20th Century and Atonal Music

1. Between 1900 and 1925, traditional norms were violated or abandoned in art, music, and literature. What factors might have brought about this situation? Offer specific examples to illustrate your general statements (think of Picasso, Matisse, Brancusi, and Mondrian). Pablo Picasso, who was born in Malaga, Spain, changed and created new style of painting while moving from a place to another. He went throng his blue period, in which he used different shades of blue to paint, during his three trips to Paris. After he settled down in Paris finally in 1904, he met Fernande Oliver and started changing his style of art from dull blue to light color like red and pink. He then kept changing his mood of works when he moved back to Gosol, Spain and created works influenced by not only Spanish style of art, but Greek, Iberian, and African art.one of the factors that caused the traditional norms of art, music, literature to be transformed was the merging of arts amid different regions and cultures.

2 It is often said that tradition, like history, is continually being recreated and remodeled. To what extent did writers, painters, and composers of the early twentieth century deliberately break with tradition? Explain how they accomplished that goal. Consider the development of atonal music in 20th century. Before the 20th century, serious music, even the music of the greatest composers, was pretty easy for the average person to understand and enjoy. Serious music followed common and easily understood patterns .In the 20th century, however, many of the most important composers began to move away from these patterns toward what is called atonal music. Atonal music is music without a home key. There is a pattern, but the pattern is not at all easy to recognize. Composers working in this style prepare for themselves a 12 tone grid.

3. How did the media of photography and film respond to the modernist aesthetic? Depends on the photographers intent as well as the kind of film used, like color or black and white and depends on using what kind of film. Photography and film are two new-invented modern media that play important roles in modernist aesthetic. Since photography was invent, it developed really fast and was boosted by new printing technology in the later period of 19th century. Film developed rapidly also since it was invented in early 20th century. Film demonstrated both audio and visual information and Photography illustrated light and shadow that excites human’s eyes. They can quickly inform people and give visual enjoyment and imaginary space to people.

4. Create a stream-of-consciousness diary entry of your experiences since you awoke this morning. Does your entry capture these experiences more effectively than a narrative description of them might? It’s a sunny day. Today I have many things to do. First of all I want to take a shower. I feel a lot of energy is coming and it is good. Better prepare breakfast and start doing my housework. Since they are still sleeping, I have to cook for them. I try to make some omelet but there is not enough eggs but still pretty good. I spent too much time for housework and I am late for school. We have PE class today. The class is awesome and I learn a lot. I’m happy to be a student. Such a great day, perhaps taking a walk with my dog is a great idea. Gosh, my dog gets off of the leash but there is no car and I can run after it to get her back. It is so lucky.

5. Research the art of the revolutionary Latin American mural painters such as Diego Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco, and Rufino Tamayo. Provide visual examples (1 each) of how each artist used art as a vehicle of social protest. Rivera’s scene is simultaneously dark and playful, condemnatory and celebratory. The “Judases” in his mural are a suit-wearing politician, a heavily armed general astride a horse, and a priest in black robes, representing government, army, and church, respectively. The mural, created just a few years after the end of the Mexican Revolution, speaks to the betrayal of the people by these institutions in the period preceding the war. It is, thus, an endorsement of the leftist, socialist ideals embraced by Rivera and others in the revolutionary and post-revolutionary era.

Orozco’s vision of history, in his 1932 mural sequence in Dartmouth College’s Baker Library, is spare. He selects key moments which he abstracts and synthesizes. He discards incident, breaks up logical narrative sequence and retains only the essence of Mexico’s origins and evolution. In his view, there are a few important historical figures, namely the white bearded priest/god Quetzalcoatl, Cortez, Zapata and an angry Christ who returns to destroy his cross, because, as Orozco saw it, human beings made such a botch of history that Christ realized that his sacrifice had been in vain. Orozco draws a parallel between Quetzalcoatl and Christ. Unappreciated by their people, both these part human, part divine saviors left this world vowing to return.