Intersections and

The Characteristics

of ModernismPARADE, ART DECO

Collaborative Effort: Parade

Costumes and set: Pablo Picasso

Music: Erik Satie

One-act scenario: Jean Cocteau

Ballet: Ballet Russes (Sergei Diaghilev)

Premiere: Friday, May 18, 1917 (Paris)

The artists tried to apply the principles of clarity,

simplicity, and purity in their work and rejected the

notion of “artist as genius” (S. Calkins, “Modernism in

Music and Erik Satie’s Parade”).

Link to YouTube Video.

Parade: A Marriage of Music, Movement,

Design

Co

cte

au

th

e p

oe

t • The plot centered around a group of performers and their failed attempt to attract audience members to their show.

• The characters included circus performers, acrobats, a Chinese conjurer, and an American girl.

Sa

tie

th

e c

om

po

ser • Satie’s first composition

for ballet.

• He was influences by jazz and ragtime.

• Jean Cocteau praised Satie’s “clear and natural orchestration,” “purest rhythms,” and “frankest melodies.”

• Satie rejected impressionism, stating that “it is the art of imprecision.”

Pic

ass

o t

he

de

sig

ne

r • Designed the set and bulky costumes made of cardboard.

• Awkward and stiff dance moves due to Picasso’s restrictive and bulky costumes.

• He was also a dancer in the show.

Ma

ssin

e t

he

ch

ore

og

rap

he

r

Intersections:

Picasso incorporated cubist elements in his design of the cardboard costumes.

The poet Guillaume Apollinaire described Parade as "a kind of surrealism" (une sorte de surréalisme) when he wrote the program note in 1917, coining the word three years before Surrealism emerged as an art movement in Paris.

The music was influences by ragtime.

Costume design by Pablo Picasso for Serge Diaghilev's

Ballets Russes performance of Parade at Théâtre du

Châtelet in Paris 18 May 1917. Image from Wikipedia.

Modernism

and Experimentation

Experimentation with traditional genres (portrait)

and styles

The artist is a creator rather than preserver of

culture.

Ezra Pound: “Artists are the antennae of the

race but the bullet-headed many will never

learn to trust their great artists.”

The roles of art: think of the performers’ failed

attempt to draw an audience in Parade and

the poor reception of this ballet piece.

Reception Parade

The ballet piece was even more controversial than Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring with an audience hissing and booing.

One critic who gave Parade a bad review received a postcard from Satie, which read (translation), "Sir and dear friend – you are an arse, an arse without music! Signed, Erik Satie." (Original: "Monsieur et cher ami –vous êtes un cul, un cul sans musique! Signé Erik Satie“).

Picasso married one of the dancers, Olga Khokhlova the following year.

Pablo Picasso, spring 1918, Portrait d'Olga

dans un fauteuil (Olga in an Armchair), oil

on canvas

One of the dancers in Parade wearing

a costume designed by Picasso.

Cocteau on Parade: The Influence of

Futurism

Cocteau, Satie, and Picasso went to see

Gertrude Stein before creating their

masterpiece with the Futurists in Rome.

Cocteau wanted to create a scandal similar

to Igor Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring.

Apollinaire wrote, “Parade will upset the

ideas of quite a number of spectators. They

will be surprised, to be sure, but in the

pleasantest way, and fascinated; and they

will learn how graceful modern movement

can be—something they have never

suspected.”Link to YouTube video

Satie and the Absurd

“Several years before he began working on Parade, he had attempted to

live according to ‘absurdist principles.’ Satie declared publicly, ‘I eat only

white foods: eggs, sugar, grated bones, the fat of dead animals; veal salt,

coconut, chicken cooked in water, fruit mold, rice.’”

Satie stated that “impressionism is the art of imprecision,” qualifying that he

himself “tend[ed] towards precision.”

Futurism

Futurism was an Italian avant-garde movement

that flourished from approximately 1909 to1916.

Visually, the futurists were influenced by cubism;

however, unlike the cubists, they were more

interested in a directly kinetic appeal that

conveys the exhilaration of modern urban life,

especially the sensations of industry, energy,

speed, and light.

Thus, the future, they envisioned was to be

founded on a dynamism that would break

completely with the cultures and societies of the

past. (Columbia Dictionary of Modern Literary

and Cultural Criticism)

Top Joseph Stella, 1919-20, Brooklyn Bridge, oil on canvas.

Bottom: The cover of the last edition of BLAST, the literary

magazine of the British Vorticist movement, a movement heavily

influenced by Futurism. Images: Wikipedia.

Originalist vs. Collage Method

Satie was influenced by jazz – parts of Parade seem plagiarized from ragtime,

particularly from Irving Berlin’s 1912 hit song That Mysterious Rag.

