibition of historic moment (although little ap- because of the postwar fame that British Metamorphic and
preciated at the time). Situation, at the RBA Galleries, Expressionist sculpture had enjoyed. Anthony Caro (1924-)
London, in i960. The title drew attention to the problems of was an and essential link in applying to sculpture some
early
presentmg large-scale work but has also come to infer a cer- lessons of American Post-Painterly abstraction. Caro's rejec-
tain kind of painting. Part of the exhibition was still gestural tion of the pedestal went further than ever before in using the
in character, but the work of Robyn Denny (193 1-), William ground plane to extend sculpture almost to room size. His use
1
I

I
 POSTWAR FUROI'FAN ART 947

of prefabricated steel wrought metal,

sections instead of old Abstraction-Creation principles, he developed by the early
equals, in sculpture, the rejection of gestural painting. The 1960s a repetitive method using various modules on a grid
elaborate spatial extension of Caro's large works is intended system — inviting analogies with architecture — later using
to baffle compositional analysis: he insists, like the Americans, color and luminosity to create strident three-dimensional il-

that he does not "compose". lusions. Schoffer's work is confined to three-dimensional

Post-Painterly and situationist abstraction was an Anglo- structures and, being dependent on elaborate realization in
American, rather than international, reaction to Abstract Ex- practice, is much is one of the first, and
less familiar. Schoffer
pressionism. In mainland Europe, reaction or opposition to certainly the most elaborate, of the postwar Kinetic artists,
informal or gestural abstraction either used systems that were that is, those using actual and not merely implied movement.
already available, such as Constructivism, or expressed itself —
His works are open structures scaffoldings always based —
in a revival of Dada individualism or dissidence. Or it took on right-angled members, within which greater and lesser
elements from both. parts move mechanically in constandy changing counterpoint.
As an available system. Constructivism was to provide a The extent and complexity is multiplied by mirror surfaces
good antidote to the personality cult and romantic aspirations and by lights, which also move and change, so that we seem to
of gestural abstraction. It had played such a role before when witness a world of infinite flux and infinite possibility of de-
the hard-core Constructivists in Russia won an ideological velopment. The aim, according to Schoffer, is not to bring to
and Kandinsky, C1921, or when Gabo
victory over Malevich birth a finite work of art but to "create creation".
and Pevsner denounced Futurism. In spite of the factions The ramifications of Constructivism — like Kinetic, Optical,

within Constructivism and the erosion of its original or Systemic art —have been far more prominent in the postwar
sociopolitical spokesmen consistently opposed
meaning, its period than its original principles, such as its transcendental
"the tyranny of the subjective" and also lyricism or drama. claim to universal harmony and its scientific idealism. Al-
Constructivism proposed instead a preconceived, objectively though Constructivism stood for an alliance between art and
planned self-referential art, beautifully made with the best science, the kinetic tendency,which accustomed artists and
available technology. Yet in the postwar world, the successors public to introduce and accept moving sculptures and reliefs,
to Constructivism have branched out in directions that seem encouraged a kind of surreal mechanics having little to do
dramatic and personal, and instead of adopting a constant with contemporary technology, even in a symbolic connec-
standard of visual value have directed attention to relativity, tion. The slowly moving wooden components of Pol Bury
illusion, and instability. (1922—) for example, conceal their source of energy and sug-
Some of the surviving members of the prewar Abstraction- gest hidden animal or insect life rather than mechanical
Creation movement were grouped together after 1947 in a power. Jean Tinguely (1925-) has earned great attention for
loose associationknown as the Salon des Realites Nouvelles, a his large, rattling or self-destructive pseudo-machines which
significant change of name which asserted the "reality" of are only nominally Kinetic, having nothing to do with the
Constructivism over the new trend to psychic improvisation. Constructivist tradition, but a great deal to do with the Neo-
Among the artists was one of particular energy and ambition, Dada revival.

Victor Vasarely (1908-), who had been a member of Ab- Artists of Constructivist and Kineticist inclination did retain

straction-Creation before the war. His fellow Hungarian, from their own tradition an aptitude for group activity. The
Nicolas Schoffer (1912-), came to Constructivism after 1950 German Gruppe Zero founded 1957 by Otto Piene (1928-)
in

and imbued it with still more dramatic and visionary qualities. and Heinz Mack (193 i-), with Gunther Uecker (1930-) soon
Both men promoted tendencies which differed radically from turned away from any constructivist discipline. The French
pure Constructivism, although their own statements incorpo- Croupe de Recherche d'Art Visuel, existing from i960 to
rate at least one essential Constructivist idea: they both antici- 1969, included in its members Vasarely's son Yvaral (1934-)
pate an art of mass spectacle and multiple production, ever and was to some extent based on Vasarely's ideas. Although
more integrated with the technological architecture that was apparently more properly Constructivist in the Russian tra-
supposed to reconstruct the inadequate social framework of dition, it too deviated in embracing instabilitv and showing no
our time. Vasarely coined the term "planetary folklore" to interest in architectural scale. Its aims, as defined in 1962,

denote an aspiring global and popular technology. He himself were to demystify art and make it more available, but also

remained mainly in the production of traditional "art included a program for disrupting habitual visual responses
works" — paintings, prints, and reliefs — although in an in- and eliminating intrinsic stable values one paradox among —
creasingly impersonal and mechanical mode. Starting from many in the artistic programs of the 1960s. Its methods rested
on dividing up a visual field on a rhythmical or pulsating
Left, above: Baby is Three by Robyn Denny; oil on canvas; system, in order to manifest patterns of energy. This can be
113 X ^6(Scni (84 / i44in); i960. lale Gallery, London and was done on a flat surface, but is gready enhanced if other
planes are added by relief, or by using transparent materials,
Left, below: Karly One Morning by Anthony Caro; acrylic sculpture
on nielal supports; 290 x 620 x ? VSt-Ti 14X244X i32in); 1962.
'
to enableone to be played against the other. Movement,
(

Tate Gallery, London whether by motorizing the components or by using pro-

948 POSTWAR EUROPEAN ART

grammed light, emphasized the Kinetic effect in a dramatic nate desire of the majority of people to see art in their own
way. Where they did not use actual movement, the Groupe de human image.
Recherche d'Art Visuel remained in the camp of "Op art", a The prevailing existential philosophy of the postwar period
journaHstic term (conveniently pairable with "Pop art", its emphasized humanity's singular plight, our isolation from or-
opposite pole) coined to describe the creation of energy by ganic or inorganic nature, the fear of aimlessness in human
purely optical means. life. Although existentialism's effect on art was ambivalent, it

In its purer forms, when it was not invaded by Neo-Dada- certainly did nothing to encourage optimistic or transcen-
ism. Constructivism and its legitimate offshoots offered a cen- dental ideas in Abstract art. On the other hand, those few
tral alternative to mid 20th century. Yet its
subjectivism in the artists who, against the whole trend of gestural or post-gestur-
scientific idealism has been undermined by the subjectivity of al abstraction, held out for the human image, are readily seen
science itself, and by the increasing human dissatisfaction with in terms of existentialism. Alberto Giacometti (1901—66), as a
Western technology and disillusion with the planned environ- friend of the existential philosopher Sartre, easily assumed the
ment. Constructivism is well fitted to express the fundamental role of typical existentialist artist. Giacometti was a living link
dialectical, existential problems of human personality and so- between prewar Surrealism, in which he was distinguished,
ciety, but these must be translated into the formal language of and the postwar world of self-assertion against clouded vision
20th-century abstraction. It has remained an art for artists, and amorphous fears. In his paintings of people, nearly always
constantly disappointing the hopes of its founders that, portraits of single, immobile persons, space is shown as a
through the prevalence of manufactured shapes in society. tangible property, actively weighing on them, and they in turn
Constructivism would acquire a universally understood vo- as opposing it with unconscious, essential dignity. His sculp-
cabulary. Such hopes continue to be undermined by the obsti- tures take this further in their elongation and emaciation. By
placing small figures on large bases, Giacometti emphasized
Diego Seated by Giacometti; oil on canvas; 32x20cm (13 x gin); 1948. their reduction and defined the space that imprisoned them. In
Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, University of East Anglia, Norwich groups of figures, the hostility of space was doubled by their
own inability to communicate with each other. As a t\pe, the
Survivor claimed great importance in the postwar period and
was of existential interest. Giacometti's persons are survivors
and also, like survivors from a major disaster, are at the same
time new creatures existing uncertainly in an unfamiliar
world.
The Bacon (1909-/ are not so much sur-
figures of Francis
vivors as victims. As a British artist Bacon sensed, and used,
the metamorphism of Henry Moore (1898-), Graham Suther-
land (1903—80), and others in the early 1940s. But his interest
in extreme situations has more in common with the Surrealist

group to which Giacometti also belonged, or with the imagery

of the Surrealist films of Luis Buriuel. Like Giacometti's,
Bacon's figures are often small in relation to the space they
occupy, and are oppressed by it. But instead of confronting it

with immobile dignity they are actively victimized or are di-

verting themselves as best they can, often sexually. They are

then unconscious victims on whom the painter has projected
his own fears of boredom and the void. They are also doubly
imprisoned, not just by their environment but also by the flesh

they inhabit, on which Bacon (possibly following Bunuel) has

always insisted. The mobility of Bacon distinguishes him from
Giacometti's iconic world. He is interested in the early efforts
to record evolving movements, such as the photographs of
Edward Muybridge, and one purpose of his deformations is to
set bodies in motion, a familiar aim from the Futurists
through to Picasso.
It is possible to see Neo-Dada as the dominant mode of the

