UNIT 4 - LEARN!!!

ABSTRACT (Sculpture) The Kiss

Constantin Brancusi 1908 - Limestone - Two abstracted embracing figures in a single compact block. - Eyes, arms, hair and lips are schematically indicated and the mouth and eyes are shared. - Intimacy of the embrace. - No individualisation and gender differences are unclear - (in some versions the male and female are clearly identified). - Tool marks are not disguised. - Direct carving created solid and simple forms and were considered an authentic expression of creativity. - Perhaps a deliberate response to Rodin's Kiss

NEW OBJECTIVITY Fit for Active Service - The medium is pen, brush, and ink on paper -depicts a bare skeleton being judged as physically fit for conscription - some with dispositions of indifference, some grinning. - windows= social disillusion associated with rapid industrialization and urbanization. -The cartoon-like nature of the piece carried political and social overtones.

George Grosz 1918 - The medium is pen, brush, and ink on paper -considered a seminal part of the post-World War I movement, Neue Sachlichkeit, or New Objectivity - depicts a bare skeleton being judged as physically fit for conscription (the military doctor declares: "KV," which abbreviates kriegsdienst-verwendugsfähig, or "fit for active service") - The German soldiers and military doctors around the conscript are well-rounded, some with dispositions of indifference, some grinning. - The industrial smokestacks in the background windows are characteristic of Modernist and avant-garde art, symbolic of the social disillusion associated with rapid industrialization and urbanization. - The military doctor dons the Iron Cross, a military medal awarded for bravery and leadership, debased by its often wide and undeserved distribution during the First World War. -The cartoon-like nature of the piece carried political and social overtones. Grosz drew what is essentially a sketch, alluding to the primitive nature of conscription. - Some of the surrounding soldiers are drawn in the composite view, again suggesting the overt superficialness of war and society. -The simplicity of the line drawing "contributes to the directness and immediacy of the work, which scathingly portrays the German Army." - The cartoon gains credibility by including a tone of malicious humour, despite the traumatic and horrible subject matter, and it also establishes the viewer as a passive observer, perhaps as one of the German soldiers - Although he was originally associated with Dadaism, his art is now referred to as art of the New Objectivity movement, a post-war movement in which veterans of World War I communicated the horror, destruction, and trauma of the war-

INTRODUCTION (Surrealism) - what is surrealism - characterised -similar dada / positive rather then nihlistic - founded by AB 1924 manifesto

Surrealism was a movement which began in the 1920's of writers and artists who experimented with ways of unleashing on the power of personal imagination which places them in the tradition of Romanticism Surrealism was characterised by a fascination with the bizarre, the irrational and operation of the subconscious. Though sharing some characteristics of Dadaism, Surrealism was POSITIVE rather than NIHILISTIC. - Founded by André Breton in his Surrealist Manifesto of 1924.

MARCEL DUCHAMP

- Duchamp rejected purely visual or what he dubbed "retinal pleasure," deeming it to be facile, in favor of more intellectual, concept-driven approaches to art-making and, for that matter, viewing. - A taste for jokes, tongue-in-cheek wit and subversive humor, rife with sexual innuendoes, characterizes Duchamp's work and makes for much of its enjoyment

GIACOMA BALLA - lyrical painter, unconcerned with modern machines or violence

- Largely self-taught as an artist - lyrical painter, unconcerned with modern machines or violence - Balla conveys a sense of speed and urgency that puts his paintings in line with futurism's fascination with the energy of modern life

OTTO DIX

- Otto Dix was initially drawn to Expressionism and Dada, but like many of his generation in Germany in the 1920s, he was inspired by trends in Italy and France to embrace a cold, linear style of drawing and more realistic imagery. - Otto Dix has been perhaps more influential than any other German painter in shaping the popular image of the Weimar Republic of the 1920s. - A veteran haunted by his experiences of WWI, his first great subjects were crippled soldiers, but during the height of his career he also painted nudes, prostitutes, and often savagely satirical portraits of celebrities from Germany's intellectual circles. - His work became even darker and more allegorical in the early 1930s, and he became a target of the Nazis.

FAUVISM

- characterised by strong colours and fierce brushwork - Van Gogh and Gauguin influenced the Fauves. The central Fauve artists were Henri Matisse, Andre Derain and Maurice de Vlaminck - Derain and de Vlaminck in particular often applied their intense colours with thick, heavy brush strokes reminiscent of Van Gogh's work.

MAURICE DE VLAMINCK

- he continued the approach established by the impressionists of rejecting conventional themes and instead representing scenes from everyday life - Vlaminck's particular brand of Fauvism incorporated heavy, dark outlining of brightly coloured forms

CARLO CARRA

- he was largely self-taught - in 1909 he met the poet Filippo Marinetti and the artist Boccioni, who converted him to Futurism

DIR BRUCKE -Rejected the classical inheritance and turned to nature and the primitive to rejuvenate German art.

-Rejected the classical inheritance and turned to nature and the primitive to rejuvenate German art. - Most of its members moved to Berlin between 1910 and 1914. - They came to be seen as harbingers of destruction and loss. - Their expressionism was intimately bound up in an exploration of German identity and traditions - They called themselves Die Brucke, which means the 'bridge to a brighter future' - The artists of Die Brucke were critical of the intensely materialistic nature of German bourgeois society - Artists of Die Brucke were interested in extreme psychological states. Munch e.g. "the scream"

EXPRESSIONISM / PORTRAITURE Self-Portrait as a Soldier

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner 1915 - Oil on canvas - A symbolic self-portrait set in the artist's studio, with model and painting on easel. - An imagined scene grounded in the reality of the painter's experiences in WW1. - Wears the uniform of the Field Artillery Regiment No 75. - Right hand is a bloody stump - Kirchner was not mutilated but this loss symbolises the loss of his artistic powers. - Left hand is like a useless claw. -Harsh, bright, clashing colours, many non-naturalistic (eg skin tones). - Some modelling of forms, but often cursory, linear treatment (eg facial features). - Artist's face is masklike and angular, with a cigarette clamped between the lips. - Model is schematic and reminiscent of tribal carving. - Plunging, non-uniform perspective. - Style is expressive, compelling, shocking, crude, childlike. - A quickly-worked painting, created during a period of recuperation. - Juxtaposition of Kirchner and the nude female might indicate the loss of sexual power and virility associated with the trauma of war. - Documents the artist's fear that the war would destroy his creative powers or even as a kind of talisman to ward off future injury. - The image has also been interpreted as a kind of martyrdom for the artist - sacrificed for his homeland.

EXPRESSIONISM Berlin Street Scene

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner 1913 - Considered by many to be the highpoint of Kirchner's career as a whole, this series of seven paintings is showcased with sixty related prints and drawings -This series dates from Kirchner's Berlin period, when the effect of life in the metropolis brought about a dramatic change in his work - It was created in the year before the first world war until 1915. The cycle often depicts prostitutes with their clients - urban environment / figures in centre embody glamour and alienation and sad reality of a culture of everything for sale - black suited men - non engage them directly - tilts and spills this claustrophobic composition heightening the dramatic environment of prostitution and isolation of belonging in a society - dressed in fashionable, colour formal where, dehumanising their profession and appearance/identity as the brush strokes is significant to the feathered collars they wear =bird like distorted figures

EXPRESSIONISM Five Woman on the Street

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner 1913 - Oil on canvas - 1st painting in series "street scenes" -high point in Kirchner's career - Berlin, a busy street in big city / city tarts out - quick nervous brushstrokes splashed on canvas depicting city - Five prostitutes on a Berlin street - they appear like birds of paradise, their clothing appearing like plumage. heels and streamlined coats, fashionable hat - triggers of overall impression of this moving moment in society, he is depicting a quick moment and this idea is significant to his application of paint - peck here and there like crows - they dont concentrate for long -left car rushes past/ the side of a shop window the tarts inspect - window been created by rapid brushstokes suggest a rush of recorded moment the artist has witnessed - Figures seem like tectonic forms with their high heels and geometric silhouettes. - They seem uniform and impersonal and indicate the pace, anonymity and dehumanisation of modern urban capitalist society. - Faces appear savage and mask like. - Subdued and limited colour, the expressive element lies in the angular and elongated stylisation of the figures. - Background and space between them seems oppressive and solid - figures have been likened to caged animals. - Kirchner was a founding member of Die Brücke.

ABSTRACT

Non-representational autonomous paintings that reject the representation of figures, objects and the exterior world. Works that are 'abstracted' from the visible world are allowed.

DADA - Often called 'Anti-Art'. - Use of unconventional materials, found objects and readymades.

- A loose movement in response to the carnage, destruction and human cost of World War I. - An iconoclastic group that challenged traditional assumptions about the role, function and form of art. - Not a style but an ironic, satiric and sometimes nihilistic view of the world. - Often called 'Anti-Art'. - Use of unconventional materials, found objects and readymades. - Duchamp planted an aesthetic time-bomb with his 'ready-mades' - industrial or everyday objects which he signed as though he had made them himself and then exhibited in art galleries. - Through 'ready-mades' Duchamp rejected traditional craftsmanship and categories of art. - His intention was to make people aware that the definitions and standards by which we label and judge works of art are possibly secondary art and not definitive of it.

