Twentieth-Century Art-Fauvism/Cubism/German Expressionism/Purism/Futurism

Gino Severini - Armored Train (1915)

Another interesting Futurist piece, one which may serve as a summary of the movement's stylistic characteristics and political aims, is the Armored Train of Gino Severini (1883-1966). A sleek armored train with a huge cannon rushes down the track with a row of soldiers firing rifles. The colors are crisp and clean, and there is no hint of the death and destruction that war brings. The work is also broken into facets and places indicating motion.

Expressionism

with a capital "E," refers to an art movement dominant in Germany from about 1905 to 1925. Although color was an important element for the German Expressionists, distortion (or abstraction), aggressive brushworks, and rough, flat outlines were stressed above all. These artists were responding to a spiritual crisis of sorts as Germany rapidly transformed from an agricultural society that was close to nature to an industrialized society that was alienated from nature. German Expressionists were seeking visual representations that presented their inner visions as well as free from the established order, which they saw as corrupt.

Synthetic cubism

After breaking forms down as much as they could, Picasso and Braque then began to build them back up. During the later Synthetic phase of Cubism (1913 through the 1920s), artists constructed paintings using shapes cut from paper or other objects to represent parts of a subject that were based to a lesser extent on natural objects. By forming these collages,1 the Cubist is no longer "analyzing" perspective, but rather creating (or "synthesizing") objects and space from the materials used, whether it is oil, paper, newsprint, pencil, etc. or a combination of media. The works of this phase were composed of fewer and simpler forms and brighter colors were employed as well. A quick way for you to remember the difference between the two major phases of Cubism is this: Analytical Cubism is DE-constructive, while Synthetic Cubism is RE-constructive. (Fruit Dish and Glass)

Self-Portrait as a Soldier. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. 1915 C.E. Oil on canvas.

After the devastation of World War I, the focus of German expressionist works shifted to examine the aftermaths of the conflict. Kirchner's Self-Portrait as a Soldier (Image 133) documents the artist's fear that the war would destroy his creative abilities, and in a broader sense, it symbolizes the reactions of the artists of his era who suffered the kind of physical and mental anguish from their experiences in the war. A photo exists from ca.1915 of Kirchner in his studio in his soldier's uniform showing him confident and at relaxed, standing at ease, and holding a cigarette in his hand. The artist volunteered to serve as a driver in a artillery unit to avoid being drafted for more violent duties. Soon after this photo was taken, Kirchner was declared unfit for service because of general weakness and lung problems. He was sent to recuperate in Halle on the Saale. He painted the Self-Portrait as a Soldier during this time. Almost autobiographic , it reveals his unwavering, almost pathological, fear of the effects of war on himself as an artist. Kirchner depicts himself in the uniform of the Mansfelder Feldartillerieregiment Nr. 75 in Halle on the Saale. His face is drawn, and a cigarette hangs loosely from his mouth. His eyes remain empty, without pupils, the irises reflecting the blue of his military uniform. The lost right hand and bloody stump stand for the terrible account of his own as well as German losses in the war. The painting shows emotional loss of his ability to paint, of his creativity, of artistic vision, and of his inspiration to create. In a larger sense, Kirchner also expresses fear for his potency and manhood. There is little compositional connection between the artist and the nude woman seen behind him. Some earlier self-portraits are influenced by an erotic sence between the model and artist, and in those works, the artist paints confidently while smoking a pipe. In Self-Portrait as a Soldier, the model and canvas function as hints from a past that had become completely insignificant in the face of the artist's mutilation.

Die Brucke

An important group of German Expressionists were known as Die Brucke (German term meaning "the bridge"). By taking this name, these artists hoped that their work would serve as a bridge out of the past into the future, thus affirming their faith in the art of the future. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880-1938) was a founding member of the Die Brucke movement and a leading German Expressionist. The artist, like most of the Expressionists, railed against the evils of industrialization as well as the status quo. In his 1908 work Street, Dresden, Kirchner's offers a bold, discomfiting attempt to render the jarring experience of modern urban bustle. The scene radiates tension as the street is packed with pedestrians who are locked into constricting spaces. In an upsettingly intense pink color that is part of a palette of shrill and clashing colors, the plane of the sidewalk slopes steeply upward, and any hope of exit to the rear is blocked by a trolley car. The street is crowded, even claustrophobically so, but everyone seems alone and isolated in the crowd. The women at the right, one clutching her purse and the other her skirt, are holding themselves in. Their faces are expressionless and mask-like. A little girl is dwarfed by her hat, which is one shape in a network of eddying, whirling shapes that entwine and enmesh the human figures. Street, Dresden is also an example of the Die Brucke artists' exploration of the expressive possibilities of color, form, and composition in creating images of contemporary life. The work is a bold expression of the intensity, dissonance, and anxiety of the modern city. Kirchner later wrote, "The more I mixed with people, the more I felt my loneliness."