Right: Lying Figure with Hypodermic Syringe by Francis Bacon;

oil on canvas; 197X 144cm (78X57in); 1963.
University Art Museum, Berkeley
95° POSTWAR EUROPEAN ART

1960s in Europe, as informal abstraction had been of the technology and everyday life within the medium of mass com-
1950s. But it was not a "style", any more than original Dada munication, was similar to the one that inspired early Pop art
had been. If there was one favored stylistic device, it was in Britain. But Neo-Dada, by renouncing the traditional
assemblage: a bringing together of elements of painting and activities of paintings and sculpture, was bound to take a
sculpture with collage, relief, objects. Through the
and found different course.
use of objects, assemblage and Neo-Dada maintained some The first Neo-Dada overlapped with some of the
signs of
hold on the real. Indeed realism, as proclaimed in Pierre latest manifestations of the old Surrealism. The American,

Restany's Nouveau Realisme manifesto published in i960, Robert Rauschenberg (19Z5-), showed at the same exhibition
was one of the main planks of the Neo-Dada platform. as the veteran Surrealist Merer Oppenheim in Paris in 1959.
Restany's conception of "modern nature" as an integration of Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns (1930-) had already intro-
duced Neo-Dada ideas in the mid 1950s by incorporating real
Shroud (Suaire). ANT-SU 2 by Yves Klein; mixed media and techniques; objects in their work. In Europe, a very conspicuous avant-
138x75cm (54X3oin); 1962. Modem Museum (National Museum), gardist, Yves Klein (1928—62), acted as a catalyst of Neo-
Stockholm Dada. Klein's "exhibition" of a bare white gallery in 1958
followed a series of all-one-color canvases. The other manifes-
tation which brought him notorietv' was his painting (before
an audience) with the human body — applying paint to nude
models who then pressed themselves against his canvas. These
actions make him an antecedent of the Performance art move-
ment.
Klein attracted the enthusiastic collaboration of Jean
Tinguely, a Kinetic Constructivist, who turned his machine art
into a series of Neo-Dada manifestations. Cesar (19Z1-) used
scrap metal components to create assemblage sculptures in the
mid 1950s, but these had an informal character and conveyed
an effect of expressionist anxietv' common to much sculpture
of the 1950s. In i960, adhering to Restany's new realism, he
exhibited his Compressions, block sculptures made by reduc-
motor bodies in powerful hydraulic
ing colorful presses. These
marvelous works were multiple analogues of industrial so-
ciety: the results of controlled violence producing stereotypes

in which may be traced the attractive colors and bnghtwork

of yesterday's status objects. Violence away in is never far
Neo-Dada. Another new realist, Arman (1928-), made assem-
blages which were not so much assembled as dismembered
objects, such as sliced-up musical instruments, and others
which he called Coleres. Both Cesar and the much older
Italian artist of different background, Lucio Fontana (1899-
1968), used slicing and stabbing (of metal or canvas) as a
demonstrative technique which both records the action and
changes the material as the stroke of a brush could never do.
One senior and important French painter had anticipated
aspects of Neo-Dada while informal abstraction was still in
the ascendant —even before had it fairly begun. Jean Dubuffet
(1901-) held the exhibition
first of his characteristic paintings
in Paris in 1945 — painted
thickly pictures in a deliberately
clumsy technique which was the very opposite of the "fine

painting" to which even modernists in Paris subscribed.

Equally shocking were his subjects, ordinary ones like people
in a car, represented apparently without art as a child or
someone who "can't draw" might represent them. This was a

new primitivism as shocking as the cult of African art had

been at the beginning of the century, perhaps more so because
it uncovered primitive sources right there within society'.

Primitivism of a certain kind is the most consistent principle in

 POSTWAR EUROPEAN ART 95 I

Dubuffet's subsequent very diverse work and constitutes his undermined the concept of sophisticated taste in European
personal variety of realism. The provocatively named Corps art. Dubuffet was perhaps already responsive to this current

de Dames ("bodies of ladies") showed the female body plas- when in 1964 he gave up his diverse experiments in favor of a

tered shapelessly as if on a wall, seeming to invite comparison unified, more insistently visible style with heavy black lines
with the most moronic sexist graffiti. In other works, such as enclosing white spaces or primary colors. Dubuffet's own
the Texturologies, Dubuffet displays a kind of nostalgie de la work has been underpinned throughout by his advocacy of
boue by reveling in mud colors and gritty textures. That he the primitive art of his time, namely the products of people
made works of ravishing beauty on these principles reveals without art conditioning or, sometimes, education, and of
Dubuffet as an immensely sophisticated operator in the best psychotics. Dubuffet coined the term Art Brut ("raw art") to
French tradition of modernism, and has tended to reduce his describe this category and has founded a private museum de-
credibility today when the cumulative American example has voted to it.

The Yellow Buick by Cesar; crushed automobile; 149 x 79 x 62Cin Dustbin no. i by Arman; 66x40x10cm (26xi6X4in).
(59X31 X 24111); 1 96 1. Museum of Modem Art, New York Kaiser Wilhelm Museum, Krefeld
952. POSTWAR EUROPEAN ART

the same time his own procedures became technically more

sophisticated with use of large aluminum castings. Richard
Hamilton, not a sculptor, had nothing in common with brut-
alism, but is a spare and fastidious artist in the manner of
Duchamp, whose interpreter he became. His sources lay in the
up-to-date world of packaging and advertising. His critique of
consumerism was carried out in an oblique manner employing
collage and a delicate, English-style line-and-wash way of rep-
resenting his selected emotive images. Using a spatial ambi-
guit\' derived from Surrealism, his early works explore the
sexual and social ambivalence of consumerism from the
standpoint of an ironic man of the left.

In employing visual traces of contemporary life, Hamilton

and Paolozzi were renewing the practice of early modern art

and their importance in the 1950s was to provide a link be-
—
tween the established tendencies Surrealism, abstraction and
—
metamorphism and nascent Pop art. Pop art as usually
defined had to wait for the media-orientated, hedonistic and
youthful climate of culture in Britain in a word, the Pop —
culture of the 1960s —
to become fully established. At the same
time, it played a part in preparing its own ground. Pop art is at
least as important as a liberating force as for its original pro-
ducts. David Hockney (1937—) seemed iconoclastic in his
work 1 96 1 and 1962 because of its large size, its primitivist
in

drawing recalling Dubuffet, its frank treatment of homosex-

ual themes. The First Marriage (1962; Tate Gallery, London)
shows Hockney indulging his own highly selective interest in
particular images, appealing to the freedom already granted to
painters by abstraction in order to treat the rest of the canvas
as undefined space. Hockney's trajectory through the world of
Blood and Fire, one of the series Corps de Dames by Jean Dubuffet;
high camp fashion and popular acclaim in the 1960s was
oil on canvas; 1 17x89cm (46X35in); 1950.
reflected in his painting, which became a perfect visual expres-
Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York
sion for a subculture with an overwhelming but implicit sense
of style. The cool surfaces, parallel planes, and impersonally
The parallel with Art Brut must have been obvious to the schematic details provide a faithful reflection of the guarded

critic Reyner Banham when he applied the term "brutalism" relationships where reaction and alienation seem to tremble
to tendencies in Britain in 1955, in architecture and, in a small beneath the surface. It has been said that in Pop art style is
way, sculpture and painting. The anodyne background of itself the subject. In later Hockney, style is subsumed in a

European mformal abstraction and English lyricism was then knowing rejection of styles, leaving only traces of his com-
provoking thoughts of a return to realism. The thickly im- prehensive knowledge of modernism, from Bonnard to Post-
pasted paint of Frank Auerbach (193 1—) or Leon Kossoff Painterly abstraction.
(1926—) gave their images a grave clumsiness that was anti-art The Neo-Dada tendency in the 1960s was most effective in

in that context. A more radical reconsideration of contempor- —

throwing art open some would say far too open and — in

ary reality, more like that of the French new realism, was creating the belief that in art "anything goes". Although con-
emerging in the work of Eduardo Paolozzi (1924—) and sistently ignored and America, Neo-Dada was per-
in Britain

Richard Hamilton (1922-) who proposed close study of the vasive, and subsumes the Pop movement. The freedom
really

visual materia! of contemporary machme and media culture. of art to use any material, any object, any theme, in any
Paolozzi's bronzecast sculptures made Httle use of this ma- combination, was only kept in check by the limits of the im-
terial up to 1962, except that, like Cesar's, they incorporated agination which proved all too finite. The succeeding stages,

small scrap components. They combine the "survivor" imag- Conceptualism and Process art, which dominated the i9-'os,

ery of the postwar period with a ponderous roughness recal- both exploited this freedom and reacted against it; in either

ling Dubuffet. From 1962 Paolozzi found ways of incorporat- case they were born of Neo-Dada, and could not have origi-

ing into his work elements of the huge collection of source nated from Pop art alone.

