Chapter 31 Art History

Dada and "readymades"

Marcel Duchamp was the founder of the Dada movement. Dada was essentially an antiart style, or anti-art establishment movement, an art that was against everything that was formalized or organized. The Dada movement was a reaction against World War I. •In this case Duchamp has used an everyday object - a porcelain urinal - and elevated it to the status of art object by the authority of the artist. This is a "found" object (or at least designated as "found" by the artist). Duchamp called them "readymades". •This was entered in an art show by Duchamp as a test to see how far he could go with his idea. It was rejected but has come to be one of the most influential works of art of the 20th century.

Japonisme Post-Impressionism

- inspiration for post-impressionism, Japonisme is a term that describes the influence that Japanese art (especially prints) had on Western artists during this time period, and on Degas in particular.

The Fauves

A French term meaning "wild beast" and descriptive of an artistic style characterized by the use of bright and intense expressionistic color schemes. have an interest in more than intense color, expressing what can be described as a blazing fire of color. They often used violent brush strokes and intense compositions with exaggerated tilted perspective.

the "291" Gallery

Alfred Stieglitz (the photographer) opened a gallery in NYC called gallery "291", which became an avenue to exhibit "modern art. Stieglitz was responsible for bringing modern art to the U.S.A. and for breaking down the barrier between these "realists" painters and the more "modern" painters.

Abstract Expressionism

An artistic movement that focused on expressing emotion and feelings through abstract images and colors, lines and shapes. •Many great artists and art teachers immigrated to the United States from Europe after World War II and a large portion of them settled in New York City. One of the most important art movements that arose from this diverse and talented group of artists was Abstract Expressionism. •The movement encompassed a wide variety of styles and a wide range of artists. Two of the leading members were Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. Pollock invented "action painting", a technique that involved dripping paint onto an un-stretched canvas that was placed on the floor.

Analytical Cubism and Synthetic Cubism

Forms are only seen from one angle at a time. To get a real sense of the object, one must show it represented by multiple angles, multiple planes. This concept marks the very beginning of Cubism. •True Cubism (Analytical) was developed by Georges Braque, a close friend of Picasso's. Analytical Cubism broke objects apart to "analyze them". The resemblance of form is no longer important. This was a new solution, a new direction for depicting 3-dimensional space on a 2- dimensional surface. This is much different from the Renaissance "window" of depicting space. Planes and volumes are reduced to essentials seen from changing vantage points with the added implication of changing time. Synthetic Cubism (Collage Cubism). The technique used is called "collage", a French word meaning "paste-up". Artists stepped even further by attaching actual objects to the surface of the canvas. Synthetic Cubism is the opposite of Analytical Cubism in that the picture space lies in front of the picture plane. The space is created by the use of overlapping layers of pasted materials which creates a very tactile response as well as a visual response.

What were the main concerns of the Impressionists painters? Briefly describe.

Impressionism was a radical art movement in the late 1800s. It was centered primarily around Parisian painters. Impressionist rebelled against classical subject matter and embraced modernity. They desired to create works that reflected the world in which they live. They painted outdoors. Impressionist painters sought to capture the play of light quickly before it changed. They painted still life depictions landscapes, portraits of friends and family, and modern city scenes. This was very different from the historical, mythological, and allegorical scenes found in traditional French painting. The impressionist technique is characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities, and ordinary subject matter.

Discuss the work of Marcel Duchamp and the beginning of the Dada movement.

Marcel Duchamp was the founder of the Dada movement. Dada was an anti-art style, or anti-art establishment movement, an art that was against everything that was formalized or organized. The Dada movement was a reaction of World War 1. His art work Fountain was entered in the art show by Duchamp as a test to see how far he could go with his idea. It was rejected but it is one of the most influential works of art of the 20th century.

collage (papier colle) and assemblage

Picasso also work with the concept of collage three-dimensionally and introduced, assemblage, a method of assembling found objects and unconventional materials together. The technique used is called "collage", a French word meaning "paste-up". Artists stepped even further by attaching actual objects to the surface of the canvas.

De Stijl

Piet Mondrian was a leading artist in a movement called the De Stijl, Dutch for "the style". De Stijl artists promoted utopian ideals and developed a simplified geometric style. Mondrian used a very limited vocabulary of black, white, red, yellow and blue without any resemblance to any actual object. With straight lines, squares and rectangles no single portion of the paintings surface is more important than any other.

Art Nouveau

The Art Nouveau movement, a French term meaning "new art", came as a revolt against the new age of industrialization. Like Symbolists, practitioners of Art Nouveau rejected the values of modern historical society and fought for a return to the simplistic and beautiful, developing a style of decoration based on linear patterns and undulating curves that suggested the "natural" and "organic" forms.

der Blaue Reiter (the BlueRider)

Vassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc founded the second German Expressionist group, Der Blaue Reiter, in Munich. The name was derived from Kandinsky's love of the color blue and Marc's love of horses. Both Kandinsky and Marc considered the color blue to be the color of spirituality. They wanted to use art to visually express a spirituality that they believed resided beneath the surface of the visible world.

