A Journey Through Modern Art
A new book arrived today. On the front cover is one of Warhol’s Marilyns, and on the back is Kandinsky’s A Mountain. I really love that painting. I’m less keen on Warhol, but I think this Marilyn is my favourite that he did — it’s the one with the red background, yellow hair… Niagara, starring Ronald McDonald. Should I even have a favourite? It seems kind of beside the point; wasn’t his whole thing about standardisation? I should really get back to this book.
It’s called Modern Art, published by Taschen as part of their Bibliotheca Universalis series — the “compact cultural companions” that typically set you back little more than £10. (I own five of them now, and they look gorgeous on a shelf. Never mind how many I’ve read.)
Modern Art follows “the restless energy of 20th-century modernism.” From what I can tell, it’s been arranged largely chronologically — at least, in terms of chapters, which are dedicated to fourteen major movements in modern art: beginning with Impressionism and concluding, as a book titled Modern Art probably should do, with Post-Modernism. Each chapter has its own foreword on that particular movement, followed by a host of individual essays on the key artists and works associated with it. Some artists crossover into other chapters — such as Man Ray appearing in both Dadaism and Surrealism, or Picasso in Cubism and Symbolism — whilst others boast two essays in the same chapter! Can you imagine? I sure can’t. (When did they say we’d be allowed to socialise again?)
Now, I could just read the book and leave it at that, maybe posting the odd page on Instagram to keep followers updated with my cultured exploits in lockdown. (FIFA? No Pro Clubs for me lads, I’m grappling with this nouveau réalisme business.) But I’ve had this strange urge to write of late — less a review or a feature (or my dissertation) than something more informal in prose and fluid in its intent. It’s a type of writing that I don’t get the chance to test out all that often, and I’m a little curious. Call it a vaguely edited stream of consciousness, call it a diary in Getting Cultured™, or just call it a quasi-masturbatory ramble. In any case, I’d like to do something new-ish in quarantine that doesn’t involve running or focaccia or actual masturbation.
It’s a book review, of sorts, except I’m no authority on whether or not the writers are going to capture these paintings effectively or not. Instead, I’ll be evaluating… myself? Art has always felt a bit daunting to discuss for someone from my background, but I’ve so far found that a great deal of modern art is really quite conducive to just leaving any prior teachings at the door and letting something have an effect on you. And why shouldn’t you be able to pen those thoughts down — to remind yourself of that encounter, and to describe it to others?
Whatever this is, I’d rather not keep this one on a hard drive gathering dust. So it’s getting published on Medium for you all to read. Suck it up, folks!
(I hope you like it though.)
First Impressions
Before diving into this Modern Art thing, I thought it worth establishing a baseline for where I’m at pre-read. This whole essay is essentially that baseline — Chris pre-upgrade, before he knew what on earth a Balthus was. This is partly to preface my initial unfamiliarity with the bulk of this work (and my insecurities in writing about them) but it’s also to make use of “First Impressions.” The book starts with Impressionism, my interest in art originated with Monet, and even if neither of those things were actually true, I’d still have titled this section “First Impressions,” because it’s some very low-hanging fruit for a writer who already feels out of his comfort zone. Enjoy it, people.
Anyway, having received no formal education in art history or aesthetics outside of a cursory 3am browse through Wikipedia, it’ll be no surprise that I’m not entirely comfortable with the material contained within this book — even if it appears as somewhat a primer for the uninformed. This is just to say: if someone who’s soon to have a bachelor’s in film studies suffers from the occasional bout of imposter syndrome when writing a 300-word review of a Disney movie, you can imagine any attempt at saying anything about Paul Cézanne fills them with utter dread. This is also to say: isn’t it a good job this is all just quirky and informal and totally meaningless?
Still, I’ve been fortunate enough to make it this far in my life, and my time at university has partly facilitated travel to some very special cities — and their galleries that have always been top of the to-do list. From the Musée d’Orsay to getting my $19 (!) worth in a 4-hour visit to the Art Institute of Chicago, it’s safe to say whatever limited knowledge of modern art I’ve so far amassed has been through these physical experiences, and I’m exceptionally grateful to have had them.
Social mobility is alive and well in the queue outside the Louvre.