material he was amassing to illustrate the Americanized popu- Right: She by Richard Hamilton; oil and other media on board;
lar culture and simple technology of the 1940s and 1950s. At I22x8icm (48X32in); 1958—61. Tate Gallery, London
L
The First Marriage by David Hockney

4 The Marriage by
The Pop art phenomenon in Britain in the
David Hockney; an
late 1950s and early 1960s can be sum- etching; 3 1 x 40cni
marized simply as a new approach to figura- (iiXi6in); 1962.
tion, when much progressive art was Ab- Victoria and Albert
.Museum, London
stract. Most Pop artists drew on new sources
for the imagery work, but what
in their

characterized David Hockney (1937—) and

set him apart from mainstream Pop was his
preference for traditional subjects.
In the year he painted The First Marriage,
1962, he wrote in the catalog to the group
exhibition at the Grabowski Gallery, London
"Image in Progress":

I paint what I like, when I like and where 1

The Second Marriage
like with occasional nostalgic |ourneys. by David Hockney; oil

When asked to write on "the strange on canvas; igSxiigcm

(ySxgoin); 1963.
possibilities of inspiration" it did occur to
National Galler>' of
me that my own sources of inspiration Victoria, .Melbourne
•>;'?»^>\^
were wide — but acceptable. In fact, I am
''::^ '.

sure my own sources are classic, or even

epic themes. Landscapes of foreign lands,
beautiful people, love, propaganda, and
major incidents (of my own life). These
seem to me to be reasonably traditional.

Two years later in another catalog statement

("The New Generation: 1964") Hockney
wrote about two distinct groups of his paint-
ings: those that start from or are about
"technical devices" and those that are
"dramas, usually with two figures".
The First Marriage incorporates a number
of Hockney's themes and at the same time
epitomizes his working process at the time.
Like so many of his paintings The First
Marriage was inspired by a personal experi-
ence.While staying in Berlin in August 1962,
Hockney and his friend Jeff Goodman visited
thePergamon Museum in East Berlin. They
became separated and when Hockney next
saw his friend he was standing next to an
Egyptian sculpture of a seated woman. From
Hockney's viewpoint they were both seen in
profile, apparently looking at the same thing
which was hidden from Hockney's view.
"From a distance they looked like a couple,
posing as it were, for a wedding photo-
graph", he wrote in a letter to the Tate
Gallery. He was simply amused at first, but paintmg: tree and white sand. However, the sand was
later in his West Berlin hotel he made two or only put there to give the figures something
the husband stands politely, and the sculp-
three drawings of the scene from memory to stand on, and the rest of the setting left
ture is made to look like his wife who is a
and started the painting on his return to "slightly out of focus". An etching The
bit tired and therefore sitting down ... I
London in September. Marriage (1962) is a simplified version of
loved the idea of playing with the word
The painting has an alternative title, A The First Marriage but with the image re-
"marriage". The setting is vague but the
Marriage of Styles, because of the heavily versed.
Gothic window in the bottom left-hand
stylized figure juxtaposed with a real human Hockney did not pay much attention to the
corner was, I remember, added for its
being, although both figures are stylized in Egyptian sculpture at the time. He has de-
ecclesiastical connections with marriage.
the painting itself, the Egyptian sculpture scribed it as made of wood. But not only are
more obviously so. Hockney described how Elsewhere he suggested that the ambiguous seated figures in wood, especially ones of this
he enjoyed elaborating the scene in the setting looked like a desert island with a palm size, exceedingly rare in Egyptian sculpture.
 — ;

CLOSE STUDY

single seated women

in any media are prob- long wig and flower-petal fillet (headband), figures, the woman seated — the mountains
ably even rarer. one existed in the Berlin
If rounded breasts beneath her gown, and her are painted as if diagram of
in a geological

museum it would he very famous. So what
did Hockney glimpse momentarily?
If we look for a similar seated woman and
recall that he saw her in profile we must
conclude that it was almost certainly part of
a group. One promment group m the Ag\p-
tisches Museum in East Berlin
left hand on her knee.
Hockney never paints from nature, and
only occasionally from memory. Generally
he does a great deal of drawing before he
starts a painting and then develops the ideas
but without much reference to the drawings.
fits the bill. It In the early 1960s he displayed a magpie-like
rock strata, the Indians themselves from
magazine illustrations, and an eagle from a
photograph of a wooden totem pole, yet all
are painted illusionistically.
Hockney regularly makes series ot pamt-
ings on the same themes, and even occasion-
ally refers back to earlier paintings. The First

depicts Ptahmay flanked by two women tendency to pick up images from surprising Marriage was originally called The Marriage.
seated on a flat bench with two tmy children and paradoxical sources and build them into He changed the title when he painted The
standing between them. From a distance the paintings. The stylization of objects Second Marriage based on the same idea in
Hockney would have seen only the nearest whether drawn from memon." or nature or 1963. The Second Marriage (National Gal-
figure of the woman in profile, noting her —
copied from illustrations was partly a con- lery of Victoria, Melbourne) is more com-
scious naivety and partly a search for the plex, illusionistically painted on a shaped
The First Marriage by cliche or recognizable image. For example, in canvas to exaggerate perspeaive effects,
David Hockney: oil on
Rocky Mountains and Tired Indians 1 96 5 i whereas the earlier painting was flat and
canvas; i83Xii5cm
i-2X85in); 1961. Tate Scottish National Galler)- of Modern art, hierarchical, like Egyptian painting.
Gailerv, London —
Edinburgh; also a "drama" with two CHRISTOPHER JOHNSTONE

1^.
956 POSTWAR EUROPEAN ART

Peter Getting out of Nick's Pool by David Hockney; acrylic on canvas; 214 x214cm (84X84in); 1966. Walker An Gallery, Liverpool

An immense change occurred in the community of modern 1966, indicates the direction of the Conceptualists' criticism.
art CI 96 5. Its origins are ven.' complex, lying both within the It is also an analog of an overriding tendeno" towards "the
history of modern art (the influence of Marcel Duchamp was dematerialization of the art object" as Lucy Lippard has called
crucial)and in the social and political currents of the 1950s It.It was a perfect Neo-Dada act (the book was rirually

and 1960s. Unlike Pop, Conceptualism was common to West- chewed by group of like-thinking people; but the subsequent
a
ern Europe as well as to America, evidence that a more far- exhibition, of documents, bottles of chemicals, etc, the whole
reaching critique of Western culture was involved. One of the constituting a "work", was t\'pical of the more labored con-
earliest Conceptual John Latham's literal distilla-
art "acts", cern of Conceptualism with presenting the evidence of the
tion of a copy of Clement Greenberg's Art and Culture m artist's procedures.
 The beginning of Conceptualism took place in the mid
1960s, but there had been earlier pointers. Yves Klein "exhi-
bited" an empty gallery in Paris in 1958, and had himself
photographed jumping from a window in i960. Piero Man-
zoni (1933-63) had produced a signed edition of a line of
measured length rolled in a small drum, in 1959. These
"conceptual" acts were done in the context of Neo-Dada as
already described, and do not pretend to the elaborate theor-
etical or practical development of later Conceptual art. But
the fame enjoyed smce 1958 by Chnsto (Christo Javacheff,
1935—) rests on exteriorizing on a vast scale a small private
concept: the way a wrapped object acquires a sense of mystery
and disquieting ambiguity. Christo has put the concept to the
test in projects to wrap public buildings and even stretches of

coastline. The plans, drawings, preparations, and, when actu-

ally done, the doing of these things constitute their real inter-
est and are minutely recorded.
An artist who came to embody the spirit of advanced art in

the early 1970s, Joseph Beuys (19ZI— ), took his departure

from the Neo-Dada technique of assemblage and the trans-
Art and Culture by John Latham; assemblage of book, labeled vials filled
formation of found objects. From 1966 he developed the per-
with powders and liquids, letters, and photostats in a leather case;
formance, with himself as sole actor, as his principle medium.
8X28X25cra (3XiiXioin); 1966-9. Museum of Modern Art, New York
It is impossible to sum up the long performances of Beuys,

which employ a mixture of body symbolism and fetishistic

props significant to his beliefs. In the 1970s Beuys has more Package, 1961 by Christo; fabric, plastic, twine rope, and wood;
and more transferred his performances to the plane of verbal 92 x64 x36cm (36x25 X i4in). Artist's collection

discourse, and his main effort to promoting a form of millen-

arian politics of self-regulation. Beuys' success exemplifies the
search within the modern art public —mainly young and disil-

lusioned by the 1960s — for spiritual enlightenment or, more

truly, any form of mystical or personal magnetism. Many
characteristic elements of the Conceptual art era can be seen
together in Beuys. His adoption of himself, his appearance,
and clothes means and subject, is the natural
as both principal
conclusion of the tendency for medium, "style", and subject
matter to come together and be identical. This aspect of Beuys
shows the first of three main strands in Conceptualism of the —
artist in his person, of the image, and of the word.

