Post 2: Modernism

Women have long struggle to fight for equality. Although sometimes they won many battles there were some instances in which they didn’t.  Modernism is a key word that encompasses many things during the late nineteenth century to the twentieth century (1890-1940). While trying to find what exactly is Modernism I found on http://www.artmovements.co.uk/modernism.htm Modernism is a period in which new styles of art and ideas in art and literature are introduced. It is a departure from the traditional and conventional ways in art and in which innovative things begin to emerge. All combine cubism, futurism, dada-ism, surrealism, expressionism, abstract expression among others form and best describe modernism (Guerrilla Girls 59).

Abstract expressionism was a time period in which artists began using abstract paintings in their artwork. Helen Frankenthaler (1920-2011) was an abstract expressionist. In the book Women, Art and Society by Whitney Chadwick, the author states: “Mountains and Sea (1952), her first major stained canvas, containing richly colored masses and fluid forms reminiscent of Gorky’s and Willem de Kooning’s biomorphism” (328). Figure 1 illustrates Frankenthaler Mountains and Sea. It shows the luminous and abstract colors in her painting. Although she was not the first artist to stain canvases, she was the first to develop a “feminine” technique.  Abstracts Expressionists artist developed paintings that was related to nature.

Figure 1 Mountains and Sea (1942) by Helen Frankenthaler

Hannah Höch was a German artist during the dada movement. At first she was not accepted as a Dadaist artists.  “Dada, an art movement that challenged every convection (except male supremacy) and scandalized bourgeois society (GG 66). Hoch was also one the first artists to make photomontages by using images from the media. Figure 2 depicts a map of all the countries in Europe that have given women voting rights. The following link https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/art-1010/wwI-dada/dada1/v/hannah-h-ch-cut-with-the-kitchen-knife-1919-20

Offers a very detailed analysis of Hannah Höch picture The picture also illustrates the fragmentation of the country and the political chaos during the 1919-1920 as seen through the eyes of Höch. Cut with the Kitchen Knife Dada Through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch of Germany, 1919-1920. The idea of cutting things is also similar in how pictures are cut and pasted in a photomontage.

Figure 2 shows Cut with the Kitchen Knife Dada Through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch of Germany, 1919-1920. by Hannah Höch

Additionally, Surrealism is a movement that aims to express the unconscious and inner thoughts of the artists. An important key figure during the Surrealist movement is Leonora Carrington (1917-2011).  The following link  http://www.theartstory.org/artist-carrington-leonora.htm illustrates Carrington biography. Carrington’s art explore on the ideas of sexual identity. Interestingly she avoids stereotyping and objectifying women. One of her famous paintings Self-Portrait (1937-1938), shows Carrington’s wearing androgynous clothes and giving her hand to a hyena (illustrated on Figure 3). According to Chadwick: “The Self-Portrait (1930) by Leonora Carrington reinforces the woman artist’s use of the mirror to assert the duality of being, the self as the observer and observed” (Chadwick 314). The author emphasizes how Carrington’s portrait serves as a way in which she can reinvent her reality and life. In a very similar way Claude Cahun expresses herself as a man and a woman. According to the Guerilla Girls: "Instead of presenting herself as a passive object ready to be consumed by a heterosexual male gaze, she defiantly presents as both object and subject of her own sexual fascinations” (63). Her identity was confounded for some people couldn’t categorize her as a woman or man. Claude Cahun, Self Portrait 1928 is shown on Figure 4.

Figure 3 Self-Portrait (1937-1938) by Leonora Carrington

 
Figure 4 Claude Cahun, Self Portrait 1928

Another important figure of the Surrealist movement was the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo (1907-1954). Chadwick mentions: “The duality of Kahlo’s life—an exterior persona constantly reinvented with costume and ornament, and an interior image nourished on the pain of a body crippled in a trolley accident when she was an adolescent…” (313). Kahlo’s works represent her reality. The background in her paintings serves to illustrate her inner most thoughts, desires, and pain. Her inability to conceive a child is often illustrated in her paintings such as “Henry Ford Hospital”, “My Birth” 1932. Although Kahlo didn’t considered or identified as a Surrealist, her painting, “The Two Frida’s (1939) is one that is surrealist. Kahlo’s painting on the left depicts Frida who is heartbroken and broken. It illustrates her pain at losing Diego Rivera, her husband. The Two Frida’s are connecting by a vein. The Frida on the right is a person that is complete, the one that loves Rivera, and is not heartbroken. In her hand she holds a picture of Rivera, which signifies that she is still in love with her husband. This painting is very symbolic because it represents Frida Kahlo as the person that she is and the one the she wants to become- simply the duality of her life.

Figure 5 The Two Frida’s by Frida Kahlo (1932)

Modernism is a period of changes in which art and artists artwork evolves. Dadaism, Abstract Expressionism, Dadaism, Surrealism are movements that serves to define modernism. Modernism and its eras are shaped by artists such as Frida Kahlo, Hannah Höch, Helen Frankenthaler etc. 

Works Cited

Chadwick, Whitney. Art, Women and Society. Thames & Hudson. 2015. 5th Ed. 

The Guerrilla Girls. The Guerrilla Girls' Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art. Penguin Group. 1998.