1925-1939

Art Contextual:-

• 1925 Flapper dresses became stylish.
• 1926 A.A Milne publishes Winnie-the-pooh and Houdini dies.
• 1927 BBC Founded.
• 1928 Penicillin discovered.
• 1929 The Great Depression begins.
• 1932 Scientists split the atom.
• 1934 Bonnie and Clyde killed by Police.
• 1935 Monopoly Board Game Released by Parker Brothers and Alcoholics Anonymous founded.

Bauhaus:-

Bauhaus was a revolutionary school of art, architecture and design established by the pioneer modern architect Walter Gropius at Weimar in Germany in 1919, includes artists Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky.

Wassily Kandinsky
Swinging 1925
Oil on board

Dada:-

Dada was an art movement formed during the First World War in Zurich in negative reaction to the horrors and folly of the war. The art, poetry and performance produced by dada artists is often satirical and nonsensical in nature.

Max Ernst
Dadaville circa 1924
Painted plaster and cork laid on canvas

German Expressionism as well as many of the 'isms' were being documented in films between 1925 and 1939, for example: Nosferatu released in 1922 directed by F.W. Murnau starring Max Schreck as the vampire Count Orlock was a great example of German Expressionism.

   


Surrealism:-

Surrealism was a movement which began in the 1920s of writers and artists (including Salvador Dalí and René Magritte), who experimented with ways of unleashing the subconscious imagination.

René Magritte
The Future of Statues 1937.

Surrealism sought to free the imaginative human mind and reveal the unconscious, encouraging radical change and rejection to logic and reasoning. Surrealism literally means 'above and beyond reality'. 

Andre Breton published The Surrealist Manifesto in 1924.

Fashion between 1925 and 1939:-

The desirable look for women in the1930s was still slim, but more womanly and sophisticated than in the previous decade. This body shape was created through longer skirts cut on the bias and by an indented waistline and rounded bosom.

This increased exposure of the body was due to sportswear’s influence on new styles including the ‘halter-neck’ credited to the French couturier Madeleine Vionnet, which exposed arms and back.

Typical daywear for women consisted of a two-piece suit with sleek, fitted jacket and matching skirt or dress. Day dresses were usually simple and calf-length, while more formal attire was longer, often reaching the floor. Evening dresses became more elaborate and extravagant as the decade progressed.

Although Hollywood stars, such as Marlene Dietrich and Katharine Hepburn wore trousers, they were not widely accepted. However, they did appear in sports and leisurewear, particularly for playing golf, tennis or for riding and cycling. In 1939 high fashion magazine Vogue featured trousers as acceptable day wear for women for the first time.

  

1914-1925

Art Contextual:-

• 1914 Charlie Chaplin first appeared as the Little Tramp.
• 1916 Battle of the Somme.
• 1920 Women given the right to vote in the U.S.
• 1921 Extreme inflation in Germany.
• 1922 Insulin discovered.
• 1924 First Olympic winter games.
• 1925 The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald published.

Constructivism (1913-1930)

Constructivism was a total commitment to and acceptance of modernity. The pieces created were often totally abstract, with an emphasis on geometric shapes and experimentation. Constructivist art was optimistic. The movement wanted to remove all art that had come before which led to catastrophic war. The new art would lead to greater understanding, peace and unity, which would then have an impact on the social and economic problems of the time. The movement was founded in about 1915 by Vladimir Tatlin and Alexander Rodchenko.

El Lissitzky
1. Part of the Show Machinery 1923
Lithograph on paper

Cubism (1907-1915)

Cubism was a revolutionary new approach to representing reality invented in around 1907/08 by artists Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque who aimed to bring different views of subjects (usually objects or figures) together in the same picture, resulting in paintings that appear fragmented and abstracted.

Pablo Picasso
Bowl of Fruit, Violin and Bottle 1914
Oil on canvas

Fauvism (1905-1910)

Fauvism is the name applied to the work produced by a group of artists (which included Henri Matisse and André Derain) from around 1905 to 1910, which is characterised by strong colours and fierce brushwork.

