58. JEAN (HANS) ARP, Collage Arranged According to the Laws of Chance , 1916–1917. Torn and pasted paper, 1’ 7 1/8” x 1’ 1 5/8”. Museum of Modern Art, New York.
59. The Armory Show 1917 Duchamp, Fountain, 1917 Duchamp, Bottle Rack
60. Marcel Duchamp, The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass), 1915-1923
136. Aaron Douglas, Slavery Through Reconstruction , Aspects of Negro Life Series, 1934
137. Jacob Lawrence, The Migration Series , "Panel 1 -- During World War I, there was a great migration North by Southern African Americans.“ 1940-41
138. JACOB LAWRENCE, No. 49 from The Migration of the Negro , 1940–1941. Tempera on masonite,
Hinweis der Redaktion
Modernism , in its broadest definition, describes both a set of cultural tendencies and an array of associated cultural movements , originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The term encompasses the activities and output of those who felt the "traditional" forms of art, architecture, literature, religious faith, social organization and daily life were becoming outdated in the new economic, social and political conditions of an emerging fully industrialized world. Modernism rejected the lingering certainty of Enlightenment thinking , (reason and individual freedoms of man) Modernism can be viewed as a questioning of the truths of the previous age. A characteristic of Modernism is self-consciousness. This often led to experiments with form, and work that draws attention to the processes and materials used (and to the further tendency of abstraction). Modernism encouraged the re-examination of every aspect of existence, from commerce to philosophy, with the goal of finding that which was 'holding back' progress, and replacing it with new ways of reaching the same end.
Influenced by the mosaics at Ravenna, Klimt’s work involves bright colors and mosaic like patterns that enwrap the figures in Death and Life. Intertwined images of youth, maturity, and old age celebrate life as bound up with love. Death watches as the figures are vulnerably sleeping.
painted by Gustav Klimt , during his ‘golden period’, and is probably his most famous work. It depicts a couple, in various shades of gold and symbols, sharing a kiss against a bronze background. Two figures are situated at the edge of a flowered escarpment. The man is wearing neutral coloured rectangles and a crown of vines; the woman wears brightly coloured tangent circles and flowers in her hair. The twain’s embrace is enveloped by triangular vining and a veil of concentric circles. The Kiss falls in line with Klimt’s exploration of fulfillment and the redeeming, transformative power of love and art.
Every detail functions as part of a living whole. Furniture, drapery folds, veining in the lavish stone panelings, and the patterning the door moldings join with real plants to provide graceful counterpoints for the metallic tendrils that curl around the railings and posts, the delicate metal tracery that fills the glass dome, and the floral and leaf motifs that spread across the fabric panels of the screen.
Gaudi invented many new structural techniques that facilitated the actual construction of his visions. Casa Mila is a wondrously free form mass wrapped around a street corner. Lacy iron railings enliven the swelling curves of the cut stone façade, while dormer windows peep from the undulation tiled roof, which is capped by fantastically writhing chimneys that poke energetically into the air above. The rough surfaces of the stone walls suggest naturally worn rock.
Casa Mila roof architecture
Casa Mila center atrium
Influenced by Impressionism and Post Impressionism but with the focus on unrealistic, expressive color. Painted during a trip to London
Derain rejects the harmonies of Impressionism which favored atmospheric and light conditions, in favor of a distorted perspective emphasized by the contrast of the non naturalistic colors. Derain, like the Fauves, believed that an artist’s goal should be to make the strongest possible presentation of his emotional reaction to a subject by using bold color and strong linear patterns. Color no longer describes the local tones of an object; instead, it creates the expressive content of the picture, foreshadowing later nonobjective works whose entire content is the interaction of color and form.
It is believed that the woman in the painting was Matisse's wife, Amelie. It was exhibited with the work of other artists, now known as " Fauves " at the 1905 Salon d'Automne . Critic Louis Vauxcelles described the work with the phrase " Donatello au milieu des fauves!" (Donatello among the wild beasts), referring to a Renaissance -type sculpture that shared the room with them. [1] His comment was printed in a newspaper and widely read. One critic said, "A pot of paint has been flung in the face of the public" The painting that was singled out for attacks was Matisse's Woman with a Hat , which was bought by Gertrude and Leo Stein , who collected and financed many modern artists including Picasso. This had a very positive effect on Matisse, who was very upset from the bad reception of his work.
This painting shows Matisse’s interest in color as well as the artists Duccio and Ingres as well as Japanese prints and Near Eastern textiles, potter and paintings. The composition is a festive, lyrical arrangement of simplified interlocking shapes. The space of the room is suggested by the perspective view of the chair seat and the window’s frame, but it is simultaneously transformed into a flat pattern of colored shapes and the patterned red pink fields shared by the tablecoth and the wallpaper.
Rouault embarked on an apprenticeship as a glass painter and restorer. This early experience as a glass painter has been suggested as a likely source of the heavy black contouring and glowing colours which characterize Rouault's mature painting style. This piece seems to reflect the biblical question that asks what a man shall gain if he gains the whole world but loses his soul. Rouault was deeply religious.
Expressionism is characterized by a search for expressiveness of style by means of exaggerations and distortions of line and color, a deliberate abandonment of realism in favor of a simplified style that can carry far greater emotional impact. Northern artists have always had more of a tendency towards expressionism over artists of Latin descent- because of an obvious link to symbolism.
