MODERN ART

19TH CENTURY TO WORLD WAR II

MANET AND THE IDEA OF MODERN ART


Édouard Manet (1832-1883) is often seen as one of the first truly "modern" artists of the 19th century. Though he once wrote that he had "no intention of overthrowing old methods of paintings, or creating, new ones," his radical innovations in color composition and narrative did exactly that. He famously rejected the conservative sensibilities of the Académie des Beaux-Arts by largely forgoing religious or allegorical subjects in favor of depictions of bourgeois life. To the shock and scandal of the Academy, as well as the public, he painted life-size tableaux of barmaids, courtesans, and bullfights, earning the veneration of avant-garde artists who would later be known as Impressionists. Yet he never identified with their movement either. In this series of three lectures, we look back at his most ground-breaking works in their broader cultural context.

1. Edouard Manet in Dialogue with Past Masters

2. Portraits of an Age

3. Manet and the Impressionists

MANET/DEGAS

This single lecture explores the personal and artistic relationship between two of the most significant artists of 19th century Paris - Edouard Manet and Edgar Degas. 

MONET AND THE ART OF PERCEPTION

Claude Monet was a key figure in the Impressionist movement that transformed French painting in the second half of the nineteenth century. Throughout his long career, Monet consistently depicted landscapes and leisure activities of Paris and its environs as well as the Normandy coast. He led the way to twentieth-century modernism by developing a unique style that strove to capture on canvas the very act of perceiving nature. Monet’s interest in recording perceptual processes reached its apogee in his series paintings such as the Haystacks [1891], Poplars [1892], Rouen Cathedral [1894].  Join us in this three-part series on his artistic evolution as the first and the last of the Impressionists.

3. Monet's Late Work and the Birth of Modern Art


WHISTLER: IN SEARCH OF VISUAL HARMONY

James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) is widely regarded as one of the most important artists from the turn of the 20th century. Often seen as a forerunner of Post-Impressionism, he is celebrated for his bold and innovative style in a variety of media – from painting in oil to watercolors and etchings. His artistic ideals were thoroughly informed by the Aesthetic movement and its premium on refinement, subtlety, and belief in the autonomy of art. As a result, he departed from traditional representation for the sake of visual “arrangements” and color “harmonies” that correspond to those in music.  

1.     Whistler in Context

2.    The Muse of the Painter

3.    Painting as Music

THE ROSSETTIS

When we think of the Pre-Raphaelites, we typically remember their refined visual aesthetic, with its emphasis on beautiful lines, jewel-like colors, and decorative flourish. Yet for all of the ostensible traditionalism of this group, they were also remarkably unconventional in their search for the proverbial "beauty and truth". In this lecture, we look more closely at three seminal figures associated with this movement and the Rossetti family in particular: the painter Dante Gabriel, his muse and wife Elizabeth (née Siddal), and his sister Christina. 

GIUSEPPE DE NITTIS: AN ITALIAN IMPRESSIONIST IN PARIS

Although not well known outside of Italy, Giuseppe De Nittis (1846-1884) is a central figure in the Parisian avant-garde of the 1870s. He belonged to the same circles as other groundbreaking artists of the period, including Edgar Degas, Edouard Manet, and Gustave Caillebotte. In his depictions of the changing urban environment of Paris, he was both aiming for attention to detail and freedom of expression. Unfortunately, this foreigner in Paris died at the young age of thirty-eight, unable to reach his full potential and demonstrate his well-deserved place along other artists that made this city so special in the closing decades of the 19th century. This special program was organized to coincide with the first-ever exhibition of the works of De Nittis in the United States, at the Phillips Collection, 2023.

