Locating the Modern Self through the Figure

It is often difficult to locate ourselves amidst the hustle and bustle of modern life. Urban life contextualizes itself within metal, concrete, and machine. Throughout the 20th century, artists explored the intersection between humanity and modernization. Some artists have raised concerns. Should we distance ourselves from modern life, and attempt to reconnect with something natural or primal? On the other hand, if we are completely lost to ourselves at this point do we become the machine or fade away? Other artists fully embrace the tides of progress. They are eager for what comes next, eager for what the future may hold.

In 1913 Boccioni and his fellow Futurists were enthralled with modernization. The old ways of doing things were mere shackles to a newer and brighter future. Nature seemed all but conquered with the rise of machinery. Cars and airplanes made fast travel possible, and the blurred image of an object racing by became a prominent motif for the Futurists. They were willing to sacrifice anything in the name of progress.

Our identity becomes an increasingly blurred image in the fast moving pace of modern life. Nevertheless, we are enchanted with the new. As a society we are fascinated by scientific progress. We unquestioningly embrace the newest iPhone. We instantly validate new social media platforms. My goal in this curation is to call the viewer to pause and consider the impact modern life has on the self. In consideration of history, what should the dynamic be between old and new? Should we resist the momentum of modernity or embrace it? Or should we locate ourselves somewhere in the tension between the old and the new?

Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, Umberto Boccioni, 1913 (cast 1931), Bronze, 231.1948.

Boccioni’s figure races past the viewer. We catch a glimpse of the figure as it rushes by, but don’t see it clearly. Here we see an example of the Futurist’s ideology-- inevitable, unstoppable progress. Boccioni uses a strong sense of geometry to abstract the figure, integrating human and mechanical forms. Boccioni was invigorated by progress, and remained unwaveringly optimistic about where it would take humanity. It is worth noting that this piece was completed only a year before WWI ravished Europe in 1914.

Torso in Metal from ‘The Rock Drill’, Sir Jacob Epstein, 1913-15, Bronze, Tate Britain.

Sir Epstein has concerns about how technology affects our identity as humans. The industrial elements have completely overtaken the figure, to the point that we may wonder whether we are looking at a human or a robot. It is worth noting that Sir Epstein began this sculpture before WWI, and finished in its midst. The Tate Britain's website notes that this piece was originally situated on a rock drill, but the artist cut it at the waist in response to the horrors of modern warfare. In what ways does the misuse of technology shape our identity?

Little French Girl (The First Step [III]), Constantin Brancusi, 1914-18, Oak on pine base, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

With Little French Girl we take a step away from progress, and consider regress. Brancusi was inspired by African sculptures, and wants us to reconsider ourselves in light of a “primitive” visual language. He thematically distances the viewer from machinery and progress. Instead, he invokes child-likeness and the innocence of a first step. He also uses organic materials to strengthen the viewer’s connection with the natural and primitive. Is our identity better situated in primitive expressions?

Recumbent Figure, Henry Moore, 1938, Green Hornton stone, Tate Britain.

Moore’s work also connects the viewer back to themes of natural and primitive. He creates organic forms that coalesce into a figure. The reclining pose stands in stark contrast to the brisk stance of Unique Forms. This figure is completely at rest, content in being old and earthy. In Moore’s world the figure is not overwhelmed by machines, but morphs back into the landscape. As we situate ourselves between Unique Forms and Recumbent Figure are we identifying with the mechanical or the natural, or are we something in between?

Abstract Figure, Oskar Schlemmer, 1921, Bronze, Kröller-Müller Museum.

Schlemmer’s Abstract Figure is a return to the themes of Unique Forms. The steely color and forms that make up Abstract Figure visually connect it with manufactured objects. Schlemmer confidently reveals the human figure through highly geometric shapes. We might situate it somewhere between the organic and the mechanical. Kröller-Müller’s website highlights that Schlemmer's figure champions optimism about the future. Even after the devastation of WWI, Schlemmer would agree in many ways with Boccioni’s excitement about progress. Should we? Does Schlemmer’s optimism seem naive or profound in light of WWI’s horrors?

Walking Man II, Alberto Giacometti, 1960, Bronze, Kröller-Müller Museum.

