Art his quiz

Courbet, The Studio of the Artist: an allegory summing up 7 years of my artistic & moral life.

1855. Realist. The title is a contradiction, 'real allegory'In Courbet's earlier work, "real" could be seen as a rejection of the heroic and ideal in favor of the actual. Courbet's "real" might also be a coarse and unpleasant truth, tied to economic injustice. The "real" might also point to shifting notions of morality.The artist is immediately recognizable in the center of the canvas. His head is cocked back and his absurd beard is thrust forward at the same haughty angle seen in Bonjour Monsieur Courbet. There is a nude model, which is not uncommon sight in an artists studio, yet Courbet is painting a landscape. In the realm of the "real," she functions as the model, but as "allegory," she maybe truth or liberty according to the political readings of some scholars She is also a symbol of academic art, and a symbol of Courbet's inspiration (and this particular model may well have inspired the artist, since they were lovers.) On the left of the painting are the everyday people od paris: a woodsman, the village idiot, a Jew, and others. There are several other allusions, such as the inclusion of the current ruler of France, Louis-Napoléon, There is also a "lay figure"/"crucified figure" directly to the left of Courbet's easel. This figure appears contorted and potentially mangled. Art historians Benedict Nicolson and Georges Riat both interpret this figure as a symbol of the "death" of the art of the Royal Academy of Art in France. Here then, are the country folk whom Courbet faces.On the opposite side of the canvas are, in contrast, a far more handsome and well-dressed party. Gathered at the right lower corner of the painting are Courbet's wealthy private collectors and his urbane friends. In the canvas's extreme lower right sits Charles Baudelaire, the influential poet who was a close friend of the painter.Courbet has placed himself in the position of creator. But does he want us to use a capital "C"? What then of the model/muse? In the place of the blessed on the left are the country folk. Again, the pure morality of nature is referenced. On the right side in place of the damned are the urban sophisticates. Again, the notion of the corruption of the city is present. And in the bottom right corner, where Michelangelo placed Satan himself, we find, amusingly, Courbet's close friend, the poet Baudelaire, author of The Flowers of Evil.

Munch, The Dance of Life, c. 1899

A distinction can be drawn between those of Munch's imaginative works that are directly symbolic, like Jealousy, and those like the present picture that are illustrations of a metaphor. The latter may be more difficult to interpret. Life is not in fact a dance and metaphor is too vague to give much indication of what is intended. The picture, however, appears to be a more complex and personalized version of Woman in Three Stages, with an innocent woman in white on the left, a sensual woman dancing with the man, and an anguished woman in black on the right. All three resemble Tulla Larsen; the girls dancing in the background may also represent her. The man in the foreground appears to be Munch. It is possible to construct a reasonable explanation of the scene if we remember that at times Munch used the depth of the picture space as a time scale, moving from the distant past in the far background up to the present in the foreground adjacent to the picture plane. Applying this principle here, the initial impulse for life's dance comes from the sun with its phallic column of light crossing the sea. In front of this, far away on the beach stands a solitary girl, waiting for a sex partner. At about the same distance but now on the greensward a group of men appear to contend for the girl's favor - a point where jealousy arise. Nearer to us a chosen male partner dances decorously with the girl; this is the stage of courtship. Still closer to the foreground courtship has progressed to lust, in the form of a leering man ready to ravish his partner. His face is a gross caricature of the playwright Gunnar Heiberg, who had introduced Munch to Tulla Larsen and of whom he was jealous, believing Tulla had previously had an affair with him. The girl still wears white but her hair has darkened and reddened. The couple in the foreground represent the final stage, where the dance of life turns into a dance of death. They glide through the motion like somnambulists, trapped by their fate. Munch's feet are enveloped by the coils of Tulla's red gown, while its predatory contour almost completely encases him. Yet there is no eye contact, they remain spiritually remote from each other. Placed in profile, unlike nearly all the other figures, they form the timeless image of a pair for whom creative life, his artistic, hers biological, has ended. Tulla on the left looks forward naively to connubial bliss, for her gaze misses the distressing vision, but she on the right looks straight at it, apprehending the fatal consequences of love.

Klee, Angelus Novus, 1920

Angelus Novus (New Angel) is a 1920 monoprint by the Swiss-German artist Paul Klee, using the oil transfer method he invented. It is now in the collection of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. In the ninth thesis of his 1940 essay "Theses on the Philosophy of History," the German critic and philosopher Walter Benjamin, who purchased the print in 1921, interprets it this way: A Klee painting named Angelus Novus shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.[1] Otto Karl Werckmeister notes that Benjamin's reading of Klee's New Angel image has led to it becoming "an icon of the left."[2] The name and concept of the angel has inspired works by other artists, filmmakers, writers and musicians, including John Akomfrah, Ariella Azoulay, Carolyn Forché, and Rabih Alameddine.[3][4][5] In September 1940 Walter Benjamin committed suicide during an attempt to flee the Nazi regime. After World War II Walter Benjamin's lifelong friend, Gershom Scholem (1897-1982), the distinguished scholar of Jewish mysticism, inherited the drawing. According to Scholem, Benjamin felt a mystical identification with the Angelus Novus and incorporated it in his theory of the "angel of history," a melancholy view of historical process as an unceasing cycle of despair.[6] In 2015, in conjunction with her solo exhibition at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, American artist R. H. Quaytman discovered that the monoprint had been adhered to an 1838 copper-plate engraving by Friedrich Muller after a Lucas Cranach portrait of Martin Luther.

