Chapter 33 content

Untitled (72)

- Alexander Calder. 1976, aluminum honeycomb, tubing, and paint - Moholy-Nagy: belief that modern experience is spatial-temporal. this and his interest for new materials - After his visit to mondrian's studio, he was filled with desire to set his brightly color rectangular shapes into motion - he planned each non mechanized mobile so that any air current would set the parts moving to create a shifting dance in space - their shapes resemble those in Joan Miro's surrealist painting - kinetic art (moving)

Bird in Space (69)

- Constantin Brancusi, 1928, bronze - his sculptures are natural and refer to the cycle of life - despite abstraction, the sculpture retains the suggestion of a bird about to soar - viewer's eye follows the reflection of curves inducing a feeling of flight - Brancusi was interested in exploring the emotional chords he could bring out in his viewers

Dada

- Dada: a state of mind that believed reason and logic had been responsible for the disaster of the world war. they concluded that the only route to salvation was through political anarchy, the irrational, and the intuitive - irrational and nonsensical - they showed pessimism and disgust for convention of tradition (and for the war) - extraordinarily avant-garde and liberating - made fun of art as well

Migrant Mother, Nipomo Valley (75)

- Dorothea Lange, 1935, Gelatin silver print - just like American gothic, it has achieved an iconic status - mixture of strength and worry in the raised hand and careworn face of a young mother, who holds a baby - she was hired to document the lives of people during the Great Depression - strikes a sympathetic chord in viewers - PSA, political propaganda because lange was being payed to do it

NightHawks (76)

- Edward Hopper, 1942, onc - his works during the depression show the overwhelming loneliness and isolation of modern life in the US - he focused on scenes of contemporary american city and country life - the indifference of his characters and space around them show the loneliness of modern humans - he created kind of a realist vision recalling works of thomas eakins and Henry ossawa tanner

Fate of the animals (7)

- Franz marc, 1913, onc, german expressionist - his perception of human beings as flawed led him to turn to the animal world - he focused on color and created a system of correspondence between certain colors and feelings - brighter colors are absent and colors of severity and brutality dominate -showed peoples inhumanity and the pureness of animals

The Two fridas (49)

- Frida Kahlo, 1939, onc - she has been known as a surrealist b/c of the psychic and autobiographical issues she uses in her art - her life became a battle against illness and personal relationships - the figures suggest different sides of her personality linked by clasped hands and the artery that connects them - this work incorporates her commentary on the struggle facing mexicans in the 20th cent in defining their national identity - frida on right represents indigenous culture and the one on the right represents imperialist forces

Cut with the Kitchen Knife Dada through the Last Weimar Beer Belly Cultural Epoch of Germany (25)

- Hannah hoch, 1920, photomontage - parts of Dada collage were made of "found" details. not all dada photomontages were as aggressive as that of the Berlin photomontagists - her] works gave commentary on the redefinition of women's social rules and the growth of mas print media - aware of the power both women and Dada had to destabilize society, Hoch made visual manifestations of that belief - she juxtaposed the heads of german military leaders with exotic dancers to provide humorous critique central to Dada

Still life with Chair-Caning (12)

- Pablo picasso, 1912, onc, synthetic cubism - in synthetic cubism, artists constructed art from objects and shapes cut from paper or other materials to represent parts of a subject - this painting has a piece of oilcloth on the canvas after it was imprinted with photolithography pattern of a chair set - the abstract areas don't imitate anything which makes them more "real" than the chair caning- no presence exists - purposeful abstraction of an object - it is seen from more than one viewpoint

Composition in Red, Blue, and Yellow (55)

- Piet Mondrian, 1930, onc - Mondrian made "pure plastic art" that he believed expressed universal reality - he concluded that primary colors and values are the purest colors and are the perfect tools to help an artist construct a harmonious composition - he maintained a dynamic tension from the size and position of lines, shapes, and colors - created cohesion and harmony by size and placement -

Unique forms of continuity in space (20)

- Umberto boccioni, 1913, Bronze, futurism - this piece highlights the formal and spatial effects of motion rather than the human figure - this sculpture surpasses other efforts in painting to create images symbolic of the dynamic quality of modern life - bears a strong similarity to nike of samothrace (5-82), it reveals how far modern work departs from ancient ones - a solid form in motion taking up space over time

De stijl

- group cofounded by Piet Mondrian and Theo van Doesburg - they promoted utopian ideals and believed in the birth of a new age during WW1 - they felt it was a time of balance between individual and universal values when the machine would assure ease of living - toward this goal of integration of art and life, Mondrian created a monistic style meaning it was based on a single principle - neoplasticism

synthetic and analytic

synthesis: synthesis of all those objects (collage) analytic: analyzing forms and breaking them down