At the same time the Fauves were showing in Paris, a group of German artists, known as Die Brucke, formed in Dresden, Germany. They had seen some Fauve paintings and had adopted their bright color, but the work of Die Brucke artists is generally more coarse and robust, more primitive, than that of the French Fauves. Led by Ernst Kirchner, the group thought of themselves as preparing the way for a more perfect age by forming a bridge from the old age to the new, which led to their name. The group appealed to artists to revolt against academic painting and develop an art that would turn people away from false values and toward spiritual rejuvenation. They were interested in German medieval art, which led to the group modeling themselves after medieval craft guilds by living together and practicing all the arts equally. Under tensions preceding WW1, the group dissolved around 1913 and each artist then worked independently.
Nolde's figures are large scale, crammed together in a constricting space. The result is crowded and claustrophobic. Nolde focuses our attention on the intense emotions of the event. Furthermore, the harsh drawing, agitated brushwork, and distortion of the figures enforce the feeling.
Nolde was a supporter of the Nazi party from the early 1920s, having become a member of its Danish section. He expressed negative opinions about Jewish artists, and considered Expressionism to be a distinctively Germanic style. This view was shared by some other members of the Nazi party. However Hitler rejected all forms of modernism as " degenerate art ", and Nolde's work was officially condemned by the Nazi regime. Until that time he had been held in great prestige in Germany. 1052 of his works were removed from museums, more than any other artist [2] . He was not allowed to paint—even in private—after 1941. Nevertheless, during this period he created hundreds of watercolors, which he hid. He called them the "Unpainted Pictures". Mary, before her conversion, entertains lechers whose brutal ugliness is magnified by their lust. It’s an appalling picture of subhuman and depraved passion in which evil wreaks its visible consequences in the repulsive faces and gestures. This is an analogy of his view of modern German society.
Leader of the Die Brucke group. Steep perspective, jaggedly angular forms, acrid colors, and haunted people suggest the brittleness and fragility of life in the German metropolis as Europe moved closer to war. Kirchner portrays the German "high society," the monied aristocracy of the new materialism, as stiff, hard-edged, two-dimensional cut-outs concerned with nothing but themselves and their image, indifferent to the suffering going on around them. In 1933, Kirchner was labelled a " degenerate artist " by the Nazis and asked for his resignation from the Berlin Academy of Arts ; in 1937, over 600 of his works were confiscated from public museums in Germany and were sold or destroyed. [8] In 1938, the psychological trauma of these events, along with the Nazi occupation of Austria, close to his home, led to his suicide. [8]
in Munich , Germany . Der Blaue Reiter was a German movement lasting from 1911 to 1914, Within the group, artistic approaches and aims varied from artist to artist; however, the artists shared a common desire to express spiritual truths through their art. They believed in the promotion of modern art; the connection between visual art and music; the spiritual and symbolic associations of colour; and a spontaneous, intuitive approach to painting. Members were interested in European medieval art and primitivism , as well as the contemporary, non-figurative art scene in France . As a result of their encounters with cubist , fauvist and Rayonist ideas, they moved towards abstraction. the artists of Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider), led by Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky, searched for a universal spirituality that would save all mankind from the coming catastrophe.
Marc turned to the 'animal painting' for he believed that they were better suited than human figures to the expression of cosmological ideas... for unlike humans they seemed uncorrupted, part of nature acting on instinct and therefore purer and more noble.
the artists of Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) searched for a universal spirituality that would save all mankind from the coming catastrophe. This search for a universal visual "language" to express his message of spirituality to everyone would lead Wassily Kandinsky to the creation of the first totally nonrepresentational imagery. As the story/legend goes, Kandinsky, who started painting in the Fauve style, walked into his studio one bright afternoon and was overcome by the visual impact of a painting leaning against the far wall of his studio. On closer examination, he found that it was one of his own paintings which he had set down on it's side, making the images in the painting unrecognizable (thus nonrepresentational). The realization of the power of the visual elements released from their discriptive role opened a whole new direction for him and inevitably the whole of the visual arts. Kandinsky painted his improvisations with no preconceived theme. He allowed colors and marks to come as they will, prompted by his subconscious feelings. This idea of expressing the subconscious would be influential and further explored by the Surrealists.
Matisse derived the pose from a photograph of a model, whose stocky proportions he elongated and transformed into flexible, rope like forms. He did this, “ so that the movement would be completely comprehensible from all points of view.”
Greatly influenced by African art, but put in a western art context
With her long, curved neck, her elongated, oval face, almond-shaped eyes and small, pursed lips, this portrait represents the artist’s mature style
Pablo Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter , draughtsman , and sculptor . As one of the most recognized figures in 20th-century art , he is best known for co-founding the Cubist movement and for the wide variety of styles embodied in his work. Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907) and his depiction of the German bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War , Guernica (1937). He was born in Spain. His father was an art teacher. He was an art student at art schools in Barcelona and Madrid. In his early career he traveled back and forth from Barcelona and Paris. He was initially attracted to the work of Honore Daumier and he painted outcasts of Paris and Barcelona in weary poses and a coldly expressive blue because of its association with melancholy. Picasso felt a political sensitivity to those he considered victims of modern capitalist society, which eventually led him to join the Communist party.
Pablo Picasso painted this Self Portrait with Cloak painting during his famous blue period series. Like many of his other paintings from this period, this self portrait uses all blue tones and is very melancholy in nature.
