RADIUM AGE ART (1930)

By: Joshua Glenn
November 6, 2024

René Magritte’s “The Annunciation” (1930)

A series of notes regarding proto sf-adjacent artwork created during the sf genre’s emergent Radium Age (1900–1935). Very much a work-in-progress. Curation and categorization by Josh Glenn, whose notes are rough-and-ready — and in some cases, no doubt, improperly attributed. Also see these series: RADIUM AGE TIMELINE and RADIUM AGE POETRY.

RADIUM AGE ART: 1900 | 1901 | 1902 | 1903 | 1904 | 1905 | 1906 | 1907 | 1908 | 1909 | 1910 | 1911 | 1912 | 1913 | 1914 | 1915 | 1916 | 1917 | 1918 | 1919 | 1920 | 1921 | 1922 | 1923 | 1924 | 1925 | 1926 | 1927 | 1928 | 1929 | 1930 | 1931 | 1932 | 1933 | 1934 | 1935.


1930


Theo van Doesburg produces a “Manifesto of Concrete Art.”

Theo van Doesburg’s cover design for Art Concret

Art Concret was a single-issue French-language art magazine published in Paris in 1930. It was the vehicle for a group of abstract artists who wished to differentiate themselves from others gathered around the magazine Cercle et Carré. Eventually most in both groups fused in the wider association of non-figurative artists, Abstraction-Création. Articles in Art Concret championed strictly geometrical art, free of personal interpretation and based on mathematics. It also ridiculed the sloppy and imprecise vocabulary of contemporary art criticism.

The group manifesto, followed by the surnames of the five artists involved, appeared on page 1. The key points: “A work of art must be entirely conceived and shaped by the mind before its execution. It should receive nothing from nature’s formal properties nor from sensuality nor sentimentality. We want to exclude lyricism, dramaticism, symbolism, etc… The painting should be constructed entirely from purely plastic elements, that is to say planes and colors.”

Elsewhere in the journal, we read that “As painters, we think and measure,” i.e., avoiding interpretation and subjectivity. Jean Hélion’s “The Problems of Concrete Art: Art and Mathematics” writes: “If art is universal, it escapes both personality and era. It belongs to the domain of constant certainties and is under the control of logic. The search for constants through logic is the shared aim of mathematics. Mathematics concretise constant certainties via formulae; painting does it via colours. So mathematics and painting are in essential relationship.”

Debye uses x-rays to investigate molecular structure; Eddington attempts to unify general relativity and the quantum theory. Pluto discovered.

Valentina Kulagina’s poster “International Women Worker’s Day—A Battle Day for the Proletariat” (1931)

Also see: RADIUM AGE: 1930.


DISENCHANTMENT


Harue Koga’s 窓外の化粧 (Make-up on the Outside of Window), 1930

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“Three Symbols” (1930), by Eileen Agar

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Johannes Molzahn’s Armariolo in Antisma (1930/1931)

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Salvador Dali, “Untitled (Surrealist Composition)” (1930)

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Peter Blume’s “Parade” (1930)

“This mildly surrealistic painting ironically posits the modernist language of industrial utopianism against the language of a socially committed art,” we read in The Thirties: Politics and Culture in a Time of Broken Dreams (1987), ed. Heinz Ickstadt. “The worker in the foreground has left the factory to either display, as trophy of victory, the paraphernalia of the robber barons, or his liberation from the iron-clad that they had forced on him.”


DYSTOPIA


René Magritte’s “The Annunciation” (1930)

This painting rates a mention in Ballard’s “The Atrocity Exhibition” (1970):

Dr Nathan studied the walls of the empty room. The mandalas, scored in the white plaster with a nail file, radiated like suns towards the window. He peered at the objects on the tray offered to him by the nurse. ‘So, these are the treasures he has left us — an entry from Oswald’s Historic Diary, a much-thumbed reproduction of Magritte’s “Annunciation” and the mass numbers of the first twelve radioactive nuclides. What are we supposed to do with them?’ Nurse Nagamatzu gazed at him with cool eyes. ‘Permutate them, doctor?’ Dr Nathan lit a cigarette, ignoring the explicit insolence.


