art 438

artist: Guimard, Hectortitle: Metro (subway) Stations, Paris

Art Nouveau subject: a new form of architecture hits the Parisian scene during the World's Fair of 1900: metro stations, for which there were no prototypes, so Guimard invents his own model. Goes well beyond "form follows function" in these decorative, highly inventive designs that the Parisians quickly dubbed "street furniture."style: highly stylized, the stations make extensive use of ornamentation that plays off the "stylized flower" motif. Guimard also makes use of modern metal construction (influenced by the Eiffel Tower).expand: good example of Art Nouveau design, which picks up on the Arts and Crafts stylized flower, but which unlike that movement embraces the new technology of the Industrial Age.

artist: Matisse, Henrititle: The Green Stripe (Portrait of Mme Matisse)

4.directness,boldness,liberated,pure,color

artist: Matisse, Henrititle: Joie de Vivre (Joy of Life)

5.Joy of Life. Updates classical tradition:Arcadia rediscovered;harmony with nature. Fauvismsubject: joy of life, classical arcadia re-found with a style that is completely modern. The scene suggests a land of milk and honey with no distress (an "easy armchair aesthetic"). Figures are in repose or in embrace. There is a wonderful harmony or rapport between the human figures and nature. Note how the dome of the reclining woman's hips is echoed in the arc of the tree overhead. A circle dance in the background will become the subject of another key work, "The Dance," from Matisse's monumental decorative period (1908-1910). The image is an update of Arcadian or bacchanal images from the past. Matisse paints out all tensions, leaving us with nothing but joy and calm.style: despite the peaceful Arcadian mood, the colors are heightened, bold, and anti-naturalistic: orange trees, purple flesh, yellowish ground. Matisse liberates color from description. His palette has its own independence from nature. Perhaps even more than the subject matter, what truly expresses Matisse's joy of life theme are the brilliant sensations of pure color and rhythmic lines that animate the scene and make an appeal directly to the senses. He wanted to cut through theory and over-intellectualizing by being more direct in terms of sensory stimulus. Lines are thickly painted with a boldness that certainly defied the academic standard, but his direct use of lines is not without its own brand of delicacy, as flowing arabesques swirl throughout the scene. The entire surface registers as an energy field where everything is tuned up to peak brilliance. Lines dance and colors sing, and they do so riotously and with an almost primitive intensity and vitality, but Matisse never allows it to reach an anxious state. There is no expressionistic angst here, only the expressiveness of "pure painting."expand: Fauvism means "wild beasts," a name they were given by the critics who accused them of suffering from "color madness." Compared to academic standards of refinement and finish, these paintings looked crude and childlike, downright "primitive." Matisse is clearly breaking with Mimesis, but in a way different from the Cubists. If Cubism points the way to hard-edge geometric abstraction (the grid), Fauvism points the way to Color Field painting and the decorative, "easy armchair aesthetic." Matisse keeps things airy (never claustrophobic like Picasso's Demoiselles) and flowing rather than angular and faceted. While Matisse also affirms the flat picture plane, color is how he moves toward abstraction rather than shattering one-point perspective into multiple frames of reference. If Cubism works out of deliberately unresolved tensions and contradictions, Fauvism works out of harmony and a balancing of opposites. Tradition is not deconstructed so much as

artist: Matisse, Henrititle: Harmony in Red (The Dessert)

7.Colors sing! stylized flower. a lot of red.

artist: Schiele, Egontitle: Self-Portrait Nude, Facing Front

: Pre-WWI, Viennamovement: Viennese Expressionismsubject: self-portrait stripped completely bare, the naked self. Art as painfully autobiographical and confessional. Revealing the psyche means exposing the body. Overbearing physical presence of the body. A wish to penetrate the outer self, as if seen through an X-ray, dissecting the self.style: the Art Nouveau decorative line now cuts like a knife, razor sharp. It goes kinky and angular as Schiele shifts to an edgy, brittle contour that elbows itself around the naked body. Nothing flows. He looks convulsed in a spasm. His hair stands on end in punk fashion, as if he were being electrocuted. The skin looks flayed, leaving only the raw meat of the flesh. The interior of the body is oddly sectioned, but not in a decorative way. Schiele is decidedly anti-decorative. Surrounding the outer contour of the figure is a body halo or astral glow. Schiele's psychic vibrations or aura (inspired by Rudolf Steiner's Theosophy). The naked body is not idealized. No setting or locale. The self in the void. There is nothing beyond the self (solipsism). Painful cropping of the figure at the thighs. Odd censoring of the hand gesture (in later self-portraits, the artist will actually show himself masturbating). A fascinated look at the self experiencing orgasm. Auto-erotic.expand: Vienna, the city of Freud, becomes the backdrop for the transition from Klimt's elaborate surfaces to Schiele's uncovering of the self. In the move from facade to psyche, we shift from Art Nouveau to Expressionism. The sons against the fathers. Expressionist rejection of the facade. Schiele paints from inside out. What emerges is the psychological portrait. The inner state of the sitter is brought out to the surface, highly charged in emotional energy and intensity, unmasking the traditional portrait to reveal the naked self.

artist: Picasso, Pablotitle: Three Women

Although [Three Women] is not truly Cubist, it is of great significance in the emergence of the style.Each of the three women is now rendered somewhat differently. The figure at the left is the most "African" in appearance. The body of the woman to the right is modelled in softer, riper forms. The third figure is the most abstracted and schematic. But whereas the Demoiselles is a stylistically disjunctive painting, here each figure seems simply to qualify and reaffirm the properties and existence of her neighbors. The figures now form a tight sculptural group and the space around and behind them is limited and seems to press in upon them. In the two figures on the right in particular the earlier striations and hatchings have given way to more discreetly and subtly modelled planes delineating the component parts of the trunks and limbs of the figures; these planes are angled away from each other along clearly defined ridges in some passages, but softly opened up into each other in others. The violence of the Demoiselles has given way to a mood of gravity: the monumental figures appear to be in reverie or slumber...

Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri de title: At the Moulin Rouge

Art Nouveau. The scene is garishly lit through artificial light signaling a definite break with the plein-air (open air) painting of the Impressionists. Everything goes askew here, from the tilted, oblique space to the freakishly lit face in the right foreground that comes up flat against the surface like a dehumanized mask. Seems a place for a wild, primitive ritual rather than a bourgeois (middle class), conventional setting. T-L heightens all effects to bring the drama boldly to the surface. Goes against naturalism by making highly expressive use of artificial lighting and color, especially in the foregrounded, masklike face on the right. A place of tensions and aggressive clashes of complementary colors. His art is one of heightened stylization and exteriorized drama.

artist: Guimard, Hectortitle: Metro (subway) Stations (detail), Paris

Art Nouveausubject: Detail showing linear flow and decorative elements along with the steel construction of Guimard's metro stations. See image of the complete station for more extensive accompanying text.extras: street furniture "the stylized flower"

artist: Horta, Victortitle: Van Eetvelde House, interior. Brussels

Art Nouveausubject: an Art Nouveau interior by a Belgian artist. Goes well beyond "form follows function" in this decorative, highly inventive space where a linear flow disrupts the old, static box space of previous room designs. Horta makes extensive use of the "stylized flower" motif in his exposed iron construction.style: Art Nouveau curves at their best with a flowing rhythm that just won't stop. The line climbs up around, disrupting all sense of rigid, geometric right angles in the process. Nothing corners, but rather curves around in an organic, sinuous way. Horta makes extensive use of metal construction. Highly stylized to the point of line for line's sake.expand: turn of the century Art Nouveau, the first movement to truly call itself new (nouveau) and to embrace modern technology (exposed iron construction). It is also the first movement to truly become international. Picks up on the "stylized flower" motif from the Arts and Crafts movement, but leaves that movement's historical trappings behind. Moves further away from the 19th c. world of nature and closer to the 20th c. world of abstraction in the play of line for line's sake.

artist: Horta, Victortitle: Spiral stairway, Tassel House, interior. Brussels

Art Nouveausubject: an Art Nouveau interior by a Belgian artist. Goes well beyond "form follows function" in this decorative, highly inventive space where a linear flow disrupts the old, static box space of previous room designs. Horta makes extensive use of the "stylized flower" motif in his exposed iron construction.style: Art Nouveau whiplash line at its best with a flowing rhythm that just won't stop. The line climbs up the wall and disrupts all sense of rigid, geometric right angles in the process. Nothing corners, but rather curves around in an organic, sinuous way. Horta makes extensive use of metal construction. Highly stylized to the point of line for line's sake.expand: turn of the century Art Nouveau, the first movement to truly call itself new (nouveau) and to embrace modern technology (exposed iron construction). It is also the first movement to truly become international. Picks up on the "stylized flower" motif from the Arts and Crafts movement, but leaves that movement's historical trappings behind. Moves further away from the 19th c. world of nature and closer to the 20th c. world of abstraction in the play of line for line's sake.

artist: Gaudi, Antonititle: Casa Mila Apartment House, exterior. Barcelona

Art Nouveausubject: an apartment house like no other, shifting the Art Nouveau aesthetic to Spain in the form of Gaudi's highly visionary designs. The building's cut stone looks so organic that it seems like a sea-hollowed cliff that nature evolved rather than man built. Balconies thrust forward like open lips as if the building could breathe, while fantastic chimney shapes crown the roof. The plastic, dynamic facade looks like waves ebbing and flowing. It is a landscape of sculp-architecture with a wonderful, organic vitality. Inside, no 2 floors are exactly alike. Highly individual vision that is a combination of fantasy and engineering.style: uses stone to look like naturally eroded rock, highly organic. No flat wall facade, instead, the building seems to roll around in a continuous movement of sculptural volumes. The flowing facade alternates between sculptural mass and interpenetrating voids. Has a complex plastic quality. Ironwork grows over the balconies like seaweed or lush vegetation. The roofline undulates. All of these flowing forms are a translation of Art Nouveau line into 3-dimensions. Irregular shapes characterize the large, freestanding structure that opens up around two interior courtyards. An internal skeleton of widely spaced piers eliminated the need for bearing partition walls, and thus the space was freed up to flow in an unprecedented way.expand: in 1880 Barcelona was undergoing a major plan of expansion, and Gaudi was given a rare opportunity to do highly original work as part of that visionary city plan. Gaudi is an anti-rationalist, but he knows engineering. Nothing is standardized in his buildings and he never repeated himself. His buildings end up expanding the very boundaries of architecture and they inventively build on what is usually a rigidly limited canon. He translates Art Nouveau's flowing linear rhythms into plastic, 3 dimensional form from an extremely individual vision.

artist: Nolde, Emiltitle: The Candle Dancers

Art born out of inner necessity German Expressionism subject: not your academically trained ballet, this dance beats to a different drum. The figures dance with a "primitive" intensity to the point of frenzy. they dance as if possessed. The rhythm is heightened here to the point of intoxication or ecstasy. They seem to be dancing on throbbing, red hot coals, as if caught up in some blood ritual. Something seems out of control, which hints of human sacrifice. This is not a bourgeois, middle class scene. Passions run too wild here. Nolde is painting pure instinct here, and he is painting it instinctually. Compared to Matisse's "Dance" of 1910, it is like Swan Lake vs. Dirty Dancing or the Apollonian (god of light and measure) vs. the Dionysian (god of wine and orgies). There is an eroticism unleashed here as the bare-breasted women dance to abandon. Their red nipples seem blood stained.style: Nolde acts out his theme in his painting style, which is frenzied itself. The image is painted quickly, with a sense of urgency, as if the artist himself were intoxicated and caught up in the dance. Brushwork is broad, gestural, obvious, undisguised, and emotionally intense. Colors are aggressively anti-naturalistic and deliberately clashing. Here he works the complements red and green against each other. No soothing, curvilinear rhythms flow throughout the scene. This is no "easy armchair aesthetic." Nolde paints in an assaultive way that is decidedly anti-bourgeois, anti-decorative, and anti-complacent. He expresses passion and the instinctual (without cultural restraint) from the inside out.expand: Germany in the years leading up to WWI where "joie de vivre" (joy of life) was not the atmosphere. Nolde expresses the growing spiritual crisis of Germany, which moved abruptly from an agricultural society (close to nature) to a technological society (factories and German efficiency) due to the Industrial Revolution. German Expressionist artists picked up on the apocalypse to come in the tense years leading up to war (1910-1914). The theme that they continually express is angst: an alienated anxiety. They reject the post-Renaissance, modern industrial world and turn to an earlier, more mystical time--the Middle Ages--in order to recover the "Gothic soul." Their works pick up on the jagged edge and pointed arches of the Gothic style as they seek a language to express their inner state of alienation and anxiety. It is an art of sharpening rather than leveling tensions. What they want to do is give visual form to inner life. They are, thus, against Mimesis. The art is highly subjective and they do not hesitate to distort in order to express felt reality. Munch and Van Gogh are among their heroes. Art for the German Expressionists is an art born out of inner necessity. There are two groups of German Expressionists: Die Brucke (the bridge) and Der Blaue Rieter (the Blue Rider). Nolde belongs to Die Brucke, which is an art of clashing tensions, just as the German word itself sounds, with its harsh, clashing consonants. Nolde is, in many ways, the archetype of the Expressionist painter in style and emotional impulse. Paul Klee called him the "Demon of the Lower Depths." Nolde also believed in the doctrine of "Blut und Boden" (Blood and Soil), which held that a people's character is intrinsically embodied in the place of their origin. Your blood runs through the soil. This "Volk" philosophy that stems from the peasants' connection to nature will eventually evolve into the Nazi theory of racial superiority, and it accounts for why Nolde will later volunteer his efforts to Hitler's cause. Hitler, of course, considered this avant-garde artist to be degenerate and promptly forbade him to paint. The modern artist, it seems, was misunderstood by everyone, from the Academy to Hitler.

