Kazimir Malevich: White on White (1918)

Listen to a short critique of this work from the MoMA website:

Click image above for reviews or to buy this Taschen book about Malevich

Kurt Schwitters: Merz (1918 – 1948)

Click on image above for more info or to buy this excellent overview

Read the informative entry for Kurt Schwitters at the Artchive

Find out more about the legacy of Schwitters in the North West of England, including the project to restore the 'Merzbarn'

Edward Alexander Wandsworth: Dazzleship in Drydock, Liverpool (1919)

A short biography of Wandsworth and an image of this painting at the Spartacus Educational website

Marcel Duchamp: L.H.O.O.Q. (1919)

Click on the image below to buy the catalogue for this Tate Modern exhibition that explored the connections between these three friends and artistic adventurers...



Walter Gropius: Bauhaus Manifesto (1919)

Read the revised and expanded version of this article for free HERE

There is also plenty of info at the website of the Bauhaus-archiv, Berlin and at the website for the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation...

Click image  above for info or to buy this Taschen book about the Bauhaus

Around the same time in Russia...

Vladimir Tatlin: Monument to the Third International aka The Tatlin Tower (1919)

Paul Klee: They’re Biting (1920)

Paul Klee was highly innovative and hugely influential. He pioneered many new techniques that are now fairly commonplace in drawing. One such technique was to mix light oil with drawing ink, which meant that after a drawing had dried, watercolour could be applied using the wet-on-wet technique, but the soft bleed of the pigment would not cross lines drawn with the water repelling oil-ink. Look carefully at the circle of the sun in They’re Biting.

Klee had similar metaphysical ideas to both Marc and Kandinsky and saw art as a process of revelation, however, Klee believed that there was no ‘Ultimate Reality’ to reveal and thought that ‘reality’ should be treated as a child treats a toy – it is ours to imagine how we wish and to enjoy as much as we can. He was very interested in how children intuitively create symbols in their drawings. (A rectangle under a triangle is a house, a square with a cross in it is a window, a spiral is smoke coming from a chimney, a stick figure with a blue head is mummy, a red blob with L-shaped ‘feet’ is daddy.) He attempted to capture this freshness and honesty in his own compositions, and this approach can be seen here.

The image shows a cartoon style scenario of a boy fishing with his dad. The boy has caught a fish, a larger fish is about to take the hook of the father’s line. Following the lines from the fishing rods is a little bit like games found in children’s puzzle books, where the loops and curves must be traced from one symbol to another. Amongst the symbols for fish we also find two recognisable typographic symbols in the full-stop and the exclamation mark. These represent methods of indicating much larger concepts, such as conclusion and surprise, in a very simple abstract way. The exclamation is above a fish that is big enough to swallow both father and son. And what do fish do: big fish eat little fish. A series of events have been set in motion that will reach a final conclusion with the big fish being caught by one of the fishers. The ratio will be reversed and the struggle to land the catch could go ‘either way’.

There is a childish sense of fun in They’re Biting and also a more adult and darker humour at work. The narrative also operates on different levels and becomes a metaphor of  competition, interaction, relative strength, team work, our relationship with the natural world, the unknown, invisible factors that may affect us, strength used to dominate or nurture others… a relatively simple story leads on to more and more complex contemplations.

Flicking through a catalogue of Klee’s work reveals a wide range of media, from the traditional to experimental. He would sometimes coat paper or board with plaster and similar substances then etch into the surface or polish areas down to the base before rubbing waxes and thicker pigments across the surface and then scraping it back off, leaving residue in the lines and textures. This method was a combination of etching, drawing and printing with an element of sculptural relief.

He came up with an approach he called “taking a line for a walk”. This involved attempting to draw a scene without taking the tip of the pen or brush from the surface of the canvas and recording the scene in the same order as our eyes may wonder across it. The resulting drawings often resembled doodles though in many ways were a more realistic and direct representation of how we see the world and visually respond to it.

Klee would also start drawings from random doodles without a clear idea of how the drawing would turn out: Once the pen had begun to move, he would respond to what the random doodles suggested and allow his subconscious to place meaning onto the mark-making. This constituted what would be known as Automatist Surrealism, where biomorphic shapes are coerced into becoming fantasy animals within dream-like scenarios.