Modernist art strives not for complete originality but rather a new way of looking at the old, placing unexpected elements together, using a collage-like method to create a different form.

Links: Satie and That Mysterious Rag

Modernism

and

Fragmentation

Fragmentation is the opposite of totality and

can be understood in aesthetic terms or in terms

of understandings of the self or system of values

we inhabit.

Examples: James Joyce’s Ulysses, T.S. Eliot’s The

Waste Land

Examples of Fragmentation

Fragmentation of black self: Josephine Baker, J’aideux amours – double consciousness

Aesthetic fragmentation: Pablo Picasso, 1910, Girl with a Mandolin (Fanny Tellier), oil on canvas.

Fragmentation of self: the division between the conscious and unconscious self/the world we have christened reality and the world of dreams (Dali)

Bottom left: Dali, The Temptation of St. Anthony, 1946, oil on canvas

Modernism

and

Alienation

“Faced with the dissolution of the out-moded

political orders and the enormous casualties of

the war, old ways of explaining and portraying

the world no longer seemed either appropriate

of applicable” (Columbia Dictionary of Modern

Literary Terms).

Examples: the Lost Generation, T.S. Eliot’s The

Waste Land, the emphasis on the absurd (Kafka,

Satie, dadaism)

Resistances

Coco Chanel’s rejection of

the corset and celebration

of a more androgynous

aesthetic for women.

Matisse’s rejection of the

realist values maintained by

impressionism.

Picasso’s rejection of

Matisse’s vision.

Dadaism’s rejection of

aesthetics.

Clock-wise: Coco Chanel, Matisse’s Joi de vivre, Picasso’s Demoiselles D’Avignon,

Hannah Höch, Cut with the Dada Kitchen Knife through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly

Cultural Epoch in Germany, 1919, collage of pasted papers

Resisting

Boundaries

“Many of the modernist artists regarded

the destabilization of the boundary

between high and low art as one of the

great freedoms of the twentieth century.”

Art Deco

“Art Deco, style of design popular in the 1920s

and ’30s. It manifested itself primarily in furniture,

jewelry, textiles, and interior decor. Its sleek,

streamlined forms connote elegance and

sophistication. Although the movement began

about 1910, the term Art Deco was not applied to

it until 1925, when it was coined for the title of the

seminal Paris design exhibition, Exposition

Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels

Modernes.”

Art Deco vs. Art Nouveau

Art deco (1920-1940) resisted the principles of art nouveau, an earlier movement.

Art nouveau was intricate, decorative, flowery (natural elements, patterns in the shape of vines and flowers). There are a lot of semi-circle shapes.

Art deco is characterized by geometric, stream-lined, and sleek lines and incorporated new industrial materials (chrome, plastic, stainless steel). There are more zig-zag shapes and broad curves.

On the left, art nouveau entrance to the metro. On the right, Grand Rex movie

theatre in Paris (1932)

Art Deco: Fragmentation

It was an eclectic style

influenced by cubism, the

bright colours of fauvism,

and the exotic style of

China, Japan, India,

Persia, ancient Egypt.

It represented luxury,

glamour, exuberance,

and faith in social and

technological progress.

Joseph Csaky, 1912, Danseuse (Femme à l'éventail, Femme à la cruche), fashion

designer Jacques Doucet’s townhouse, 1927. Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon

can be seen hanging in the background, Csaky designed the staircase.

1925 Exposition Internationale

In 1925, an international exhibition was held in the centre of Paris.

Germany refused to participate, as it was invited very late, and so did the United States.

However, art deco influenced modern architecture in New York (see the Chrysler Building)

Art Deco: The New Woman

Clock-wise, Tamara de Lempicka’s self-portrait, Tamara in a Green Bugatti (1929) and "The Musician" (1929), and woman painted in the style of art nouveau (Alphonse Mucha)

Tamara Lempicka was a Polish artist living in Paris, who is known of her art-deco portraits.

Reaction against Art Nouveau and its representation of women. The new modern woman was strong and independent.

Art Deco

Josephine Baker is considered one of the most iconic images of the art deco period.

On the right, Josephine Baker wearing her set of three Jean Dunand jewels among other jewels for a 1929 ‘Vanity Fair’ shoot.

The three necklaces were inspired by African styles.

Modernism

and Primitivism

“The infatuation of people from European

descent with the culture and works of art from

tribal societies” (Columbia Dictionary of Modern

Literary Terms).

Stock Market Crash 1929

Art Deco became more subdued in the Great Depression.

Hemingway and his new wife Pauline, the Fitzgeralds went back to America.

Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas stayed in Paris until the beginning of WWII. At that time, they relocated to their country home.

Crowd gathering on Wall Street after the 1929 crash

Conclusion: simplicity, make it new

A rose is a rose is a rose