artist: Guimard, Hectortitle: Metro (subway) Stations (detail), Paris

Art nouveau architecture. Detail showing linear flow and decorative elements along with the steel construction of Guimard's metro stations. See image of the complete station for more extensive accompanying text. stylized flower, furniture.

william morris, pamona tapestry, 1885

Arts and crafts. Pomona, goddess of fruit trees, is depicted among nature in a historical style that recalls Medieval tapestries. comes from Belief in honest design and production relies on the historical precedent of medieval guilds and communal workshops of artist-craftsmen. Stylized flower has now changed. a strange mix of an allegorical, historical figure with a highly stylized, swirling pattern of rhythmic forms that make up the flowering backdrop. Nature is becoming abstracted into flowing lines here, but the classical figure still holds center place. Sought a unification of all the arts and crafts. Brought about important reforms in architecture, interior design, wallpapers, and typography. Believed art should be beautiful and useful. against industrial revolution.

william morris, wallpaper design 1876

Arts and crafts. Unification of arts & crafts all craftsmen should think of themselves as artists, and all artists should be good craftsmen. Art must be both beautiful and useful (functional). Rage against the machine distrust of the machine-made and mass production, which they saw as cheapening quality and compromising craft.

artist: Nolde, Emiltitle: The Evening (Marsh Landscape)

Emil Nolde's watercolors encapsulate the Expressionists' quest for spontaneity and immediacy, and for painting by instinct rather than by adhering to traditional landscape structure.

artist: Nolde, Emil title: The Last Supper

Expressionism style. religious. The Last Supper The gaunt appearance of Christ in the piece has led some to speculate that Nolde identified with Him, having just recovered from a near death experience. Spiritual crisis of pre-war Germany: abrupt turnover from agrarian society to industrial urban centers; Volkish thinking: blut und boden (blood and soil), a people's character is tied to the so

artist: Matisse, Henrititle: The Blue Nude

Fauvism

artist: Matisse, Henrititle: Woman with Hat / Open Window, Collioure

Fauvism

artist: Matisse, Henrititle: Decorative Figure Against an Ornamental Background

Fauvism. flower back again. decoration.

artist: Matisse, Henrititle: Piano Lesson

Fauvism. geometry structured sense of balance. The painting evokes a specific moment in time - light suddenly turned on in a darkening interior - by the triangle of shadow on the boy's face and the rhyming green triangle of light falling on the garden. The artist's incising on the window frame and stippling on the left side produce a pitted quality that suggests the eroding effects of light or time, a theme reiterated by the presence of the metronome and burning candle on the piano.The Piano Lesson is a highly abstract painting, and is important because of its relation to the Cubist grid developed by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, because of its biographical aspects, and especially due to its thoughtful iconography (symbolic content).

artist: Matisse, Henrititle: Jazz

Fauvism. subject: the "Jazz" series of paper cut-outs is improvisational, like jazz music itself. They are among the best examples of Matisse's doctrine of "pure painting" since they can be read abstractly or representationally. Here we see what possibly might be a rolling figure in blue surrounded by star bursts, or we can read the work purely as abstract shapes and colors that are highly animated on a flat surface, where expression stems completely from "the purity of means."style: Matisse's trademark curvilinear, flowing rhythms animate the surface as does the brilliant play of colors that add to the allover energy. The joy of life theme is expressed here without any real subject matter or narrative to convey it. The colors and shapes suffice on their own to express Matisse's "easy armchair aesthetic." Highly design conscious and surface-oriented, these images seem to dance to a jazz beat through the color vibrations and linear rhythms.expand: these youthful-looking, highly energized works date from Matisse's late style, when he was suffering from crippling arthritis. As usual, he does not show any sign of struggle in these final images that synthesize all he has learned from a long career of "pure painting."

artist: Matisse, Henrititle: The Red Studio

Fauvism. use of pure color for expression. Red is often thought of as the most aggressive color. It has the most punch, and that's what Matisse needed here. This canvas was a part of a series, there is, for instance, a Pink Studio too. But that canvas was concerned with different issues. Here, the red is an attempt to find a color that is forceful enough to resist the illusion of deep space by pushing to the surface. The red is, of course painted onto the flat canvas but actually fails to remain there visually. Instead, the red becomes the walls and furnishing of the room seen in space. Illusion triumphs-Matisse is thwarted. This triumph of illusion is due in part to the linear perspective that defines the table, chairs, and the walls and floor of the studio. But look! Matisse has constructed some of the worst linear perspective ever seen. Receding lines should converge, but look at the chair on the lower right. The lines widen as they go back. And look to rear left corner of the room. The corner is defined by the edge of the pink canvas but above that painting, the line that must define the corner is missing! Matisse is literally dismantling the perspective of the room but it makes no difference, we still see the room as an inhabitable space. Illusion still triumphs.

artist: Matisse, Henrititle: The Airplane

Fauvismsubject: the "Jazz" series of paper cut-outs is improvisational, like jazz music itself. They are among the best examples of Matisse's doctrine of "pure painting" since they can be read abstractly or representationally. Here we see what looks like a figure in black falling or perhaps floating in space surrounded by star bursts or soaring birds. There is a brilliant, bold dot of red right where the heart would be that adds a poignant touch. The work recalls the Myth of Icaraus, the boy who dared the gods by fashioning wings so he could fly. When he flew too close to the sun, his wings melted and he became the boy who fell to earth. It is amazing that Matisse manages to conjure up so much with so little. The work proves very satisfying even if read purely as abstract shapes and colors that are highly animated on a flat surface. Matisse's expression stems mostly from "the purity of means."style: Matisse's trademark curvilinear, flowing rhythms animate the surface as does the brilliant play of colors that add to the allover energy. The joy of life theme is expressed here with a new poignancy in this floating or falling figure he called "Airplane." It is the sensory stimulus more than the subject matter, however, that proves most expressive. The colors and shapes have a life of their own. Highly design conscious and surface-oriented, these images seem to dance to a jazz beat through the color vibrations and linear rhythms.expand: these youthful-looking, highly energized works date from Matisse's late style, when he was suffering from crippling arthritis. As usual, he does not show any sign of struggle in these final images that synthesize all he has learned from a long career of "pure painting."

artist: Klimt, Gutsavtitle: Fulfillment (The Kiss)

Pre-WW1, Vienna movement: Art Nouveau/Jugenstil. Roots, stories, history between one another.

artist: Marc, Franztitle: Blue Horses

Franz Marc's use of colour to symbolise man's relationship with nature is perfectly captured in his Large Blue Horses artwork of 1911 Blue horses are encapsulated here within a halo-like swirl of white. In the background sits an abstract scene which also utilises Franz Marc's use of colour for symbolism. The artist would feature horses in several other works from this time in his career and it is clear that this animal held many of the characteristics that he needed for his symbolic displays. Besides there, he would also make. Featuring the artist's signature pallette of vivid, primary colours, the oil on canvas painting depicts three large blue horses standing together in a group, in front of a stylised landscape of red hills. The horses take up most of the canvas and are made of completely curving lines.

artist: Klimt, Gustavtitle: Death and Life

Pre-WWI, Viennamovement: Art Nouveau/Jugendstil. man leaving his family. death standing by his side. everyone full of clothes and life- man is nude to represent purity in his form back to birth now death.

artist: Kirchner, Ernst Ludwigtitle: Market Place with Red Tower

German Expressionism Sharpening; acute angles; the jagged edg

artist: Marc, Franz title: Fate of the Animals

German Expressionismsubject: a key work for Marc that reveals an apocalyptic vision painted one year before the outbreak of war. The original title, "The Trees Show their Rings, the Animals their Veins," suggests his meta- physical desire to push "behind the veil of appearance" to the "other side" to seek "the hidden things in nature . . . the inner spiritual side of nature." Here he stresses this desire to see through nature by painting a mystical inner construction using a prismatic cubist fracturing to structure this scene of primal chaos. It is a world being torn apart as fires rain down from heaven and trees are pulled out from the earth. Animals shriek in terror, running to escape the inescapable. The most poignant moment is at center where the blue deer throws its head back in one final scream while the red ray of light cuts through the white of the deer's neck. In this massacre of the innocents, we get a kind of crucifixion scene that expresses an apocalyptic end of the world. On the reverse side of the canvas, the artist had written this inscription: ""And All Being is Flaming Suffering." The "Fate of the Animals" would actually become the fate of the canvas itself, which caught on fire later, after Marc's death. In a painting in which the theme of destruction is so explicit, it is ironic that the canvas itself would almost be destroyed by fire. Marc's friend, the painter Paul Klee, undertook the task of restoring the work. He resurrected the linear structure of the original in the damaged portion on the right, but he chose not to attempt to duplicate the unique transparency of colors that were Marc's alone. The result is an image of apocalypse and a plea for redemption.style: his earlier art from 1910-12 showed the mixed influence of Art Nouveau flowing rhythms and organic curves with Fauvist color to simulate an animal's consciousness. In 1913-14, a Cubist influence enters his work. Marc would develop his own unique form of Cubist fracture, however. Instead of breaking up his subject, Marc uses Cubism more as a way to fuse than fragment his forms into an allover structure that stresses union rather than alienation and separation. Cubism becomes his way to get at that "mystical inner construction" that underlies all nature. For him, Cubism is a form of linkage, not deconstruction. Marc's Cubism is a color prism, a kaleidoscope that fuses more than it fragments.expand: Germany in the years leading up to WWI where "joie de vivre" (joy of life) was not the atmosphere. In his desire to make art metaphysical by identifying with an animal's consciousness, Marc expresses the growing spiritual crisis of Germany, which moved abruptly from an agricultural society (close to nature) to a technological society (factories and German efficiency) due to the Industrial Revolution. German Expressionist artists picked up on the apocalypse to come in the tense years leading up to war (1910-1914). The theme that they continually express or try to overcome is angst: an alienated anxiety. What they want to do is give visual form to inner life. They are, thus, against Mimesis. The art is highly subjective and they do not hesitate to exaggerate in order to express felt reality. It is an art born out of inner necessity. There are two groups of German Expressionists: Die Brucke (the bridge) and Der Blaue Rieter (the Blue Rider). Marc belongs to Der Blaue Reiter, which is an art that stresses intuition and a metaphysical projection into the mysterious realm of nature through color and forms that push away from description and towards the abstract. The movement is more lyrical and romantic than the sharpened tensions and jagged edges of Die Brucke. Marc's visionary images push towards an "apocalyptic enthusiasm" in the years preceding the war (1912-14). Along with other contemporaries, like the writer Herman Hesse, this generation almost longed for the apocalypse to come as the only way to purge what they saw as a soulless, materialistic, hopelessly bourgeois and corrupt society. Marc fights on the front during the war, at which time his art pushes close to the point of complete abstraction, non-objectivity. He never lived to make that final metaphysical breakthrough. He was killed at the front in 1916.

artist: Kirchner, Ernst Ludwigtitle: Self-Portrait as a Soldier

German Expressionismsubject: a self-portrait of the artist after he had been called up to military duty, and after he suffered his nervous breakdown at the warfront. He now is back in Berlin awaiting recall. Kirchner paints himself as a wounded soldier. Though his own wounds were psychic and not physical, here he cuts off the artist's own hand in a hallucinatory gesture that recalls Van Gogh's self-destructive act of cutting off his own ear. His face has become a degenerate mask with the eyes empty, hollowed-out sockets. Behind him is a naked woman, representing carnal desires and lust. Eros and Thanatos (love and death) seem again to hang in the balance. In contrast to the woodcut "Conflict," however, this time it is the man who suffers the wound rather than the woman, but in each case we see an impending violent act staged in a hallucinatory way. Kirchner's fear of losing one's intrinsic individuality, one's soul, is again given expression.style: Kirchner makes use of the jagged, Gothic edge and a sharpening rather than leveling aesthetic that cuts like a knife. Curves are eliminated by sharply acute angles and slashing diagonal lines. The rhythm is not one that flows, but one that corners you at every turn. An edgy, congested scene that puts you on emotional edge. The space splinters, zigzags, and implodes on the individual. Evidence of a Cubist fracture, but with an emotional edge.expand: Germany in the years leading up to WWI where "joie de vivre" (joy of life) was not the atmosphere. Kirchner expresses the growing spiritual crisis of Germany, which moved abruptly from an agricultural society (close to nature) to a technological society (factories and German efficiency) due to the Industrial Revolution. German Expressionist artists picked up on the apocalypse to come in the tense years leading up to war (1910-1914). The theme that they continually express is angst: an alienated anxiety. They reject the post-Renaissance, modern industrial world and turn to an earlier, more mystical time--the Middle Ages--in order to recover the "Gothic soul." Their works pick up on the jagged edge and pointed arches of the Gothic style as they seek a language to express their inner state of alienation and anxiety. It is an art of sharpening rather than leveling tensions. What they want to do is give visual form to inner life. They are, thus, against Mimesis. The art is highly subjective and they do not hesitate to distort in order to express felt reality. Munch and Van Gogh are among their heroes. Art for the German Expressionists is an art born out of inner necessity. There are two groups of German Expressionists: Die Brucke (the bridge) and Der Blaue Rieter (the Blue Rider). Kirchner belongs to Die Brucke, which is an art of clashing tensions, just as the German word itself sounds, with its harsh, clashing consonants. Kirchner would be called up to military duty in 1914 when war breaks out. Soon after he suffers a nervous breakdown. After the war he tries to heal his exhausted nerves by painting "healthy" subjects. When Hitler comes to power, Kirchner becomes one of the "stars" of the Degenerate Art show of 1937. Kirchner ends up committing suicide in 1938, one year later.