Primitivism

a belief in the value of what is simple and unsophisticated, expressed as a philosophy of life or through art or literature. An early 20th century artistic movement which was attracted to the directness, instinctivness and exoticism nonurban cultures

the Prairie Style

a style of housing designed by Frank Lloyd Wright with strong horizontal design that uses wood, stone, and materials found in the natural environment.

non-representational

artwork that is made from pure shapes or forms that do not purposefully refer to the real world. No definitely recognizable subject matter

the Armory Show of 1913

exposed American public to 1600 art works of contemporary European and American artists. It was a significant catalyst in the disseminating knowledge of recent developments in art. A major turning point in art was the year 1913 in New York City. An exhibition called the Armory Show (at the 69th Regiment Armory) helped introduce European modern art to the U.S.A. This is when art changes in the U.S.A. and a shift from Paris to New York City for the art capital of the world became inevitable.

abstract

theoretical; not concrete, existing in thought or as an idea but not having a physical or concrete existence.

avant-garde fin-de-siècle

•Artists of the 19th and 20th century, beginning with Courbet's Realism, are referred to as the Avant-garde. This is a military term which means "advance force" and referred to the soldiers who were the first to go into battle. In art, it refers to artists who led the way to innovations in both subject matter and technique, rebelling against the established conventions of the art world. •As we move through these last chapters we will be seeing the work of the Avant-garde and the movements ("isms") that they established as they broke new ground in the art world. Modern and Contemporary art is defined by the "isms" which try, and in most cases succeed, to outdo one another.

"primitive painter" Arts and Crafts Movement

"Primitive art" is another term often applied to art by those without formal training, but is historically more often applied to work from certain cultures that have been judged socially or technologically "primitive" by Western academia, such as Native American, subsaharan African or Pacific Island art

die Brucke (the Bridge)

A movement of German expressionists formed in Dresden. Paintings were emotionally agitating - portrayed claustrophobic/crowded city streets, figures seem to be wearing masks. Express emotion through non-naturalistic, bright colors. Compared to Fauves. was conceived in 1903 by 4 architecture students in Dresden. The goal of these artists was to oppose "older wellestablished powers" and create a "bridge" to the future. Kirchner, and other Die Brücke artists were influenced by van Gogh and Matisse's intense color. They also saw and admired the work of the Symbolist Edvard Munch. Street, Dresden, like the Scream, reflects the alienation of the city and the rise of industrialization and militarism in Germany that Kirchner was experiencing.

Color Field Painting

A technique in abstract painting developed in the 1950s. It focuses on the lyrical effects of large areas of color, often poured or stained onto the canvas. Newman, Rothko, and Frankenthaler painted in this manner. •The artist Mark Rothko used an abstract expressionist technique called Color Field painting in his work "Lavender and Mulberry". Helen Frankenthaler was another major artist who used this technique. She created canvases "stained" with washes of color to create large-scale paintings that are very ethereal and existential. •Mark Rothko believed that one could achieve a level of spirituality through viewing and spending time with his paintings. There is a chapel in Houston called the Rothko Chapel that is filled with his paintings.

In Vincent Van Gogh's work, what was the primary purpose of color?

After discovering Impressionist painters, Van Gogh had a new passion for color that was brilliant and uncontrolled. He is well known to use vibrant colors and great detailing of his everyday observations onto the canvas. He used color to describe his paintings and to tell a story.

Futurism

An early-20th-century Italian art movement that championed war as a cleansing agent and that celebrated the speed and dynamism of modern technology. Futurism began with the publication of a manifesto by a controversial Milanese poet and literary magazine editor, Filippo Marinetti. The Futurists rejected the past and explored the beauty of the machine as imagery. •The Futurists were interested in speed, energy, and the power of modern technology and modern life. The aims of the Futurists are seen in this sculpture of a man striding through space. Boccioni captures the energy, as if the figure is wearing the displaced space as he strides into the future.

How do Analytical and Synthetic Cubism differ?

Analytical was developed by Georges Braque. Analytical cubism broke objects apart to analyze them. The form is no longer important. This was a new solution, a new direction for depicting 3-dimensional space on a 2 dimensional surface. This is different from the Renaissance window of depicting space. Planes and volumes are reduced to essentials seen from changing vantage points with the added implication of changing time. Synthetic Cubism is a technique which is called collage. Collage means "paste-up" . Artist's stepped even further by attaching actual objects to the surface of the canvas. It is the opposite of Analytical Cubism by the picture space lies in front of the picture plane. The space is created by overlapping layers of pasted materials which creates a very tactile response and a visual response.

the "Bauhaus" in Germany

The Bauhaus was a school of architecture in Germany in the 1920's who emphasized the unity of art, architecture, and design. They felt that design should avoid all "romantic embellishment and whimsy" and should be removed of all unnecessary ornamentation and reduced down to its most basic and most useful simplistic form.