Picasso Head of a Woman; Paris; 1909; bronze

Artist: Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), who, together with Georges Braque (1882-1963), undertook the greatest revolution in European art since the invention of perspective in Renaissance Florence. This was cubism, though the name - coined by Matisse - says nothing about what they were trying to achieve. In 1907 Braque visited Picasso's studio in the Bateau Lavoir in Montmartre, where the Spanish artist had lived since migrating from Barcelona to Paris in 1904. Although Braque was at first shocked by Picasso's use of African masks and jagged, flat compositions, the two of them pooled ideas over the next few years as they repudiated perspective in works of unrivalled density and power. Subject: Fernande Olivier (1881-1966), Picasso's lover. Fernande - real name Amelie Lang - had worked as an artist's model in Montmartre and was an aspiring painter. She fell in love with Picasso when they smoked opium together. Picasso spoke of being caught by her beauty, but by 1909, when he made this head, the strain in their relationship was showing. That autumn they settled in a new flat, where Fernande's desire to be respectable got on Pablo's nerves. In 1911 he started seeing Eva Gouel. In 1912 the all-but-ostracised Fernande had an affair, giving Picasso an excuse to end their relationship. By the end of that year she was borrowing money from Gertrude Stein. In 1933 she published her evocative memoir Picasso and His Friends. Distinguishing features: You can never exhaust the richness of this head. It is like a mountain range, a landscape. It is transformed every time you move your own head, walk around it, bend closer, taking in the rough surface with the marks of Picasso's touch, the warm softness of the plaster that contrasts with the sharp contours. It has been compared to an anatomist's flayed model in the way Picasso seems to see beneath the skin, revealing a tangle of tendons in Fernande's neck but it doesn't feel violent in that way at all. They had spent the summer of 1909 in the Spanish mountains, where Picasso painted Fernande in a similarly faceted way, making this head almost as soon as he returned to Paris. The fractured texture of Fernande's face, her hair a system of gorges and upland ridges, is a metaphor for the way we experience another person. Like Rembrandt's most intimate portraits, it is about the mystery of being close to another human being. Picasso makes you recognise this by inviting your eye down into those channels and crevices, until you feel you are inside Fernande's head. This is one of the seminal works of cubism, and in the state that Picasso liked it best. He moulded Fernande's head in clay, then made two plaster casts from which he authorised a series of bronzes. He never liked the bronzes as much as this raw plaster version. It is a key work in the development of cubism because it was the first time Picasso realised he could translate his new kind of painting into three dimensions this is one of his paintings from that time given solid form. Solidity was what Picasso wanted in art: he wanted not just to see the world but to touch it. Fernande's head is a masterpiece because it perfectly realises his desire to represent not the surfaces of things but the essence, the structure - Fernande not just naked but experienced from within her own skin. You can no more feel you have exhausted this piece than know everything about another person. Inspirations and influences: The impact of this work was immediate: the futurist painter Boccioni saw it and started experimenting with sculpture, producing his striding figure Unique Forms of Continuity in Space in 1913.

Kirchner, Five women on the street, 1913, Wallraf Richartz Museum, Cologne

Berlin 1913, city 'tarts' go window shopping. 'Quick, nervous brushstrokes'. The viewer is a voyeur. Kirchner between 1913-15 painted a series of similar street scenes. This one was the first. In the lower-left hand corner a car is rushing past. The picture gives the illusion of a hurried execution. The women are dressed fashionably, in flashy coats with furs, high heels and fancy hats. They seem grotesque. They seem crow-like. Kirchner moved a great deal as a child, which has been interpreted as a reason for the restlessness of his work.

Duchamp In Advance of the Broken Arm, 1915

Dadaism during WW1- artists didn't want to have any part in the fighting, they wanted to show the absurdity of the modern world. Duchamp created ready-mades, some assisted ready mades, were two objects put together, others, like 'in advance of the broken arm' were 'pure ready mades'. There is an element of cynicism in the work, but Duchamp would argue that the 'art' of finding a perfect ready made was no straight forward- one had to hunt for it. Duchamp is trying to get us to think about what art truly is and how we value it. Perhaps in the 20th century art was no longer about the proficiency of ones brushstrokes- it is resting in symbolic langauge, and how art can transform the way we see the world. He wanted us to be shocked by the absurdity of titling a snow shovel such an uppity, grandiose name and be challenged by it. The work is meant to be absurd.

Matisse, The Dance (second version), 1910,

Dance, is a large decorative panel, painted with a companion piece, Music, specifically for the Russian businessman and art collector Sergei Shchukin, with whom Matisse had a long association. Until the October Revolution of 1917, this painting hung together with Music on the staircase of Shchukin's Moscow mansion.[4] The painting shows five dancing figures, painted in a strong red, set against a very simplified green landscape and deep blue sky. It reflects Matisse's incipient fascination with primitive art, and uses a classic Fauvist color palette: the intense warm colors against the cool blue-green background and the rhythmical succession of dancing nudes convey the feelings of emotional liberation and hedonism. The painting is often associated with the "Dance of the Young Girls" from Igor Stravinsky's famous musical work The Rite of Spring. Dance is commonly recognized as "a key point of (Matisse's) career and in the development of modern painting".[5] It generally resides in the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, but was loaned to Hermitage Amsterdam for a period of six weeks from April 1 to May 9, 2010.[6]