The Blue Period stretched from 1901 to 1904 and was defined by its melancholy subject matter and hues. The painting depicts a blind beggar in torn and tattered clothes sitting in a somewhat distorted manner around his guitar. The distortion of his features and elongated limbs is reminiscent of the work of el greco. The figure is known to be modeled after a blind artist whom Picasso knew in Madrid
Picasso painted the circus on many occasions around the time this painting was completed. The artist was inspired by his visits to the Cirque Médrano in Montmartre. Pablo Picasso used the circus performers to refer to the artist's alienation and outsider image, particularly the image of a modern artist breaking new ground. Scholars have identified each individual as a disguised portrait of members of Picasso’s circle, including the dark haired artist himself, who stands at the left in the harlequin costume.
From 1903 to 1914 she lived in Paris with her brother Leo, an art critic. Gertrude and Leo compiled one of the earliest collections of modern art, owning early works by Pablo Picasso. When someone commented that Stein didn't look like her portrait, Picasso replied, "She will".
Picasso's rough-hewn rendering of a man's head combines aspects of African and Iberian art which had first impacted his work a year or two earlier. Reduced to a few simple shapes and large masses, the head has a masklike appearance. The highly stylized lozenge-shaped eyes and mouth are dark open voids that could have been copied from the stone and bronze Iberian sculptures or from the wooden African masks that Picasso saw, but most likely were a synthesis of both sources.
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon churned together Picasso's earlier subject matter, specifically the classical nude, with Iberian statuary—ancient pre-Spanish sculpture—and African art, beloved for its seemingly abstract simplifications. The painting has also been viewed as the young Picasso's brutish reaction to Henri Matisse's bold and idyllic 1906 masterpiece, Le Bonheur de Vivre (Barnes Foundation). Picasso evidently provoked his fellow artists and critics with the monumental bordello scene, formerly titled The Philosophical Brothel , in which five prostitutes seductively invite the viewer into a splintered and faceted space that confounds our understanding of the image. The three on the left show influence from Iberian sculpture and the two on the right are more representative of African masks. The forms of the latter two, painted later, show a much more broken up style and influence of Cezanne’s later paintings of broken up landscapes and still lifes showing multiple points of view. For the first time, the tradition since the Renaissance of interpreting space in one viewpoint is drastically altered. At first Picasso only showed the painting to other artists. Matisse hated it, but another friend, Georges Braque was challenged and inspired by it. http://www.smarthistory.org/videos.html
At the Modern Museum of Art since 1939
Cubism was a 20th century avant-garde art movement , pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque , that revolutionized European painting and sculpture , and inspired related movements in music and literature . The first branch of cubism, known as "Analytic Cubism", was both radical and influential as a short but highly significant art movement between 1907 and 1911 in France. In its second phase, Synthetic Cubism, (using synthetic materials in the art) the movement spread and remained vital until around 1919, when the Surrealist movement gained popularity.
After viewing Picasso’s les demoiselles d’avignon, Braque painted this painting where he attempts to translate nature’s complexity into an independent, aesthetically satisfying whole. He submitted the painting to the progressive 1908 Salon d’Auomne, but the jury who included Matisse, rejected the painting. Matisse called the painting, “little cubes” and the critic Louis Vauxcelles, who gave the Fauves their name, borrowed Matisse’s observation and wrote that Braque, “reduces everything, places and figures and houses to geometrical schemes, to cubes.” Thus, the name cubism was born. Braques would influence Picasso into a new direction.
Like I said before, to understand cubism we have to look back to Cézanne’s still lifes or even further, to the Renaissance. If a Renaissance artist wanted to painting a paper cup, they would position themselves at particular point and construct the objects and surrounding space frozen in that spot. On the other hand, Cezanne, would allow himself to see the changing shapes and lines that result when you shift your weight from one leg to the other. Cezanne might allow himself to see slightly around the paper cup since Cézanne was interested in vision and memory working together. Finally, Braque or Picasso would want even more. They were not be satisfied with the narrow limiting conventions of the Renaissance nor even with the too timid explorations of the master Cézanne. As a Cubist, they would want to express the total visual understanding of the paper cup. They would render the cup’s front, its sides, its back, and its inner walls, its bottom from both inside and out, all on a flat canvas. How can this be done? The answer is provided by The Portuguese. In this canvas, everything was fractured. By breaking these objects in to smaller elements Braque and Picasso are able overcome the unified singularity of an object and instead transform it into an object of vision. To understand, we could tear up the cup into little pieces. If I want to be able to show you both the back and front and inside and outside simultaneously, I must fragment the object. Basically this is the strategy of the Cubists.
Three Musicians is a large painting measuring more than 2 meters wide and high. It is painted in the style of Synthetic Cubism and gives the appearance of cut paper. The central figure is a Harlequin playing a guitar, with two musicians by his sides. There is also a dog that can be seen to the left of the musicians with his ears clearly visible.
After the artists had grown tired of the Analytical period, they began to develop what is known as the Synthetic period. Picasso and Braque continue to introduce new and controversial changes with the introduction of collaged objects into their paintings. Still Life with Chair Cane was one of the first of these experiments, and integrates chair caning with the paint, framed with a length of rope.
Worked in a cubist style, but infused color back into the composition. His style was labeled orphism by the French poet Apollinaire who used the word when labeling one of Delaunay’s paintings.
"a roaring motor car, hurtling like a machine gun, is more beautiful than the Winged Victory of Samothrace ," the Futurists hoped to wrench Italy from her languid, retrospective dream of an antique and Renaissance past into the shrill, dynamic realities of the industrial present. To accomplish this aim, they needed to develop a style as aggressive and conternporary as their new urban environment. For this, Cubism was essential. Futurism was an attack against everything old, dull, “feminine” and safe. The Futurist Manifesto promoted the exhilarating “masculine” experiences of warfare and reckless speed. Futurism aimed both to free Italy from its past and to promote a new taste for the thrilling speed, energy, and power of modern technology and modern urban life. Futurist painters declared that “all subjects previously used must be swept aside in order to express our whirling life of steel of pride, of fever, and of speed.” "We want no part of it, the past", he wrote, "we the young and strong Futurists! " The Futurists admired speed , technology , youth and violence , the car, the airplane and the industrial city, all that represented the technological triumph of humanity over nature , and they were passionate nationalists.
