Winter 2020

 

December 2020 Holidays

 

Félix Fénéon: The Anarchist and the Avant-Garde

 These four installment chapters are drawn from an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art on Félix Fénéon, 1861-1944.  "One of the most influential figures in the history of modern art is also one of the least know:  Félix Fénéon, a Fresh art critic, editor, publisher, dealer, collector, and anarchist who was active in Paris during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Fénéon tirelessly advocated for avant-garde art, literature, and politics, working behind the scenes for more than five decades.  

He began his career as a critic, contributing to dozens of progressive journals in the a880's and 1890's.  In 1886, he coined the term New-Impressionism to describe the work of Seurat and Signac, the first of many modern artists he would ardently champion.In the early twentieth century he became a dealer and engaged with a new generation of artists, signing Henri Matisse to his first gallery contract in 1909, and giving the Italian Futurists their breakthrough exhibition in 1912.  As a patron, Fénéon amasses an extraordinary collection of paintings by Seurat, Signac, Matisse, PierreBonnard, Modigliani, and may others.  H was also  one of the first European collectors of art from Africa, Oceania and the Americas and he endeavored to bring recognition to such works.  His anarchism- for which he was arrested, in connection with bombing in 1894- shaped his belief that art could play a fundamental role in the formation of more just and harmonious world."

Paul Signac, French, Opus 217, Against the Enamel of a Background Rythmic with Beats and Angles, Tones, andTints, Portrait of M. Félix Fénéon in 1890.  1890.

Félix Valloton, French, Félix Fénéon at La Revue blanche, 1896.

Fénéon and Neo-Impressionism

 Félix Fénéon coined the term Neo-Impressionism  in 1886 to describe a style founded by Georges Seurat and was a champion of many of the artists, especially Seurat and Signac.  It was involved with political theories of anarchism and scientific studies of light and color.

Henri, Edmond Cross, French, The Golden Isles, 1891-92.

Albert Dubois-Pillet, French, The Forges of Ivry, 1888-89.

Paul Signac, French, Setting Sun, Sardine Fishing.  Adagio.  Opus 221.  1891.

George-Pierre Seurat, French, Seated Woman with a Parasol, 1884-85.

Fénéon: "I aspire only to silence."

 "The most sensational of the myriad exhibitions that Fénéon organized was 'The Italian Futurist Painters' in February 1912. Launched three years earlier, Futurist paintings combined the color principles of the New-Impressionists and the fractured forms of the rivaling Cubists with their own distinctive subject matter:  revolutionary politics and the speed and dynamism of the modern experience.  While the exhibition received mostly negative reviews, partly in response to the artists' bombastic rhetoric, it drew huge crowds and catapulted the Futurists into the European avant-garde."

Luigi Russell, Italian, The Revolt.  c. 1911.

Giacomo Balla, Italian,  Street Light, c. 1910-11.

Fénéon also was one of the first Europeans to champion art from Africa, Oceania and the Americas.  

Fénéon worked in a prestigious gallery and collected art himself, promoting artists that were not well known and struggling at the time, but who became famous and successful later (Matisse).  

''I aspire only to silence, ' Fénéon once said.  He realized this aim toward the end of his life in the ultimate act of self-erasure; rather than bequeathing his art collection to a French museum, he decided to disperse it through a series of auctions.  The first took place in December 1941, when he needed funds for cancer-related bills.  Following his death in 1944, and that of his wife Fanny in 1946, more  than eight hundred remaining works were sold in four record-setting sales:  three for his collection of art from Europe, and one for his collection of objects and sculptures from Africa, Oceania and the Americas."

Anarchy and Neo-Impressionism: Signac

 "Anarchism flourished during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in France, a period often referred to as the Belle Époque.  Though celebrated for its extraordinary cultural achievements, the era saw horrendous economic devastation for the working class, instilling in many a profound distrust of state institutions.  Anarchists like Fénéon and his artist friend Paul Signac believed that the dissolution of the government, capitalism, and the bourgeoisie would allow social harmony, economic fairness, and artistic freedom to prevail."

Paul Signac, French, Sunday.  c. 1888-90.  "Signac subtly criticizes bourgeois ideals by painting a bored couple in their ornate Parisian living room on a gloomy Sunday afternoon.  Despite their middle-class comfort, husband and wife are turned away from each other, alone with their separate thoughts.  Signac's use of taut geometries reinforces the rigidity of the mood."

Paul Signac, French, The Demolition Worker.  1897-99.  "Signac called for artists to deliver the 'forceful blow of a pickaxe to the antiquated social  structure.'  Here, he depicts demolition workers tearing down the edifice of the old order as a new dawn rises behind them.  The monumental canvas is an allegory for Signac's anarchist vision of a modern, egalitarian society in which laborers would be created with fairness and respect."