ANALYTICAL CUBISM

- An empirical process involving the part-by-part, viewpoint-by-viewpoint dissection of the subject with semi-transparent, overlapping, intersecting monochromatic flat faceted planes, suggestive of a low relief. - This 'scaffolding' has been likened to early X rays. - Influence of angular African masks on representation of facial features. - A new set of stylistic conventions was invented not reliant on renaissance perspective. - Austere, depersonalised pictorial style. - Limited palette of ochres, browns, greens and greys. - A conceptual rather than perceptual procedure. - By 1911 Cubism was an autonomous and internally consistent style- some nearly abstract paintings in the spring of 1911 - (sometimes labelled Hermetic Cubism). - In 1911 experimentation with simulated textures, shadows, and modern stencilled typography. - Use of traditional subject matter, still-lifes, portraits, some figure studies.

GEORGE GROSZ - leading figure of NO and Dada group in Berlin - observed horrors of WW1 focused his art on social critique - His drawings and paintings from the Weimar era sharply criticize what Grosz viewed as the decay of German society.

- George Grosz is one of the principal artists associated with the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) movement, along with Otto Dix and Max Beckmann, and was a member of the Berlin Dada group - After observing the horrors of war as a soldier in World War I, Grosz focused his art on social critique. - He became deeply involved in left wing pacifist activity, publishing drawings in many satirical and critical periodicals and participating in protests and social upheavals. - His drawings and paintings from the Weimar era sharply criticize what Grosz viewed as the decay of German society. - The traumatic experiences that drove George Grosz to rally against war, corruption, and what he saw as an immoral society created a particularly affecting and indelible artistic legacy. - As a symbol of the revolution in Germany, his art was instrumental in awakening the general public to the reality of government oppression.

WASSILY KANDINSKY

- Kandinsky is thought to be the first artist to cross the line into pure abstraction - Wassily Kandinsky exploited the evocative interrelation between color and form to create an aesthetic experience that engaged the sight, sound, and emotions of the public. - he innovated a pictorial language that only loosely related to the outside world, but expressed volumes about the artist's inner experience - His visual vocabulary developed through three phases, shifting from his early, representative canvases and their divine symbolism to his rapturous and operatic compositions, to his late, geometric and biomorphic flat planes of color. - He sought to convey profound spirituality and the depth of human emotion through a universal visual language of abstract forms and colors that transcended cultural and physical boundaries. - Kandinsky viewed music as the most transcendent form of non-objective art - musicians could evoke images in listeners' minds merely with sounds.

ERNST LUDWIG KIRCHNER - painted series -city brimming with culture - Nazi's came into power -human figure central to his art - moved around a lot - handling of paint

- Painted a series of street scenes in Berlin, capital of Germany, and the most populous city in Europe before the First World War. - City brimming with culture- non-stop entertainment for bourgeoisie, who loved to dress up/ fashionable people on streets - When the Nazis rose to power in the early 1930s he was also a victim of their campaign against "Degenerate Art." Depressed and ill, he eventually committed suicide. - The human figure was central to Kirchner's art. - Kirchner's Expressionistic handling of paint represented a powerful reaction against the Impressionism that was dominant in German painting when he first emerged. - The slashing diagonals and angular, attenuated shapes of these figures are characteristic of Kirchner's style. - father was an engineer who moved his family city to city which creates this rushnes evident in sons paintings - creates a creative way of life that oppose traditional forces

FUTURISM - The Futurists wanted art to break from the Classical and Renaissance styles still dominant in Italy at the start of the Twentieth Century.

- The Futurists wanted art to break from the Classical and Renaissance styles still dominant in Italy at the start of the Twentieth Century. - characterised by its aggressive celebration of modern technology, speed and city life (movement of a car for example- more significant to futurists than its shape of appearance when stationary) - Fragmentation and dissolution of forms - influenced by Cubism.

SURREALISM

- The Surrealist artists sought to channel the unconscious as a means to unlock the power of the imagination. - Disdaining rationalism and literary realism, and powerfully influenced by psychoanalysis, the Surrealists believed the rational mind repressed the power of the imagination, weighting it down with taboos. - Influenced also by Karl Marx, they hoped that the psyche had the power to reveal the contradictions in the everyday world and spur on revolution. - Their emphasis on the power of personal imagination puts them in the tradition of Romanticism, but unlike their forbears, they believed that revelations could be found on the street and in everyday life. - The Surrealist impulse to tap the unconscious mind, and their interests in myth and primitivism, went on to shape many later movements, and the style remains influential to this today.

SYNTHETIC CUBISM

- Use of collage, papier collé, tactile effects and witty word play. - Pre-existing objects and materials were used partly to preserve a connection with reality and partly out of a feeling that Analytical works were becoming too abstract. - Introduction of collage and papier collé offered a new method not only of suggesting space but also of replacing conventional forms of representation with fragments of images that functioned as signs. - Re-introduction of colour. - A way of describing visual reality without resorting to illusionism, such collages were completely flat with no suggestion of modelling. - Some element of spatial ambiguity by the overlapping of paper. - Great freedom of formal organisation for the artist based on the construction or invention of representational signs using elementary and sometimes geometric shapes. - Materials are not illusory but must be understood as real objects, signifying themselves. - Still-lifes, often set in cafés, were frequently the subjects

DER BLAUE REITER

- Was more overtly mystical and aimed to reveal the spiritual truth hidden within the world. - It was strongly influenced by the Russian Kandinsky and used a subtler, more diverse range of colours than Die Brucke artists. - What both groups shared with other expressionists was the conviction that art could express an intrinsic human truth and restore meaning to people's lives.

HENRI MATISSE -who he is -emerged -interests -use of colour & pattern - influences - human figure

- Widely regarded as the greatest colourist of the 20th century - Emerged as a post-impressionist, and 1st achieved prominence as the leader of the french movement Fauvism - interested in cubism, he rejected it, and instead sought to use colour as the foundation for expressive, decorative and often monumental paintings - his use of colour and pattern is often deliberate disorientating and unsettling - he was influenced by art from other cultures - incorporated some of the decorative qualities of islamic art, the angularity of African sculpture, and the flatness of Japanese prints into his own style - human figure was central to Matisse's work - at times he fragmented the figure harshly, at other times he treated it decorative element =used them merely for his own feelings

EXPRESSIONISM - what is expressionism -emerged - different artistic circules - distinct movement used (3points for 2 themes) - 2 major groups

- image of reality is distorted in order to make it expressive of the artists inner feelings or ideas - expressionism emerged in different artistic circles across Europe (its high point being 1905-20) -it was not a distinct movement but used strong colour, distorted figures and sometimes abstraction to explore themes of belonging and alienation - characterised by emotional extremes / is the art of unrest and the search for truth - In Germany its leading artists were loosely gathered in 2 groups called DIE BRUCKE and DER BLAUE REITER = both explored the destruction of genuine feelings by a society which they felt needed to be 'cleansed' or purified - The communication of emotion and subjective perceptions by distorting shape, line, space and colour.

PABLO PICASSO - who is he -collage - relationships - emerged - symbolist - influences - archaic and tribal encouraged figures more weight and structure - moved interchangeably between different styles

- most dominant and influential artists of the first half of the 20th century - he also invented collage along side Braque -his many relationships with women filtered into his art - Picasso's 1st emerged as a symbolist, this tendency shaped his so called blue period and the brighter moods of his subsequent Rose period - INFLUENCES - from Cezanne and Rousseau, to archaic and tribal art that encouraged Picasso to lend his figures more weight and structure around 1906 - he moved interchangeably between different styles -BLUE PERIOD (1901-04) -THE ROSE PERIOD (1904-06) -THE AFRICAN INFLUENCED PERIOD (1907-09) - ANALYTICAL CUBISM (1909-12) - SYNTHETIC CUBISM (1912-19)

UMBERTO BOCCIONI -who is he -emerged -died -borrowed geometric form -scientific advances and experience of modernity

- one of the most prominent and influential artists among the Italian Futurists - emerging 1st as a painter, Boccioni later produced some significant Futurist sculpture - he died while volunteering in the Italian army, aged 33 - Boccioni borrowed the geometric forms typical of french style, and employed them accompany the depicted movement - Boccioni believed that scientific advances and the experience of modernity demanded that the artist abandon the tradition of depicting static, legible objects

DERAIN

- use of expressive vibrant colour, his simplification of form, and his fascination with primitive art - Derain was one of the founders of the fauvist movement - he uses expressionistic qualities if paint. his work is characterised by dense vibrant brushworks that attract the viewer's attention as much as the subject itself - his focus is more the beauty of what is described on the canvas

SALVADOR DALI -spanish artist who joined surrealist group after just coming to Paris - His paintings also evince a fascination for Classical and Renaissance art, clearly visible through his hyper-realistic style and religious symbolism of his later work.

-spanish artist who joined surrealist group after just coming to Paris - Salvador Dali is among the most versatile and prolific artists of the 20th century. - Dali was renowned for his flamboyant personality as much as for his undeniable technical virtuosity. - His paintings also evince a fascination for Classical and Renaissance art, clearly visible through his hyper-realistic style and religious symbolism of his later work. - Freudian theory underpins Dali's attempts at forging a formal and visual language capable of rendering his dreams and hallucinations. - Obsessive themes of eroticism, death, and decay permeate Dali's work, reflecting his familiarity with and synthesis of the psychoanalytical theories of his time.

