One of the main characteristic that defines the end of
the 19th century is a phenomenon known as the Second Industrial Revolution.
Iron, very employed in the railway at the beginning of the century, was
substituted by aluminium and copper. These new materials allowed a big
development in the architecture, and we find some examples of this in the Eiffel Tower
(1889) or the buildings of the Chicago’s
School called skyscrapers, where metal combines with glass. But copper was
especially used in another of the greatest inventions of finals of the 19th
century: the installation of electrical light, thanks to Thomas Alva Edison’s
advances. The last important invention of the century was the car. In Europe it arrived in 1889 thanks to Armand Peugeot, and
it was a first prototype of 4 wheels and with a Gottlieb-Daimler engine that
worked with petrol. Shortly afterwards, Henry Ford did the same in the United States
with the Ford-T, which would comport big advances in the chain of production.
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| Louis Sullivan, Carson Store, 1899 |
Some of these technological advances -such as the
production in chain or the electrical light-, influenced terribly in the
society, extending and toughening the working times. All these facts contributed
to the growth of the social ideologies and the working movements, that had been
developing since the revolutions of the first half of the century and that
would culminate with the Russian Revolution of 1917. Meanwhile, society kept a
very classist structure, where new bourgeoisie controlled the economy. Yet, the
mix between classes was unavoidable; the borders were increasingly thin and the
boulevards and nightclubs turned into places where the labels did not
matter. They were simply considered as “sanctuaries of freedom”.
Like this, the existential and social anxieties
present in the 19th century, conditioned the artistic production of the change
of century. In this way, it predominated to all levels a feeling of “decadence”
that manifested itself of many ways.
In the literature field, it appeared the Decadentist
current (with J.K. Huysmans as the main exponent), which was present in the
press of the moment, by means of critical or poems, mostly. On the second hand,
in the plastic arts field –and linked to Decadentism- it raised
a trend called Symbolism, which illustrated the decadentist thematic
that took place in onirical or strange landscapes. Even thoug, in many times
this current was accompanied by Occultism, where the inner world and the
feelings of the artist-creator became the main protagonists. In this point, is
convenient to highlight the impact that supposed the Freud’s Psychoanalysis
theory -published in 1896- that opened the doors of the unaware and would
condition the daily life of the 20th century people.
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| Jean Delville, Les Trésors de Sathan, 1895 |
Meanwhile, those artists with a more accommodated
position reflected the wealthy bourgeoisie ambient, where the last novelties in
entertaining fit as well, such as Edison’s
phonograph, or Lumière Brothers’ cinematograph. The waltz, the opera and the
Russian ballet also became important figures of inspiration for this type of
social art. On the other hand, some artists wanted to shun of the bourgeois reality
and their tastes (very often suitable to the academical precepts) and created
the bases of the plastic movements that would appear at the beginnings of the
20th century. Therefore, there are two important painters from the north of
Europe, James Ensor and Edvard Munch, who recovered – in the line of
decadentists– the romantic feeling of expression of the own artist’s
subjectivity and the reflection of the hardest questions of the reality (death,
obsessions, solitude, morality) by using a very own style that put the accent
in the colour and the personal stroke.
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| James Ensor, The death and the masques, 1897 |
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| Edvard Munch, Madonna, 1895 |
The interpretation of the individual freedom by means
of a free utilisation of the colours was different, depending on the geographic
field and, in this way, we can distinguish two new currents: Fauvism in France and Expressionism in Germany.
Fauvism appeared in France in 1905 and its name is used
to talk about a word that defines this trend: “beasts” (fauves in
French) with which the critic of art Louis Vauxcelles described the exposed works
that followed this style in the Chamber of Autumn of Paris of 1905. The chromatic
load of the works of H. Matisse, A. Derain or M. Vlaminck, to the detriment of
the drawing, contradicted all the academic canons, showing a transgressor
posture that evidenced the willingness of change and innovation of these
artists, that reacted in this way against the Impressionist Art that was
dominating in that moment.
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| Henri Matisse, Joy of life, 1905 |
German Expressionism also wanted to convert colour in
his more pungent characteristic, but giving to the works a deeper dimension in
exposing with them his problematic inner as individuals.
In the case of the group that initiated the movement
expressionist, die Brücke (the Bridge), in 1905 in Dresde, his style
wanted to escape of urban reality and bourgeois that surrounded these young
artists, looking for a state of purity that reflected their wishes of freedom. Therefore,
E.L. Kirchner, M. Pechstein or E. Nolde, wanted to acclimatise his works in a
Nature in wild state and, regarding human figuration, resorted to the
“primitive” style of Africa or Oceania
villages, which they knew thanks to several ethnographic collections and
engravings. In this last case, they often got inspiration in the stages of nightclubs
and city circuses, that in fact, provided them of that freedom they were
looking for.
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| Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Monocycle, 1911 |
In the south of Germany, another group of
expressionist style was configured, der Blaue Reiter (the Blue Rider),
that shared with its north neighbours –with which in fact goes collaborated in
several occasions– the research of freedom; but, unlike those, their works
wanted achieve a spiritual dimension considered the art as a catalyst of wishes
of young renewal.
Following this line, W. Kandinsky created what is
thought to be the first abstract work, followed by this path for some of his
companions, like F. Marc.
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| Wassily Kandinsky, First abstract watercolor, 1910 |
The breaking attitude against tradition, as well as
they wanted the creation of a suitable art according to the times that they
were living, brought all the artists of this moment to the experimentation,
being the Cubism the most paradigmatic example and the culmination of all this
process. By 1910, a
group of artists influenced by Cézanne’s style, exposed their work in the
Chamber of the Independent in Paris,
presenting to the public some canvases that converted the reality in a
geometrical simplification that broke with all the previous artistic tradition.
Like expressionists, cubists did of the popular arts of far –and “primitive”-
villages their model to follow, refusing the mimetically figures of the
classical canons. But, contrary to those, the works of P. Picasso, G. Braque
and J. Gris, deepened much more in the geometry of bodies doing, in last term,
a geometrical plane of all what surrounded them, simplifying it to the maximum
and, at the same time, deconstructing the reality in an intellectual level that
included, for the first time in the history of painting, the fourth dimension (time).
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| Paul Cézanne, Mount ste-Victoire, 1902 |
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| Pablo Picasso, The piper, 1911 |
With the First World War, many artists of these First
Avant-gardes disappeared, not only because they modified their style, but also
because they died at the front; but the “rules” of a new language were already been
written, because of a situation of insubmission to the social and artistic
guidelines of the moment. This circumstance would condition the development of
the art of all 20th century.
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