Lecture 48: Art between Two Wars—Kandinsky to Picasso
example, we see The Menaced Assassin (L’assassin menacé) (1926) by
René Magritte (Belgian, 1898–1967). Magritte, whose deadpan Surrealism
is exempli¿ ed by this painting, excelled in the combination of unexpected
objects or the creation of unexplained tableaus. The painting is so peculiar
that it is memorable. Who are the witnesses and what are they waiting for?
For the record to end? For the man to exit? Where is this sparsely furnished
apartment with the bare À oor? It is all expressionless, without meaningful
clues. It looks like a scene from a crime ¿ lm or detective novel, but it doesn’t
act like one. It simply is. Why should we care about the questions it raises,
given that no answers will be forthcoming?In complete contrast is this almost contemporary painting by Picasso, The
Dance (1925). We see three frantic dancers; one is doubled over at the left
and seems to have a “hole” in the body, created by the space between the arm
and the torso. The long, extended ¿ gure of the central dancer ¿ lls the canvas,
and its right hand extends over to the other dancer, who is partly in bright
white and partly in near-black. In this frantic, Dionysian outburst, Picasso
is the expressive opposite of Magritte: Both paintings are repositories of
emotional and sexual content, but Picasso chooses to release rather than box
in the emotion. It is Expressionistic, and one small part of it commemorates
the death of a friend, whose black silhouette is seen at the top right. Next,
we see Woman with her Throat Cut (1932; bronze cast, 1949) by Alberto
Giacometti (Swiss, 1901–1966). This eviscerated form may be abstracted
but is still too clearly what its title says it is to be looked at with detachment.
It is about sexual torture and murder and is, therefore, as relevant today as
the day Giacometti conceived it.During the 1930s, with a worldwide Depression, Fascism rising, and the
possibility of another war looming, art reÀ ected world events. If Dada, an
embracing of the anti-rational and the nihilistic, was one response to the
postwar trauma, the art of Piet Mondrian (Dutch, 1872–1944) was another.
It is all too easy to assume that the highly structured, non-objective mature
paintings of Mondrian are exercises in art for art’s sake. Nothing could be
further from the truth, because he was not an aesthete—he was an idealist:
since the world was without order, Mondrian would supply it.