After the Fin, de siècle (fancy French for 'end of the century fears') phenomena of the turn of the century, the first half of the 1900s saw a series of rampant development in all sectors of cultural life. This was documented extensively throughout the visual arts. In this instalment of -Isms and Schisms let’s look at some of the individual movements that spurred us through the first half of the 20th century.
Post-Impressionism, c.1886-1905, France
Post-Impressionism succeeded Impressionism through individual artists re-interpretation and development of the techniques and skills acquired by impressionist masters. Like Impressionism it was art critics that gave post-Impressionism its' name, specifically British critic, and artist Roger Fry. Fry staged the first post-impressionist exhibition entitled Manet and The Post Impressionists at Grafton Galleries which opened London 8 November 1910. Featuring works from artists such as Édouard Manet, Paul Gaugin, Paul Cézanne and Vincent Van Gogh, Fry's exhibition text describes the artists featured as undefinable by a "single term". He rejects the term "synthesists" that had previously been used to group them as it actively ignores the relationship these artists held to impressionism. Many trained in Impressionist schools yet according to fry had now come to a point where they said to impressionism "You have explored nature in every direction, and all honour to you ; but your methods and principles have hindered artists from exploring and expressing that emotional significance which lies in things, and is the most important subject matter of art." As a result, Post-Impressionists turned to focusing on formal simplicity in works. The geometrics, shape and colour of an object became all the more important to the artworks production than the light and shadow that fell upon it. Notable in both Cézanne and Van Gogh's work is their use of colour and colour-blocking to create geometrics in their work.
This specific use of colour is also found within Gaugin's work. Unfortunately, as we often find This specific use of colour is also found within Gaugin's work. Unfortunately, as we often find when we look back in history, despite being an exemplary example of Post-impressionism, Gaugin was also a bit of dodgy bloke. Specifically dodgy because he married and impregnated a 13-year-old Polynesian girl in Tahiti during his time working there only to leave and never see them again. This places a large portion of his work in a very different light. What was once deemed as observation and documentation is now perverse fetishization.
This colonial overtone is rampant throughout this period of our visual history due to the development and influence of Primitivism. This controversial movement used the products of cultures deemed the opposite of 'high-class European life' and therefore 'primitive' as influence. Often tribal art from the Americas, Africa and Oceania were appropriated and imitated by western artists who infantilised these cultures through persistent use of childlike imagery, 'simpler' colour pallets and abstraction. Gaugin is a prime example of the consequences of colonial primitivism and many other famous artists were guilty of it as well. Primitivism became imbued in multiple areas of modernisms development and as we discuss the furthered nuances and niches of modernism this period saw, this fact is always worth bearing in mind.
Fauvism, c. 1905-1910, France
The use of strong colour and structural painting techniques that emerged in the post-impressionist era went on to form the core of Fauvism. Derived from the French 'les fauves' meaning the wild beasts the term Fauvism was used by critic Louis Vauxcelles (there's them here isn't there) to describe Henri Matisse and Andre Derain's work. Fauvism was the first movement to step towards an abstract art utilising colour theory and placement to infer subject matter rather than creating detailed pictorial representation. Many artists who began working in this Fauvist manner departed even further in abstraction It is from here that we see movements such as Cubism coming out of Europe. This increased artist autonomy and stylisation of art aligned with developments in photography. At the start of the 20th century early forms of handheld cameras became available and pictorialists (people who wanted to prove photography was capable of creating grand art-level imagery) were giving artists a run for their money. This pushed artists to become increasingly inventive.
Cubism, c. 1907-1922, France
Cubism created fragmented images through breaking down its subjects into distinct planes illustrating multiple viewpoints of the same object in a singular artwork. This gave cubist works a distinct flatness that was a remarkable departure from arts previous focus on giving its' subjects depth. Cubism divided into two sub-genres analytical vs. synthetic . Analytic cubists focused on this multi-plane aspect and muted tones. Synthetic cubism on the other hand used brighter colours and for the first time began using real-world items such as newspaper and cardboard in an artistic context. George Braque was one of cubism's most famed figures and a god example of analytical cubism. Contrastingly, cubism's other famed figure, Pablo Picasso, is an exemplar of synthetic cubism.
