Art History III: Fauvism to Modernism (Images)

Walter Gropius, Bauhaus (architecture)

Bauhaus Building German art school that combined crafts and the fine arts, and was famous for the approach to design that it publicized and taught. The German term Bauhaus—literally "construction house"—was understood as meaning "School of Building." It was founded with the idea of creating a "total" work of art in which all arts, including architecture, would eventually be brought together. The Bauhaus style later became one of the most influential currents in modern design, Modernist architecture and art, design and architectural education. The Bauhaus had a profound influence upon subsequent developments in art, architecture, graphic design, interior design, industrial design, and typography.

Leonora Carrington, Surrealism (oil on canvas)

Self-Portrait Sporting white jodhpurs and a wild mane of hair, Carrington is perched on the edge of a chair in this curious, dreamlike scene, with her hand outstretched toward the prancing hyena and her back to the tailless rocking horse flying behind her. The daughter of an English industrialist, Carrington spent her childhood on a country estate surrounded by animals and reading fairy tales and legends. She revisited these memories in her adulthood, creating paintings populated with real and imagined creatures. Here, the white horse, which Carrington used as her symbolic surrogate, gallops freely into the verdant landscape beyond the curtained window. She is wearing pants which is linked with the role of woman and their voice in the society trying to find independence and individuality.

Egon Schiele, Vienna Secessionists (gouache and pencil on paper)

Self-Portrait Nude The artist depicted himself in a eroticized in highly revealing poses—male self-portraits virtually unparalleled in the history of Western art. He created an intense and almost frightening vision of himself perhaps suggesting a sense of shame, and in a twisting pose indebted, as many writers have suggested, to the important influence of modern dance. He expresses his anxiety through line and contour, and flesh that appears abraded and subjected to harsh elements. Representation of human form in a different way. Honest work.

Aaron Douglas, American Modernism (oil on canvas)

Aspects of Negro Life The emerging of Jazz, also connected with the emancipation process, the end of the civil war, the KKK, capturing the movement, the energy, the new ideals. He wanted to show the power and the value of their heritage. Attention to the circular shapes and the background.

Grant Wood, Regionalism (oil on beaverboard)

American Gothic Arrangement of the composition probably influenced by photography posing subjects in front of their home. The window is another focal point in the composition the structure or architecture of the home is what connected with his titled as gothic but also it shows the duality or double of elements as the two figures. The expression of the figures, they have stoic expressions so they can connect with conservative figures. Realistic portray with exaggerate expressions. By that time it was a lot of problems with change or urban world and farm living style. He was from Iowa and here hi portray his home state.

Georgia O' Keefe, American Modernism (pastel on board)

An Orchid Abstract painting. Fascination with nature. Freud Interpretations where analyzed in the US her work was interpreted with this new ideals and visions and disconnected with her own interpretation. Creative impulse connected to a creative evolution, as the reality or true reality base on abstraction. The "real essence".

Salvador Dali, Surrealism (oil on canvas)

Birth of Liquid Desires "paranoid-critical" approach to art, which consisted in conveying his deepest psychological conflicts to the viewer in the hopes of eliciting an empathetic response. He embodied this theoretical approach in a fastidiously detailed painting style. Liquid is pouring from everything, and since the artist was so sex-obsessed we can guess what that may mean. A fusing of mother, father and brother are all blended and becoming "one". It was painted during a time when Dali felt tremendously rejected by his father and at the same time he hooked up with Gala. The painting pulls all these fears and feelings he experienced together in a "portrait" sort of way. The interpretation of the figures and forms still open. The background is a landscape without clear identification in its context because we cannot recognize where it is.

Pablo Picasso, Cubism (oil on canvas)

Bottle of Suze Key image of the late Synthetic Cubism. The artists synthesized separate elements from real life in their pictures to suggest objects and environments. Picasso used cut fragments of newsprint, wallpaper, and construction paper, as well as gouache and charcoal, to suggest a liquor bottle with a label and, on the left, a glass and an ashtray with cigarette and smoke. Serving as a formal element, the newsprint also suggests the popular Parisian café activity of reading the paper while smoking and drinking. The texts add a political and social dimension to the image: they juxtapose newspaper articles referring to horrific events from the First Balkan war with stories of Parisian frivolity. Along with the texts, the distorted, fragmented forms in this Cubist image allude to such conditions of modernity as the lack of coherent perspectives or meanings in a constantly changing world.

Joan Miro, Surrealism (oil on canvas)

Composition Miró pioneered a wandering linear style of Automatism—a method of "random" drawing that attempted to express the inner workings of the human psyche. Miró used color and form in a symbolic rather than literal manner, his intricate compositions combining abstract elements with recurring motifs like birds, eyes, and the moon. The painting has no recognizable context or subjects.