artist: Kirchner, Ernst Ludwig title: The Drinker (Self-Portrait)

German Expressionismsubject: a self-portrait of the artist after he had been called up to military duty, and after he suffered his nervous breakdown at the warfront. He now is back in Berlin awaiting recall. Kirchner paints the metropolitan psyche here as a lost soul in a state of regression or devolution. The face is masklike. The body almost disappears under the coat, and the scarf wraps itself around his neck in a menacing way. The figure seems to suffer inertia, incapable of action. The cafe setting, with the big drink on the table, is convulsive and hallucinatory. The crowded space seems to offer no exit. There is no way out of history. The theme of psychic disequilibrium--psychic vertigo--is painfully expressed in this image in which Kirchner himself has become one of the zombies he used to paint in the big city streets.style: Kirchner makes use of the jagged, Gothic edge and a sharpening rather than leveling aesthetic that cuts like a knife. Curves are eliminated by sharply acute angles and slashing diagonal lines. The rhythm is not one that flows, but one that corners you at every turn. An edgy, congested scene that puts you on emotional edge. The space splinters, zigzags, and implodes on the individual. Evidence of a Cubist fracture, but with an emotional edge.expand: Germany in the years leading up to WWI where "joie de vivre" (joy of life) was not the atmosphere. Kirchner expresses the growing spiritual crisis of Germany, which moved abruptly from an agricultural society (close to nature) to a technological society (factories and German efficiency) due to the Industrial Revolution. German Expressionist artists picked up on the apocalypse to come in the tense years leading up to war (1910-1914). The theme that they continually express is angst: an alienated anxiety. They reject the post-Renaissance, modern industrial world and turn to an earlier, more mystical time--the Middle Ages--in order to recover the "Gothic soul." Their works pick up on the jagged edge and pointed arches of the Gothic style as they seek a language to express their inner state of alienation and anxiety. It is an art of sharpening rather than leveling tensions. What they want to do is give visual form to inner life. They are, thus, against Mimesis. The art is highly subjective and they do not hesitate to distort in order to express felt reality. Munch and Van Gogh are among their heroes. Art for the German Expressionists is an art born out of inner necessity. There are two groups of German Expressionists: Die Brucke (the bridge) and Der Blaue Rieter (the Blue Rider). Kirchner belongs to Die Brucke, which is an art of clashing tensions, just as the German word itself sounds, with its harsh, clashing consonants. Kirchner would be called up to military duty in 1914 when war breaks out. Soon after he suffers a nervous breakdown. After the war he tries to heal his exhausted nerves by painting "healthy" subjects. When Hitler comes to power, Kirchner becomes one of the "stars" of the Degenerate Art show of 1937. Kirchner ends up committing suicide in 1938, one year later.

artist: Kirchner, Ernst Ludwigtitle: Friedrichstrasse, Berlin

German Expressionismsubject: the "big city streets" of Berlin are depicted by Kirchner, who paints the metropolitan psyche. In this scene of hustle and bustle, we see the devolution of the human into automatons--the herd--following each other like zombies. Kirchner expresses the German spiritual crisis through the delirium and anonymity of the big city streets, where he fears the loss of one's intrinsic individuality and the onset of a psychic disequilibrium--psychic vertigo. Faces become dehumanized masks in a way reminiscent of Munch. Off to the side we make out the wheels of a vehicle rushing by. Most jarring of all is the little deer, who could not seem more out of place in this anti-natural, urban scene. We know that in the next second, that innocent animal will become road kill, because the big city is obviously no place for innocence or nature.style: Kirchner makes use of the jagged, Gothic edge and a sharpening rather than leveling aesthetic that cuts like a knife. Curves are eliminated by sharply acute angles and slashing diagonal lines. The rhythm is not one that flows, but one that corners you at every turn. An edgy scene that puts you on emotional edge. Kirchner turns the city street into a convulsive, hallucinatory environment, where space splinters, zigzags, and implodes on the individual. Cubist fracture, but with an emotional edge.expand: Germany in the years leading up to WWI where "joie de vivre" (joy of life) was not the atmosphere. Kirchner expresses the growing spiritual crisis of Germany, which moved abruptly from an agricultural society (close to nature) to a technological society (factories and German efficiency) due to the Industrial Revolution. German Expressionist artists picked up on the apocalypse to come in the tense years leading up to war (1910-1914). The theme that they continually express is angst: an alienated anxiety. They reject the post-Renaissance, modern industrial world and turn to an earlier, more mystical time--the Middle Ages--in order to recover the "Gothic soul." Their works pick up on the jagged edge and pointed arches of the Gothic style as they seek a language to express their inner state of alienation and anxiety. It is an art of sharpening rather than leveling tensions. What they want to do is give visual form to inner life. They are, thus, against Mimesis. The art is highly subjective and they do not hesitate to distort in order to express felt reality. Munch and Van Gogh are among their heroes. Art for the German Expressionists is an art born out of inner necessity. There are two groups of German Expressionists: Die Brucke (the bridge) and Der Blaue Rieter (the Blue Rider). Kirchner belongs to Die Brucke, which is an art of clashing tensions, just as the German word itself sounds, with its harsh, clashing consonants. Kirchner would be called up to military duty in 1914 when war breaks out. Soon after he suffers a nervous breakdown. After the war he tries to heal his exhausted nerves by painting "healthy" subjects. When Hitler comes to power, Kirchner becomes one of the "stars" of the Degenerate Art show of 1937. Kirchner ends up committing suicide in 1938, one year later.

artist: Kirchner, Ernst Ludwigtitle: Potsdam Square

German Expressionismsubject: the "big city streets" of Berlin are depicted by Kirchner, who paints the metropolitan psyche. In this scene of hustle and bustle, we see the devolution of the human into automatons--the herd--following each other like zombies. Kirchner expresses the German spiritual crisis through the delirium and anonymity of the big city streets, where he fears the loss of one's intrinsic individuality and the onset of a psychic disequilibrium--psychic vertigo. Faces become dehumanized masks in a way reminiscent of Munch.style: Kirchner makes use of the jagged, Gothic edge and a sharpening rather than leveling aesthetic that cuts like a knife. The space plunges, converging forward. There is no way to secure one's footing in a world where the bottom seems to be dropping out. Curves are eliminated by sharply acute angles and slashing diagonal lines. The rhythm is not one that flows, but one that corners you at every turn. An edgy scene that puts you on emotional edge. Kirchner turns the city street into a convulsive, hallucinatory environment, where space splinters, zigzags, and implodes on the individual. Cubist fracture, but with an emotional edge.expand: Germany in the years leading up to WWI where "joie de vivre" (joy of life) was not the atmosphere. Kirchner expresses the growing spiritual crisis of Germany, which moved abruptly from an agricultural society (close to nature) to a technological society (factories and German efficiency) due to the Industrial Revolution. German Expressionist artists picked up on the apocalypse to come in the tense years leading up to war (1910-1914). The theme that they continually express is angst: an alienated anxiety. They reject the post-Renaissance, modern industrial world and turn to an earlier, more mystical time--the Middle Ages--in order to recover the "Gothic soul." Their works pick up on the jagged edge and pointed arches of the Gothic style as they seek a language to express their inner state of alienation and anxiety. It is an art of sharpening rather than leveling tensions. What they want to do is give visual form to inner life. They are, thus, against Mimesis. The art is highly subjective and they do not hesitate to distort in order to express felt reality. Munch and Van Gogh are among their heroes. Art for the German Expressionists is an art born out of inner necessity. There are two groups of German Expressionists: Die Brucke (the bridge) and Der Blaue Rieter (the Blue Rider). Kirchner belongs to Die Brucke, which is an art of clashing tensions, just as the German word itself sounds, with its harsh, clashing consonants. Kirchner would be called up to military duty in 1914 when war breaks out. Soon after he suffers a nervous breakdown. After the war he tries to heal his exhausted nerves by painting "healthy" subjects. When Hitler comes to power, Kirchner becomes one of the "stars" of the Degenerate Art show of 1937. Kirchner ends up committing suicide in 1938, one year later.

artist: Kollwitz, Kathe title: The Mothers (War)

German Social Realismsubject: Kollwitz is haunted by the theme of a death of a child, perhaps because she lost her own son in WWI and her grandson in WWII. In this monumental expression of that mother-child bond, she depicts a cluster of mothers banding together to protect the children. Kollwitz eloquently extracts all that is not necessary. Instead of a narrative, she gives us an icon. The figure grouping forms a monumental fortress of strength. Her work is sometimes interpreted as part of a sacrifice mystique, one that submerges an anti-war ideology by playing up the nobility of a mother sacrificing her son to war. The enduring strength of the mothers' love, however, can also be read as a silent but powerful protest against war. The mother emerges here and elsewhere in Kollwitz's art as a new kind of hero, a counterpart to the traditional war hero. I see the mother figure not as a victim so much as a powerful protector of children and humanity. Together, these mothers exhibit a strength in that transcends war and that will survive. That to me seems a strong anti-war message.style: reduction to the essential. Kollwitz's earlier work was more narrative and detailed in terms of setting and storyline, but by the 1920s, she finds a way to focus in on the heart of the drama with an eloquent economy of means. The result is more monumental. Works the black and white of the graphic woodcut medium to full advantage. Not interested in art for art's sake or in a decorative, formal aesthetics. This work is driven by a strong sense of social conscience.expand: Kollwitz is not a member of either of the two German Expressionist groups, Die Brucke or Der Blaue Reiter. She goes a different track in her social activist art. Married to a doctor who chose to work in the slums rather than starting up a posh private practice, Kollwtiz was a socialist all her life, never wavering in her political and moral convictions. This is one reason she chooses to work in graphics, since work in multiples is often more affordable and can be more widely disseminated to the masses. Hers is a message-driven art rather than an art of individual expression or aesthetic formalism. She is against the making of unique masterpieces for the museum. Kollwitz uses her art as a social weapon to make war on war.

artist: Kollwitz, Kathetitle: Death of a Child

German Social Realismsubject: Kollwitz is haunted by the theme of a death of a child, perhaps because she lost her own son in WWI and her grandson in WWII. In this monumental expression of that mother-child bond, she has extracted all that is not necessary. Instead of a narrative, she gives us an icon. The horizontal casket of the child is counterbalanced by the vertical orientation of the mother's face. Kollwitz cuts the woodgrain so it runs in these two opposing directions. The mother is separated from her child by the dark void that floats between them, a space that expresses her loss. Her hands are still anchored on the little coffin that she cradles, which indicates her inability to let go or forget. The woodgrain flows down the mother's face like the track of her tears. Kollwitz's work is sometimes interpreted as part of a sacrifice mystique, one that submerges an anti-war ideology by playing up the nobility of a mother sacrificing her son to war. The strength of the mother's love, however, can also be read as a silent but powerful protest against war. The mother emerges here and elsewhere in Kollwitz's art as a new kind of hero, a counterpart to the traditional war hero. I see the mother figure not as a victim so much as a powerful protector of children and humanity. She seems to exhibit a strength in these images that transcends war and that will survive. That to me seems a strong anti-war message.style: reduction to the essential. Kollwitz's earlier work was more narrative and detailed in terms of setting and storyline, but by the 1920s, she finds a way to focus in on the heart of the drama with an eloquent economy of means. The result is more monumental. Works the black and white of the graphic woodcut medium to full advantage. Not interested in art for art's sake or in a decorative, formal aesthetics. This work is driven by a strong sense of social conscience.expand: Kollwitz is not a member of either of the two German Expressionist groups, Die Brucke or Der Blaue Reiter. She goes a different track in her social activist art. Married to a doctor who chose to work in the slums rather than starting up a posh private practice, Kollwtiz was a socialist all her life, never wavering in her political and moral convictions. This is one reason she chooses to work in graphics, since work in multiples is often more affordable and can be more widely disseminated to the masses. Hers is a message-driven art rather than an art of individual expression or aesthetic formalism. She is against the making of unique masterpieces for the museum. Kollwitz uses her art as a social weapon to make war on war.

