| Good afternoon everyone. |
| As you know, this set of lectures will look at the different movements in twentieth-century art history. |
| But before I start looking at some of these movements in detail, |
| I thought it would be helpful for you to understand exactly what we mean by the term "movement". |
| Basically, an art movement is a collective title that we give to artworks |
| that share the same artistic ideas, styles, or technical approaches. |
| Each movement occupies a specific point in history. |
| These time periods can span, months, years, or decades, |
| but normally, the movement's heyday can be pinpointed to a period of a few years. |
| The practice of grouping artists into movements is only seen in Western Art, |
| and in fact, all movements came from the twentieth century, |
| during the time period we call 'modern art', |
| which spans, more or less, from the beginning to the middle of the twentieth century. |
| After that, we refer to art as postmodern, |
| and from then on, the era of movements came to an end, |
| as if it was just a passing fad. |
| The term movement is actually pretty vague. |
| In some cases, the artists of one movement adhere strictly to a set of guiding principles, |
| but in other cases, the artists have very little in common. |
| Although it's sometimes based on artistic style and technique, like Art Deco, |
| it isn't always. |
| Sometimes, it is based on a particular concept or ethical belief. |
| Let's look at some examples of what I mean. |
| Let's look at Cubism, for example. |
| This is very much a visual approach. |
| Cubists wanted to discard past conventions in which art mimicked nature, |
| and highlight the fact that a painting is not nature, |
| it's just a flat two-dimensional representation of it. |
| To highlight this idea, Cubists painted quite common objects - |
| musical instruments, bottles, humans - |
| but depicted them from several vantage points at once; |
| something quite impossible in reality. |
| Other movements were not connected by their styles or techniques. |
| Instead, it was their beliefs that brought them together. |
| Dadaism is an example. |
| Dadaists believed that rational thought was responsible for the growth of corrupt, |
| nationalist politics, and the spread of violence and war. |
| They saw themselves as crusaders against this. |
| They used their art, for example, to protest against the nascist Nazi party in Germany. |
| The scale of movements varied considerably. |
| Some were international, while some were very small-scale, |
| centered around a particular city, and included a specific group of people. |
| Vorticism was an example of this type of small-scale, close-knit group. |
| The Vorticists were from London, |
| and the group was centered around London's Rebel Arts Center |
| and published its work in the London-based magazine Blast. |
| Its manifesto had just eleven signatories, |
| and there were a handful of others who contributed to the movement. |
| On the other hand, some movements existed on a large scale. |
| Dadaism, for example, comprised of a loosely-knit international network of artists |
| living in Zurich, New York City, Berlin, and Paris. |
| That's another important thing about these different art movements. |
| They don't just encompass the visual arts. |
| Art movements also encompass literature, poetry, architecture, and music. |
| The ideals are transferred from one art form to another. |
| Take Futurism, for example. |
| The idea of Futurism was that it embraced new technology - change, speed, and innovation. |
| Where painters expressed this by painting modes of transport and large crowds in vibrant, expressive colors, |
| to glorify the virtues of speed and dynamic movement, |
| writers expressed the futuristic ideal by ridding their poetry of unnecessary elements, |
| like adjectives and adverbs, and emphasizing the verbs. |
| Movements, as a whole, were short-lived. |
| To some extent, this can be attributed to fashion, but not always. |
| Some movements, like Futurism and Vorticism, that glorified technology |
| were seen to be a glorification of war, |
| as when these movements started up, World War I was just around the corner. |
| When it was finally realized how much destruction the new machines that they so highly praised was causing, |
| these movements died a death, and in some cases, their artists did too, |
| as a number of prominent Vorticists were killed in action. |