WOMEN OF THE IMPRESSIONISM


Berthe Morisot (1841–1895), Mary Cassatt (1844–1926), Eva Gonzalès (1849–1883), and Marie Bracquemond (1840–1916) were all members of the Impressionist circle. These four women—three French artists and one American artist living in Paris—exhibited works that were as innovative as those of their male counterparts. While they have diverse biographies, each of these artists overcame daunting obstacles to contribute to the development of Impressionism. As they shaped their unique careers and artistic styles, Morisot, Cassatt, Gonzalès, and Bracquemond negotiated not only personal challenges but also those posed by the conventional ideas of acceptable behavior for women of their time. Join us in a closer look at their artistic accomplishments and their relationships to fellow artists of the Impressionism.

3. Eva Gonzalès and Marie Bracquemond 

JOHN SINGER SARGENT REVISITED

John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) is one of the greatest American artists from the turn of the 20th century. Yet, as Henry James would observe in a seminal essay, could one ever really consider this painter a true American?

Indeed, both in terms of his life experience and the works he produced, Sargent straddled worlds and cultures. Born to American parents who had settled in Florence, he studied in Italy and Germany, and then at the art academy in Paris. This itinerant quality that marked his formative years continued to shape his life, as he moved between different cities and countries, creating some of the most striking portraits of the elites of the “Gilded Age.” 

His public commissions were just as impressive, from the murals for the Boston Public Library to the monumental treatment of gassed soldiers from the Western front, now at the Imperial War Museum in London.

At the same time, Sargent also left behind a diverse body of work of far more personal significance: portraits of friends and fellow artists, as well as luminous watercolors of places he loved and repeatedly returned to.  

SARGENT AND SPAIN: A LIFELONG LOVE AFFAIR

A special lecture provides a closer look at the various ways in which Spain and Spanish culture left an indelible mark on the work of this wonderful artist - whether in terms of his subject matter, or  with regard to his stylistic choices.

VINCENT VAN GOGH: AN UNDYING FASCINATION

 

We know so much about Van Gogh, or so we feel as we look at his instantly recognizable paintings: those vases with sunflowers wilting away in front of our eyes, those fields of wheat waving in the bright Provencal sunlight, and those unbearably intense self-portraits.  We never tire from reading about his personal and artistic failures, his struggle with mental illness, and his posthumous fame. And yet, even his most familiar compositions retain an air of mystery. Where did his inspiration come from? Who did he paint for?  What was he trying to tell that ideal viewer?In this three-part series, we look again at some of his most important works and his striving to communicate his complex vision of the world.


1.      Background, formative years, breakthrough

2.      In Search for Haven

3.      Late Works and Posthumous Recognition



PAUL GAUGUIN AND THE LOST PARADISE

Born in Paris on 7 June 1849, Paul Gauguin began his professional life as a merchant marine and a stockbroker’s clerk, before turning to painting in the 1870’s. In 1877 he travelled to Panama and Martinique, a trip that would later inspire his voyage to Tahiti in 1881. In 1883, due to financial and health issues, Gauguin returned to France – both only temporarily. Within a year or so, he would relocate permanently to the Marquesas Islands, where he lived until his death in 1903. Despite having spent such long periods of time away from France, he has become established as one of the most significant French artists of the 19th century. Join us in an in-depth look at the complexities of his personal and professional identity.

Becoming an Artist

In Search for another World

Gauguin and the Lost Paradise

PAUL CÉZANNE AND THE ART OF SEEING 

Widely considered as the “Father of modern art”, Paul Cézanne broke away from the artistic tradition by a new way of seeing - which allowed him to turn even the most mundane of objects into phenomena worthy of wonder. 

As an artist, he drew on a number of different sources of inspiration. Though his work opened the path for the 20th century avant-garde, he was deeply invested in the visual culture of the past, especially the art of the old masters. Like other artists of his generation, he was also interested in capturing the fleeting impressions of the world. At the same time, his focus on forms as solids, his use of large planes of color and light, and his sensitivity to multiple viewpoints quickly set him apart from the Impressionists.  Despite his ever more pronounced tendency towards abstraction, he remained connected to the "real". As he noted concerning his goals, “painting from nature is not copying the object,” but rather, the realization of "one’s sensations.” With this five-part series, we consider the groundbreaking approach of Paul Cézanne in order to gain a fuller appreciation for that new way of seeing - and how it helped him forge a completely new way of representing the world.