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. Pablo Picasso. 1907 C.E. Oil on canvas.

Arguably, Picasso's most important work, and indeed one of the most influential paintings in all of Western art, is Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (Image 126). With this composition, the artist makes a revolutionary and completely innovative break from traditional composition and perspective. The confrontational piece ostensibly depicts five sex-workers in a brothel on Avignon Street in the red-light district of Barcelona. Yet, here, Picasso has literally shattered nearly every convention of Western art in order to represent the raw, even brutal sexuality of these prostitutes. First, he makes a striking departure from the tradition of Mimesis, which had governed art in Europe since the Renaissance (mimesis is the imitation or representation of aspects of the sensible world, especially humanity, in literature and art). In this piece, the women's bodies are broken into planes with sharp, harsh angles, and they lack any sense of three-dimensional volume. This shattering of form is so intense hat it is impossible to separate the figures from the curtains, walls, and background. Secondly, space itself is also fragmented. While Picasso offers the viewer multiple perspectives (note, for example, how the figure in the lower right is seen from the front and from the behind at the same time), everything is still on the surface, in one flat picture plane. Thirdly, the artist destroyed any sense of unity of style. The three nudes on the left, with their almond-shaped eyes and scroll-like ears, were inspired by ancient Iberian sculpture that he and Fernande had seen on their vacation to the Iberian Peninsula (the European land mass occupied by Portugal and Spain) in 1906. The two nudes on the right recall African art, which Picasso had seen at the Trocadero museum in Paris. The motif of female nudes placed around a still life as well as the figural poses are actually indebted to classical conventions, though most certainly ironically so. Les Demoiselles d'Avignon was controversial, and led to disagreement amongst his closest associates. It also opened the door for he and Braque to delve into their experimentations with the dissolution of form in their Cubist works that followed. This work is a significant turning point away from Mimesis and towards abstraction, one of the dominant characteristics of twentieth-century art. It also lays the foundation for one of the most influential and original artistic movements of the 20th century: Cubism.

The Portuguese. Georges Braque. 1911 C.E. Oil on canvas. (later analytical cubism)

Braque's The Portuguese (Image 130) seems identical to Picasso's The Poet at first glance. Braque's work records an interesting point in the evolution of Braque's paintings. In the top right hand corner, he stenciled the letters "D BAL," and under them, Roman numerals. He had included numbers and letters into a still life in 1910, but they were a representational element of the painting. In The Portuguese, the letters and numbers are solely a compositional addition. Braque's intentions for adding the letters are varied, but chiefly they are added to make the viewer aware of the canvas surface itself. In representational paintings, the canvas is there only as a surface to hold the illusion the painter desires. In the Renaissance, for example, the elemenst were organized on the canvas to create a sense of "a window on the world." By adding numbers and surface textures, the viewer becomes mindful of the fact that the canvas can also hold other elements, making the surface of the painting just as important as what is put on it. In Braque's canvas, everything has dissolved and fractured. The guitar player and the dock are pieces of broken form, almost like broken glass. By breaking these objects into much smaller elements, Braque and Picasso are able to overcome the unified singularity of the object and instead change it into a totally different visual object. Cubism is at its limit here, for any further fragmenting would make the painting a work of abstraction (i.e., no traces of figurative elements), rather than a Cubist one.

