1905-06

Early Modern Architecture

Eiffel, Eiffel Tower, Paris• Eiffel designed hundreds of metal

structures, mostly railway bridges• The base of the Eiffel Tower

resembles a railway bridge• Built as the symbol of the 1889

World’s Fair in Paris• Elevator invented in Yonkers,

NY in 1853 by Elisha Otis, who designed the radical tilting elevators of the Eiffel Tower

• Exposed iron allows wind forces to go through the building

Early Modern ArchitectureHenry Richardson, Marshall Field Warehouse,

Chicago• Rounded arches, rusticated masonry which

decreases as it goes up• Flat cornice on top• Cf. Palazzo Medici-Riccardi• Iron columns as interior supports• Self-bearing masonry loads• 7 story embryonic skyscraper• Arranged around a central court• No architectural features: pediments, pinnacles,

capitals• Main entrance unaccented• Subtle grouping of windows: variation in size

and shape of bays• Simplification of rhythm• Solid look of building despite large proportion

of window space• Masculine image of wholesale store, rather than

the feminine image of a retail storeRomanesque

inspiration

Destroyed 1930

Early Modern ArchitectureLouis Sullivan, Guaranty Building, Buffalo• Ornament as a major design feature• Building entirely covered in decorative terra

cotta panels• Inspiration of Romanesque buildings• Taller and more slender, with windows recessed

to allow for height of piers to seem more dramatic

• No office space more than 25 feet from windows• Generous rear lighting courts• Steel frame with lighter outer walls• First building to use Gray columns, designed

with distinctive open webs, had lateral stiffness against wind loads

• Arrow-like motifs on façade are a playful account of stress forces on the building

• Ornamental grills that Sullivan designed for the elevators were to be silhouetted against daylight

Art Nouveau

In design Art Nouveau was characterized by writhing plant forms and an opposition to the historicism which had plagued the 19th century. There was a tension implicit throughout the movement

between the decorative and the modern which can be seen in the work of individual designers as well as in the chronology of the whole. Its emphasis on decoration and artistic unity links the

movement to contemporary Symbolist ideas in art, as seen in the work of the Vienna Secessionists, but the movement was also

associated with Arts and Crafts ideas and, as such, Art Nouveau forms a bridge between Morris and Gropius

Beardsley, The Peacock Shirt

•Japanese influence

•Sweeping curved lines

•Erotic connotations

•Very thin lines

•Based on peacock motifs

•No shading, no shadows

Art Nouveau

Gaudi, Casa Mila, Barcelona, Spain• Sinuous curved façade of an apartment

building• Wrought iron balconies a Catalonian specialty• Produces the effect of a great piece of

sculpture• Wavy stringcourses define floors• Roses at top are a religious symbol of Mary• Small windows of attic story peak out over

roof line• Fanciful chimneys dominate the top• Artistic expression in the forms• Traditional use of stone carving façade with

modern sense of design• Interior curving walls respond to vegetal

designs

Expressionistic, fantastic, organic forms in undulating facade and roof line. light court

"Church of the Holy Family".

1882 - 1926

Vienna Secessionists

At the turn of the century, Vienna was a center of radical intellectual vitality, home to Freud, Schoenberg, the architect Adolf Loos, and others. In general, especially in

German-speaking countries, young artists complained of he stranglehold the establishment had on exhibitions and policies. In 1897, 19 artists from the Viennese Artists' Association broke off from the organization, including Austrian painter and illustrator Gustav Klimt (1862-1918), the architects and designers Josef Hoffmann

(1870-1956), Olbrich, and Moser. These were the Secessionists.

They celebrated modernity vs. the retreat into revivalism seen in other movements. Nevertheless, they did share notions with Arts and Crafts: that art belongs to all, that the

notion of great art vs. minor art needs to be abolished. They designed and erected a geometric building for permanent exhibition space, and they published a periodical. They supported Art Nouveau, and Klimt especially was the preeminent exponent. In

1905 came a further split within the movement: a split between the fine arts people and the applied arts people. The latter, including Klimt, associated art with industry and were

dismayed by the increasingly strong trend towards naturalism. Geometrics, functionalism, and a two-dimensional quality were features instead here. In 1939

growing Nazism contributed to the dissolution of the movement.

1907

Klimt, The Kiss•Couple kissing on the edge of a bed

•Bodies lost in decorative patterning

•Only heads, hands, and feet visible

•Surface pattern embraces all

•Background is flat and offsets foreground patterns

1901

In the Old Testament, the Jewish widow, Judith, saved the city of Bethulia from siege by the Assyrians by adoring herself and venturing into the enemy camp to gain access to the Assyrian general, Holofernes. He invited her to a banquet intending to seduce her, and while they were alone at the feast, Judith took advantage of Holofernes' drunkenness to decapitate him, and returned to Bethulia with his head in a sack. The Jews saw Judith as a virtuous heroine, but Klimt portrays her as a Viennese femme fatale. Her expression of cruel triumph has often led to her being confused with Salome, who ordered the beheading of John the Baptist to satisfy the vengeful spirit of her mother.

FauvismMatisse, Red Room (Harmony in Red)

• First appeared in 1905 at the third Salon d’Automne in Paris• Dubbed by a critic as “wild beasts”• Color used as an expression of the artist’s mindset, not as a description

of reality• Color inspired by Gauguin• Contrast of warm and cool colors, straight and curved lines• Simplicity, clarity• Artist free to use color independent of natural conditions• Simplified and schematized drawings• Loud bold colors• Depth suggested: forms flattened at curve of table, but curve is

suggested by bending of floral patterns, not by the undelineated edges• Same floral patterns on walls and table

1911

Kirchner, Street, Dresden

•Founder of “The Bridge” a German Expressionist movement that saw itself as a bridge between traditional and modern art

•Jarring and dissonant colors and shapes, clashing colors

•Confrontational art

•Ghoulish figures, seemingly fashionably dressed but in reality they appear threatening

•Tilted perspective

•Bright pink street offset by darker sinister figures

•Paint thickly applied in broad brushstrokes

Kandinsky, Improvisation 28

•Founder of the “Blue Rider” school of German Expressionism

•Representative elements of art eliminated: birth of abstract art

•Subconscious sensations in art

•Titles inspired by musical compositions

•Dominant black lines broadly play horizontally, vertically, diagonally

•Lines define space, color added at intervals around lines

1906

'Rouault was a deeply religious man, considered by some to be the greatest religious artist of the 20th century. The terrible compassion with which he shows his wretched creatures makes a powerful impression. A savage indictment of human cruelty; she is a travesty of femininity although poverty drives her still to prance miserably before her mirror in hope of work. Yet the picture does not depress but holds out hope of redemption. This work is for Rouault a profoundly moral one. She is a sad female version of his tortured Christ, a figure mocked and scorned, held in disrepute.'

From: D Solle, Great Women of the Bible in Art and Literature (Eerdmans 1994)

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