EDVARD MUNCH AND THE COLORS OF EMOTIONS


The impact of Edvard Munch (1863-1944) on modern art is often reduced to his single most famous painting, The Scream. Yet upon his death in 1944, there were over 1000 paintings, 4000 drawings, and  close to 16000 prints in his own house - works he had created and never sold.  What these "children", as he used to call them, represented for him was something very personal - a record of feelings and memories, or the ways in which a remembered event or a scene was reflected through his sensibility. In this three-part series, we explore Munch's artistic vision and his striving to communicate it to the world.


1.      Between "the tradition" and the "new"

2.     Passions and Dissilussions

3.     Late Works and Experiments

THE DECADENTS OF THE FIN DE SIECLE

The Decadent Movement of the late 19th century was a cultural and artistic rebellion against the perceived moral and societal norms of the time. Emerging in Europe, particularly in France, it embraced themes of excess, indulgence, and a rejection of conventional values. Influenced by Symbolism and Aestheticism, Decadent artists and writers sought to explore the darker, more sensual aspects of life, often delving into themes of decay and the allure of the forbidden. Join us for an overview of some of the key characters associated with this movement - such as Toulouse Lautrec and Aubrey Beardsley - whose fascination with the unconventional left a lasting impact on literature and the arts. 

LES NABIS AND THE IDEA OF MODERNITY IN LATE 19TH CENTURY PARIS


Active from around 1889 until 1900, the Nabis (from the Hebrew word for “Prophets”) were a group of French painters who aspired towards a new artistic language focused on metaphors and symbols, rather than a realistic representation of the world. Their ideas about art were influenced by a variety of sources: late Impressionism with its emphasis on color, the decorative aspects of Japanese prints, and the symbolist tendencies of older masters like Paul Gauguin. 


In this series of lectures, we look more closely at the ways in which these diverse individuals forged their paths towards that new, modern expression.


PIERRE BONNARD AND THE PLEASURES OF COLOR   


The French painter Pierre Bonnard was known especially for the stylized decorative qualities of his paintings and his bold use of color. Like many other artists from the Post-Impressionist group Les Nabis, his early work was strongly influenced by Paul Gauguin, and the prints of Hokusai and other Japanese artists. He painted landscapes, urban scenes, portraits and intimate domestic scenes, where the backgrounds, colors and painting style usually took precedence over the subject. 

Join us in this two-part series, in which we explore the ways in which he gave the most ordinary of phenomena a quality of permanent surprise. 

VIENNA, CIRCA 1900 

As the nineteenth century drew to a close, the city at the heart of a vanishing world power gave birth to some of the most exciting developments in arts and sciences. This was Vienna, the capital of the multilingual and multicultural Austro-Hungarian empire, and home to radical thinkers such as the father of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud, and path-breaking artists ranging from Gustav Klimt to Oskar Kokoschka. In this four-session course, we look at the ways in which the Viennese cultural and intellectual elites encouraged intellectual dialogue to give birth to new ways of thinking, as well as creative expressions in the arts.

1.     The “cosmopolis” of a dying empire: how the mixing of cultures, faiths, and world views in Vienna led to fresh insights in all spheres of knowledge and the arts

2.     Breaking with the past: Vienna Secession, from Hoffman and Wagner, to Gustav Klimt

3.     Egon Schiele and the gaze towards the interior

4.     Anxiety and its expression: from Arnold Schoenberg to Oskar Kokoschka

GUSTAV KLIMT CLOSE-UP


In 1897, Klimt and a group of twenty other painters, sculptors and architects founded the Wiener Sezession (Vienna Secession), which rejected the insular historicism of Vienna and marked the beginning of modern art in Austria. United in their rebellion against staid academic ideals, these artists created some of the most imaginative and idiosyncratic works associated with the international avant-garde. 