When the artist in person is the agent of Conceptualism, it

may result in "body art" in which the artist submits himself to

various ordeals either in public view, or recorded photo-
graphically. Stuart Brisley (193 1-) has taken the personal
ordeal (immersion in water) to an extreme point, but not with
the sadism shown by members of the "Direct Art Institute"
founded in Vienna in 1966. Or it may result in the simple
assertion of artisthood — as in the case of Keith Arnatt (1930-)
who exhibited his wall inscription Keith Arnatt is an Artist in

1972. Such acts had a placeDada and Neo-Dada, but were

in

now accompanied by elaborate linguistic explanations. The

"living sculptures", Gilbert and George, are the most noted
examples by far of "the artist as concept". By adopting a pose
with nostalgic music-hall overtones, and ironically rejecting
involvement in art discourse, they have baffled criticism but
have nevertheless been accepted into current orthodoxy. Their
work includes actual performances or appearances, and
 P
958 POSTWAR EUROPEAN ART

I
KEITH ARNATT IS AN ARTIST

^Tf»?Bai TT-T- .-,

T-"-t«-
 POSTWAR F.UROI'hAN ART 959

photographic and video record. The careful control and man- well of the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 1971 at the
agement of the artist's projected personality is also seen in insistence of other participating artists.
artists who do not directly appear in their work. Richard Although Buren is cited here, he has been a savage critic of
Long, for example, does not permit any personal data or dis- "Conceptual" art. His own form of art is wholly visual; he
cussion of his work to appear at his exhibitions, and does not expresses himself with Gallic clarity and is specially intolerant
give interviews. Other artists exercise detailed supervision, if of those Conceptual artists who take words as their medium.
they can, over what is written about them. The Art and Language group, who have comprised ten or
The work of Richard Long (194 5-) shares in the Conceptu- more members in the period since 1966, are the most rigorous
word Conceptual-
alism of artist and of image, in so far as the in this respect. Their work has no visual "product". Their
ism fits him at all. Long does not appear in his work, but his subject is the meaning of art and it could be claimed that they
inferred passage through a landscape creates it. He is a are the most authentic of Conceptual artists because they deal
traveler on foot to remote and beautiful places, where he with the fundamental concept of art itself. Their discourse is

makes some small intervention or trace m the landscape which so dense and so hampered by the necessity to qualify words,
is recorded photographically. Sometimes this image usually — especially "ordinary" words, as to be partly unintelligible
beautiful —
is withheld and the record of his passage, on a even to specialists. This is no by-product of their aims, how-
map, is presented instead. Back in the urban and fashionable ever, but central tothem as it assists the disorientation they
galleries, he brings stones or sticks with which he makes seek, and the subversion of the whole critical and historical
shapes of symbolic resonance, echoing primeval signs and apparatus that sustains art in its present state. The obscurity
traces he may have seen on his travels. The difference between of art language may be accounted for by the explanation re-
Long and the romantic English landscapists of the past is not cently offered by Marcuse for the obscurity of Adorno: that
deep, and is contained in his contemporary belief in semi- ordinary use of language is so impregnated by the concepts of
otics — a belief in a valid system of sign language replacing the ruling order that it has to be subverted. It is no surprise
representation. There is also a strong element of Duchampian that at least one member of Art and Language has recently
arrogation in Long as in others of his generation, as he re- adopted a much more direct political form of expression.
serves the right to elect objects to art status — for example, a The interaction of political and social dissidence with art

photograph framed and inscribed, as opposed to the same since1965 has been complex and pervasive. The ability of

photograph in a book, is more than merely an original photo- Conceptualism to present raw data in an acceptable "artistic"

graphic print as opposed to a reproduction. form made it the perfect vehicle for a political art. Hans
Works of imagist Conceptual art have been the most Haacke (1936-) has made the attack on art institutions from
numerous, but seldom in so pure a form as Long's photo- within, always implicit in modern art, quite explicit with his
graphs. Much of it has dealt in images repeated in series with published statements about, for example, the detailed finan-
small variations. The concepts behind it have often involved a cial backing of the Guggenheim Museum in New York. For
program of periodic observations or interventions. John Mill- him, museums are political institutions irrespective of the

iard (1945-) in Britain and Jan Dibbets (1941-) in Holland stance they take. Other artists have used the museum as a

attempt to chart a progressive distortion in perception by theater for manifesting contradictions and abuses in the so-

focusing on the means of perception in series of parallel ciety outside its walls, as in Victor Burgin's (1941-) commen-
photographs. Along with imagist Conceptual artists must be tary in II photographic panels, Britain 1976, where social-
considered a few who use abstract configurations for Concep- realist photographs are overprinted with"up-market" ad-

tual purposes. Daniel Buren (1938-) and three other French vertising copy. Notably, Burgin has moved to this simple and
artists founded a group in 1966, each of whom adopted a direct form of expression from an earlier involvement with
minimal Abstract form for their work henceforward in — linguistic and perception theories which led him to question

Buren's case vertical stripes of a set width. A "piece" of Buren the necessity of any form of art object.
hung in a gallery would therefore appear to be like a Minimal- To "question" the meaning of art: this has been, together
ist painting. But Buren, who became a politicized person in the with the preoccupation with "process", a constant activity of
wake of the Parisian events of 1968, has refused to let this artists since 1965. They have followed out these preoccupa-

happen, but has consistently tried to install his stripes in con- tions in many more ways than can be described here. One
texts where they could function as irritant and as critique of form of reaction from conventional painting and sculpture
the art system. This has led Buren into several confrontations, took art into the realm of performance, where "process" and
as when his immense striped banner was removed from the result are one and the same. The Neo-Dada revival and the
increasing politicization of art both tended to encourage per-
formance, which seemed to promise more direct contact with,
Left, above: Keith Arnatt is an Artist, a wall inscription by Keith Arnatt a nonspecialist public. But although it
and participation by,
exhibited in 972 in the Tate Gallery, London 1970s than before, Perform-
1
attracted more artists in the late

15x700x587cm ance art has occupied until now a very marginal position,
Left, below: 1 19 Stones by Richard Long; approx.
(6X276xniin); 1976. Tate Gallery, London despite the crucial importance for the future of opening new
960 POSTWAR EUROPEAN ART

channels to a democratic audience. As a "questioning" form On a superficial view, Super-Realism might seem to imply
of activity, Performance art shared m producing increasing an end to "questioning" and a revived belief in the end-pro-
pubhc mystification and disorientation from the 1960s on- duct rather than the process. It has been widely received, and
wards. Why have so many socially conscious artists accepted perhaps practiced, in that light. Further reflection shows that
and shared in this obscuration, while sometimes claiming to Super-Realism offers no answers to the important questions
oppose it? One answer may be that they are not interested in about art, any more than photography does; moreover, inter-

making art easy for its traditional, bourgeois audience, and est in how it is — —
done process again outweighs interest in

that for them the possibility of direct interaction with a mass what is done. Only here and there does Super-Realism seem to
public has not yet dawned. inherit the role of I9th-cenfury realism in focusing concern
Performance art may be regarded as Conceptualism enacted about the human condition.
physically. Minimalism, the production of ultra-simple, often The late i9-'os were, reputedly, a period of uncertainty and
massive regular structures and paintings, may be considered retrenchment in art. As a reflector of social and political
an objectified form of Conceptualism. It represented the ulti- attitudes, art could not fail to show such a result. If Conceptu-

mate renunciation of aesthetic, relational qualities, and was alism lost ground, it was not lost to any one succeeding ortho-
executed from a preordained conceptual plan with no room doxy. New forms of figuration began to dispute with a revived
for intuitive variations. By remaining so emphatically within formalism for the right to express the democratic humanism
the parameters of paint and canvas, or of fabricated objects, that is widely acknowledged to be the matter and raison d'etre
while many artists were giving them up. Minimal artists of art.

turned this deeply sceptical, questioning activity against their DOUGLAS HALL
predecessors, the critics, and themselves. As compared with
the sprawling, anarchic nature of the Performance art move-
Bibliography. Brion, M. Art Since 194s, London (1958). Burnham, J.
ment, Minimalism inspired a disciplined group of mainly
The Structure of Art, London and New York {1971). Compton, SI.
American artists, who imposed their severe orthodoxy on the Art Since 194^, Milton Keynes (1976). English Art To-day, 1960—76,
art establishment for a decade after 1965. Yet almost at the (2 vols.), Milan (1976). Goldberg, R. Performance, London 119-^9).

same time, a dialectic opposite emerged in early examples of Haftmann, W. Painting in the 20th Century (2 vols.j, London (1965).
Super-Realist (Hyper-Realist or Photo-Realist) art. Like Mini- Henri, A. Environments and Happenings, London (1974). Hill, A.
(ed.) Data: Directions in Art, Theory, and Aesthetics, London
malism, Super-Realism is seen in its most radical development
(1968). Lippard, L. (ed.) Six Years: the Dematertaltzatton of the
only in America. It is now a vigorous school with many vari-
Object, London (1973). Lucie-Smith, E. Art Today, Oxford (1977).
ants. Its exponents all employ exact imitation of external ap-
Lynton, N. The Story of Modern Art, Oxford (1980). Popper, F. Art,
pearance, but there are many variants according to the scale Action, and Participation, London (1975). Richardson, T. and Stan-
and focus used or, more importantly, according to the type of gos, N. (eds.) Concepts of Modern Art, Harmondsworth (1974).
subject and the degree of implied comment or interpretation Vries, G. de (ed.) On Art, Cologne (1974).
the artist permits himself to apply to it.
 53

