Online Study Guide

Revolution and World War :: Expressionism in Early 20th-Century Europe :: Embracing Abstraction :: Challenging Artistic Conventions :: Transatlantic Artistic Dialogues :: European Art in the Wake of World War I :: New Art for A New Society-Utopian Ideals :: Emphasizing the Organic :: Art As Political Statement in the 1930s :: Émigrés and Exiles: Energizing American Art at Midcentury

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EMPHASIZING THE ORGANIC

While many artists embraced the expansion of mechanization and growth of technology, other artists immersed themselves instead in a search for the organic and natural.

"natural" Architecture

Frank Lloyd Wright sought to develop in his architecture an organic unity of planning, structure, materials, and site.

A "wandering" prairie house:

Frank Lloyd Wright's "prairie house" design for Robie House in Chicago has long, unconfined ground-hugging lines. It includes enclosed patios, overhanging roofs, and strip windows. The open ground plan interior is composed of intricately joined spaces grouped freely around a central fireplace.

33-66: FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT, Robie House, Chicago, Illinois, 1907-1909.

33-67: FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT, plan of the Robie House, Chicago, Illinois, 1907-1909.

A house with waterfall:

Frank Lloyd Wright's expansive design for the Kaufmann House ("Fallingwater") is built on a rocky hillside over a small waterfall. The design contrasts the textures and shapes of concrete, painted metal, and natural stones. Interior and exterior space are interwoven.

33-68: FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT, Kaufmann House (Fallingwater), Bear Run, Pennsylvania, 1936-1939.

Organic Sculpture

Seeking the essence of flight:

In the softly curving surfaces of his elegant Bird in Space, Constantin Brancusi emphasized the natural and organic. Brancusi sought to move beyond surface appearances to capture the essence or spirit of the object depicted.

33-69: CONSTANTIN BRANCUSI, Bird in Space, 1928. Bronze (unique cast), 4' 6" x 8" x 6" high. Museum of Modern Art, New York (given anonymously).

Evoking organic vitality:

Barbara Hepworth developed her own kind of essential sculptural form, combining pristine shape with a sense of organic vitality.

33-70: BARBARA HEPWORTH, Oval Sculpture (No. 2), 1943. Plaster cast, 11 1/4" x 16 1/4" x 10". Tate Gallery, London.

Celebrating the natural condition:

Henry Moore's simplified and abstracted sculpture of a recumbent woman, Reclining Figure, attempts to express a universal truth using an organic vocabulary. The contours and openings follow the grain of the wood and express the fluidity, dynamism, and evocative nature of the human form.

33-71: HENRY MOORE, Reclining Figure, 1939. Elm wood, 3' 1" x 6' 7" x 2' 6". Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit (Founders Society purchase with funds from the Dexter M. Ferry, Jr. Trustee Corporation).

Large-Scale kinetic sculptures:

The nonobjective organic forms of Alexander Calder's nonmechanized mobile 125 are set moving by air currents to create a constantly shifting dance in space.

33-72: ALEXANDER CALDER, Untitled, 1976. Aluminum honeycomb, tubing, and paint, 29' 10 1/2" x 76'. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (Gift of the Collectors Committee).