Though Klimt was initially their leader, he left this group in 1905 in pursuit of his own version of modernity, rooted in a fascination with human psychology, the resonance of myth and history, as well as the concept of a "total work of art." This two-part seminar explores some of the most significant aspects of his search for the new.


THE RADICAL GAZE OF EGON SCHIELE


Egon Schiele (1890–1918) was one of the most talented artists associated with the Austrian avant-garde. A protégé of Gustav Klimt, his work is characterized by contorted figures, raw sensuality, and a distinctive use of line. His introspective and often erotic renderings of the human form have a raw intensity that reflects the turbulence of his own life.  Though Schiele's career was cut short by his death at the age of 28 by the Spanish flu, his daring and unapologetic approach had a lasting impact on later artists. This two-part seminar considers in depth his visual language and his ideas about art and life, as expressed in his writings. 

FAUVISM: THE FIRST AVANT-GARDE MOVEMENT IN 20TH CENTURY ART


Fauvism was the first avant-garde movement in European art of the twentieth century. The Fauve painters broke with traditional methods of perception and painting – but also with other more progressive movements before their time, including Impressionism. Their spontaneous, often subjective response to nature was expressed in bold, undisguised brushstrokes and high-keyed, vibrant colors directly from the tube. Though this movement lasted for merely five years, the artists associated with it – such as Matisse, Derain, and Vlaminck – left a lasting impact on twentieth-century painting.


1.      The "Wild Beasts" in Context

2.      Fauvism and the Human Form

3.      Visions of Nature  


MATISSE: IN PRAISE OF COLOR

Henri Matisse (1869-1954) gained his first recognition at the beginning of the 20th century, as a member of the avant-garde group known as the Fauves (wild beasts). Over time, the expressive intensity of his early works gave way to a more rigorous visual language oriented towards abstraction. Yet even as his style continued to evolve, he remained enamored of color and decorative pattern. This tendency culminated in his final years when, despite failing health, he continued to create some of his boldest works in the medium of cut-paper collage. With this series of four lectures, we explore the most significant aspects of his oeuvre.

1.     Formative years and Les Fauves

2.     Paris to Nice

3.     The Light of the South

4.     Late works – Body and Soul  

 

CUBISM AND TROMPE L'OEIL: THE ENCHANTMENTS OF PICTORIAL ILLUSION

Though the pictorial genre of trompe l'oeil has sometimes been dismissed as a mere "game" intended to puzzle the beholder, it is often a point of departure for questions that deal with the nature of representation, and the relationship between truth and fiction. Many ideas associated with Cubism are also part of this tradition: the emphasis on the flat surface; the breaking of the boundaries between the pictorial space and the "real" world, the mimicry of materials, as well as the taste for visual puns, which often contain references to the artist, the patron, or specific  historical events. In these two lectures, we look more closely at the varied ways in which artists have given visual expressions to these ideas in their works.


MODERN ART AND MUSIC

During the Romantic era, music was declared as the purest of all arts – as well as the one whose direct appeal to emotions gives it a particular value as an expression of one’s authentic self. It was precisely on account of these qualities that as painters of the 19th, as well as the first half of the 20th centuries, placed so much emphasis on these analogies in their efforts to distance themselves from the academic tradition and “liberate” their art from its associations with literature. In this three-part series, we look more closely at some of the most fascinating aspects of these developments, and the widely different ways in which they were expressed by artists ranging from Whistler to Klee.


1.      Nineteenth-century Currents: Romanticism to Symbolism


2.      Music and the Search for Pure Painting: Kandinsky, Kupka, Mondrian


3.      The Musical Enchantments of Matisse, Picasso, and Klee


MODERNISM AND ITS CRITICS: ARTISTS AND WRITERS 


When Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) dismissed realism as an “insult thrown into the face of all analysts,” he challenged an entire visual tradition based on the ideal of mimetic representation.  His sentiment would be echoed by numerous later critics, from T. S. Eliot to André Breton, in their respective discussions of the ways in which modern art (and literature) had to maintain a degree of distance from reality in order to fashion its more truthful image, or a “new artistic reality” parallel with that of nature.