AUSTRALIAN ART

• f •"^JWJI^
'sii

The Selector's Hut: Whelan on the Log by Arthur Streeton; oil on canvas;
77X5 icm (30X2001)
1890. Australian National Gallery, Canberra (see page
965)
96z AUSTRALIAN ART

WHEN established
the first British
on Sydney Cove
colony
in
in AustraHa was
1788 the continent
colony. The finest are the

Ferdinand Bauer (1760—1826),

2,000 botanical studies made by
who spent 1801— 5 in Austra-
was still called New Holland. The elegant neo- lia with Matthew Flinders' expedition. William Westall
classical name Australia — a Latin form for what had long (1781— 1850), of the same expedition, was also the first to
been vaguely referred to as the South Land — did not gain paint artistically significant Australian landscapes. Because of
currency until the early 19th century, though one of the the extreme peculiarity of Australia's native flora and fauna,
earliest high-style European objects which can be claimed for natural history has remained a continumg theme in Australian
Australian art is a small medallion commissioned in 1789 art.

from the Wedgwood pottery factory, bearing a graceful neo- More interesting has been the outbreak of Australian flora
classical allegory of the new colony. The medallion's title was and fauna in decorative arts, design, graphic arts, and popular
Hope encouraging Art and Labour under the influence of emblems at moments of heightened national
arts as patriotic

employments necessary to give security

Peace, to pursue the consciousness. The 1850s goldrush influx coincided with the
and happiness to It was made of clay
an infant settlement. intricacies of Rococo-revival design, Gothic-revival architec-
shipped from Sydney to Etruria in Staffordshire, and was ture, and Pre-Raphaelite minuteness in painting; the delicate

commissioned by an influential and energetic scientific ama- intricacy of tree-ferns, grass-trees, cabbage-palms, and lyre-

teur. Sir Joseph Banks. birds became preferred decorative-arts emblems. The boom
Sir Joseph Banks's particular interest was botany. He had period of the 1880s and the centenary celebrations in 1888
imposed himself and a party of naturalists on to a scientific coincided with William Morris's aestheticism, and so the
voyage in the South Pacific under the command of Captain larger-scaled, compact waratah blossomed in architectural
James Cook, and in 1770 during that voyage a landing was stone-carving and stained-glass windows. The federation of
made at what they enthusiastically named Botany Bay (oppo- the six colonies in 1901 coincided with the mannered linearity
site present-day Sydney Airport). Natural-history artists were of Art Nouveau, which gave the elongated eucalyptus leaf and
among Banks's chief proteges, and natural-history drawings cascading yellow wattle-blossom their opportunity. The 1970
are the most characteristic art form in the earliest years of the Bicentenary celebrations for Captain Cook, and preparations

Raby, a Farm Belonging to Alexander Riley, Esq. by Joseph Lycett; watercolor; 2rX28cni (SXiiin); C1820. Australian National Gallery, Canberra
 AUSTRALIAN ART 963

for the 1988 Bicentennial of first settlement, have drawn upon the watercolors of Joseph Lycett {ciyy^-post 1824), painted
Pop art and a heightened appreciation of kitsch to reintroduce <:i820, had already begun to place illustration of colonial life

most previous emblems plus the Koala bear and such man- in the foreground but this human-interest tradition neverthe-
made artifacts as the Sydney Harbor Bridge and the Sydney less continued to provide specifically rendered botanical back-
Opera House for use in jewelry and clothing. The best animal grounds. Augustus Earle (1793-1838), who spent three years
(and figure) painter of the 19th century was William Strutt in Australia and New Zealand in the mid 1820s, painted a few
(1825— 191 5), who spent 11 years in Australia and New Zea- landscape canvases of this kind, though he was primarily a
land from 1850 but his magnum opus, executed in 1864, is portraitist. S.T. Gill (1818-80), chiefly an illustrator in water-
history painting —
a vast canvas of terrified Australian and color and lithography of the life of squatters and gold-diggers,
European animals and humans fleeing the midsummer was also fascinated by the inland deserts and demonstrated a
bushfires of "Black Thursday, February 6th, 1851." special sensitivity to their delicate vegetation.
Botany was often central to landscape painting. William If the first European visitors were most interested in botany
Westall's canvases, worked up in England from his field they were also interested in the native Aborigines. One of the
sketches, set a pattern for a theatrical foreground parade of and most tender images is a book-illustration of 1793,
earliest

clearly identifiable curious plants for which the landscape is A New South Wales, engraved in London by Wil-
family of
little more than a perfunctory background. The botanical- liam Blake from a colonial officer's amateur drawing. Blake
parade formula is still found in major landscape paintings by presented the naked family as innocent, graceful inhabitants
John Glover (1767-1849) and Conrad Martens (1801-78), of a natural paradise. By the 1820s the characteristic locally
who settled in Australia in 1 8 3 1 and 1835 respectively, and by produced images also included detribalized degradation. And
Eugene von Guerard (1811—1901) who arrived in 1852. John by the 1830s in Tasmania, when it was believed that that
Glover, the first artist of consequence to settle permanently, was possibly on the point of extinction,
colony's distinct race
placed the predominant eucalyptus tree at center stage, accu- there was a sudden rush of ethnographic documentation
rately observed and also identified as a prime emblem of a mingled with sentimental regret. John Glover, whose own
foreign land. Earlier landscapes than Glover's, for example farm in northern Tasmania had recently ceased to be an

Ferntree Gully in the Dandenong Ranges by Eugene von Guerard; oil on canvas; 92X1380™ (36X54in); 1857. Australian National Gallery, Canberra
The Golden Fleece: Shearing at Newstead by Tom Roberts; oil on canvas; 104 x159cm (4iX63in); 1894. Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Aboriginal hunting ground, painted several reminiscences of etation, forest giants and minute herbage, cool shadow and
those who had "led a gay happy life . . . before being disturbed hot sunshine. The is symbolized by such details
cycle of nature
by the white people." and is movement of
reinforced by the strong surging circular
Less sensitive to the Tasmanian Aborigines is Benjamin the composition. The painting was perceived as a masterpiece
Duterrau's (1767— 1851) large composition of 1840, The when first exhibited in Melbourne in 1857 and became the
Conciliation (Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart), focus of an unsuccessful campaign to make it the beginning of
the first grand-manner history painting in Australian art. Al- a National Gallery for the colony of Victoria.
though Duterrau's admiration is directed chiefly towards the Melbourne was then the largest and wealthiest Australian
white conciliator, George Augustus Robinson, who had gone city and for the rest of the century the most significant art was

among the remnants of the "savages"and persuaded them to to be found there. Louis Buvelot (1814-88), a Swiss painter
accept resettlement, the Aborigines are given dignity, humani- who settled in Melbourne in 1865, quickly found favor for his
ty, and individuality. The painting speaks very strongly to assertively commonplace landscapes of outer-suburban
late-20th-century Australians about the largely dispossessed countryside and riverbanks frequented by big-cit\' excursion-
Aborigines. The finest 19th-century Australian artist, the ists. Buvelot suppressed the natural variety of vegetation and
romantic landscape painter Eugene von Guerard, in the 1850s focused almost exclusively on old, twisted eucalyptus trees.
executed a number of tranquil arcadian scenes inhabited by They are ubiquitous throughout Australia and thus to feature
Aborigines. In other landscapes without figures, Australian them so obsessively was to give Australians the pleasure of
native animals, kangaroos grazing within the chance shelter of recognizing that affectionately familiar everyday objects could
a natural stone circle, are threatened by a European fox. Thus be elevated into art.

the cloistered sanctuary of Ferntree Gully in the Dandenong In 1885 the painter Tom Roberts (1856— 193 1) returned to
Ranges (1857; Australian National Gallery, Canberra) may Melbourne from studying in London. A group which formed
not be a permanent sanctuary for the two beautiful lyrebirds it around him produced for the first time a genuinely collective
shelters. The romantic qualities of exotic botany and zoology movement in Australian art; naturalistic landscape painting
are presented with patently honest accuracy of detail, but a en plein air became an article of faith, and their outdoor paint-
narrative of past and future, decay and regeneration is also ing camps were remembered with the romantic haze at-
later
implied by juxtapositions of erect live and fallen dead veg- tached to having been young artists in a city where aesthetic
 AUSTRALIAN ART 965

decoration and young artists were in fashion. In 1889 Tom the 1890s became the subject of Piguenit's finest paintings.
Roberts, Arthur Streeton
(1867-1943), Conder Charles Many artists chose not to produce the "Australian" art
(1868-1909), Frederick McCubbin (1855-1917), and others which, from the 1880s onwards, was always in demand by
held a provocatively aesthetic exhibition of unusually small, Australian society. Instead they preferred to express their own
sketchy landscape "Impressions". Whistler's English Im- individuality by becoming, for varying periods, expatriates in
pressionism, not the French, was the principal influence. Paris or London where they joined the fringes of the artistic
McCubbin's painting The Lost Child (1886; National Gal- mainstream. In general they were finer practitioners of their
lery of Victoria, Melbourne) is filled with loving observation craft than those who remained in Australia, but their art re-

of the rich diversity of subtle color and texture, and apprecia- quires less explanation than that of the stay-at-homes. Among
tion of the peculiar delicacy and fineness of forms to be found the expatriates the sculptor Bertram Mackennal (1863-193 1)
in native Australian vegetation. A year later Tom Roberts was made a distinguished contribution to the late- 19th-century
perhaps the first to paint naturalistic naked Europeans, as revival ofMannerist marble and bronze. George W. Lambert
bathers, amongst Australian trees. In the 1890s bushrangers (1873— 1930), who departed in 1901 for 20 years in London,
(bandits) from the recent past would appear in landscape painted neo-Baroque portraits and groups in emulation of
paintings by Tom Roberts as a realistic kind of nature spirit; Brangwyn and Velazquez. John Russell (1859-1930) in Paris
at the same moment Greek figures appeared in Sym-
Classical in the 1880s gained a true understanding of French Im-