artist: Matisse, Henrititle: Large Reclining Nude

He can harmonize anything--warm and cool colors ;plain forms and patterns;2D flatness and 3D breathing space; the organic and the geometric ; curved and straight lines,repose and activity

artist: Marc, Franz title: Fighting Forms

In Marc's very final works before the outbreak of the First World War, it is extremely difficult to identify any animals, since non-representational form and abstraction have taken over. One of his final major paintings is Kämpfende Formen (Fighting Forms) which is dominated by two swirling shapes, one red and the other black. Painted at the start of the Great War, Fighting Forms (1914) is clearly the product of a country at war. We see in Marc's painting two opposing forces that are very obvious. This mentality was very common during World War I because of propaganda. Propaganda drove a wedge between good and evil, right and wrong. Fighting Forms perfectly expresses this belief. As Marc explains:"Objects speak: objects possess will and form, why should we wish to interrupt them! We have nothing sensible to say to them. Haven't we learned in the last thousand years that the more we confront objects with the reflection of their appearance, the more silent they become.shows the influence of color symbolism, a technique that had been pioneered by Vincent van Gogh. While Van Gogh used an impulsive, gestural application of paint and symbolic colors to express subjective emotions, Marc use colors to humanize natural forms in the landscape, emphasizing his own interest in pantheism. Fighting Forms was Marc's last painting, which clearly indicated that he had abandoned figural painting.

artist: Kandinsky, Wassily title: Blue Mountain

Kandinsky studied colour in great detail in the early stages of his artistic development and he would later write several publications about his own theories on this topic. The result of all this is that he became one of the most skilled artists in the application of colour within western art and Blue Mountain provides an example of this. The artwork was completed in 1908-09 in his customary oils. He makes use of yellows, reds, browns, whites and blues in order to produce this eye catching, charming piece. Most of the colours are adapted into darker and lighter tones which provides a deeper palette. The initial focus is drawn to the two trees which drift in from either side of the cropped composition. We then view the blue mountain in the centre, with a carefully crafted sky behind them which purposely uses the tones from the rest of the painting and blends them into a foundation of white - this creates a consistency between the sky and the rest of the landscape. Many have argued that the horse and rider combination that can be found in a number of his paintings was not simply a brand or form of iconography for purely aesthetic purposes. In reality, it was used to represent Kandinsky's aggressive stance against traditional art, which he found stale and in need of updating. Most of the academics of the time were opposed to this view, but over time he at least persuaded them to listen to his opinions and at the very least find and appreciate the qualities found within more modern art. In this particular painting there are two horse and riders in the centre of the composition, and then a flurry of other figures to the left and right of them to provide additional visual support. When we consider the popular works from his career, there is an equal blend between the truly abstract, and then items like this where the key elements can be easily identified.

artist: Kandinsky, Wassilytitle: First Abstraction

Kandinsky: the first to go completely abstract. Synaesthesia: listening to the "inner sound" of a color. " The object, it hurts my painting." Wrote Concerning the Spiritual in Art (1910-12) : " It is the spirit that rules over nature. German Expressionism subject: this little watercolor is considered the first non-objective painting. All elements of representation and association have disappeared. Just because there is no subject matter, however, does not mean the work lacks content or meaning. The drama here is played out purely by the formal dynamics. Colors are not descriptive because they have no associative connection back to nature. Color has its own autonomy and freedom. Line is sketchy and animated without being defining. It has a life of its own. Kandinsky works from intuition rather than logic and rational design, keeping the image improvisational and avoiding the hard-edge boundaries of a rigid geometry. Consciousness, not consciousness of something, but consciousness itself is his subject. What he expresses is his pure sensations and feelings, divorced from any object or specific subject. He did want his abstractions to be emotional through the intuitive, outward expression of the artist's inner needs. Kandinsky, thus, paints from the inside out, cutting all ties to the world of matter and particularities in the process. The space he creates, thus, is not one bounded by gravity, but one radically open-ended and boundless. The canvas surface is no longer measured in terms of a horizon line and a grounding at the bottom. He conceives of the surface plane as an allover energy field. A believer in "synestehsia" (where one sensory stimulus evokes another, like seeing colors and hearing music), Kandinsky wanted the viewer to listen for the "inner sound" of a color. He wanted painting to be abstract like music. He is seeking a metaphysical art that transcends the material, objective world. What he did not want was for his art to be mistaken merely for decoration. In the spiritual crisis of Germany before the war, pure aesthetic formalism did not address the artist's inner necessity. Abstraction, thus, had to address the spiritual. For Kandinsky, it is the spirit that rules over matter, and thus he turns away from material reality.style: opposed to the orderly construction and restricted color range of Cubism and other hard-edge geometric abstraction. Did not trust an art that evolved out of logic or the rationale. Trusted only internal feelings and intuition. His art, thus, has a mystical core that takes form at this time in dreamy improvisations that are not earthbound. Space is conceived of as an unbounded, energy field. He has no interest in illusionistic one-point perspective. Line, shape, and color all have their own autonomy and function freely within the unbounded field. The picture is conceived of as a vibrant arrangement of rapidly moving color areas that make no reference to a storyline or object in external reality. The picture has its own reality.expand: Germany in the years leading up to WWI where "joie de vivre" (joy of life) was not the atmosphere. In his desire to make abstraction spiritual, Kandinsky expresses the growing spiritual crisis of Germany, which moved abruptly from an agricultural society (close to nature) to a technological society (factories and German efficiency) due to the Industrial Revolution. German Expressionist artists picked up on the apocalypse to come in the tense years leading up to war (1910-1914). The theme that they continually express or try to overcome is angst: an alienated anxiety. What they want to do is give visual form to inner life. They are, thus, against Mimesis. The art is highly subjective and they do not hesitate to exaggerate or abstract to express internal, felt reality. It is an art born out of inner necessity. There are two groups of German Expressionists: Die Brucke (the bridge) and Der Blaue Rieter (the Blue Rider). Kandinsky belongs to Der Blaue Reiter, which is an art that stresses intuition and a metaphysical projection beyond the world of matter through color and forms that push away from description and towards non-objectivity. The movement is more lyrical and romantic than the sharpened tensions and jagged edges of Die Brucke. Kandinsky had trouble letting go of the object in the beginning for fear people would mistake his abstractions for formal decoration. In 1910, the year of this watercolor breakthrough, he began work on his book, "Concerning the Spiritual in Art," which he published in 1912. During these years he gradually made a complete break with the objective world, realizing that "the object harms my painting." Kandinsky, who had been trained in the logic of law, wants only to be guided by creative intuition. In a scientific age, intuition is often looked on as fuzzy thinking. Kandinsky's book is an important theoretical text for making an argument that the intuitive is a valid position of knowledge in its own right. Kandinsky would return to Russia, his homeland, during the war. When Russia has its own revolution in 1917, Kandinsky becomes the director of the Russian museum system. During this short-lived period--the Heroic Period of Communism--Russia will emerge as the most progressive country for abstract art in all the world. In the 1920s, Kandinsky returns to Germany and joins the faculty at the Bauhaus, where his work begins to take on more of a geometric hard-edge. The book he writes in 1926, "Point and Line to Plane," clearly suggests a different logic than the earlier "Concerning the Spiritual in Art," but Kandinsky's art will remain mystical and abstractly directed his whole career. He ends up in Paris where he dies in 1944.

artist: Picasso, Pablotitle: The Reservoir, Horta de Ebrodate: 1909

Picasso: Analytic Cubism (early stage)subject: stucco houses on a hill with a reservoir over a river below, but remember what Braque will say about Cubism: "the subject is not the object." The subject matter is not the true objective of Cubism. Rather than painting the thing itself from a one-point perspective, Picasso maps the site from the multiple perspectives of a vision that continually shifts its frame of reference. We see the scene from above (looking down on the rooftops), from below (looking up at the underneath side of the reservoir bridge), and straight-on (looking directly across from the door at center). We are looking from all these mutually conflicting points of view simultaneously! Thus, instead of mirroring the scene according to the illusions of one-point perspective (the mimetic ideal), Cubism maps the shifting frames of reference of multiple perspectives, laying them all out on the flat surface plane. Denies a sense of plasticity as any tangible sense of concrete mass dissolves into faceted planes in space that fuse figure and ground through "passage" (learned from Cezanne). In this early stage of Analytical Cubism, the picture turns on the contradictory principle of "volumetric flatness"--cubic volumes are suggested only to then be undermined as all forms end up as faceted planes that affirm the flat canvas surface. That is Cubism's reality: the flat canvas surface and the languages of art, not nature.style: Picasso shatters one-point perspective into multiple, shifting frames of reference with the help of lessons learned from Cezanne's art, most notably, "passage"--the commingling of faceted planes in space that fuse figure and ground into an allover structural unity that holds the picture tightly together while dismantling the integrity of the various objects pictured, which end up highly fragmented in the process. Light and shadow add to the confusion by no longer being traceable to a single source. This is not light coming from nature but light and shadow as part of the language of art, which can break with the laws of nature to create mutually conflicting, multiple sources. Modeling in the round is thereby undermined by a light that flickers across the whole field rather than setting up a clearly defined, unambiguous focus. Picasso teases us by suggesting volume only to flatten it out later through the combined effects of passage and the erratic play of light and shadow. "Volumetric flatness" is his strategy for upsetting the traditional 3-D illusionism of Western mimesis.expand: this is the early stage of Analytic Cubism in which traces of green are still evident in a reference to nature. After 1909 all traces of green will drop out of Analytic Cubism, which will keep to a strictly disciplined, monochromatic palette of earth tones, ochres, and greys. Color drops out because it is no longer about setting an emotional mood as it was in the Blue and Rose Periods. It is now about redefining the representation of space on the flat picture plane, and color gets in the way. The Cezanne retrospective of 1907 taught Picasso much, directing him away from painting "things" to painting "passage" itself, i.e., the transition between things and the shifting of perspective. "I do not believe in things, I believe in relations," Braque would say. Cubism's shifting frames of reference, of course, parallel Einstein's 1905 development of the "Theory of Relativity," which pulls the ground out from under concrete absolutes by showing how reality is itself relative to one's point of view in spacetime (conceived as a continuum). Picasso is not reading Einstein, but Cubism's multiple perspectives lead to the same undermining of one, absolute Truth. These ideas, added to the anti-mimetic lessons of Iberian and African Art, gave Analytical Cubism its momentum in the years directly following the Demoiselles, 1908-1909. By 1910, everything has gotten much more complex and flatter as Picasso, together with Braque, pushes Analytic Cubism to the breaking point. The invention of "collage" in 1911-12 will be the next significant turning point, shifting the frame of reference from Analytic to Synthetic Cubism.

artist: Picasso, Pablotitle: Nude Woman

Picasso: Analytic Cubism (hermetic stage)subject: almost impossible to "read" in terms of subject matter at this hermetic stage of Analytical Cubism (1910-11), but then subject matter does not really matter in Cubism anyway. Remember what Braque will say about Cubism: "the subject is not the object." He would also add, "I do not believe in things, I believe in relations." The subject matter is not the true objective of Cubism. Painting relations, or passage, is more to the point. Physical matter itself is dissolved by Cubism's faceting and fragmenting, which turns mass into a linear network--the grid--that affirms the allover, flat picture plane. What this grid is mapping or diagramming (rather than mirroring in mimetic fashion) is a nude woman. Analytic Cubism is at the breaking point here. If it goes any further in abstracting the figure it will soon reach the point of non-objectivity in which any lingering figurative elements drop out completely. Where he goes next after this, thus, is crucial to what the Cubist project is all about for Picasso. Is it about a progression in which complete abstraction is the end goal? Or is it truly about multiple perspectives? See the next image to find out.style: Picasso shatters one-point perspective into multiple, shifting frames of reference with the help of lessons learned from Cezanne's art, most notably, "passage"--the commingling of faceted planes in space that fuse figure and ground into an allover structural unity--here the grid--that holds the picture tightly together while dismantling the integrity of the various objects pictured, which end up highly fragmented in the process. Light and shadow add to the confusion by no longer being traceable to a single source. This is not light coming from nature but light and shadow as part of the language of art, which can break with the laws of nature to create mutually conflicting, multiple sources. Modeling in the round is thereby undermined by a light that flickers across the whole field rather than setting up a clearly defined, unambiguous focus. Everything is much flatter and more complex here than it was in 1908-09. The "grid" has replaced "volumetric flatness" as Picasso levels the playing field by more radically shifting away from the figure in the round, which he re-maps into a diagram. There is no way to speak of a mirror of nature here in the mimetic sense. The degree of abstraction is much greater.expand: this is the later stage of Analytic Cubism (1910-11) in which the subject matter becomes so difficult to read that we call this stage "hermetic," implying hidden or sealed inwardly. No traces of green remain as Picasso and Braque keep to a strictly disciplined, monochromatic palette of earth tones, ochres, and greys. Color drops out as the grid takes over. It is no longer about setting an emotional mood as it was in the Blue and Rose Periods, but about radically redefining the representation of space on the flat picture plane, and color gets in the way. Cezanne's lesson of "passage" continues to be employed here, but "volumetric passage" also drops off as the "grid" takes over and space becomes flatter. This is Analytic Cubism at the breaking point. The invention of "collage" in 1911-12 will be the next significant turning point, shifting the frame of reference from Analytic to Synthetic Cubism.

