Like Henri, who once chided his colleague John Sloan for working too laboriously at his painting, Man Ray had become a devotee of speed in composition. ... Henri urged them to reassess the notion of completion "the artist should understand his work in progress well enough to know when it was done to his own satisfaction; polish was not a prerequisite for a good painting. ... Man Ray's contribution, A Study in Nudes, foreshadows a concept that he was still three years away from entitling in another painting, "an arrangement of forms." ... There is a preoccupation in Man Ray's pai...

• Word Count: 3679
• Approx Pages: 15
• Grade Level: High School

Modernism is essentially post-Darwinian: it is a search to explain mankind's place in the modern world, where religion, social stability and ethics are all called into question. ... Narratives gave way to lyrics, above all to 'impressions', capturing the sensation of an immediate scene or moment; a development paralleled in the 'Impressionist' painting of artists like Sickert and Whistler. ...

• Word Count: 10566
• Approx Pages: 42