Urban Life

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Boccioni 'The City Rises' (1910)

Description

  • Men and horses strain with heavy object, large scale, horses exaggerated and dominate
  • Dissolving lines- movement, man/horse/machine all blended in sense of unity
  • Background has building site, factories trams etc.
  • Divisionism- slanting thin strokes, repeated shapes create shift and movemenr 'synthesis of light, work and colour'

Context

  • Horse link to development of Italy- symbols of force e.g. Munch's 'Galloping Horse'
  • Marinetti called cars 'snorting beasts', called his car Pegasus'
  • Technical Manifesto of Furturists- movement through dissolving forms
  • Ronard's theory of Unaimism, humanity coming together in city
  • Milan becoming industria; centre of Italy with new industry
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Dix 'Metropolis' (1928)

Description

  • New Objectivity- unidealised, bright colours, dancing looks cheerful at first
  • Woman with plumes, makeup etc, prostitutes look clown like, stacked on each other 
  • Soldier on floor, one with no nose/ legs, one with crutches, one on floor
  • Disorts space like Flemish religious paintings, tilted floor creates anxiety

Political context

  • Rise of Nazis (Mein Kampf 1925), Weimar government blamed for post WW1, rise of right
  • Kasnter's 'Fabian' - 'soldiers lying maimed in hovels', Dix haunted by war
  • Germany in 'political waiting room'- meaningless, jumbled architecture and strange depth

Social context

  • 1920s Berlin rapid growth, American culture e.g. Charleston, some saw as loss of identity
  • Discrimination towards Jewish and blacks- black man parodied, also associated with jazz
  • Fashion of flappers, short hair, Vamp figure, influence of actress Marlene Dietrich
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Hopper 'Nighthawks' (1942)

Description

  • 4 people in dinner, brightly lit, men in hats, woman in red and barman- triangular
  • Don't communicate, sickly green light = unease, segregation from street and the viewer
  • Mise en scene- sense of narrative never revealed, Jo Hopper- things reduced to essentials

Context

  • American Realism, linked to Ash Can school, taught by Henri, everyday struggles of people
  • Anxiety of Depression and just about to enter WW2- alienation of city talked of by Marx
  • Gerter: 'reproduction of the world around me by means of the wold that is within me'

Influence

  • Baudelaire and Impressionists e.g. Manet with alienation in city
  • Film Noir- feature of femme fatale, Hopper inspiration for Psycho and American Beauty
  • Maltese Falcon film, featured detective and femme fatale, Hemmingway's 'The Killers' - 2 hitmen wait in dinner, Poe's 'Man of the Crowd' with flaneur, Van Gogh's 'Night Cafe'
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