Neue Sachlichkeit

Following the devastation of World War I, dejected and disillusioned German artists formed a new movement known as the Neue Sachlichkeit ("New Objectivity"). These artists presented straightforward, hard-edged, honest, and sometimes grotesque or satirical paintings and drawings of the brutality of war and the turmoil of its aftermath. One of the leaders of the movement was Max Beckmann (1884-1950). In The Night, the artists shows the viewer the horror of a chaotic, post-war society. The cramped scene shows three thugs terrorizing an innocent family. The husband appears to the left, hanged. One intruder stands behind him in the act of hanging the man while another attempts to pull the man's left arm out of its socket. At the center left, the wife has been strung up, and she hangs there half naked and presumably raped. At the right, a third intruder attempts to leave with a young child. Beckmann is commenting on the hellish condition of his society in a very personal presentation, as the husband, wife, and youth are depictions of himself and his family. The painting's rough brushstrokes, angularity, and contortion as well as the cramped space and illogical perspective all illustrate the brutality of war and its aftermath in the manner of the "Neue Sachlichkeit."

Goldfish. Henri Matisse. 1912 C.E. Oil on canvas.

Goldfish were introduced to Europe from East Asia in the 17th century. Around 1912, a recurring subject in the paintings of Henri Matisse were goldfish. They appear in at least nine of his paintings, as well as in drawings and prints. Goldfish (Image 131) is part of a series that Matisse created between spring and early summer 1912. Unlike the others pieces, the focal point here centers on the goldfish themselves. The goldfish immediately attract our attention because of their intense color. The bright orange strongly contrasts with the more subtle pinks and greens that surround the fish bowl and the blue-green background. Blue and orange, as well as green and red, are complementary colors and, when placed next to one another, appear even brighter. But why was Henri Matisse so interested in goldfish? One clue may be found in his visit to Tangier, Morocco, where he stayed from the end of January until April 1912. He noted how the local population would daydream for hours, gazing into goldfish bowls. This painting is an depiction of some of the major themes in Matisse's painting: his use of complimentary colors, his search for an picturesque paradise, his longing for contemplative relaxation for the viewer, and his complex construction of pictorial space.

Umberto Boccioni - Unique Forms of Continuity in Space (1913)

In art, Futurists were especially interested in the motion, speed and dynamism of the machine age, and the perceived beauty therein. This "motion aesthetic" is magnificently portrayed in Umberto Boccioni's (1882-1916) Unique Forms of Continuity in Space. Speed and force are combined in sculptural form, as the artist has highlighted the effects of motion, rather than the source of the motion.

Analytical cubism

In the analytic phase (1907-1912), the Cubist palette was severely limited, using predominantly black, browns, grays, and off-whites in order to direct the viewer's concentration to the forms. In addition, the forms were rigidly geometric, and the compositions were subtle and intricate. The goal of Cubist abstraction was to appeal to the intellect, rather than the emotions. The Cubists sought to show everyday objects as the mind, not the eye, perceives them: from all sides at once. A key concept of Cubism is that the essence of objects can only be captured by showing them from multiple points of view simultaneously, which is evident in Picasso's Reservoir Horta de Ebro

Later analytical cubism!

In the later stages of Cubism's Analytical phase the volumetric flatness of the earlier works was replaced by a grid in an even more radical move from pictorial illusionism. In these later works, the fragmenting is so intense that the subject matter is almost impossible to discern. Picasso and Braque were sharing a studio during this period, and at times, they could not tell whose work was whose since their subject matters were indiscernable and they both used dull, muted palettes. Not being able to identify the subject matter was little importance to either artist because, as Braque is quoted as saying, "...[in Cubism] the subject is not the object."

Memorial Sheet for Karl Liebknecht. Käthe Kollwitz. 1919-1920 C.E. Woodcut.

In the political upheaval after the First World War, many artists turned to printmaking instead of painting. The ability to produce multiples of the same image made printmaking an ideal medium for distributing political ideas. Käthe Kollwitz (1867-1945), a German artist, worked almost exclusively in the medium of printmaking, she became known for her prints that celebrated the predicament of the middle-class. The artist rarely showed imagery of real people, but she often used her creativity in support of causes she truly believed in. In Memoriam Karl Liebknecht (Image 134) was created in 1920 in response to the assassination of Communist leader Karl Liebknecht during an uprising.This work is unusual among her collection of works as it memorializes the man, but does so without support for his philosophy. The composition divides the picture plane into three horizontal areas. The top section is densely packed with crowded figures. The faces in the crowd are identifiable and have interesting emotion in their expressions. The space is very compressed. The heads pushing to the foreground and packed into every corner of space give the impression of multitudes coming to pay their respects. The middle area contains fewer details, emphasizing the crowding at the top. This section draws attention to the action of the bending figure. His hand on Liebknecht's chest connects the middle to the lower level of the composition. Women and children were a central concern of Kollwitz's work, making her a unique voice in a creative environment dominated by young men. Just above the bending figure we see a mother raising her baby to a better vantage point, perhaps to pay her respects.

