Notes from lecture [Jan 25]

Key dates and historical context:

1914-1918 WWI

1939-1945 WWII

1907-1914-Cubism [inspiring De Stijl, Constructivism, Neoplasticism]

1908-1915-Futurism

1916-1923-Dada

Totalitarian regimes in place in: Germany, Italy and the Soviet Union (post-1922)

Avant-garde: means "advance guard" or "vanguard".  Term used by Napoleon. 

Cubism: Simultaneous representations of different perspectives, *The first major movement in visual art where the concept is emphasized over the visual.

Key players: Matisse [coined the term in 1908], Picasso, Gris, and Braque.

Federal Art Project-Roosevelt Era, disbanded at the outreach of WWII. 

Fernand Léger “Beauty is everywhere, in the arrangement of your pots and pans.”

“Ballet Mécanique”- American composer George Antheil and the French filmmaker/artist Fernand Léger.

DADAISM: Characterized by absurdity, chance, collage, primitivism, playfulness, whimsy, apolitical acts/processes as political acts. Founded in Zürich, continued in Hanover, Paris, Berlin (became the most politicized wing of the Dadas—The Communist Party of Germany was founded at this time)

Hugo Ball and Emmy Hemmings  (both Germans) founded the Cabaret Voltaire in Zürich, Switzerland in 1916.

Other key players:

Marcel Janco, and Tristan Tzara (Romania)

Richard Huelsenbeck, Hans Richter (Germany)

Jean Arp (Alsace)

*Consider, why Switzerland?

Borders re-open in 1918.

Important Dada films:

Hans Richter: Rhythm 21 (1921)

Viking Eggeling: Diagonal Symphonie (1924)

Marcel Duchamp: Anemic Cinema (1926)

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1895-Birth of cinema

1927-Sound cinema