Tag modernist art

The Modernism of Hector Guimard

Hector Guimard (1867-1942) was one of France’s greatest Art Nouveau architect/designers. In an exhibition organized by the Richard H. Driehaus Museum in Chicago and Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York, accompanied by a gorgeous catalogue, seven distinguishedscholars share their research and knowledge of Guimard. The book’s insightful essays

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Women with Good Taste: The Cone Sisters and Matisse

When modern artists like Picasso and Matisse first started trying to sell the public on their work, the experience was extremely difficult—everyone knows just how successful Van Gogh was, after all. Sometimes it took a little extra marketing on the painter’s part in order to close a sale. In Karen

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To London, with Love: On or About 100 Years Ago

Ivan Lett Virginia Woolf declared in her essay “Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown” that “On or about December 1910 human character changed.” There is hardly a better way to describe the dilemma of art in the Modernist period. The mere mention of Mrs.Woolf, her husband Leonard, E.M. Forster, and their

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Barcelona and Modernity

“In Barcelona, there is no need to prepare the revolution, simply because it is always ready. It leans out of the window on the street every day.” – The city’s civil governor, 1909 Today’s New York Times called the exhibition “Barcelona and Modernity: Gaudí to Dalí,” which is currently on

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Société Anonyme

“Traditions are beautiful–but to create them–not to follow.” – Franz Marc, motto of the Société Anonyme Before there was MoMA, there was the Société Anonyme, an organization founded in 1920 by Katherine S. Dreier, Marcel Duchamp, and Man Ray as America’s first “experimental museum” for contemporary art. Aiming to provide

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