Severini takes this painting and includes the “past” and “future” by depicting various facets of the landscape, located on the sides, as they are being pierced by the speeding train. The sense of immediacy and movement are further conveyed by the diagonals emanating and fusing from the landscape into the train’s structure and vice versa.
Other paintings, such as Dog on a Leash , got to grips with the problem of recreating speed and flight by superimposing several images on top of each other. Inevitably, the advances that were made by this short-lived movement were eventually to be overtaken by the art of cinematography. Futurism was finished by the First World War, after which Futurist ideals became increasingly associated with Fascism.
bronze Futurist sculpture by Umberto Boccioni . It is seen as an expression of movement and fluidity. Boccioni rejected traditional sculpture and depictions to create this piece and it is seen as a masterpiece of Futurism Unique Forms of Continuity in Space depicts a human-like figure seemingly flying or gliding through air. A clinging drapery whips back around his legs, giving the sculpture an aerodynamic and fluid form. Instead of a traditional pedestal , the figure is only bound to the ground by two blocks at his feet. The figure is also armless and without a discernibly real face. Though Boccioni apparently reviled traditional sculpture, Unique Forms of Continuity in Space does resemble more realist works. [4] The flowing, windswept drapery looks back to the classical Winged Victory of Samothrace , which Filippo Marinetti , founder of Futurism, declared was inferior in beauty to a roaring car.
Dada was an informal international movement, with participants in Europe and North America. The beginnings of Dada correspond to the outbreak of World War I. For many participants, the movement was a protest against the bourgeois nationalist and colonialist interests which many Dadaists believed were the root cause of the war, and against the cultural and intellectual conformity — in art and more broadly in society — that corresponded to the war. [3] many Dadaists believed that the 'reason' and 'logic' of bourgeois capitalist society had led people into war. They expressed their rejection of that ideology in artistic expression that appeared to reject logic and embrace chaos and irrationality . For example, George Grosz later recalled that his Dadaist art was intended as a protest "against this world of mutual destruction". [4] According to its proponents, Dada was not art, it was " anti-art ." For everything that art stood for, Dada was to represent the opposite. Where art was concerned with traditional aesthetics , Dada ignored aesthetics. If art was to appeal to sensibilities, Dada was intended to offend. Through their rejection of traditional culture and aesthetics the Dadaists hoped to destroy traditional culture and aesthetics. As dadaist Hugo Ball expressed it, "For us, art is not an end in itself ... but it is an opportunity for the true perception and criticism of the times we live in." [5]
Fountain is a 1917 work by Marcel Duchamp . It is one of the pieces which he called readymades (also known as found art ), because he made use of an already existing object—in this case a urinal , which he titled Fountain and signed "R. Mutt". The art show to which Duchamp submitted the piece stated that all works would be accepted, but Fountain was not actually displayed, and the original has been lost. The work is regarded by some as a major landmark in 20th century art. [2] Replicas commissioned by Duchamp in the 1960s are now on display in museums. Duchamp labeled the piece a " readymade ", a term he used to describe his collection of ordinary, manufactured objects not commonly associated with art.
Duchamp carefully created The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even , working on the piece from 1915 to 1923. He executed the work on two panes of glass with materials such as lead foil, fuse wire, and dust. It combines chance procedures, plotted perspective studies, and laborious craftsmanship. Duchamp's ideas for the Glass began in 1913, and he made numerous notes and studies, as well as preliminary works for the piece. The notes reflect the creation of unique rules of physics, and myth which describes the work. He published the notes and studies as The Green Box in 1934. [1] The notes describe that his "hilarious picture" is intended to depict the erratic encounter between the "Bride," in the upper panel, and her nine "Bachelors" gathered timidly below in an abundance of mysterious mechanical apparatus in the lower panel.
In 1913 at his Paris studio he mounted the bicycle wheel upside down onto a stool, spinning it occasionally just to watch it. Later he denied that its creation was purposeful, though it has come to be known as the first of his readymades . "I enjoyed looking at it," he said. "Just as I enjoy looking at the flames dancing in the fireplace." It was not until he began making readymades a few years later in New York that he decided Bicycle Wheel was a readymade. [1]
This photomontage shows the Kaiser and Crown Prince dressed up as chorus girls while the new emerging leaders appear alongside acrobats and sports stars. All of this is happening among an explosion of machine parts. When the rest of the Dada group had to move out of Germany in 1933, Hannah Höch moved to a remote house outside Berlin and remained there throughout the 30s and 40s. Many of the surviving original works from that time spent those years stored at the bottom of a dried out well in Hannah Höch's garden, only to be recovered when the war ended in 1945
Many of his best works utilize famous quotes of leading Nazis, and subtly undermine the intended message by quite ingenious visual puns. So, when Hitler said, "millions stand behind me" , he was boasting of his popular support, whilst Heartfield used this to reveal the fact that the Nazis were being bankrolled by leading German industrialists
Marcel Duchamp (28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968, pronounced [maʀsɛl dyˈʃɑ̃] ) was a French artist whose work is most often associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Duchamp's first work to provoke significant controversy was Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (Nu descendant un escalier n° 2) (1912). The painting depicts the mechanistic motion of a nude, with superimposed facets, similar to motion pictures . It shows elements of both the fragmentation and synthesis of the Cubists , and the movement and dynamism of the Futurists . He later submitted the painting to the 1913 " Armory Show " in New York City. The exhibition was officially named the International Exhibition of Modern Art, displayed works of American artists, and was also the first major exhibition of modern trends coming out of Paris. American show-goers, accustomed to realistic art, were scandalized, and the Nude was at the center of much of the controversy.
