Word Count: 2004 Alexander File LICA100 — Modernism in the Arts

Submission date: 28 April 2014

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Modernism was progressive and avant-garde,

yet there are many critiques of modernist values and ideologies. With reference to the work of at least two

visual artists and specific artworks, discuss ONE of the following critiques of modernist art: attitudes to gender,

nature, technology or popular taste. (ESSAY QUESTION NUMBER 12)

fig. 1 Balla, G. (1913) Abstract Speed- The Car has Passed / Velocità astratta - l'auto è passata, Tate Liverpool

The second half of the nineteenth century was a time of intense social change; mass-industrialisation and mechanisation heralded in a new epoch. With it, a new set of images and metaphors were generated, reconfiguring the way in which we view the relationship between artist and viewer, subject and object, and even mind and matter. Modern mankind found itself in the midst of a great absence and emptiness of values and yet, concurrently, a remarkable abundance of possibilities. In Beyond Good and Evil (1882) Nietzsche explored the duality of Modernism and the internal conflicts modern man faced at this cultural-crossroads in time; the modern “dares to individuate himself” or “throws himself into parodies of the past.” (Nietzsche quoted in Berman, 1982, p.21-22)

Before discussing the critiques of modernist values and ideologies, more specifically attitudes towards technology, I believe it is important, first and foremost, to establish my own personal understanding of the dualistic and frequently conflicting ideas within Modernism itself. Modernism’s key feature is its rejection of everything perceived to be orthodox; a rhetoric of ‘permanent revolution’— to innovate rather than imitate. This inevitable progression into self-conscious interrogation of art’s own internal, usually formal, functions meant that the avant-garde ultimately veered towards self-criticism and continuous evolution. The constant struggle to sustain some form of critical or oppositional challenge to the status quo means that many of Modernism’s most powerful critiques and conflicts often appear to come from within. It is for this reason that within this essay I will approach Modernism and the avant-garde as shifts within a shift; a series of distinct and conflicting movements that are holistically linked within a period of constant cultural upheaval.

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fig. 2 Barr, A. (1936) The Development of Abstract Art, Museum of Modern Art

“Modernism as a movement, or at least a loose confederation, is a set of ideas and beliefs about art produced in the modern period. ‘Modernism’ as a label for the era is in itself a modern approach to art history. We break down this chaotic period into a linear chronology of ‘-isms’, slotting it into the “story of art” (Meecham and Sheldon, 2000, p.27). Modernism was however, broadly speaking, the cultural outcome of modernity, the social experience of living in the modern world.” (Meecham and Sheldon, 2000, p.2) This in mind, while exploring Modernism it should be considered distinct from the concept of modernity, rather considered as a cultural impulse pushing away from the constraints of authoritarianism— as Peter Gay (2007) asserts, liberalism is Modernism’s fundamental principle. !As Alfred Barr’s attempt to map Modernism’s development shows (figure 2) it was a non-linear and messy affair, with modernists marching under many banners, with ideals and ideologies that were at times completely incompatible with one another. (Gay, 2007, p.334) As Manet’s La Vie Moderne demonstrated, modernity is a fleeting and ephemeral experience, as such, Modernism never stood still. It was a period that aimed for rejection by the orthodox, defined most succinctly in the modernist trinity— authenticity, autonomy, originality. (Meecham and Sheldon, 2000, p.1) An ethos of spirited opposition coupled with the conscious aim of breaking boundaries was seen to be the obligation of modernist art. !At the forefront of the movement were the ‘avant-garde’; a military metaphor applied to western cultural practices that differentiates art practice from the late nineteenth century to what had come before. The term embodies the danger and risk associated with the originality and counter-institutional values which the avant-garde embodied. Within the avant-garde movements many paradoxes, conflicts and key critiques become evident. In Peter Bürger’s second thesis (1984) he develops the idea that avant-garde movements were a shift into self-criticism— Dadaism no longer criticised the schools that preceded it, but it criticised art as an institution. This in turn took in to criticise the bourgeois society, and ultimately aestheticism. !The strategies devised by artists, writers and musicians to establish and sustain some form of critical or oppositional challenge to the dominant order make up some of the most interesting skirmishes of the nineteenth- and twentieth century art. (Meecham and Sheldon, 2000, p.16) Fuelling these skirmishes was an avant-garde culture that contained many paradoxes. One such paradox was the instrumental effect of art markets on an art “that aims to be autonomous and ‘free’ but at the same time remains in thrall to the novelty factor of an art world hotfoot in pursuit of the new and unfamiliar.” (Meecham and Sheldon, 2000, p.27)

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fig. 3 Duchamp, M. (1917) ‘Fountain’. Photograph by Stieglitz, A. 1917 fig. 4 Duchamp, M. (1913) ‘Bicycle Wheel’. 3rd Version, 1951.