He was a teacher at the Bauhaus where his concept of taking a line for a walk had unexpected influence. The Bauhaus metal shop were the first to produce furniture using tubular steel, most notably the chair by Marcel Breuer that became known as The Wassily Chair, its design having been approved by Kandinsky. The frame for this chair was, in essence, devised by taking a line for a walk in three dimensions. This is a good illustration of the groundbreaking Bauhaus idea of placing the conceptual and abstract artists alongside the engineers and technicians in order to foster innovation and original approaches. 

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A short and informative article about this work at the Tate Collection on-line

A major exhibition of Klee's work at Tate Modern

Click image above to buy this book - written and illustrated by Paul Klee whilst he was a tutor at the Bauhaus

Preview or Buy Evolution of Western Art

Marcel Duchamp: Rrose Sélavy (1920s)

A short article by Jonathan Jones at the Guardian on-line about Man Ray's photographs of Rrose Sélavy.

The 'classic' photograph of Rrose at the Philadelphia Museum of Art on-line catalogue

Marcel Duchamp: Rotary Glass Plates (Precision Optics) (1920)

Good quality image of this work in action at Olga's abc Gallery

Marcel Duchamp: The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even or the Large Glass (1915 - 1923)

Read my piece about The Large Glass... one of the most important and interesting pieces of twentieth century art.

Learn more with this lovely graphic Duchamp timeline

Marcel Duchamp World Community is a most impressive on-line resource!

Click on the image above for more info or to buy this excellent overview of Duchamp's life and works

Paul Klee: Eros (1923)

This watercolour is an exercise in balance and how a single point can disperse the energy of a composition if placed in the right position. The energy is generated by repetitive rhythms of form and an incremental ‘colour ladder’, the point is where these energies meet and achieve harmony. It is more of a visual essay than an aesthetic piece, yet it makes its point beautifully. Klee developed his approach to abstract art alongside his colleague Wassily Kandinsky. They exhibited their work together with Der Blaue Reiter and also taught together at the Bauhaus.

Klee approached abstraction as more of a visual exercise than a means to an end and used the approach to explore underlying theory. Though he produced many abstract compositions, he tended to use abstraction as a way of reducing reality to geometric and biomorphic forms, rather than replacing representation with total abstraction. In this he is a hub in the wheel of abstraction made up of geometric minimalism, compositional abstractions, cubism, dynamism, automatist and dream surrealism. Klee is a key to understanding the development of all these varied approaches. 

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Biography of Paul Klee and chronology of his works presented at Olga's abc Gallery

An extract about Klee from Shock of the New by Robert Hughes and selected works on-line at the Artchive

Click on the cover images below for more info about the books or to buy them...

Both are recommended reading for anyone interested in the life and works of Klee

Man Ray: Object to be Destroyed, Destroyed Object, Indestructible Object (1923 – 1932, 1957 and 1964)

The original piece in this serial work, or Multiple, was a Readymade metronome. Man Ray simply attached a photograph of an eye to the armature. The object itself was exhibited and so were his photographs of it. He titled the piece, and the accompanying photographs, Object to be Destroyed. This simple adaptation of an object and its title suggests many themes, amongst these would be the transient nature of existence: 

The object could be destroyed, but a record of it exists in the form of photographs, and also in the memory of those who saw it. This drew attention to the nature of direct experience and representations. An observer may be able to recall the object as it moved and clicked when set in motion, whereas photographs could only suggest these attributes through clever time lapse and sequential prints. We can see recordings and representations of others, but these indicators are not the person or the object and are not the same as memories. Memories themselves are unreliable and can be coloured by subsequent experience, idealised or romanticised. The real passage of personal time is subjective, not the tick-tock perfect measure of a metronome… “Time flies when you’re having fun!” We can remember something from years ago, “like it happened only yesterday,” yet struggle to remember something that actually did happen yesterday. 

In 1932, Man Ray split up from his long term partner, Lee Miller (who was also a groundbreaking photographer), and substituted a photograph of her eye in place of the image he had originally attached to the object. Some saw this as a metaphor dealing with the insistent, and sometimes unwelcome, memories of past relationships. The tick-tock of the metronome could now symbolise a heart beat, the essential rhythm of life and love. 

