ART American Art Before WWII
Assignment: Prewar Modernism in North America and Cuba
Please answer each the following 6 questions in a minimum of FOUR or more sentences. You must reference a page number from the text (e.g. “p. 12) or indicate the video (e.g. “Haussmann video”) you are drawing your information from.
1. What is a mobile? Which modern artist is most associated with the object type? How do mobiles relate to other modernist art movements, notably Cubism and Futurism?
2. What is the point of Grant Wood’s American Gothic? What are we supposed to think of the people in the painting? Why did he paint in a Renaissance painting style instead of a modernist one?
3. What was Mexican Muralism? What were the goals of Mexican Muralists like Diego Rivera?
4. How did modernism influence architecture? Select one example and describe the features that show modernist influences.
5. What is the significance of 291 for modern art in the United States? Describe its lasting impact on American society.
6. How were documentary photographers like Jacob Riis related to “Ashcan School” realist painters like Robert Henri? Compare and contrast their work and its vision of the modern city