AFRICAN INFLUENCE Aspects of a Negro Life - Harlem renaissance were trying to create a cultural identity/history for the African americans - panel of 4 murals = revealing the emergence of black America - beginning with life in Africa, tracing history of African Americans through slavery/ emancipation/ rebirth of african traditions

Aaron Douglas 1935 - African were denied having a history, the Harlem renaissance were trying to create a cultural identity/history for the African americans - panel of 4 murals = revealing the emergence of black America - beginning with life in Africa, tracing history of African Americans through slavery/ emancipation/ rebirth of african traditions -2nd panel - helps modern viewer understand artists artistic style - African American role in History - specifically form slavery through reconstruction as the title suggests COMPOSITION - 3 sections (right to left) 1ST SECTION - comprised of silhouettes symbolising doubt & uncertainty of african slaves - Trumpet playing silhouette depicts transformation of doubt into the exultation felt after the reading of Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 2ND SECTION - strength of Black leaders - figure standing in the middle holds a document and pointing to the capital in the distance - Douglas encircled piece of paper = proclamation (paper that freed the slaves - all other silhouettes in this section are crouched below - gazing at the leader - similar to 1st section- highlights ballots to freedom with circles to display its significance in upholding the rights of african americans and the importance of voting 3RD SECTION - left panel - characterises withdraw of the union soldiers from the south and the rise of white supremacist groups BACKGROUND - dull colours = the silhouettes of departing union soldiers/ small sized soldiers compared to large white hooded figures on horseback = the emergence of white supremacist groups JUXTAPOSITION of negative & positive figures is intended to inspire others by encouraging them to "continue the struggle to improve the African americans lives"

INTRODUCTION (Abstraction) -what is it - cubist and fauvists -pioneers of 'pure abstract painting' 1910-20

Abstract art is art that does not attempt to represent an accurate depiction of a visual reality but instead use shapes, colours, forms and gestural marks to achieve its effect Cubist and fauvist artists depended on the visual world for their subject matter but opened the door for more extreme approaches to abstraction. The term is also applied to art that uses forms, such as geometric shapes or gestural marks, which have no source at all in an external visual reality. Pioneers of 'pure' abstract painting were Kazimir Malevich and Piet Mondrian from about 1910-20.

AFRICAN INFLUENCE

African-American art is a term describing the visual arts of the American black community (African Americans). Influenced by various cultural traditions, including those of Africa, Europe and the Americas, traditional African-American art forms include the range of; plastic arts, from basket weaving, pottery, and quilting to woodcarving and painting. THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE - was one of the most notable movements in African-American art. Certain freedoms and ideas that were already widespread in many parts of the world at the time had begun to spread into the artistic communities United States during the 1920s.

FAUVISM The Pool of London

Andre Derain 1906 - Oil on canvas. - A view of the Thames from London Bridge, showing the working port of London, with Tower Bridge in the distance. - Viewpoint from above. - Unorthodox perspective and changes in scale. - Bold contrasts of colour and sense of energy. - The London skyline is free of fog and soot and appears bright and shimmering. - A subjective rather than objective response. - A 'modern' interpretation of Monet's previous views of the Thames.

NEW OBJECTIVITY -Art in Germany between the wars: 1920'a and 1930'a NEW OBJECTIVITY motif all about realism, favtual and truth. - THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC The Weimar Republic was a genuine attempt to create a perfect democratic country

Art in Germany between the wars: 1920'a and 1930'a NEW OBJECTIVITY motif all about realism, favtual and truth. - THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC After Germany lost the First World War, the Kaiser fled and a new democratic government of Germany was declared in February 1919 at the small town of Weimar. It was too dangerous to make a declaration in Berlin where there had just been a revolt by a Communist group called the SPARTACISTS. The Weimar Republic was a genuine attempt to create a perfect democratic country

FUTURISM Funeral of the Anarchist Galli

Carlo Carra 1910-11 - oil on canvas - In this painting Carlo Carrà commemorates the death of Angelo Galli during a strike in Milan and the subsequent funerary parade to the cemetery, which erupted into violence between anarchists and the police. - At the center of the canvas, Galli's red coffin is held precariously aloft, surrounded by a chaotic explosion of figures clad in anarchist black, illuminated and dissected by light emanating both from the coffin and the sun. - The preparatory drawing for Funeral uses one-point perspective and combines detail and dynamism in its depiction of the scene. - When Carrà began working on the painting in 1910, it may have originally looked similar to this drawing, but in 1911 the Futurist artists went on their first trip to Paris and saw examples of Picasso's Cubism; upon returning Carrà changed his canvas to the fractured perspective we see in the painting today. - the Futurists were keen to emphasize that their abstraction was quite different from that of the Cubists, stressing their dynamism as opposed to static analytical Cubism - Carrà's painting has become an emblem of Futurism, both for its violent subject and formal novelty. Its relationships with anarchist politics, Cubism and battle paintings remind us of the diverse ideas circulating in early twentieth-century Europe. -Carlo Carrà was present. His work embodies the tension and chaos of the scene: the movement of the bodies, the clashing of anarchists and police, the black flags flying in the air.

ABSTRACT (Sculpture) Bird in Space

Constantin Brancusi 1928 - polished bronze (looks bronze) limestone and wooden pedestal - artist was Romanian who worked for almost his entire career in Paris - about light and movement -not a literal depiction of a bird / gentle organic arching of the soaring figure - lights reflects on it = shifts, changes and flickers = sense of something kinetic - included in a famous 1936 exhibition at MOMA called - 'Cubism and Abstract art' - people thought it had an industrial use - a Propeller piece of a Propeller - suggests flight and upward movement

CUBISM - shallow pictorial space (flat-no depth or volume) -conceptual approach to painting -shapes angular & sharp -fragmented planes of colour

Cubism made use of shifting viewpoints. Cubists attempted to capture this on canvas and consequently, cubism has been described as a conceptual approach to painting. KEY CHARACTERISTICS OF CUBISM - The painting has very shallow pictorial space, the painting is very flat and does not have much depth or volume - There is not just a one point perspective, there is many perspectives and this invites the viewer into the painting, abandoning of perspective - The shapes are angular and sharp - Blending the background into the foreground, you are never truly sure about what the painting is doing - Fragmented planes of colour, the background, the reds and the blues are very much unblended and bold Avant-garde, goes against tradition but also incorporates ideas of Fauvism - They use earthly colours CUBIST SCULPTURE - While working on his cubist paintings, Braque has been making cardboard models - Picasso saw in these a possibility for Cubist sculpture - Until now all Western sculpture had been carved in wood or stone or modelled in clay and then cast in metal - Picasso used wood, tin, cardboard, paper, strong and other materials - put together like on of his collages - Picasso liberated sculpture from traditional materials and traditional materials and traditional subject matters

INTRODUCTION (cubism) -what is cubism - first exhibition -pioneered by p&b -radical - subject matter -no distinction

Cubism was a revolutionary new approach to representing reality developed around 1907 The first cubist exhibition took place in 1911 at the salon des Independents, paris. Cubism was pioneered by Picasso and Barque and was initially indebted to Cezanne's use of multiple viewpoints in a single painting The way cubists represented object's was considered to be radical Their subject matter was highly conventional and usually drawn from still-life tradition Cubists made no distinction between 3D forms, they simply flattened them into shapes which multiplied across the canvas By painting objects from different angles cubists also explored their movement through time as well as space

INTRODUCTION (Dada) - what is dada - advocated - mocked/ ridiculed/ challanged - 1st dada manifesto 1918 claimed...accused - independent groups

Dada was an art movement formed during ww1 in Zurich, in negative reaction to the horrors of war they advocated a destructive, irrelevant and liberating approach to art challenging viewers perspective of what art actually is Dadaists mocked politicians, ridiculed centuries of culture and made a new way of looking at the world The 1st Dada manifesto, published in 1918, claimed that Dada was a 'New reality' and accused the expressionists 'of sentimental resistance to the times'. There were independent groups of Dada in Zurick, New York, Berlin, Paris

COMMEMORATIVE SCULPTURE war monument

Ernst Barlach 1927 - When war broke out in 1914, Ernst Barlach decided to enlist. - Barlach wanted to see for himself and was finally pronounced fit for service in 1915, even though he was 44 years old and had a heart condition - At the War's end, there was tremendous demand for memorial monument and Barlach was approached about designing several. - commission was for the church in Güstrow where he lived most of his life. - installed in 1927, the sculpture is a bronze casting more than two meters long and is suspended over the baptismal. - It depicts an angel, arms folded and eyes closed hovering above the heads of humanity. - The expression on the angel's face is one of deep compassion felt by this other-worldly being for the human beings below who are inflicting so much pain on one another. - "Recollection and inner reflection" was the proper attitude for a war memorial to inspire, said Barlach. - While modeling the angel's head, Barlach became aware that it resembled fellow artist, Käthe Kollwitz. - Kollwitz was three years older than Barlach and was, like him, associated with the Secession Movement, though neither was particularly interested in being described as a Movement artist.

INTRODUCTION (Expressionism)

Expressionism refers to art which the image of reality is distorted in order to make it expressive of the artists inner feelings or ideas the movement emerged in different artistic circles across Europe, it high point being 1905-20 Expressionist used (3 points); strong colour/ distorted figures and sometimes abstraction to explore themes of belonging and isolation the major movements associated with expressionism during this period are DIE BRUKE and DER BLAUE REITER

INTRODUCTION (Fauvism) -what is fauvism -term -juxtaposition of intense colours -empirical/theoretical -application of medium -what their paintings show

Fauvism was a short lived paris-based, avant grade movement between 1905-08 The term derives from the work 'Fauves' meaning 'wild beasts' used in a review by the art critic Louis Vauxcelles , of the room at the 1905 Salon d'Automne where enthusiastic coloured paintings by Matisse, Derain, Vlaminck and others seemed to him like placing 'Donatello amongst the wild beasts'. Fauvist paintings used the juxtaposition of intense colours creating space and light and expressing personal feelings and responses The movement is an EMPIRICAL rather than THEORETICAL approach The fauves used these strong colours straight from the tube and applied directly to the canvas without mixing or shading. Fauvist paintings show the world simplified into vivid shapes where much detail is omitted. As a result, the paintings often look like brightly coloured flat surfaces.

