The Great Upheaval: Modern Art from the Guggenheim Collection, 1910–1918

February 4 – June 1, 2011
*opening February 4 from 7:30 to 11pm, with live music and a cash bar.
Guggenheim (New York)
Curated by Tracey Bashkoff, Curator, Collections and Exhibitions, and Megan Fontanella, Assistant Curator, Collections and Provenance

Exhibition Unites the Guggenheim Foundation’s Collections in New York and Venice and Illuminates the Spirit of Dynamism and Innovation that Marks the Period before World War I

Featuring More than 100 Paintings, Sculptures, and Works on Paper by Such Avant-Garde Artists as Umberto Boccioni, Marc Chagall, Marcel Duchamp, Kazimir Malevich, and Pablo Picasso

LECTURE: “Isms” and “Ists”: The Modernist Group in the 1910s
Tuesday, March 15, 6:30 pm
Milton A. Cohen Professor of Literary Studies, University of Texas at Dallas

The 1910s witnessed an explosion of modernist groups. In the visual arts alone, prominent groups included the Italian Futurists, the Parisian Cubists and Orphists, Der Blaue Reiter of Munich, Die Brücke of Berlin, the London Vorticists, and the Russian Rayists. What accounts for this burgeoning? What made groups so appealing to artists in these years? More importantly, was this surge in modernist groups related to the accelerating innovation in all the arts of these years? “Isms and Ists” will address these questions and conclude with examples of how one group in particular, the Italian Futurists, influenced artists from London to Munich to Moscow. Cohen’s essay “Artists Write! Manifestos and Books in 1912” appears in The Great Upheaval exhibition catalogue. Tickets are $10, $7 members, free for students, and are available at guggenheim.org/publicprograms or via the Box Office at 212 423 3587.