A Century of Rebellion: Exploring 20th-Century Art Movements

Henri Matisse. Woman with a Hat.
Public domain.

The 20th century was a crucible of chaos—wars, tech booms, cultural upheavals—and its art mirrored that turbulence, violating norms and redefining creativity. From Fauvism’s wild colors to Conceptual Art’s brain-bending ideas, artists didn’t just paint or sculpt; they revolted, experimented, and dreamed. Here’s a romp through 10 art movements that left their mark, each being an influence in various ways, upon impressionable fine arts students like myself. 

The century kicked off with Fauvism around 1904, when Henri Matisse unleashed bold, screaming colors and fierce brushstrokes. Forget realism—these “wild beasts” (fauves) shocked Paris salons, paving the way for Expressionism’s emotional roar. Growing up in JerseyI had the privilege of having access to so much art it was mind-blowing. On one occasion saw a Matisse retrospective beginning with his very first painting all the way through to the end of his life.

Then came Cubism in 1907, where Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon is regarded by many to be the birth of modern art.  It wasn’t just painting; it rewrote how we see space—sculpture, even architecture, felt the ripple. It was a break from tradition that incorporated primitism and scandal, though provocative subject matter wasn't really all that new in the art world. Nevertheless, the piece made an impact n art hisory.

By 1909, Italy’s Futurism roared in, led by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, author of The Futurist Manifesto. The movement was obsessed with speed, machines, and modernity. I recently watched Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times and it's easy to see the energetic dynamism of a world in motion. Loud and aggressive, the movement briefly flirted with fascism before fading. 

"Fountain" by Marcel Duchamp
Photo by Alfred Stieglitz
Public domain

In Zurich during the second decade of the century World War I gave birth to Dadaism, a middle finger to logic and tradition. When Marcel Duchamp plopped a urinal on a pedestal (“Fountain”) and called it art, critics debated whether there was profound seriousness here or a profound joke. The Dadaists generated pure chaos. (If you're in the neighborhood, there is a room at the Phildelphia Museum of Art with a collection of some of Duchamp's most famous works including Nude Descending a Staircase, The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors and Chocolate Grinder No. 2.

Out of the chaos of dada came  Surrealism, André Breton’s lovechild with Freud’s psychoanalysis. Salvador Dalí’s melting clocks and Max Ernst’s eerie landscapes, unearthing images from the unconscious and captured in paint.

Post-WWII, New York stole the spotlight with Abstract Expressionism in the 1940s. (For context, keep in mind the German occupation of Paris, which drove droves of artists, writers and thinkers to America and elsewhere.) Jackson Pollock became a sensation by dripping his soul onto canvas; Mark Rothko’s vast color fields swallowed viewers whole. America was now the art world’s heavyweight.

The 1950s brought Pop Art, where Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein raided comic books and ads. Campbell’s Soup Cans became icons—high art meets low culture--and the line blurred. (I myself never "got" Lichtenstein. It seemed boring to me.)

Then Minimalism stripped it all back in the ‘60s—Donald Judd and Agnes Martin went for clean lines, simple forms, industrial cool. No emotional mess, just detachment. 

It was during this same period that I myself was in the fine arts program at Ohio U. Happenings, Foreign Film Festivals and all manner of experimentation was taking place. Op Art tricked eyes with Bridget Riley’s dizzying patterns and Victor Vasarely’s pulsing grids, a scientific twist on perception. Through I never aspired to do Vasarely-like work, it did impress me.

The turning point here was Conceptual Art, which flipped the script. Sol LeWitt and Joseph Kosuth said the idea outranked the object—art could be instructions or a dictionary definition. Art became a mind game. It wasn’t about beauty; it was about thought. Tom Wolfe's The Painted Word was a scathing dissection of this game.

As one who loved the act of laying paint on a surface, of creating visual imagery in whatever medium, Conceptual Art was a throwback to where I'd started my college studies: in philosophy. (You can read my take on this in my story Terrorists Preying.)

These movements weren’t just styles—they were the 20th century’s pulse, reacting to its madness. Take Dada, for instance. As a young art student, I fell hard for Salvador Dalí’s incredible precision (inspired by the classical mastery of Vermeer). His surreal clocks led me to De Chirico’s empty plazas, Max Ernst’s haunting woods and strange birds, Yves Tanguy’s strange landscapes, and Magritte’s sly riddles. Somewhere along the way, I learned Surrealism drank deep from Surrealism's well. 

At the time, my mind latched onto this story of Dada's roots: European artists in 1916 Zurich, sick of war, picked “Dada” randomly from a dictionary—eyes closed, finger pointed. Anti-art, I thought. While digging deeper recently, I found that tale to be a little murkier. Some say a knife stabbed the page for drama; others tie it to Romanian artists Tristan Tzara and Marcel Janco muttering “da, da”—a sarcastic “yeah, yeah” in English, “yes, yes” in Romanian. And Dada wasn’t anti-art—it was anti-war, born in WWI’s heart. Their work mirrored the senselessness of a world gone mad, and artists held up the mirror.  