INTRODUCTION (Futurism) - what is futurism -rejected past -praised - largely over

Futurism was launched by F.T Marinetti, in his 1909 Futurist Manifesto published in LE FIGARO and followed by the 1910 manifesto of futurist painters by Boccioni, Carra, Balla and others. Other manifesto's followed Futurists rejected the art and culture of the past: they wanted to destroy everything old and ventured to make way for everything new and vital Futurists praised (6 points); speed/ dynamism/ machines/ modernity/ urban environment and aggression - all these influences made there way through artists works As a movement it was largely over by the death of Boccioni in 1916 and the end of the WW1

NEW OBJECTIVITY The Pillars of Society -It is a deeply sarcastic portrait of the German elite classes who supported Fascism - believed was the corrupt and bourgeois society of Germany - Grosz uses his skills as a caricaturist - four main characters foreground we have the old beer-drinking aristocrat with his head full of the pageant of war

George Grosz 1926 -It is a deeply sarcastic portrait of the German elite classes who supported Fascism - Like many of his paintings of this era it satirized what he believed was the corrupt and bourgeois society of Germany -In this painting Grosz uses his skills as a caricaturist to produce vivid, grotesque, nightmarish, portrayals of those who controlled society. - Businessmen, clergy and generals, are all portrayed not as the polished, fine, refined gentlemen of Academy art, but as vicious, selfish, and uncaring individuals. - Grosz was a leading figure of the Neue Sachlikeit (New Objectivity) Movement which reflected the resignation and cynicism of the post-war period and it used violent satire to depict the face of evil. The name of the painting, The Pillar of Society, derived from a play of that name by Henrik Ibsen. - In the painting we can see four main characters. In the foreground we have the old beer-drinking aristocrat with his head full of the pageant of war with a dueling scar on his left cheek and a swastika on his necktie. - In one hand he holds a glass of beer and in the other a foil. His monocle is opaque and he has difficulty in seeing. His skull is open and from it rises a war-horse. - On the left of the picture stands the journalist, Alfred Hugenberg with a chamber pot on his head, symbolizing his lack of intelligence, clasping newspapers in one hand and a bloodied palm branch in the other. - On the right hand side we have a Social Democrat, probably a caricature of Friedrich Ebert, the German president, holding a flag and a socialist, pamphlet stating "Socialism must work", with his head opened to expose a steaming pile of dung. - Behind these three characters is a pro-Nazi clergyman, bloated and preaching peace, choosing to ignore the murderous actions of the military seen in the background. - Through the windows we can see the city in flames and in the background chaos reigns unchecked.

ABSTRACT (Sculpture) Woman with her Throat cut

Giacometti 1932 - Bronze. - A Surrealist representation of a hybrid animal, seemingly part woman, part crustacean and part insect. - Some recognisable elements of the female form - breasts, legs, torso, neck and arms, but considerably distorted/abstracted. - Rigorously horizontal, intended to rest directly on the floor as part of the 'real' world, rather than in the elevated realm of art. - A macabre and threatening image. - Female figure's body appears in the spasms of death, having been violated and murdered. - The sexual drama and violence is an example of the misogynistic imagery frequently present in Surrealism

FUTURISM Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash - similar to Leonardo da Vinci's drawing 'Vitruvian Man' -visual language of motion - lady = 15 feet / variably solid and see-through - dog = 8 countable tails/ while legs are lost in flurry of blurry overlaying

Giacomo Balla 1912 - Oil on canvas - similar to Leonardo da Vinci's drawing 'Vitruvian Man' = 4 arms and 4 legs showing possible alternatives positions for a mans limbs - designed to demonstrate how the human frame can be made to fit within both circle and a square - figure in motion - idea of breaking down movement into separate positions wasn't unknown to our ancestors -visual language of motion - oil painting doing something never done before -lady walking her dog - lady = 15 feet / variably solid and see-through - dog = 8 countable tails/ while legs are lost in flurry of blurry overlaying - created out of stark black forms - CHRONOPHOTOGRAPHY - studies of animals in motion created by scientist = Etienne Jules Marey (beginning in the 1880's) - led to painting techniques showing motion

DADA Cut with the Kitchen Knife Dada Through the last Weimar Beer-Belly cultural Epoch of Germany

Hannah Hoch 1919 - mixed media - displayed at the 1st international Dada fair - 1919-20 fraught moment = political chaos (government has changed after WW1 , lots of conflict between SPARTACISTS and FRICOURT = lots of fragmentation) captured here TITLE - chaotic title and images - 'CUT'= violence during this time, putting pieces back together that make sense to her -'WEIMER BEER-BELLU CULTURAL EPOCH'= abundance and gluttony / beer is very German (society and culture) - 'KITCHEN KNIEF'= women during the time 'women role' male dad artists were dominant (gender equality) - Machinery of government and government all around = male connotation focusing on the fragmentation as defining culture at that moment - photographs taken from press - all images create a discussion/ argument (for and against' - photo montage was central to Berlin Dadaists -'WEIMER BEER-BELLU CULTURAL EPOCH'= abundance and gluttony / beer is very German (society and culture) - think of image in QUADRANTS 1) UPPER RIGHT - Political establishment (anti dadaists) - cut a lot of text and people in this section (politicians/ former politicians) - Kaiser Wilhelm = led country WW1 into disaster - took a male general put on female body (castrated him in a way) - german minister + another general standing on their heads (mock) 2) LOWER RIGHT- world of dadaists - corner has Hannah Hock and map (map showed counties in Europe that had women's voting rights at the time) - the person the artist had a relationship with (Raoul Hausmann) - less dense and heavy = demonstrating men/power relations - head of modern art critic and writer (Theodpre Dauble) on a baby's body - all Dadaists are men ( dada propaganda) 3) UPPER LEFT- Einstein saying "hehe young man, Dada is not an art trend" (something more meaningful and political 4) LOWER LEFT- lots of scenes of mass gathering (dividing classes and places woman in power- artist is women uncommon) - centre here = Karl Liebknecht - one of German communist party leaders - CENTRAL IMAGE - German expressionist (Kathe Kolleitz) body underneath her = dancer - forms a central point = movement

FAUVISM Le Bonheur De Vivre (joy of life)

Henri Matisse 1905-6 - large-scale painting depicting an Arcadian landscape filled with brilliantly colored forest, meadow, sea, and sky and populated by nude figures both at rest and in motion - As with the earlier Fauve canvases, color is responsive only to emotional expression and the formal needs of the canvas, not the realities of nature - In both works trees are planted at the sides and in the far distance, and their upper boughs are spread apart like curtains, highlighting the figures lounging beneath - Here is a place full of life and love and free from want or fear. Instead of a contemporary scene in a park, on the banks of the Seine, or other recognizable places in nature, Matisse has returned to mythic paradise - a radical new approach that incorporate purely expressive, bright, clear colors and wildly sensual forms - despite its languid poses, Bonheur de Vivre was regarded as the most radical painting of its day. Because of this, Matisse became known, briefly, as the most daring painter in Paris - The shift of scale between the player of the double flute (bottom center) and the smooching couple (bottom right) is plausible, compared to the figures standing in the wings, who are obviously mature women (middle ground left), these center women are of enormous proportion - The painting was purchased by a wealthy expatriate American writer-poet named Gertrude Stein and her brother, Leo Stein, who shared a home filled with modern art at 27 Rue de Fleurus, in Paris

FAUVISM Harmony in Red

Henri Matisse 1908 - influenced by post- impressionism and admired Japanese art - developed his style-areas of flat, unnatural colour and outlined his form similar to Van Gogh - dining room scene in Moscow mansion - lack of central focal point - This Fauvist painting follows the example set by Impressionism with the overall lack of a central focal point - the maid is an alter ego of Matisse himself and just as he paints fruit on canvas, she places fruit in the bowl - An empty chair at the side of the image was often used by Matisse, and other artists too, to suggest the hidden presence of the artist. - The whole image, meanwhile, appears flat not because Matisse was trying to develop a new form of representation, as is often suggested, but because the scene itself is a design for a flat painting: it is "a painting inside his head."

PORTRAITURE Jeanette (series of portrait busts)

Henri Matisse 1910-16 -Bronze - In the process of creating five busts of Jeanne Vaderin between 1910 and 1916, Matisse radically reconfigured traditional representation of the human face. - Jeannette I and II were created directly from the model, which is evident in their characteristic, hawklike profiles. -As he progressed with the series, Matisse dramatically abstracted his subject, organizing the head into increasingly simplified chunks. - In 1908 he explained that his goal in portraiture was not to achieve visual precision but rather to reveal the "essential qualities" of his sitters—qualities, he felt, that physical imitation could not capture.

FAUVISM / PORTRAITURE Woman in the Hat

Henri Matisse, 1905 - Portrait of Matisse's wife, Amélie. - Vivid colours and animated brushwork, deliberate disharmonies of colour. - No drawing and modelling is achieved by colour contrasts alone. - Facial features are greatly simplified. - Madame Matisse is dressed as a member of the French bourgeoisie, with an elaborate hat and a gloved arm holding a fan. - Yet painted in a highly personal, expressive way with non-naturalistic and seemingly arbitrary colours. - Seen as eccentric, childlike, in bad taste and an affront to femininity - a brutal caricature of womanhood. - One of the works shown at the 1905 Salon d'Automne which gave rise to the term 'Fauve' being coined by the critic Louis Vauxcelles.

