Chapter 35
Film at Mid-century 2
"The Thriller" genre was dominated by Alfred Hitchcock. This style depended on the use of suspense rather than graphic violence for its impact.
Hopper: Regional Artists
A New York artist created paintings that presented a figurative view of an urban America that is bleak and empty of meaningful relationships. Many of his works resemble film still reflecting his fondness for America theater and cinema
Architecture: International style
A symbol of corporate wealth, skyscrapers designed in the international style embodied the spirit of the West in the late 20th century. Ludwig Van Der Rohe was a leading in the 'less is more austere structures of this era.
Christian Existentialism
According to philosophers Karl Jaspers and Gabriel Marcel, God has challenged humans to act as free and responsible creatures. There is little contradiction between the belief in a supreme being and the ethics of human behavior.
Jean-Paul Sartre: Existentialism
Argued that all human actions takes place within a universe that is meaningless. According to Sartre, individuals are defined by the choices that they make. Human beings are "Condemned to be free" (Sartre words).
Sculpture
Art critic Herbert Read described sculpture of this period as a "geometry of fear"
Music and Dance at Mid-century
Composer John Cage experimented with random methods of integration sound and silence. His colleague, Merce Cunningham, revolutionized modern dance by rejecting thematic and musical associations in favor of gesture, random movement, and form.
Cage and Aleatory music: Music and Dance at Mid-Century
Created aleatory music, that is, music based on random choices and procedures. According to him, music has it's only common denominator: Rhythm "Everything we do is music." Work celebrates the absurd and random nature of the modern experience.
Calder: Constructed Sculpture
Created whimsical wire constructions and mobiles. His use of biomorphic forms, bright colors and polished aluminum created ever changing relationships between volumes and voids.
Bacon: Regional Artist
Dublin artist was self trained and infused expressionism with an eccentricity that turned human and animal forms into flayed carcasses and mangled skeletons. "Pope Innocent X" looks back to the works of Munch, Eisenstein and Picasso, all of who he admired
George Balanchine energetic approach to classical ballet: Music and Dance at Mid-century
Favored musically driven dance and invested classical ballet with a new speed and energy. Influenced by his friend and collaborated Stravinsky.
Saarinen: Subjective and Personal Alternatives
Finnish born, brought a lyrical and gestural quality to his buildings such as the TWA terminal at NYC's JFK airport.
Rothko: Color Field Painting
He created paintings that consisted of translucent, soft-edged blocks of color that seemed to float mysteriously on the surfaces of yet fields of color. Took his own life in 1970 at the age of 67
De Kooning: Painting Abstract Expressionism
He fled Nazi oppression and moved to NYC. Working on large canvases and using oversized brushes, he applied paint in a loose, free and instinctive manner that emphasized the physical act of painting.
Motherwell: Painting Abstract expressionism
He said that in the history of all art "there was never a movement as hated as abstract expressionism"
Rabindranath Tagore: Indian Poetry
He societal crisis lays in prizing business, wealth and material comforts at the expense of beauty, creativity and spiritual harmony
Dylan Thomas: Meaning of Modern Poetry
He was a Welsh poet who exalted life affirming action even in the face of death. In his poem "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" creates a musical litany that resolves 4 of the 6 stanzas with the imperative: "rage against the dying of the light.
Muhammad Iqbal: Islamic Poetry
He was deeply critical of injustice, godlessness and false ideals-which he equated with failing western morality. He envisioned a utopian society that transcended race and religion
Sartre: Existential Hero
In his world the traditional 'hero' becomes an 'antihero' who must take up the quest of meaning...neither noble or sure of purpose. His play "No Exist" one of the characters notes, "Hell is other people"
Visual Arts at Mid-Century
In visual arts, abstract expressionists and action painters explored the balance between choice and chance. New, more personalized direction in sculpture and architecture challenged the austerity of the international style.
Kline: Painting Abstract Expressionism
Kline created huge black and white canvases that consisted entirely of imposing abstract shapes. Though non-representational, they call to mind the power of monuments of postwar urban expansion.
Existentialism
Led by Sartre, a humanistic philosophy that asserts the importance of individual choice exercised in the absence of moral and religious absolutes
Film at Mid-century 3
Most celebrated existentialist film maker of this era was Swedish director Ingmar Bergman. Most notable film, "The Seventh Seal" and "Wild Strawberries" probed the troubled lives of men and women as well as the themes: loss of God, spiritual and emotional alienation and the anxieties that accompany self-understanding.
Film at Mid-Century
Neorealism was an Italian movement championed by Robert Rossellini. This form rejected the artifice of cinematic moralizing and Hollywood 'staging'. It sought to depict the harsh realities of commonplace existence. "Film Noir" is a film style that deals with the dark world of crime and intrigue. It conveys a mood of disillusion and moral ambiguities.
Pollock: Painting Abstract Expressionism
Pollock early works were a course and brutal figural work similar to De Kooning, but in 1945 Pollock devise a style that made action itself the subject of his painting *Alcoholic Drip Painter
Segal: Representation of Alienation
Segal created haunting works devised of life-size figures cast in plaster from live models (often family and friends). "assembled environments"
Frankenthaler: Color Field painting
She cultivated the practice of pouring thin washes of paint directly from coffee cans, directly on unprimed canvas. Paintings captured the transparent freshness of watercolors.
Smith: Constructed sculpture
Smith was a pioneer of 'constructed sculpture', large, welded pieces that were covered in layers of car enamel or burnished stainless steel. Work symbolized the optimistic spirit of postwar.
Abstract expressionism
The American artistic movement of the 1940s and 1950s that embodied the break with traditional, representational art. Ironically, this art which sought to scorn the depersonalized effects of capitalist technology came to be prized by the guardians of that very culture.
Glass monolith re-envisioned: International style
The Aqua Building, Chicago. Designed by Jeanne Gang, it is the tallest tower in the world designed by a women.
Samuel Beckett: Theater of the absurd
The absurdist play, which drew stylistic inspiration from Dada performance art and surrealist film. His "Waiting for Godot: belongs to the dramatic genre known as theater of the absurd although throughout his life. He denied this classification.
Cunningham: Radical Choreography
Was one of the first choreographers to develop "abstract" movements, with no reference to a story line. He collaborated with Cage as part of a neo-dada movement known as "fluxus"
Giacometti: Representations of alienation
Was originally influenced by surrealism, but following WWII, he devised a new language to described the human form and condition. Clay works cast in bronze, his haunting, spindly creatures seemed to symbolize the existential solitude of individual amidst the modern metropolis
Alienation and anxiety
Were the unique conditions of the modern world at the mid-century. Utopias and Dystopias: B.F. Skinner's novel, Walden Two is an example of utopian Lit. In the novel, "technology of behavior: replaced "prescientific" views of freedom and dignity. *Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World", George Orwell's 1984 and Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 are all examples of dystopian lit.
Wright: Subjective and Personal Alternative
Wright's design for the Guggenheim museum in NYC resembles a huge shell and the main gallery is a continous spiral ramp surrounding a multistory atrium topped by a glass dome to bring natural light into the space.
Camus: Existential Hero
defined the Absurd as the "divorce between man and life, actor and setting. His play "Caligula" explores the twisted life of the ultimate antihero.