Modernism and its alternatives in 20th-century British art

Aims

This course aims to: 

• help you to think critically about what it means for art to be modern and about how concepts of modern art and modernism are used in art history
   
• introduce the history of British art in the 20th century, including less well-known artists and those who came from marginalised backgrounds
   
• develop techniques for looking at and understanding 20th-century art and for thinking about art in its social, historical and political context

Course content

In this course, we will consider the modern movement in British art, asking why the styles we associate with modernism (such as abstract painting or found objects) can be understood as a response to the modern world. In looking at movements and groups such as Vorticism, the Bloomsbury artists, the Independent Group and British Pop art, we’ll explore the idea that there was more than one kind of modernism. We will explore the fundamental differences in philosophy between these movements and note how those differences were hidden by similarities in style and in their self-presentation as an ‘avant-garde’.

However, the course will also give particular attention to traditions outside of modernism, such as the social realist and popular art of the 1930s, neo-romanticism in the 1940s, and the ‘welfare state culture’ of the Festival of Britain in the 1950s. In each case, we will examine how this art related to its particular social and political context and how it can be understood as an alternative, non-modernist response to the pressures and possibilities of ‘modernity’.  We will also look at work in less prestigious media (such as printmaking) and by artists working at the margins, including women and artists from the ‘’commonwealth’ who moved to Britain.

In examining these topics, we will consider what factors underpin an artist’s reputation and how modernism has come to dominate the received story of 20th century British art. We will explore how modernist interpretations have often taken a derogatory view of other types of art, casting it as effete, timid, middle-class, and unsophisticated. We will look at recent work in cultural history which has developed alternative approaches, such as the ‘intermodern’ and the ‘middle-brow’ and ask if these can help us better understand both modernism and its alternatives.

What to expect on this course

Each class will contain a mix of elements.

Key concepts (such as ‘modernism’, the ‘avant-garde’ and the ‘middlebrow’) will be introduced through concise mini-lectures and hand-outs. The class will give you enough information to understand these concepts, though any further background reading will be helpful.

The core of each class will be looking at artworks.

For each theme we will look at reproductions of selected images and think through how what we see relates to the ideas introduced in the class and how the artworks can complicate our assumptions about the history of modern art and of modernity. Members of the class will be invited to contribute their own reactions to the works shown. We will jointly develop interpretations, informed by our developing understanding of the historical context for modern British art and of relevant theoretical concepts. It will be through images that the history of British art in the 20th century, and its social and political context, will be introduced.

Course sessions

1. Modernism and its alternatives
   The first class will introduce and critically examine the idea of an art ‘movement’ and of an ‘avant-garde’. We will ask what it was about modernist art – its style and its ideas – that responded to the conditions of the modern world, and if there were other, non-modernist ways for art to express the experience of living in modernity. These topics will be explored through consideration of Vorticism (e.g. Wyndham Lewis, David Bomberg, Richard Nevinson) and the Bloomsbury Group (e.g. Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant) and of a non-modernist movement, the 1920s wood engraving revival.
    
2. Popular modernism and public modernism
   The second class will explore how modernism was nuanced and inflected in a specifically British national and cultural context. ‘Popular modernism’ will look at how Claude Flight, Sybil Andrews and the Grosvenor School attempted to create cheap and accessible modernist art through linocut prints. ‘Public modernism’ will look at public reactions to modernist sculpture and how the reception of modernism was connected with questions of national and ethnic identity, focusing on the careers of Jacob Epstein and Henry Moore.
    
3. The Middle Decades
   The third class will focus on the period from 1930 to 1950. It will contrast the development of surrealism and constructivism as movements within British modernism (in particular the careers of Paul Nash, John Piper and Ben Nicolson) with examples of working-class art, notably the ‘pitmen painters’ of the Ashington Group, and the desire of the Artists’ International Association to make popular, affordable art.
    
4. Post-war to Pop Art
   In the fourth class, we will assess the idea of ‘modernist realism’ through the works of Francis Bacon and his peers, considering it as a reaction to the horrors of the Second World War. We will then consider the emergence of the Independent Group (eg Eduardo Paolozzi, Nigel Henderson) in the 1950s, as a reaction to the ‘welfare-state culture’ promoted by Britain’s post-war government. The Independent Group is often seen as the originator of British Pop Art (e.g. Richard Hamilton, Peter Blake, Joe Tilson). We will consider this relationship and question the connection between Pop Art, popular art and modernism.
    
5. Insiders / outsiders
   In the final class we will consider ‘primitivism’ as an aspect of modernist art, and examine its relationship with British colonialism. We will look at how immigrant artists shaped British modernism but also how they were shaped and constrained by their new home country (in particular through works by Sidney Nolan and Frank Bowling). We will review the themes of the course by considering three women artists, their reception and reputation: Laura Knight, Barbara Hepworth and Pauline Boty. We will end by looking at David Hockney as a paradigmatic figure in the end of British modernism.

Learning outcomes

As a result of the course, you will gain a greater understanding of the subject and you should be able to:

• describe selected artists, art movements and styles in 20th-century art
• explain and critique key concepts in art history, including ‘movement’, ‘avant garde’, modernism and period
• apply critical art historical techniques to look at and understand art works in their social and political context

Required reading

There is no required reading for this course. See Course materials for supplementary reading once registered.