# Modernism and the Avant-Gardes

History I · Art and History · https://tryals.app/learn/history-i/modernism-and-the-avant-gardes

## Cubism Breaks the Window

For five centuries the Western picture had been Alberti's **window**: one eye, one instant, one place. In 1907 Picasso's **Les Demoiselles d'Avignon** smashed the pane. Faces turn to masks from African sculpture, bodies fracture into planes, and space refuses to recede.

**Analytic Cubism** (Picasso and Braque, 1909–12) works this through. We walk around objects, remembering a handle while seeing the lip. So show viewpoints **simultaneously**, fractured into facets on a flat surface.

Then **collage** (1912) delivers the coup: gluing actual newspaper, oilcloth, or chair caning. Real material enters. The painting admits to being an object on a wall, not a view through one.

## The Logic Runs to Zero

| Move | Consequence |
| --- | --- |
| **Cubism** (1907–12) | One viewpoint abandoned; surface admits it is flat |
| **Futurism** (1909) | Speed, machines, and worship of the new |
| **Abstraction** (1910s) | Kandinsky, Malevich, Mondrian: no subject at all |
| **Dada** (1916) | War made sense absurd; art attacks itself |
| **Surrealism** (1924) | Freud's unconscious as the true source |

Malevich's **Black Square** (1915) is the endpoint: a picture that is **only itself**. In 1917 Duchamp submits a factory urinal as **Fountain**, proving **choice** is the art. **Art history is a record of what people believed was real, and what happened when they stopped believing it.**

## Practice questions

10 of this lesson's 14 practice questions, with answers. The full set is in the app.

### 1. Why does Analytic Cubism show several viewpoints at once rather than the single view an eye actually receives?

A. It allowed larger canvases to be filled more quickly
B. We know objects by moving around them, not from one spot
C. Painters wanted to imitate the multiple lenses of a camera
D. Multiple viewpoints make objects easier to identify

**Answer:** B. We know objects by moving around them, not from one spot

**Why:** You walk around a jug; you remember the handle while facing the lip. Cubism says a picture built on one eye at one instant is lying about that, so show the views simultaneously and let the surface be honestly flat.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/history-i/modernism-and-the-avant-gardes/why-does-analytic-cubism-show-several-viewpoints-at-once-rather-than

### 2. Match each movement to its core proposition.

**Answer:**

- Cubism → Abandon the single viewpoint; admit the flat surface
- Futurism → Speed, machines, and the worship of the new
- Dada → The war made sense absurd; art attacks itself
- Surrealism → The unconscious as the picture’s true source

**Why:** Four propositions, one decade. None is a decorating style, each is a claim about what is real.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/history-i/modernism-and-the-avant-gardes/match-each-movement-to-its-core-proposition

### 3. Why did Duchamp’s _Fountain_ prove so consequential?

A. It proved that craft skill is the only measure of art
B. It was the first sculpture cast in industrial porcelain
C. It won the exhibition’s top prize and legitimized the readymade
D. It relocated the art from the making to the choosing

**Answer:** D. It relocated the art from the making to the choosing

**Why:** He selected a factory object, signed it "R. Mutt", and the selection was the work. What counts, who decides, does skill matter, is the institution part of the piece, the whole following century is folded into that urinal, which the committee promptly hid.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/history-i/modernism-and-the-avant-gardes/why-did-duchamps-fountain-prove-so-consequential

### 4. Photography arrived in 1839 and painting turned away from likeness over the following decades. What is the strongest version of the causal claim?