André Derain
Henri Matisse 1905

German Expressionism (1905-1925)

German expressionism was an early twentieth century German art movement that emphasized the artist’s inner feelings or ideas over replicating reality, and was characterised by simplified shapes, bright colours and gestural marks or brushstrokes.

George Grosz
Suicide 1916

Futurism (1909-1914)

Futurism was an Italian art movement of the early twentieth century that aimed to capture in art the dynamism and energy of the modern world.

Gino Severini
Suburban Train Arriving in Paris 1915

De Stijl (1917-1931)

De Stijl was a circle of Dutch abstract artists who promoted a style of art based on a strict geometry of horizontals and verticals.

Friedrich Vordemberge-Gildewart
Composition No. 15 1925

Suprematism (1915-1925)

Name given by the Russian artist Kasimir Malevich to the abstract art he developed from 1913 characterised by basic geometric forms, such as circles, squares, lines and rectangles, painted in a limited range of colours.

Kazimir Malevich
Dynamic Suprematism 1915 or 1916

Abstract Art (1907 Onwards)

Abstract art is art that does not attempt to represent an accurate depiction of a visual reality but instead use shapes, colours, forms and gestural marks to achieve its effect.

Morris Louis
Phi 1960-1

Fashion between 1914 and 1925:-

My image of a woman of the 'Roaring Twenties' is the image of a flapper. Flappers did not truly emerge until 1926.  Flapper fashion embraced all things and styles modern.  A fashionable flapper had short sleek hair, a shorter than average shapeless shift dress, a chest as flat as a board, wore make up and applied it in public, smoked with a long cigarette holder, exposed her limbs and epitomised the spirit of a reckless rebel who danced the nights away in the Jazz Age. 

The bras of the early 20s include home made ones in white cotton and which were little more than bust bodices with extra separation.  Some purchased bras were like camisoles and they offered no support.

  

1900-1914

Art Contextual:-

Between the times of 1900-1914 there were many events that influenced the art and popular culture:

• 1901 Queen Victoria dies and U.S President McKinley was assassinated.
• 1904 Theodor Seuss Geisel and Salvador Dali were born.
• 1905 Painting by Matisse and and Derain introduce Fauvism.
• 1907 Picasso introduces Cubism.
• 1908 the Converse rubber corporation was formed.
• 1909 Plastic is invented.
• 1911 Mona Lisa is stolen.
• 1912 the Titanic sank.
• 1914 WW1 began.

Aestheticism:-
Aestheticism (or the Aesthetic Movement) is an art movement that was prominent particularly in Europe in the 19th century. It supported the emphasis of aesthtic values more than social-political themes of literature, fine art, music and other arts.

The Peacock Room, Aesthetic Movement designed by James Abbott McNeill Whistler, one of the most famous examples of Aesthetic style interior design.

Modernism:-
Modernism refers to the broad movement in Western arts and literature that gathered pace from around 1850, and is characterised by a deliberate rejection of the styles of the past; emphasising instead innovation and experimentation in forms, materials and techniques in order to create artworks that better reflected modern society.

Women and Fashion between 1900 and 1914:-

Only 19% of women had jobs, most of them working in factories. By 1900, more than one million women worked in factories, primarily in textile mills and clothing factories. They worked long hours, often 15 hours a day, in poor conditions and for very little pay. They could not fight for better conditions because many unions did not allow women to join. Only about 5% of women were secretaries, clerks, or salespersons. Middle-class women joined the work force, primarily as teachers and nurses (teachers, however, were required to quit when they got married). They also worked as typists or telephone and telegraph operators. Half the female workers were under 25 years old and they were paid less than men. 

Because of this women's fashion also began to change, women's skirts became shorter, in part to make it easier to step into automobiles and trolleys and when at work. A popular skirt was the "hobble skirt" which had a slit to the knee, making walking easier. Women also liked to wear big hats. Middle class women copied styles from fashion magazines, either hiring someone to make replicas or sewing the clothes their own. At the time of around 1908, women started rejecting the corset and European style for more comfortable clothes such as tailored skirts and blouses. Women based their styles on the Gibson Girl, a creation of American artist, Charles Gibson.