ABSTRACT (Sculpture) Reclining Figure

Henry Moore 1929 - This was the first figure Moore sculpted in brown Hornton stone - heavily influenced by an Aztec sculpture, the Chacmool figure, of which he saw a cast in a Paris museum. - Moore said of the Chacmool figure that it was the most important work to influence his early career: "Its stillness and alertness, a sense of readiness - and the whole presence of it, and the legs coming down like columns." - The figure is also one of the earliest instances of Moore's use of the reclining figure, a motif that would be central to his mature style. - dark, erotic overtones and morbid anxiety and so present a more complex figure and a different view of his modernity. - new ideas of sexuality and the body

MULTI-FIGURE SCULPTURE Mother and Child Hepworth 1938

Hepworth 1938 - small abstract stone sculpture - which is horizontal in configuration and has an undulating and biomorphic shape. - The work's title suggests that the sculpture is loosely figurative, with the larger shape that comprises most of the sculpture representing the reclining figure of the mother, and the smaller shape that rests on top of it a child held in her embrace. - Although they are independent sculptural elements, both mother and child appear to have been carved from the same piece of Cumberland alabaster. - Both parts are a warm brownish-grey colour and have black, grey, white and brown veining running across them. - Each of the figures has a nodule-shaped head with a single white eye drilled into it, and there is a large opening in the centre of the work that denotes the space beneath the mother's arm as it rests upon her leg. - The work sits off-centre on a thin rectangular base made from white-grey marble.

INTRODUCTION (New Objectivity)

In 1918, the Great War was finally over. The general mood in Germany throughout the 1920s was very much conditioned by the experience of World War I: the cruelty and senselessness of the war, as well as the crippling reparations demanded in the Treaty of Versailles left Germany in a state of economic and psychic depression. The sobering effect of both the war and the failure of revolutionary events in Germany through 1918-1919 gave rise to an unsentimental, coolly factual view of reality amongst a small number of artists, who would become known by the the label of Neue Sachlickheit: New Objectivity. Their work was closely linked to wider European developments characterised by a rappel a l'ordre and a return to more traditional figurative styles. The use of satire became a common motif; New Objectivity artists like Otto Dix and George Grosz used cutting humour, irony and exaggeration to ridicule and expose the vices and hypocrisy of the government officials and bourgeoisie who they saw as failing the German people.

AFRICAN INFLUENCE Bar and Grill - gouache on paper - division of the two worlds created by Jim Crow segregation laws (keeping the genders separate but 'equal')

Jacob Lawrence 1941 - gouache on paper - A Black artist depicting his vision of contemporary america -emphasising the artificiality of the division of the two worlds created by Jim Crow segregation laws (keeping the genders separate but 'equal') - just finished 60 panels of his 'migration' series - he only had 2nd hand knowledge of the south, the point of origin for 1000s of rural blacks who had made the great migration to industrial cities of the urban north - INTERIOR cafe divided by a floor-ceiling wall seperating the commercial space into 2 realms - blacks against whites - apart from obvious segregation of race - also reveals status BLACKS - are limited/ In far background - race during 20th century America - number of figures occupying each side reflects the white/black ratio of city residents - artists anger is present - emphasises the artificiality of 2 separate worlds

COMMEMORATIVE SCULPTURE Royal Artillery Memorial

Jagger and Pearson 1925 Monument dedicated to the casualties of the Royal Regiment of Artillery during World War I. - A large granite sculpture of a BL 9.2 inch Mk I howitzer is set on a plinth of Portland stone, suggestive of a gun emplacement. - Four stone reliefs depict scenes from the conflict - where heavy and cumbersome artillery pieces are fired and manoeuvred in muddy and difficult conditions and smaller Lewis machine guns are also fired. Scenes show the physical effort, strain, exhaustion and mess of the real conflict. - Four bronze figures of artillerymen are placed around the memorial - a driver and a shell carrier on the two long sides and an artillery captain and a recumbent fallen soldier on the ends. - Caption along both long sides In Proud Remembrance of the Forty Nine Thousand and Seventy Six of All Ranks of the Royal Regiment of Artillery Who Gave Their Lives for King and Country in the Great War 1914-1919. - Below is a list of countries in which the regiment served. - Below the dead soldier is the inscription 'Here Was A Royal Fellowship of Death' - from Shakespeare's Henry V - an appropriate nationalistic and patriotic source. - Figure of the driver rests with outstretched arms under a shroud-like cape - reminiscent of a crucifixion. - Unusually realistic, detailed and unsentimental military memorial for its time. - Depiction of the reality of death. - Prominent location - close to the Mall, Buckingham Palace and Apsley House.

ABSTRACT (non-figurative works) Airplane Flying

Kazimir Malevich 1915 - As early as 1914, Malevich had become interested in the possibilities of flight (as had the Futurists) and the idea that the airplane might be a symbol for the awakening of the soul surrounded by the freedom of the infinite - Malevich was also interested in aerial photographs of landscapes, although he later backed away from this source of inspiration, feeling that it led him too far from his vision of a totally abstract art - However, at the time, in Airplane Flying Malevich was able to further explore the pictorial potential of pure abstraction - he rectangular and cubic shapes are arranged in a solid, architectonic composition - The yellow contrasts starkly with the black, while the red and blue lines add dynamic visual accents to the canvas - The whiteness of the background remains unobtrusive but contrasting, and has infused the interplay of colourful shapes with its energy. Malevich believed that emotional engagement was required from the viewer in order to appreciate the composition, which constituted one of the key principles of his theory of Suprematism

ABSTRACT (non-figurative works) Black Square - forms are weightless, more like thoughts than like images. -Malevich is monumental not for what he put into pictorial space but for what he took out: bodily experience, the fundamental theme of Western art since the Renaissance - The work is frequently invoked by critics, historians, curators, and artists as the "zero point of painting", referring to the painting's historical significance and paraphrasing Malevich - Even though the painting seems simple, there are such subtleties as brushstrokes, fingerprints, and colors visible underneath the cracked black layer of paint - If nothing else, one can distinguish the visual weight of the black square, the sense of an "image" against a background, and the tension around the edges of the square

Kazimir Malevich 1915 - oil on canvas -The first version was done in 1915. Malevich made four variants of which the last is thought to have been painted during the late 1920s or early 1930s - The work is frequently invoked by critics, historians, curators, and artists as the "zero point of painting", referring to the painting's historical significance and paraphrasing Malevich - A plurality of art historians, curators, and critics refer to Black Square as one of the seminal works of modern art, and of abstract art in the Western painterly tradition generally. - But the forms are weightless, more like thoughts than like images. -Malevich is monumental not for what he put into pictorial space but for what he took out: bodily experience, the fundamental theme of Western art since the Renaissance - This piece epitomized the theoretical principles of Suprematism developed by Malevich in his 1915 essay From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism: The New Realism in Painting. Although earlier Malevich had been influenced by Cubism, he believed that the Cubists had not taken abstraction far enough. - here the purely abstract shape of the black square (painted before the white background) is the single pictorial element in the composition - Even though the painting seems simple, there are such subtleties as brushstrokes, fingerprints, and colors visible underneath the cracked black layer of paint - If nothing else, one can distinguish the visual weight of the black square, the sense of an "image" against a background, and the tension around the edges of the square

ABSTRACT (non-figurative works) White on white - Two squares, one large and one small. - The smaller square is placed at an angle. - Sense of floating and weightlessness of the small square against a white field. - This square is asymmetrical and has blurred outlines. - Artist's hand is visible in the paint texture and the subtle variations of white. Sense of the mystical and infinite and of utopian purity.

Kazimir Malevich 1918 - Oil on canvas - Two squares, one large and one small. - The smaller square is placed at an angle. - Sense of floating and weightlessness of the small square against a white field. - This square is asymmetrical and has blurred outlines. - Despite initial appearance, it is not a clinical and impersonal statement. - Artist's hand is visible in the paint texture and the subtle variations of white. Sense of the mystical and infinite and of utopian purity. - Liberation from the material world. - Perhaps some relationship with the Russian icon tradition. - Malevich coined the term 'Suprematism' for his art and felt it could become a universal language that transcended national boundaries. - Created the year after the Russian Revolution, a new pictorial language for a new Russia.

DADA & SURRELALISM Cadeau

Man Ray 1958 - 1921, editioned replica 1972, or 'Gift', is one of the famous icons of the surrealist movement. - everyday continental flat iron of the sort , transformed here into a non-functional, disturbing object by the addition of a single row of 14 nails. DADA -before arriving in Paris - Ray was associated with NY Dada group = intrested in using humour to question the definition of a work SURREALIST OBJECT- prefigured by several years a key artistic practice that would develope within the surrealist movement - type of 3D art that included (found objects/ modified objects/ sculptured objects) -transformation of an item of ordinary domestic life into a strange - unnameable object with sadistic connotations exemplified the power of the object within dada and surrealism = escape the rule of logic and the conventional identification of words and objects - Before arriving in Paris, Man Ray was associated with the New York Dada group, which included the artist Marcel Duchamp - Re-defining art was prevalent in Duchamp's Readymades, such as his Bicycle Wheel - Of the many types of Surrealist objects that were produced, two important features are present in Man Ray's The Gift. First, an everyday object has been changed so that its original function is denied. the artist's relatively simple addition of tacks transforms a useful device into a destructive one. - Man Ray's alteration gives a common object a symbolic function. - The flatiron, associated with social expectations of propriety and middle-class values, becomes a subversive attack on social expectations. - Even if Man Ray's tack-lined iron is no longer used for pressing clothes, the object resonates with ruinous, violent possibilities. - While denial and destruction are qualities are not intrinsic to all Surrealist art, there are striking examples, like The Gift, that show Surrealists working with banal objects to question the viewer's expectations, and force us to re-evaluate the function of those objects in our lives.

