THE 20th CENTURY

Henri Matisse, The Red Studio
1911, Oil on Canvas, The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Matisse is regarded as one of the founding fathers of twentieth-century painting. He is respected, loved, and emulated for that wild, yet subtle colorwhich he tamed, mastered, and managed. Color was the tool with which he controlled line, volume, light, transparency, reflection, and space. As a leader of the Fauves-a group of artists known for their radical style of bold and violent color-he explored a shared sense of liberation and experiment. His exploration led him to his personal style of rhythmically arranged line and color on a flat plane. We can witness Matisse's genius in "The Red Studio ". In his reduction of tints, he makes color an independent, structural element in the piece. Furthermore, the essentially monochromatic piece exhibits his ability to distinguish horizontal from vertical using only a few lines. By repeating a few basic shapes, hues, and decorative motifs in a seemingly casual manner, Matisse harmonizes each element to the rest of the picture.

Pablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon
1907, Oil on Canvas, The Museum of Modern Art, New York

The other founding father of modern art is Pablo Picasso. Where Matisse liberated color, Picasso broke open the entire canvas. In 1907 Picasso left his melancholic Blue Period to produce this painting - his response to Matisse's "The Joy of Life." What resulted can be regarded as the birth of modern abstraction. In the painting, Picasso intended to depict the temptations of a Barcelona brothel, but he resulted with five nudes and a still life. These nudes turned the art world on its head. With the angular, distorted reinterpretations of the classical nude, Picasso altered the way we look art, and the world. The two figures on the right are regarded as the result of Picasso' s mythologized visit to the Trocadero Ethnographical Museum. It is believed that the African and Iberian masks he viewed there are the motivations behind the faces of the figures on the right. Truth or myth, the incorporation of non-western imagery into western awareness led to re-evaluations of how we define art. Beyond the imagery, the way in which the figures and space were broken into angular chunks, angles, and edges opened the door to a new style, dubbed Cubism.

Marcel Duchamp, The Fountain
1917, Ready-Made porcelain urinal, Philadelphia Museum of Art

The question "What is art?" began to formulate in the American consciousness when an artist took a common everyday object out of its common everyday existance and placed it in a museum show and signed it R.Mutt. Marcel Duchamp was the quintessential industrial artist that took all the heat of doing something new, radical, and untraditional. He dabbled in everything: dressed like a woman, placed a bikewheel on top of a stool, put a moustache on the Monalisa and called her a kiss-ass and at the end of the day he called it all art. Best of all Duchamp had a sense of humor and unlike many of his contemporaries did not take himself or his art too seriously. Needless to say, Duchamp more than raised a few eyebrows but most importantly he paved the way for Oldenburg, Rauschenberg, and of course, Warhol. Three cheers for the Campbell soup can!

Salvador Dali, The Persistence of Memory
1931, Oil on Canvas, The Museum of Modern Art, New York

The Surrealists defined their aim as "pure psychic automatism, intended to express the true process of thought free from the exercise of reason and from any aesthetic or moral purpose." Dali was the most notorious of the Surrealists, once saying: "My paintings are handmade Technicolor photographs of my dreams." In "The Persistance of Memory," Dali used meticulous verism to render a dream in which time, forms, and space have been distorted. He places illogical forms and unidentifiable objects in an eerie seaside setting, thus intertwining possibly realistic elements with impossible ones. The affect of such a work is a lingering, nagging sense- like a dream- that we must look for hidden meanings in the symbols he employs.

Diego Rivera, Flower Carrier
1935, Oil and Tempera on Masonite, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

In the last twenty years, the name Diego Rivera has become a mainstream topic of conversation. He has crossed over from and important 20th century Mexican artist into one of the greatest artists that the Americas have ever seen. His murals and paintings are apart of museum collections everywhere and most recently there have been many shows that have brought him and other Latin American artists into the spotlight. His subject matter and style was distinctly a tribute to his culture and ethnicity. Politically active in the Communist party on Mexico, Rivera integrated his beliefs into his work. In essence, Rivera was the creator and proponent for the development of a national art that inspired American artists to form a visual program that was conspicious to the United States. The forms and colors, the references to his culture, his desire to combine these in an effort to speak for his people places Rivera at the top of the list.