Paul Signac, French, In the Time of Harmony:  The Golden Age Has not Passed, It is Still to Come, 1896.  "Signac originally thought of titling this painting 'In the Time of Anarchy,' but changed his mind due to widespread fear of anarchist violence in Paris in the 1890's.  To counteract that association, he offered a utopian vision of a future anarchist society- a Golden Age in which disparities between social classes would disappear and men, women, and children would live together peacefully.  Signac intended for his individual lines and colors to coalesce into a harmonious whole that might inspire viewers toward a corresponding social harmony.  As he once declared, 'Justice in sociology, harmony in art:  same thing.'"

Abstraction: The Red Square

 This and the following four installment chapters are from another exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art: Engineer, Agitator, Constructor:  The Artist Reinvented.

The examples of posters, photomontages, magazines, and paintings illustrate the fertilization and tension between art and politics, advertising and uses of art to manipulate people's behavior.   The show is particularly rich with art from the Soviet Union after the Revolution and into the 1930's, 'agitation propaganda.'

Following are selections on abstraction, a leading Latvian graphic artist Gustav Klutsis, a selection of Soviet women artists, a few German examples, and finally art and advertising.  Quotation marks indicate text taken from museum labels.

"Abstraction for Radical Ends:  Already committed to Kazimir Malevich's Suprematism, an approach he first presented in 1915 that rejected the deliberate illusions of representational painting, many artists in Russia responded to the imperatives of the 1917 Russian Revolution by deploying abstraction for radical ends.  Basic shapers were utilizes, as Gustav Klutsis put it, to construct 'a new reality not yet in existence,' to call, in effect, for world revolution.  In the early years of Soviet Russia, the red square exemplified this utopian stance...  In the following years, the red square would proliferate across Europe.  While at times less explicitly agitational, it continued to represent the revolutionary impulses of this period  in Russia and to embody aspirations for the new - an ongoing reminder of abstraction's experimental leap."

Kazimir Malevich, Russian born Ukraine, Painterly Realism of a Boy with a Knapsack- Color Masses in Fourth Dimension.  1915.

El Lissitzky, Russian.  About Two Squares:  A Suprematist Tale of Two Squares in Six Constructions.  1922.

Liubov Popova, Russian, Painterly Architectonic.  1917. 

Gustav Klutsis

 

"In 1919, Gustav Klutsis (1895-1938) joined both the Communist party and UNOVIS (Affirmers of the New Art), a collective of artists who sought to use abstraction for agitational purposes.  Klutsis's photomontage embodies these dual commitments.  While some of the photographic elements have deteriorated or been lost, the combination of approaches - simplified geometries exemplified by the red square and cut and pasted photographs calling out the ambitions of the new Soviet order - suggests the work may have been created in two stages:  begun in the spirit of UNOVIS and reworked after Vladimir Lenin's death in January 1924.  The printed text refers to Lenin's famous slogan of 1920, 'Communism = Soviet power plus the electrification of the entire country.'"

Gustave Klutsis, Latvian, "Electrification of the Entire Country", c. 1920.

Gustav Klutsis, Maquette for 'Plan for Socialist Offensive' magazine spread, for 30 Days.  1929.

Gustav Klutsis, Latvian.  'Let's Fulfill the Plan of Great Works'.  1930.

Gustav Klutsis, Latvian.  'Maquette for the poster 'The Reality of Our Program is Real People - That is You and Me'.  1931.  'Photomontage is an agitation-propaganda form of art,' Gustav Klutsis declared.  This poster depicts Joseph Stalin as a man of the people, striding alongside workers representing a variety of occupations.  The title is from a 1931 speech in which he promoted higher wages for technical specialists as a way to improve industrial productivity; the imagery reiterates the slogan's anti-elitism.  Preparatory designs reveal how Klutsis experimented to create a poster with maximum visual power, cutting and rephotographing his source material and pasting elements in different configurations to determine his finished composition.  In 1931, the year this work was published, Stalin's regime centralized power production, which enabled the state to censor artists and control their output, including dictating that the leader personify socialism.  Artists once drawn to the utopianism of the revolution found themselves enlisted to mobilize the masses in support of a dictatorship.  Despite his years of service, Klutsis was executed in 1938 for being 'an enemy of the state.'"

Soviet Propaganda Women Artists

"WOMEN AS PRODUCERS AND CONSUMERS:  Joseph Stalin's first Five-Year Plan (1928-1932), which aimed to increase industrial productivity and the construction of public infrastructure, created an urgency for Soviet women to enter the workforce.  A campaign for a 'new everyday life' (novyi byt), in which the state would provide services such as childcare, cafeterias, and public laundries, sought to free women from domestic duties and enable them to work outside the  home, in factories and communal farms, for example.  Central to this initiative was the creation of posters, often by women artists assigned to the theme, representing new ways female citizens could be producers and consumers in Soviet society.  These artists sought to reach a wide public as they shaped the socialist ideal of gender equality." 

Valentina Kulagina, Russian, Maquette for We are Building - Stroim.  1929.    "In 1929, no skyscrapers had yet been built in the Soviet Union.  Nevertheless, Kulagina created an aspirational vision of Soviet architecture.  With 'We are building' spanning the cityscape, this maquette promoted Stalin's First Five-Year Plan (1928-32), which supported public infrastructure projects as part of a program to increase the nation's industrial productivity.  Kulagina combined printed images of American architecture, such as the Detroit skyscraper at right, with hand-drawn elements, and inserted sandpaper to suggest the texture of concrete."

