The making of modernism: how pioneering artists shaped an era of radical change
Our specialists discuss how 20th-century artists in different fields — the likes of Andy Warhol, Irving Penn and Georgia O’Keeffe — helped define the themes of modernism across the artistic spectrum
Sophie Taeuber-Arp’s Relief rond en quatre hauteurs, from 1936, delicately combines geometric and biomorphic forms, creating a synthesis of the mathematical and the organic. Made of painted wood, it is a key mature work by an artist who was an innovator in fields as various as dance, tapestry, painting, sculpture, collage and set design
A vast and crowded canvas, Birdscape was made in 1979 by the Icelandic artist Erró (born Guðmundur Guðmundsson in 1932). The wildly diverse display of avian life is part of a series of ‘scapes’ involving foodstuffs, fish, sci-fi and images of Donald Duck. Erró once said he saw himself as a ‘reporter… who gathers together all the images in the world’
These ormolu-mounted porcelain ewers represent a spectacular marriage of two traditions: the porcelain is Chinese and dates from the early 19th century, while the mounts were made about 50 years later in France. With the contrast between the blue ceramic and the gold-hued metal, and the drama of the scrolling handles topped with dragons, this is a particularly striking pair
In 2014, Yang Fudong made a film on the island of Sandhornøya in Norway, from which The Light That I Feel 2 is a still image. For an artist based in Shanghai, the island was a place of extraordinary silence, space and natural light. Working with a cast of locals, he created a dreamlike meditation on humanity and nature that was projected as a video installation on eight screens set up on the beach