 

This series of lectures revisits some of the main participants in this cross-generational exchange of ideas about Modernism. As we shall see in the course of our discussions, while these critics, poets, and practicing artists offered a variety of different perspectives on the idea of the “modern,” they shared an interest in creating a new critical vocabulary for the continually changing forms of the avant-garde.

 

1. Nineteenth-century perspectives on the “modern” manner: between John Ruskin and Chares Baudelaire; focus on the works of Turner, Delacroix, and William Morris.

 

2. The solemn goals of art and their betrayal: Friedrich Nietzsche, Rainer Maria Rilke, T.S. Eliot, and José Ortega y Gasset; focus on the works of Rodin, Cézanne, and Matisse.

 

3. Cubism and its critics: Guillaume Apollinaire, Daniel-Henri Kahnweiler, and Jacques Rivière

 

4. Modernism and Revolution: George Grosz, Richard Hülsenbeck, Max Pechstein, Osip Brik   

 

5. Surrealist disenchantments and re-enchantments: André Breton, Georges Bataille, Louis Aragon and the Surrealists

BIRTH OF ABSTRACTION: KANDINSKY, KUPKA, MONDRIAN, MALEVICH

According to Wassily Kandinsky’s claim, he created the first truly abstract painting in 1911. Another artist working during the same time period, Frantisek Kupka, made a very similar statement about a painting he exhibited in 1909. Working in parallel with both of them, Piet Mondrian would posit that all “natural appearances” of things should be superseded by a new “plastic expression” of a true reality. This aim, in turn, related to that of Kazimir Malevich, who aspired towards the creation of art which is not only abstract, but non-objective. In this series of four lectures, we look at the different pathways of these key figures towards their shared goal – to liberate painting from any real connection to the visible, material world.


BRANCUSI: BETWEEN THE ARCHAIC AND THE MODERN

Born in Romania in 1876, Constantin Brancusi moved to Paris in 1904. His principal interests included the idealization of form; the integration of architecture, sculpture, and furniture; and the poetic evocation of spiritual thought. Throughout his life, he continued to adjust and refine sculptural groupings in his studio, a project that epitomized his interest in creating dynamic dialogues among various works and the spaces they inhabit. He died in Paris in 1957. This is a single lecture - but can be combined with the one dedicated to Brancusi's legacy.

BRANCUSI'S LEGACY

Brancusi was a member of the Parisian avant-garde, but his inventive and original approach to sculture  would influence a host of later artists, from Isamu Noguchi to Andy Goldsworthy.  As Henry Moore would famously state, this artist made sculptors aware of the power of form again.  Adding his own words of praise, Richard Serra would observe that Brancusi opened up a whole new world of possibilities for the medium of sculpture. This special lecture focuses on his rich legacy.

MODIGLIANI AND SOUTINE: ON NOT BELONGING

During his brief and turbulent life, Amadeo Modigliani (1884-1920) developed a unique and instantly recognisable pictorial style. Born in a Jewish family in Livorno, he moved to Paris in 1906, where he tried to establish himself in an environment still prejudiced against non-French artists. In addition to his large body of paintings, he also left behind impressive sculptures and drawings. However, the legend of his troubled life and early demise - and the subsequent suicide of his young fiancée, Jeanne Hébuterne - has tended to overshadow his significant artistic achievement. 


The 11th child of a Russian Jewish tailor, Chaim Soutine (1894–1943) was rescued from poverty and abuse by a rabbi who recognized his talent and sent him to art school—first in Minsk, then in Vilna. Soutine arrived in Paris at the age of 17 in 1911–1912 and met Modigliani in Montparnasse in about 1914, who would become one of his few friends in the art metropolis. As an expatriate Russian Jew, Soutine interpreted common themes with the eye of an outsider, further enhancing his unique perspective regarding his human subjects, landscapes, and still lifes and lending them a particular sense of poignancy.