Whenever I think about modern art, then, I arrive first at Claude Monet. He’s been a favourite of my grandma’s — a woman whose fondness for art is ultimately responsible for me now babbling about it on this here Medium — for as long as I can remember. Her visit to Monet’s house and gardens some years ago was what led me to Giverny myself, nearly a year ago today. It’s rare that you encounter an artist’s subjects or sources of inspiration with such immediacy anywhere, but it feels especially unique with Monet and Giverny — such a distinct locale that merely walking down a garden path feels like your every step belongs to a paintbrush.
I think of those water lilies often.
Since that visit, though, I’ve had a further few memorable encounters with some Impressionists featured in this chapter. On a visit to the MoMA, I felt a little overwhelmed in a room of thirty-two soup cans, and quickly fled down the nearest corridor. The empty room I’d inadvertently stumbled into was Henri Matisse’s The Swimming Pool — a small and brightly lit space whose walls were adorned with the most gorgeously fluid paper cutouts of the deepest ultramarine. I spent several minutes being soothed by Matisse’s aquatics before others eventually began flooding in, likely in search of that same sensation I’d just been treated to. So I set off, but not before taking a selfie.
The other Impressionist is Georges Seurat, whose A Sunday on La Grande Jatte — as observed on the day off of one Ferris Bueller — was, admittedly, the sole purpose of my visit to the Art Institute of Chicago on a brief trip to the city one weekend in November. I was in Chicago to reunite with some American friends from my time in Edinburgh, but we’d spent last night slamming pints at that Lagunitas brewery, and I needed some repose: Cameron Frye style. I found it in Seurat’s pointy strokes, though I was surprised to be moved more not by Georges, but by someone named Henri Edmond Cross — a name that doesn’t appear at all in this book’s index — and his Beach at Cabasson.
The Impressionists seem like such an eclectic bunch of artists. Of all the movements in this book — and some, it must be said, I’m not at all familiar with — Impressionism has always seemed the most varied and heterogeneous in its output. (Maybe it’s the colours, or just the obvious signs of the painter’s unique hand in its creation.) I suppose that’s not exactly a surprising view to have of the trailblazing movement that kick-started modernism (the blurb to Modern Art describes their output as the “first assault on the artistic establishment”), but I’m curious to find out how a movement that encompassed names as distinct as Monet and van Gogh saw itself manifested in so many different visions.
Spanish Inquisitions
Some of y’all ‘bout to be real mad at me. But it must be said. Picasso has never quite done it for me.
Cubism really frustrates me, and it knows it — what with those jarring compositions and its deeply unsatisfying patchwork of rogue colours. (Brown and grey? What’s all that about?) But last year I discovered an old thing called Futurism, and I think it shares enough aesthetic traits with Cubism to cover Picasso’s arse for him. That or I just prefer Italians.
I do remember being once quite taken with something from Fernand Léger (though the painting itself escapes me), while Juan Gris — another Spanish Cubist, and possibly the best-named artist in all of Modern Art — has always moved me much more than any Picasso has ever managed to. I’d be interested to see if Gris is the exception, or if there’s more to Cubism than I’d initially been attracted to. If not, the following chapter is Futurism anyway. Stay winning!
Upon glancing at the list of Expressionists, I was a little struck with just how few names I actually recognised from a movement that I was sure I adored. Only one, in fact: Kandinsky, whose A Mountain adorns the back cover of Modern Art. (And whose Swinging is actually tacked onto my bedroom wall back in London, now I come to think of it.)
Turning the contents page, I quickly discover that there is a separate chapter to follow on Abstract Expressionism — filled with names I recognise and love — and I suddenly don’t feel like such a fraud. Will it last?
On Isolation, In Isolation
Like many others since lockdown began, I’ve found myself especially drawn to Edward Hopper — the American Realist turned Social Distancing King.
Hopper was ahead of the curve on solitude, but his work surprises in that it doesn’t exactly feel despondent. There’s a calmness to his isolated individuals and a quiet sense of perseverance that fills me with a lot of strength at the moment. I wouldn’t say Hopper was a sexy painter, but there’s a seductive undercurrent to a lot of this stuff — an allure that promises intimacy at a time where we crave it so badly.
