MODERNISM

Modernism

• Definition: Modern character, tendencies, or values; adherence to or sympathy with what is modern.
• Background: Modern Art refers to art created roughly between 1867 and 1975. Major movements included Impressionism, Cubism, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, and Pop Art. 

In 1907, Pictorialism was challenged by a new way of photography called ‘Straight Photography’ which is photography that is sharp and clear, based upon only what the camera could do, un-manipulated in the darkroom.

·      Paul Strand: –

o   ‘Wall Street (1915)’

o   ‘Blind Woman (1916)’

o   ‘Fifth Avenue (New York 1915)’

o   ‘Portrait (Washington Square Park 1916)’

o   ‘Lathe No. 3 (New York 1923)

Paul Strand (October 16, 1890 – March 31, 1976) was an American photographer and filmmaker who, along with fellow modernist photographers like Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Weston, helped establish photography as an art form in the 20th century. His diverse body of work, spanning six decades, covers numerous genres and subjects throughout the Americas, Europe and Africa.

Photo Realism – moving away from pictorialism

Modernist Painter: Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, Charles Scheeler, Charles Demuth, John Marin, Georgia O'Keeffe, Abraham Walkowitz, Gerald Murphy, Edward Hooper

Modernist Photographers: Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand

Charles Scheeler : 

• American painter who is best known for his precise renderings of industrial forms in which abstract, formal qualities were emphasized.
• Sheeler studied at the School of Industrial Art in Philadelphiaand then at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. He contributed six paintings, mainly still lifes, to the New York Armory Show of 1913.
• To make a living, Sheeler turned to photography about 1912. Initially he worked on assignments from Philadelphia architects. He moved to New York City in 1919 and the next year collaborated with the photographer Paul Strand on a film, Mannahatta, a study of the buildings of the city. During the early 1920s he received recognition for both his paintings and his photography. In 1927 he made an outstanding series of photographs of the Ford Motor Company's plant at River Rouge, Mich. This assignment was followed in 1929 by a series on the Chartres cathedral, France.

Man Ray (born Emmanuel Radnitzky, August 27, 1890 – November 18, 1976) was an American modernist artist who spent most of his career in Paris, France. He was a significant contributor to the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal. He produced major works in a variety of media but considered himself a painter above all. He was best known in the art world for his avant-garde photography, and he was a renowned fashion and portrait photographer. Ray is also noted for his work with photograms, which he called "rayographs" in reference to himself.

Avant-garde refers to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics.

Avant-garde Photography was the type of photography that interested me the most out of the Modernist movement. My favourite of the avant-garde photographer’s was Diane Arbus.  

Diane Arbus 

(March 14, 1923 – July 26, 1971) was an American photographer and writer noted for black-and-white square photographs of "deviant and marginal people (dwarfs, giants, transgender people, nudists, circus performers) or of people whose normality seems ugly or surreal". Arbus believed that a camera could be "a little bit cold, a little bit harsh" but its scrutiny revealed the truth; the difference between what people wanted others to see and what they really did see – the flaws. A friend said that Arbus said that she was "afraid ... that she would be known simply as 'the photographer of freaks'", and that phrase has been used repeatedly to describe her. In 1972, a year after she killed herself, Arbus became the first American photographer to have photographs displayed at the Venice Biennale. Millions viewed traveling exhibitions of her work in 1972–1979. Between 2003 and 2006, Arbus and her work were the subjects of another major traveling exhibition, Diane Arbus Revelations. In 2006, the motion picture Fur, starring Nicole Kidman as Arbus, presented a fictional version of her life story

A young man in curlers at home on West 20th Street, N.Y.C. 1966

Child with a toy hand grenade in Central Park, N.Y.C. 1962

Child with a toy hand grenade in Central Park, N.Y.C. 1962

Identical twins, Roselle, New Jersey 1967

Boy with a straw hat waiting to march in a pro-war parade, N.Y.C. 1967

Xmas tree in a living room in Levittown, Long Island 1963

 "Freaks was a thing I photographed a lot. It was one of the first things I photographed and it had a terrific kind of excitement for me. I just used to adore them. I still do adore some of them. I don't quite mean they're my best friends but they made me feel a mixture of shame and awe. There's a quality of legend about freaks. Like a person in a fairy tale who stops you and demands that you answer a riddle. Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats." - Diane Arbus