artist: Klimt, Gustavtitle: Portrait of Friedericke Maria Beer

Pre-WWI, Viennamovement: Art Nouveau/Jugendstilsubject: portrait of a Viennese lady, but the figure is almost swallowed by the abstract background pattern. Elaborate surface with no focus on the inner self. A good example of the beautiful facade of Art Nouveau (or Jugendstil as it was called in German-speaking countries). Klimt asked his sitter to turn her jacket inside-out so he could add the pattern of the lining to his already overloaded composition. The background pattern is a blown-up version of a Korean vase design, from his personal collection. The woman as a beautiful, ornamental art object (a stylized flower) rather than a psychological study. Friedericke Beer also had her portrait painted by Egon Schiele, but with differing results (see the text that accompanies that image).style: the entire surface is covered with jeweled, ornamental filler and gold ground reflecting a space negating horror vacuii, the decorative overlay. Highly stylized and surface oriented. It is as if the ornamental frame has flooded the interior field. The hands, face, and feet are all that is left of the figure. Mosaic pattern of precious, metallic materials, recalling the influence of Byzantine mosaics from San Vitale in Ravenna that the artist had recently seen. Tension between the 3-D representational elements and the 2-D abstract surface elaboration. Body is filled with ornate, decorative motifs in a sensory overload. Airless repetition of pattern.expand: Vienna, the city of Freud, becomes the backdrop for Klimt's elaborate surfaces that mask over any repressed content. It was a city of beautiful facades with all kinds of repressed desires and anxieties lurking undercover. It was the city in which Freud discovered the unconscious, studies hysteria, and did his dream interpretations, looking past the manifest surface to the latent content. It was the city in which the beautiful facade would eventually give way to the psyche.

artist: Klimt, Gustavtitle: Portrait of Frau Adele Block-Bauer

Pre-WWI, Viennamovement: Art Nouveau/Jugendstilsubject: portrait of a Viennese lady, but the figure is almost swallowed by the abstract background pattern. Mood of detachment. Elaborate surface with no focus on the inner self. The woman is treated as a beautiful art object (a stylized flower) rather than a psychological study. The painting is an elegant example of the beautiful facade of Art Nouveau (or Jugendstil as it was called in German-speaking countries). A close-up of the surface pattern reveals various symbolic forms: the spiral, the Egyptian eye, phallic shapes, and a split circular shape that has been seen as a masked symbol of the vagina. The body turns into ornament, but the ornament references the body. Interplay of the manifest (surface) and the latent (subtext). Klimt paints from outside in.style: the entire surface is covered with jeweled, ornamental filler in a space negating horror vacuii, the decorative overlay. Highly stylized and surface oriented. It is as if the ornamental frame has flooded the interior field. The hands and face are all that is left of the figure. Mosaic pattern of precious, metallic materials, recalling the influence of Byzantine mosaics from San Vitale in Ravenna that the artist had recently seen. Tension between the 3-D representational elements and the 2-D abstract surface elaboration. Body gives way to flat pattern design in a sensory overload. Airless repetition of pattern, claustrophobic.expand: Vienna, the city of Freud, becomes the backdrop for Klimt's elaborate surfaces that mask over any repressed content. It was a city of beautiful facades with all kinds of repressed desires and anxieties lurking undercover. It was the city in which Freud discovered the unconscious, studies hysteria, and did his dream interpretations, looking past the manifest surface to the latent content. It was the city in which the beautiful facade would eventually give way to the psyche.

artist: Klimt, Gustavtitle: The Kiss

Pre-WWI, Viennamovement: Art Nouveau/Jugendstilsubject: portrayal of a kiss expressed through two figures locked in an embrace. Elaborate surface with no focus on the inner self,. An elegant example of the beautiful facade of Art Nouveau (or Jugendstil as it was called in German-speaking countries). A close-up of the surface pattern reveals two types of symbolic forms: erect phallic shapes in his cloak and circular, womblike spirals in hers. The "intercourse" of symbolic patterns played out abstractly in the surface design. The latent content is alluded to in the overall contour of the embracing couple, which together form a giant, phallus. A sensual image of Eros, fertility, and regeneration.style: the entire surface is covered with jeweled, ornamental filler and gold ground reflecting a space negating horror vacuii, the decorative overlay. Highly stylized and surface oriented. It is as if the ornamental frame has flooded the interior field. The hands, face, and feet are all that is left of the figure. Mosaic pattern of precious, metallic materials, recalling the influence of Byzantine mosaics from San Vitale in Ravenna that the artist had recently seen. Tension between the 3-D representational elements and the 2-D abstract surface elaboration. Body is filled with ornate, decorative motifs in a sensory overload. Airless repetition of pattern.expand: Vienna, the city of Freud, becomes the backdrop for Klimt's elaborate surfaces that mask over any repressed content. It was a city of beautiful facades with all kinds of repressed desires and anxieties lurking undercover. It was the city in which Freud discovered the unconscious, studies hysteria, and did his dream interpretations, looking past the manifest surface to the latent content. It was the city in which the beautiful facade would eventually give way to the psyche.

artist: Nolde, Emiltitle: Dance Around the Golden Calf

Pre-WWImovement: German Expressionismsubject: not your academically trained ballet, this dance beats to a different drum. The figures dance with a "primitive" intensity to the point of frenzy. They dance as if possessed. The rhythm is heightened here to the point of intoxication or ecstasy. Bodies blur together in a kind of primal chaos. There seems something highly ritualistic here that is out of control, which hints of human sacrifice. This is not a bourgeois, middle class scene. Passions run too wild here. Nolde is painting pure instinct here, and he is painting it instinctually. Compared to Matisse's "Dance" of 1910, it is like Swan Lake vs. Dirty Dancing or the Apollonian (god of light and measure) vs. the Dionysian (god of wine and orgies). There is an eroticism unleashed here as the bare-breasted women dance to abandon. In the background is the golden calf, the idol that these pagans worship with ecstasy.style: Nolde acts out his theme in his painting style, which is frenzied itself. The image is painted quickly, with a sense of urgency, as if the artist himself were intoxicated and caught up in the dance. Brushwork is broad, gestural, obvious, undisguised, and emotionally intense. Colors are aggressively anti-naturalistic and deliberately clashing. No soothing, curvilinear rhythms flow throughout the scene. This is no "easy armchair aesthetic." Nolde paints in an assaultive way that is decidedly anti-bourgeois, anti-decorative, and anti-complacent. He expresses passion and the instinctual (without cultural restraint) from the inside out.expand: Germany in the years leading up to WWI where "joie de vivre" (joy of life) was not the atmosphere. Nolde expresses the growing spiritual crisis of Germany, which moved abruptly from an agricultural society (close to nature) to a technological society (factories and German efficiency) due to the Industrial Revolution. German Expressionist artists picked up on the apocalypse to come in the tense years leading up to war (1910-1914). The theme that they continually express is angst: an alienated anxiety. They reject the post-Renaissance, modern industrial world and turn to an earlier, more mystical time--the Middle Ages--in order to recover the "Gothic soul." Their works pick up on the jagged edge and pointed arches of the Gothic style as they seek a language to express their inner state of alienation and anxiety. It is an art of sharpening rather than leveling tensions. What they want to do is give visual form to inner life. They are, thus, against Mimesis. The art is highly subjective and they do not hesitate to distort in order to express felt reality. Munch and Van Gogh are among their heroes. Art for the German Expressionists is an art born out of inner necessity. There are two groups of German Expressionists: Die Brucke (the bridge) and Der Blaue Rieter (the Blue Rider). Nolde belongs to Die Brucke, which is an art of clashing tensions, just as the German word itself sounds, with its harsh, clashing consonants. Nolde is, in many ways, the archetype of the Expressionist painter in style and emotional impulse. Paul Klee called him the "Demon of the Lower Depths." Nolde also believed in the doctrine of "Blut und Boden" (Blood and Soil), which held that a people's character is intrinsically embodied in the place of their origin. Your blood runs through the soil. This "Volk" philosophy that stems from the peasants' connection to nature will eventually evolve into the Nazi theory of racial superiority, and it accounts for why Nolde will later volunteer his efforts to Hitler's cause. Hitler, of course, considered this avant-garde artist to be degenerate and promptly forbade him to paint. The modern artist, it seems, was misunderstood by everyone, from the Academy to Hitler.

artist: Marc, Franztitle: (Red) Horse in a Landscape (seen from the back)

Pre-WWImovement: German Expressionismsubject: seeing the world through an animal's eyes, Marc looks at nature transformed through the horse's point of view. Not a mimetic art, but one more interested in metaphysics, going "behind the veil of appearance" to the "other side" to seek "the hidden things in nature . . . the inner spiritual side of nature." For him, "each animal is an embodiment of a cosmic rhythm," expressed here in the undulating forms and heightened, lyrical colors. The human disappears from Marc's art during this year--1910--and in its place he substitutes a pantheistic animal consciousness. Color becomes symbolic rather than descriptive: blue as the masculine principle, robust and spiritual, yellow as the female principle, gentle, serene, and sensual, and red as physical matter, brutal and heavy. What he seeks is an inner harmony between self and the external world, which he finds only through the purity of an animal's consciousness. The desire to merge or become one with a mystical, cosmic rhythm and spirit that underlies all nature is, perhaps, a desire to transcend the anxiety and tensions of the German cultural and spiritual crisis by escaping to a more primitive view of nature.style: goes against his academic training in naturalism to develop a more mystical, abstract view of nature, using Art Nouveau flowing rhythms and organic curves with Fauvist color to simulate an animal's consciousness. This is the first stage of his art. Breaking away from naturalistic description, he works out a color symbolism (see above).expand: Germany in the years leading up to WWI where "joie de vivre" (joy of life) was not the atmosphere. In his desire to make art metaphysical by identifying with an animal's consciousness, Marc expresses the growing spiritual crisis of Germany, which moved abruptly from an agricultural society (close to nature) to a technological society (factories and German efficiency) due to the Industrial Revolution. German Expressionist artists picked up on the apocalypse to come in the tense years leading up to war (1910-1914). The theme that they continually express or try to overcome is angst: an alienated anxiety. What they want to do is give visual form to inner life. They are, thus, against Mimesis. The art is highly subjective and they do not hesitate to exaggerate in order to express felt reality. It is an art born out of inner necessity. There are two groups of German Expressionists: Die Brucke (the bridge) and Der Blaue Rieter (the Blue Rider). Marc belongs to Der Blaue Reiter, which is an art that stresses intuition and a metaphysical projection into the mysterious realm of nature through color and forms that push away from description and towards the abstract. The movement is more lyrical and romantic than the sharpened tensions and jagged edges of Die Brucke. Marc's visionary images push towards an "apocalyptic enthusiasm" in the years preceding the war (1912-14). Along with other contemporaries, like the writer Herman Hesse, this generation almost longed for the apocalypse to come as the only way to purge what they saw as a soulless, materialistic, hopelessly bourgeois and corrupt society. Marc fights on the front during the war, at which time his art pushes close to the point of complete abstraction, non-objectivity. He never lived to make that final metaphysical breakthrough. He was killed at the front in 1916.

artist: Picasso, Pablotitle: Ma Jolie ("My Pretty One") Woman with a Guitardate: 1911-1912

Pre-WWImovement: Picasso: Analytic/Synthetic Cubism (transitional work)subject: when Analytical Cubism becomes almost impossible to "read" in terms of subject matter at the later hermetic stage (1910-11), Picasso adds in references to external reality that keep the image from going completely abstract: he adds in words ("Ma Jolie," my pretty woman, a reference to a popular cafe song) and a treble clef (to signify music). He provides us with clues, thus, for "reading" the work in terms of a representational frame of reference. The image thus becomes about mutually shifting frames of reference in a new way: shifting between highly abstract cubist passages to representational words or even highly illusionistic trompe-l'oeil moments. This picture of a woman (his mistress of the moment, Eva) playing a mandolin is very difficult to "read" as such, but the words are not difficult to "read" and the treble clef is clear and intact. Cubism stops short of going completely abstract, thus, because Picasso refuses to choose sides--abstraction over representation. He refuses to privilege the one over the other, and chooses instead to work both, following the forking paths of Cubism in accordance with the logic of multiple perspectives, which leads him to the principle of multiple styles. Thus, the figurative and the abstract co-exist on the same flat canvas surface! Picasso here is synthesizing--or bringing together--diverging codes and styles of art as he creates a new pictorial reality that is truly pluralistic rather than strictly adhering to only one dimension (whether it be the mimetic or the abstract). The addition of words, and then of collage elements (actual bits of external reality) move us from Analytic to Synthetic Cubism at this crucial turning point of 1911-12.style: Picasso combines "passage" and the contradictory, allover flicker of light and shadow, plus the grid, with readable words and an intact treble clef that anchor us back to external reality through these representational reference points. He not only shatters one-point perspective into multiple, shifting frames of reference, but he shatters the unity of style into multiple, shifting codes--from the abstract to the representational. He, thus, keeps us "reading" passages between reality and abstraction rather than pushing Cubism all the way in one direction to non-objectivity.expand: this is the transitional shift between Analytic and Synthetic Cubism (1911-12) in which subject matter is re-introduced through representational clues, such as text and trompe-l'oeil moments. The next step is to actually introduce bits of external reality into the picture by turning to "collage."