non-objective abstraction

Kandinsky was also one of the first artists to work in total abstraction, as we see in First Abstract I. Here, the artist has completely eliminated all recognizable forms in favor of a vivacious arrangement of quickly moving color, lines, and shapes. It is the first case of truly non-objective abstraction, meaning that there are no recognizable objects or subjects depicted. Although this painting lacks identifiable subject matter, it is nevertheless quite dramatic, but its dynamism is played out in its formal qualities, such as line and color. Color is free from the bondage of description; space, not limited by horizon and baselines, is open and boundless; and forms reflect the artist's intuition rather than predetermined shapes. Kandinsky has thus clearly turned away from visible reality for a certain spiritual reality.

Fauvism

The first recognized twentieth-century movement, Fauvism, began in 1905 at the Salon d'Automne. Here, a hostile critic, seeing a Renaissance style piece of sculpture amidst a collection of revolutionary paintings, exclaimed, "Donatello au milieu des fauves!" ("Donatello among the wild beasts!"). The painters then ironically responded by taking "fauves" as the name of their movement. Fauve works are "ferocious," or unrestrained (i.e., "wild") in terms of color, brushstrokes, and distortion. Fauvism is essentially an expressionistic1 movement employing shockingly bold, often contrasting color, rough brushstrokes, and unnaturalistic drawing and perspective. Above all, color is at the center of the movement. Building on the innovation of van Gogh and Gauguin (Lesson 7.18), the Fauves further freed color from its descriptive role by using it as a means to convey structure and expression as well as aesthetics. Although Fauvism was short-lived as an organized movement, lasting only five years, it had a lasting influence on the evolution of twentieth-century art and impacted subsequent styles.

Fauvism continued.

The most important Fauvist was Henri Matisse (1869-1954). The artist elevated color as the primary means to convey meaning. According to Matisse, "What characterizes [Fauvism] was that we rejected imitative color, and that with pure colors we obtained stronger reactions [and] more striking simultaneous [ones]." (Woman with the Hat) ... Matisse said, "Color was not given to us in order that we should imitate nature. It was given to us so that we can express our emotions," and in the Matisse's Red Room the colors do just that.

Der Blaue Reiter

The second major group of German Expressionists, Der Blaue Reiter (German for "the blue rider"), was founded by Russian born Vassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) and German Franz Marc (1880-1916) in 1911. Their name, according to tradition, comes from a combination of Kandinsky's fondness for blue and Marc's affinity for horses. Vasily Kandinsky's use of the horse-and-rider motif symbolized his disdain against traditional aesthetic values and his dream of a better, more spiritual life through the powers of art. The rider is featured in many of his woodcut prints, temperas, and oil paintings. Its first appearance is in the artist's folk-inspired paintings, executed in Russia at the turn of the century. The motif can also be seen in the abstracted landscapes he made in Munich during the early 1910s. The horseman was also included int the cover designs for Kandinsky's theoretical manifesto of 1911, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, as well as the Blue Rider Almanac, which he coedited with Franz Marc. In general, Der Blaue Reiter works were more lyrical, romantic, and abstract than Die Brucke, as theirs was a spontaneous, avante-garde expressive style that sought to give visual form to feelings. Here, color, shape, line, and space were liberated from their representative associations in order to express spiritual truths. In one of his most quoted passages from Concerning the Spiritual in Art, Kandinsky explains, "Color directly influences the soul. Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another purposively, to cause vibrations in the soul." (http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/155176.Wassily_Kandinsky).

