Transcript Francis Bacon

The Fall of Europe and
the end of Modernism
Photos from World War One:
Europe 1914-1918
The promises of modernization
led to massive murder and
destruction
Paris World’s Fair, May 25 to
November 25, 1937
Worker and Kolkhoz
(Collective Farm) Woman by
Vera Mukhina,
80 ft high
Totalitarian art and architecture: Paris World Fair 1937
(left) German Pavilion by Albert Speer with Comrades, by Joseph
Thorak, one of Hitler’s favorite sculptors
(right) USSR Pavilion, Vera Mukhina, The Worker and The Collective
Farm Woman, welded sheets of stainless steel over wood frame. Notice
gigantic scale, signaling the insignificance of the individual relative to the
state.
Joseph Thorak’s studio near Munich, designed by Albert Speer
and paid for by the government
Picasso, Guernica, 1937, Paris Worlds Fair, for the Spanish Pavilion
(137.4 in × 305.5 in) Muséo Reina Sofia, Madrid
ANXIOUS VISIONS for anxious times – Spanish Civil War and impending
World War
Salvador Dali, Soft Construction with Boiled Beans: Premonitions of Civil
War, 1936, oil on canvas, 39 x 39” (Spanish Civil War), Surrealism
Hitler and Goebbels visit the Degenerate Art Exhibition, Munich, 1937
(insert below) German Expressionist, “degenerate” artist, Max Beckmann at
MoMA NYC in 1947 with 1933 painting, Departure
(left) Nazi 1937 music poster for
degenerate art exhibition. Jazz was
despised as Jewish (Star of David) and
Black.
(right) Degenerate art show installation –
“Dada” with confiscated works by modern
masters, Kurt Schwitters and Paul Klee
artworks visible
National Socialist (Nazi) Realism
Arno Breker, (left) Comradeship, 1940; (right) The Party, 1938
Adolph Hitler (Austrian-German,1889-1945)
Photograph sent to Eva Braun after occupation of Paris,
June 14,1940. Hitler’s tour of Paris
The Fall of Paris marks “the end” of Modernism
1940 - Occupation of Paris signifies the “end” of Modernism “
Before the occupation and after, hundreds of refugee European artists,
scholars, and scientists fled. Many came to the United States. Surrealism is
the last European art movement. Center of world of art shifts from Paris to
New York City.
Photo of émigré European
artists included in the 1942
exhibition, “Artists in Exile” at
the Pierre Matisse gallery,
New York
Nazi (Axis) Blitzkrieg of London, beginning in 1941, inaugurating the
ceaseless bombing of civilian populations throughout the war by both sides
Soviet (Allied) bombing of Berlin, August
11, 1941
Dresden, September 1945
after fire bombings by British &
American air forces – 30,000 deaths
(left) Francis Bacon (British), panel from Three Studies for a Crucifixion,
1947
(right) Alberto Giacometti (Swiss), Pointing Man, 1947
Europe after the War: Existentialist Expressionism
Neo Rauch, Das Neue (The New), 2003
"We came from the people, we remain part of the people, and see ourselves as
the executor of the people's will.“ (left) Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Minister for
People's Enlightenment and Propaganda: 1938 Nazi propaganda rally in Graz.
(right) Hans Haacke, And You Were Victorious After All, Graz, Germany,
1988, a reconstruction of 1938 Nazi propaganda, a public art work attacked
and destroyed.
The atrocities of the Holocaust threw Western humanism, with its premise that
man is essentially good and perfectable, into profound crisis. Auschwitz, near
Warsaw Poland, largest of the Nazi concentration camps, was liberated by
Soviet troops in January, 1945
German Jewish philosopher Theodor Adorno, self-exiled to New York, famously
asserted after this that "writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric."
"Selection" on the unloading ramp at
Birkenau, May/June 1944. To be sent to
the right meant assignment to a work
detail; to the left, the gas chambers.
United States atomic bombing of
Hiroshima, Japan, August 6, 1945
The total estimated human loss of life
caused by World War II was roughly 72
million people. The civilian toll was
around 47 million. The Allies lost about
61 million people, and the Axis lost 11
million.
Aftermath of Hiroshima bomb – estimated 90,000–166,000 deaths
The U.S. dropped atomic
bombs on Hiroshima
(August 6, 1945) and
Nagasaki (August 9).
Japan surrendered six days
later and ended WW II.
The bombs killed 90,000–
166,000 people in
Hiroshima and 60,000–
80,000 in Nagasaki, with
roughly half of the deaths
in each city occurring on
the first day and the rest
within four months. Almost
all were civilians.
Right: Nagasaki before
(top) and after (the atomic
bomb).
Post-colonialism is one of the most
important historical contexts for
today’s global culture
Decolonization of Europe’s empires occurred
after World War II. Ghana gained
independence in 1957, the first in subSaharan Africa.
The Algerian War of Independence
from France (1954 -1962), one of
many anti-colonial wars for national
identity.
De-colonization characterized the
post-modern/post-Europe period.
Bomb blast, Algiers, 1957
Poster for film about the Algerian
War of Independence from France.
World map in 1980: The Cold War (1947-1991)
Berlin Wall, August 13, 1961, the German Democratic Republlic
(Communist East Germany) began under the leadership of Erich Honecker to
block off East Berlin and the GDR from West Berlin by means of barbed wire
and antitank obstacles. Construction crews replaced the provisional barriers by
a solid wall.