Malevich described his aesthetic theory, known as Suprematism, as "the supremacy of pure feeling or perception in the pictorial arts." He viewed the Russian Revolution as having paved the way for a new society in which materialism would eventually lead to spiritual freedom. Malevich pioneer of geometric abstract art and the originator of the Avant-garde Suprematist movement. For Malevich, that realm, a utopian world of pure form, was attainable only through nonobjective art. Indeed, he named his theory of art Suprematism to signify "the supremacy of pure feeling or perception in the pictorial arts"; and pure perception demanded that a picture's forms "have nothing in common with nature." Malevich imagined Suprematism as a universal language that would free viewers from the material world. Malevich had initially been influenced by Cubism and primitive art. This is a pure abstract painting, the artist's main theme being the internal movements of the personality. The theme has no precise form, and Malevich had to search it out from within the visible expression of what he felt.
This austere painting counts among the most radical paintings of its day, yet it is not impersonal; the trace of the artist's hand is visible in the texture of the paint and the subtle variations of white. The imprecise outlines of the asymmetrical square generate a feeling of infinite space rather than definite borders. He wanted White on White to create a sense of floating and transcendence. White was for Malevich the color of infinity, and signified a realm of higher feeling. ``The object in itself is meaningless... the ideas of the conscious mind are worthless''. What he wanted was a non-objective representation, ``the supremacy of pure feeling.'‘
Tatlin’s Tower or The Monument to the Third International was a grand monumental building envisioned by the Russian artist and architect Vladimir Tatlin , but never built. It was planned to be erected in Petrograd (now St. Petersburg ) after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, as the headquarters and monument of the Comintern (the third international). Lenin’s plan for monumental propaganda. It was supposed to house the organization devoted to the worldwide spread of Communimsm. Tatlin combined the skeletal structure of the Eiffel Tower with the formal vocabulary of the Cubo-Futurists to convey the dynamism of what Lenin called the “Permanent Revolution” of Communism. The built tower would dwarf the Eiffel Tower. Although Russia lacked the resources to build Tatlin’s monument, models displayed publicly were a symbolic affirmation of faith in what the country’s science and technology would eventually achieve.
Proponents of De Stijl sought to express a new utopian ideal of spiritual harmony and order. They advocated pure abstraction and universality by a reduction to the essentials of form and color; they simplified visual compositions to the vertical and horizontal directions, and used only primary colors along with black and white. [De Stijl] was posited on the fundamental principle of the geometry of the straight line, the square, and the rectangle, combined with a strong asymmetrically; the predominant use of pure primary colors with black and white; and the relationship between positive and negative elements in an arrangement of non-objective forms and lines
He evolved a non-representational form which he termed Neo-Plasticism . This consisted of a grid of vertical and horizontal black lines and the use of the three primary colours. [1] the abstractions that were a half-way house to his geometrical work, yet it also has a foothold in the real world of life and death.
The Grey Tree is realist art on the point of taking off into abstraction: take away the title and we have an abstraction; add the title and we have a grey tree. He claimed to have painted these pictures from the need to make a living, yet they have a fragile delicacy that is precious and rare. Mondrian sought an art of the utmost probity: his greatest desire was to attain personal purity, to disregard all that pleases the narrow self and enter into divine simplicities. That may sound dull, but he composed with a lyrical sureness of balance that makes his art as pure and purifying as he hoped.
Piet Mondrian , Composition 10 in Black and White , 1915, Oil on canvas, 33 ¾ x 42 ½ inches; Collection Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, The Netherlands
Escaping to New York after the start of World War II, Mondrian delighted in the city's architecture, and, an adept dancer, was fascinated by American jazz, particularly boogie–woogie. He saw the syncopated beat, irreverent approach to melody, and improvisational aesthetic of boogie–woogie as akin to his own "destruction of natural appearance; and construction through continuous opposition of pure means—dynamic rhythm." Bands of stuttering chromatic pulses, paths of red, yellow, and blue interrupted by light gray suggest the city's grid and the movement of traffic, while the staccato vibration of colors evokes the syncopation of jazz and the blinking electric lights of Broadway.
At the High Museum and on the AP exam in 2008
The Rietveld Schröder House ( Dutch : Rietveld Schröderhuis ) (also known as the Schröder House ) in Utrecht was built in 1924 by Dutch architect Gerrit Rietveld for Mrs. Truus Schröder-Schräder and her three children. She commissioned the house to be designed preferably without walls. The house is one of the best known examples of De Stijl -architecture and arguably the only true De Stijl building. Mrs. Schröder lived in the house until her death in 1985. The house was restored by and now is a museum open for visits. The facades are a collage of planes and lines whose components are purposely detached from, and seem to glide past, one another. This enabled the provision of several balconies . Like Rietveld's Red and Blue Chair , each component has its own form, position and color . Colors where chosen as to strengthen the plasticity of the facades; surfaces in white and shades of grey, black window and doorframes, and a number of linear elements in primary colors. an icon of the Modern Movement in architecture and an outstanding expression of human creative genius in its purity of ideas and concepts as developed by the De Stijl movement. (...) With its radical approach to design and the use of space, the Rietveld Schröderhuis occupies a seminal position in the development of architecture in the modern age.
