Ch 1.7 Art History Creating a universal visual language 1

In the early 20th century, a growing belief emerged among the avant-garde for a need for a universal visual language that encompassed all cultures—east, west, north, and south. They felt that traditional art and culture were outdated. Dual approaches were developed. One was based on the promise of science, the other on a dive into spirituality.

The invention of vaccines, electricity, cars, airplanes, and movies at the start of the 20th century stunned the world. All were made possible by scientific discovery. Darwin’s theory of evolution and Einstein’s theory of relativity opened up a new universe in what was possible. Artists began to view their role as leading our culture into the future in this new reality. Darwin destabilized fixed creation. Einstein overturned Newton’s universe, where space and time had once seemed fixed and eternal. Cézanne cracked the foundation of Renaissance space, while Picasso, Braque, and Gris shattered it completely. Though these artists and scientists traveled separate paths, they shared the same awakening: reality was no longer stable, singular, or absolute. The modern world had entered an age of fractured perception.

At 21, I began to deconstruct the surface of a painting into geometric forms, painting its tables, windows, wine bottles flat, shaded, upside down, sideways, and from above. Cubism was a visual deconstruction based upon scientific analysis and a synthesis of information. In Italy, artists such as Severini, Boccioni, Russolo, and other Futurists projected a fractured spatial reality based on a worship of machines, cars, factories, and so forth, providing evidence of our evolution. During the Russian Revolution in 1917, Constructivist artists created a style in defiance of the realism of aristocratic rulers. Lenin and Trotsky adapted it; Stalin rejected it and then filled the streets with nationalistic posters of the working class.

In my opinion, this form of a universal visual language fell short. Brilliant, but too cool, too cerebral. Not the type of future I would want to live in.