artist: Picasso, Pablotitle: Les Demoiselles d'Avignon

Pre-WWImovement: Picasso: Proto-Cubism (1906-1907)subject: 5 prostitutes in a brothel fix their gaze outward, directly at us in this confrontational painting, which arguably is the key turning point of the first half of 20th c. art. Instead of vision turned inward, we see everything coming forward to the surface with a new boldness. The picture started out as a traditional allegory on the vices and virtues, but it does not end there. Picasso deconstructs allegory by leaving out the traditional storyline and symbols. In allegory, one is supposed to read through the picture to the underlying moral, but there is no way to read through the Demoiselles. There is no way to get past that surface! These figures are not nudes in the traditional sense. They are naked, implying a raw sexuality that cannot be sugarcoated. The turn of the century depiction of the femme fatale climaxes here in these women who have been called a "species of bitch goddess." They parody some of the traditional poses of the Academy, but the figure seated on the right also seems to be "mooning" that academic tradition. It is almost as if Picasso had committed pictorial rape, assaulting the conventional concepts of Western Art: Beauty, Grace, Harmony, and Unity. To take on the Western tradition, Picasso has turned to counter-cultural traditions: to Iberian sculpture (the "primitive" sculpture of the ancient Spanish peninsula) in the almond-shaped eyes and scroll-like ears of the figures on the left, and to African sculpture and masks for the figures on the right (he would have seen such art in the Trocadero Museum, a collection of ethnographic arts still considered to be "curiosities" at the time). So-called "primitive" art supplied him with a counter-cultural aesthetic to hold up against the Western emphasis on Mimesis. African art does not try to mirror nature, instead, it diagrams or maps nature onto a different, more schematic, abstract plane. He takes on Western one-point illusionistic perspective, as well, shattering it into multiple perspectives. In many ways, this painting is the birth of Cubism (though the lessons of Cezanne still have to be added to the mix).style: fragmentation of the body, of space, and of any unity of style. Picasso does not model any figure in the round. The women's bodies are broken into faceted planes in space. They are all elbows and sharp angles. These women "prick" you if you get too close! The body is dismantled or deconstructed into bits and pieces. Space is both exploded and imploded as Picasso shatters one-point perspective and its mimetic illusions. There is no way to separate figure from ground, as Picasso denies plasticity in the end to affirm the flat picture plane. Stylistic unity is also shattered into multiple perspectives: from the Iberian influences on the left to the African influences on the right and the subtext of classical poses that reference Western art and the Academy. Picasso never finished the painting. He leaves all its internal tensions unresolved and exposed. Cubism, a radical redefining of how to represent space, mass, and form on a flat canvas surface, will grown out of all those tensions that keep the Demoiselles so dangerous.expand: the Demoiselles represents a major turning point away from Mimesis and towards abstraction. When Picasso breaks the neck of the seated figure on the right, he is breaking the tradition of Mimesis that had governed art since the Renaissance. We see her head-on and from the rear simultaneously! And when he paints her face with the schematized, highly abstracted and flattened features of an African mask, he is subverting the very foundation of the Western aesthetic. In terms of its almost expressionistic intensity and aggressive confrontation, the Demoiselles does not exhibit the disciplined study of space and form that characterizes the Cubist project that will follow, but in terms of its play of multiple perspectives, affirmation of the flat picture plane, and anti-mimetic attitude, it builds the foundation out of which Cubism will develop. Most subsequent modern "isms"--from German Expressionism to Italian Futurism--will be movements that splinter off from Cubism and, thus, are traceable back to this seminal painting. Coming to terms with early Modernism means quite simply confronting the Demoiselles.

artist: Picasso, Pablotitle: Guitar, Sheet Music, and Wine Glass

Pre-WWImovement: Picasso: Synthetic Cubism (1912-1921)subject: subject matter is re-introduced when Picasso shifts from Analytic to Synthetic Cubism in 1911-12 by turning to "collage." Here he incorporates actual fragments of external reality into the picture, using real wallpaper, an actual fragment of sheet music, and a ripped out portion of a page from the newspaper. Along with these bits of the "real," he includes a drawing of a flattened, cubist glass seen from multiple perspectives, some large facets or planes, and a simulation of wood grain paper to signify the wood guitar. The picture becomes a combination of styles or codes, from the abstract to the representational. No code or style has more truth-value than any other. They are all part of the languages of art. He synthesizes plural styles to build a new pictorial reality, rather than a reality completely dependent on nature as its model. Synthetic Cubism is once again, thus, a reality relative to shifting frames of reference.style: Picasso combines fragments of the "real" with cubist, abstracted fragments, and word fragments: "Jou," which says nothing in itself, but which is a fragment of various words with multiple meanings--"jour" (day), "journal" (newspaper), "jou-jou" (child's play toy). Taking these multiple fragments, he builds up a new synthesis that is pluralistic rather than one-dimensional. He uses "collage" (which means two people living together out of wedlock in French slang) to keep us questioning reality (and art's reality) by continually shifting our frame of reference. He, thus, keeps us "reading" passages between reality and abstraction rather than pushing Cubism all the way in one direction to non-objectivity.expand: collage is the turning point between Analytic and Synthetic Cubism (1911-12) in which subject matter is re-introduced through actual fragments of the "real." Color is also re-introduced in the process, and individual differences between Picasso and Braque start to show up in ways they did not during the Analytic Cubist period. If Analytical Cubism is basically "de-constructive," then Synthetic Cubism is "re-constructive."

artist: Braque, Georgestitle: The Clarinet

Pre-WWImovement: Synthetic Cubismsubject: throughout the period of Analytic Cubism, it was extremely difficult to tell Braque's work from Picasso's. At times they did not even sign their works. With Cubism they knew they were caught up in a project bigger than any one person's invention. Cubism is, after all, more than a style. It is a philosophy that addresses a changing conception of space and time and redefines truth as being relative to one's frame of reference. In 1911-12, when Analytic Cubism shifts to Synthetic Cubism due to the development of collage, Braque's work starts to separate from Picasso's to a greater extent. In this still life with a clarinet, Braque introduces collage through the inclusion of the newspaper fragment that contains the word "echo." That word suggests a sound that is in keeping with the theme of music expressed by the clarinet. There is an elegance of design to Braque's collage that differs from Picasso's emphasis on wit and puns at this time. Braque's work almost conveys a classical serenity, while Picasso's collages often are more playful and willfully subversive, at times even crude (compare the heavy hemp rope Picasso hangs around "Still Life with Chair Caning," the very first collage, to the more balanced design Braque creates here).style: Braque combines fragments of the "real"--the newspaper--with cubist, abstracted fragments. He includes carefully drawn elements with broad blocks of black cut paper. The image ends up a synthesis of diverging styles, providing another good example of how Synthetic Cubism builds up a new pictorial reality that is pluralistic rather than privileging any one style, representational or abstract.expand: collage is the turning point between Analytic and Synthetic Cubism (1911-12) in which subject matter is re-introduced through actual fragments of the "real." Color is also re-introduced in the process, and individual differences between Picasso and Braque start to show up in ways they did not during the Analytic Cubist period. If Analytical Cubism is basically "de-constructive," then Synthetic Cubism is "re-constructive."

artist: Kirchner, Ernst Ludwig title: Conflict (Self-portrait as Peter Schlemihl)

Psychological crisis of pre-war Germany; losing one's psychic equilibrium WWI Periodmovement: German Expressionismsubject: a self-portrait of the artist after he had been called up to military duty, and after he suffered his nervous breakdown at the warfront. He now is back in Berlin awaiting recall. Kirchner carves and gouges his inner conflict here in a woodcut that takes on a violent edge in the tensions it creates between man and woman, Eros and Thanatos, love and death. In the foreground we see Kirchner's own face, turned into a mask that expresses a severe degree of psychic disequilibrium. Directly behind him is a naked woman clutching at her wounded breast where a trail of red blood streams out. Her skeletal arm hangs over the artist's shoulder. A scene of "lustmord" (sex murder) seems to be played out here. Perhaps it is a crime of passion, or a crime acted out only in one's mind. Either way, the effect is chilling and speaks of Kirchner's fear of losing one's intrinsic individuality, one's soul. The woodcut is subtitled with a reference to Peter Schlemihl, the man who according to legend sold his shadow to join in with the crowd. In Kirchner's own words, "by selling his intrinsic individuality, he thereby loses his psychic equilibrium" (his inner, emotional balance).style: Kirchner makes use of the jagged, Gothic edge and a sharpening rather than leveling aesthetic that cuts like a knife, quite literally in this woodcut. The Die Brucke artists often turned to the woodcut, which they worked in a highly expressive way through painfully gouged lines and, at times, deliberately crude cuts that again reject Renaissance idealism (Durer) and modern technologies to recover a more Gothic sensibility. Curves are eliminated by sharply acute angles and slashing diagonal lines. The rhythm is not one that flows, but one that corners you at every turn. An edgy, congested scene that puts you on emotional edge. The space splinters, zigzags, and implodes on the individual. Evidence of a Cubist fracture, but with an emotional edge.expand: Germany in the years leading up to WWI where "joie de vivre" (joy of life) was not the atmosphere. Kirchner expresses the growing spiritual crisis of Germany, which moved abruptly from an agricultural society (close to nature) to a technological society (factories and German efficiency) due to the Industrial Revolution. German Expressionist artists picked up on the apocalypse to come in the tense years leading up to war (1910-1914). The theme that they continually express is angst: an alienated anxiety. They reject the post-Renaissance, modern industrial world and turn to an earlier, more mystical time--the Middle Ages--in order to recover the "Gothic soul." Their works pick up on the jagged edge and pointed arches of the Gothic style as they seek a language to express their inner state of alienation and anxiety. It is an art of sharpening rather than leveling tensions. What they want to do is give visual form to inner life. They are, thus, against Mimesis. The art is highly subjective and they do not hesitate to distort in order to express felt reality. Munch and Van Gogh are among their heroes. Art for the German Expressionists is an art born out of inner necessity. There are two groups of German Expressionists: Die Brucke (the bridge) and Der Blaue Rieter (the Blue Rider). Kirchner belongs to Die Brucke, which is an art of clashing tensions, just as the German word itself sounds, with its harsh, clashing consonants. Kirchner would be called up to military duty in 1914 when war breaks out. Soon after he suffers a nervous breakdown. After the war he tries to heal his exhausted nerves by painting "healthy" subjects. When Hitler comes to power, Kirchner becomes one of the "stars" of the Degenerate Art show of 1937. Kirchner ends up committing suicide in 1938, one year later.

artist: Nolde, Emiltitle: Crucifixion

Search for the Gothic soul: they rejected the post-Renaissance modern world as soulless, materialistic German Expressionism subject: the crucifixion, but not from the conventional religious point of view. Nolde paints this passion scene passionately and subjectively, from inside out. Bodies are contorted and distorted for emotional expression so you feel the scene in your gut with a direct sensory charge. Influenced by the German late Gothic painter, Grunewald, and his Isenheim Altarpiece of 1515, which also stressed the pained, suffering body of Christ rather than an idealized, Italian High Renaissance image of Christ triumphant, even on the cross. The Expressionists reject that Renaissance model for the more expressive, German version of the "Gothic soul" evident in Grunewald.style: Nolde rejects Renaissance illusionistic one-point perspective for a space that is more disjointed and direct in its surface-orientation. He sharpens rather than levels tensions through his jagged edges and clashing colors, playing the complements of red and green against each other. Figures are crude and angular rather than idealized, adding to the overall edginess of the scene. Nolde expresses here an "anti-Renaissance ideal." It is Christ's suffering that he focuses on and the Gothic Dark Ages that he turns to in order to express the message of spiritual crisis in his own present-day Germany.expand: Germany in the years leading up to WWI where "joie de vivre" (joy of life) was not the atmosphere. Nolde expresses the growing spiritual crisis of Germany, which moved abruptly from an agricultural society (close to nature) to a technological society (factories and German efficiency) due to the Industrial Revolution. German Expressionist artists picked up on the apocalypse to come in the tense years leading up to war (1910-1914). The theme that they continually express is angst: an alienated anxiety. They reject the post-Renaissance, modern industrial world and turn to an earlier, more mystical time--the Middle Ages--in order to recover the "Gothic soul." Their works pick up on the jagged edge and pointed arches of the Gothic style as they seek a language to express their inner state of alienation and anxiety. It is an art of sharpening rather than leveling tensions. What they want to do is give visual form to inner life. They are, thus, against Mimesis. The art is highly subjective and they do not hesitate to distort in order to express felt reality. Munch and Van Gogh are among their heroes. Art for the German Expressionists is an art born out of inner necessity. There are two groups of German Expressionists: Die Brucke (the bridge) and Der Blaue Rieter (the Blue Rider). Nolde belongs to Die Brucke, which is an art of clashing tensions, just as the German word itself sounds, with its harsh, clashing consonants. Nolde is, in many ways, the archetype of the Expressionist painter in style and emotional impulse. Paul Klee called him the "Demon of the Lower Depths." Nolde also believed in the doctrine of "Blut und Boden" (Blood and Soil), which held that a people's character is intrinsically embodied in the place of their origin. Your blood runs through the soil. This "Volk" philosophy that stems from the peasants' connection to nature will eventually evolve into the Nazi theory of racial superiority, and it accounts for why Nolde will later volunteer his efforts to Hitler's cause. Hitler, of course, considered this avant-garde artist to be degenerate and promptly forbade him to paint. The modern artist, it seems, was misunderstood by everyone, from the Academy to Hitler.

artist: Picasso, Pablotitle: Portrait of Gertrude Stein

Spanishcontext: The Turn of the Century. She is neither old nor young, sexual nor submissive - her stone face makes her something new on Earth. She is in command of her identity."