a school in Germany that combined crafts and the fine arts, and was famous for the approach to design that it publicized and taught. It operated from 1919 to 1933. The Bauhaus school was founded by Walter Gropius in Weimar. In spite of its name, and the fact that its founder was an architect, the Bauhaus did not have an architecture department during the first years of its existence. The Bauhaus style became one of the most influential currents in Modernist architecture and modern design. [1] The Bauhaus had a profound influence upon subsequent developments in art , architecture , graphic design , interior design , industrial design , and typography . The school existed in three German cities ( Weimar from 1919 to 1925, Dessau from 1925 to 1932 and Berlin from 1932 to 1933), when the school was closed by the Nazi regime.
Steel and ferroconcrete made it possible for Le Corbusier to invert the traditional practice of placing light architectural elements above heavy ones and to eliminate weight-bearing walls on the ground story. This is located 30 miles outside Paris, near Versailles. It was designed as a weekend retreat. The owners could drive under the house, whose ground floor curves to accommodate the turning radius of an automobile and incorporates a three car garage.
The Chrysler Building is a classic example of Art Deco architecture and considered by many contemporary architects to be one of the finest buildings in New York City . Art Deco was a popular international art design movement from 1925 until 1939, affecting the decorative arts such as architecture , interior design , and industrial design , as well as the visual arts such as fashion , painting , the graphic arts and film . At the time, this style was seen as elegant, glamorous , functional, and modern. The movement was a mix of many different styles and movements of the early 20th century, including Neoclassical , Constructivism , Cubism , Modernism , Art Nouveau , and Futurism . [1] Its popularity peaked in Europe during the Roaring Twenties [2] and continued strongly in the United States through the 1930s. [3] Although many design movements have political or philosophical roots or intentions, Art Deco was purely decorative. [4] Art Deco experienced a decline in popularity during the late 30s and early 40s, and soon fell out of public favor. It experienced a resurgence with the popularization of graphic design in the 1980s. Art Deco had a profound influence on many later artistic movements, such as Memphis and Pop art .
Fallingwater is an example of Organic Architecture- Frank Lloyd Wright’s design process. Materials, motifs, and basic ordering principals continue to repeat themselves throughout the building as a whole. The idea of “Organic Architecture” refers not only to the buildings' literal relationship to the natural surroundings, but how the buildings' design is carefully thought about as if it were a unified organism. Geometries throughout Wright’s buildings build a central mood and theme. Essentially “Organic Architecture” is also the literal design of every element of a building: From the windows, to the floors, to the individual chairs intended to fill the space. Everything relates to one another, reflecting the symbiotic ordering systems of nature.
Kathe Kollwitz was an independent expressionist artist. She was committee to causes of the working class and pursued social change primarily through printmaking because of its potential to reach a wide audience. Kollwitz represents the sorrowing poor gathered around the assassinated leader of the 1919 socialiat
Following the death of her youngest son, who was killed in action in 1914, she became committed to the pacifist cause and produced a series of anti-war posters. “Nie Wieder Krieg” (Never Again War) was commissioned by the Socialist Democratic Party in 1924 for a German Youth Conference and it became an iconic image used to unite the pacifist movement.
The Survivors was used for a Peace Congress held in The Hague, The Netherlands in 1922. An accompanying text stated: Do not teach the children to glorify war and war heroes. Teach them to despise war.
In the originality of its formal language and its deeply expressive content, Seated Youth would influence sculptors as diverse as Alberto Giacometti and Henry Moore. We see a nude young man seated alone in a closed, self-contained, reflective, and melancholic pose. All nonessential elements have been eliminated, and we focus our attention solely on the expressive arrangement of the bowed head, the intertwined limbs, and the pockets of negative space that unite the form. A poem by Lehmbruck titled "Is There Anybody Left?," written in 1918, attests to the sculptor's own feelings of despair: Who has survived this bloodbath? I tramp over this new cut field And look at the harvest of men cruelly mown down. Friends lie silent around me; My brothers are no longer here. Faith, love, everything has disappeared, But death is everywhere, on every flower and every path. Oh limitless curses on it! You who have made so much death, Have you none for me? Seated Youth , subtitled "The Friend," portrays both survivor and mourner, one who questions his own existence while he meditates on and grieves over the loss of friends. It was chosen as a cemetery monument in Germany.
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members. Surrealist works feature the element of surprise and unexpected juxtapositions; however, many Surrealist artists and writers regard their work as an expression of the philosophical movement first and foremost, with the works being an artifact. Leader André Breton was explicit in his assertion that Surrealism was above all a revolutionary movement. Surrealism developed out of the Dada activities of World War I and the most important center of the movement was Paris. From the 1920s on, the movement spread around the globe, eventually affecting the visual arts, literature, film, and music, of many countries and languages, as well as political thought and practice, and philosophy and social theory.
Born to Italian parents in Greece, he studied art in Munich and began painting images juxtaposing the fantastic with the commonplace. In 1911 he moved to Paris, where he produced ominous scenes of deserted piazzas with Classical statues, isolated figures, and oppressive architecture. The element of mystery in his work exerted a great influence on Surrealism in the 1920s. The art of De Chirico centers upon the contrast between classical culture and modern mechanistic civilization. These two elements are locked in a desperate struggle, and the tragic quality of this situation exudes an aura of melancholy . The iconographic elements of his early art - modern railways and clock towers combined with ancient architecture - are to be sought in the artist's childhood memories of Greece. For the strange visual images in which De Chirico cast his mature works (1911-1918), he used an airless dreamlike space in his townscapes with an exaggerated perspective artificially illuminated, with long sinister shadows, and strewn about with antique statues.
