Find old Modern Art articles here. Find information on Modern Painting, artists, 1920s modernists, newspaper articles about modernism and more.
A few words on the water colors that John Singer Sargent (1856 – 1925) made in 1917 which pictured the Villa Viscaya in Miami, Florida. The paintings were later purchased by the Worcester Museum in Worcester, Massachusetts.
An unnamed art critic writing for the British magazine SPECTATOR gave his back-hand to Wyndham Lewis
The point might also be raised whether Mr. Wyndham Lewis should ever use oil paint. It is a medium which he seems to have little capacity and no sympathy…
A profile of the twenty-eight year old artist Isamu Noguchi (1904 – 1988).
This single column reported on the 1916 busts that were created by the American sculptor Jo Davidson (1883 – 1952), during his tour of war-torn Europe.
By the end of the Twentieth Century, much of his work would be in the collections of many of the finest art museums, such as the National Gallery of Art, Washington, the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, the U.S. Senate Art Collection and the National Statuary Hall, both in Washington.
Not long after the death of Auguste Rodin (1840 – 1917) Paris-based artist Stephen Haweis (1878 – 1969) remembered his friendship with the French sculptor:
He loved flattery, as all human beings do, and would listen attentively to rhapsodies from almost anybody, though they do say that a pretty lady got more attention from him than a half-starved journalist.
Rodin proclaimed himself the culminator of one era of sculpture, the inspirer, and nearly the author of another. He was the father of various schools which are lumped under the title of Modern Art.
The British writer Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963) had much praise for the artist Augustus John (1878 – 1961) and his skill as a portrait painter:
With his few fellows he stands apart, reminding us in the most salutary fashion that it is the gift of God, not the correct education, that produces genuine art…
A one page article regarding Swiss-born painter Paul Thevenaz
Read a 1937 article about another gay artist: Paul Cadmus.
Here is a petite notice that appeared in a 1915 issue of VANITY FAIR heralding a new portrait by the British painter William Orpen (1878 – 1931), which depicted the likeness of a popular American stage actress Mrs. Oscar Lewisohn (Edna May Pettie 1878 – 1948). The anonymous reviewer compared the portrait styles of Orpen with that of London’s reigning portrait painter, John Singer Sargent:
Sargent had a way of showing his sitters as they didn’t think they looked. On the other hand, Orpen has a trick of making his sitters look like what they would like to be.
A war-time interview with the Welsh painter Augustus John (1878 – 1961).
Exempted from serving with the French military in World War I, the artist Marcel Duchamp returned to New York City where he triumphed during the Armory Show of 1913 – together he and his two brothers, Raymond Duchamp-Villon and Jacques Villon, all showed their groundbreaking art. Marcel was the toast of New York and his modern painting, Nude Descending a Staircase was regarded as a masterwork.
In the attached VANITY FAIR article, Duchamp let’s it be known that he crossed the submarine-infested waters of the Atlantic to see American art.
In 1915, the year before Dada was created, one of the movement’s followers, Francis Picabia (1879 – 1953), was spotted in New York City by the editors of VANITY FAIR who quickly put him through the works.
A VANITY FAIR MAGAZINE profile of the American painter Robert Henri (1865 – 1929):
Robert Henri does not sympathize with the artists who throw their work in the face of the public with a ‘There, take it or leave it.’ Indeed, he has an almost hieratic belief in the power of the fine arts, not merely to delight, but to improve, to uplift and to educate the masses.
Click here to read further about the 1913 Armory show.
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In his lifetime Amedeo Modigliani‘s (1884 – 1920) was only honored one time with his own solo showing in an art gallery; many of his paintings were given away in exchange for meals in restaurants and he died the death of a pauper in some unglamorous corner of Paris. In the years that followed the art world began to learn about Modigliani bit by bit through art reviews like the one attached herein. Written sixteen years after his death, this is a review of a Modigliani exhibit at the avant-garde gallery of Mrs. Cornelius J. Sullivan in New York City:
C.J. Bulliet (1883 – 1952) in ‘Apples and Madonnas’ declared that Modigliani’s nudes may be ranked ultimately with the great ones of all time – with Giorgione’s ‘Sleeping Venus’, Titian’s ‘Venus Awake’, Goya’s ‘Maja’ (nude and even more impudently clothed), with Manet’s sensational wanton in the Louvre.’
Some interesting postmortem thoughts and seldom heard facts concerning the life and times of Impressionist painter Edgar Degas (1834 – 1917); of particular interest was the enormous amount of money fetched at auction for the assorted content of his studio during a time of national crises in France.
Modigliani’s art reflects the psychological secret of his personality as a man, which in turn determines, the characteristics of his art. This longing for intellectual and spiritual self-discipline was constantly struggling with the demands of his overflowing sensual nature; his dreams of physical and sexual vigor were at odds with the failings of his body, his ailments, and his psycho-sexual infantilism; his desire for glory rebelled against the frustrations and poverty of reality.
The ink-stained editors at QUICK MAGAZINE rarely ever concerned themselves with the Bohemian-happenings of the New York art world, but when the abstract expressionist painter Robert Motherwell (1915 – 1991) strayed from the standard-issue art supply tools and used a reflective fabric called Scotchlite in the creation of a 12 foot, three-paneled mural – the editors thought it was news.
The U.S. had only been actively engaged in World War II for five months when the American artist Rockwell Kent (1882 – 1971) felt the impulse to write about the unique roll an artist must play when a democracy goes to war:
The art of a democracy must be, like democracy itself, of and by and for the people. It must and will reflect the public mood and public interest…Awareness of America, of its infinitely varied beauties and of its sometimes sordid ugliness; awareness of the life of America, of its fulfillments and its failures; awareness, if you like, of God, the landscape architect supreme – and political failure: of the promise of America and of its problems, art has been, or has aimed to be, a revelation. It is for the right to solve these problems our way that we are now at war.
