20th Century Art History's Response To New Technology
While Norman Rockwell's 1949 magazine cover "The New Television Set" suggests both delight and humor to the viewer, in portraying the confusion of middle-class Americans faced with new technological innovations, Edward Hopper's 1940 oil on canvas work "The Office at Night" and "The Family-Industry and Agriculture" oil of printmaker Harry Sternberg (1939) suggest a much darker version of human beings' collective response to the impersonal nature of modern industrialization and technology.
This contrast is due to three major reasons -- firstly, Rockwell's painting deals with human's use of technology in their leisure time, in contrast to the mechanization of the modern office and of modern farming. Secondly, Rockwell painted his work after the end of World War II, and the advent of much greater American prosperity than had been enjoyed during the time when "The Family-Industry and Agriculture" by Harry Sternberg were created, during the Great Depression and the uncertainty of the early times of America's entry into World War II, when Hopper created his work of art. Thirdly, Rockwell's magazine cover was created for commercial purposes. Hopper, although he worked as a commercial illustrator, created his work for private purposes, for his own personal expression as an artist, and Sternberg unapologetically identified himself as a social activist as well as a teacher an a painter. ("A Tribute to Harry Sternberg," The San Diego Museum of Art, 2001)
Edward Hopper's large oil on canvas "The Office at Night" (its impressive 22 1/8 x 25 inches, now displayed, rather ironically given the painting's urban focus at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota) portrays a sterile while office space, filled with a narrow desk, illuminated by overhead light rather than the light from the virtually nonexistent window in the room. The male executive in the "Office at Night" seems to be staring at the muscular calves of his bored female employee -- evidently they are or will be 'working late' -- enjoying an office romance. The drama is mundane, even trite, yet Edward Hopper,...
His paintings were and are provocative because, instead of using personal confessions (like Dali), he uses irony and wit and intelligence to make his point hear. "The Treason of Images" is controversial in the sense that it makes the viewer question art and language and the meaning that we apply to objects. Magritte questions the assumptions made by people about the world, changing the scale of objects and defying
Art History And Contemporary Art The world is a complex place and the old, outmoded, Eurocentric way we look at politics, economics and culture (art) may not be the right way to conceive the new order. Globalism describes, in fact, the increasing unification of the world through economic means (reduction of trade barriers, support of international trade, and mitigation of export and import quotas). They goal for globalization is to increase
20th Century Architecture Architecture in the 20th Century As said by a famous spokesperson, architecture aims at eternity. Throughout history, architecture has always asked for creativity and coordination from those who possess the skills to excel in this field. Throughout the course of the nineteenth century, architecture had very little to do with industrial activities and rather was only concerned with structures and monuments which symbolised the pride of a country or
Museum Paintings Fauvism in 20th-century Paintings The medium I have selected for the time line I will be working on for the museum website is 20th-century Western painting, sharing the common theme of Fauvism. th-century Western painting began with the weighty influence of painters like Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, Georges Seurat, Henri de Toulouse Lautrec and the like - all of whom played critical roles in shaping the modern art. At the
Expressionism: This movement was launched in the early 20th century and it used exaggeration, alteration and "primitivism" (www.ibiblio.org). Expressionism alludes to art works that "emphasize the extreme expressive properties of pictorial form," according to the Guggenheim Museum. Expressionism departed from the "appearance of reality" and promoted idealistic values that oppose the "constricting forces and repressive materialism of bourgeois society" (Guggenheim). The example used is "Paris Society" by Max Beckmann: given
In this regard, Frye notes that, "The social changes appeared most profoundly to the majority of citizens not in the statistics of gross national product or the growth of technological inventions but in the dramatic occupational changes that faced fathers and sons and mothers and daughters" (1999, p. 4). The innovations in technology that followed the Industrial Revolution also served to shift the emphasis on education for agricultural jobs to
Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.
Get Started Now