In 1957, a group of students stole and destroyed this adapted version. Man Ray changed the title of its photographs to Destroyed Object. The multiple nature of photographs made him think of the validity of original experience and its relationship with personal memory over time. This concept tackled bigger questions about authenticity. 

Over the next few years, Man Ray produced 100 replicas of the original and also photographed these. In 1964 he renamed these editions, Indestructible Object – even if they were all destroyed, more could be made, and as none were the ‘original’, each would be as authentic as another. The concept had become the ‘reality’ of the work and existed independently. (To confound this further he also used the same titles for other works.) The object and photographs were replicas and artifacts that embodied that concept, though it no longer depended on any single representation for its continuation. Likewise, a memory is independent of the experience that created it, and the memory may linger long after that original experience. 

In this serial work the original concept is developed and changed over time. It is difficult to say if any single piece constitutes the work as the original object no longer exists, although the photographs of it does. As replicas of the original can be made that are identical to, though are not, the original, so any number of identical prints of a photograph can be made from the single negative, which in itself is a chemical recording of light. 

With this series of Readymades, Multiples and photographs, Man Ray extended concepts laid out by his close associate Marcel Duchamp. Although this work grew from a Dada approach it became seminal to the development of Surrealism – poetically, an object comes to symbolise much more than its surface reality, including aspects of the human condition – memory, emotions and our subjective experiences.

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Click on image below to read reviews or to buy this good introduction to the work of Man Ray

André Breton: Manifeste du Surréalisme / Manifesto of Surrealism (1924)

You can read an on-line transcript of the Manifesto of Surrealism ... here


Fritz Lang: Metropolis (1926)

Click image above for reviews or to buy the restored 'definitive' version of this influential movie masterpiece

In 1926, film, as an artform in itself, was still new and represented a marriage between technology and art. An alchemical process – involving metal oxides, light and incandescent arcs – the ‘magic lantern’ could be used to ‘realise’ the imagination into a visible, shareable commonality. Since the dawn of human language, society has sought ways to share its dreams. Film is merely the most recent and effective method that has, generally, superseded all other forms of dream-sharing employed by all tribal communities, particularly throughout western culture.

As David Annan observed in his book, Cinema of Mystery and Fantasy, “Metropolis is the bridge between ancient myth and the machine world of mass man.” Lang’s masterpiece was based upon the novel by Thea Von Harbou, though he drew heavily from Wagnerian themes and his own fascination with folklore and myth – which was to reveal itself throughout the German mass-persona over the following decades. Indeed, Metropolis is a chillingly prophetic reflection of the national social trends of its day, all be it viewed through the artistic lens of speculative science fiction.

The central plot of the film deals with a split in society. There is an underground city of the workers, who maintain the giant machines and feed the furnaces that drive the overground city of the privileged citizens. It is a cautionary tale of mass industrialisation and automation leading to the enslavement of humanity, echoing the sentiments expressed by British poet, William Blake, who had warned at the dawn of the industrial revolution that reliance on mechanisation would lead to the workers and traditional artisans becoming thought of merely as a resource that serves the machines. In effect, reducing the craftspeople and workers to the same level as machine components within “Dark Satanic Mills.”

In the extreme scenario of Metropolis, there is nothing but the city, above and below, both equally hellish in their own way. The workers enslaved by machinery, the citizens trapped by empty decadent lifestyles. The result is inevitable revolution which finally re-unites society.

The magician-alchemist, Rotwang, is the catalyst for the events that bring about profound change. He represents the past, the city’s forgotten heritage – the craft of magic denied by modern thought. His house is a dark mediaeval building still standing in the heart of the city, dwarfed by the sky-scraping erections of girders and glass. The events that lead to the machines stopping and the underground city being flooded begin in the dark interior of the ‘mad professor’s’ house and, fittingly, reach final culmination on the roof of the great cathedral, which is the only other Gothic structure still standing.