Munch: Evening on the Street, c.1895

Edvard Munch was never happy. He objected every way. He saw singledom as misery. He saw coupledom as bondage. He saw rooms as claustrophobia. He didn't care for street life either. Evening on Karl Johan takes place on the main street in Kristiana (now Oslo). It shows a zombie-passeggiata. Gas-lit, moon-faced, gazing ahead, moving as if under hypnosis, a crowd that might have flowed out of Eliot or Sartre presses straight towards us. Geometry makes it inexorable. The descending diagonal of the receding houses continues into the slanting edge of the advancing crowd. It impels the people along, and binds them together into a collective force. But each face stares out in our direction, saucer-eyed and separately. This is a mass of solitaries. What is it makes Munch uneasy in crowds? Perhaps he wants to join in and finds he can't. Being in gatherings only makes him painfully aware he can never escape his solitude. Perhaps (more likely) he wants to be alone, and fears the way crowds threaten his isolation. The dark lean figure, in the middle of the road, walking apart and away, is likely Munch himself. Whichever, it sounds like a private anguish. But Evening on Karl Johan isn't a private image. Its visual rhetoric is thoroughly public. It has the power and directness of propaganda. Large simple shapes, bold tonal contrasts, explicit imagery: this picture could speak to us from a hundred yards away. You could blow it up and paste it up on the very street that it depicts. It announces "The Anxiety of Crowds" as boldly as any Soviet poster ever announced "The Dictatorship of the Proletariat". Munch's painting makes angst into a public cause. He probably takes the other side to Kim's. The tragedy of isolation? Quite the opposite. Resist the smothering social. Stand up for solitude. Get out and vote for the party of the alone. The 'cropping' techniques of Degas, Japanese prints, and photography, provide Munch with a method of intimating threat and unease, as the vacant, pitiless gazes of the bourgeois strollers bear down on the viewer. The mood of nocturnal catalepsy comes from Munch's experience as he waited for a mistress to meet him: 'She greeted him with a soft smile and walked on ... Everything became so empty and he felt so alone ... People who passed by looked so strange and awkward and he felt as if they looked at him, stared at him, all these faces pale in the evening light.' Compared with The Scream, however, this work is still more symbolist than expressionist - the raw power of the latter hidden under the great beauty of the blue night sky and the glowing lamps, a velvet surface disguising the terror. The single figure moving against the flow and walking in the middle of the street, evokes Munch's own situation as a 'bohemian' and radical artist, hounded by the middle-class authorities in the stifling parochialism of Christiania, in contrast with the larger world of Berlin, Paris and beyond for which he was yearning. Munch's mastery of symbolism, however, ensures that these personal interpretations do not intrude on the vision of universal anguish and every individual's fear of the mindless crowd.

Hannah Höch, Cut with the Dada Kitchen Knife through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany, 1919, collage of pasted papers,

Hannah Hoch was a prominent female artist within the Dada movement in Germany after WWI. Her photomontage "Cut with the Kitchen Knife Dada Through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany" reflected her views of the political and social issues that arose during this transitional time in German society. The long drawn out war that had focused the countries attention for so long was lost and Germany was left in a state of political chaos.[1] There was a clash between the old Weimar government and the uprising of a new left-wing communist party called the Spartasists. Hoch's title for this piece illustrates her critique of the "bloated and heavy handed" nature of the male dominated Weimer republic and German military.[2] She chooses to give specifications, such as kitchen knife and beer-belly, to make it clear that this piece is social commentary regarding gender issues in post-war Germany. The Dada movement wished to critically examine German culture by not glossing over the negative aspects, but rather accentuating them. Hoch cut out pieces of images and text found in magazines, advertisements, newspapers and journals.[3] She carefully pieced all these clippings back together in a way that made sense to her[4] and as she felt appropriately served her purpose of critical examination. At the time of this pieces creation in 1919 and 1920, Germany was experiencing political chaos after losing WWI. There was a struggle between two political parties, as German society navigated its way out of the old Weimer Republic and into the left-wing Communist movement. Dada artists used photomontage to express messages of critique that censorship would not allow to be put into words, as stated by George Grosz.[5] "Cut with the Kitchen Knife..." has a feeling of rapid progress portrayed through a mocking and satirical tone. Pieces of machine are exploding throughout the montage to symbolize booming industry and culture within an urban area. This booming progress is not displayed in a proud, exciting and dignified manner however, but rather in a circus-like environment. The mood is whimsical to the point of ridiculous, with theatrical expressions and dramatic body language mixed in with images of political figures serving as a critique of the political free-for-all between the old Weimer leaders and the new left-wing communist agenda. Dr. Juliana Kreinik simplified analysis of this photomontage by dividing it into four distinct sections. She called the upper-left corner "Dada Propaganda", the lower-left corner "Dada Persuasion", the lower-right corner "Dadaists" or "Dada World", and the upper-right corner "Anti-Dadaists". [6] In the center of the montage is an image of the head of Kathe Kollwitz, a German expressionist, floating above its dancer body. The dynamic movement of this central image seems to tie in the chaos that surrounds it and give a sense of movement and revolution to the busy montage. Within the section Kreinik called "Dada Propaganda" there is a large head of Albert Einstein framed by two German newspaper clippings that translate to "invest your money in dada!" and "he he, young man...dada is not an art trend".[7] To the right of Einstein is the head of Friedrich Ebert pasted upon a topless female performer's body. The lower-left corner referred to as "Dada Persuasion" is covered with images of crowds, and emerging from the midst of them is Karl Liebknecht. Lieknecht was the leader of the Communist part in Germany, but in 1919 he was arrested and executed due to his role in the Spartasist uprising.[8] The text clipping "join dada!" is bursting forth from his mouth. The Anti-Dadaist section is full of politicians displayed through Hoch's satirical and mocking eyes. Most prominent is the large head of Keiser Wilhelm II, who was blamed for leading Germany into the disastrous war.[9] His mustache is replaced with two pairs of wrestling legs spouting from either side of his nose. Below Wilhelm is the head of General Hinderberg attached to the body of a belly dancer. Hannah Hoch included many of her male Dadaist colleagues in the bottom-right section, referred to as "Dada World". She placed the heads of Dadaists George Grosz and Wielande Herzfelde together on the body of a ballerina. The heads of Lenin, fellow Dadaist Johannas Baader and leader of the Communist Party in Germany, Karl Radek, look caricatured atop small female performers' bodies. And, directly to the right is the small head of Karl Marx with his mouth open, seeming to say "Die grosse Welt Dada", which translates to "the big dada world".[10] The head of a modern art critic of the time is placed backwards upon the chubby, naked body of an infant.[11] Hoch leaves a clue in the bottom-right corner of the piece; a map showing countries in Europe at this time where women were allowed to vote. This clue reminds the viewer of her interest in pointing out gender issues and inequality within the Dada/art world, but also within society as a whole.[12] Hoch uses gender in "Cut with the Kitchen Knife..." to play games with the viewers perception, and create juxtaposing and sometimes confusing messages. She couples the heads of prominent male political figures with the bodies of female dancers and showgirls to emasculate them and strip them of their power.[13] "Cut with the Kitchen Knife Dada Through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch of Germany" gained Hoch a lot of attention, and is to this day considered one of her most popular pieces. The photomontage symbolizes the piecing together of German society after WWI, and the social, political and even artistic hypocrisies that existed in this era