Beardsley, Aubreytitle, Salome with the Head of John the Baptist 1893

Stylized flower present. Salome beheading John Bapstist after a kiss looking directly in the eye. Inspired by japanese woodcuts. male-lust, desire of dominance, head dripping blood flower symbolizing purity. 1) Unification of art & life ("live your life like a work of art") 2) Beauty is the artist's only master (quest for an unusual, irregular, and unique beauty, not one that conforms to societal norms) 3) No need for a moral 4) Style becomes content (line for line's sake; beginnings of formalism, art about art) 5) Extreme individualism and style vs. the communal spirit or the soc

Edvard Munch, Madonna, 1895.

The Turn of the Century. Symbolism. The woman has her hair let down and her body laid bare, strong expressions of sexuality and death (the unborn fetus in the lower left corner). Fears of a breakdown on the homefront in terms of the family unit lead to fears of women's newfound freedom and especially fears of an unleashed female sexuality. The femme fatale (fatal woman) reflects those cultural fears. This Madonna is a fully sexualized woman--once again an example of nature eroticized rather than spiritualized. Age of Freud and the discovery of the unconscious and the sexual drives that lurk in all of us

Edvard munch, The death chamber, 1893

The Turn of the Century. Symbolism. death, expressed through the grieving family. We do not see the face of the dying girl who is seated in the chair. Instead we look into the faces of those who will survive her. Pale, broken. The image is very silent, with death expressed as an emotional void--the presence of an absence. The scene as felt more than seen with the outward eye. pictures from the reverse side of the eye

artist: Gaudi, Antonititle: Church of Sagrada Familia. Barcelona

The Turn of the Centurymovement: Art Nouveau

artist: Gaudi, Antonititle: Guell Park. Barcelona

The Turn of the Centurymovement: Art Nouveau

artist: Gaudi, Antonititle: Casa Mila Apartment House, floorplan. Barcelona

The Turn of the Centurymovement: Art Nouveau.

artist: Tiffany. Louis Comforttitle: Table Lamp

The Turn of the Centurymovement: Art Nouveau. Useful art. Beautiful is the good.

artist: Picasso, Pablotitle: First Communion

The Turn of the Centurymovement: Picasso: Early Work (1894-1900)subject: a traditional theme--a young girl's first communion--but it is really a painting to show off what all the young artist, Picasso, can do. The young girl is dressed completely in white to show how well Picasso can depict whites on white. The lighting is candlelight, to show how well he can handle darkness and illumination. Materials are rendered distinctly to show how well he can simulate textures. The model for the bearded man in the painting was none other than the artist's father, who most likely set the theme and style, which are highly conventional. A competent job considering the artist was only 15 years old.style: optical reality--rendering materials, light, and figures as accurately as possible. Academic sense of finish to the polished surface. Mimetic in approach, with no deliberate distortions.expand: an example of Picasso as a child prodigy. Competent, but not ground breaking. Picasso has not been to Paris yet, nor is he aware of the avant-garde.

artist: Picasso, Pablotitle: Study of a Torso, after a Plaster Cast

The Turn of the Centurymovement: Picasso: Early Work (1894-1900)subject: early academic drawing done after a plaster cast of a classical Greek sculpture from antiquity. Done as part of his application to the Barcelona School of Fine Arts, Picasso was 13 or 14 at the time and very much under the guidance of his father.style: carefully modeled figure study using chiaroscuro shadows and highlights to render a volumetric plasticity. Traditional and academic in style.expand: an example of Picasso as a child prodigy, but also a telling example of how well he could draw the figure from an academic standpoint. If he deviates from that standard in the future, it is because he chooses an alternative aesthetic. Picasso has not yet been to Paris or exposed to modern art.

artist: Picasso, Pablotitle: La Vie (Life)

The Turn of the Centurymovement: Picasso: The Blue Period (1901-1904)subject: La Vie--life--only it looks like a painting about death or impasse. Inspired by Picasso's close friend's suicide, the death of Casagemas, which happened in 1901 at the start of the Blue Period. Here Picasso poses philosophical questions about the meaning of life, and by implication, the meaning of death. He leaves us with more questions than answers in the end. Without a clear cut moral, the image becomes the death of allegory. At center is Casagemas's hand pointing in the void, where nothing and no one points back. The heart of every Blue Period painting is marked by precisely this kind of gap, breach, or rupture that cannot be bridged. Modern alienation as a tragic condition. In the background we can make out two images painted on the wall: one of a couple, where the male is comforted by the female, and the other of a figure so curled up in a fetal position that we cannot make out its gender--the universal soul. The mood is one of mystery and melancholy, the blues. Body language turns inward, each figure in his or her own private zip code. No eyes meet. Theme of loss, longing, and loneliness. The picture's inscrutability is precisely its power in the end.style: predominantly blue palette. Color no longer descriptive or naturalistic but chosen instead to set the mood. Blue is an otherworldly color, a cool color that retreats with a haunting, enigmatic sense of mysteries that are unfathomable. Picasso is no longer being faithful to optical reality. This is a "picture from the reverse side of the eye," to quote Munch. An image of inner vision, pointing toward psychological depths rather than surface appearances. No longer interested in deep, perspectival space. He cuts off deep space by signing his name in the upper left corner, right under the threshold that traditionally led back into space. There is no going backwards here. Picasso places us on the threshold of abstraction when he undermines the traditional allegory in this painting that leaves us pointing in the void.expand: Picasso's early Blue Period, colored by his first experience with a friend's death (the suicide of Casagemas). Also expresses a turn of the century anxiety and state of modern alienation. The mystery, anti-naturalism, and deliberate ambiguities of these early works suggest that the Blue Period is Picasso's version of Symbolism. Painting things that cannot be put into words. Picasso's favorite book at this time was Nietzsche's "The Birth of Tragedy."

artist: Picasso, Pablotitle: The Tragedy

The Turn of the Centurymovement: Picasso: The Blue Period (1901-1904)subject: a gap, breach, or rupture that cannot be bridged. Modern alienation as a tragic condition. The mood is one of mystery and melancholy. The blues. Body language turns inward, each figure in his or her own private zip code. The young boy gestures outwardly, but cannot close the gap. No eyes meet. Everything points inward rather than outward, the inscape. Minimal setting. The picture is not set in a particular place and time. It could be everywhere and nowhere. An allegorical picture of the human condition, which suggests mystery more than a clear cut moral. The figure grouping at the edge of the sea suggests society's outcasts, marginal figures who serve as a metaphor for the modern artist no longer under the patronage of the king or the church. Modernity as a condition of homelessness, rootlessness. Theme of loss, longing, and loneliness.style: predominantly blue palette. Color no longer descriptive or naturalistic but chosen instead to set the mood. Blue is an otherworldly color, a cool color that retreats with a haunting, enigmatic sense of mysteries that are unfathomable. Picasso is no longer being faithful to optical reality. This is a "picture from the reverse side of the eye," to quote Munch. An image of inner vision, pointing toward psychological depths rather than surface appearances. No longer interested in deep, perspectival space. The image flattens and the figures are distorted for emotional expression. The depth is one of mood more than space. Picasso suggests more than he spells out. Color, form, and figure type corresponding to an inner state of feeling. Highly subjective rather than objective.expand: Picasso's early Blue Period, colored by his first experience with a friend's death (the suicide of Casagemas). Also expresses a turn of the century anxiety and state of modern alienation. The mystery, anti-naturalism, and deliberate ambiguities of these early works suggest that the Blue Period is Picasso's version of Symbolism. Painting things that cannot be put into words. Kafka's "The Hunger Artist," who starves because he cannot find the right food to fill his soul, finds an echo here. Picasso's favorite book at this time was Nietzsche's "The Birth of Tragedy."

artist: Picasso, Pablotitle: The Frugal Repast

The Turn of the Centurymovement: Picasso: The Blue Period (1901-1904)subject: modern alienation as a tragic condition. The mood is one of mystery and melancholy. The blues, even though this is a black and white etching. Even though coupled, the figures still seem alone, each figure in his or her own private zip code. No eyes meet. Minimal setting, frugal meal. The picture is not a specific portrait set in a particular place and time. It could be everywhere and nowhere. An allegorical picture of the human condition, which suggests mystery more than a clear cut moral. The figures are society's outcasts, marginal figures who serve as a metaphor for the modern artist no longer under the patronage of the king or the church. Modernity as a condition of homelessness, rootlessness. Theme of loss, longing, and loneliness.style: Picasso is willfully distorts his figures for added emotional expression. Elongated and painfully thin, this couple seems to suffer from extreme poverty or anorexia nervosa. Picasso uses the body as a metaphor for an otherworldly, out of body, spiritual or metaphysical dimension. El Greco's elongated, spiritual figures were Picasso's source of inspiration here. Form and figure type correspond to an inner state of feeling. Highly subjective rather than objective.expand: part of Picasso's early Blue Period, colored by his first experience with a friend's death (the suicide of Casagemas). Also expresses a turn of the century anxiety and state of modern alienation. The mystery, anti-naturalism, and deliberate ambiguities of these early works suggest that the Blue Period is Picasso's version of Symbolism. Kafka's "The Hunger Artist," who starves because he cannot find the right food to fill his soul, is a particularly fitting parallel to this image.

artist: Picasso, Pablotitle: The Absinthe Drinker

The Turn of the Centurymovement: Picasso: The Blue Period (1901-1904)subject: vision turned inward. The figure's eye is closed as if in sleep or in a dream. The mood is one of mystery and melancholy. The blues. The body is shrouded and curled up almost in a fetal position. Everything points inward rather than outward, the inscape. She sits in a cafe with minimal trappings, only a glass of absinthe in front of her. The picture is not a specific portrait set in a particular place and time. It could be everywhere and nowhere. An allegorical picture of the human soul, which suggests mystery more than a clear cut moral. She is one of society's outcasts, a marginal figure who serves as a metaphor for the modern artist no longer under the patronage of the king or the church. Modernity as a condition of homelessness, rootlessness. Theme of loss, longing, and loneliness. Modern alienation.style: predominantly blue palette. Color no longer descriptive or naturalistic but chosen instead to set the mood. Blue is an otherworldly color, a cool color that retreats with a haunting, enigmatic sense of mysteries that are unfathomable. Picasso is no longer being faithful to optical reality. This is a "picture from the reverse side of the eye," to quote Munch. An image of inner vision, pointing toward psychological depths rather than surface appearances. No longer interested in deep, perspectival space. The image flattens and the figure is distorted for emotional expression. The depth is one of mood more than space. Picasso suggests more than he spells out. Color, form, and figure type corresponding to an inner state of feeling. Highly subjective rather than objective.expand: Picasso's early Blue Period, colored by his first experience with a friend's death (the suicide of Casagemas). Also expresses a turn of the century anxiety and state of modern alienation. The mystery, anti-naturalism, and deliberate ambiguities of these early works suggest that the Blue Period is Picasso's version of Symbolism. Kafka's "The Hunger Artist," who starves because he cannot find the right food to fill his soul, finds an echo here.

artist: Picasso, Pablotitle: The Old Guitarist

The Turn of the Centurymovement: Picasso: The Blue Period (1901-1904)subject: vision turned inward. The guitarist's eye is closed as if in sleep or in a dream. Picasso plays on the theme of the blind poet here, suggesting the special insight that comes only when we close our outer eye. The mood is one of mystery and melancholy. The blues. The body is painfully distorted so we respond empathetically and kinaesthetically. Everything points inward rather than outward,the inscape. Minimal trappings. The picture is not a specific portrait set in a particular place and time. It could be everywhere and nowhere. An allegorical picture of the human soul, which suggests mystery more than a clear cut moral. The old guitarist is one of society's outcasts, a marginal figure who serves as a metaphor for the modern artist no longer under the patronage of the king or the church. Modernity as a condition of homelessness, rootlessness. Theme of loss, longing, and loneliness, modern alienation.style: predominantly blue palette. Color no longer descriptive or naturalistic but chosen instead to set the mood. Blue is an otherworldly color, a cool color that retreats with a haunting, enigmatic sense of mysteries that are unfathomable. Picasso is no longer being faithful to optical reality. This is a "picture from the reverse side of the eye," to quote Munch. An image of inner vision, pointing toward psychological depths rather than surface appearances. No longer interested in deep, perspectival space. The depth is one of mood more than space. The image flattens and the figure is distorted and elongated for emotional expression. Picasso wrenches the figure's shoulder blade almost out of its socket so we feel the pain. Using the body as a metaphor for an otherworldly, out of body, spiritual or metaphysical dimension. El Greco's elongated, spiritual figures were Picasso's source of inspiration. Color, form, and figure type corresponding to an inner state of feeling. Highly subjective rather than objective.expand: Picasso's early Blue Period, colored by his first experience with a friend's death (the suicide of Casagemas). Also expresses a turn of the century anxiety and state of modern alienation. The mystery, anti-naturalism, and deliberate ambiguities of these early works suggest that the Blue Period is Picasso's version of Symbolism. Kafka's "The Hunger Artist," who starves because he cannot find the right food to fill his soul, finds an echo here. Picasso's favorite book at this time was Nietzsche's "The Birth of Tragedy."