The Spirit of the Plains (by Sydney

bolist paintings titled pressionism, and left many attractive landscapes of Italy, the
Long, 1871-1955) or The Hot Wind (by Charles Conder) Cote d'Azur, and Belle-Ile. E. Phillips Fox (1865-1915),
which depicted a drought spirit. In the 1940s Nolan's Ned during his second period in Europe from 1902, became an
Kelly paintings and
1950s Tucker's explorers revived
in the Impressionist painter of sunlit gardens and beautiful women
the same impulse towards providing mythology figures for the relaxing. The work of Rupert Bunny (1864-1947) in France
Australian landscape. passed through three phases: Symbolist figure and landscape
If Symbolist ideas sometimes account for the figures in land- compositions in the 1890s; luxurious douceur de la vie

scape paintings, the land itself began to be charged with a new compositions in the 1900s; and, after the First World War,
symbolism of heat, drought, and implacable sunlight. In 1888, high-color decorative figure compositions and landscapes
after several decades of good seasons, long droughts became a influenced by the Russian Ballet and by Bonnard respectively.

new fact in Australian life. Streeton's painting The Selector's The few years Hugh Ramsay (1877-1906) spent in Paris
Hut: Whelan on the Log (1890; Australian National Gallery, before his early death in Melbourne saw some splendid por-
Canberra) is realist in its sympathy for an Australian worker, traits, dispassionate yet psychologically penetrating. Ramsay

aesthetic in its Japanese-style placement of a single slender and Max Meldrum (1875-1955), who spent the first dozen
eucalypt off-center above a low horizon, but more significant- years of the new century in France, were two of many who
ly, in its assertively yellow landscape and blue sky it helped followed Whisder's cult of Velazquez in their figure painting.
launch a standard symbolic color for Australian landscape It is difficult to assess the conservative Australian painters in
painting. Symbolist yellow grasslands displaced the Dutch
green woodlands of Glover and Buvelot and would in turn be
The Lacquer Room by Grace Cossington Smith; oil on paperboard;
displaced in the 1940s by Surrealist red deserts. 74x91cm (29X36111); c 1935-6. Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
Tom Roberts, the most accomplished figure painter of the
movement, was the most successful of the many who began,
around the centennial year of 1888, to elevate depiction of
national life from illustration to heroic museum-scale pamt-
ing. The Golden Fleece: Shearing at Newstead (1894; Art

Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney) clearly indicates by its

(.reek-myth title that Australia's economic basis, the wool

^«.-Mj__ii
industry, is being ennobled. The subject, shearing, was the
climactic moment in the creation of Australia's wealth. And
the composition, academically compiled from many studies,

sets the firmly structured figure-group in a woolshed whose

rude architecture evokes the nave of a church, thus converting
the activity of shearing into a kmd of sacrament.
InSydney W.C. Piguenit (1836-1914) evolved a late Ro-
manticism. Deriving largely from Turner's art and his own
upbringing in the dampness of southern Tasmania, Piguenit's
art from the i 870s maintained an obsessive preference for low
clouds, water and mud as fit subjects for the liquid medium of
paint. Disastrous floods on the plains of New South Wales in
 9

966 AUSTRALIAN ART

Second World War provoke the realization that all her paint-
ings fix lyrical moments of heightened consciousness in an
everyday world. She suddenly sees the exhaustion of pumpkin
leaves drooping in heat, the rhythmic order in a grouping of
trees, or in a chance arrangement of chairs, the persistent
flood of light from outdoors through corridors and mirrored
rooms. Such ecstatic delight in grasping order implies a
special awareness of potential disorder and chaos. That was
Cezanne's greatest quality and Cossington Smith is remark-
able for a rare sympathy with the master's content when many
of his admirers merely followed his style.
Margaret Preston (1875-1963), a more decorative Post-
Impressionist and more assertively modern, was less consis-
tently successful, but atmoments could equal anything in Aus-
tralian art. Around 192^ some Cubist angularity entered her
still-life paintings of modern household equipment and of

such geometric (hence modernist) Australian flowers as the

banksia. Around 1942 her oil paintings began to emulate the
earth colors and the simple outlined style of Australian
Aboriginal ocher paintings on eucalyptus bark. These were
not only and landscapes, but also wartime military
still lifes

subjects. many prolific modernist woodcut and

She was one of
linocut printmakers, and her woodcut The Aeroplane is an
earlier essay at honoring Aboriginal art by introducing its

primitivism (the concentric rings of sound at the aeroplane's

propellors) to the world of self-conscious modernism.
In 1932 in Sydney Dorrit Black's Modern Art Centre, fol-

lowed by Grace Crowley's and Rah Fizelle's school, intro-

The Aeroplane by Margaret Preston; colored woodcut on silver paper;
duced an academic Cubist style to Australia. Out of this circle
25x19cm (loXyin); C1932. Australian National Gallery, Canberra
there later developed the major Constructivist Abstract pain-
tersRalph Balson (i 890-1964) and Frank Hinder (1906—)
relation to those from other countries during this internation- and the sculptor Margel Hinder (1906—). Their principal
alist, old-master oriented period. However, the high quality of works of that kind belong to the 1940s and 1950s and like
Bunny's, Ramsay's, and Meldrum's work perhaps suggests most such abstraction theirs aimed at metaphors of scientific
that Australians, then especially deprived of museum art, were truths and spiritual states of universal order. Also in 1932, but
likely to be especially stimulated by it when at last they in Melbourne, a reality-based modernism stressed firm, solid,
reached Europe, and were determined to make the most of it pictorial construction but soon took on board Romantic and
while they were there. Smith (1912-49) and Russell
Surrealist attitudes. Peter Purves
By 1915, wake of Roger Fry's Post-Impressionist
in the Drysdale (191 2-81) were the outstanding products of that
exhibitions inLondon, painters in Sydney were experimenting school. Ian Fairweather, (1891— 1974), an English Post-Im-
with heightened color and nondescriptive autonomous brush- pressionist painter who had migrated between Shanghai, Bali,
work in emulation of Cezanne and Vincent van Gogh. In 1 9 1 Melbourne, and other parts of the east, moved towards ab-
Roy de Maistre (1894-1968) and Roland Wakelin (1887- straction in the 1950s after he settled in Queensland. His
1971) shared an exhibition of small stylized landscapes or- Mangrove (1961-2; Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide)
ganized in terms of color scales and bearing such titles as has some basis in the mudflats near Brisbane, but it is more a
Synchromy in Orange Major. Roy de Maistre eventually de- symbolic Tree of Man, paying homage to the linear delicacy
veloped, in England, a Cubist style as a vehicle for his rather and grace of Aboriginal art, the will towards order of Chinese
literary preoccupation with the interlace of human relations as ideogrammatic writing, the layered space of Cezanne.
well as music. Wakelin remained a warmly romantic land- The early phases of Australia's modernism are closely re-
scape and figure painter, and in Melbourne Arnold Shore lated to English modernism. Henceforth Australian art would
(1897-1963) and William Prater (1890-1974) became simi- no longer develop in phase with British art.

larly Cezannesque. The war years 1939-45 saw an extraordinary outbreak of

Grace Cossington Smith (1892-) was more individual. Oc- collective artistic energy, chiefly in Melbourne, fuelled by the
casional paintings of high moments in national life troops — artists' enforced isolation from Europe as well as by social
embarking in the First World War, church thanksgiving in the disruption. Realist artists of social conscience, for example
 AUSTRALIAN ART 967

Death of Constable Scanlon from the first scries of Ned Kelly paintings by Sidney Nolan; enamel on composition board; 90X 121cm (35X48in); 1946.
Australian National Gallery, Canberra

William Dobell (i 899-1 970) and Noel Counihan (1913-),

Barry Humphries in the Character of Mrs Everage by John Brack; oil on
painted working men as heroes at their difficult labor or
canvas; 97x130cm (38X5iin); 1969. Art Gallery of N.S. Wales, Sydney
memories of general hardship in the 1930s economic de-
pression. Refugee artists from Hitler's Europe imagined the
hardships in the Polish ghettoes they had escaped (for ex-

ample, Yosl Bergner, 1920-). The vivid street life of slum

children was pointed out (by Danila Vassilieff, 1897— 1958,
for example). However, the three outstanding painters of the
time, Tucker, Nolan, and Boyd, were individualists.
Albert Tucker (1914— responded to a specific experience of
)

military work in 1942.: drawing mutilations in a military hos-

pital for the purposes of plastic surgery. The following year he

began his series Images of Modern Evil, an expression of the

night-time hysteria of Melbourne's cinema and street life.