Marc, Blue Horses, 1911

In 1910, Marc was a founding member of Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider), and was the center of a circle of German and Russian expatriate artists with August Macke, Wassily Kandinsky and several others whose works were seminal to the development of German Expressionism. This work, which represents three vividly coloured blue horses looking down in front of a landscape of rolling red hills, is characterized by its bright primary colors and a portrayal that utilizes stark simplicity, and a profound sense of emotion. According to the 'Encyclopædia Britannica', "the powerfully simplified and rounded outlines of the horses are echoed in the rhythms of the landscape background, uniting both animals and setting into a vigorous and harmonious organic whole.".[1] It is thought that the curved lines used to depict the subject are to emphasize "a sense of harmony, peace, and balance" in a spiritually-pure animal world and that by viewing human beings are allowed to join this harmony.[2] Marc gave an emotional or psychological meaning or purpose to the colors he used in his work: blue was used for masculinity and spirituality, yellow represented feminine joy, and red encased the sound of violence and of base matter. Marc used blue throughout his career to represent spirituality and his use of vivid color is thought to have been an attempt to eschew the material world to evoke a spiritual or transcendental essence.[3][4][5] This oil painting on canvas measures 41.625 inches by 71.3125 inches (unframed) and is unsigned. This is one of Marc's earliest major works depicting animals and the more important of his series of portraits of horses in various colors. It is often thought that Marc thought animals to be more pure and more beautiful than man and represented a more pantheistic understanding of the divine or of spirituality.[6] Swiss painter Jean Bloé Niestlé (1884-1942) urged Marc to "capture the essence of the animal."[7] According to art historian Gabi La Cava, Marc depicts "the feeling that is evoked by the subject matter is most important"—more so that zoological accuracy.[8]

Marcel Duchamp (France/USA), LHOOQ, 1919.

L.H.O.O.Q. (French pronunciation: ​[ɛl aʃ o o ky]) is a work of art by Marcel Duchamp. First conceived in 1919, the work is one of what Duchamp referred to as readymades, or more specifically a rectified ready-made.[1] The readymade involves taking mundane, often utilitarian objects not generally considered to be art and transforming them, by adding to them, changing them, or (as in the case of his most famous work Fountain) simply renaming them and placing them in a gallery setting. In L.H.O.O.Q. the objet trouvé ("found object") is a cheap postcard reproduction of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa onto which Duchamp drew a moustache and beard in pencil and appended the title.The use of computers permitted new forms of parodies of L.H.O.O.Q., including interactive ones. One form of computerized parody using the Internet juxtaposes layers over the original, on a webpage. In one example, the original layer is Mona Lisa. The second layer is transparent in the main, but is opaque and obscures the original layer in some places (for example, where Duchamp located the moustache). This technology is described at the George Washington University Law School website.[11] An example of this technology is a copy of Mona Lisa with a series of different superpositions-first Duchamp's moustache, then an eye patch, then a hat, a hamburger, and so on. This is a link to the graphic. The point of this technology (which is explained on the foregoing website for a copyright law class) is that it permits making a parody that need not involve making an infringing copy of the original work if it simply uses an inline link to the original, which is presumably on an authorized webpage.[12] According to the website at which the material is located: The layers paradigm is significant in a computer-related or Internet context because it readily describes a system in which the person ultimately responsible for creating the composite (here, corresponding to [a modern-day] Duchamp) does not make a physical copy of the original work in the sense of storing it in permanent form (fixed as a copy) distributed to the end user. Rather, the person distributes only the material of the subsequent layers, [so that] the aggrieved copyright owner (here, corresponding to Leonardo da Vinci) distributes the material of the underlying [original Mona Lisa] layer, and the end user's system receives both. The end user's system then causes a temporary combination, in its computer RAM and the user's brain. The combination is a composite of the layers. Framing and superimposition of popup windows exemplify this paradigm.[13] Other computer-implemented distortions of L.H.O.O.Q. or Mona Lisa reproduce the elements of the original, thereby creating an infringing reproduction, if the underlying work is protected by copyright. (Leonardo's rights in Mona Lisa have, of course, long expired.) This is a link to examples of the foregoing parodies, together with an explanation of the technology. (These animations were originally prepared by the late Professor Ed Stephan of Western Washington University.)

Gauguin, Les Contes Barbares, (Primitive Tales), 1902

Les Contes barbares (Primitive Tales) featuring Tohotau again at the right. The left figure is Jacob Meyer de Haan, a painter friend of Gauguin's from their Pont-Aven days who had died a few years previously, while the middle figure is again androgynous, identified by some as Haapuani. The Buddha-like pose and the lotus blossoms suggests to Elizabeth Childs that the picture is a meditation on the perpetual cycle of life and the possibility of rebirth.[168] As these paintings reached Vollard after Gauguin's sudden death, nothing is known about Gauguin's intentions in their execution.

