The Modern

Sigmund Freud

• born in Vienna 1856, Jewish family, earned medical degree 1881.
• Vienna becoming a modern city, open sexuality, slums, brothels, disease.
• analyzed his first dream July 24, 1895, denied the neurophysical cause of hysteria.
• 1st use of the word "psychoanalysis" March 1896, hysteria due to repressed emotions from previous traumatic experience, cured by emotional ventilation.
• Interpretation of Dreams published Nov. 4, 1899, about the irrational, Oedipus complex, infantile sexual wish, id-ego-superego transference and repression
• "anatomy is destiny" - Freud argued that nature not nurture shaped people
• Salvadore Dali read Freud while a student in Madrid, and the concept of irrational man became part of his surrealism, said 3 blows to classic humanism: Copernicus (Earth not the center), Darwin (man not biologically superior), Freud (man not rational)

Albert Einstein

• born in Ulm, Germany, 1879, Jewish family
• 1895 moved to Switzerland, renounced German citizenship, student in Zurich
• read Max Planck's paper on "quanta" and began writing scientific papers
• Planck wrote his paper Dec. 14, 1900, after a revelation while walking in the woods with his son Erwin near Berlin, "Today I have made a discovery as important as that of Newton" that energy was emitted not in continuous waves, but as discrete bursts of subatomic particles he called quanta, the size relative to frequency of radiation according to the math formula of Planck's Constant
• Einstein was committed to explore this invisible subatomic world that defined all matter and energy
• Patent office job 1902, married Mileva Maric 1903, Slavic family, separated 1914
• 1905 paper "Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies" argued that the speed of light was a constant
• 1914 moved back to Germany at Planck's urging, professor at University of Berlin, joined pacifist New Fatherland League, signed antiwar "Manifesto to Europeans."
• 1916 published his general theory of relativity about gravity and curved space and Reimannian geometry
• 1919 confirmed by solar eclipse measurements, became world-famous as a founder of the new physics that described a subatomic world of photons and quanta moving without any cause or purpose, according to the randomness of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. Einstein produced a new system of reference in which the senses were not valid, only able to be confirmed by mathematics, and concepts such as matter and energy overlapped and became interchangeable. Einstein would spend the rest of his life defining his theory of a unified field in which the forces of the universe interact in a multi-dimensional space-time continuum.
• 1921 first visit to the U.S., with Chaim Weizmann.
• 1923 visit to Palestine, gave inaugural lecture for future Hebrew University, made 1st honorary citizen of Tel Aviv.
• 1933 moved to Princeton University in the United States

Pablo Picasso

• born 1881 in Malaga, Spain, Basque family, studied art in Madrid but rejected classical education
• learned modern ideas in Barcelona from goup of poets and painters at the Quatre Gats cafe
• 1900 to Paris, patron Max Jacob, studio in the the Bateau Lavoir building
• 1900 painted "Moulin de la Galette"
• 1901-4 was his Blue Period that reflected the suffering he observed in the world
• 1905 began to change style, influenced by Cezanne massive figures, African masks in Louvre, Altamira rock art, Wrights' airplane that opened a new dimension by flying without visible support in the air, sought to explore the 4th dimension of the subconscious, not superficial appearance of an object, but its reality, a difference between seeing an object and knowing it, purpose of art was not to create absolute beauty but show the complexity of reality
• 1907 "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" was his first Cubist work, a large 8 ft canvas, five nudes with distorted faces, angular shapes that Matisse called "la petits cubes" in reference to George Braque's 1907 "Landscape with House"
• 1908 "Nude on Beach" back and front at same time, eliminated the 2-dimensional form
• The Cubists rejected absolutes, geometric forms, traditional standards of beauty. The new reality was beyond human perception, and could only be understood by opening new dimensions, simultaneus multiple perspectives. In traditional painting, objects and space were constants. In modern painting, the artist removed objects from the normal environment and broke up space to form new relationships and multiple layers.
• Picasso said "some day we shall paint pictures that can cure a man of toothache" by appealing to emotions and spirit, not to the senses
• Cubists changed form, Fauvists (Matisse) changed colors, Orphists (Delaunay) separated equivalents, Surrealists (Dali) viewed the unconsicous, Dadaists (Duchamp) mechanized man
• Modern art influenced the other arts, ballet, theater, sculpture, literature
1910 Abstract art founded by Wassily Kandinsky, used color and shapes to give expression to dramatic states of mind
• 1911 Picasso first seen in America at the Photo Secession Gallery of Alfred Stieglitz
• 1913 Armory Show

Links:

• Armory Show of 1913 from University of Virginia
• Sigmund Freud from Library of Congress and Internet Encylopedia of Philosophy and Freud Museum in Wien and Freud Museum in London and Sigmund Freud Archive
• Albert Einstein from Einstein Archives at Hebrew University and Einstein Archives Online and Einstein Online and Image and Impact by AIP
• Pablo Picasso from Island of Freedom and Art Archive and Official Site and On-Line Picasso Poject
• George Tilyou and Steeplechase Park and Coney Island postcards and Coney Island history
• Alfred Stieglitz from MOMA's Alfred Stieglitz and American Photography and MOMA's Alfred Stieglitz and His Circle and Getty Museum and Wadsworth Atheneum
• Thomas Edison and the Heroic Age
• Henry Ford and the Road to Happiness
• Modern Culture
• Art Deco

Sources:

• Brian, Denis. Einstein: a Life. New York, NY: J. Wiley, 1996. 509 p.
• Cabanne, Pierre. Pablo Picasso: His Life and Times. New York: Morrow, 1977. 606 p.
• Gay, Peter. Freud: a Life for Our Time. New York: Norton, 1988. 810 p.
• Kasson, John F. Amusing the Million: Coney Island at the Turn of the Century. New York : Hill & Wang, 1978. 119 p.
• Twombly, Robert C. Frank Lloyd Wright; an Interpretive Biography. New York, Harper & Row 1973. 373 p.
• Whelan, Richard. Alfred Stieglitz: a Biography. Boston : Little, Brown, 1995. 662 p.

   

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