The film employs rich Gothic imagery throughout… The entrance to the chambers of the great machines resembles a giant Molochian effigy, devouring its workers at the start of their shift and spitting them out when they are spent. The image of Death is glimpsed fleetingly, playing his dance on a hollow human thigh bone. Ancient symbols empower Rotwang’s environment and the famous android he constructs and animates using a blend of technology and magic echoes many myths, from the Golem to Frankenstein’s monster and embodies much of the Futurist ideology.

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These themes are discussed further in this article I wrote for The Scrawl: Futuregoth... What the Hell is it?

Rene Magritte: La Trahison des Images / The Treachery of Images aka Ceci N’est Pas Une Pipe / This is Not a Pipe (1929)

There is a good section on Rene Magritte at Olga's abc Gallery

and also...

good info about Rene Magritte at the Artchive

Click on image below for the Taschen book about Magritte

Max Ernst: Loplop Introducing a Bird (1929)

image used for educational purposes under fair usage

Click on the image below for more info or to buy the Taschen book about Ernst

Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali: Un Chien Andalou (1929)

There is a 'region free' DVD edition of Un Chien Andalou  available to buy, or...

Click on the image below for an in-depth book about the film and its place in the ouvres of Buñuel and Dali

Salvador Dali: The Persistence of Memory (1931)

Click on image above for reviews or to buy this excellent overview of Dali's life and work



Hans Bellmer: Dolls (1930s)

images used under fair usage and for educational purposes

Click on the image above for more info or to buy this translation of Bellmer's original book of photographs and accompanying texts

Click on the image below for a good overview of Bellmer's life and work

Alberto Giacometti: The Palace at 4 a.m. (1932)

An image of this piece can be seen at the MoMa Collection on-line.

There is a good entry for Giacometti at the Artchive.

Click on the image above for reviews or to buy this overview of his life and work including interviews with, and writings by, the artist

Pablo Picasso: Guernica (1937)

See an image of Guernica at the BBC Power of Art gallery...

There is plenty more info at this website dedicated to Pablo Picasso.

or go to Olga's abc Gallery for an extensive overview of Picasso's life and works...

Click on the image above for reviews or to buy this book published by the National Gallery

Henry Moore: Reclining Figure 192 (1938)

You can see an image of this sculpture in the on-line catalogue at the Henry Moore Foundation, who also publish a good book about Moore and his work:

Click on the image above to buy the book

Click on the image below for reveiws or to buy the DVD documentary

Jackson Pollock: Number 1A (1948)

You can see an image of this piece at the NY MoMa website.

Go to the WebMuseum for an overview of Jackson Pollock's life and work

Have a bit of fun creating your own 'Pollock' on your iPad, Mac or PC screen with this on-line application at JacksonPollock.org

Click on the image above for reviews or to buy the book

Lucio Fontana: Spatial Concept Series (1949 – 1968)

Good resource about Fontana with an on-line gallery of his work at the website of art dealers, Sperone Westwater.

Click on the image above for the Taschen book about the artist

Hans Hartung: untitled prints (1950s)

Hartung was one of the pioneers of abstract expressionism, particularly the use of grand gestural mark-making. Many of his mid-career works, particularly his prints, are composed of strong dark strokes and lively scribbles that ‘argue’ with the blankness they almost fill, but by which they are ultimately contained. He maintained that abstract art was a form of direct expression and was not aligned with any of the many ‘isms’ and should not be thought of as a movement, being the product of individuals who strive to express themselves and their feelings as clearly and honestly as possible.

Hans Hartung originally studied philosophy and the history of art and only sought practical tuition after he became a ‘painter’. His compositions deal with movement, expressive gestures and the balance or imbalance of forms.

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You can read a rather good illustrated article about Hans Hartung at the Deutsche Bank's artmag by Dr. Hans-Werner Schmidt...