Liubov Popova, Russian.  "Long Live the Dictatorship of the Proletariat!".  1923.  Set design for the play 'Earth in Turmoil.'     

    "Artist Constructor:  To be a 'constructor' in 1920's Russia was to create by embracing modern industry, technology, and utility in the service of postrevolutionary society."

Valentina Kulagina, Russian, "Women Shockworkers, Fortify Your Shockworker Brigades, Master Technology, Increase the Cadres of Proletarian Specialists."  1931.

 

Varvara Stepanova, Russian, "Bolster Our Defense with Whatever You Can!", c. 1930.

Natalia Pinus, Russian, "We Will Build Daycares, Playgrounds, and Factory Kitchens, Enlist Working Women into the Ranks of Active Participants in the Industrial and Social Life of the Country!", 1933.

Natalia Pinus, Russian, "Women Workers, Women Collective Farmers, Be in the Front Lines of Fighters for the  Second Five-Year Plan for Building a Classless, Socialist Society!"  1933.

German Posters from the Twenties

 The poster below is a famous image demonstrating the intention of modern designers in Germany in the late 1920's to leave behind stuffy turn of the century interior and home design and move toward modern design of the future.  The poster was done by Willi Baumeister in 1927 for an exhibition organized at the Weissenhofsiedlung in Stuttgart, Germany.  The typography asks 'How to live (at home)?'

Campaign poster for the German Communist Party.  John Heartfield/Helmut Herzfeld.  The Hand Has Five Fingers.  1928. 

Poster for municipal pools, Augsburg Germany, 1928.  Werner David Feist.

"Soon after designing this poster, Feist was banned from those same pools because he was Jewish."  Ironically, the photo is of Feist himself.

Max Burchartz, German, Untitled (red square), c. 1928.

"An Expert in Publicity, Max Burchartz

  Max Burchartz argued that an advertisement should be clear in its message, modern in its means, and economical in its form.  Exemplifying this approach, the photomontage combines three distinct elements:  photographic reproductions of industrial parts; a red square, indicating his own Constructivist leanings; and Burcharts's own logo, a lowercase b with an inset square.  The three upper tubes are cannons; the bottom-most is a pipe of the kind made by one of Burchartz's major clients that became one of the largest arms producers for the Third Reich.

 Neither an advertisement nor a study for publication, this photomontage is instead a personal work, like a calling card.  A member of an international group of graphic designers and typographers founded by Kurt Schwitters, Burchartz was committed to advancing modern, functionalist advertising and typography.  In the late 1930's, Burchartz, like many of his clients, turned toward fascism."

The Artist as Adman

 

"The word MERZ is nothing more than the second syllable of Commerz," Kurt Schwitters explained of his branding of his one-man art movement....  As a fine artist, Schwitters gathered urban detritus into collages.  In 1924, he established the advertising agency Merz Werbezentral to address a broader public, shape its appreciation for functional design, and harness a stable income.  Based in Hannover Germany, the agency, later renamed Werbe--Gestaltung, served a range of clients, from a furniture maker to the city's  streetcar company.  Combining bold, often asymmetrical layouts, typographic elements reflecting information hierarchies, and photography, his designs emphasized split-second legibility for busy viewers."

To left, Programs for Hannover (Germany)Municipal Theater Opera House productions.   by Kurt Schwitters.  1930-32.

Poster for Dammerstock Housing Development.  Karlsruhe Germany.  1929.  Kurt Schwitters.

"Advertising-Constructors:  We understand perfectly well the power of agitation...  The bourgeoisie understands the power of advertising.  Advertising is industrial, commercial agitation," wrote the Russian poet Vladimir Mayakovsky in the period of the Soviet Union's New Economic Policy (1921-1928), when capitalist-style commerce was temporarily endorsed.  Determining that new conditions in the years following the Russian Revolution demanded a new civically engaged role for artists and poets, Mayakovsky and the artist Aleksandr Rodchenko formed the advertising agency Reklam-Konstruktor (Advertising-Constructor).          Rodchenko designed the bold graphics while Mayakovsky contributed the pithy slogans....  As advertisers, their goal was not simply to sell such products as light bulbs and cigarettes, but to compel consumers to support the new state:  to spark their desire for socialist objects and to transform that consumerist longing into a civic one, to shop as responsible Soviet citizens."

The poster below is advertising Tea Directorate Cocoa Powder.  The word slogans are:

COMRADES, THERE'S NO DEBATE, SOVIET CITIZENS, WILL GET IN GREAT SHAPE, WHAT IS OURS, IS IN OUR POWER, WHERE'S OUR POWER?, IN THIS COCOA POWDER

Max Bill, Swiss, Poster for exhibition of furniture by Wohnbedarf at Le  Corbusier's Masion de Verre, 1933.

Max Bill, Swiss, Poster for exhibition on the Neubühl housing project, Zurich, 1931.