Paintings and Sculptures of this period responded positively to the modern
world?
Situated at the precipice of industrialisation, Modernism, as denoted by its name, directly
responds to, and challenges the advent of new technology, ideas and political institutions
fostering in the social upheaval of the ‘Great War’. Whilst there is no doubt that artistic
practices underwent a consistently positive rejuvenation in this period, directly informed by
new philosophical ideas, many of the conceptual focuses of the pieces are seen to be less
favourable.
An outlier to the core argument of this essay is Robert Delaunay’s Homage a Bleriot, 1914, a
work which in virtually all respects represents a positive embrace of Delaunay’s modern
climate. Straddling the line between the abstract and representational; this painting depicts
recognisable emblems of the French technological progress including that of a biplane and
the Eifel Tower which have been given status in the composition through their
comparatively bare surroundings in contrast to the playful concentric circles that dominate
the rest of the work. Their simplified nature presents an unthreatening celebration of their
creation and Delaunay’s use of unmodulated colour mirrors Sauvestre’s use of steel lattices
which similarly embrace controversial modern techniques in art. A notion that is developed
in Delaunay’s collapsing of space informed by Cubist fascinations with Einstein’s Theory of
relativity. The use of saturated primary colours is also an extension of this celebration of
modernity as it was based on the scientific discovery of the Law of Simultaneous contrasts
developed by Chevreul as well as the Fauvist interpretation of it. The contrasting colours of
yellow, blue, red, and green, placed beside each other, heighten their vibrancy, and indicate
a positive depiction of modernity. Whilst this use of colour maintains frequencies that
affront the senses and denote a loud atmosphere, which might postulate some negativity, it
conforms more to Marinetti’s futurist manifesto that celebrated speed and mechanisation in
the modern world. This link is especially illustrated in Delaunay’s use of concentric circles
which act like directional lines of force for the propellers in the painting and echo’s the
commemoration of aviation that Delaunay intended by dedicating this work to Bleriot.
Whilst this work is undoubtedly positive, it is almost utopian and illustrates Green’s notion
of the ‘selective and idealised’ nature of several works of the period. Focusing on the
celebration of technological, artistic, and intellectual innovation it is only representative of
some aspects of the modern world, and thereby not positively responding to all of it.
Dealing with the end of World War One, Hannah Hoch offers a wider scope of both positive
and negative depictions of the modern world in her photomontage ‘Cut with a Kitchen Knife
Dada through the last Weimar Beer Belly Cultural Epoch’ 1919. The busy composition
retains a quarterly division of Dadaist and anti-Dadaist elements, creating a fragmented
picture plane which denotes the fragmented political, social, and cultural atmosphere of
1919 in Germany. It’s a satirical piece which recontextualises images from magazines in a
mocking depiction of the culture and political figures in Weimar Germany, whilst also
embracing the stylistic properties of photography. By reforming the bodies of significant
figures in her modern world, she subverts the traditional notions of political and patriarchal
power. In one instance she depicts the head of General von Hindenburg on a female body as
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