Looked this week at the painting ‘Still Life Chair With Caning’ by Pablo Picasso in 1912. This painting was the beginning something different to the art world and is believed to be the first collage or one of the first in conjunction with Georges Braque. This new style of Cubism used found objects, flattened perspective and multiple viewpoints, it was a question of the elitism of art at the time and the difference between high and low art. Is it illusionistic and cheating?
Also looked at Futurism which developed around the time of Cubism and was influenced by it. The Futurists were based in Italy at the turn of the 20th century and they rejected all of the past. This included the Renaissance and the Baroque styles of art in Italy’s past. They instead focused on new technology, the way things moved and speed. The movement was lead by Fillipo Tommaso Marinetti and founded in 1909. The Futurists celebrated and supported World War One and the idea of destruction to pave the way for a new future. It reflected an emphasis on change, speed, noise, movement, machines, pollution and cities. Some other Futurists were Giamcomo Balla and Antonio Sant’Elia. Guilio Bragalia was a photographer at the time who was part of the movement. Another photgrapher at the time was Etienne-Jules Marey who used long shutter speeds to achieve the effects of movement. Umberto Boccioni was another Futurist who painted ‘The City Rises’ in 1910 an important painting as it pulled away from Cubism but also kept elements of it and included elements of Futurism.
Vorticism was another movement at the time, it was a short lived British movement from 1914-1917 and focused on the rejection of classic subjects like landscapes and nudes and focused instead on the machine and geometric shapes, it leaned towards abstraction. It was lead and invented by Percy Wyndham Lewis.
Looked at Eadweard Muybridge and his photgraphy and focus on the movement of a subject.
The world at the turn of the 20th century was a time of turmoil as personal and artistic differences emerged. 1914 marked the start of WW1, Facism was beginning around this time and many Futurists enlisted in the army when Italy joined the war and many were killed.
The Futurist manifesto said “We will glorify war—the world’s only hygiene—militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of freedom-bringers, beautiful ideas worth dying for, and scorn for woman.” Extract from http://391.org/manifestos/1909-the-futurist-manifesto-f-t-marinetti.html#.W6oPg-SotPY
Umberto Boccioni – Simultaneous Visions 1912
Will's Art in the 19th/20th Century Blog 