Tucker in 1947 escaped Australia for 13 years in Europe and

New York. Direct confrontation with Europe often makes
those from transplanted European cultures intensely aware of
their own non-European character and in Rome in 1955
Tucker began to paint explorers from Australian history, their
features ambiguously treated as an Australian desert landscape.
 —
968 AUSTRALIAN ART

Sidney Nolan (1917—) explored the high-spirited inventive-

ness of Klee, Picasso, Matisse, and the sense of wonder and
transformation in Rimbaud's poetry. A poet himself, Nolan
constantly renewed direct experience of the senses by endless
4
travel; he painted quickly, celebrating the wonder of fresh,
I innocent experience in bright enamel pamt wafted magically
into an image. From the 1960s, a more tragic dimension en-
tered his art in darker oil paintings.
If all Nolan's art is about the miracle of transformation
paint into image, perception into form — much of it is about
Australian landscape and its inhabitants. He observes the ap-
pearance of the land and its light with great accuracy, es-

pecially relishing so flat a land's dramatic, horizontal, flaring

confrontation with the sky. And he populates it with figures,
faces, and animals that have a sense of belonging there. His
Ned Kelly paintings of 1946—7 are incidentally concerned
with a particular narrative about a particular antiestablish-
ment Irish bushranger who was hanged in Melbourne in 1880
Jil:U^}r^,->J,^^j^ ,;

and became an ambiguous folk-hero. They are more con-

cerned with how an outlaw might love the bush, feel at home
in and bestow upon it the gift of poetry, myth, or legend.
it,

Arthur Boyd (19Z0— loved Old Master artists and tra-

)

ditional culture more than modernism and his paintings are

An untitled work by Ken Unsworth; stones, steel wire; 2i5Xio4Xio5Cin
(85X4iX4iin); 1975. Australian National Gallery, Canberra
usually concerned with private fears and obsessions. A close
associate, John Perceval (1923-) used related imagery for
war-time subjects but then turned, as did Boyd, more to land-
scape. Perceval's landscape was usually friendly, worked with,
untidy; Boyd's though sometimes similar often introduced his
personal symbolism.
The outstanding sculptures associated with the Melbourne

Landscape by Fred Williams; oil on canvas; 92 x198cm (36X78in); 1969. Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
Constructive Painting by Ralph Balson; oil on cardboard; 63X79cni {25X3iin); 1951. Australian National Gallery, Canberra

expressionists were the stone carvings of Danila Vassilieff, late structions, but by 1952 he was exhibiting Abstract construc-
works which summed up his admiration for the direct spon- tions of color-planes on rods. Klippel's innumerable collages
taneity of primitive, naive,and child art. and drawings, his ideas for sculpture, his constantly develop-
In the 1950s Austraha began to receive a steady stream of ing personal vocabulary of form, are, like his sculptures,
exhibitions of contemporary European and American art. In among the finest and most vital works in Australian art.

general the 1950s were dominated by French art, post-Cubist In the early 1950s the work of the isolated Melbourne styl-
angularity and intense, saturated color. However, Lloyd Rees ist, the painter John Brack (1920—), had something of the
(1895-), admired as a pen-and-ink and pencil draftsman from period style of austere French angularity, but it is transcended
the 1920s, developed a later style of high-keyed radiant skies in an inventive series of speculations on the artificiality of art:
and water. It was a response to the specific charms of Sydney, the still life, the nude model, the studio, the posed portrait as
a harbor city of winding waterways, wayward hills and in- conventions; the paint surface, the color-relationship as exer-
tense, expansive light. Similar subject matter in more charac- cises in taste. For such serious mannerism the best subjects are
teristic 1950s style is found in the shifting, Cezannesque those that are already works of artifice or skill: window reflec-

water-views by John Passmore (1904-). tions superimposed on an interior, acrobats precariously bal-

Abstract art now flourished for the first time — the construc- anced, competitive ballroom dancers. His portrait of the actor
tivist art of Ralph Balson, Grace Crowley (1890-1979), and Barry Humphries in female travesty is an admiring homage to
the Hinders, already mentioned — and it too was French in its perfectionist characterization by means of carefully studied
ordering of color-planes m space. The constructivist painters 1969 petit-bourgeoise dress in Melbourne. The subject has as
were closely associated with the sculptor Robert Klippel many levels of artifice as the virtuoso play of line, form, and
(19Z0-). His career began with Surrealist carvings and con- color; it is stretched to the limits of taste.
970 AUSTRALIAN ART

Fred Williams (19Z7— 82) also emerged from the French photography as the prime medium for Conceptual art and as a
1950s in Melbourne but after an early preference for figure documentary medium for ephemeral landscape sculptures,
painting in which he relished the expressive presence of body sculptures, and performance art. Of all works of land-
Daumier, he settled chiefly for landscape. His apparently scape art the best known to the general Australian public is

highly abstracted landscapes embody very exact observation the mile of coast at Little Bay, Sydney, wrapped in 1969 by
of color, light, and the characteristic forms that occur in the Christo (1935—), 3 visiting artist from New York. Since it

spacious flatness of Australia. Ambiguously, they can be read existed for only six weeks it is known chiefly from its photo-
both as intimist closeups or as bird's-eye views. As with graphs.
McCubbin in the 19th century, a superficially monochrome Performance art was as strong in the mid 1970s as land-
world is seen to be filled with varied and subtle colors, and scape and ecology sculpture. Ken Unsworth (193 1—) makes
Williams's great body of black-and-white landscape etchings sculptures that are metaphors of bodily experiences of heavi-
also underlines the subtle tonal values of the land. But Wil- ness, suspension, and compression at their most extreme
liams's triumph is combined the subtlety of tone and
to have limits: the sculptures are alternatives to the performances in

color and the delicacy of small accents and incidents with the which his own body is the principal art material. Mike Parr
grandeur, firmness, and weight of land itself: his forms hold (1945—) and Stelarc (1946—) are other performance artists

their place on the surface of the canvas as no others in Austra- whose work is strongly individual and obsessive.
lian landscape art; they have self-possession and stability as Printmaking since the mid 1970s has been most interesting
well as energy. Previous Australian landscape painters had in the form of screenprint posters made outside the traditional
seen the land in many different and illuminating ways: Wil- art world bycollectives of political, feminist, and other social
liams was the first not only to see it but also to grasp it. activists. Craftwork of all kinds has also flourished, not only

Abstract Expressionism first came to Australia as French ceramics, though the ceramic tradition was strongest, both in
Tachisme in the late 1950s. Tony Tuckson (19Z1— 73) was the pure Far Eastern manner and in the rougher, more sculp-
unusual in equating his earHer Abstract Expressionist paint- tural manner of Californian funk art.

ings not with landscape but with the humanity of graphism, of Painting participated during the revivals of realism and ex-
communication through writing or through Aboriginal sym- pressionism in the 1970s. The realist Ivan Durrant (1947-)
bols. Even more unusual, he occasionally adumbrated the showed an individual, tender concern for animals; the ex-
human face. The artist himself was a presence in Tuckson's pressionist Peter Booth (1940-) made public his personal

work. nightmares.
An early reaction against Abstract Expressionism was that If Australian art has had any new characteristics in the
of the Imitation Realists, a group consisting of Mike Brown 1980s they are partly due to more than 10 years of jet travel.