FAR-OUT MATHEMATICS


Theo Van Doesburg’s Arithmetic Composition (1929-1930)

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Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Composition of Circles and Overlapping Angles, 1930.

The principles of textile work—pattern, senses of proportion, the rationality of line—became the basis of Sophie Taeuber-Arp’s practice. Unlike her contemporaries Piet Mondrian and Wassily Kandinsky (whom she later counted as a friend), whose practices were guided by utopian values and spiritual concerns, Taeuber-Arp was simply interested by the interplay of geometry and color, and its potential to beautify everyday life.

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Gunta Stölzl’s “Slit Tapestry Red-Green” (watercolor and pencil design for a wall hanging), 1927

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Feininger’s “The Market Church at Halle” (1930)

A print of Feininger’s “The Market Church at Halle” (1930) was prominently featured in the first three seasons of the iconic television show Bewitched hanging over the desk in Darren Stephens’ office.


FOURTH DIMENSION


Harue Koga’s Composition (c. 1930)

Klee’s “Open Book” (1930)

1980 edition of Hesse’s “Steppenwolf”


FUTURE WAR


Rodchenko’s “War of the Future” (1930)

From the website The Charnel House: “Aleksandr Rodchenko’s grim sci-fi vision of the War of the Future (1930) illustrates the extent to which the terror of chemical warfare and advanced implements of destruction haunted the Soviet and European imagination of conflict following World War I and the Russian Civil War. Death-rays and dirigibles. Howitzers and skyscrapers. Chiaroscuro gas-masks.”

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Tullio Crali’s “Bombardamento notturno” (1930)


NEW TECHNOLOGIES


Margaret Bourke-White’s “Chrysler Building, New York, exhibition announcement” (1930)

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Fortunato Depero’s “New York” (1930)

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“The Bridge in Curve” by Grace Cossington Smith (1930)

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Fortunato Depero’s “Grattacieli e tunnel” (1930)


UNKNOWABLE ALIENS


Salvador Dali’s The Average Bureaucrat (1930)

I’ve seen this painting titled “Cranial Reflections” and reproduced with different tones.

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Victor Brauner’s “Suicide at Dawn” (1930)

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Picasso’s “The Seated Bather” (1930)


UNSEEN FORCES


Tullio Crali’s “Le forze della curva” (1930)

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Mary Swanzy’s “Cubist Landscape with red pagoda and bridge” (c. 1925-1930)

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Helen Torr’s “Evening Sounds” (c. 1925–1930)

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Kandinsky’s “Diagonal” (1930)

Kandinsky’s “Shallow-Deep” (1930)

Kandinsky’s “Far Away” (1930)

Kandinsky’s “Serious Fun” (1930)

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Will Henry Stevens’s “Untitled [Blue Background with Multicolored Circles], c. 1930. Inspired by the works of Kandisnky and Klee.

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“Lo Spirito” (1930) by Benedetta Cappa

“Totale” (1930) by Benedetta Cappa

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Robert_Delaunay’s “Rythme, Joie de vivre” (1930)

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Tato (Guglielmo Sansoni)’s “Flying Over the Coliseum in a Spiral” (1930)

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Also see…

László Moholy-Nagy’s “Licht-Raum Modulator” (1922–30)

Shown here is a 1970 replica.

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MORE RADIUM AGE SCI FI ON HILOBROW: RADIUM AGE SERIES from THE MIT PRESS: In-depth info on each book in the series; a sneak peek at what’s coming in the months ahead; the secret identity of the series’ advisory panel; and more. | RADIUM AGE: TIMELINE: Notes on proto-sf publications and related events from 1900–1935. | RADIUM AGE POETRY: Proto-sf and science-related poetry from 1900–1935. | RADIUM AGE 100: A list (now somewhat outdated) of Josh’s 100 favorite proto-sf novels from the genre’s emergent Radium Age | SISTERS OF THE RADIUM AGE: A resource compiled by Lisa Yaszek.

Categories

Radium Age SF, Sci-Fi