THE ICARIAN FLIGHT OF THE RUSSIAN AVANT-GARDE

Modernism in the visual arts - as in music and literature - existed in numerous variants throughout Europe.  In addition to its association with artistic centers such as Paris, Vienna, and Berlin, it also flourished in cities at the very boundaries of the continent such as Moscow and St. Petersburg. 

Due to the complexities of 20th century history, many of the fascinating developments associated with that Russian version of Modernism remained almost unknown for decades. In this four-session course, we look at this period of unprecedented artistic innovation, from the end of the 19th century to the mid-1930s, after Socialist Realism was decreed the sole sanctioned style of art. 

GERMAN EXPRESSIONISM

During the early years of the 20th century, a number of German-based artists built on the precepts of the post-impressionists and began creating works of art that were not aimed at accurate representation of the visible world, but at expressing their innermost feelings. Using color, line, shape, and composition to evoke emotional responses in the viewer, they developed an entirely novel artistic vocabulary and aesthetic ideals, which led to a veritable shift in the paradigm concerning the goals and the purpose of the visual arts.

Beginning around 1908, this movement lasted through the end of World War I, though some of its best-known practitioners continued to work in this manner for several decades. Some of the most prominent artists associated with it used expressionist language to address spiritual concerns. Others remained primarily concerned with visual storytelling, often imbuing their paintings and sculptures with strong social messages. In this series of lectures, we explore the movement, the artists, and the powerful works they produced, as well as their impact on the course of modern art.

1.     The “Blue Rider” in Munich – Kandinsky, Munter, Marc

2.     Colors of Emotions – Macke, Kirchner, Pechstein, Nolde, Klee

3.     The Lament of Art – Lehmbruck and Kollwitz

4.     Cutting through the Surface of Being – Grosz and Dix

5.     Bearing Witness: Max Beckmann and the fate of the Avant-Garde

SURREALISM: BEHIND THE MIRROR


One of the most fascinating developments following World War I in European literature and visual arts was the movement that became known as Surrealism. The word was coined by the French Avantgarde poet Guillaume Apollinaire in 1917, but it was his compatriot, Andre Breton, who defined this movement in a Manifesto of 1924 as a striving towards a creative expression of the workings of the mind, which rejects the rational for the unconscious, substituting the clarity of daylight with the mystical realm of dreams. The movement drew a wide variety of poets and artists throughout Europe. In this four-part lecture series, we look at some of the most original and influential among them.

 

“COLOR AND I ARE ONE”: THE MAGICAL VISION OF PAUL KLEE 


Paul Klee (1879-1940) is one of the most fascinating artists associated with European Modernism. Though his work has been related to numerous groundbreaking movements, including Expressionism, Bauhaus, Dada and Surrealism, he does not fit in easily with any of them. His inventiveness and idiosyncratic vision led him to constant experimentation with – resulting in an oeuvre that seems both like a product of a spontaneous, child’s play and a deeply engaged exploration of pictorial signs and their meanings. Despite his essentially unclassifiable quality, he has also been cited as an important influence on numerous later painters, from Juan Miro to Robert Motherwell. In this series of three lectures, we look more closely at what makes him so uniquely important for 20th century art.

 

1.     Background, artistic formation, early years

2.     The Bauhaus period and the science of art

3.     Late works and legacy

ANATOMY OF A MASTERPIECE: THE MODERN ERA

Some works of art become famous because they seem to provide a memorable expression of the cultural ideals of a particular society. Some gain their place within the canon because of the ways in which they subvert those very ideals. Still others become important not merely on account of their “quality”, if one can even use that term, but also because of the many questions they continue to raise and leave frustratingly open-ended. We may know their authors and the circumstances of their creation, but are unable to reach conclusions regarding their “meanings,” or how they would have been understood by contemporary viewers. In this series of lectures, we explore three works of art from the modern era – highlighting both what makes them exceptional, and how they fit within their broader social and cultural context.

1: Manet and The Old Musician

2: Picasso and Les Demoiselles d'Avignon

3: Francis Bacon's Self-Portrait