Futurism

an Italian literary and artistic movement, also embraced the age of the machine by seeking to convey the dynamism of twentieth-century life. The Futurists had a considerable political agenda as well, for their works glorified war, which they saw as the only effective cleansing agent for society's ills. They also advocated the complete annihilation of the old guard, which even included the destruction of museums and libraries. In art, Futurists were especially interested in the motion, speed and dynamism of the machine age, and the perceived beauty therein. This "motion aesthetic" is magnificently portrayed in Umberto Boccioni's (1882-1916) Unique Forms of Continuity in Space. Speed and force are combined in sculptural form, as the artist has highlighted the effects of motion, rather than the source of the motion. Of all the technological innovations of the machine age, none had more impact on the Futurists than the automobile. In fact, playwright and poet, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, who is generally regarded as the group's founder, wrote,"The world's splendor has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed ... A roaring automobile ... is more beautiful than the Nike of Samothrace."1 Another interesting Futurist piece, one which may serve as a summary of the movement's stylistic characteristics and political aims, is the Armored Train of Gino Severini (1883-1966). A sleek armored train with a huge cannon rushes down the track with a row of soldiers firing rifles. The colors are crisp and clean, and there is no hint of the death and destruction that war brings. The work is also broken into facets and places indicating motion. The speed of racing automobiles was also the inspiration for Giamcomo Balla's (1871-1958) Abstract Speed + Sound. The colors, the lines, and the fragmented places all represent the beauty of speed while the crisscross motifs represent sound. The artist has also continued the forms and colors of the composition outside of the canvas, as if to overflow the painting's reality into the viewer's space

Cubism n stuf

arguably the most influential art movement of the twentieth century. Although it lasted only a few years and did not achieve an international following, the movement nevertheless sparked an immense creative explosion that resonated through all of twentieth-century art. Cubism began as an intellectual revolt against the artistic expression of previous eras. Among the specific elements abandoned by the Cubists were the sensual appeal of paint texture and color, subject matter with emotional charge or mood, the play of light on form, movement, atmosphere, and the illusionism that proceeded from scientifically based perspective. To replace these, they employed an analytic system in which the three-dimensional subject was fragmented and redefined within a shallow plane or within several interlocking and often transparent planes. Picasso and Frenchman Georges Braque (1882-963) began the movement in 1907, after a retrospective in Paris that featured the work of Paul Cézanne, who said artists should render nature "in terms of the cylinder, the sphere and the cone." Interestingly, the name of the movement was derived from comments made simultaneously by the painter Henri Matisse and the art critic Louis Vauxcelles, who described Braque's Houses at L'Estaque as being comprised of "little cubes." Cubism developed in two major phases: Analytic Cubism and Synthetic Cubism.

Analytical vs synthetic cubism

http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/cubism/analytic-vs-synthetic

mimesis

imitation or representation of aspects of the sensible world, especially humanity, in literature and art

Improvisation 28 (second version). Vassily Kandinsky. 1912 C.E. Oil on canvas.

in both Sketch for Composition II and Improvisation 28 (second version) (Image 132), Kandinsky depicted catastrophic events on one side of the composition and the paradise of spiritual salvation on the other half. In the second painting, images of a boat and waves signal the global deluge. A serpent, and, perhaps, cannons appear on the left, while a couple, shining sun, and celebratory candles appear on the right.

collage

picture or design created by adhering such basically flat elements as newspaper, wallpaper, printed text and illustrations, photographs, cloth, string, etc., to a flat surface, where the result becomes three-dimensional. Introduced by the Cubist artists, it was widely used by artists who followed, and is a familiar technique in contemporary art

Purism

rejected Synthetic Cubism's highly decorative qualities and called for a return to simple, geometrical shapes based on machine forms. This movement fully embraced the mechanical age and looked to the precision and clean lines and shapes of machines for inspiration. A fine example of Purist aims and style is The City by Fernand Léger (1881-1955). Elements of a city-scape (e.g., streets, buildings, scaffolding, billboards, a telephone pole, etc.) are evident in a Cubist-like analysis of form. Yet, where Cubism presents generalized cylindrical shapes, Leger conveys pistons and cylinders that capture the energy and rhythm of a mechanized metropolis. http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/collections/collection-online/movements/195234

expressionistic/expressionism

with a lower case "e," refers to the outworking of the personal (often emotional) vision and internal experience of the artist which he or she conveys through emphasis (of color, etc.) and distortion.