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Find old Modern Art articles here. Find information on Modern Painting, artists, 1920s modernists, newspaper articles about modernism and more.
The attached VANITY FAIR article announced that the numero uno society portrait painter of the Gilded Age, John Singer Sargent (1856 – 1925) was swearing-off portrait commissions in order to concentrate on water color. Little did he know that he would be back at it in a few years painting whole boat-loads of general officer portraits when he was named as one of the Official British War Artists.
Clive Bell (1869 – 1964) was an art critic who is remembered in our day as one of the most devoted champions of modern abstract art. In this 1921 review for THE NEW REPUBLIC, Bell explained why he held that the paintings of the André Derain (1880-1954) were so significant – writing that the Frenchman was best painter in all of France (reserving for Picasso the roll of the most influential painter in all of Europe).
This article will give you a good look at how the seeds were sewn as early as 1915 to ensure the rise of New York City as one of the great art centers of the world. For the first time since the 1913 Armory Show, New York was again to host an important exhibition of the European modernists. Much of the article concerns Henri Matisse (1869 – 1954) and is illustrated with a portrait of the artist by the photographer Edward Steichen.
Things were changing – not long after New York was proclaimed as the commercial capital of the art world, America was recognized as the preeminent world power, click here to read about it…
Ukrainian artist David Bruliuk (1882 – 1967) is warmly recalled by his friend and fellow artist, Moses Soyer (1899 –
Recent paintings from Paris have been brought to New York by Pierre Matisse (1900 – 1989) and are now on view at his 57th Street Gallery [at the Fuller Building]. Represented are the Pierre Bonnard, Jean Dubuffet, Andre Marchand, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Georges Rouault.
When this profile of the thirty-tree year-old Thomas Hart Benton (1889 – 1975) was published, the painter was not as yet recognized as the eccentric that history remembers him to have been. The anonymous journalist took an enormous interest in understanding Benton’s education and the source of his inspiration.
Click hereto read a 1936 art review regarding the paintings of Grant Wood.
This is a VANITY FAIR art review that was reverently torn from the brittle, yellowing pages of a 1915 issue of VANITY FAIR covering the first Paul Cezanne (1839 – 1906) exhibit on American shores.
WHY DO THEY DISTORT THINGS? CAN’T THEY DRAW? WHY DO THEY
PAINT SQUARES AND CUBES?
In an effort to help answer these and many other similar questions that are overheard in the modern art museums around the world, authors Mary Rathbun and Bartlett Hayes put their noodles together and dreamed up the book (that is available at Amazon) Layman’s Guide to Modern Art
The authors point out that abstract images are not simply confined to museums and galleries but surround us every day and we willingly recognize their meanings without hesitation:
Lines picturing the force and direction of motion are a familiar device in cartoons… The cartoonist frequently draws a head in several positions to represent motion. Everybody understands it. The painter multiplies the features in the same way… Everybody abstracts. The snapshot you take with your [camera] is an abstraction – it leaves out color, depth, motion and presents only black-and-white shapes. Yet its simple enough to recognize this arrangement of shapes as your baby or your mother-in-law or whatever…
A late Thirties art review of Paul Cadmus (1906 – 1999), one of the finest and most scandalous artists of the W.P.A.:
Paul Cadmus was thrust into national prominence at the age of 26 when his canvas, ‘The Fleets In’, painted for PWAP in 1933, stirred up a storm of protest. Since then controversies have dogged his art but with them has come recognition…Like the contemporary writers Thomas Wolfe and Aldous Huxley the reaction of Cadmus against present day ‘civilization’ is one of repulsion tinged with hatred. This note of protest seems to be the battle cry of the younger generation of artists and writers. Mrs Overdressed Middle class to be viewed by the public…
Artist and poet Jaime Sabartés (1881 – 1968) had been among the oldest and closest friends of Pablo Picasso since the two of them were 19-year-old artists in Barcelona. Throughout the course of their 40-year friendship Picasso had painted and drawn his pal on numerous occasions – Sabartés’ comments about those six portraits and his memories of those isolated moments appear on the attached pages. He recalled a day when Picasso energetically encouraged him to write down his thoughts, which in time lead to this article, that appeared in his 1948 book, PICASSO: an Intimate Portrait
I decided, therefore, to take these portraits as texts, to try to imbue with warmth Picasso’s pictures of me, to make them live anew, to enrich them with fragments from the life of their creator and shreds of my own.
A Picasso poem is included among the reminiscence (translator unknown).
A forgotten article from 1913 that degraded Picasso and other assorted Modernists can be read here.
Jacob Epstein was brought up in the city of New York, being one of a group of young men from the other side of the Bowery, some of whom have since become well known in the arts.
Attached is a photograph of the American expatriot sculptor Jacob Epstein and three of his pieces. This is a short notice heralding the great splash that the artist was making in the London art world of 1915. Although his work can be found in many of the world’s finest museums, Epstein is best remembered today for his creation of the monumental sculpture that marks the grave of Oscar Wilde.
Just prior to the death of Auguste Rodin (1840 – 1917), the Welsh poet and essayist, Arthur Symons
AUGUSTE RODIN PRIS SUR LA VIE at once a document and a living thing. The main interest lies in the exactitude with which it records the actual words of Rodin, much as he must have spoken them y
VANITY FAIR critic James Huneker(1860 – 1921) had a few words regarding the Italian Futurist painters. Huneker stated that he had been following their progress since he first attended a 1912 Futurist exhibit, and in the subsequent years had gained a familiarity with their 1910 manifesto, which he summed up for this articleVanity Fair critic James Huneker(1860 – 1921) had a few words regarding the Italian Futurist painters. Huneker stated that he had been following their progress since he first attended a 1912 Futurist exhibit, and in the subsequent years had gained a familiarity with their 1910 manifesto, which he summed up for this article.
Writing for one of the earliest issues of VANITY FAIR, playwright and culture critic Mary Cass Canfield slammed some nails into the Futurist coffin a wee bit prematurely in this critical essay titled The Passing of the Futurists.
A magazine article about the artist Ben Shahn (1898 – 1969) and his particular approach to making art:
A fundamental of Ben Shahn’s philosophy insists that there should be a minimum of separation between the private and the public work of art. He believes that the painter should speak with the same voice in the room and in the street. He is pleased by the criticism that his posters sometimes look like fragments of murals…
This review was penned by James Thrall Soby (1906 – 1979), art historian and critic who wrote two monographs on the artist.
Max Beckmann (1884 – 1950), having fled to Holland from his native Germany in order to escape Hitler, arrived in New York shortly after the end of the war and wasted no time in securing an aggressive dealer eager to arrange liasons between him and the the post-war dollar.
The first exhibition of Max Beckman’s work since 1941 is currently being held at the Bucholz Gallery in New York. Director Kurt Valentin has assembled for this event important examples of Beckman’s brush dating from 1939 to the present…Among the many drawings particularly remembered are a satirical ‘Radio Singer’ and a tongue-in-cheek ‘Anglers’, along with ‘Head Waiters’.
Sixty years before this article was published, Libero Nardonne, who posed for the Rodin’s celebrated sculpture, The Kiss (1885), enjoyed a life as one of the most popular artist’s model in all of Paris – at a time when the greatest artist’s in the world were residences of that famous burg. Jump forward to 1955 and you would find him a broke and broken man who lived on the streets – nonetheless, he showed the American photographers through the art museums to point out all the masterpieces he had played a part in creating.
