Accords 1922

Art Historian: We're looking at "Accords," a 1922 oil painting by Amédée Ozenfant, housed right here at the Honolulu Museum of Art. Art Historian: My initial sense is one of subdued elegance. The cool grays and whites give it a very contained, almost architectural feeling. Art Historian: Ozenfant was a key figure in the Purist movement. You see it in the pared-down forms, the celebration of industrial objects presented almost like idealized machines for living. He intended it as a response to the more decorative and emotive Cubism that preceded it. Art Historian: Exactly. And those objects he chose are carefully considered, I think. The guitar, for instance, represents culture, artistry, and sensuality, all rendered into very stable geometric forms. Even the pitchers evoke vessels of life-sustaining potential. Art Historian: And that repetition of forms – the cylinders, the smooth curves – it speaks to a kind of standardization, a belief in the beauty and functionality of the modern age. The Paris of the early 20th century was changing rapidly; Ozenfant, along with others, believed that art needed to embrace that progress. Art Historian: It’s not cold or clinical though, is it? Those subtle tonal variations in the grey, like on the pitcher, almost humanize it. You get this suggestion of light and shadow, warmth even, in the ostensibly cool color palette. He imbued simple domesticity with almost classical undertones. Art Historian: I agree; that tension between austerity and subtle beauty is where the painting gains its strength. Ozenfant’s goal wasn’t just about celebrating the machine age. He hoped that the new visual order he proposed might lead towards social harmony. Art as a pathway towards an ordered society was a belief that shaped avant-garde artistic circles after the First World War. Art Historian: So even in this pared-down composition we glimpse this aspiration, and the way symbols—even seemingly everyday ones—reflect a longing for harmony in a shattered world. Art Historian: Seeing it this way reminds me that modernism’s various styles and movements had specific political, economic, and social roots and trajectories. Art Historian: Yes, now it is clear that Ozenfant wanted his viewers to bring cultural memories when looking at his art.