I’ve also been rewatching a lot of Mad Men while cooped up indoors, and its thematic debt to Hopper is as strong as its visual one. Don Draper is frequently framed alone, but unlike the bulk of the series’ go-to shots — those low-angle glimpses of Don that stress both seniority and mystique — every now and then we’ll get the Hopper shot: the man sitting alone in a dark space. It’s a more submissive and intimate window into this steely-eyed alpha, and one that benefits greatly from the hindsight of fifty years. Hopper didn’t have that hindsight, but his lens on American society seems wholly unique; the nation was booming, expanding, but the world had changed, and people couldn’t quite figure out their place in it. Hopper saw this as the other side of the coin: the visually accurate semblance of the world we live in, forced into a difficult conversation with how we actually feel inside.
If that all sounds horribly contrived and rote then I’d probably agree, but without reading up on Hopper any further, all I know is that I’ve got a very strong impulse towards his work at the minute, and I’m feeling grateful for it. Were other Realists in this chapter also able to capture this same mood? I’d be interested to find out, as well as how (if at all) different national contexts produced their own distinct visions of solitude.
Meaninglessness
Or: Abstract Expressionism! I’ve always loved Jackson Pollock (as any Manc should) and never quite understood the seemingly widespread opposition to his work and his contemporaries. (This includes Lee Krasner, Pollock’s wife, whose own art was shamefully overlooked or ignored outright for decades. A retrospective at the Barbican last year sought to counter this, and her incredible Combat has been my Twitter header ever since. She gets very little mention in this 700-page book, it seems.) Accusations of “I could do that!” and “it’s meaningless!” seem appropriately typical of a lot of modern art, but it’s clearly no more prevailing than within abstract art.
I’ve also become fairly taken with Mark Rothko (again partly through my revisiting Mad Men) whose work I remember sharing a single room with Pollock’s in the MoMA — surely the biggest flex in the entire building. It’s work that seems fairly simple and restrained in actual content, but which invites so much engagement and accessibility for all those very reasons.
I feel oddly torn about actively trying to study such paintings, as it seems antithetical to why I’m so taken with them. Other movements seem to be strengthened by having contextual knowledge and various works of comparison, but Abstract Expressionism has so far worked well enough (for me, at least) without trying to figure out the who-s and the why-s. Let’s hope I’m not put off!
Pop Art, meanwhile, has always had me fairly ambivalent to begin with. I’ve no doubts this is tied to the movement being the only one I actively remember studying in high school. (In fact, was it the only movement that we actually learned about? I wouldn’t be surprised) I do like Warhol, though he’s not particularly cool anymore, but truthfully I could take it or leave it. I feel the same with Lichtenstein and co. — that I likely adored it upon first interaction, but whose endless reproduction and misappropriation and whatever Walter Benjamin said now leave me a bit empty when I confront the original thing. (Is this the entire point of Pop Art? My interest is stifled either way.)
Lucien Freud is also included in this chapter, and I feel a little thrown off. A Pop Artist? Surely not. I’m now starting to doubt I even know who Lucien Freud is, and whether I’m just confusing him with Egon Schiele. Maybe there are just more strands to Pop Art than I’d thought? Still, if anyone is likely going to be the key to me enjoying Pop Art, it’ll be David Hockney. He’s much too big a favourite of island kitchens in middle-class homes for me to be truly swept up, but the few pieces I’ve seen (including this American Collectors from Chicago) have much more to play with than Warhol or Lichtenstein. Or Freud, apparently.
If you’ve made it this far, I salute you.
Congratulations! A copy of Modern Art is on its way.
If nothing else, this little experiment has been quite therapeutic. I never kept a diary growing up, and so you’ll excuse me for trying to catch up via Medium, but it really does feel invigorating to write about something you’ve never actually written about. Who knew I could talk about art for an alleged 12-minutes?
I expect it’ll be a while before I check back in with something like this — the book is 700-pages long, after all, and I may or may not have 10,000 words to write by the month’s end. But I’d also like this to be something fluid and open-ended. Not exactly leaving you on the edge of your seat; just keeping the door ajar for future rambles.