German painter , sculptor , graphic artist , and poet . A prolific artist, Ernst is considered to be one of the primary pioneers of Dada movement and Surrealism . The combination of flat painted surfaces and unexpected objects in this work align it with Surrealism. A red wooden gate affixed to the painted surface opens onto a deceptively pastoral scene dominated by blue sky. One female figure brandishes a small knife as though fending off the unassuming nightingale at left; another falls limp in a swoon; a man who lights atop the roof carries off a third, his hand outstretched to grab the knob fastened to the old-fashioned frame. Ernst gave two autobiographical references for the nightingale: the death of his sister in 1897 and a fevered hallucination he experienced in which the wood grain on a panel near his bed took on "successively the aspect of an eye, a nose, a bird's head, a menacing nightingale, a spinning top, and so on."
Spanish painter. Born into a middle-class family, he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid, where he mastered academic techniques. Dalí devoted himself with passionate intensity to developing his method, which he described as 'paranoiac-critical', a 'spontaneous method of irrational knowledge based on the critical and systematic objectivation of delirious associations and interpretations'. It enabled him to demonstrate his personal obsessions and fantasies by uncovering and meticulously fashioning hidden forms within pre-existing ones, either randomly selected (postcards, beach scenes, photographic enlargements) or of an accepted artistic canon (canvases by Millet , for example)
The well-known surrealistic piece introduced the image of the soft melting pocket watch . Dali was friends with Freud and was very interested in expressing element of the subconscious in his work. Dali has created a haunting allegory of empty space in which time is at an end. The barren landscape, without horizon, drifts to infinity, lit by some eerie, never setting sun. It is possible to recognize a human figure in the middle of the composition, in the strange "monster" that Dalí used in several period pieces to represent himself. Dali has draped his creature with a limp pocket watch. Another watch hangs from the branch of a dead tree that springs from a blocky form. A third watch hangs half over the edge of the rectangular form, beside a small timepiece resting dial down on the block’s surface. Ants swarm mysteriously over the small watch, while a fly walks along the face of its large neighbor, almost as if this assembly of watches were decaying organic life. Dali rendered every detail of this dreamscape with precise control, striving to make the world of his paintings as convincingly real as the most meticulously rendered landscape based on an actual scene from nature. The absurd yet compelling image of ants feeding on a metallic watch typifies the Surrealist interest in unexpected juxtopositions of disparate realities.
Oppenheim, a young Swiss artist took the surrealist notion of juxtaposition and applied it to sculpture. Consisting of a cup, saucer, and spoon covered with the fur of a Chinese gazelle, Oppenheim’s work transforms implements normally used for drinking tea into a hairy ensemble that simultaneously attracts and repels the viewer.
René François Ghislain Magritte (21 November 1898 – 15 August 1967) was a Belgian surrealist artist. He became well known for a number of witty and thought-provoking images. Magritte painted it as a self-portrait . The painting consists of a man in a suit and a bowler hat standing in front of a small wall, beyond which is the sea and a cloudy sky. The man's face is largely obscured by a hovering green apple . However, the man's left eye can be seen peeking over the edge of the apple. Another subtle feature is that the man's left arm appears to bend backwards at the elbow. About the painting Magritte said, At least it hides the face partly. Well, so you have the apparent face, the apple, hiding the visible but hidden, the face of the person. It's something that happens constantly. Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see. There is an interest in that which is hidden and which the visible does not show us. This interest can take the form of a quite intense feeling, a sort of conflict, one might say, between the visible that is hidden and the visible that is present
Magritte's work frequently displays a juxtaposition of ordinary objects in an unusual context, giving new meanings to familiar things. The representational use of objects as other than what they seem is typified in his painting, The Treachery of Images ( La trahison des images ), which shows a pipe that looks as though it is a model for a tobacco store advertisement. Magritte painted below the pipe " This is not a pipe " ( Ceci n'est pas une pipe ), which seems a contradiction, but is actually true: the painting is not a pipe, it is an image of a pipe. It does not "satisfy emotionally" – when Magritte once was asked about this image, he replied that of course it was not a pipe, just try to fill it with tobacco. [5]
"Human Condition", by: Rene Magritte, looks like you are looking in the window but half of it is a painting of the outside. But the painting is on an easel and you can hardly see it. It just looks like you are looking at a window.
The painting depicts a "Black Five" locomotive jutting out of a fireplace , at full speed, in an empty room. The clock and candlestick are reflected in the mirror on the mantle, suggesting that there are neither people nor furniture in the room. "I decided to paint the image of a locomotive . . . In order for its mystery to be evoked, another immediately familiar image without mystery — the image of a dining room fireplace — was joined."
The “twittering" in the title doubtless refers to the birds, while the "machine" is suggested by the hand crank. The two elements are, literally, a fusing of the natural with the industrial world. Each bird stands with beak open, poised as if to announce the moment when the misty cool blue of night gives way to the pink glow of dawn. The scene evokes an abbreviated pastoral—but the birds are shackled to their perch, which is in turn connected to the hand crank. Composed of a wiry, nervous line, these creatures bear a resemblance to birds only in their beaks and feathered silhouettes; they appear closer to deformations of nature.
