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Gare d'Orsay
The Gare d'Orsay was a Beaux-Arts railway station in Paris. It was the first electrified urban rail terminal in the world, and opened in time for the 1900 Universal Exposition. It has now been turned into the Musée d'Orsay, a museum which holds mainly French art dating from 1848 to 1914, including paintings, sculptures, furniture, and photography. It is one of the largest art museums in Europe, and houses the largest collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist masterpieces in the world. -
Period: to
1900 through WWII
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African Fang Sculpture
This majestic work from Gabon is among the most frequently reproduced works of African art. In Fang society, it was designed to be placed on a family altar to represent past generations. During the early 1900s, traditional African sculpture became a powerful influence among European artists who recognized the spiritual aspect of the composition and adapted these qualities to their own efforts. -
Clair de Lune
LISTEN
Claude Debussy, a leading figure in French music, is one of the most highly regarded composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and is seen as the founder of musical impressionism. "Clair de lune," the French term for "moonlight", is the third and most recognized movement of Suite Bergamasque, one of Debussy’s most famous piano suites. -
Waterlilies
Claude Monet was a French painter whose work gave a name to the art movement Impressionism, which was concerned with capturing light, natural forms and scenes of everyday life. The Impressionist period lasted from the mid-1850s through 1920, and painting from that period remains the most attractive in the history of modern art and the most appreciated by the public. Waterlilies is not one painting by Monet--over the course of his life he created over 250 oil paintings with waterlilies in them. -
The Dream
The self-taught French painter Henri Rousseau is considered the greatest exponent of naive or primitive art. His style was derided by art critics but much admired by other modern artists who championed his strong use of colour and the child-like simplicity of his work. His best-known paintings depict jungle scenes, even though he never left France or saw a jungle. The Dream is one of his last works and is a memory-image of his first love reclining on a sofa in one of his imaginary jungles. -
Girl With Mandolin
This painting by Spanish artist Pablo Picasso, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century, is an example of analytic cubism. In Cubism, objects are analyzed, broken up and reassembled in an abstracted form. Picasso co-founded the Cubist movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture and inspired movements in music, literature and architecture. His many works contributed significantly to, and paralleled the development of, modern art in the 20th century. -
Birth of a Nation opens
The silent epic film The Birth of a Nation is one of the landmarks of film history. It is preserved in the National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." Directed by D.W. Griffith, it was groundbreaking in its dramatic, visual, and musical innovations. It was panned however because of its blatantly racist depiction of life during and after the Civil War, and is credited with reviving the “second era” of the Ku Klux Klan. -
The Mechanic
Fernand Leger was a French painter, sculptor, and social activist who became one of the giants of early 20th century modern art. He created a "democratic art" for and about ordinary people— strong simple imagery of blue-collar workers at work or leisure, along with the machines and objects of their environment. This painting represents his “mechanical period” which grew out of his experiences in WWI and which convinced him of the role that machines would play in the creation of a new world. -
The Negro Speaks of Rivers
Hughes reading the poem (the actual poem begins at 1:39)
Langston Hughes was a black poet, novelist, fiction writer, and playwright. He is known for his insightful, colorful portrayals of black life in America from the twenties through the sixties and was important in shaping the artistic contributions of the Harlem Renaissance. This poem is one of his most famous and widely anthologized poems. -
Metropolis
This photomontage of the New York Metropolis by the German-born artist Paul Citroen is an example of German Expressionism. The collage of landmarks and buildings presents a densely clustered, suffocating global city. American artists glorified their industrial advancements, but many Europeans, particularly Germans, were more concerned about the claustrophobic New York cityscape. The German Expressionism movement carried over into architecture, dance, sculpture, and cinema, as well as painting. -
The Violin of Ingres
Man Ray was an American painter, sculptor, poet, filmmaker, and photographer. He was successful commercially in both the US and Europe. He used photography to fill in the gap between art and life. Throughout his career Man Ray was fascinated with juxtaposing an object with a female body. In this photo, sometimes described as a visual pun, he transformed the female body into a musical instrument by painting sound-holes on her back, playing with the idea of objectification of an animate body. -
Bridalveil Fall
Ansel Adams was an American photographer best known for his iconic images of the American West, including Yosemite National Park. He was an environmental activist who used his work to promote conservation of wilderness areas. His iconic black-and-white images helped to establish photography among the fine arts. This photo, capturing one of Yosemite's most famous and majestic waterfalls, is emblematic of the images Adams made during the late 1920s, a critical development period in his career. -
The Jazz Singer Premier
This award-winning American musical film is most famous for being the first feature-length motion picture with synchronized dialogue sequences. Its release heralded the advent of the “talkies” and the decline of silent films. The film starred Al Jolson, a white entertainer who performed in blackface makeup, a theatrical convention at the time. Although the practice is unacceptable today, Jolson was later credited with single-handedly introducing African-American music to white audiences. -
It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)
LISTEN
"It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)" was composed by Duke Ellington, an American composer, pianist, and bandleader of a jazz orchestra. It was the first song to use the phrase "swing" in the title and is now accepted as a jazz standard. Ellington composed thousands of songs during his 50-year career, and this is one of his most famous. -
Working Class Posters of Japan
See More This unique style of posters emerged in Japan during the early 1930s. They were created by government artists and used as a form of propaganda. They depict happy and strong workers cooperating with soldiers to help make The Land of the Rising Sun a world power. -
Empire State Building completed
The iconic Empire State Building is a 102-storyskyscraper located in Midtown Manhattan in New York City. It is designed in the distinctive Art Deco style and has been named one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World. For nearly 40 years it stood as the world's tallest building until the original World Trade Center surpassed it in 1970. The building even has its own zip code! It has been featured in countless television programs, books, and movies, including the film King Kong in 1933. -
Autumnal Cannibalism
Salvador Dali, the most eccentric and imaginative figure in Spanish painting, is best known for his surrealistic paintings. Surrealism was "the" fashionable art movement of the inter-war years, and Dali became the best-known proponent of the style. The vivid and bizaare content of his paintings expressly circumvented the usual "rational" thought processes involved in creating works of art. He used dreams, hallucinations, and other subconscious activity as material for his artwork. -
Their Eyes Were Watching God
More
Zora Neale Hurston was an African-American novelist and fixture of the Harlem Renaissance, rubbing shoulders with many of its famous writers. Her masterwork of fiction, Their Eyes Were Watching God, is her most famous novel, and today it is regarded as a seminal work in both African-American literature and women's literature. -
Woman Seated in the Underground
Henry Moore was recognized as a 20th century British sculptor, but after the German Blitz of London in 1940-41 he was appointed an official war artist and was commissioned to draw life in underground bomb shelters. He began to focus exclusively on his Shelter Drawings series, which became symbolic of the British resistance against Nazi aggression. His drawings were also displayed in New York as part of a campaign to encourage America to join the Allied Forces efforts to defeat the Nazis. -
The Monolith
This sculpture is carved out of one piece of white granite and rises 57 feet above the ground in Vigeland Park, Oslo, Norway. It consists of a series of 121 intertwining human bodies, all carefully holding on to each other. The Monolith is part of a unique sculpture park that contains over 200 sculptures by Gustav Vigeland. They were created in granite, bronze, and wrought iron. -
Appalachian Spring Premier
LISTEN (start at the 22 second mark to hear the familiar melody)
Aaron Copland was one of the most important figures in American music during the twentieth century and has been called "the Dean of American Composers." He forged a distinctly American style of composition which captures the essence of an ideal America. The Pulitzer Prize-winning ballet score "Appalachian Spring” is based on a traditional Shaker song “Simple Gifts.”