Marcel Duchamp, and surrealism, can be used to illustrate this paradox. Self-consciously interrogating art’s own internal, usually formal, functions was the imperative that gave the modernist movement a seemingly undisputed status in identifying the only ‘significant’ art of its time. Duchamps ‘anti-art’ , for example ‘Bicycle Wheel’ and ‘Fountain’ (fig. 3 and fig. 4), was the anti-thesis of art, so arguably it cannot be ‘claimed for art’. (Humble’s second thesis, 1982) Duchamp sanctioned the role of artist “to question, admonish, critique, and playfully ridicule existing norms in order to transcend the status quo”. (Rosenthal, 2000) !Anti-art’s embodiment and intention was to create something that does not, and could not, satisfy the criteria we employ in identifying something as art. Modernists seemed to be embroiled in a crisis about its objects of desire, which is to say that artists fetishised objects perceived to fall outside of the traditional remit of art. Thus, identifying these objects as such nullifies their significance. (Humble, 1982) This cyclic paradox with the avant-garde has been identified by Hal Foster as “… the ideology of progress, the presumption of originality, the elitist hermeticism, the historical exclusivity, the appropriation by the culture industry, and so on.’ (Foster, 1990, p.5) In other words, the consistent critique of modernist values, the paradox it faced, is the self-nullification of itself through an inherent contradictory ideology wherein the ‘counter-institution’ is institutionalised. !Despite this disjunction, “… the avant-garde remains an important (if fictional) feature of Modernism, especially in terms of its inclusions and exclusions.” (Meecham and Sheldon, 2000, p.16) A key inclusion, and iconic feature of Modernism, is its attitudes towards technology, dynamism, mechanisation and, predominantly, the machine aesthetic. The machine and technological advancement reconfigured mankind's philosophical relationship with the world. The Great War substantially engrained the machine into the consciousness of the period; creating in turn a new set of images and metaphors to interpret the modern condition. !The ‘machine aesthetic’ doesn’t describe a particular group, more it is a label for common aspects between affiliated movements in the First Machine Age of the 1910s and 1920s— “very generally purism in France; De Stijl in Holland; suprematism and productivism in Russia; constructivism at the Bauhaus; and precisionism in North America.” (Meecham and Sheldon, 2000, p.113-114) Identified by “leitmotifs of speed, gigantism, repetition, standardisation, efficiency and noise provided both positive metaphors of harmony and strength and negative metaphors of human alienation in an increasingly mechanised and artificial world.” (Meecham and Sheldon, 2000, p.110)

Arguably the most famous Modernist movement associated with the machine aesthetic was Futurism. In Futurism’s core was a celebration of technology and the machine, expressed through enthusiasm and dynamism shown in works such as Balla’s (fig.1), forever embedding this idea into Modernism’s image and identity. However, in actuality the Futurists hijacked Modernism, taking it to places it had never expected to go; making it synonymous with scientific and technological advances. The zeitgeist of inexorable technological advancement had spawned both utopian and dystopian premonitions within Modernism; conflicting ideas of the machine as a harbinger of disaster or a means of salvation. From here spawned two distinct approaches towards the the utilisation of, and place for, technology within the arts. Here lies the fundamental dichotomy in the Modernist technological mission— constructivism vs. expressionism; umbrella terms used to describe all sorts of European and North American art movements.

Through the self-consciously utilitarian language of the constructivist avant-garde, the differences between expressionism and constructivism is evident. In the utilitarian manifesto, ‘New Way of Life’ (1918-1919), Vladmir Tatlin renames the artist as ‘technician’ or ‘inventor’; fundamental opposition to the idea of the artist as a solitary genius “expressing ‘himself’ in the medium of paint or stone”. (Meecham and Sheldon, 2000, p.117) For constructivists the modern age was ‘the death of the easel’, they believed in mimicking industrial processes. In his pamphlet, ‘Where Artists and Technicians meet’ (1925-1926), Walter Gropius laid out the fundamental difference between expressionism and constructivism— a differentiation between ‘the technological product made by a sober mathematical mind and the “work of art” created by passion’ (Leger, quoted in Benton and Benton, 1975, p. 147). These conflicting legions of thought adopted dissimilar styles and engaged in an artistic duel.

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The course of modern art was split in two, Modernism was subsumed by two overarching trends (see Alfred Barr’s map of Modernism,The Development of Abstract Art, figure 2)— ‘Non-Geometrical abstract art’, growing out of expressionism; and ‘geometrical abstract art’, growing out of constructivism. Geometrical abstract art was an antidote to expressionism, it revealed a broad disenchantment with the cult of the solipsistic and self-indulgent artist. Fernand Léger summed up this attitude in 1924: ‘I have more faith in it [the machine] than in the longhaired gentleman with a floppy cravat intoxicated with his own personality and his own imagination’ (quoted in Benton and Benton, 1975, p.98) This is a far cry from the early modernist’s heightened sense of self-expression exemplified in Cézanne’s maxim, ‘let us strive to express ourselves according to our personal temperaments’.

