About this video
A Tate Britain curator introduces the 1930s gallery, when artists debated how art should respond to the rise of fascism in Europe. He looks closely at Leon Underwood's carved wooden Totem to the Artist, then contrasts two paintings in a naive style: Christopher Wood's Zebra and Parachute and Julian Trevelyan's The Potteries, from a project investigating industrial northern England. He ends by reflecting on the decade's belief in art's power to change the world, undermined by the Second World War and the Holocaust.
You'll be able to
- explain what 1930s artists were debating and why.
- describe how Leon Underwood used the qualities of wood in Totem to the Artist.
- explain why the curator calls the room's optimism 'fundamentally undermined'.
Key words
- avant-garde
- Artists making new, experimental work that challenges tradition.
- the Academy
- The traditional art establishment, with its accepted rules and styles.
- fascism
- A violent, authoritarian political movement that rose in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s.
- social realism
- Art that shows everyday life, especially of working people, to make a social or political point.
- totem
- A carved column of stacked figures, like a totem pole.
- naive style
- A simple, unpolished way of painting that can look childlike or untrained.
Transcript
the 1930s saw debate not only between the avant-garde and the Academy but also between modern artists about the appropriate response to the rise of fascism in Europe abstract artists are realists and social realists all interpreted that political imperative in different ways one of the things the refurbishment of these galleries has allowed is the introduction of wooden sculpture which until now we have been able to show at Tate Britain and it's revealed in the late 20s and 30s the dominance of the Supreme ative icing styles among sculptors this is Leon Underwood's totem to the artist and it shows a series of tumbling figures like us a pile of acrobats if you like you can see under words wonderful use of the
wood here the way he allows the light of SAP wood to highlight certain features but in particular his use of the grain look at this wonderful concentric rings that exaggerate the form of this figures torso it is very much a totem pole three stacked figures carved out of a log of wood and you can see how under wood is has left part of that log uncarved so you can see the original material from which this work was made these two paintings together share a certain naive style and but also show some of the extremes of the art of the 30s at the top Christopher woods zebra with parachute a very strange a vocation of Paris from 1913 made shortly before wood took his own life throwing himself under a train the lower work is Julian
trillions the Potteries a painting that comes out of a larger project of artists and intellectuals who travel to and investigated the industrial cities of northern England a sort of anthropological project do almost uncover these sort of hidden communities and one very politically charged during a sort of deep economic depression I find this room very moving because whether abstract or realist it's full of works made in the belief of art's ability to change the world but of course the 1930s is a decade that ends at the beginning of the Second World War and the unleashing of the horrors of that conflict and of the Holocaust that fundamentally undermined that optimistic belief in the power of culture
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