Search Results 1 - 25 of 42


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Man Ray (1890-1976)

Born Emmanuel Radnitzky, Man Ray was one of the key innovators in modernist photography, film, and object making. He began his artistic career as a…

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Abbott, Berenice (1898–1991)

Berenice Abbott was a photographer, theorist, teacher, and inventor who first learned photography as Man Ray’s studio assistant in Paris. In 1926, she established an…

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Emak Bakia (1926)

Emak Bakia (Basque for “Leave me alone”) is a 16-minute long black-and-white silent film directed by Man Ray. Subtitled a “cine-poem,” it features no obvious…

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Overview

Dadaism

Dada began in Zurich, Switzerland, in the midst of World War I. Several expatriate artists converged in the city to escape the brutal and seemingly…

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Overview

Surrealism Overview

Soupault’s publication of Manifeste du Surréalism in 1924. Rising in the wake of the First World War, Surrealism revolted against a world that had become…

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Photography

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Painlevé, Jean (1902–1989)

Jean Painlevé was a French scientist who was particularly well known for his documentary films about science and the natural world. He was the only…

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Dadaism in Film

Members of the Dada cultural and artistic movement began to experiment with film as a means to disseminate their stylistic partialities and cultural values through…

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Okamoto, Tarō (1911–1996)

Tarō Okamoto [岡本太郎] (1911–1996) was one of Japan’s most visible artists during the post-World War II period. Born in Kawasaki, Kanagawa, his father was a…

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Dupain, Maxwell Spencer (1911–1992)

Australian photographer Max Dupain distinguished himself as a professional and artistic presence from the 1930s well into the 1970s. His earliest works were in the…

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Levy, Julien (1906–1981)

New York-based art collector and gallerist, Julien Levy, was an important advocate for photography as a modern art medium in the 1930s and 1940s, and…

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Société Anonyme

The Société Anonyme, Inc., Museum of Modern Art, was an international avant-garde exhibiting society that ran from 1920 to 1950. Founded in New York by…

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Fondane, Benjamin (1898–1944)

A primarily francophone Jewish poet and writer of Romanian origin, Fondane became known as a critic, poet and dramaturge in Romania before leaving Bucharest for…

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Assemblage

Assemblage is an artistic form that involves the transformation of non-art objects into two-dimensional or three-dimensional artistic compositions. Together with abstraction, it has been considered…

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Satie, Erik Alfred Leslie (1866–1925)

Erik Satie’s compositions, writings, and humor played an important role in many modernist movements of the twentieth century. Experimenting with simple forms, neoclassicism, mysticism, satire,…

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Berkman, Alexander (1870–1936)

Alexander Berkman (21 November 1870–28 June 1936), while largely remote from literary concerns, was closely connected to a number of key modernist figures, helping to…

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Atget, Jean Eugène Auguste (1857–1927)

Eugène Atget employed one of the defining instruments of modernity—the camera—to produce a comprehensive photographic record of what modern city planning was about to destroy:…

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Anemic Cinema (1926)

Considered one of the important experimental films of the prewar European avant-garde, Anemic Cinema (1926) is a short experimental film by Marcel Duchamp, who authored…

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Cocteau, Jean (1889–1963)

Jean Cocteau (Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau) was an influential, prolific, multi-talented French artist, writer, critic and filmmaker. He wrote poetry, plays, libretti for ballets,…

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Lye, Len (1901–1980)

New Zealand native Len Lye was an experimental innovator in painting, sculpture, documentary film, and animation. After studying indigenous art in Samoa, he emigrated to…

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Cunard, Nancy (1896–1965)

A poet, journalist, publisher, radical intellectual, and political activist, Nancy Cunard operated at or near the centre of multiple modernist discourses. Her early poetry, especially…

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Tanguy, Yves (1900–1955)

Yves Tanguy was a French painter and one of the principal members of the Surrealist group. His main artistic output consisted of oil paintings, which…

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Machine-Age Exposition (New York, 1927)

The Machine-AgeExposition took place from 16–28 May 1927 at 119 West 57th Street in Steinway Hall, a commercial space in Manhattan, New York. It exposed…

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Desnos, Robert Pierre (1900-1945)

Robert Pierre Desnos (1900-1945) was a surrealist French poet whose diverse work included scripts for film and stage; journalism; essays; advertisements; cantatas; children's fables; and…

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Antheil George (1900–1959)

George Johann Carl Antheil was an American composer, pianist, author, and inventor. He is best-known for his 1924 composition, Ballet Mechanique, originally scored for sixteen…