As Modernism developed, these two conflicting outlooks appeared irreconcilable. Attempting to reunite, embody and apply modernist values and ideologies towards technology, was the Bauhaus, where the conflict played out in microcosm. While maintaining an emphasis on craft, in 1923 Walter Gropius repositioned the goals of the Bauhaus towards designing for mass production. (Griffith Winton, 2000) The Bauhaus’ necessary restructure was a substantiation of the financial impracticability of early modernist ideals of autonomy from markets; a value largely expunged from Modernism and latterly hyper-inverted by the easy embrace of commodity culture in Postmodernism.

Bauhaus’ main critique, and it’s ultimate failure, was its flaw in recognising the human element of design, architecture and technology. Peter Schiedahl stated the Bauhaus’ shortcomings were due to its projection of a utopia with mechanistic views of human nature; “Home hygiene without home atmosphere.” (Schjeldahl, 2009) The influence of the Bauhaus spread into movements around the world, but it was this utopian vision, lacking in human reality, that would be its iconic downfall.

“The day modern architecture died” (Jencks, 1984), 3:32pm, 15th July, 1972— the Pruitt-Igoe housing complex was demolished, and any notions and ideas of Modernism were said to have gone with it. However through Postmodernism many of the defining characteristics of Modernism remain. The modernist values and ideologies towards technology as embodied in the Bauhaus, although adapted, remain a continuation that makes the two designations seem, at times, almost indistinguishable. ((Meecham and Sheldon, 2000, p.1) In addition, as new technology emerged, and the network society developed, the modernist aspiration of continuous opposition and premonitions of utopia and dystopia persist. The avant-garde a standard, normalised and accepted feature of institutionalised art— one it’s hard to imagine the world without.

In all, Modernism was a movement that shaped and defined the world we live in today. It’s many movements, shifts and struggles set a basis and created the language for approaching the modern world— while also highlighting the many impasses modern man has crossed to get there. It has been criticised time after time, and is systematically self-antithetic. The avant-garde’s constant aim to oppose and disrupt caused many distinctions and artistic-melees between Modernism’s coexisting movements and subjects. Nonetheless, the technological values and ideologies it embodied— however dystopian, utopian or contested they may have been— created a new lens through which to view and interpret the modern condition, and have continued as an underlying feature of modern art ever since.

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References !!

ARS (2014) Bicycle Wheel (1951) third version, after lost original of 1913, digital image, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris / Estate of Marcel Duchamp. Source URL: <http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?object_id=81631> !Balla, G. (1913) Abstract Speed- The Car has Passed / Velocità astratta - l'auto è passata, Tate, digital image, Source URL: <http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/balla-abstract-speed-the-car-has-passed-t01222> !Barr, A. (1936) The Development of Abstract Art, Museum of Modern Art, digital image, Source URL: <http://blogs.artinfo.com/lacmonfire/files/2012/02/Barr.jpg> !Berman, M. (1982) All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity, New York: Simon and Schuster. !Benton, T. and Benton, C., with Sharp, D. (1975) Form and Function: A Source Book for the History of Architecture and Design 1890-1939, London, Open University Press !Bürger, P. (1984) Theory of the Avant-Garde, University of Minnesota Press, 1st Edition !Collins, M. (1987) Towards Post-Modernism, London: British Museum Publications. !de Duve, T. and Krauss, R. (1994) Echoes of the Readymade: Critique of Pure Modernism, Vol. 70, The Duchamp Effect (Autumn, 1994), pp. 60-97, The MIT Press : Article URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/779054 !Foster, H. (ed.) (1990) Postmodern Culture, Pluto Press, London !Gaiger, J. and Wood, P. (2003) Art of the Twentieth Century, New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. !Gay, P. (2007) Modernism, New York: W.W. Norton. !Griffith Winton, A. (2000) The Bauhaus, 1919–1933. In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000 <http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/bauh/hd_bauh.htm> (August 2007) !Huhn, T. (2000) A Modern Critique of Modernism: Lukács, Greenberg, and Ideology, Constellations Volume 7, No. 2, 2000, Oxford : Blackwell !Humble, P. N. (1982) Duchamp’s Readymades: Art and Anti-Art, British Journal of Aesthetics, Vol. 22 Issue 1: 52-64, Oxford University Press !Jencks, C. (1984) The Language of Post-Modern Architecture. New York: Rizzoli. ISBN 978-0-8478-0571-6. !Meecham, P. and Sheldon, J. (2000) Modern Art: A Critical Introduction, London: Routledge !Rosenthal, N. (2000) Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000 <http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/duch/hd_duch.htm> (October 2004) !Schjeldahl, P. (2009) “Bauhaus Rules”, Newspaper Article, The New Yorker, November 16, 2009 !Stieglitz, A. (1917) Fountain, 1917, digital image, viewed 20/04/2014, Source URL: <http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f6/Duchamp_Fountaine.jpg > !Ware, B. (2013) Wittgenstein, modernity and the critique of modernism. Textual Practice, 27:2, 187-205, DOI: 10.1080/0950236X.2012.721384

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