(1938-), Ross Crothall (1934-) and Colin Lanceley (1938-) Australia no longer seems physically isolated from its cultural
which in 1962 dragged real life back into art by means of sources on the other side of the world, nor from the alterna-
poetic Dadaist rehabilitation of neglected, outcast materials tives available to the north, in China and Japan. Nor is the
(found objects, junk) and an embrace of outcast styles (child third cultural stream, from the Australian aboriginal, so
art, naive art, commercial art, Realism). Pop art, a more psychologically distant as before. Long-term expatriation by
specific celebration of large-scale advertising and media Australian artists is no longer common. Since the visit of
images, was a style of some influence on Richard Larter Christo to Australia in 1969 there has been a steady stream of
(1929—) but otherwise had little influence in Australia.It was European, American, and Japanese artist-visitors. And Aus-
American-style color abstraction which in the late 1960s tralian Aboriginal art and artists, though preserving a tribal
largely swept Abstract Expressionism aside. base, have become a part of the big-city art world. The result

Among these Conceptual abstractionists appeared the be- is a more relaxed individualism. Earlier there were mass
ginnings of the strong move into photographic media which movements, alternately nationalist and internationalist. Now
characterized the 1970s. Photography had been confined Australian artists have begun to take an interest in the history
chiefly to photojournalism in the mid 20th century, but later of Australian art, and therefore to exert pressure for its inclu-

revived its traditional concerns for beauty and strangeness at sion, for the first time, in international surveys of art.
the same time as painters and sculptors began to make use of DANIEL THOMAS
 54

SOUTH AFRICAN ART

Pondo Woman by Irma Stern; oil on canvas; 86X720111 (34X28in); 1929. Pretoria Art Museum (seepage
972. SOUTH AFRICAN ART

society has a cultural background rooted in the after the subcontinent was from the West, belongs
Every but past, in few are origins and recent history divided spirit to
settled
another time frame and gives expression to a state of
it in

silent chasm as in South Africa.

by such a yawning, mind Europeans had long forgotten.
The what are considered as South Africa's "Old
earliest of South Africa's modern cultural era began during the 17th
Masters" were heirs of Western culture and many were active century, when the Cape was colonized by representatives of
well into the 20th century. Yet the real dawn of South African the Dutch East India Company of Holland. The indigenous
art took place in a Paleolithic era (c30,ooo-io,ooo bc) and —
Khoi-San peoples the Bushmen and the Hottentots re- —
preceded the coming of Europeans by many thousands of treated as settlers drove ever deeper into the interior. Ancest-
years. That art is a remarkable heritage of paintings and en- ral shrines and shelters were barely noticed by the European
gravings, on the surfaces of rocks and in natural shelters. pioneers. The first colonistscame from a European society
There is no certainty as to the identity of the hunting, food- that was experiencing a golden age of cultural achievement,
gathering peoples who produced the images; they are general- but they themselves were yeomen, mariners, and farmers, too
ly assumed to have been the ancestors of the nomadic San preoccupied with survival to give attention to the fine arts.

tribes —
the so-called Bushmen —
whose surviving members It was in the field of architecture that the colonists made the
live today in the Kalahari Desert. first artistic response to both the very different climate and
The primary subject matter of South Africa's lithic art is the topography and to the much-altered way of life encountered
animal. Figures of men occur, but they are probably of more at the Cape. The whitewalled, thatched, gabled "Cape Dutch"
recent origin and are usually conventionalized, whereas the homesteads of the 1 8th century share esteem with the refined
animals are more commonly depicted as perceptual likenes- proportions of contemporaneous public buildings and town-
ses — in outline, monochrome, or polychrome. Those images houses, as examples of one of the world's most attractive
were the documents of man's encounter with pri-
first local styles of colonial architecture.

meval nature. Although rock art continued in southern Africa The beginnings of sculpture in South Africa were intimately

An example of rock painting, from a farm in the Orange Free State

V
 —

Hieratic Women by Alexis Prelltr; oil on canvas; 85X loicm (33 X4oin); 1955. Johannesburg Art Gallery

associated with Cape Dutch architecture. For unlike the tribes med. South African art of the period was thus essentially prov-
of West and Central Africa, the black peoples who had mi- incial and derivative in character. Painting tended to reflect

grated into the subcontinent from the northeast had no tra- in somewhat jaded, academic terms — the awe with which the
dition of sculptural expression. There were thus no indigenous majestic landscape was regarded. Few painters were able to
precedents. The individual regarded as South Africa's first come to terms with light and spacious
South Africa's bright
sculptor, Anton Anreith (1754-1821), was born and trained atmosphere, and fewer seemed to be aware of the innova-
still

in Germany and executed the bulk of his oeuvre in embellish- tions of the modern movements in Europe.
ing Cape Town buildings. Anreith settled in the Cape m 1777. Following the declaration of Union in 1910 the country's
Almost 100 years were to elapse before the commencement of development was accelerated: towns and cities expanded, in-

any organized artistic activity in South Africa. dustrialization commenced. But South Africa was still far

It was only in the latter half of the 1 9th century that circum- from being an urbanized society, and its art reflected the con-

stances of life in the Cape Colony and in the interior became dition. In continuing the dominance of landscape themes in
at all conducive to professional and public
artistic practice easel painting three figures stood out:Hugo Naude (1869—
exhibition. There was now a greater sense of permanence 1941), Pieter Wenning (1873-19Z1), and Jacob Hendrik Pier-
among the white community, though it was nonetheless an neef (i 886-1957). All foreswore the previous dependence on
archetypal colonial society. Indeed, most of the early pro- academic realism.
fessional artists were settlers, prmiarily from England and the However, it was not only how they were expressed but also
Netherlands, who had acquired their training and their view- the perceptions being given visual form that altered as the
points in the European communities from which they stem- 20th century proceeded. The most notable changes concerned
m^^^m
i^ -^^'t^:^->^)J^>«rii*

mmM^w^wi

Symbols of Life by Walter Battiss; oil on canvas; iizXixicm (48X48in); 1967. Pretoria Art Museum

attitudes to man and to the African identity. The first signifi- Stern (1894-1966) and Maggie Laubser (1886-1973), had
cant interest in human subject matter was manifested fairly been directly influenced by German Expressionism, but they
early in this century by the realist sculptor Anton van Wouw differed considerably in their individual application of the fea-
(1862-1945). He won initial acclaim for his interpretation of tures they adopted. Laubser created a highly personal, folk-
themes and figures venerated by the Boers. But he was also the loric world, inhabited by colored fishermen and peasants.
first artist to create percipient portraits of black models and to Stern was fascinated by the sensuous beauty- of unspoilt Africa
portray black figures engaging in traditional pursuits and and the vital splendor of its tribal figures. The themes of both
practices. were mainly African, but their styles were European.
The first painters to be more concerned with people than Although the creation of artistic objects, for whatever pur-
with scenery were also the first to introduceEuropean subjec- pose, occupied a very minor role in black South African cul-
tivism into local art, during the 1930s. Two of them, Irma ture, there was one form of artistry unique to local tribes, a
Above: Confrontation by Edoardo Villa; steel; height 4230111 (i67in);

1978. Collection of the artist

Right: Seated Couple by Cecil Skotnes; engraved woodpanel;

70x51cm (28X2oin); 1965. Egon Guenther Gallery, Johannesburg

tradition that excelled among the 'Ndebele peoples of the

Transvaal: the embellishing of walls of adobe houses with
colorful painted decoration. The decoration was and is ex-
ecuted by the women of the tribe, a characteristic which unites
it with the total pattern of South African artistic activity, in

which women have played a larger role than in any other

known society.
The first evidence of a conscious artistic encounter between
the post-Renaissance West and the heritage of ancient Africa
appeared during the 1940s. It stemmed, on the one hand,
from the fascination exerted by the 'Ndebele murals on the
imagination of the Pretorian artist Alexis Preller (191 1—75);
on the other, from a long-delayed communion with the spirit
of the ancient artists of the rocks. Although the original colon-
ists had taken little note of South Africa's treasury of rock art,

it aroused the curiosity of later archaeologists. It was appreci-

ated mainly for its archaeological significance, until it at-

tracted the attention first of the landscapist Pierneef and later,

and more lastingly, of the imaginative Walter Battiss (1906-
8i). Battiss was immensely impressed by the aesthetic quality
inherent in the works. Not only did he energetically record
976 SOUTH AFRICAN ART

and publicize the art, he also identified himself with the "an- African and Western culture. Skotnes was a member, in the
cient men" of Africa and adopted many of their formal de- 1960s, of the small Amadlozi Group, which became the first
vices into his own contemporary style of painting. Preller professional artistic fellowship to number a black artist
found greater affinity with the mystique of Africa than with its among its members, the sculptor Sydney Kumalo (193 5-).
forms, but jointly the two artists introduced a new perception Before long other promising black newcomers had begun to
of the continental past into the art of present-day South draw attention. Paradoxically, however, this "African" art
Africa. developed solely in response to Western urban inspiration.
The postwar rush to close the gap that still divided South The other sculptor in the Amadlozi Group was the Italian
African art from the modern Western movements coincided immigrant Edoardo Villa (19Z0— ). To his embodiment in
with a surge of industrialization, urbanization, and techno- bronze and steel of the elusive spirit of the land, he later added
logical advancement in the 1950s. The development was a further dimension of the South African experience: the en-
coupled with acute awareness of the "winds of change" sweep- counter with contemporary technology. Villa's interpretations
ing through Africa — and with a need among all South Africans, of African technological man brought the art of the 1960s to a
particularly whites, to establish an identity within the com- climax.
plex ethos of the continent. "Africanism" became a dominant The burning issue of the 1970s was the relationship of man
theme of local art. For the first time also there was evidence of to man. Humanism dominated; "relevance" became the pri-
emergent artistic interest among the urban black community. mary requirement; "Protest Art" became the vehicle of many
A central figure in the encouragement of black artistic aspir- younger artists, black and white. The output of that challeng-
ation was the Johannesburg artist Cecil Skotnes (19Z6-). He ing decade is represented in the public art museums, but his-
also epitomized a new phase in the South African collective tory has still to isolate the major figures.

consciousness, giving expression in his colored engraved

woodpanels to his awareness of the country's dual heritage of ESME HERMAN
/ ';"'">'
''^'•M'
. .'i'i'i'lll'i

' — '
—•
-