What was the "Salon des Refuse" of 1863 and why was it important?

The Salon des Refuse means the exhibition of rejects. It is generally an exhibition of works rejected by the jury of the official Paris Salon , but the term is most famously used to refer to the Salon des Refuse of the 1863. It was an event sanctioned by Emperor Napoleon lll, to appease the large number of artists who joined forces to protest the harsh jury decisions of over 5,000 paintings submitted. 2,217 were rejected. The Salon des Refuses was of great significance in undermining the prestige of the official Salon. Artists began to organize their own exhibition and art dealers became of increasing importance. The Salon des Refuses is thus regarded as a turning point in the history of art.

Social Realism / Regionalism

•Edward Hopper was referred to as a Social Realist. This return to realism was usually applied to social and political subjects. The Great Depression of the early 1930's had a major influence on this group of artists. Hopper's personal realism involves scenes of city-life and quiet scenes of loneliness and isolation in the United States. Regionalism was a movement in art where artists developed Midwestern scenes into becoming the main subject of their work. They were referred to as "American Scene Painters" painting rural life as America's "Backbone". •Grant Wood Rural painted scenes of Iowa - a state where he was born and raised. Regionalism was a reaction against the abstraction of the modernists from Europe and NYC artists.

Impressionism Salon de Refusés

•Fauvism was the first major style to emerge in the 20th century. This group expressed a new approach to the surface taking van Gogh and Gauguin a step further. They used Impressionism's love of outdoor nature and added the Post-Impressionists color contrasts and emotional expressive depth to create a barbaric style. Their name came from an art critic, who, when seeing the work of these painters in the same room as a Renaissance sculpture, during the Paris 1905 Salon d'Automne (Autumn Salon), remarked "Donatello among the wild beasts"

local color plein-air

•Impressionism focused on a "fleeting moment" and was thought of as the ultimate refinement of realism. Impressionists subjects include scenes of contemporary life - city, landscape, still life and interiors. They are mainly outdoor scenes, "plein-aire painting (in open air)". These artists were interested in capturing the outdoor light and atmosphere, an Impression of light and color on the eye. As painters began to move outdoors they came to realize that nature , even in dark shadows was not composed of blacks and browns.

Pointillism / Divisionism color theory / successive contrast

•In his brief career, Georges Seurat became obsessed with the theories and principles of color. Seurat uses a very scientific approach in painting based on simultaneous contrast (successive contrast) where he places small dots of contrasting pigment (referred to as pointillism or divisionism) side by side. At first glance the image appears to be patterns of colored strokes, but as on gradually moves away the blending of the color optically occurs with the eye. The technique seemed analogous to the medium of mosaic. •In A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, Seurat has also adapted a very formalized approach to composition. The cylindrical forms of the figures are used as repeated motifs bounded by the verticality of the trees juxtaposed with horizontal shadows.

Purism

•Purism opposed Synthetic Cubism on the grounds that it was becoming decorative art that was out of touch with the machine age. These artist explored the beauty of the machine as imagery, with its clean functional lines and pure forms. This "machine aesthetic" inspired Fernand Leger's painting three Women where the clean geometric shapes of modern machinery is represented with flat areas of color. He saw beauty in everyday objects and life.

Expressionism (as defined by Van Gogh) Symbolism

•Van Gogh's night sky is a field of rolling energy. Below the exploding stars, the village is a place of quiet order. Connecting earth and sky is the flame-like cypress, a tree that is known as a symbol of death. The artist wrote of his experience to his brother Theo:"This morning I saw the country from my window a long time before sunrise, with nothing but the morning star, which looked very big." This morning star, or Venus, may be the large white star just left of center in The Starry Night. The hamlet, on the other hand, is invented, and the church spire evokes van Gogh's native land, the Netherlands. The painting is rooted in imagination and memory. Leaving behind the Impressionist doctrine of truth to nature in favor of restless feeling and intense color, as in this highly charged picture, van Gogh made his work a touchstone for all subsequent Expressionist painting.

Surrealism (and biomorphic)

•With Surrealism the spirit of the Dada art movement shifted away from chance and nonsense and toward psychological investigations of the unconscious. The movement was formally launched in 1924 by Andre Breton in his surrealist manifesto. Breton put his own spin on Freud's theories concerning the unconscious mind. The word Surrealist means "above the real" and was intended to express that the dream can be transferred directly from the unconscious mind to the canvas. Surrealism is the unexpected juxtaposition of seemingly irrelevant objects in unexpected situations.