DADA In Advance of a Broken Arm

Marcel Duchamp 1915 (original) - Wood and glazed -iron snow shove- hung from ceiling = art - PURE 'Ready- made' - made at the time of WW1 'Anti-Art' - Duchamp asserted that an artist could create simply by making choices - ready-mades aimed at shifting viewers engagement - RETINAL (pleasing to the eye) to theINTELLECTUAL (in the service of the mind) - show how dangerous world has gotten - challenge what art is - Relocated and renamed the shovel to understand it in a aesthetic sphere - mockery - undermine the way in which we value and see art because society became chaotic - creates a NARRATIVE - title (parody- fancy title) makes you think = challenging society - can you have an original? physically no difference BUT one touched by artist- 1000 not = cynical -in 20th century = arts value depends on its ability to transform the way we see it - this challenged art market and definition of art - eg. POETRY = we don't think of cost, we think about where that poem brings us emotionally and intellectually - HANDICRAFT- (distancing art to purely..)- CONCEPTUAL

DADA Bicycle Wheel

Marcel Duchamp 1913 - Metal wheel mounted on painted wood stool - ASSISTED 'Ready- made' - Bicycle Wheel is a readymade by Marcel Duchamp consisting of a bicycle fork with front wheel mounted upside-down on a wooden stool. - 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

DADA Fountain

Marcel Duchamp 1917 (original) - Readymade public urinal, signed R.Mutt 1917. Original destroyed and numerous artist-authorised replicas exist. - he made it as a work of art - asking us to this in a new way and ask us what art is and what the artist does - he seperates aesthetic elements and craftsmanship in an art work - he submitted it to the exhibition for independent artists, jury always selected traditional work and this new group pushed boundaries and submitted this as sculpture (monumental heroic tradition) and this was rejected ( considering they accepted all submissions - Everyday utilitarian object becomes art simply because the artist deems it so. - Taking the object out of its setting, placing it in a gallery environment and giving it a title forced it to be considered in an aesthetic way. - Debates on degree of 'skill' required. - An early example of conceptual art. - Associated with ironic Dada attitudes to what constitutes a work of art

FAUVISM The River seine at Chatou

Maurice de Vlaminck 1906 - Born in Paris to a Flemish father and a French mother, Vlaminck grew up in a musical household that was virtually impoverished. - age of sixteen, he left home and moved to Chatou, where he later supported his wife and two children by working as a professional cyclist and an itinerant violinist - The scene shown here appears to have been observed from a point on the island facing the village of Chatou, with its red-roofed houses, on the mainland - Vlaminck shared a studio on the island with fellow artist André Derain in 1900. - Together, they formed what has been called the "School of Chatou," and their painting style—characterized by bright colors and bold brushstrokes—was a harbinger of Fauvism. - spent the summer of 1906 in and around Chatou, - painting pictures such as this one, emulated the undisguised brushwork and intuitive application of paint of Van Gogh's late, expressive style, which he so admired - Combining the primary colors of blue and red with white, - applied them directly from the tube in daubs and swirls of pigment, employing these conventional hues for the white houses, green leaves, reddish-orange tree trunks, and the blue, red, and white trawler in the background.

SURRELAISM Le Déjeuner en fourrure

Méret Oppenheim 1936 - Mass-produced teacup, saucer and spoon bought at shop, covered in fur of Chinese gazelle. - Combination of natural 'found object' and manufactured 'found object'. - Exists as sculpture/object and as series of photographs (by Man Ray, Dora Maar, et al). - Linked to Surrealism's desire to contest hegemony of traditional art materials and forms. - Juxtaposition of two disparate objects creates 'shock' effect, a Modern fetish object (the displaced object of desire). - Freudian fetish: juxtaposition of cup and fur sparks recognition of repressed desires; cup as fur void or vessel 'triggers' subconscious thoughts of female genitalia (Freudian symbolism)

NEW OBJECTIVITY The Skat Players- card playing war invalids

Otto Dix 1920 -Oil and collage on canvas - Otto Dix immortalized the unprecedented horrors of World War I and its crippling aftereffects on life in Berlin. -Showing both his Dadaist and Cubist influences, Dix makes a clear social statement using his bold technique in this painting. - The skat players are war veterans horribly disfigured and crippled by their service, yet they are still able to play cards. Skat was a card game favoured by Krupps, the German manufacturers of weapons. -Dix uses the repetition of the cards, the chair legs, and the stumped limbs of the men to build a composition that is disturbing in form as well as content.

EXPRESSIONISM / NEW OBJECTIVITY Stormtroopers Advance under Gas

Otto Dix 1924 - Etching, aquatint, and drypoint from a portfolio of fifty etching, aquatint and drypoints - When World War I broke out in August 1914, German artist Otto Dix was 22 years old and studying at the Dresden Academy of Art - Dix's works alternated between landscapes and city scenes, but the horrors of World War I proved to be his greatest subject matter. - Dix used his memories of trench warfare to make uncompromisingly harsh images. - Der Krieg (The War)focuses on occurrences common to service in the trenches and became a way for him to speak to others about his experiences during the war. The most reproduced print from the series is Stormtroopers Advance under Cover of Gas. - Dix has portrayed five soldiers, their faces covered by their gas masks, advancing on an enemy line through No Man's Land while under a gas attack. - Despite the fact that these men appear inhuman, they materialize as even more menacing as they move in and out of the haze created by the gas - The landscape they move through consists of mud, shelled trees, barbed wire, and dead bodies. The landscape is heavily shaded and dense and seems to consume the men's bodies which shows that it took sheer effort and strength to navigate the trenches and No Man's Land - The shelled tree on the right looks just as dangerous as any of the modern weapons used during combat due to its pointed limbs representing a demonic pitchfork. - The soldier on the far left has gotten snagged on a line of barbed wire representing the many ways in which a soldier's body came under attack. -For many, especially those young men like Otto Dix who entered the war under the age of twenty-five, war experience made them what they are and they now had to learn how to translate that experience into a language to be understood by civilians. - Dix's use of shading mixed with aquatint gives these bodies monumentality and asserts their presence in the viewers' space. - The solidarity of the bodies is what allows them to not be consumed by the realities of war - This print represents bodies in active combat where there was no time for fear and bodies ran off of pure adrenaline. Dix is rendering a militarized male body, one that fits in with society's standards of masculinity. -But when soldiers wore their masks they lost all signs of humanity and Dix uses the masks here to show that soldiers had to alter their bodies and therefore their identities and literally become inhuman in order to live up to the masculine standards of heroism imposed upon them -It is prints like this that help the soldier confront war experience as the process of being made strange and fill the gaps between his prewar self and postwar self because he can come to terms with the exact experiences of the war that changed him.

NEW OBJECTIVITY Three Prostitutes on the street - painting that draws attention to the ambiguous figure of the New Woman in Weimar Germany - Fashionable female body became a key topic of debates on sexuality/ morality / politics

Otto Dix 1925 - oil on canvas - painting that draws attention to the ambiguous figure of the New Woman in Weimar Germany - Although a greater number of women engaged in public life than before during this period - in 1925 about a third of the country's female population was in the workforce - their unprecedented visibility was far from unproblematic - The fashionable female body became a key topic of debates on sexuality, morality and politics, with the New Woman becoming more of an abstracted concept than a social reality as a result - Dix's painting can be perceived as elaborating on this seemingly new kind of fashionable female behaviour, especially through its central figure, a woman wearing a red cloche hat and veil

NUDE FIGURE Les Demoiselles D'avignon

Pablo Picasso 1907 Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, though not fully evolved Analytical Cubism, are to be allowed if the association with subsequent Cubism is demonstrated. - Oil on canvas - Not fully developed Cubism - with its debts to African art and to Cézanne it is perhaps best to refer to it as 'proto-Cubist'. - Five nude or near nude females, set in the Avignon Street brothel in Barcelona. - Painted in a jarring and savage style with violent dislocation of the female body and a disregard for single point perspective. - Abstracted, angular, shallow picture space, no tonal modelling, faceting of planes crowded composition, planar and linear elements. - Space appears solid and seems to come forward in jagged shards, like broken glass. - The two right hand figures were repainted in response to African masks. - The seated/squatting one seems to face in both directions. Figure above her has lozengeshaped breast and striations on mask-face. - Face of left hand figure raising the curtain was repainted. - 'Standing' figure, with almond eyes, one in from the left, may actually be a reclining nude seen from a bird's eye view. - This and the central figure derive from ancient Iberian sculpture and the multiple viewpoints show the influence of Cézanne. - Conceptual rather than perceptual approach show the influence of non-Western carving where the figure was represented emblematically rather than naturalistically, in terms of simple signs for facial features, limbs and other parts of the body. - Rather ugly and unattractive prostitutes - perhaps associated with Picasso's fears of transmitted venereal disease. - Powerful, mythic or totemic image.