Futurism, c. 1909-1914, Italy
Whilst France was pioneering Fauvism and Cubism Italy was having its own artistic revolution with Futurism. Futurists were enamoured with the speed and technology of modernity. The Futurists were quite extreme in some of their statements and endorsements to say the least. Father of Futurism and poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti in his Futurist Manifesto boldly claimed that: cars were more beautiful than anything in museums; war should be glorified alongside patriotism/ militarism and expressed a desire to "demolish museums and libraries, fight morality, feminism and all opportunist and utilitarian cowardice." Now, with this considered I am by no means a fan of the futurists, but I do enjoy how their love of speed, the general increased pace of society, is expressed in Giacomo Balla's Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash.
Expressionism, c.1905-1920, Germany
Whilst Italy was speeding through futurism Germany was following Munch's Norwegian lead with expressionism. Germany had two major expressionist groups 'Brücke' (Bridge) and 'Der Blaue Reiter' (The Blue Rider). The Brücke group focus was on rejecting traditional methods and promoting vibrant palettes that conveyed emotion. This is notably seen in Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's paintings . Der Blaue Reiter group were more heavily focused on symbolic abstraction and mark making characterised by bold marks as seen within the work of Wassily Kandinsky. The expressionists are perhaps best known for the controversy they incited. When the Nazi's rose to power in 1933 one of the fist German cultural areas that came under attack was expressionism. Thousands of expressionist works were looted from galleries across Germany and exhibited in the Nazi exhibition Degenerate Art. Now, I could go on about Degenerate art all day but for the sake of staying on topic (and not self-plagiarising my dissertation) I will simply say that this changed the course of modernism indefinitely and undeniably.
Dadaism, c.1916-1922, Switzerland
Jumping across Europe to our Swiss friends in Zurich we encounter the anti-war and anti-establishment artists of the Dada period. Primarily working with found materials such as newspaper to create collage-based works termed 'photomontages' Dadaists responded to the horrors of the first world war and societal challenges such as mass production and labour. A personal favourites Dadaist of mine is German artist Hannah Höch. Höch not only critiqued the wider social-economic stance of Germany like her fellow Dadaists but looked at this through a female lens. With the advent of the 'new woman' in Weimar Germany that questioned pre-existing notions of sexuality and gender Höch's work illuminated the failures of modern society and how specifically this impacted the female experience.
![Ohne Titel (Aus einem ethnographischen Museum) (Untitled [From an Ethnographic Museum]), 1930, Collage, 48.3 x 32.1 cm, Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg. Photo courtesy of Maria Thrun.](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/7e813f_7e3da4cccf89491c97c1fd374ddee2e0~mv2.png/v1/fill/w_920,h_1329,al_c,q_90,enc_avif,quality_auto/7e813f_7e3da4cccf89491c97c1fd374ddee2e0~mv2.png)
Vorticism, c. 1912-1915, United Kingdom
Vorticism peaked just before the first world war embracing new modern machinery and modern design. Vorticist work is characterized by abstraction, bold, black, geometric, lines and vivid colours. The Vorticists collated and expressed their artistic views in their own magazine Blast the first issue of which was published 1 July 1914 . This magazine listed the likes and dislikes of Vorticists likes of which included: salvation army, castor oil and Cromwell. Dislikes included: drizzle, France, and the mecca of America. The distinctly British undertone to the manifesto is incredibly amusing and swiftly brought the UK into the modernist debate.
From 1914-1918 and beyond the nature of modernism changed and eventually modernism became post-modernism. This transitionary period of post-modernism is vital to the trajectory of art history. In the next and final instalment of -isms and schisms we will go into all the details of post- modernisms niches. For now, I will leave you with the knowledge that the modernism I have discussed in this article is just one canonised slice of a global shift in culture.
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