Hans Hofmann was an abstract artist who transformed the art world due to the way he synthesized the traditional methods of painting with the new avant-garde ideas regarding the philosophy of painting. His work was based to a great degree upon the earlier works of famous Modern painters such as Paul Cezanne, Wassily Kandinsky, and Pablo Picasso’s unique Synthetic Cubism. When considering his art, it is most often critically compared to his theory, which he spent much of his life teaching and revising. Hofmann’s work fuses the various aspects of 20th-century art due in large part because of his deeply-rooted European sensibilities and his necessarily newly adopted American way of life. “He combined Cubist structure and intense Fauvist color into a highly personal visual language with which he endlessly explored pictorial structures and chromatic relationships. Hofmann created volume in his compositions not by rendering or modeling but through contrasts of color, shape, and surface” (Catalogue Raisonné Project, 2007). In each of these explorations, Hofmann relied on the forms and structures of nature to inform the piece, allowing his thought and his motion to mirror one another in visible details on the surface of the canvas, building up texture and color to enhance an impression, a reaction or an interaction.
The contemporary dance developed in the 20th century as artists moved away from the structured traditional styles of ballet to explore the natural movements of the body in response to inner personal feelings. In the United States, the movement has been attributed to Isadora Duncan. Duncan performed what she referred to as ‘free dance,’ which was based on “flowing natural movements that emanated, she said, from the solar plexus. She aimed to idealize abstractly the emotions induced by the music that was her motivating force” (“Modern Dance”, 2003).
Isadora Duncan arrived in London in 1898 or 1899. “London society acclaimed them, and British royalty honored them. Life became busy, hectic, and full to overflowing with triumphs – and setbacks. Duncan, the dancer, had arrived, but the girl, Isadora, was still a rebel against customs and traditions” (Dickson, 2004). Although she had found recognition in England, Duncan’s fame is primarily known for her unusual performances throughout the rest of Europe, Russia, and the United States. Schools she founded in Germany, Paris, Russia, and London, “based on a dance form that had no ‘teachable’ technique, encouraged the students to explore natural gesture and traveling and to exploit their spontaneous expressivity” (Carter, 2006).
The Beatles, considered by many to be popular music’s most historically important band, continues to evoke intrigue and fascination from a social point of view while their music, even today, appeals to people of all ages more than 30 years after their last album was released. The Beatles were the embodiment of the 1960s. They began their career as one type of band and ended as quite another altogether (Weinstein, 1998). This is the theme of their development, how they transformed from seemingly carefree suit and tie wearing lads who created relatively simple songs to counter-culture icons widely perceived as leaders of a societal revolution. For America, the Beatles could not have emerged at a better time. The Beatles’ appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show in February of 1964 served to effectively end the period of deep and endless mourning the country experienced following John F. Kennedy’s assassination the previous November. Since then, the country and the world have never been quite the same. The Beatles’ influence directly affected music, art, fashion, philosophy, and culture from that time throughout the remainder of the 1960s and the band remains iconic still today.
William Faulkner was one of America’s most highlighted and unlikely authors. Eventually producing 26 books and a difficult-to-count number of short stories, Faulkner’s stories were full of such artistry and character that he has become recognized as a giant in world literature. “Faulkner accomplished in a little over a decade more artistically than most writers accomplish over a lifetime of writing” (Padgett, 2005). His creation of the mythical Yoknapatawpha County, along with all the people in it, painted a precise picture of what life was like at the turn of the century American south. Rather than portraying his characters in keeping with the generally accepted and widely held view of the stereotypical farmer, for instance, Faulkner presented his characters, good and bad, with a strong degree of sensitivity and understanding (Cowley, 1977). By covering several aspects of living in Yoknapatawpha, telling stories from various different viewpoints within the town, Faulkner has an amazing repertoire of characters who drift in and out of focus and who can trace their lineage back to his first tale. In doing so, he focused attention on the beauty and meaning in the everyday and perfectly complimented the realism of the time.
The significance of Frank Lloyd Wright’s contribution to modern architecture cannot be underestimated. Widely accepted in both America and Europe as the most innovative and original architect of the last century, his concepts and constructions have had a great effect on the design of homes and office buildings, an influence that continues to this day. His name is synonymous with the very highest in architectural achievement. To Wright, the important aspect of architecture was in providing a sense of shelter, which was a feeling as much as a form, leading to his development of the open-style prairie houses with the emphasis on the horizontal. These houses were built with low pitched roofs and deep overhangs along with other facets which further accentuated the horizontal principle that reflected the low prairie on which they were built. He never used painted wood, always stained and employed other native materials to bring out the natural beauty of the particular native environment (Cronon, 1994).
Wright also worked in the corporate realm, designing the headquarters for Johnson Wax in Racine, Wisconsin from 1936-1939. Wright’s unique style was inspired by his desire to encompass, develop and incorporate an assortment of cultures into his works, all of which display his opposition to unoriginal styles. His conception of architecture involved a totality viewpoint of the building process; its environmental surroundings and corresponding materials functioning together in harmony within a collective use of the structure.
References
Carter, Alexandra. (2006). “Duncan, Isadora (1878-1927).” The Literary Encyclopedia. The Literary Dictionary Company.
Catalogue Raisonné Project. (2007). New York.
Cowley, Malcolm. (1977). “Introduction.” The Portable Faulkner. New York: Penguin Books.
Cronon, William. (1994). Inconstant Unity: The Passion of Frank Lloyd Wright. New York: The Museum of Modern Art.
Dickson, Samuel. (2004). “Isadora Duncan (1878-1927).” The Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco.
Padgett, John B. (2005). “William Faulkner.” University of Mississippi English Department.
Weinstein, Donna. (1998). “The History of Rock’s Past Through Rock Covers.” Mapping the Beat: Popular Music and Contemporary Theory. Thomas Swiss, John Sloop and Andrew Herman (Eds.). London: Blackwell.