Picasso, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, 1907

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (The Young Ladies of Avignon, and originally titled The Brothel of Avignon)[2] is a large oil painting created in 1907 by the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso (1881-1973). The work portrays five nude female prostitutes from a brothel on Carrer d'Avinyó (Avinyó Street) in Barcelona. Each figure is depicted in a disconcerting confrontational manner and none are conventionally feminine. The women appear as slightly menacing and rendered with angular and disjointed body shapes. Three figures on the left exhibit facial features in the Iberian style of Picasso's native Spain, while the two on the right are shown with African mask-like features. The racial primitivism evoked in these masks, according to Picasso, moved him to "liberate an utterly original artistic style of compelling, even savage force."[3][4] In this adaptation of Primitivism and abandonment of perspective in favor of a flat, two-dimensional picture plane, Picasso makes a radical departure from traditional European painting. This proto-Cubist work is widely considered to be seminal in the early development of both Cubism and Modern art. Les Demoiselles was revolutionary and controversial, and led to widespread anger and disagreement, even amongst the painter's closest associates and friends. Matisse considered the work something of a bad joke, yet indirectly reacted to it in his 1908 Bathers with a Turtle. Braque too initially disliked the painting, yet perhaps more than anyone else, studied the work in great detail. And effectively, his subsequent friendship and collaboration with Picasso led to the Cubist revolution.[5][6] Its resemblance to Cézanne's Les Grandes Baigneuses, Paul Gauguin's statue Oviri and El Greco's Opening of the Fifth Seal has been widely discussed by later critics. A photograph of the Les Demoiselles was first published in an article by Gelett Burgess entitled The Wild Men of Paris, Matisse, Picasso and Les Fauves, The Architectural Record, May 1910.[7] At the time of its first exhibition in 1916, the painting was deemed immoral.[8] The work, painted in the studio of Picasso at Le Bateau-Lavoir, was seen publicly for the first time at the Salon d'Antin in July 1916; an exhibition organized by the poet André Salmon. It was at this exhibition that André Salmon, who had already mentioned the painting in 1912 under the title Le Bordel philosophique, gave the work its present title Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (in preference to the title originally chosen by Picasso, Le Bordel d'Avignon) to lessen its scandalous impact on the public.[2][5][9][10] Picasso, who had always referred to it as mon bordel (my brothel),[8] or Le Bordel d'Avignon,[9] never liked Salmon's title, and as an edulcoration would have preferred Las chicas de Avignon instead.[2] Pablo Picasso's painting "The Young Ladies of Avignon" ("Les Demoiselles d'Avignon"; 1907) is the most famous example of the way in which the use of geometric forms and planes in African masks helped to inspire the rise of cubism and abstract art. Picasso plays with the tradition that makes the female nude a symbol of natural purity; the subjects of his painting are prostitutes. The distorted shapes of the women's bodies, as also in Henri Matisse's Blue Nude of the same year, challenge the expectation that paintings will offer idealized representations of female beauty. Picasso's distortion of the women's faces makes the painting a famous example of primitivism in modern art. While the appeal to primitive art served in part as a challenge to western tradition, African art also seemed to Picasso and his contemporaries to confirm the direction that modern painting had taken since Cézanne. The modernists admired the abstract quality of African and other native art, its tendency to turn the human face into a geometric form rather than a realistic copy of nature. This interest in the formal qualities of the work of art, rather than its accuracy as a representation of reality, contributed importantly to the development of modernism

Max Ernst (German/French), The Blessed Virgin Chastises the Infant Jesus Before Three Witnesses: André Breton, Paul Éluard, and the Painter 1926,

