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Find old Modern Art articles here. Find information on Modern Painting, artists, 1920s modernists, newspaper articles about modernism and more.
An essay by one of the founders of Dada, Tristan Tzara (Sami Rosenstock a.k.a. Samuel Rosenstock; 1896 – 1963), who eloquently explains the origins of the movement:
Dadaism is a characteristic symptom of the disordered modern world…
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.
VANITY FAIR’s Edmund Wilson (1895 – 1972), reported his view on Dada as it existed in Paris, the influence of Jazz and the art of Jean Cocteau (1889 – 1963). The article is subtitled:
The Influence of Jazz and Americanization of French Literature and Art
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.
A review of the Stuart Davis (1892 – 1964) retrospective that opened at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in the fall of 1945. The artist referred to his influences:
In my own case I have enjoyed the dynamic American scene for many years, and all my pictures (including the ones I painted in Paris) are referential to it. They all have their originating impulse in the impact of [the]contemporary American environment.
The editors of VANITY FAIR saluted the eighty year-old painter Claude Monet, praising him as
the only remaining member of a little group of painters – Degas, Manet, Renoir and several others – known as the Master Impressionists.
Art alone survives the earthquake shocks of revolution, and Russian art has been doubly secure because of it’s deep-rooted imagination and it’s passionate sincerity.
That was the word from Oliver M. Sayler writing from Moscow as it starved during the Summer of 1919. Sayler, known primarily for his writings on Russian theater from this period, wrote enthusiastically about the Russian Suprematist Casimir Malyevitch, Futurist David Burliuk and The Jack of Diamonds Group; believing deeply in the Russian Revolution, he wrote not a word about how the Soviets mistreated the modern artists of Russia.