European
Postwar
Existentialism
1943
1949 – a founding
feminist text rooted in
Existentialism’s questions
about the nature of Being.
“One is not born a woman,
one becomes one.” (De
Beauvoir)
Jean-Paul Sartre
Simone de Beauvoir
1938 Paris
Jean Fautrier (French, 1898-1964) Art Informel, tachisme, Head of a Hostage,
20," oïl on panel, 1944, one of over thirty “hostage” paintings and sculptures
made during the occupation of Paris that allude to the Nazi atrocities Fautrier is
said to have witnessed there.
“These paintings addressed the
most important issue of their time,
epitomizing a 'new human resolve'
against the horrors of war."
- Jean Fautrier
Jean Fautrier, Large Tragic Head, bronze, 15 in. high
1943, Tate MA, London
Jean Fautrier, Nude, 1960, oil on canvas, tachism, 35 in. x 57 1/2 in.
Germaine Richier (French, 1904-1959) Crucified Christ, 1950, Notre-Dame de
Tour Grâce d'Assy, France. Post-humanist?
(below right) Compare Richier’s teacher, Emile-Antoine Bourdelle, Hercules,
1909. What became of the heroic human body in Western art in the hands of
WWII generation artists? Why?
Germaine Richier, (left) The Shepherd of Landes, c. 5 ft high, bronze, 1951
(cast 1996), Tate Modern, London; (right) Le Griffu, 1952, bronze, c. 39 in
high
Shepherd’s head is cast from a piece of
eroded building rubble that Richier found
on the beach.
Germaine Richier, Praying Mantis, 1949, bronze, 47” height, Middelheim
Sculpture Museum, Antwerp
Germaine Richier in
her studio, 1951 /
Gordon Parks,
photograph (for
Life magazine)
“Life does not always belong to serene things.” (G. Richier)
Alberto Giacometti (Swiss, 1901-1966), (left) City Square, 1948, bronze, c.
8 x 25 x 17“
(right) Giacometti, Portrait of a Seated Man (Diego), 1949, oil on canvas, 80
x 64 cm.
2 of 5 casts. Guggenheim collection photos.
Lower one is artist’s preferred viewpoint (eyelevel, close up), which alters the viewer’s
perception of scale
Portraits are the stopping point
of an agonized struggle with
perception as proof of existence
(left) Poseidon, Greek, c. 575 BC, bronze, National Archaeological Museum,
Athens. Gods represented as men. The sculpture was a source for Giacometti.
(right) Giacometti, Man Pointing, 1947, bronze, 70 inches high, Existential man:
“thrown naked into the void” (Heidegger, German WWII-era existential
philosopher).
February 3, 2010, Striding Man I,
bronze, 72” high, (1961, 2nd of six
numbered editions plus four artist
proofs) by Alberto Giacometti sold for
$104,327,006: the most expensive
work of art ever sold at auction to
date.
Jean Dubuffet (French, 1901-1985) Art Brut
(left) Large Sooty Nude, 1944, o/c, 64”H; (right) Tree of Fluids, 1952
“Art addresses the mind, not the eyes.” (Dubuffet)
Jean Dubuffet, Fleshy Face with Chestnut Hair, 1951, Oil & mixed-media,
28”H, Art Brut. Compare the head of the Apollo Belvedere (Roman copy of
Greek original c. 350 BC) and Jean Fautrier’s 1944 Hostage
Brassai, (Gyula Halasz, French b. Brasso, Romania, 1899 - 1987)
(left) Swastika Graffiti; (right) Passion Graffiti, both Paris, 1939
Henry Moore (English 1896-1986),Tube Shelter Perspective, 1941, ink, pen, wax,
and watercolor, 8 1/2 x 6 1/2 in., one of many such drawings Moore made during
WWII Blitz of London by Nazi Germany.
Henry Moore, working model for Reclining Figure for Lincoln Center, New York,
1963-65, plaster
Henry Moore, Reclining Figure for Lincoln Center, New York, 1963-65, bronze
Francis Bacon, Three Studies for Figures at the
Base of a Crucifixion, 1944, oil and pastel on
canvas, triptych on wood fiberboard, each 37 x 29
inches. The crucifixion was for Bacon a symbol of
humanity’s sadism. (right) Picasso, On the Beach
(La Baignade) 1937. Picasso was a crucial source
and personally encouraged Bacon.
Francis Bacon (British, 1909 -1992),
(left) Painting, 1946, oil and pastel on
linen, 6' 6" x 52”, MoMA, NYC
The black umbrella was the symbol of
British Prime Minister Neville
Chamberlain, and his policy of Nazi
appeasement before WWII.
“An attempt to remake the
violence of reality itself” (Bacon)
Francis Bacon, Study after Velazquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X, 5 x 4 ft,
1953; (right top) source: Velazquez, Pope Innocent X, 1650; (right below) a
still from Sergei Eisenstein’s 1925 film, The Battleship Potemkin, Odessa
steps sequence
Francis Bacon, Head Surrounded by Sides of Beef (Study after Velasquez),
4’3” x 4’, oil on canvas, 1954, Art Institute Chicago
(left) Francis Bacon, Three Studies of figures on Beds, 1972, oil and pastel
on canvas, triptych, each panel 6’6” x 4’ 10”
(right) source: Eadweard Muybridge, photograph from The Human Figure
in Motion, 1887
Sotheby’s May 14, 2008, a 1976 Francis Bacon Triptych sells for $86,281,000:
from existential anguish and social disaster to prize art market commodity