Piet Mondrian, De Stijl (oil on canvas)

Composition with Red, Blue, and Yellow Avoiding references to the real world, and using only the primary colors (red, blue, and yellow), the primary values (black, white, and grey), and the primary directions (horizontal and vertical), Piet Mondrian created abstract paintings through which he sought to reveal universal harmony and order. The movement tried to express an ideal of balance and harmony in both art and life. Pure abstract art becomes completely emancipated, free of naturalistic appearances. —Piet Mondrian. Mondrian believed his abstraction could serve as a universal pictorial language representing the dynamic, evolutionary forces that govern nature and human experience. In fact, he believed that abstraction provides a truer picture of reality than illusionistic depictions of objects in the visible world. Perhaps this is why Mondrian characterized his style as "abstract real" painting. Connection of art for him was thought pure simplicity of color and forms. The real process to experience art is abstraction and than means an equilibrium and balance created with color and shapes.

Hannah Hoch, Dadaism (collage)

Cut with the Kitchen Knife Appropriated and rearranged images and text from the mass media to critique the failings of the German Government. Also her own critique to male figure in Germany. Moreover, it connects the male figure with industrial items and the female figure with dance and beauty (gender roles critique)

Natalia Goncharova, Cubo-Futurism (oil on canvas)

Electric Light Style that blended features of the two European movements: fragmented forms fused with the representation of movement. Characterized by the breaking down of forms, the alteration of contours, the displacement or fusion of various viewpoints, the intersection of spatial planes, and the contrast of color and texture. Cubo-Futurist artists stressed the formal elements of their artwork, showing interest in the correlation of color, form, and line. Their focus sought to affirm the intrinsic value of painting as an art form, one not wholly dependent on a narrative. Shows artificial light, play with perspective. This painting is not from the Italian context, she copies basically the form but it shows how Italian futurism impact in other countries and artists.

Marcel Duchamp, Dadaism (readymade)

Fountain 'readymade', an ordinary manufactured object designated by the artist as a work of art (and, in Duchamp's case, interpreted in some way). Duchamp used "readymades," objects and turner them into art simply by altering their context. By incorporating objects of everyday life into art Dadaists embraced and critiqued the signs and symbols of modernity. Duchamp said he had chosen a urinal in part because he thought it had the least chance of being liked (although many at the time did find it aesthetically pleasing). He continued: 'I was drawing people's attention to the fact that art is a mirage. A mirage, exactly like an oasis appears in the desert. It is very beautiful until, of course, you are dying of thirst. But you don't die in the field of art. The mirage is solid.' Advocated for a philosophy of total freedom in art-making. Rejecting classical traditions. Disturbing the subject matter and asking questions about authority, the value of art, ownership. He wanted to bring to the museums those elements of modernism and industry.

Pablo Picasso, Surrealism (oil on canvas)

Guernica Picasso's most powerful political statement, painted as an immediate reaction to the Nazi's devastating casual bombing practice on the Basque town of Guernica during Spanish Civil War. Guernica shows the tragedies of war and the suffering it inflicts upon individuals, particularly innocent civilians. This work is seen as an amalgamation of pastoral and epic styles. The discarding of color (blue, black and white) intensifies the drama, producing a reportage quality as in a photographic record. Feelings of war and its consequences in terms of destruction and lost. Surrealist elements such as the light source.

Marcel Duchamp, Dadaism (pencil on postcard)

L.H.O.O.Q This Mona Lisa modification is an example of that, taking a pre-made work of art and adding alterations. This particular work was considered shock art, due to its mildly obscene title and comical modifications. Nobody in the past would think to alter Da Vinci's Mona Lisa, particularly in the manner Duchamp did. He drew a curled mustache and a go-tee on the woman's head, and gave it a raunchy title. Many coined this technique gender reversal, which Duchamp enjoyed doing. L.H.O.O.Q. falls under this category of shock art because it does just this to an audience trained to appreciate traditional works of art, it shocks them. Ideas of gender, he played with language, Bringing questions about reproduction and industrialization playing with humor and addressing questions about human obsession with icons.

Pablo Picasso, Primitivism (oil on canvas)

Les Demoiselles d' Avignon Picasso abandoned all known form and representation of traditional art. He used distortion of female's body and geometric forms in an innovative way, which challenge the expectation that paintings will offer idealized representations of female beauty. It also shows the influence of African art on Picasso. Picasso played with the figures with distortion and abstraction. The pictorial problems are related to how he change the perspective.