With Walking Man II we look into the far off future Boccioni couldn’t see. Giacometti worked after both World Wars, inhabiting an entirely different cultural consciousness. The Walking Man II silently towers above us, progressing alone. He is faded, as if only a fragment or a memory of a former self. He is utterly fragile, and seems to crumble away as we stare. According to the Kröller-Müller’s website, Giacometti took inspiration from watching people commute in the city. Is Walking Man II and older, worn out, disenchanted Unique Forms? Has Unique Forms hurried gate slowed to a measured pace?

Swimming Pools and Embracing the In-Between

The tension of humanity inhabiting the in-between is a long-explored theme in art history, tracing perhaps most famously back to Greek sculpture and most recently to the representation of pools in modern art. Water, pools specifically, symbolize this tension, like a petri dish for all unknown to stay, manifest, dwell. The act of swimming itself is a middle ground for our physical reality -- not wholly feeling our weight but not wholly feeling its absence. This intermediary position represented through the physical location in or near water shows the cognitive power of humanity in an exaggerated, exalted manner. Artists emphasize the appropriateness, even correctness, of dwelling in the in-between through depicting bright artworks that portray a simplified interpolation. Artists like David Hockney, Caroline Walker, Benjamin Senior, and Eric Fischl position much of their artwork poolside, breathing deeply into the conflict and theme of the in-between. By assuredly telling their audience to breath deeply within their conflict, these artists suggest that peace comes from growing in conflict rather than hurriedly remedying it. In this collection, artists reckon with the elusivity of the in-between in various ways: some portraying the struggle, some portraying the action, and some portraying the peace.

David Hockney, A Bigger Splash, 1967, acrylic on canvas, 95.5 x 96 inches, Tate

Although there is no figure seen, Hockney loudly reminds us of human presence with a large, detailed splash in the center of this painting. This figure, trapped still beneath the water’s surface, leaves the viewer a big white splash reminding us of their humanity. Hockney speaks into the tension of the in-between by submerging his subject fully in it, much like Eric Fischl’s Christian Retreat.

Eric Fischl, Christian Retreat, 1980, oil on canvas, 64 x 78 inches, MoMA

Titled Christian Retreat, Fischl suggests a recently-made decision by an unseen but suggested figure. The empty poolside lounge chair, the open Bible, the sunglasses, the box of cigarettes and the lighter, all rest idly on poolside tables next to a pool that has just been jumped into. Eric Fischl captures a scene frozen in the middle of conflicted decision, and he continues the motif of water as representation for human tension. The splash loudly announces the splasher’s decision -- brashly moving away from their conflicted life as represented by the contradicting objects on the tables. The in-between still remains on the poolside, but for now, the figure will decidedly move to the water.

Benjamin Senior, The Pool, 2013, egg tempera on cotton on aluminum, 40 x 60cm, Carl Freedman Gallery

Two figures stretching, and one figure preparing to dive off the block, and partially covered by a fourth figure whose dive covers nearly the entire painting horizontally. Benjamin Senior speaks into the reckoning with human tension through water quite directly. He painted four swimmers at the pool, but none of them are yet inside it. While one is seconds away from breaking through the surface, this emphasis on the in-between of tension remains the primary form of action portrayed in this artwork.

David Hockney, Portrait of an Artist (Pool With Two Figures), 1972, Acrylic on canvas, 84 x 12 inches, Christie’s

David Hockney’s paintings enhance the sexual tension of his homosexuality through his location of the pool. Hockney paints himself into this painting, standing at the end of the pool in an anticipatory hover over the nearly-naked man swimming below. He paints himself waiting and watching, but paints the man in the pool as seemingly unaware of what is going on at the surface.

Caroline Walker, Desert Modern, 2016, oil on linen, 90 3/5 × 128 inches, GRIMM

A tranquil, cool indigo pours over the once blue sky and once green trees. The figure on the right sits on her partly-indoor partly-outdoor patio, nestled in the in-between of the cool of the outdoors and the yellow warmth of her home. Rather than experiencing doubt of impending decision, she embraces her position, sits back, and reads. While the in-between frightens some people, to others, as Caroline Walker suggests in this painting, it offers an overwhelming peace of potential opportunity.