A. The two developments were unrelated; abstraction came from philosophical sources alone
B. Painters copied photographic effects, which led them toward abstraction
C. Photography took over the documentary function more cheaply
D. Photography made painting obsolete, and abstraction was a defensive reaction

**Answer:** C. Photography took over the documentary function more cheaply

**Why:** The portrait trade collapsed and the medium was released rather than defeated, which is why the change reads as reassignment rather than retreat. Delaroche's reported 'from today, painting is dead' names the panic; what followed was seventy years of painting asking what it alone could do.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/history-i/modernism-and-the-avant-gardes/photography-arrived-in-1839-and-painting-turned-away-from-likeness

### 5. Sort each statement: **the Renaissance window** or **the modernist surface**?

**Answer:**

- Renaissance window: One eye, one instant, one location, Depth constructed toward a vanishing point, The picture pretends to be a view through a wall
- Modernist surface: Multiple viewpoints fused into one plane, Real newspaper glued onto the canvas, The picture admits to being an object on a wall

**Why:** Five hundred years of pretending the canvas was a hole, ended in five years of admitting it is a surface. Collage is the confession made physical.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/history-i/modernism-and-the-avant-gardes/sort-each-statement-the-renaissance-window-or-the-modernist-surface

### 6. The African sculpture Picasso encountered at the Trocadéro was a significant source for _Les Demoiselles d’Avignon_.

**Answer:** True

**Why:** It was decisive, and Western art history spent decades burying the debt under the word "primitive", crediting the borrower and erasing the source. Whose innovation gets named is itself a historical question.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/history-i/modernism-and-the-avant-gardes/the-african-sculpture-picasso-encountered-at-the-trocadero-was-a

### 7. Dada staged nonsense poems and attacked art's own premises, which reads as a joke. Why is it taken seriously?

A. Because the works are technically accomplished despite appearing absurd
B. Because its participants later became conventional artists of high reputation
C. Because it was the first movement to be documented photographically
D. Because it emerged in 1916, arguing about the reason that led there

**Answer:** D. Because it emerged in 1916, arguing about the reason that led there

**Why:** The absurdity is the content. Dada answers a civilisation that used its finest engineering to kill a generation, and the nonsense is a verdict on the sense that produced it.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/history-i/modernism-and-the-avant-gardes/dada-staged-nonsense-poems-and-attacked-arts-own-premises-which

### 8. Which forces drove the early-twentieth-century avant-gardes?

A. A sudden shortage of traditional pigments forced experiment
B. Photography had taken over likeness and documentation
C. Freud claimed the mind is not transparent to itself
D. Industrial modernity shattered the scale and pace of experience

**Answer:** B. Photography had taken over likeness and documentation; C. Freud claimed the mind is not transparent to itself; D. Industrial modernity shattered the scale and pace of experience

**Why:** A machine, a world, and a theory of mind, plus a war that killed the story about reason and progress. The avant-gardes are a response to reality changing, not a fashion cycle.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/history-i/modernism-and-the-avant-gardes/which-forces-drove-the-early-twentieth-century-avant-gardes

### 9. Why did Malevich hang the _Black Square_ across the corner of the room?

A. It was the only wall with adequate lighting
B. To hide a flaw along one edge of the canvas
C. Corner hanging was standard practice at Russian exhibitions
D. That corner is where a Russian home hangs its icon

**Answer:** D. That corner is where a Russian home hangs its icon

**Why:** The icon corner is the place of contemplation, and Malevich put his square in it, replacing one object of devotion with another. Not a picture of nothing: a picture that is only itself, claiming the icon’s job.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/history-i/modernism-and-the-avant-gardes/why-did-malevich-hang-the-black-square-across-the-corner-of-the

### 10. The avant-gardes arrived in rapid succession — Fauvism, Cubism, Futurism, Dada — each rejecting the last. Why did the pace accelerate so sharply after 1900?

A. Because state patronage collapsed and artists competed for private buyers
B. Because paint manufacturing improved, allowing faster work
C. Because artists could travel more easily and copy one another
D. Because photography had taken over painting's traditional job

**Answer:** D. Because photography had taken over painting's traditional job

**Why:** When the purpose is settled, style evolves slowly; when it is contested, movements multiply. Photography removed the settled purpose and the succession is the argument that followed.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/history-i/modernism-and-the-avant-gardes/the-avant-gardes-arrived-in-rapid-succession-fauvism-cubism