Miro used many surrealist approaches to art, even though he denied affiliation with any art group. Surrealists used many methods to free their creative process from reliance on the kind of conscious control they believed had been too much shaped by society. Dali used his paranoiac-critical approach to encourage the free play of association as he worked. Other Surrealists used automatism and various types of planned accidents to provoke reactions closely related to subconscious experience. Miro was a master of this approach. From the beginning his work contained an element of fantasy and hallucination. He often began paintings with scattering materials to create a collage and then working from the compositions that were created. “Rather than setting out to paint something. I begin painting and as I paint the picture begins to assert itself, or suggest itself under my brush. The form becomes a sign for a woman or a bird as I work. The first stage is unconscious…the second stage is carefully calculated.”
The tempo is light and graceful , the mood playful and humorous.
Chagall created his own mixture and style of modern art based on his visions of Eastern European Jewish folk culture. His abstract post-impressionist style with biblical undertones embodies a deep passion for life, while still maintaining a zest for the whimsical, and at times, childish.
was a Mexican painter, who has achieved great international popularity.[3] She painted using vibrant colors in a style that was influenced by indigenous cultures of Mexico as well as by European influences that include Realism, Symbolism, and Surrealism. Many of her works are self-portraits that symbolically express her own pain and search for identity. Kahlo was married to Mexican muralist Diego Rivera.
Kahlo paints a double self-portrait. It was created during her separation and divorce from Rivera. On the right-hand side Frida sits in traditional Mexican costume, representing the woman that Diego loved. She holds a picture of him as a child in her hand, and her heart is exposed but whole. On the left is the unloved Frida, dressed in a colonial-style wedding dress; her heart is broken and an artery drips blood into her lap. Kahlo once said that The Two Fridas showed the 'duality of her personality'. Whilst presenting an image of a divided self, the painting is also emblematic of a cultural divide: the conflict implicit in the mestizo race, neither fully European nor fully Mexican Indian.
The portrait of Lenin , the founder of the Soviet Union , is placed center/right in Diego Rivera 's mural, and Trotsky is seen to the right Rivera's "Man at the Crossroads" mural was originally painted for the Rockefeller Center in New York City. Rivera had finished ⅔ of the mural when the Rockefellers objected to an image of Vladimir Lenin in the mural. When Rivera refused to remove Lenin, his commission was cancelled and the mural was destroyed. Rivera repainted it a smaller scale at the Palacio in 1934 and renamed it "Man, Controller of the Universe Rivera held strong Communist beliefs
He wanted to create “what is real… not the outward form, but the idea, the essence of things.” Brancusi began the sculpture closer in detail to the shape of a bird standing at rest with its wings folded at its sides. Gradually, he simplified the bird’s shape until the feet and body merged, the final form suggesting that it is about to leave the ground to soar in free flight.
Using iron rods to draw in space, Gonzalez uses the simplified forms seen in pre Columbian art to influence his simplified abstract sculpture.
The reclining female figure is a central subject in Moore’s art. The negative space is important in drawing the viewer in as well as linking the sculpture to landscape, another source of Moore’s inspiration.
Kinetic artwork called mobiles. Many similarities to Miro.
She mostly painted organic close up compositions of flowers, but for a time she did paint city scapes while she lived in New York after she married photographer Alfred Stieglitz. The dark tonalities, stark forms, and exaggerated perspective may produce a sense of menace or claustrophobia. She found the city too confining and spent her summers in New Mexico and moved there permanently after Stieglitz’s death.
In 1930, Georgia O'Keeffe painted a series of six canvases depicting a jack-in-the-pulpit. The series begins with the striped and hooded bloom rendered with a botanist's care, continues with successively more abstract and tightly focused depictions, and ends with the essence of the jack-in-the-pulpit, a haloed black pistil standing alone against a black, purple, and gray field. Jack-in-the-Pulpit No. IV represents a midpoint in this process of concurrently increasing detail and abstraction. If O'Keeffe consistently found her strongest inspiration in nature, she believed that the immanence of nature could be discovered in and through the refinement of form. Thus in the jack-in-the-pulpits, abstraction becomes a metaphor of, and an equivalent for, knowledge -- the closest view of the flower yields an abstract image; the most profound knowledge of the subject reveals its abstract form.
Precisionism- a group of painters active in the 1920’2 and 30’2 who devoted much of their art to urban and industrial subjects and who tended to work with simplified forms, crisply defined edges, smooth brushwork, and unmodulated colors. Photography was an important influence in this style.
was an American painter , born in Anamosa , Iowa . He is best known for his paintings depicting the rural American Midwest , particularly the painting American Gothic , an iconic image of the 20th century. American Gothic is a painting by Grant Wood from 1930. Portraying a pitchfork -holding farmer and a younger woman in front of a house of Carpenter Gothic style, it is one of the most familiar images in 20th century American art and has achieved an iconic status in mainstream culture as one of the modern world's most recognizable images and most parodied artworks. Wood wanted to depict the traditional roles of men and women as the man is holding a pitchfork symbolizing hard labor. Wood referenced late 19th century photography and posed his sitters in a manner reminiscent of early American portraiture. Most famous American Regionalist painting.
She wanted to reveal the connectedness of the human experience and worked for most of her life on assignment taking pictures for various publications. Her most famous photos show Americans the plight of the poor.
Optimistic, good natured views of American Life
Between the World Wars, hundreds of thousands of African Americans migrated to the urban, industrialized North seeking greater social and economic opportunity. This transition gave rise to the so called Negro Movement in which African Americans were encouraged to become more socially and racially conscious. This led to an outpour of artistic expression called the Harlem Renaissance.
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