American Ideals of Dignity and Stoicism in Winslow Homer

Winslow Homer, one of the greatest american outdoor painters of all time, showed his fascination with the natural power of the sea and the heroic people who live by and on it through much of his artwork. Homer spent most of his life living along the coast and enjoying its lifestyle while observing and painting local fishermen and sailors. Homer provided a contrast to many other famous impressionists during his life such as Degas, Monet and Renoir.  Through his more realist style of painting, Homer showed a forgotten people during his time, and a people he deemed to be noble in their strenuous lifestyle. Homer was not interested in showing modernization and the huge social transitions that were taking place in urban lifestyles during the late 19th century. Homer tries through his paintings to show just the opposite, he shows fishermen and sailors who are noble in their work and heroic in their overcoming of the ocean he depicts as powerful, dangerous, and beautiful. His goal was to show the dignity and heroic effort of the arduous and demanding lifestyle of fishermen. Through his art, Homer shows this focus on the natural world, and the dignity in doing hard work that most others during his time overlooked. His goal of representing these overlooked classes of people is seen clearly through Gulf Stream, and many of his other artworks.

Gulf Stream, Winslow Homer 1899, Medium:Oil on canvas, 06.1234

Homer’s Gulf Stream was one of his most famous works which culminated much of the experience he gained by painting ocean scenes throughout his lifetime. Homer’s Gulf Stream brings to fruition his idea of the ocean as provisional, yet dangerous and untamable.  This painting differs from most of his oil paintings in its subject as the southern gulf ocean off of the coast in the Bahamas, however it remains the same in its portrayal of under represented classes viewed as stoic and dignified.

Inside the Bar, Winslow Homer,1883, Watercolor and graphite on off-white wove paper, 54.183

In Homer's Inside the Bar, he represents life on the coast of Tynemouth on the north sea of England. Homer shows his sensitivity towards the lives of women and the strenuous and courageous lives they live in Tynemouth hauling and cleaning fish, repairing nets, and standing at the water's edge patiently awaiting the return of their husbands. The foamy waters and dark ominous sky shown in this watercolor suggest the turmoil and toughness these women of Tynemouth must face, and the stoic attitudes they embody while doing so.  

Fisher Folk in a Dory, Winslow Homer, 1881. Watercolor over graphite on heavy white wove paper. Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, 1939.24

Fisher Folk in a Dory is one of Homer's more light and tranquil portrayals of the ocean.  This painting uses lots of whites and some hints of blue peaking through the clouds to represent a much less ominous and dangerous feeling ocean.  However the subjects of the painting are the same common theme he portrays throughout his life. He shows three fishermen and one woman patiently plying their trade while drifting across the ocean in their dory.  These people doing what most during the time period considered proletariat work, are represented as noble people worthy of portrayal in his art.

The Fisher Girl, Winslow Homer,1894. Oil on canvas. Mead Art Museum, 1933.7.

In this work Homer once again seeks to bring light to under privileged classes and their burdensome and formidable work.  The under privileged class in this area however is not just a fishing society, it is the rugged lifestyle of a female in a fishing community during the 1890’s. The Fisher Girl provides strong contrast to other famous impressionist artists of the time who were showing aristocratic women with frivolous hats and dresses full of color as the way women should act and dress within the rise of modernization.  Paintings such as Renoir’s depiction of women in his Luncheon of the Boating Party, push for the opposite version of dignified humanity that Homer strives to represent in The Fisher Girl.

The Fog Warning, Winslow Homer, 1885,  Oil on canvas, 94.72

This painting by Homer shows his common theme of the dangers of venturing out to sea to earn a living, and how physically demanding this task can be.  The Fog Warning makes the viewer understand that even after the catch has been won, getting back to shore can be another problem all together.  In The Fog Warning, dark mist looms on the horizon threatening to make the fishermen pictured loose his way back to shore, or worse, wreck his boat on the rocky shoreline when he attempts to land.

Fishing Boats Key West, Winslow Homer, 1903, Watercolor and graphite on off-white wove paper, 10.228.1

Fishing Boats, Key West, another one of Homer’s most famous watercolors, is a result of his time spent painting in Nassau Bahamas. Similarly to his Gulf Stream, this painting represents the warm vibrant colored waters of the gulf, and shows his life theme of painting beauty found in the natural world.  In connection to Gulf Stream this seascape also shows Homer’s idea that the ocean is wild, untamable, and dangerous.  Even though Fishing Boats, Key West is in the same location as Gulf Stream, it portrays a relaxing calming ocean while Gulf Stream depicts a wild ravaging hurricane.