artist: Picasso, Pablotitle: Family of Saltimbanques

The Turn of the Centurymovement: Picasso: The Rose Period (1905-1906)subject: troupe of saltimbanques (wandering circus performers) who serve as a metaphor for the rootlessness of the modern artist no longer working under the patronage of the king or the church. Modernity as a condition of homelessness and alienation. Still, this group does start to function as a group or family unit. The figures are actually loosely based on Picasso and his friends: Picasso as Harlequin, wearing the patchwork suit of diamonds, Apollinaire, the poet and art critic (the first one to coin the term "surrealism"), poets Andre Salmon and Max Jacob as the two small boys. The female seated off to the side on the right is Fernande, Picasso's mistress, and the young girl holding the Harlequin figure's hand is an orphan child that Picasso and Fernande had adopted, and then returned. Initially, Picasso had planned to include a horse race in the upper right, but he omits it in the end, which makes the image much less a narrative and much more abstract. That empty space registers an absence that continues the theme of the Blue Period: loss, longing, and loneliness, or alienation in the void.style: the figures are lighter, more delicate and tender than the painfully distorted figures of the Blue Period. Actual portraits replace the earlier more universal archetypes of the Blue Period and figures now touch, but the spatial setting is still vacant and not particularized, which has the effect of keeping the figures marginalized. Though the palette has lightened up to warmer pinks and roses, the mood is still melancholy and bittersweet.expand: the theme of the saltimbanque has a long tradition in French art and often the clown or performer served as a metaphor for the artist (see Watteau and Daumier, for examples). The saltimbanques grew out of the Italian Commedia delle Arte, an improvisational theatre group featuring Pierrot (the sad clown), Columbine (the woman he loved), and Harlequin (the trickster). Picasso's Rose Period lasts only one year--1905--following after the Blue Period. The tone and mood lighten up a bit here as Picasso himself no longer feels so alienated in Paris--he now has a mistress and a family of sorts, since he is hanging out at the circus, making friends with the performers and other artists.

Edvard Munch, The Dance of Life, 1900

The turn of the century. Symbolism. Different stages of love. sexualization of nature (moon) the Innocent to left in white dress. the love in middle. the widow to the right. joy to the left of widow.

Edvard Munch, Puberty, 1894

The turn of the century. Symbolism. girl on the verge of becoming a woman. Sits on the edge of her bed and stares straight forward, but seems to be looking inward.Dark shadow hovering at her side is a reference to her first menstrual period. On a larger level, this picture of "puberty" expresses how each human being is part of the bigger drama of nature and sexuality. Nature not spiritualized like in the scream, erotisized instead. anti-naturalism in its stylization and abstracted space. Age of Darwinism. Psychological image of alienation, the expressionist path to the interior.

Odilon Redon, The Origin of Vision Begins in the Flower 1883

The turn of the century. Symbolism. world of physical nature coupled with the 20th c. world of the psyche expressed through this strange hybrid flower with a human eye as its bloom. Focus is on vision, not of the outer eye so much as the inner eye, the disembodied eye. a shadowy world, deliberately vague and mysterious rather than defined. This is no botanically correct flower like you would find in a nature guidebook. This is pure invention from the imagination. Working chiaroscuro rather than color. unfolding the mind. Proto - Surrealism

Odilon Redon, The Eye Like a Strange Balloon Mounts toward Infinity, 1882. Lithograph.

Turn of the century symbolism. this strange hybrid balloon-eye leaving material reality behind. Focus is on vision, not of the outer eye so much as the inner eye, the disembodied eye, transcendence of the physical world. Compilation of imaginary vs reality.

Odilon Redon, The Swamp flower

Turn of the century symbolism. world of physical nature coupled with the 20th c. world of the psyche expressed through this strange hybrid flower with a human face as its bloom. Focus is on vision, not of the outer eye so much as the inner eye, the disembodied eye. In entrance to a dreamscape. Sad Human face. Inventing through imagining. Proto - Surrealism

odilon redon, silence 1911

Turn of the century. symbolism. Redon is now working with color, but he keeps it deliberately vague and mysterious rather than defined, just as he did in his lithographs. The space suggests a mystery rather than anything measurable. Not of this world. A "picture from the reverse side of the eye," to quote Munch.

artist: Schiele, Egontitle: Portrait of Friedericke Maria Beer

Viennese Expressionismsubject: a portrait of the same woman who would later sit for Klimt. Schiele's portrayal is not the beautiful facade so much as an image of a figure lost in the void. The Art Nouveau surface ornamentation loses its decorative overlay as Schiele shifts attention to the psyche. No frame of reference except self. For Schiele, there is nothing but the self (solipsism). Even when he paints someone else, he is in effect painting a self-portrait.style: the flowing, linear rhythms of Art Nouveau go angular and quirky here. Schiele's work is more edgy than sensual. There is no background, only the self as Klimt's horror vacuii gives way to the void.expand: Vienna, the city of Freud, becomes the backdrop for the transition from Klimt's elaborate surfaces to Schiele's uncovering of the self. In the move from facade to psyche, we shift from Art Nouveau to Expressionism. The sons against the fathers. Expressionist rejection of the facade. Schiele paints from inside out.

artist: Schiele, Egontitle: Self-Portrait I

Viennese Expressionismsubject: self-portrait stripped bare, the naked self. Peeling off the Art Nouveau decorative overlay. From facade to psyche. Art as painfully autobiographical and confessional. Revealing the psyche means exposing the body. Overbearing physical presence of the body.style: the Art Nouveau decorative line goes kinky and angular. The manifest (surface) gives way to the latent (unconscious desires and anxieties). The naked body is not idealized. No setting or locale. The self in the void.expand: Vienna, the city of Freud, becomes the backdrop for the transition from Klimt's elaborate surfaces to Schiele's uncovering of the self. In the move from facade to psyche, we shift from Art Nouveau to Expressionism. The sons against the fathers. Expressionist rejection of the facade. Schiele paints from inside out. What emerges is the psychological portrait.

odilon redon, the dream is consummated in death 1887

a coupling of dreams and death, a descent into one's unconscious. The path to the interior. Focus is on vision, not of the outer eye so much as the inner eye.

artist: Braque, Georgestitle: Houses at L'Estaque / Violin and Palette

analytical cubism

artist: Braque, Georgestitle: The Portuguese

analytical cubism

artist: Braque, Georgestitle: The Viaduct at L'Estaque / The Batherdate: 1907

analytical cubism

artist: Nolde, Emiltitle: The Prophet

anti- rational; anti- bourgeois; anti- decorative; anti- naturalism

artist: Matisse, Henrititle: The Purple Robe

armchair aesthetic. Fauvismsubject: as is often the case in his work, Matisse here links the woman with flowers and fruits to emphasize the theme of fertility. That theme is not only played out in his subject matter, but also in his compositional design, which seems to turn on a spiraling arabesque at center that animates the entire surface with a lively rhythm and allover energy. The seated woman may rest head on hand in the pose of Durer's "Melancholia," but there is nothing melancholy or depressing about this scene. Matisse's "easy armchair aesthetic" seems the antidote to Picasso's Blue Period "hunger artists." Matisse's women are well fed, voluptuous, and always well dressed (when dressed) and accessorized (even when not dressed).style: Matisse expresses his "joy of life" theme through the direct sensory stimulus of heightened color, decorative patterns, and linear rhythms. His art is highly design-conscious and surface-oriented. Rather than working from tensions, he struggles to harmonize and balance all oppositions, though he never wants you to be able to see the struggle in the final piece, that would destroy the "easy armchair aesthetic." Here he balances straight lines (stripes) with curvilinear rhythms, the geometric with the organic, plain areas with patterned passages, repose with activity, warm tones with cool colors, and the 3-D reality of the seated woman and the table at her side with the 2-D surface plane.expand: this work comes long after the Fauves held that first scandalous exhibition in Paris in the fall of 1905, but Matisse is still true to "the starting point of Fauvism: the courage to return to the purity of means." He believes in "pure painting" and "joie de vivre" (the joy of life theme) his whole life. For Matisse, color must have its own autonomy or independence from nature and expression should be direct in terms of pure visual sensation. What is often most expressive is not the thing portrayed so much as the organization of the painted surface itself. For Matisse, a painting was a reality of lines, shapes, and colors before it was a picture of nameable objects. These are the ideas that underlie the doctrine of "pure painting."

artist: Matisse, Henrititle: The Dance

colors sing. lines dance.

artist: Marc, Franztitle: Stables

cubism style. Rather than portraying the natural world from the point of view of the individual animal, Marc now saw his subjects as part of a larger unified field and treated them in terms of the overall structure of the composition. In Stables, the images of horse and stables are almost indistinguishable. The artist arranged a group of five red, blue, and white horses within a framework of parallel and crossing diagonals. Massed on the picture plane, the horses are transformed into flat colored shapes. The curvilinear patterns of the animals' tails and the shifting planes of vivid, light-filled colors suggest the influence of the Futurists and Robert Delaunay, whom Marc had met during a trip to Paris in 1912.

artist: Matisse, Henrititle: Luxe, calme et volupte

fauvism. 3. pure visual sensation.

artist: Kollwitz, Kathetitle: Death Seizes a Woman

holding her baby as death approaches and attacks. scared, death is fusing and blending, no way to stop it

Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri detitle: Moulin Rouge 1895

makes an art out of the poster in this lithograph of a dance hall that is part of the demi-monde (the half-lit world of the Parisian nightlife). The scene is unnaturally lit through the highly abstract, artificial lights on the left, which signal a definite break with the plein-air (open air) painting of the Impressionists. The boldness of the flat surface design is effectively integrated with the 2-D text that accompanies it. The poetry of modern urban life in a newly industrialized world .style: highly design conscious. Works the flat surface with a boldness of design. Influenced greatly by Japanese woodcut prints in terms of the 2-D planar aspect, the absence of one-point perspective, the linear rhythms, expressive contours, use of color for flat pattern effect, and the simplification of natural forms for the sake of the overall pictorial design.

artist: Picasso, Pablotitle: Houses on the Hill, Horta de Ebro 1909

muted colors. Here Picasso has turned this view of a group of houses perched at the top of a hill into an agglomeration of geometrical forms, with all detailing such as windows, removed. The topography of the scene has also been freely rearranged to emphasize further that this landscape has been produced from many distinct viewpoints.

Edvard Munch, The Scream, 1893

symbolism Turn of the Century. Landscape. Nature sublime. Big wave.

Edvard Munch, Evening on Karl Johan Street, 1892

symbolism Turn of the Century. city street scene, no longer open air painting in sunlight. Figures turn their backs on nature to stare straight ahead like zombies. Faces become like masks. One figure stands off to the side, sometimes identified as the artist himself. Expression of alienation from the crowd. painted from "the reverse side of the eye." An inner vision. Anticipates Expressionism in its use of space to express alienation and a highly charged, emotional setting that is more a mindscape than a landscape.

artist: Picasso, Pablotitle: Still Life with Chair Caning

synthetic cubism. collage. "In the old days, picture went forward toward completion by stages. Every day brought something new. A picture used to be a sum of additions. In my case, a picture is a sum of destructions. I do a picture - then I destroy it

artist: Matisse, Henrititle: My Curves Are Not Mad

the art of painting carries its own symbolism; he is not afraid to be decorative. Fauvism. subject: the "Jazz" series of paper cut-outs is improvisational, like jazz music itself. They are among the best examples of Matisse's doctrine of "pure painting" since they can be read abstractly or representationally. Here we see squiggly forms that look both floral and like coral from the sea, but it seems most appropriate to read the work purely as abstract shapes and colors that are highly animated on a flat surface, where expression stems completely from "the purity of means."style: Matisse's trademark curvilinear, flowing rhythms animate the surface as does the brilliant play of colors that add to the allover energy. The joy of life theme is expressed here without any real subject matter or narrative to convey it. The colors and shapes suffice on their own to express Matisse's "easy armchair aesthetic." Highly design conscious and surface-oriented, these images seem to dance to a jazz beat through the color vibrations and linear rhythms.expand: these youthful-looking, highly energized works date from Matisse's late style, when he was suffering from crippling arthritis. As usual, he does not show any sign of struggle in these final images that synthesize all he has learned from a long career of "pure painting."

artist: Matisse, Henrititle: Le Luxe II

the start of fauvism. the courage to return to the purity of means. fresh. depth. using color over representational value.

Odilon redon, roger and angelica 1910

turn of the century symbolism.