CUBISM / PORTRAITURE Seated Nude - the woman has been all but stripped of her humanity and appears strangely mechanistic

Pablo Picasso 1909-10 - ANALYTICAL - In the early years of cubism, Picasso constructed his images using small facets, or geometric planes, and represented objects from different viewpoints - Many critics of the period believed the artist aimed to represent reality in a new, almost scientific manner - However, as this atmospheric painting shows, Picasso could use this technique for expressive ends. Here, the woman has been all but stripped of her humanity and appears strangely mechanistic - At the same time, Picasso demonstrates his awareness of tradition in her pose and in the play of light within the picture. - Seated Nude is part of a series from late 1909 to spring 1910, and a summation of earlier Cubist three-dimensional experimental work on still life and portraits. In fact, this time of experiment and research gives this period the title of Analytical Cubism, with its manipulation and fragmentation of space and multiple angles of vision

CUBISM Guitar

Pablo Picasso 1912-14 - Sometime between October and December 1912, Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) made a guitar. - Cobbled together from cardboard, paper, string, and wire, materials that he cut, folded, threaded, and glued, Picasso's silent instrument resembled no sculpture ever seen before. - In 1914 the artist reiterated his fragile papery construction in a more fixed and durable sheet metal form. - These two Guitars, both gifts from the artist to MoMA, bracket an incandescent period of material and structural experimentation in Picasso's work. -explores this breakthrough moment in 20th-century art, and the Guitars' place within it. - Bringing together some 70 closely connected collages, constructions, drawings, mixed-media paintings, and photographs assembled from over 30 public and private collections worldwide, this exhibition offers fresh insight into Picasso's cross-disciplinary process in the years immediately preceding World War I. KHAN ACADEMY

CUBISM Bowl of Fruit, Violin and Bottle

Pablo Picasso 1914 - SYNTHETIC - This table-top scene, with its fruit-bowl, violin, bottle and (painted) newspaper, is constructed from areas of colour that resemble cut-out pieces of paper. - The background has been left white. Picasso and Braque had been making collages that experimented with representation and reality since 1912. - They soon began to simulate the appearance of collage materials in their oil paintings, sometimes adding sand to the paint to give a heightened reality to the picture surface. - This painting is an example of the Cubist technique that was developed by Picasso and Braque in Paris before the First World War. - Cubism moved away from the traditional realistic depiction of an object from a single viewpoint - Rather than attempt to create a three-dimensional likeness, objects were fragmented and seen from different angles, blurring the distinction between two- and three-dimensional representation - The two artists were influenced to some extent by Cézanne's method of breaking down all forms into basic geometric shapes. - here the fragmented forms of a table, a bowl of fruit, a bottle, a newspaper and a violin can be identified. The artist has used areas of strong flat colour, painted dots, bare canvas and grains of sand to suggest the presence of these objects - This combination is characteristic of Picasso's Synthetic Cubism, in which he put together, or 'synthesised', areas of colour and texture to evoke recognisable objects - The shapes and colours are skilfully balanced to maintain the appearance of flatness and they echo one another throughout to create a satisfying and harmonious whole.

CUBISM Bottle of Vieux Marc, Glass Guitar and Newspaper

Pablo Picasso 1913 - SYNTHETIC - It depicts a series of objects and paper fragments clustered on a table, the oval edge of which has been loosely drawn in the lower right of the composition - The abstracted forms of a guitar, glass and bottle of wine cut from white, grey and black coloured papers are juxtaposed with drawn lines indicating other elements of each object's shape - The word 'Vieux', handwritten on the bottle's neck, is partly obscured by, and overlaps, the black forms - Two pieces cut from the same newspaper Le Figaro - including the masthead - are pasted at right-angles towards the centre - Fragments of two embroidery transfer motifs extend the arrangement towards the edges of the paper - The objects are shown from several perspectives: while the guitar and table appear to be seen from above; the bottle and glass are shown from the side. The light blue support is faded and its edges are irregular - The work was made in 1913 either in Céret in the French Pyrenees or in Picasso's new studio on boulevard Raspail in Montparnasse, Paris, where he produced numerous other paper collage pieces with the artist Georges Braque between 1912 and 1913 - his period marked a departure for both artists from their experiments with cubist painting. While Braque used imitation wood-grain paper in his images, Picasso introduced newspaper into his - In Bottle of Vieux Marc, Glass, Guitar and Newspaper abstracted elements are brought together to form a harmonious still life, although the text on the largest newspaper fragment stands out

PORTRAITURE Head of a Woman -Plaster - SUBJECT - Fernande Olivier (1881-1966), Picasso's lover. - Picasso spoke of being caught by her beauty, but by 1909, when he made this head, the strain in their relationship was showing. - In 1911 he started seeing Eva Gouel. In 1912 the all-but-ostracised Fernande had an affair, giving Picasso an excuse to end their relationship. - rough surface with the marks of Picasso's touch, the warm softness of the plaster that contrasts with the sharp contours. - The fractured texture of Fernande's face, her hair a system of gorges and upland ridges, is a metaphor for the way we experience another person.

Picasso 1909 -Plaster - Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), who, together with Georges Braque (1882-1963), undertook the greatest revolution in European art since the invention of perspective in Renaissance Florence. - This was cubism, though the name - coined by Matisse - says nothing about what they were trying to achieve. SUBJECT - Fernande Olivier (1881-1966), Picasso's lover. - Fernande - real name Amelie Lang - had worked as an artist's model in Montmartre and was an aspiring painter. - She fell in love with Picasso when they smoked opium together. Picasso spoke of being caught by her beauty, but by 1909, when he made this head, the strain in their relationship was showing. -That autumn they settled in a new flat, where Fernande's desire to be respectable got on Pablo's nerves. - In 1911 he started seeing Eva Gouel. In 1912 the all-but-ostracised Fernande had an affair, giving Picasso an excuse to end their relationship. - By the end of that year she was borrowing money from Gertrude Stein. - In 1933 she published her evocative memoir Picasso and His Friends. DISTINGUISHING FEATURES -You can never exhaust the richness of this head. It is like a mountain range, a landscape. - It is transformed every time you move your own head, walk around it, bend closer, taking in the rough surface with the marks of Picasso's touch, the warm softness of the plaster that contrasts with the sharp contours. - It has been compared to an anatomist's flayed model in the way Picasso seems to see beneath the skin, revealing a tangle of tendons in Fernande's neck but it doesn't feel violent in that way at all - They had spent the summer of 1909 in the Spanish mountains, where Picasso painted Fernande in a similarly faceted way, making this head almost as soon as he returned to Paris - The fractured texture of Fernande's face, her hair a system of gorges and upland ridges, is a metaphor for the way we experience another person. - it is about the mystery of being close to another human being. Picasso makes you recognise this by inviting your eye down into those channels and crevices, until you feel you are inside Fernande's head. - This is one of the seminal works of cubism, and in the state that Picasso liked it best. - He moulded Fernande's head in clay, then made two plaster casts from which he authorised a series of bronzes. - He never liked the bronzes as much as this raw plaster version. It is a key work in the development of cubism because it was the first time Picasso realised he could translate his new kind of painting into three dimensions this is one of his paintings from that time given solid form. - Fernande's head is a masterpiece because it perfectly realises his desire to represent not the surfaces of things but the essence, the structure - Fernande not just naked but experienced from within her own skin. INSPIRATIONS AND INFLUENCES: The impact of this work was immediate: the futurist painter Boccioni saw it and started experimenting with sculpture, producing his striding figure Unique Forms of Continuity in Space in 1913.

ABSTRACT (non-figurative works) Composition with Red, Blue and Yellow - restricted himself to the three primary colours and to a grid of black vertical and horizontal lines on a white ground. - Square and rectangular planes of colour 'locked' within a black 'scaffolding'. - Purity and simplicity of forms for contemplation. - Yellow equated with the sun, its rays and light; blue with the sky and red with the earth. - Horizontal represented the earth and the vertical the rays of the sun. - Horizontal equated with the male principle, the vertical with the female. - Universal dualisms needed to be balanced. - Art should seek to achieve order, harmony and equilibrium.

Piet Mondrian 1930 - Oil on canvas - Mondrian restricted himself to the three primary colours and to a grid of black vertical and horizontal lines on a white ground. - Square and rectangular planes of colour 'locked' within a black 'scaffolding'. - Some variations of texture and the whites are not uniform - one is tinged with blue, another with yellow. - Black lines do not always reach the edge of the canvas. - Purity and simplicity of forms for contemplation. - In 1920 Mondrian formed 'Neo-Plasticism' - to find expression in the abstraction of form and colour via straight lines and primary colours. - Mondrian interested in Theosophy and work has a quasi-mystic content. - Yellow equated with the sun, its rays and light; blue with the sky and red with the earth. - Horizontal represented the earth and the vertical the rays of the sun. - Horizontal equated with the male principle, the vertical with the female. - Universal dualisms needed to be balanced. - Art should seek to achieve order, harmony and equilibrium. - An art based on such reconciliations could have wider social implications

SURRELAISM Lobster Telephone, Salvador Dali, 1936 -Steel, plaster, rubber, resin and paper - Dalí believed that such objects could reveal the secret desires of the unconscious. Lobsters and telephones had strong sexual connotations for Dalí. - A lobster was used by the artist to cover the female sexual organs of his models. - tail, where its sexual parts are located, is placed directly over the mouthpiece. - This piece was made for the English poet and collector of Surrealist art, Edward James.