Western Expansionism in American Landscapes

During the 19^th century, American landscape artists were known for their portrayals of the West. The West was a rather new and unexplored land to the Americans that began to get landscape painters attention. Before the transition west, many landscape artists that were a part of the Hudson River School, such as Thomas Cole, were known for their paintings of the vast mountains, rivers and climates in the northeast. In these paintings, they sought to capture the sublimity of the landscapes with the intent of promoting American pride and nationhood of their land. With the new movement towards western landscape painting, these themes did not cease to exist. Instead, they were interwoven with the idea of western expansionism. National pride was used to fuel the promotion of expanding westward as artists like Albert Bierstadt captured the great expanse of the Rocky Mountains and the endless, untouched terrain of the West. The sublime was still very present as painters and photographers would often have mountains taking up the majority of the canvas or photograph and many even attempted to show the utter stillness of the scene in the midst of its height and expanse. In many cases, artists would highlight the sublime through their use of light as it would shine on specific parts of the painting directing the viewers gaze helping them to see what they are seeking to present.

Albert Bierstadt, Rocky Mountain, Lander’s Peak, 1863, Oil on canvas, 07.123

    

            Albert Bierstadt was very well known for his landscape paintings of the west, particularly the Rocky Mountains, and this work of his was one of his major accomplishments that came out of his first trip to the West. In this painting, he captures a panorama of Lander’s Peak and has it take up the upper half of the painting despite it being in the background. By doing so, he stresses the majestic mountains and the vastness of this Rocky Mountain region showing how it is fertile and inhabitable for people to live in by portraying the Native Americans. There is a beautiful waterfall being highlighted by the sunlight that empties out into a calm and peaceful basin.

The Teton Range, Thomas Moran, 1897, oil on canvas, 39.47.2

Thomas Moran shows the splendors of the West through its many different components. Like Bierstadt’s Rocky Mountain, Lander’s Peak, his mountains take up the upper half of the canvas as the sunlight illuminates them. In the foreground, he paints a full flowing stream with a vast field between it and the mountains. The water and greenery show its fertility with the contrast to the majesty of the mountains behind it. Portraying these beautiful aspects of America seeks to give the viewer a sense of national pride and awe.

Albert Bierstadt, Merced River, Yosemite Valley, 1866, oil on canvas, 09.214.1

On Bierstadt’s second trip out West, he camped out in Yosemite Valley which inspired this painting. These vast, jagged mountains grasp the viewers’ attention as it overtakes its surroundings. It minimizes the people that are shown in the foreground causing it to be difficult for the viewer to even spot them.  These Native Americans seem to be pointing and admiring the mountains which could be Bierstadt’s way of emphasizes where the attention should be directed and giving Americans pride in the beauty that it possess. He stresses the sublime through the stillness of the lake and the illumination of the sunlight pouring through the clouds and highlighting the landscape.

Albert Bierstadt, Mountain Scene, 1880-90, oil on paper, 1979.490.2 

Bierstadt’s Mountain Scene exhibits the sublime through the tranquility of the scene. Beginning in the foreground, beauty is conveyed through the motionless body of water as the birds hover over it. At the far base of the lake is some greenery which seems to be a common aspect to western landscape paintings as it illustrates the land’s fertility. In contrast, Bierstadt paints sharp mountains that consume the majority of the painting. The lack of human existence expresses how this landscape has been untouched by humanity invoking western expansion into this region.  

Sanford Robinson Gifford, A Gorge in the Mountains, 1862, oil on canvas, 15.30.62

            Sanford Gifford’s, A Gorge in the Mountains, displays a vast expanse landscape that protrudes far into the background of the painting. He seems to be incorporating the use of atmospheric perspective because the father back it goes, the hazier it becomes. This aspect along with the sublimity of the beautiful valley, the waterfall, the foliage of the trees and the sun’s illumination of everything, there seems to be an invitation to move and inhabit this beautiful valley.

Albert Bierstadt, A Storm in the Rocky Mountains, Mt. Rosalie, 1866, oil on canvas, Brooklyn Museum, 76.79

Bierstadt’s, A storm in the Rocky Mountains, displays both beauty and power. Beauty is shown through both the contrast of mountains and valley and also the climate. The sharpness of the mountains terrain is contrasted with the flat valley and water basin while the dark storm clouds are contrasted with the blue sky and sunlight. Power is shown through the bulkiness of the mountains and the thick, dark storm clouds that are rolling in over the mountains covering the land in darkness. This power and beauty shown here should invoke national pride in of Americans in their land and cause American’s to want to expand to such places.