Organic Abstraction

Washington, DC In the early decades of the 20th century, prevailing attitudes among European intellectual classes favored reason and science. This attitude demonstrated itself in the highly intellectual avant-garde artistic styles that dominated in Europe and America in the 1920s and 30s: an "intentional formalism" prevailed in the precise, geometric tendencies of styles like Cubism, Constructivism and, later, Concrete Art. Bergson's ideas deeply influenced sculptors like Jean Arp and Constantin Brâncuși (both domiciled in France during the 1930s) and, in art, architecture, and design, spread to widespread influence in the 1950s and 60s. ==Influence on Mid-century Modern==