Art Movements of the Post WWI Years

Art Movementsof the PostWWI Years 1919-1939 Kelvin Chin

modernism 1916 - 1940

Principles of Modernism • The expression of the Artist’s right to freedom of choice in subject and style. • Departure from literal representation – no longer needed with birth of photography. • “Art for Art’s sake” • Reject tradition and society.

“Modernism” by the Critics “ For the younger artists of France have completely thrown overboard the ideals of perfection and form, of grace and measure and tranquility, which we are accustomed to think as their most valuable possession.” “…their (Dadaist’s) manifestos and tracts – with which it is proposed to ‘purge’ French art of its slavish subservience to rules.” from “The Aesthetic Upheaval in France” by Edmund Wilson Jr., Vanity Fair February 1922

“Modernism” by the Artists “ Seven years ago, I tried to make a painting that would live by its own resources…At the present time I am doing research in art. My conclusions? I cannot explain my present researches until I myself have evolved out of them, that is to say, until I have gone further in my artistic evolution.” Francis Picabia, quoted from “Francis Picabia and his Puzzling Art (an extremely modernized academician)”, from Vanity Fair November 1915

dadaism 1916 - 1924

Tristan Tzara – founder of Dadaism “ Freedom : Dada Dada Dada, a roaring of tense colors, and interlacing of opposites and all contradictions, grotesques, inconsistencies: LIFE” “Dada Manifesto” [1919]

Dadaism • Began in neutral Switzerland in WWI • Also big in Paris. • Reached its peak between 1916 – 1924 • “Anti – Art” • A movement against rigidity of society and art, and the barbarity of war – the public didn’t deserve art after the war.

Tristan Tzara • Born in Romania in 1896. • Lived most of his life in Paris. • Wrote the first Dada text, La Premiere Aventure celeste de Monsieur Antipyrine in 1916. • Penned the movements manifestos, Sept manifestes Dada, in 1924. • Became an active member of the French Communist Party in later life.

Characteristics of Dada Art • Nonsensical drawings • Pastel and faded colors • Used collages and layers – to confuse the “unworthy beholder.” • “The beginnings of surrealism” – many Dada artists went on to become members of the Surrealist movement. • Subjects sometimes mundane, called art as irony. (e.g.– bicycle wheel, flyer.)

Francis Picabia Machine Turn Quickly 1916-1918

Francis Picabia Feathers 1921

Francis Picabia Chapeau de Paille 1921

Kurt Schwitters The Cherry Picture 1921

Kurt Schwitters Merz 448 (Moscow) 1922

Kurt Schwitters Kleine Dada Soiree 1922

Marcel Duchamp Monte Carlo Bond 1924

Marcel Duchamp You Me (Tu-M) 1918

Example covers of DadaMagazine(1917 & 1920)

Example articles from De Stijl and Dada

Art Movements of the Post WWI Years