Lecture 48: Art between Two Wars—Kandinsky to Picasso

Art between Two Wars—Kandinsky to Picasso ..............................

Lecture 48

I have no chance, and make no pretense, to adequately explain all

these isms to you. Instead, I will show you a series of works of art that

responded to, were conditioned by, or even, one could say, created by,

the events of the 20th century between the two world wars.

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his last lecture includes Russian, Italian, Belgian, French, Spanish,

Dutch, and Swiss artists, and it covers such styles or movements

as German Expressionism, Futurism, Dada, Surrealism, and Neo-

Plasticism. We begin with Wassily Kandinsky (Russian, 1866–1944) and his

Improvisation No. 30 (Cannons) (1913). Kandinsky, working in Germany,

produced some of the earliest abstractions of the century. A ¿ rst glance at this

work suggests that it is among them, and its title, Improvisation No. 30, seems

to con¿ rm that impression. But the subtitle—Cannons—which was probably

not part of Kandinsky’s original title, contradicts it. In fact, Kandinsky did

not produce any pure abstractions before the war. The cannons, in the lower

right, discharge blue and red blasts of color, although there is a suggestion of

shells, as well as a suggestion of architectural forms at the upper right.

Our next artist is Marcel Duchamp (American, born in France, 1887–1968);

we see his Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (1912). Taking his initial

cue from sequential, stop-motion photography that revealed how people

and animals actually moved, Duchamp added the fragmentation of objects

and the monochromatic palette found in Cubism and the study of motion

from the Italian Futurists. The title provoked the kind of consternation

that Cubist titles often do when the thing described is not easily located.

Where is the nude? We see only a ¿ gurative shape, repeated, overlapping,

suggesting motion.

Next, we see an example from Umberto Boccioni (Italian, 1882–1916),

Unique Forms of Continuity in Space (1913). The mechanistic or armored

appearance of the ¿ gure is striking; it has the abstraction of a robot. We

know that Boccioni started with the idea of doing a modern nude, but it is

as wrapped in mechanistic abstraction as is Duchamp’s Nude. Seen from the