Cluster · 1905 – 1933
The Avant-Garde Explosion
Three decades when everything cracked open. The densest, most influential cluster on the map.
Essays in this Cluster§ 01
05Fauvism1905 – 1908Colour freed from description.06Cubism1907 – 1922A single object, seen from everywhere at once.07Futurism1909 – 1944The worship of speed, machinery, and the violent overthrow of the past.08Suprematism1915 – 1925The supremacy of pure feeling, achieved through pure geometric form on a pure white field.09Constructivism1919 – 1934Art must serve the revolution. The artist is an engineer of the visible.10De Stijl1917 – 1931Reduce visual experience to its irreducible elements: horizontal, vertical, primary colour, black, white, grey.11Dada1916 – 1924If civilisation produced the trenches, the only honest art is anti-art.12Bauhaus1919 – 1933Unify art, craft, and industry. Teach the designer to think from first principles.13Surrealism1924 – 1966Reality is too narrow. The unconscious is the real territory.14Expressionism1905 – 1925Distort the world until it shows what it feels like.