In 1913 French writer Charles Pguy wrote the

In 1913 French writer Charles Péguy wrote …the world has changed less since the time of Jesus Christ than it has in the last thirty years. What kind of changes do you think he was referring to?

Contextual Studies 4 Modernity and Modernism

Eiffel Tower under construction

1854 painting of The Crystal Palace

Interior of The Crystal Palace, 1851

Aerial view (from Eiffel Tower)

Andre Derain, In the Mountains,

Remember that a picture, before being a horse, a nude or some kind of anecdote, is essentially a flat surface covered with colours. Maurice Denis, painter, 1890

First Machine Age: 1908 GEC ad for electric grill

First Machine Age: 1903 vacuum cleaner, via truck

First Machine Age: 1902 vacuum cleaner demonstration

First Machine Age: 1914 vacuum cleaner

First Machine Age: Osram ad, 1920 s

First Machine Age: Electric Light warning

First Machine Age: 1927 ad The Electrical Age for Women

Fernand Léger, The Card Players, 1917

Leger, Three Women (Le Grand Dejeuner), 1921

Leger, Mechanical Elements, 1924

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, ‘Manifesto of Futurism’, 1909 We intend to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and fearlessness. We affirm that the world’s magnificence has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing car whose hood is adorned with great pipes, like serpents of explosive breath – a roaring car that seems to run on shrapnel is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace. For too long has Italy been a dealer in second-hand clothes. We mean to free her from the numberless museums that cover her like so many graveyards. From Art in Theory, pp 146 -149.

Umberto Boccioni, The City Rises, 1910

The gesture which we would reproduce on canvas shall no longer be a fixed moment in universal dynamism. It shall simply be the dynamic sensation itself. . . On account of the persistency of an image upon the retina moving objects constantly multiply themselves … Thus a running horse has not four legs, but twenty, and their movements are triangular. Boccioni, ‘Futurist painting: Technical Manifesto’, 1910 in Art in Theory, (p. 149 -152, p 150, l. 16 -22)

Eadweard Muybridge photographs, 1870 s

Eadweard Muybridge photographs, 1880 s

Giacomo Balla, Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash, 1912

Giacomo Balla, Flight of the Swallows, 1913

Boccioni, Dynamism of a Cyclist, 1913

Balla, Abstract Speed and Sound, 1913/14

Pablo Picasso, Still Life with Chair Caning, 1912

Georges Braque, Violin and Candlestick, 1910

Pablo Picasso, Le Torero, 1912

Metropolis directed by Fritz Lang, 1927

Jacob Epstein, The Rock Drill, 1913/14

Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, 1912 When religion, science, and morality are shaken (the last by the mighty hand of Nietzsche), when the external supports threaten to collapse, then man’s gaze turns away from the external toward himself. Literature, music, and art are the first and most sensitive realms where this spiritual change becomes noticeable in real form…. they turn away from the soulless content of modern life, toward materials and environments that give a free hand to the nonmaterial strivings and searchings of the thirsty soul. Extract from Art in Theory, pp 82 -89, p 87/l. 1 -12

Wassily Kandinsky, Improvisation 19, 1911

Kandinsky, All Saints, 1911

Reading for 03/11: Georges Braque, ‘Thoughts on Painting’ (1917) in Art in Theory, pp. 214 & 215 George Grosz ‘My New Pictures, 1921 in Art in Theory, p 272 -3 And re-read the Matisse text from Session 3