hi 109 class, Modern Art class, we're
talking this week about cubism and some
of the different artists that cubism
ended up influencing in the decades
afterwards one of my favorite artists
Natalia Goncharova who works in this
style is somebody who I've been having
trouble finding online sources on
there's a lot of books about her but
there isn't anything really good for me
to provide for you for free online so I
decided to instead make a little video
so in this video I'll tell you a bit
about Natalia Goncharova's background
and then we'll focus in on Linen which
is the artwork that's on your study
guide so here is Goncharova this is a
self-portrait you can see she was born
in 1889 lived till 1962 she was born in
Russia and most of her career was in
Russia just based on what we've been
studying so far in this class if you
look at this artwork you can see the
Impressionists influence of course you
know those really loose brushstrokes the
interest in showing all the color that's
in the light and shadow and then it also
has kind of a Fauvist feeling you know
the way these colors are used to feel
more about creating a mood than they do
about describing things
here's another early work of hers just
to give you a little context. Goncharova
was born to an upper-class
family but she was always really
interested in the plight of workers and
she made a lot of artworks that were
about working rural people so this is a
group of people you know obviously
planting potatoes the style of this
might look to you kind of like Gauguin
who we studied back during our
post-impressionist unit I think she was
influenced by those artists I mean
really everybody was influenced by that
group of post-impressionists but Gauguin
seems to be a really clear precedent
here for the way that she's using color
and the way that she lets these heavy
outlines sit. Her mature style though the
thing that she's known for looks more
like this I'm a big fan of this one
called Cyclist from 1913 now remember
cubism was
let's see 1907 and 1908 it was
getting started so this is a couple
years into cubism something that Goncharova does a lot you'll see it in all of
her works that we'll study in terms of
cubist influence is that she integrates
letters the forms of the letters end up
working like abstract shapes in the same
way that for example you know the motion
lines of this wheel end up working or
this odd little building that's in the
background she also integrates elements
of signage that would have been part of
just everyday life in a big city so for
example this coffee cup the pointing
finger those are things that would have
been like a sign out in public and then
she's using that as a way to push the
background up to the foreground like we
so often see Cubist's doing the one that
I wanted to focus on is this one called
linen from 1912 so that's actually the
year before this guy this one's really
interesting to me as I mentioned earlier
she's somebody who likes to focus on
work and this is a painting that's about
laundry now of course laundry is a
really normal part of everyone's life
back then it would have been
specifically a normal part of women's
lives since women would be doing the
majority of the housework but even
though that's the case you almost never
see images of domestic work like laundry
and cleaning and things like that in art
work so this is a really interesting
exception I know it's not so obvious
when you first look at it so I'm gonna
point out a couple of things so this is
an iron you know like the old just metal
chunk of metal kind if you look really
closely right here those are her
initials so she writes her initials like
signing the painting on the iron see how
it's on this like lacy kind of fabric
and then if you look upwards you've got
all of this lacy fabric here and then
look at this other side and you see how
the fabric here is much straighter it's
got these boxier lines those circles
that's a collar and these are sleeves I
don't know if you've ever seen men's
dress shirts folded up how they're
supposed to be folded like
in the store I know everyone in San
Diego so casual not too many of us wear
a dress shirt very often but these are
like fancy men's dress shirts folded and
pressed and the collar kind of pokes up
like that so you have this interesting
thing here where you've got the kind of
women's section here all of her laundry
probably and then on the left you've got
the men's section that's probably her
husband's laundry so you have something
that probably really happened two stacks
of laundry but you've also got you know
if you want to interpret it this way
which I do you've got this kind of
interesting meditation on gender
differences you've got these boxy male
kind of garments and then these lacy
frilly female garments which includes
the symbol of work the iron these words
are interesting too those are the words
for work this is a shortened version of
the Russian word for work and then this
word which I can't pronounce correctly
but that means the laundry so she's
referring to work she's obviously
referring to laundry so we've got the
subject matter now but then just look at
the form of it
it's not so different from the kind of
analytic cubism we've been looking at
remember this one by Pablo Picasso Oh
actually I'm not sure if I showed you
this one but anyway here is one by Pablo
Picasso this is called man with a violin
you can see a little bit of the violin
here you can see his face broken up into
all these different shattered bits it
has this feeling like you're looking at
a scene through a kaleidoscope and as
you turn the kaleidoscope and all of the
little shards of your vision displace
you get that impression with that
shattered look of cubism so you can see
that's fairly similar here she chooses
to use these blue colors this
interesting blue and then these bright
whites there was a bluing agent that
people used to use in their laundry it
was basically a blue liquid that you put
in there in a made your whites whiter so it
was sort of like a bleach um but this is
the same color blue so she probably
chose it to refer back to that specific
kind of work.  the thing that makes this
different than cubism really her own
kind of version well it's two things
really I mean first of all you've got
this interest in the subject matter being
something where it's part of the
painting I mean obviously the subject
matter is part of the painting here too
but with a lot of the Cubists early on
particularly Braque and Picasso the subject
was kind of just an excuse for the
formal innovations so you've got a man
with a violin but it's not really about
him it's about all of these little
shards and the things that he's doing in
terms of breaking up space whereas she's
got you know the same kind of technique
but she's choosing an unusual subject
that speaks specifically to gender roles
during this period so she's bringing in
some sort of social commentary in a way
that you don't see all that often in
these at least earlier kind of cubist
pieces. so that's a little bit on Linen
by Natalia Goncharova there's more for
you to read about her in the written
lecture online but remember she's one of
these several artists that we're looking
at who take the Cubist innovations and
then bring them you know into the future
decades and change them a little bit and
make them more their own okay thanks I
will see you next week
