Main content

Birth of the Modern: Paris, New York and the Age of Abstraction (1848–1948)

The years 1848–1871 were critical in the history of European socio-political transitions. During that protracted era following Napoleon’s rule (1795–1815), periods of civil unrest and war with neighboring Prussia fractured many of the cultural norms that had dominated French society. Out of this upheaval France’s modernist art movements arose, initiating a radical confrontation with the conservative École des Beaux-Arts and the powerful académies that eventually reverberated well beyond the country's borders. This course will follow the emergence of the resulting late 19^th-century European painting styles, including Realism, Impressionism, and Post-Impressionism (van Gogh, Cezanne, Gauguin), leading ultimately to works by Picasso, Braque, Klee, Marc, Kandinsky, and others now recognized as the modernists. It was not long before their experimental forms were on display across the Atlantic in New York City, the New World’s version of Europe’s “City of Light”—specifically in the controversial 1913 Armory Show. In the decades between the World Wars, collectors and critics alike increasingly recognized that the United States was producing a new generation of artists, writers, and musicians whose work constituted a modernism inspired by the sights, sounds, and scenes of American life.

Instructor: Richard Friswell

Four sessions, Tuesdays, Nov. 10, 17, 24 & Dec. 1, 4:30–6:30 at the Wasch Center