There are some examples of his works, with brief notes, at the Tate Website

Willem De Kooning: Woman III (1953)

Read the entry about Willem De Kooning at The Artchive

Click on the image below to read reviews or to buy the Taschen book about the artist

Franz Kline: New York, NY (1953)

Find an image of this painting and more info at The Artchive

Click on the image above for reviews or to buy the book

Robert Rauschenberg: Monogram (1955 – 1959)

A taxidermied angora goat, splashed with colours, wears a car tyre around its midriff and stands atop a Schwittersesque collage of wood, images and text. This is probably the most famous of Rauschenberg’s Combines, a technique pioneered by Marcel Duchamp in which objects are taken out of their everyday context and placed together in a kind of 3D collage. Rauschenberg built on Duchamp’s concept to create further dialogues between the readymade, found object, organic, inorganic, the natural and artificial, mechanically produced images, printing, intuitive mark-making and broad expressive brushstrokes. He fused sculpture and painting and incorporated images from art history into collages of utilitarian everyday objects and newspaper images. The collision of these different elements often appeared to create sequences and implied narratives. 

Click on the image above to visit the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation website

Click on the image below for reviews or to buy the book...

Yves Klein: International Klein Blue (1957 – 1962)

click on the image below to buy the Taschen book about Klein

Joseph Beuys: Plight (1958 and 1985)

An MP3 download of Beuys talking about his work at the time of this installation at the Tate website

Read my blog entry about Plight - one of my favourite works of art - at I'M HOT GOAT

Mark Rothko: The Seagram Murals (1958 – 1959)

Rothko’s early works, signed as Marcus Rothkowitz, were figurative and took their subject matter from Ancient Greek and Christian mythologies. He was later to veer away from these fairly derivative techniques and explore colour fields and their emotional effects.

Typically, his major works featured large, soft edged rectangles of colour stacked one above the other, horizontally dividing the canvas. During his mid-career, these large paintings were usually bright in tone, sometimes utilising complementary colours. The intended effect of the size was to allow the viewer to approach close enough so that the edges were no longer in the field of view, hence losing any sense of scale and creating an illusion of absorbing, infinite depth.

In the latter years of his career, Rothko’s palette became somber and consisted mainly of blacks, purples and dark reds. He experimented with his preferred medium of oil paint and tried adding various substances to the pigments as well as, or instead of, oil content. He experimented with egg, which had been commonly used in tempera paintings before oil paints found favour in the Renaissance. He also added paint thinners in varying concentrations which altered the properties of the paints. At a certain point, the amount of thinners prevents the oils from bonding and the result is a softer, granular appearance, more like oil pastels than oil paints. As with chalks and pastels, the result is powdery and would require the application of a fixative to prevent this powder from gradually falling away. Rothko did not fix his later works as this treatment affected the texture of the colour. Unless they are very carefully conserved in controlled conditions, these works will eventually fade away, back to the canvas.

This dark and almost transient style reached its conclusion with the Seagram Murals. This set of large paintings, which consist of dark, soft rectangles within rectangles, predominantly in black, reds and maroon, started out as a commission for the Four Seasons restaurant in New York’s Seagram building. This was a very prestigious job for any Abstract Expressionist to be given and the financial motivation would have been considerable. Rothko began work in good faith and had a space constructed within his studio to match the dimensions of the room where the paintings were intended to hang. However, as he worked on them, their character developed into something much more contemplative and almost spiritual.

Rothko had found inspiration in a vestibule of the Laurentian library of Florence. The vestibule was designed to house an overly grand staircase and to be the hallway from the library to the attached church. This part of the building was designed by Michelangelo. It is an oppressive work with architectural detailing that imply windows, but are ‘blind’ bricked-up recesses. Rothko had visited this space in 1950 and the experience stayed with him and deeply affected him. He revisited Florence to see Michelangelo’s vestibule again as he was completing the Seagram Murals in 1959. During that visit he also looked around the site of ancient Pompeii where he was impressed by the bold decoration of the interiors in black and red. In his mind, there were strong correlations with the claustrophobic architecture of Michelangelo’s vestibule, its blank windows, the unearthed city of the long dead Pompeians, and the large paintings he was working on for Seagram. Shortly after his return to New York, he withdrew from the Four Seasons commission and returned all funds.

As he had worked on this series of paintings, they had changed and so too had his motivations. He wanted the paintings to be contemplated in a quiet and enclosed space with low lighting. He seemed to have produced a set of works that demanded serious engagement and demanded profound responses, no longer suitable for a posh Park Avenue restaurant. He continued to work on these pieces and kept them until 1970, when after negotiations with London’s Tate Gallery, he donated the works with the proviso that they be displayed in a particular way. They were to be shown in subdued light and have a room of their own.