Max Ernst, "The Blessed Virgin Chastising The Christ Child Before Three Witnesses: Andre Breton, Paul Eluard and The Painter", 1926 People with intelligent souls and minds are never unconditional believers or unconditional atheists. Each of them invents a unique combination of religiosity and atheism. But people of exceptional intellectual sensitivity like Breton, Eluard or Ernst are capable of creating unique combinations of feelings and ideas in response to objects or situations appearing in their field of attention. Their reactions on witnessing the Virgin chastising the child Christ are especially interesting and meaningful. According to the painting not too many people are psychologically able to witness/ visualize the corporeal punishment of child Christ by quite a determined Virgin Mary. The encounter of godly and human substances should be more dramatic than clash of galaxies. As soon as we are talking here not about the child Jesus but child Christ, more than twenty centuries of Christianity have opened to billions of observers the relations between mother Mary and Christ. Of course, amongst these billions only very few people would pay attention to the issue of child Christ being physically abused by his mother. That's why the window we see in the painting is so small - not many people will dare to look through it. All three artists we see on the other side of the window came to see and confront the unbearable truth. But even Andre Breton cannot force himself to look straight through the window. Paul Eluard saw the truth but his eyes refused to continue to see. And only Max Ernst is forcing himself to keep on looking - we see his terrifying - gloomy and desperate face. But what is the big deal about Mary chastising her son? History is a reservoir of facts, and human behavior can be different or similar in various historical periods. The physical punishment of children by their parents is a very conservatively stable behavioral archetype. Even today and even in Western democracies physical abuse of children is proudly widespread practice. The question here - about compatibility or incompatibility of godly and human realities, has additional complications because the very sensibilities of a superhuman world and human world are changing, together with continuation of Creation through human history. But why is the Holy Virgin so determine to punish her son? How strained and masklike her face has become! It has lost all the feminine and motherly softness, all the reverie towards the godly nature of child Christ. It is, as though Mary was trying to overcome her natural and pious compassion. Whom does she try to imitate? An extremely symbolic space with two walls, on the left and on the right, is opened to the heavens. The right wall is, as if, separating god-father's kingdom of sunny Creation. The left wall is enclosing the human world. And the area of Mary and the child Christ separates the two and mediates between them. It is the area where godly emanation is represented by the sharp triangle of light from above pointed at the godly child. Behind the wall signifying the human world, we see our three witnesses of the truth of the semi-godly and semi-human realm where we see the sadistic cruelty towards Christ as a human god, towards the very human aspect of godliness. On the buttocks and thighs of the child we see redness from the blows inflicted by the mother's hand (Ernst suggests here, it seems, that the cruelty towards Christ is part of Mary's destiny). The god-child's halo ring has fallen to the ground. The position of the child's body in relation to mother's "blasphemously" suggests that sadistic libido on part of the mother is part of the situation when beating of the child has perverted sexual connotations which is often the case with physical abuse of children. The parent who has lost his/her temper or follows the proverb that sparing the rod means spoiling the child, is, indeed, as if, trying to break the child's "stubborn desire" "to be capricious and spoilt" ("to be worshipped"), because parents believe that the sooner a child will learn the lesson the better it will be for him. It is, as though, the child who doesn't know yet the ordeals and disappointments of adult life, all the terrors and humiliations adults have to go through, and "claims" "to be super-human in comparison with his parents", has to go through tough pedagogical lessons to be returned to real - human condition. It is possible that in a situation of child Christ it is the mother who feels the necessity to "teach her son" the human - humiliated destiny. Let's return to, as if, petrified face of Ernst's Blessed Virgin. Can it be, that in her (unconscious) envy that she is connected with godly substance only because of her son, she, in the moments of punishing him, righteously feels herself spiritually "bigger" than he, a... goddess? Can it be that for her, earthly woman abused by the patriarchal power and belonging to the bottom of the social hierarchy, to punish the child Christ is the only way to feel worthier than she regularly felt she is? If it is what Ernst is telling us, then we can talk about the Virgin Mary complex in every woman/mother in relation to her sons (who are traditionally considered worthier than she just by belonging to male gender). The fact that Mary's Nimbus is victoriously at its place above her head while Christ's is on the ground, symbolizes the triumph of her secondary godliness over his direct one. But the reason why Breton, Eluard and Ernst have such a hard times while looking at child Christ being abused by his mother is that they as creative intellectuals are more Christians by sensibility than Christian fundamentalists and dogmatists - they suffer that the godliness of human being (the existentially spiritual human potential) is destroyed with every new generation starting with childhood, when parents frustrated by their humiliated socio-economic life cannot resist revenging their children for their own wounds inflicted by an unjust and cruel life. We can imagine, how tormenting it must have been for Breton, Eluard and Ernst trapped between Two World Wars and post-WWII mass culture, to see how existentially spiritual potential of human beings is destroyed by various politico-economic systems with a Christian tradition. May be, the incredible attempt of human spiritual genius in Christianity to connect, to "marry" the godly and the human can be successful, but in a fallen world it's very difficult to achieve. Godliness can create monstrous envy and hatred in the human beings - humiliated, uneducated and uncertain in their survival, and then the drastic contrast between fragility and dependency of a child, on the one hand, and the naïve narcissism of childhood, on the other, can only activate this unconscious envy in adults. In this sense, every child has something from Christ. It is secularly spiritual interpretation of child abuse by Ernst in his painting makes it so painful for viewers to see Christ corporeally punished in every abused child.

Mondrian, Composition C (no.III), with Red, Yellow and Blue 1935

Piet Mondrian was a Dutch pioneer of abstract art and a founder of the De Stijl movement. During his lifetime he was celebrated for the purity of his abstract paintings and the methodical practice used to create them. Mondrian produced his most famous works from the 1920s, in his own style called Neo-Plasticism where he restricted his painting to a three colour palette and black grid system for which he is most famous. As well as being crucial to the development of modern art, his iconic abstract works still influence modern design and popular culture today

Munch, In Hell: Self-portrait, 1903

Self-Portrait in Hell clearly reveals how Munch at the time perceived his position as a man and an artist: a private hell. In the foreground, Edvard Munch has placed his own naked and unprotected figure. The abstract background is painted with fierce, expressive brush-strokes that provoke an intense, nervous atmosphere. The colour-scale goes from yellow /orange to orange /brown via red to black and is reminiscent of flames and smoke. The huge black field to the left of the figure forms a tremendous threatening shadow that might evoke ideas of a grave or a great black wing. The head with its dark contour is red as flames, while the figure seems to be illuminated from below. This gives the skin a wax-like yellow tone and also emphasises the white areas of the eyes. The light-effect thus contributes to the picture's eerie atmosphere. A red brush-stroke traverses the neck like a wound. Despite the obvious painfulness of the psychological situation, the painting doesn't present the artist as a helpless victim. Munch stands upright and self-assured, supporting himself on his strong arm as if he is posing for an official portrait. He is totally aware of his horrible situation, but has decided not to succumb. He has rather portrayed himself as a dark ruler of his own gloomy kingdom. The flames and smoke might refer to guilt and inner torment, but also to energetic rage.

Picasso, Still life with chair caning, 1912

Still-Life with Chair Caning Virtually all avant-garde art of the second half of the twentieth century is indebted to this brave renunciation. But that doesn't make this kind of Cubism, often called Synthetic Cubism (piecing together, or synthesis of form), any easier to interpret. At first glance, Picasso's Still-Life with Chair Caning of 1912 might seem a mish-mash of forms instead of clear picture. But we can understand the image—and other like it—by breaking down Cubist pictorial language into parts. Let's start at the upper right: almost at the edge of the canvas (at two o'clock) there is the handle of a knife. Follow it to the left to find the blade. The knife cuts a piece of citrus fruit. You can make out the rind and the segments of the slice at the bottom right corner of the blade. Below the fruit, which is probably a lemon, is the white, scalloped edge of a napkin. To the left of these things and standing vertically in the top center of the canvas (twelve o'clock) is a wine glass. It's hard to see at first, so look carefully. Just at the top edge of the chair caning is the glass's base, above it is the stem (thicker than you might expect), and then the bowl of the glass. It is difficult to find the forms you would expect because Picasso depicts the glass from more than one angle. At eleven o'clock is the famous "JOU," which means "game" in French, but also the first three letters of the French word for newspaper (or more literally, "daily"; journal=daily). In fact, you can make out the bulk of the folded paper quite clearly. Don't be confused by the pipe that lays across the newspaper. Do you see its stem and bowl?