So what’s art reflecting now? War’s echoes, AI’s hum, NFTs, the dehumanizing effect of technology? Cultural fragmentation? These 10 movements of the last century show that artists don’t just follow; they provoke, question, redefine. Who are the most influential artists today? Where is the center of the art world today? Is influence the measure of great art, though? Perhaps the truly great work is being done by people who are beyond the need for recognition, fame or fortune. Or who will not achieve the recognition they deserve until another lifetime comes along. 

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Varla TV (Pepe Mar. 2018) courtesy of the artist
and David Castillo Galler

For centuries art was produced in the service of the Church, with a capital C. At a certain point in time artists were liberated from this function and freed to explore other themes. Some became fascinated with light. Others with nature. (O.K. same thing usually.) In the twentieth century the winds of change were a-blowin' and artists began creating work in completely original languages, freed from the need to replicate what cameras and other new technologies were reproducing. Artist served their own inner visions.

Simultaneously, there were other streams to which many artists were drawn. One of these was the powerful reaction against the Capitalism which had been the ascendency for two centuries, creating  higher living standards wherever it spread, with its dark side that included social dysfunction and colonialism.

When I was in college (19970-74) I had a friend who used to say to me, "Eddie, the artist is the vanguard of the revolution." In other words, the proper use of my art would be for political purposes. Though I personally leaned away from making my art political, adopting the stance expressed in H.R. Rookemaaker's Art Needs No Justification, producing work that challenges is sometimes required. (e.g. my painting addressing domestic violence and abuse, "Mommy, Please Make It Stop.")

In point of fact, Marxist ideology was a binding force as a European movement in the first half of the century. Dadaism and the Surrealists were not politically benign. (Salvador Dali was shunned for not buying into the political views as presented in Andre Breton's Surrealist Manifesto.

The Happy Hour (Gonzalo Fuenmeyer, 2018) 20' wide charcoal drawing.
Courtesy the artist and Dot Fiftyone Gallery

Detail from Cross-Cultural Trap, by Christopher Carter, 2018.
Courtesy of the artist.

In 1967 The Society of the Spectacle (French: La société du spectacle) Guy Debord  published a book that built on some of the ideas of Marxist critical theory in which the author develops and presents the concept of Spectacle. The book is considered a seminal text for the Situationist movement which was an outgrowth of avante-gard, anti-authoritarian Marxism. Many of the ideas conveyed by Debord were seeds that produced the art that will soon be on display at The Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum in Miami.

The exhibition is titled "Deconstruction: A Reordering of Life, Politics and Art." More than fifty years ago, this book foreshadowed our reliance on isolating hand-held technology and the twenty-four-hour news cycle that dominates our times. The author Guy Debord warned about "a future world where social interactions become too influenced by images that would prevent us from direct personal contact." (If you are sitting with a friend at lunch while reading this on your iPhone, raise your hand and shout "Guilty!")

"Deconstruction" features 12 Miami artists whose work is designed to confront contemporary issues and current events in the frenetic social media stream. The featured artists include Eddie Arroyo, Zachary Balber, Frida Baranek, Christopher Carter, Leyden Rodriguez-Casanova, Yanira Collado, Gonzalo Fuenmayor, Pepe Mar, Glexis Novoa, Sandra Ramos, Jamilah Sabur and Frances Trombly.

Apocalyptic Cartographies. Vano dello ínfero (Sandra Ramos, 2017)

Timba (Glexis Novoa, 2017), Courtesy of the artist
and David Castillo Gallery

In remarks about the show museum director Dr. Jordana Pomeroy drew attention to the fact that this is the 10th anniversary of the Frost Art Museum's spectacular building. For this reason that wanted to produce a special show of equally exceptional work.

“When this beautiful building was constructed on campus ten years ago, few could have imagined the cultural beacon the Frost Art Museum FIU would become for our community. Now, as the museum enters its next decade we continue elevating our mission to new heights: helping to define Miami's arts and culture evolution through a global perspective that celebrates the vision of Florida International University," she added.

The artists, working in a variety of media, aim to have us "take a long, hard look at our world today." Sometimes it makes us uncomfortable to look too deeply. Other times it's surprisingly rewarding and unexpected. Occasionally an exhibition can create both sensations simultaneously.

* * * *

Opening Celebration with the Artists: 

Saturday, July 14 (4:00-7:00 p.m.) 

On view through September 30
at 10975 SW 17 Street, Miami.