After making these arrangements, Rothko ended his own life. His suicide coincided with the arrival of the Seagram Murals at the Tate. In this context, the chapel-like atmosphere of the works is enhanced and they are imbued with even more gravitas. Their velvety darkness evokes the void, an eternity, the last glowing embers amongst the ashes...

The Seagram Murals are generally held to be a masterpiece and are one of the few great works of American Abstract Expressionism that can be seen in a gallery outside the USA. The Rothko room, in Tate Modern, is a truly affecting space. It is meditative and absorbing. I feel a similar effect from these huge works as I get from the simple Suprematism of Malevich. Their simplicity, geometric structure, and Rothko’s belief in art transcendent aligns them with the approach of the Suprematists, and Rothko’s referencing of Renaissance sensibilities and mythic inspiration also places them in the broader camp of Romanticism. Without knowledge of the artist’s suicide, the room would be peaceful and calm, it would speak of the great void from which all creativity is born… but when placed in context with an act of such decisive destruction, the church-like atmosphere and sense of doom become invasive.

One of the main conceptual influences on Rothko’s pursuit of the abstraction on the grand scale that he became famous for were the writings of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, combined with the harrowing reportage of the Holocaust. Nietzsche had commented that the primal violence and murderous themes found in Greek mythology, along with the heroic triumphs, were accurate indicators of the potential for human damnation and redemption, as much today as they were when first told. Of course, Nietzsche was a huge influence upon the Nazi intelligentsia and the ‘Final Solution’ that included their plans for mass genocide that resulted in the Holocaust.

There is a quote from Nietzsche that I feel captures the essence of the Seagram Murals: “Battle not with monsters, lest you become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”

MORE:

The Seagram Murals at The Tate and their Mark Rothko resources

Click on the image above for the Tate's Rothko Book...

Click on the image below for a DVD documetary about the Rothko Rooms

Yves Klein: Saut dans le Vide / Leap into the Void (1960)

Click on the famous photograph above (by Harry Shunk) to go to the comprehensive Yves Klein Archives 

Niki De Saint Phalle: Shooting Suit and associated works (1961 – 1964)

Wearing a specially designed shooting suit, St Phalle created a number of works that in addition to being performed ‘Actions’ were also part sculpture, part collage, and part painting. Often the paintings were created in front of a live audience and recorded on film as they were constructed and then shot at. For such events, large collages of objects were coated in plaster and containers of paint were suspended in front of these large pieces or concealed within their structure. When the bullets hit these containers the pigments exploded, spattered and dripped over the white surfaces. This was when Action painting was en vogue, particularly in the male-dominated New York scene.

continue reading at SIGNIFIER... 

MORE:

Read 'Sure Shot', an article at the Opening Ceremony website about Niki De Saint Phalle by Calla Haynes, with some good images of the shootings

Click on image above to buy the Tate book - a good overview

or click on the cover below for a lovely book about her ambitious 'Tarot Garden' sculpture park

The Niki Charitable Art Foundation is the official custodian of the Saint Phalle archives and a great starting point for further research about the artist...

Cy Twombly: Leda and the Swan (1962)

The official Cy Twombly website... you can find this work online in the excellent Gallery pages or jump to it here...

Click the image above for reviews or to buy this book

Andy Warhol: (32) Campbell’s Soup Cans (1962)

Start with the BBC Virtual Exhibition: Modern Masters

...and read more at the Wikipedia pages about this and related works...

Jim Dine: Five Feet Of Colorful Tools (1962)

You can see an on-line image of this work at the NY MoMa Collection web pages.

Terry Nation and Raymond Cusick: Daleks (1963 + )

Daleks - are they art? Read why I thinks so at my blog entry for I'M HOT GOAT...

Click on the image above for reviews or to buy this comprehensive book

...also there are lots of images and plenty of info at Project Dalek, where you will also find instructions of how to build your own 'authentic' dalek prop or scale models.

This November marks 50 years since the Doctor and the Daleks first met!

The BBC host a great Offical Doctor Who website.

Click on the DVD cover below for reviews or to buy this classic Doctor Who story, Genesis of the Daleks, with Tom Baker as the Doctor...