Modernism Assignment, Mohammed

This artwork is called Yorkshire Village and is by Edward Alexander Wadsworth. He was an English artist who lived from 1889-1949. He attended Fettes College. He knew the area of Yorkshire village from his childhood, which was what inspired him to make this art. He was a modernist and a vortocist (a type of modernist that was fascinated by the industrial revolution or as some would call it, the “machine age”) which could be guessed by viewing his artwork. This artwork resembles the industrial (the vortocism) landscape of Yorkshire– a lot of buildings. This artwork looks very cube-ish, which was the intention. The cubic form of his artwork reflects on modernism by using, well, cubism. By looking at this piece, you can see the fragment pieces of buildings (in Yorkshire) placed closely together. You can see several aspects and features of the buildings: they are tall, prism-shaped, have pointy corners, and are lack space between each other. I encountered this work while visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art on fifth avenue. While I was looking around the museum, this artwork caught my eye since at first I thought it was a middle finger and was amazed since it might be deemed  “dirty” or “inappropriate” by many people. But after closely examining it, I realized that these are buildings, specifically of Yorkshire village (hence the name of the artwork). After realizing this, this artwork kept my eye glued to it since it has shapes fragmented together, yet someone can interpret it as a building– most artwork with shapes fragmented together confuse me in regards to what they are exactly suppose to be– it happened here, but I quickly figured out what the artwork is supposed to be.  I also like that this artwork is simple– no crazy out of place drawings. I also like how the viewer is made to focus on one thing– there are no bright colors or anything else that would potentially distract you from the main piece. It is straightforward, and has one thing that should be focused on. The uniqueness of this artwork drew me to this piece since not many artworks contain simple shapes just bunched up together. Some questions I have about the artwork are what were the reactions of other (non-modernist) artists during this time? Why was cubism chosen for this artwork and not something  like impressionism or surrealism? Why did Wadsworth choose to make the artwork about the buildings in Yorkshire village and not the people?