Well, it certainly has been a while since I have updated by blog. This semester has started out with a few bumps for me, including coming down with a strange virus! I believe I am on the mend, however, and I am scrambling to get caught up with my school work. Yesterday I handed in two papers, both for my American Modernisms class. It has been fascinating to learn about America at the turn of the twentieth century. Yesterday we talked about "Fordism," the phenomenon of mass production introduced by Henry Ford and the production of cars. I had not realized that the first conveyor belt was used in one of Henry Ford's factories! You may wonder how all of this relates to art. It seems that the machine became popular subject matter for artists at the turn of the century. We talked about the importance of Dada, an art movement that originated in Zurich Switzerland and eventually spread to various European cities and then New York. The Dadaists challenged the meaning of art. (You may be familiar with Duchamp's urinal from 1917, entitled 'Fountain'?) But we also talked about Dada artists like Francis Picabia. Picabia created images like 'Parade Amoureuse' from 1917. And those
Dadaists that came from Europe in the early twentieth century had been influenced greatly by the machine and it's use in war, in the mass destruction of human life. So while Americans were idealizing the machine for it's ability to speed production, the European Dadaists were more pessimistic of the machine. While the Dadaists used the machine in art as a way to critique both art and the use of the machine, American artists used factories and machinery as the metaphor for a new American landscape in their paintings. Charles Sheeler is just one of the artists we talked about in class who took up this subject matter. (See Charles Sheeler, Classic Landscape, 1931) Charles Sheeler was categorized as a Precisionist. Precisionism then came the name for this art movement, and the artists
were praised for their 'precise' technique. This barely sums up all we discussed in class. I am certainly enjoying all my classes. I am also taking Twentieth Century Modernisms in France and Britain, and Postmodernism in Art and Visual Culture. Today I turned in a proposal for a long paper I will be writing for my Postmodernism class. I will be writing on the artist Jimmie Durham, and how his work fits in a Postmodern context. (See Jimmie Durham, La Malinche, 1988-1991).