Brancusi The Kiss; 1925; freestone

The Kiss is a sculpture by Romanian Modernist sculptor Constantin Brâncuși. It is an early example of his proto-cubist style of non-literal representation. This plaster was exhibited at the 1913 Armory Show and published in the Chicago Tribune, 25 March 1913.[1] This early plaster sculpture is one of six casts that Brancusi made of the 1907-08 The Kiss. Versions The original stone carving is in the Muzeul de Arta at Craiova, Romania.[2] Brâncuși created many versions of The Kiss, further simplifying geometric forms and sparse objects in each version, tending each time further toward abstraction.[3] His abstract style emphasizes simple geometrical lines that balance forms inherent in his materials with the symbolic allusions of representational art. Here, the shape of the original block of material is maintained. Another version of The Kiss serves as a tombstone in Montparnasse cemetery in Paris, France.[4] Another version still can be seen at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.[5] This version of The Kiss is one of the artist's most well known works, along with Sleeping Muse (1908), Prometheus (1911), Mademoiselle Pogany (1913), The Newborn (1915), Bird in Space (1919) and The Column of the Infinite (Coloana infinitului), known as The Endless Column (1938)

Max Beckman (Germany/Netherlands/USA), Night, 1918-19

The Night is a 20th-century painting by German artist Max Beckmann, created between the years of 1918 and 1919. It is an icon of the post-World War I movement, Neue Sachlichkeit, or New Objectivity. It is an oil painting on canvas, located at the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf.[1] Three men appear to invade a small, cramped room, where they terrorize the scene. To the left, a man is hanged by one of the intruders, and his arm twisted by another. A woman, seemingly the man's wife, is bound to one of the room's supports after having been raped. To the right, the child is about to be taken away by one of the intruders—note the feet near the top right hand corner. Techniques[edit] The subject matter is instantly chaotic, amplified by the artist's use of color and form. The painting is limited only to brown tones and vibrant red shades. Also, Beckmann mastered a form commonly associated with early 20th-century Fauvism artists such as Henri Matisse: the painting is compositionally flat and stilted, with no implementations of depth. For instance, though the woman appears at the forefront of the piece, she is bound to the room's back entrance. The artist deviated from conventional avant-garde, non-representational paintings such as Cubism and Dada. The sporadic interruptions of vibrant red and the painting's intrusive angularity serve to shock the viewer, and animate the scene with chaos and energy. Association with Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity)[edit] Max Beckmann, like other artists associated with Neue Sachlichkeit, enlisted in the German army and originally rationalized World War I. Initially, like Futurist artists, Beckmann believed war could cleanse the individual and society. After experiencing the widespread destruction and horror of the war, however, he became disillusioned with war and rejected the glory of military service. The Night's illogical composition relays post-war disillusionment and the artist's confusion over the "... society he saw descending into madness" (Kleiner et al.). Although The Night does not directly depict a specific battle or war scene, the image is considered one of the most poignant and seminal pieces of post-war art.

Picasso, Portrait of Daniel-Henri Kahnweiler, 1910

The subject of this portrait is Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler (1884 - 1979), a German-born art dealer, writer, and publisher. Kahnweiler opened an art gallery in Paris in 1907and in 1908 began representing Pablo Picasso, whom he introduced to Georges Braque. Kahnweiler was a great champion of the artists' revolutionary experiment with Cubism and purchased the majority of their paintings between 1908 and 1915. He also wrote an important book, The Rise of Cubism, in 1920, which offered a theoretical framework for the movement. Shortly after completing his Portrait of Vollard, Picasso turned his attention to another influential dealer, Doniel-Henrg Kahnweiler, Hailing originally from Germang, Kahnweiler had begun to make inroads into the Parisian art market, and at this time he was beginning to buy works by Picasso. Not long after this portrait was painted, Kahnweiler offered Picasso an exclusive contract that secured the artist's financial security until the outbreak of the First World War. Portrait of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler represents a further incursion into the break-up of form to the point at which the sitter seems barely discernible, Kahnweiler's face can just about be picked out in the upper-right of the image, identifiable mainly by the inclusion of a wave of hair and a simple line to suggest a moustache. Two similar lines in the lower centre of the image register his watch chain, whilst his clasped hands can be seen at bottom-centre. Interestingly, Picasso included on African mask in the top-left, though this is barely discernible. From this point onwards, Cubism would rapidly develop into on even more experimental and challenging art form.

Nolde, Head of a Prophet, 1912, woodcut

This brooding face confronts the viewer with an immediacy and deep emotion that leave no doubt about the prophet's spirituality. His hollow eyes, furrowed brow, sunken cheeks, and solemn countenance express his innermost feelings. Three years before Nolde executed this print, he had experienced a religious transformation while recovering from an illness. Following this episode, he began depicting religious subjects in paintings and prints, such as the image seen here. Nolde had joined the German Expressionist group Brücke (Bridge) in 1906, participating in its exhibitions and in its exchange of ideas and techniques. He taught etching to his fellow members, and they introduced him to woodcuts. During the 1890s, woodcuts had undergone a resurgence and revamping, when artists such as Paul Gauguin and Edvard Munch used them to create bold images that expressed strong emotional content. In Prophet, Nolde also exploits the characteristics inherent to the medium. Coarsely gouged-out areas, jagged lines, and the textured grain of the wood effectively combine in this portrayal of a fervent believer—a quintessential German Expressionist print.