Salvador Dali 1936 -Steel, plaster, rubber, resin and paper -This is a classic example of a Surrealist object, made from the conjunction of items not normally associated with each other, resulting in something both playful and menacing. - Dalí believed that such objects could reveal the secret desires of the unconscious. Lobsters and telephones had strong sexual connotations for Dalí. - A lobster was used by the artist to cover the female sexual organs of his models. Dalí often drew a close analogy between food and sex. In Lobster Telephone, the crustacean's tail, where its sexual parts are located, is placed directly over the mouthpiece. - This piece was made for the English poet and collector of Surrealist art, Edward James.

SURRELAISM Sleep

Salvador Dali 1937 - Dali recreated the kind of large, soft head and virtually non-existent body that had featured so often in his paintings around 1929 - Sleep and dreams are par excellence the realm of the unconscious, and consequently of special interest to psychoanalyists and Surrealists -Crutches had always been a Dali trademark, hinting at the fragility of the supports which maintain 'reality', but here nothing seems inherently stable, and even the dog needs to be propped up! Everything in the picture except the head is bathed in a pale bluish light, completing the sense of alienation from the world of daylight and rationality. - "Sleep" is virtually a visual rendering of the body's collapse into sleep, as if it was a collapse into a separate condition of being. - Against a deep blue summer sky, a huge disembodied head with eyes dissolved in sleep, hangs suspended over an almost bare landscape. The head is "soft", vulnerable and distorted

SURRELAISM The Persistence of Memory - cliffs northern Spain coast where Dali is from/ childhood memory - playing with reality / attack on rational NATURLISTIC RENDERING - Painting concerns the passage of time and decay. - profile face (figure sleeping) - lashes/tongue/nose = different perspective - speculation optical illusion -ants attracted to metal as apposed to rotted flesh/eating away at a time piece - dead tree left growing out of a man made geometric table top

Salvador Dali 1931 - Oil on canvas - playing with reality / attack on rational - deep, quiet, isolated empty image/ time is significant (melted time literally, no activity, mo movement, no waves) NATURLISTIC RENDERING - dead tree left growing out of a man made geometric table top -ants attracted to metal as apposed to rotted flesh/eating away at a time piece - Light= looks like sunset / another day passed = time passing - cliffs northern Spain coast where Dali is from/ childhood memory - profile face (figure sleeping) - lashes/tongue/nose = different perspective - speculation optical illusion -time is not just clock but also a human experience (fundermental component of our experience) -Against an unnaturally still and deserted coastal landscape, three 'soft' watches are draped over a fleshy pink vaguely anthropomorphic form, a withered tree and the edge of a curiously square section of land. - A fourth gold watch is covered in ants - Dalí often used ants in his paintings as a symbol for death, as well as a symbol of female genitalia. - Metal acts like an over-ripe camembert cheese and attract ants like rotting flesh. - Monstrous fleshy creature draped in the centre has an approximation of Dalí's own face in profile. NATURLISTIC RENDERING - Painting concerns the passage of time and decay. - Perhaps also a Surrealist meditation on the collapse of our notions of a fixed cosmic order. - Illogical and anti-rational effects create an unsettling and disturbing effect. - Hyper-real technique that evokes the hallucinatory effect of a dream. - In 1930 Dalí had formulated his 'paranoiac-critical method', where he cultivated self-induced psychotic hallucinations in order to create art.

AFRICAN INFLUENCE (portraiture) 1930-35 Mask - stylised oval of the face / generous lips / wide nose reflect Johnson's aim to show the "pure American Negro."

Sargent Johnson 1930-35 - Copper on wood base - Johnson learned to work copper sheet metal in the 1920's as an assistant of the sculptor 'Beniamino Bufano' - stylised oval of the face / generous lips / wide nose reflect Johnson's aim to show the "pure American Negro." - he said he wanted to depict the "natural beauty and dignity in that characteristic lip, that characteristic hair, bearing and manner." - he was known for abstract figurative and early modern styles - he usually was not included as 'american art' because of how his pieces ignored traditional western techniques and inspired by foreign cultures - he focused on 'Racial Identity' "Negro's are a colourful race; they call for an art as colourful as they can be made"

READY-MADE

The artist's choice of medium and its treatment is inextricably bound to its representation, and our subsequent interpretation of it. The artist's use of materials, techniques and processes supports the content of her work and enhances our understanding of its meaning in a number of different ways These are literal work, its space, its lighting and its close proximity to the viewer are all unrelenting

FUTURISM Development of a Bottle in Space - Initially a sketch in Boccioni's "Technical Manifesto of Futurist Sculpture,"

Umberto Boccioni 1913 - silvered bronzed - Initially a sketch in Boccioni's "Technical Manifesto of Futurist Sculpture," the design was later cast into bronze by Boccioni himself in the year 1913 - work of art highlights the artist's first successful attempt at creating a sculpture that both molds and encloses space within itself. -Much of Boccioni's inspiration in creating the work can be accredited to the publication of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti's "Futurist Manifesto" - The subject matter of Boccioni's work, a DECONSTRUCTED glass bottle - The sculpture was originally cast as a silvery bronze bottle, but was then intentionally stripped open and sculpted - a process that involved breaking the bottle into twisted sections and combining ABSOLUTE & RELATIVE motion to give it a rotary appearance - The bottle is shown sitting on a much larger base, on what is believed to be the machinery used in the production of glass bottles. - The bottle itself, however, is shown as a three quarter cross section, showing the object previous to completion, as it is still being molded. - It also been suggested that the base the bottle rests on is not any part of a machine, but rather the bottle is seen blending into its natural setting

FUTURISM Unique Forms of Continuity in Space - This idea of sculpting the environment around a figure is expressed in Boccioni's "Technical Manifesto of Futurist Sculpture" (1912)

Umberto Boccioni 1913 - smaller than life-size. - Figure is a polished machine-like figure in motion. - For some, Unique Forms of Continuity in Space shows a figure striding into the future. - Series of planes made visible. - Contours are dynamic and deformed by speed. - Powerful legs each mounted on a bronze block. -Pushes forward onto right leg. - An almost abstract expression of the notion of speed. -The face of the sculpture is abstracted into a cross, suggesting a helmet, an appropriate reference for the war-hungry Futurists. -No arms and featureless face - Boccioni sculpted both the figure and its immediate environment. The air displaced by the figure's movement is rendered in forms no different than those of the actual body - This idea of sculpting the environment around a figure is expressed in Boccioni's "Technical Manifesto of Futurist Sculpture" (1912) - The fleeting is made solid. - Related to late nineteenth-century experiments in the photography of movement - (Marey and Muybridge.) - Visual expression of the Futurist love of the machine GOES AGAINST THE MANIFESTO; -nude subject matter= traditional -single block of material (bronze in this case) = Traditional - Unique Forms appears on the Italian 20-cent Euro coin and is both Futurism's most famous symbol and a reminder that the movement itself was dynamic

FUTURISM The City Rises - Monumental modern subject of building site, labourers and two large horses in Northern Italy - Workers struggle to control the powerful beasts.

Umberto Boccioni, 1910 - Oil on canvas - Fauvism was an aggressively modern movement that praised urban development. - Monumental modern subject of building site, labourers and two large horses in Northern Italy relates to Futurist notions of action and contemporaneity. - Workers struggle to control the powerful beasts. - Scaffolding, chimneys and a tram in the background. - Blurring of forms and dynamic poses suggest movement - 'the beauty of speed', 'great crowds excited by work' from Futurist Manifesto. - Vivid colour and linear brushstrokes suggest movement, - Influence of Neo-Impressionist palette. - Boccioni wrote that the painting was a great synthesis of labour, light and movement.

MULTI-FIGURE SCULPTURE COMMEMORATIVE SCULPTURE Worker and Kolkhoz Woman

Vera Mukhina 1937 sculpture of two figures with a sickle and a hammer raised over their heads. - stainless steel - Its creation was not only an artistic event, but also a political landmark, the manifesto of Soviet grand style, and the greatest advance of the monumental art of the pre-war period. - for the 1937 World's Fair in Paris and subsequently moved to Moscow. - The sculpture is an example of the socialist realistic style, as well as Art Deco style. - The sculpture portrays the masters of the Soviet land, labor class and collective farming, as two figures raising high the Soviet emblem, the sickle and hammer. -The worker holds aloft a hammer and the kolkhoz woman a sickle to form the hammer and sickle symbol -The sculpture was originally created to crown the Soviet pavilion of the World's Fair. - The symbolism of the two figures striding from West to East, as determined by the layout of the pavilion, was also not lost on the spectators - The Worker and Kolkhoz Woman is one of the brightest examples of an artistic synthesis, in which sculpture and architecture emerge as a single whole knitted tightly by the consistent repeating patterns of proportions and volumes - inspiration in the classical sculpture known as the Tyrannicides portraying Harmodius and Aristogeiton standing up together, and in the unstoppable dynamism of the Winged Victory of Samothrace, also called the Nike of Samothrace. - Thus, the key reference of Soviet realism goes down to the classical sculptural tradition.

EXPRESSIONISM Improvisation 28

Wassily Kandinsky 1912 - Oil on canvas - Kandinsky identified the subject of Composition VI as the Deluge, or great Biblical flood. - A cataclysmic event that heralds an era of spiritual rebirth. - Forms and colours have an expressive meaning and resonance to evoke a sense of threatening violence and chaos. - Some slight references to the world of objects - forms of boats, crashing waves and slanting rain. - Great sense of movement with contrasts of light and dark and strong diagonals. - No conventional perspective. - Painted on a monumental scale to enhance the effect on the viewer. - Element of mysticism and Theosophy. - Kandinsky was part of Der Blaue Reiter. - Kandinsky wrote Concerning the Spiritual in Art (1911) to explain his theories.