ABOUT THE MUSEUM

One of the largest free-standing art museums in Florida, the Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum at Florida International University was founded in 1977 and is the Smithsonian Affiliate in Miami. The museum’s new lakeside building debuted in 2008, designed by Yann Weymouth (the chief of design on the I.M. Pei Grand Louvre Project), and this year celebrates its 10th anniversary. With 46,000 square feet of energy efficient exhibition, storage, and programming space, the museum was honored with LEED silver certification.

Joan Miró's Spanish Playing Cards

Joan Miró was a Barcelona-born Spaniard who studied business and art as a teen, ultimately going in the direction of a business career. After a nervous breakdown he pursued a life in art. An art dealer, José Dalmau, helped him get his first solo exhibition in Barcelona.

The Spanish Playing Cards, on display at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, was produced in 1920 after a trip to Paris where he met Picasso for the first time. The painting shows the clear influence of the cubism in vogue at the time.

In Paris Miró took an interest in the influential Dada movement and also absorbed the ideas of the emerging Surrealists. Travels to the Netherlands resulted in influence by the Dutch Masters. By the late 1930's his work was included in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York which later held his first major retrospective in 1941.

What's interesting to me is how varied the compositional elements are in this painting, especially when you zoom in on the details. Yet, in stepping back the fragmented scene hangs together and produces an effect as a whole. Here's a snippet from the museum website where this painting is briefly discussed.

EdNote: An exhibition titled Miró: The Experience of Seeing is now on display at the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio featuring 50 of the artist's later paintings and sculptures.

Meantime, art goes on all around you. Engage it.

A Space in Time with Chani Becker (Part 2)

This is a continuation of yesterday's interview with Chani Becker of HotHouse Design and Post here in Duluth.

Ennyman: What are themes that emerge from your creative side? Or, what are the problems that you're trying to solve?

Chani: With film in particular?

E: I'm thinking of film right now.

Chani: This is something that I haven't figured out where it's going yet. But I've been thinking a lot about the work that I'm doing documentary-wise. It’s all related to sustainability, environmental and social sustainability, all very straightforward documentary projects, either documenting initiatives that are going on or this or that. But in my creative work I'm heavily influenced by the surrealists, and in my own life by the absurdity that tends to permeate every day existence. I've been thinking a lot about how surrealism and the technical approaches of surrealism can inform sustainability.

E: That's a very interesting combination.

Chani: Yes. So those are the themes that I'm interested in, working on and thinking about a lot. I'm conducting a workshop on surrealism and sustainability this summer at a sustainability conference. To a bunch of educators and scientists who may not be necessarily open to these ideas being put together. We'll see how that goes and see if it will sort of jog some new ideas and see if it will help me try to put this into some sort of narrative or experimental film.

E: Who are your influences? Bunuel and Dali come to mind for me.

Chani: Yes, Bunuel is one of my favorite film makers and David Lynch would be a close second or tied for first. But Luis Bunuel specifically regarding sustainability. His films have been really important. The Exterminating Angel is a film that comes to mind. I don't know if you've seen that one.

E: I've seen the one where things are being pulled out of the well and an eyeball is being slit. I've seen also the life of the …

Chani: The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie.

E: Yes.

Chani: The Exterminating Angel, he made in the early 60's, 1963. It's black and white, and it takes place after the opera at a wealthy persons' dinner party and they're all following social convention. It's getting late in the evening and social convention tells you that it's time to go so your host can go to sleep. So people have this urge, this instinct to do that, but they can't. They cannot find the will to leave the room. So the whole film takes place in this room over the course of days and days and days, nobody can muster the willpower to leave the room, even though it’s insane. They're breaking social convention, they get to the point where there's no food, no water over the course of these days and they are literally clawing through the walls to get to the water pipes to have water to drink because they don't have the willpower to leave. So I love that situation as a metaphor for sustainability and for how we're living so unsustainably and the capacity to change is there, the idea of leaving the room is there but the will power isn't there and we'll bite off our own ankle rather than just walk out of the cage.

E: You said you have 3 current projects right now?

Chani: Three current documentary projects, and many other graphic design projects I'm doing.
E: Tell me about your painting. You do art, also.

Chani: Yes, yes.

E: Do you have a studio?

Chani: Out of my home, I have a large space for painting at home and yes, it's been difficult to balance that with starting the business and working on these films. So it’s been tough. I haven't been painting as much.

E: Tough because you wish you could be paining more? All the time?

Chani: I do, I do. It's been tough just to balance my time, nearly impossible. I work every night at my business, working on projects. So it's been really difficult, but I've managed to eek out two paintings since I've been here in Duluth. But yeah, they're more just getting my muscles flexed, getting warmed up.

E: I guess that you're never bored?

Chani: Or easily bored, one of the two.