Man Ray, L'Enigme d'Isidore Ducasse 1920, remade 1972,

This early, assisted readymade (a found object slightly altered) was created a year before Man Ray left for France. Marcel Duchamp's influence and assistance are evident in this Dada object, in which a sewing machine is wrapped in an army blanket, and tied with a string. The title comes from French poet Isidore Ducasse (1846-70) and the imagery comes from a quote in his book Les Chants de Maldoror (1869): 'Beautiful as the chance meeting, on a dissecting table, of a sewing machine and an umbrella'. Chance effects were important to the Dada artists, and the piece is very much in that spirit, but it also prefigures the Surrealists' interest in revealing the creative power of the unconscious. The original object was created and then dismantled after the photograph was taken. Ray did not reveal the 'enigma' under the felt and intended the photograph as a riddle for the viewers to solve with the title providing a hint. Man Ray's Dada objects, made in New York before he left for Paris in 1921, are more fantastic than Marcel Duchamp's (1887-1968) assisted ready-mades, although obviously related. Man Ray first me Duchamp in 1915, but they only began to work closely together after the First World War. The enigma of Isidore Ducasse was assembled in New York in1920. Man Ray wrapped a sewing machine in an army blanket and tied it up with string. Like most of the objects which he made up to the late 1940s it was assembled primarily to provide an unusual subject for a photograph and then discarded.1 The inspiration and the title of this object derive from a famous line in the book Les Chants de Maldoror (1869) by Comte de Lautréamont, the pseudonym adopted by the French poet Isidore Ducasse (1846-70): 'He is fair ... as the chance meeting on a dissecting-table of a sewing-machine and an umbrella!'.2 The strange juxtaposition of images in Lautréamont's writings, and especially this image of the sewing-machine, was to become almost a maxim for the Surrealists, who welcomed Man Ray when he arrived in Paris in 1921. His photograph of The Enigma of Isidore Ducasse was reproduced in the preface to the first issue of La Revolution Surréaliste (December 1924), the Surrealists' first major periodical. In 1971 Galleria Schwarz, Milan, reconstructed The enigma of Isidore Ducasse in an edition of ten under Man Ray's supervision.3 The example in the Australian National Gallery's collection is no. 8 from this edition. Michael Lloyd & Michael Desmond European and American Paintings and Sculptures 1870-1970 in the Australian National Gallery 1992 p.140.

Mondrian, Farm at Duivendrecht, 1916

This small farm in Holland was a proccupation of Mondrian, who made 20 paintings and drawings of it over the course of his life. He first sketched the farm in 1905, but returned to the subject during WWI, as a break from his experiments in developing fully abstract art.

Kandinsky, Improvisation No. 19, 1911

Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky (/kænˈdɪnski/; Russian: Васи́лий Васи́льевич Канди́нский, Vasiliy Vasil'yevich Kandinskiy, pronounced [vaˈsʲilʲɪj kɐnˈdʲinskʲɪj]; 4 December (16 December by the Gregorian calendar) 1866 - 13 December 1944) was a Russian painter and art theorist. He is credited with painting one of the first recognised purely abstract works. Born in Moscow, Kandinsky spent his childhood in Odessa, where he graduated at Grekov Odessa Art school. He enrolled at the University of Moscow, studying law and economics. Successful in his profession—he was offered a professorship (chair of Roman Law) at the University of Dorpat—Kandinsky began painting studies (life-drawing, sketching and anatomy) at the age of 30.In 1896, Kandinsky settled in Munich, studying first at Anton Ažbe's private school and then at the Academy of Fine Arts. He returned to Moscow in 1914, after the outbreak of World War I. Kandinsky was unsympathetic to the official theories on art in Communist Moscow, and returned to Germany in 1920. There, he taught at the Bauhaus school of art and architecture from 1922 until the Nazis closed it in 1933. He then moved to France, where he lived for the rest of his life, becoming a French citizen in 1939 and producing some of his most prominent art. He died at Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1944. Kandinsky is believed to have had synaesthesia. Synaesthesia comes from two Greek words Syn which means together and Aesthesis which means sensation. It is a condition that allows a person to appreciate sounds, colours or words with two or more senses simultaneously. Kandinsky believed that colours and painted marks triggered particular sounds or musical notes and vice versa. Did Kandinsky have synaesthesia? Maybe we will never know for sure but what we do know is that he was preoccupied all his life with the correlation between sound and colour.Improvisation 19 was completed by Kandinsky in 1911. Annegret Hoberg, the curator at the Städtische Galerie, Lenbachhaus, Munich, which houses many of Kandinsky's paintings, including this one, wrote about the painting in the exhibition catalogue: "...It seems as if an unknown ritual occurs in Improvisation 19, a kind of initiation and enlightenment of figures who can be understood as novices. One sees translucent figures outlined only in black. On the left is a procession of smaller form presses forward to the front, followed by shades of colour. The largest part of the painting, however, is filled with a wonderful, supernatural blue, which also shines through the group of figures shown in profile on the right, who seem to move toward a goal outside the painting. The spiritual impact of these long, totally incorporeal figures draws both on the uniformity (that is, they are all the same height, as in Byzantine pictures of saints) and on the fact that deep blue, almost violet shade in their heads may symbolize extinction or transition....This work underscores Kandinsky's almost messianic expectation of salvation through painting..."

Mondrian, Evolution, 1910-11

hat year was important for Mondrian's career from another point of view: in May he joined the Theosophical Society, a group that believed in a harmonious cosmos in which spirit and matter are united. Inspired by these ideas, Mondrian began to free the objects depicted in his paintings from naturalistic representation: these objects became formal components of the overall harmony of his paintings, or, in other words, the material elements began to merge with the overall spiritual message of his work. He concentrated on depicting large forms in nature, such as the lighthouse in Westcapelle. In Evolution (1910-11), a triptych of three standing human figures, the human figure and architectural subjects look surprisingly similar, thus stressing Mondrian's move toward a painting grounded more in forms and visual rhythms than in nature. In 1910 Mondrian's Luminist works attracted considerable attention at the St. Lucas Exhibition in Amsterdam. The next year he submitted one of his more abstract paintings to the Salon des Indépendants in Paris, his first bid for international recognition.