Georgia O'Keefe, Oriental Poppies
1927, Oil on Canvas, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis

The importance of O'Keefe in history is not only due to her being a woman and artist and successful. She looked at life and nature and abstracted it in such a manner that influenced the abstract expressionists that would follow. First as an artist and then as woman she understood the true concept of examining an object intimately. With O'Keefe we discover that Abstraction is an illusion, as life is often an illusion. Her works bear a strong sense of femininity and individuality not really seen in women artists before her. She paved the way for feminist art and artists like Judy Chicago, Cindy Sherman, and more. Ultimately, O'Keefe like the other artists on this page, was a pivotal figure in the development of modern art in our Century.

Edward Hopper, Early Sunday Morning
1930, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Hopper, like O'Keefe, was a pioneering artist who shaped the landscape of American art. Unlike any previous artist, Hopper's work was devoted to the urban landscape. He focused on what has since become known as "the vernacular of architecture" of American cities - the storefronts, movie houses and all-night diners that no one had previously found worthy enough for an artist's attention. His vision of everyday life-typically of empty streets, isolated buildings and solitary figures-was a quiet commentary. In these everyday scenes of Everycity, USA, we realize that Hopper wanted the viewer to notice the lives existing behind the facades. Whether it was a storefront or a lonely usherette, Hopper captured moments of quiet reflection, highlighting the very real feeling of solitude each individual struggles with.

Ansel Adams, Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico
1941, Gelatin-silver print, 15 x 18 1/2", Museum of Modern Art, New York

Perhaps the greatest photographer of the 20th century, Ansel Adams represents many things perhaps the most poignant is a nostalgic vision of the vanishing American landscape. His popularity as a nature photographer and pre-environmentalist, assisted in the fight for the preservation of what is today the national parks and recreation areas we take for granted. Adams techiniques and compositions are famous for their"range of tonal nuances, from clear whites to inky blacks." As in Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, the artist creates a composition that is almost fantastical in its luminacity and inspired spiritual overtones. Ansel Adams was a master manipulator of the aperature: giving new meaning the phrase "the eye of the beholder". Throughout his career Adams altered the way we think about the land, water, and space that we exist on.

Andy Warhol, Marilyn
1967. Screenprint

You think Pop Art, you think Warhol. You think Cambell's Soup, you think Warhol. Andy Warhol became famous by giving to us the images and objects in our heads and our lives-essentially holding a mirror up to popular culture. He created icons out of the objects we see in our culture, that are part of who we are. These images are multi-faceted in meaning, though, because they also pose the question of why do we value one thing over another. He gives us Marilyn over and over, but he's also showing how we want Marilyn over and over. In this portrait, Warhol conveys a sense of the tragic personality that lay behind the glamorous façade. The cheap, off-color reproduction of a publicity photo for "Niagara" is showing us that this person has been reduced to a cheap commodity. Her face has been mechanically reproduced so many times, that there is a loss of recognition of the person behind the image. Warhol understood, and wanted us to understand, how the media shapes our view of people and events.

Christo and Jean-Claude, Running Fence
1972-76. Sonoma and Marin Counties Coast

The 20th Century would not be complete with out a look at the impact of Christo and Jeanne Claude's amazing and varied site-specific works. Commonly known for "wrapping objects", this pair has far transcended the early days of shrouding boxes and storefronts. Christo and Jeanne Claude have changed the way that we view the obvious. 1969 Wrapped Coast Australia, 1972 Valley Curtain, Colorado, 1976 Running Fence, California, 1983 Surrounded Islands Florida, 1985, Pont-Neuf, France, 1991 Umbrella Project Japan-US and 1995 Wrapped Reichstag are just a few of the highlights of this unique pairs endeavors to manifest their artistic passion. Self sufficient, self financed, self-motivated , Christo and Jeanne- Claude offer their visionary gift to us free of charge.

Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still #13
1979. Black and White Photograph

The contemporary work of Cindy Sherman focuses on the theme of self-portraits in various costumes and settings. Working in this vein, she depicts how women in general have been portrayed in film and television, as well as operas and fairytales. Sherman positions her work as a critique of various conventions of portraying women. By using only herself as the model, she alludes to the idea that every woman is complex and full of endless possibilities. Be it maternal, vulnerable, pure, wicked, glamorous, domineering, etc, Sherman puts forth the notion that women are diverse in style and substance.

SOURCES

Janson, H.W., History of Art, 4th edition, Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1991.

McNeil, William H., History of Western Civilization: A Handbook, 6th edition, Univeristy of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1986.

Snyder, James, Medieval Art: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, 4th-14th Century, Harry N. Abrams, Inc. 1989.

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