E: What is your biggest fear? I have to throw a curve ball in there, make it seem like I'm an interesting interviewer.

Chani: My biggest fear? I think boredom is my biggest fear actually. What a terrifying thought to not be interested in anything.

E: I have a hard time picturing that for you.

Chani: It's not something I worry about.

E: According to Updike, it is one of the life forces that drives people though. So you got involved in with this 3N6D project with John and the others. What did you learn from that experience? Tell me your take on it.

Chani: That was an amazing experience, I learned how the process of art making, or the creative process can literally open up new spiritual pathways within yourself. That's what it did for me, it ended up being a ritual, a ritualistic experience, kind of a sacred experience that just happened randomly with these disparate elements coming together. I taped all three nights and I've since watched all 3 nights, and the energy in the room and just the way it all evolved and unfolded, it turned into this very magical portal which I can't describe how or why, or really what happened. I'm sure it was unique for every person who experienced it, but that's my take on it, that there was this sort of portal that opened. It also had very much to do with the time. It was over 3 nights and it happened right at the end of February and it was an early spring and the ice was melting and it all came together in a very powerful sort of random spiritual doorway being opened.

E. Yes, it was a unique event, unusually powerful and evocative. Thanks for sharing yourself here. The best to you in your future creative endeavors.

NOTE: The paintings here are original works by Chani Becker. Click to enlarge.

Dali: Madman or Genius?

“The sole difference between me and a madman is the fact that I am not mad!”
~Salvador Dali

Without doubt he was talented. And an individualist with enormous ego. Said Dali, “At the age of six I wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since.”

Was Dali’s bizarre style a put-on to increase his marketability or was he simply a madman whose talents brought him critical acclaim, despite his ludicrous behavior?

According to the Masterpiece Paintings Gallery website, "Dali's ego and need for attention were never satisfied. His thirst for scandal was unquenchable. And 'the thought of not being recognized was unbearable', he said. He used to walk through the streets of New York ringing a bell whenever he felt people were not paying him enough attention. 'Every morning when I wake up I experience an exquisite joy -- the joy of being Salvador Dali -- and I ask myself in rapture what wonderful things this Salvador Dali is going to accomplish today.'”

As an art student I found Salvador Dali’s sensational work remarkably invigorating and inspirational. Inspirational on two levels… first, his extreme attention to detail and the skill of his painterliness, and second, for the evocative quality of his imagery.

Steve Martin, in his autobiography Born Standing Up, in passing mentions an incident during a visit to the Museum of Modern Art in New York whereupon he comes across Dali's Persistence of Memory. Martin was quite surprised at how small it was. Like Martin, the first piece I saw in person was this famous painting of melting clocks. At the time, Picasso’s stunning Guernica was on the wall just before I reached Dali’s piece. Guernica is enormous, and impressive. Just around the corner Dali’s Persistence of Memory was, in contrast, a tiny little thing, yet astonishing in its detail. When you look at plates of paintings in art books, both paintings might take a page of the book, and your mind just doesn’t quite grasp the reality.

My second Dali was the shocking/fascinating Soft Construction with Boiled Beans - Premonition of Civil War which hangs in a private collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. This is a wonderful museum, with the Dali piece accompanied by some of Marcel Duchamp’s most significant works, a great place to hang out if you are a masterpiece.

But if you seriously want to take in more than a piece or two, I strongly recommend you visit the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida which is wholly dedicated to this icon of Twentieth Century Surrealism.

While visiting the Dali Museum two springs ago, a tour guide told us a story about small sculpture composed of a lobster sitting on an old fashioned telephone rack. Dali, while dining, threw the lobster over his shoulder and it landed on the phone after knocking the handheld part off the receiver. He loved the look and made it “art.” Crazy or creative?

But the story that sealed my impression that he was a bit mad was when the tour guide said he went through a brief period in which he refused to say any two sentences in a row in the same language. So he would say something in Spanish, then French, then English, then Spanish, etc. This went on for days, maybe weeks. You can imagine the conversations that followed… or didn't.

If you've never been and you're anywhere near Tampa/St. Petersburg, you owe it to yourself to visit the Dali Museum. In contrast to Persistence, you will see fifteen foot high paintings like the Hallucinogenic Torredor, along with many rooms of other major works. The Torreador alone is worth the visit.

Although among the Surrealist Movement's brightest lights in the 1930's he was eschewed by these famous artists who composed the Dada Movement because Dali was a capitalist and they were socialists. As it turns out Dali mastered the art of making money, which contributed to his legacy. On the flip side, his mass production of prints of his work resulted in scandals that in some circles has damaged his name. It may be because his definitions of truth and ethics are as ambiguous as his motivations.

Here is a YouTube film that reveals the character of Dali's mind: self absorbed and over stimulated.