Amph A Century of "Fine" Art: Charge of the Lancers (1915) - Umberto Boccioni

Y’all know me; know how I earn a livin’. I’ll make this thread for you, but it’s going to be about “fine art.” Art is always awesome, but 1915 is a great place to start if you really want to explore art as an exploded thing where just about anything can fall under the label of “art.” And I’ll go back and hit some older art from time to time. Disclaimer: art should be experienced in person etc. etc. All opinions are valid here; let’s call it as we see it – that’s the fun of modern art. No big reviews from me; I’ll basically throw something up for discussion every couple of days. I'll also put up a place holder image here and also link to a super high-res image, if I can find one. I don't want to just kill the thread with a ton of massive pictures in here, but I do want you to have access to the largest, most detailed image I can find. So click the link. Let’s go.



Admiral Lord Fisher of Kilverstone, O.M.
Artist: Jacob Epstein
Year: 1915
Medium: Plaster
Dimensions: 62 x 53 x 31 cm
Location: The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel

Epstein was born in 1880 and came to public attention in 1908 with a controversial series of sculptures. He would continue to court controversy throughout his career for the often explicit treatment of sexuality in his sculptures but also for the ways in which he subverted the classical style of sculpture.

For example, this bust of Admiral Lord Fisher, which has a very rough-hewn look and a kind of visceral realism. Epstein studied under Rodin and you can see that in the choppy, kind of unfinished look of the sculpture. Flattering? No. Intriguing? Yes. And it seems to capture some real personality. Not one I would put up there with the masterworks of all time or anything, but I like it.

 

Black Square
Artist: Kazimir Malevich
Year: 1915
Medium: Oil on Linen
Dimensions: 79.5 x 79.5 cm
Location: Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia

Malevich had spent the first part of his career painting more traditionally, but in 1915 he published his defining manifesto, From Cubism to Suprematism. With this he founded the Suprematist movement. The focus in the Suprematist movement was on basic geometric shapes, a limited range of colors and a stark simplicity that isn’t that far off of minimalism. Malevich wrote that the total abstraction of his art was meant to allow for “the supremacy (hence the name) of pure artistic feeling” over the traditional modes, subjects and styles of painting.

Black Square is typically seen as one of Malevich’s two great masterpieces. Malevich said in letters that he painted Black Square in order to take himself and his art back “to zero.” Only by returning to this absolute blackness of nothingness, Malevich said, could he begin again to paint his true feelings. And it’s certainly a perfect example of the modern art divide. Is black paint painted on a square canvas art? It has ideas behind it certainly, but are those ideas enough to make the object art? Or should the object stand on its own? If so, does it? Is there value in standing in front of a black square and contemplating nothingness, in taking a moment to pause and ponder true darkness? Or are the ideas all hot air? Is Malevich double-talking to excuse his laziness? Is Suprematism just a way to be an artist without having to work as hard as he used to? Is this a big joke? I don’t know myself. I like some of Malevich’s stuff quite a lot; one of his later paintings we’ll talk about later I consider a masterpiece. This one is a bit too simple even for me. But this is another one trotted out in the argument about how you really have to see art in person: the brushstrokes and all that good stuff. I dunno; I believe that in a lot of instances, maybe not in this one. Is it great art? Eh, I think maybe no. But is it interesting and fun to talk about? Yeah. Should it be in a museum? Yeah, I’m cool with it.

This painting is also controversial for another reason: its condition. The above image is a reproduction from the original, because I wanted you to see the artwork as Malevich painted it. Here’s the original painting as it now hangs in the Tretyakov.



Art critics and historians have sharply criticized the Tretyakov and claim that the Tretyakov’s lack of conservation efforts have allowed the painting to deteriorate in such a dramatic way. For myself, well, I wonder if Malevich might see it as part of the process.

 

This is of course a load of horse dung. A snazzy marketing line. The guy knew how to sell his stuff. But some random canvas isn't his soul.

It's the second image that makes it an interesting tale.

 

Brandenburger Tor
Artist: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
Year: 1915
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Dimension: 50 x 70 cm
Location: Private Collection

Kirchner was co-founder of a movement called Die Brucke, or The Bridge; Die Brucke was a seminal force in creating the Expressionist movement in modern art. Die Brucke believed in a raw, crude style of painting with bold colors, broad strokes and a choppy look; they took inspiration from primitive art, like the cave paintings of Lascaux and the raw native stylings Gaugin had discovered in Tahiti. Kirchner was also a patriotic German, one supposes, since he enlisted in the German army in 1914 as soon as World War I was underway; but he was also severely mentally unstable and had a breakdown before he had even completed his initial training. He returned to art then in a career that grew increasingly disturbed. We’ll talk about this element in his work a little later when we look at another painting he did in 1915.

But this one is really quite stunning. The Brandenburg Gate is a cultural landmark in Germany and quite a work of art itself. It feels to me like Kirchner is still in his patriotic mode with this; it’s a brilliant, vibrantly colored painting of the Brandenburg. I just really love this one a lot. I like the vibrant golds and yellows. The beautiful gold of the gate even climbs into the blue sky, threatening to overwhelm even the blue. Beautiful.

 

Charge of the Lancers
Artist: Umberto Boccioni
Year: 1915
Medium: Tempera & Collage on Paper
Dimensions: 50 x 32 cm
Location: Private Collection

Boccioni was a Futurist; they were exhilarated by technology and machinery and one of their main goals was to capture motion in art. They went about this in various ways, but Boccioni, both a sculptor and a painter, set out to capture it via abstraction. By rendering the forms of, for instance, horses and riders in vague, abstract terms, he hoped to capture the blurring and visual chaos of high-speed motion. Futurism was a movement that couldn’t quite survive World War I; in the chaos of the trenches, technology and machinery and speed were all seen at their most horrific and the unbridled enthusiasm of the Futurists felt gauche. But for a while, there was a speed, an energy and a pure sense of visceral power in art, thanks to Boccioni and his fellow Futurists.

Boccioni is one of my favorite artists actually. This is a really great example of the kind of thing he could do. It’s the only one of his works to focus on war, but he captures the churning chaos of a battle. In the image a line of mounted lancers charge over the battle lines. The defending soldiers are static figures, seen in silhouette with their rifles outstretched; they are being overrun, but they’re static so Boccioni renders them less abstractly. But that charging line of horses? Is a riot of images, a spray, a cacophony of abstraction. We see flailing legs, the muscled chests of the horses, the tossing heads of the horses, the strong black lines of the lances slashing their way diagonally across the painting. Amidst all the chaos, the sharp, black lines of those lances are amazing to me. For all his love of chaos and turmoil, Boccioni was a master of composition. But I particularly love the wildly rolling eye of the first horse that we can see right at the top edge of the painting, just off center enough to give the painting the feeling of a quickly snapped photo. That eye was barely caught by the artist; it was about to be flung right out of his field, if you know what I mean, by the toss of the animal’s head, if you know what I mean. There’s something really important about animals, for all their fascination with machinery, to the Futurists. Something about the way animals move captured them. Boccioni would paint a bull in his most famous painting, The City Rises. Giocammo Balla would capture the spasmodic movements of a tiny dog on a leash. Duchamp loved the sparrow in flight. And here Boccioni captures the horse in all its power. And the guy did this, by the way, with tempera and cardboard and newspaper. The mind boggles. This is art at its most powerful.