Find old Modern Art articles here. Find information on Modern Painting, artists, 1920s modernists, newspaper articles about modernism and more.
This is a profile of the American photographer Margaret Bourke-White (1904 – 1971). At the time these pages appeared on the newsstand, the photographer’s stock was truly on the rise as a result of her remarkable documentary images depicting the Great Depression as it played out across the land.
Margaret Bourke-White (Coronet Magazine, 1939) Read More »
Brilliant photographer Ralph Steiner (1899 – 1986) spent some time examining the photographs of Murray Korman (1902 – 1961) and, to his surprise, came away finding his work to be very interesting:
Murray Korman is the man whose pictures you see outside the musical shows and in girlie magazines… After four hours of looking I was dizzy. I figured that no man could take such pictures for 17 years and get satiated with lusciousness and bored by the sameness of the girls. I figured that all that kept Korman going was the profit motive. But when I went to his studio on Broadway I found I was all wrong.
Murray Korman (PM Tabloid, 1942) Read More »
This article was written by John Hersey (1914 – 1993); it was written as a review of Slightly Out of Focus, the memoir by the most famous of World War II combat photographers, Robert Capa (né Andre Friedmann: 1913 – 1954). A fun and informative read, you will learn how the man came to be a photographer, how he acquired his nom de guerre, his work during the Spanish Civil War and the credibility that quickly followed.
Click here to read what General James Gavin remembered about photographer Robert Capa.
Robert Capa: A Life (’47 Magazine) Read More »
A child could do that has been one of the most common utterances in response to the avant-garde movements of modern art. This short article reflects that view and was written in response to the New York Armory Show, which at that time, was attracting a good deal of attention in the press. The Armory Show is well-remembered today as the first art exhibition to introduce European-style modernism to the people (and artists) of that city. Pablo Picasso (1881 – 1973), as the co-creator of Cubism, is among those lampooned, as is Marcel Duchamp (1887 – 1968) for his painting, A Nude Descending the Staircase.
The Lampooning of Picasso (Literary Digest, 1913) Read More »
The art that Hitler has exiled as ‘degenerate’ is finding ready homes in other lands that have not yet been culturally crushed beneath the heel of Europe’s twin tyrannies: Fascism and Communism. Because Hitler has embraced the calendar decoration as the supreme art form, the Museum of Modern Art in New York has been able to acquire five works that formerly were housed in prominent museums.
The article lists the purchased works.
MoMA Purchased Paintings from the Degenerate Art Exhibit(Art Digest, 1939) Read More »
The art that Hitler has exiled as ‘degenerate’ is finding ready homes in other lands that have not yet been culturally crushed beneath the heel of Europe’s twin tyrannies: Fascism and Communism. Because Hitler has embraced the calendar decoration as the supreme art form, the Museum of Modern Art in New York has been able to acquire five works that formerly were housed in prominent museums.
The article lists the purchased works.
MoMA Purchased Paintings from the Degenerate Art Exhibit(Art Digest, 1939) Read More »
The art that Hitler has exiled as ‘degenerate’ is finding ready homes in other lands that have not yet been culturally crushed beneath the heel of Europe’s twin tyrannies: Fascism and Communism. Because Hitler has embraced the calendar decoration as the supreme art form, the Museum of Modern Art in New York has been able to acquire five works that formerly were housed in prominent museums.
The article lists the purchased works.
MoMA Purchased Paintings from the Degenerate Art Exhibit(Art Digest, 1939) Read More »
At the very peak of bourgeois respectability, one of the high priests of art and culture, Gilbert Seldes (1893 – 1970), sat comfortably on his woolsack atop Mount Parnasus and piled the praises high and deep for one of the lowest of the commercial arts. The beneficiary was the cartoonist George Herriman (1880 – 1944), creator of Ignatz Mouse and all other absurd creations that appeared in his syndicated comic strip, Krazy Kat (1913-1944):
His strange unnerving distorted trees, his totally unlivable houses, his magic carpets, his faery foam, are items in a composition which is incredibly with unreality. Through them wanders Krazy, the most tender and the most foolish of creatures, a gentle monster of our new mythology.
Krazy Kat: Low Art Meets High Art (Vanity Fair, 1922) Read More »
A brief art review from 1946 announcing an exhibition of paintings, drawings, photographs, architectural plans and models by the modern architect Le Corbusier (né Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris, 1887 – 1965) at the Mezzanine Gallery in Rockefeller Center.
Along with Ozenfant, Le Corbusier invented Purism. The earliest painting in the collection, and the only one of that period (1920), which is familiar to art audiences as part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art.
New York Exhibit for Le Corbusier (Art Digest, 1946) Read More »
