Gardner's Art Through the Ages ch. 32/35

Pablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon 1907 From Spain, Probably painted in France

African and ancient Iberian sculpture and the late paintings of Cezanne influenced this pivotal work, with which this artist opened the door to a radically new method of representing forms in space. Primitivism.

Frank Lloyd Wright, Kaufmann House (Fallingwater), Bear Run, Pennsylvania 1936-1939 America

Perched on a rocky hill-side over a waterfall, this artist's building has long sweeping lines, unconfined by abrupt wall limits, reaching out and capturing the expansiveness of the natural environment.

Pablo Picasso, maquette for Guitar 1912 From Spain, Probably painted in France

In this model for a sculpture of sheet metal, the artist presented what is essentially a cut away view of a guitar, allowing the viewer to examine both surface and the interior space, both mass and void. Synthetic Cubism.

Marcel Duchamp, Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 1912 France

The Armory Show of 1913 introduced European avant-garde art to America. This artist's figure in motion down a staircase in a time continuum reveals the artist's indebtedness to Cubism and Futurism.

George Braque, The Portuguese 1911 France

The Cubists rejected the pictorial illusionism that had dominated Western art for centuries. In this painting, the artist concentrated on dissecting form and placing it in dynamic interacting with space.

Joan Miró, Painting 1933 Catalan/Spanish

The artist promoted automatism, the creation of art without conscious control. He began this painting with a scattered collage and then added forms suggesting floating amoebic organisms. "Most Surrealistic of them all."

Pablo Picasso, Guernica 1937 From Spain, Probably painted in France

The artist used Cubist techniques, especially the fragmentation of objects and dislocation of anatomical features, to expressive effect in this condemnation of the Nazi bombing of the Basque capital. Cubism.

Marcel Duchamp, Fountain (second version) 1950 France

The artist's "readymade" sculptures were mass-produced objects that the Dada artist modified. In this sculpture, he conferred the status of art on a urinal and forced people to see the object in a new light. Dadaism. Broke more rules than any other artist.

Henry Moore, Reclining Figure 1939 England

The reclining female figure was a major theme in this artist's sculptures. He simplified and abstracted the massive form in a way that recalls Biomorphic Surrealism. The contours follow the grain of the wood. Abstract.

Vassily Kandinsky, Improvisation 28 (second version) 1912 Russia

The scientific theories of Einstein and Rutheford convinced this artist that mater objects had no real substance. He was one of the first painters to explore complete abstraction in his canvases. German Expressionism.

Machu Picchu, Inka, Peru 15th Century Peru

These architects designed this so that the windows and doors frame spectacular views. Their masons cut large upright stones in shapes that echo the contours of nearby sacred peaks.

Salvador Dalí, The Persistence of Memory 1931 Spain

This artist aimed to paint "images of concrete irrationality" in this realistically rendered landscape featuring three "decaying" watches, he created a haunting allegory of empty space where time has ended. Paranoiac-critical approach/free-play association. Surrealism.

Henri Matisse, Red Room (Harmony in Red) 1908-1909 France

This artist believed painters should choose compositions and colors that express their feelings. Here, the table and wall seem to merge because they are the same color and have identical patterning. Fauvism.

Piet Mondrian, Composition with Red, Blue and Yellow 1930 Dutch/Netherlands

This artist created numerous "pure plastic" paintings in which he locked primary colors into a grid of intersecting vertical and horizontal lines. By altering the grid patterns, he created a dynamic tension. Neo-Plasticism.

Kazimir Malevich, Suprematist Composition: Airplane Flying 1915 Russia

This artist developed an abstract style he called Suprematism to convey that the supreme reality in the world is pure feeling. In this work, the brightly colored rectilinear shapes float against white space.

Umberto Boccioni, Unique Forms of Continuity in Space 1913 Italy

This artist's Futurist manifesto for sculpture advocated abolishing the enclosed statue. This running figure is so expanded and interrupted that it almost disappears behind the blur of its movement. Futurism.

Giorgio De Chirico Melancholy and Mystery of a Street 1914 Italy

This artists' Metaphysical Painting movement was the precursor of Surrealism. In this street scene, filled with mysterious forms and shadows, the painter evoked a disquieted sense of foreboding.

Reconstruction drawing with cutaway view of various rebuildings of the Great Temple, Aztec, Tenochtitlan, Mexico City, Mexico. ca. 1400-1500

This building encased successive earlier structures. The latest temple honored the gods Huitzilopochtli and Tlaloc, whose sanctuaries where at the top of a stepped pyramid.

Coatlicue (She of the Serpent Skirt), Aztec, from Tenochtitlan, Mexico City, Mexico. ca. 1487-1520

This colossal statue may have stood in the Great Temple complex. The beheaded goddess wears a necklace of human hands and hearts. Entwined snakes form her skirt. All her attributes symbolize sacrificial death.

Gerrit Thomas Rietveld, Schroder House, Utrecht, the Netherlands 1924 Dutch/Netherlands

This house has an open plan and an exterior that is a kind of three-dimensional projection of the carefully proportioned flat color rectangles in Mondrian's paintings. International Style.

Frank Lloyd Wright, Robie House, Chicago, Illinois 1907-1909 America

This house is an example of this artist's "architecture of democracy," in which free individuals move within a "free" space-- a non-symmetrical design interacting spatially with its natural surroundings. Influenced by Cubism.

Pablo Picasso, Still Life with Chair-Caning 1912 From Spain, Probably painted in France

This painting includes a piece of oilcloth imprinted with the photo lithographed pattern of a cane chair seat. Framed with a piece of rope, the still life challenges the viewers understanding of reality. Collage/Synthetic Cubism.