Postmodern Shift: The Emergence of Abstract Expressionists and Surrealism
...heir own purpose through personal expression. Braque and Picasso for instance, experimented with actual newspaper clippings, letters, numbers, and other pieces of the real world in their works. Fernand Leger, a lesser known artist of the time, created Man and Woman (1921), an undoubtedly cubist work with all the characteristics of an expressionist societal commentary. This painting contains all of the aforementioned attributes of a cubist work. Leger combines several varying forms to create what appear to be two figures. The title aids in the understanding that Leger intends for us to see two people, a man and a woman, but that is most certainly not the message conveyed in the painting. Though the figures embrace, there is no emotion between the two of them and not the slightest feeling of romance can be derived. This is due entirely to the shapes and forms intentionally chosen by Leger. Rigid, pipe-like images thrown together in a seemingly inadvertent manner compose the characters removing nearly all human attributes save general figure. Quite obvious when viewing the work, Leger wants his observers to feel the emptiness in the relationship between the two figures. One is left to wonder how these people communicate if at all. It is when this communication issue is addressed that true progress is made in analysis of this painting. For it is at this point that Leger¡¦s purpose becomes evident. Leger is expressing his ideas on relationships in the new, modernized world. First, the emptiness we feel between the characters represents the void in workplace relationships filled by cordialities, expressions, and salutations worn thin by their everyday, meaningless usage. Creating this void are the ¡§social processes at work under capitalism conducive to individualism, alienation, fragmentation, ephemerality, innovation, creative destruction, speculative development, unpredictable shifts in methods of production and consumption (wants and needs), a shifting experience of space and time, as well as a crisis ridden dynamic of social change¡¨ (Harvey 111). Meaning that ¡§producers are forced to view others in purely instrumental terms¡¨ (Harvey 103). Next, the rigidity of their make-up alludes to the structured monotony of blue collar life along with the insecurity of work in capitalist society due to the dispensability of all workers because personal ability is almost entirely inconsequential. ¡§Capitalism is a social system internalizing rules that ensure it will remain a permanently revolutionary and disruptive force in its own world history. If ¡¥the only secure thing about modernity is insecurity,¡¦ then it is not hard to see from where that insecurity derives.¡¨ (Harvey 107). Finally, the creation of the human form from inanimate objects such as metal pipes indubitably conveys the mechanization of human labor brought about by the perpetually rapid increase of assembly line occupations at the time. Viewing this painting today, nearly a century post-creation facilitates the arrival at the stated conclusions provided analysis of the social conditions at the time and the knowledge of where we have come since. But one must wonder whether or not the artist had these ideas in mind as he developed the piece. There are several pools of thought in support of the perspective that he did not, not the least of which is a short-lived European artistic movement known as futurism. Futurism was first made public by the Italian poet Filippo Marinetti with a manifesto entitled Le Figaro. ¡§Marinetti called for and art that would champion ¡¥aggressive action, a feverish insomnia, the racer¡¦s stride¡Kthe punch and the slap.¡¦ He promised to ¡¥destroy the museums libraries, academies,¡¦ and ¡¥sing of the multicolored, polyphonic tides of revolution in the modern capitals¡¦¡¨ (Sayre 496). Futurism was a joyous celebration of the break from traditional arts. Surrealism, a movement contemporary and quite similar to futurism based on the ideas of Dada, was a much larger movement that erupted following The Great War. Surrealists were obsessed with ideas and expression. They too called for the annihilation of tradition as ¡§Tzara, arch Dadaist, called circa 1917, for ¡¥a great negative work of deconstruction¡¦ against a late, overtly textualized derivation from the Renaissance paradigm of culture and history¡¨ƒx. As an understandable result of the war, however, Surrealist works lacked futurism¡¦s marked hope for the future. One type of ¡§surrealist painting was virtually abstract, presenting us with a world of undecipherable visual riddles¡¨ (Sayre 499), which is profoundly suggestive of Leger¡¦s Man and Woman. Though this as well as the coincidence of the creation of the painting and the rise of Surrealism undermine the piece as a futurist work, it is still unclear whether Leger was aware of the ideas he ultimately conveyed or merely having fun with shape and form as Marinetti might argue. The effects of modernization on the arts stretched beyond the m...