Emil Nolde, German Expressionism (oil on canvas)

Masks He attempted to convey subjective and emotional content in his paintings through intense subject matter, thick brushwork, and bold color. Nolde intended for this painting of masks and a shrunken head to be macabre and frightening. Evaluation of African masks, use of bright colors of the Fauvist. He tries to express nature of the face. Inspire by primitivism. Use of basic colors, lines, forms to show what is inside. This painting is about interpreting emotions.

Dorothea Lange, Social Documentary Photography (gelatin silver print)

Migrant Mother Social documentary photographer. Try to race money. Triangular composition. They were living in temporary houses.

Edward Hopper, Realism (oil on canvas)

Nighthawks He repeal abstraction, so move to a new form of realism because of the subjects portrayed in his works. From an American perspective. Capturing the dinning scene, fascination with light particularly artificial light as a novelty. How the urban landscape is different. Also it shows isolation of the figures and an outsider view -from the window- this was part of the everyday life something that anyone can do.

Meret Oppenheim, Surrealism (mixed media)

Object (Le Dejeuner en fourrure) "objects with symbolic function." In other words, how might an otherwise typical, functional object be modified so it represents something deeply personal and poetic? How might it, in Freudian terms, resonate as a sublimation of internal desire and aspiration? Such physical manifestations of our internal psyches were indicative of a surreality, or the point in which external and internal realities united, as described by André Breton (one of Surrealism's founders and theorists) in his first Manifesto of Surrealism. Combination of materials creating a relationship between them. Rejecting rationality. Also playing with the Parisian idea of coffee life and its value in modern life.

Marsden Hartley, Cubism (oil on canvas)

Portrait of a German Officer This monumental painting is the centerpiece of a series that evokes the dynamism, pageantry, and danger of life in Berlin during World War I. The painting's collage like appearance, dramatic color, and emotional brushwork attest to Hartley's skillful synthesis of Cubism and German Expressionism. Hartley's composition is an abstract portrait of Karl von Freyburg, a Prussian lieutenant whom the artist loved and who died in the war. Von Freyburg is portrayed symbolically with the initials, "K.v.F."; his regiment number, 4; his age at death, 24; and the Iron Cross that he received posthumously.

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, German Expressionism (oil on canvas)

Street Berlin It shows two well-dressed prostitutes strolling the streets, surrounded by furtively glancing men. For Kirchner, the prostitute was a symbol of the modern city, where glamour and danger, and intimacy and alienation necessarily coexisted, and everything was for sale. The intense, clashing colors heighten the excitement and anxiety, and the tilted horizon destabilizes the scene. Subject matter is the urban life. Balance between the background and the figures in the front showing an interpretation of the modern world. The excitement of modernism. It captures the energy of the city, its light, the new social class and how they interact.

Franz Marc, German Expressionism (oil on canvas)

The Great Blue Horses Bound to certain of the originating conceptions of the contemporaneous Blue rider group: in the symbol of the horse as a vehicle of breakthrough, in the emphasis on the spirituality of blue, and in the idea of spirituality battling materialism. Color for Marc came to embody emotional and spiritual states. Animals were also frequent subjects in his paintings—Marc considered them more spiritual and closer to nature than humans. The context is not important is the power of the horses, they are the subject matter. The energy and emotion. The value of nature is more important than the urban life. Importance in the scale. The definition of the horses from showing the power of the animals.

Max Ernst, Surrealism (oil on canvas)

The Horde The first to use the surrealist technique, frottage. This is when an artist takes a drawing utensil and rubs a medium over an uneven surface. The contents of The Horde showed the theory of the real in the demonic army of demons in the piece. The Horde is part of the call to disorder because of the depiction of demons as humans which destroys man. Also it may be a retrospected about his experiences in WWI. Is this a memory? What he wants to provoke with the painting?

Henri Matisse, Fauvism (oil in canvas)

The Joy of Life Color is responsive only to emotional expression and the formal needs of the canvas, not the realities of nature. Rather than using modeling or shading to lend volume and structure to his pictures, Matisse used contrasting areas of pure color. This is the epitome of Fauvism, a radical new approach that incorporate purely expressive, bright, clear colors and wildly sensual forms. As a result of his experimentation with perspective, the viewer relates differently to the painting and is required to "enter" the scene. It is a scene of pleasure in color and form. The enjoyment of life by music, dance.

Gustav Klimt, Vienna Secessionists (oil on canvas)

The Kiss Inspired by Byzantine mosaics, the gilding gives the appearance that accentuates the ethereal nature of the subject matter and style. Depicts an embracing couple. The woman's face as he leans in to kiss her. The female figure—whose colorful, organically patterned dress contrasts her partner's garment—wears flowers in her hair. As she wraps her arms around her partner's neck, her eyes are peacefully closed, emphasizing the tranquility and intimacy of the scene. Mosaic inspiration creating decorative elements in the painting. Attention to craft details. Universal experience of a kiss and the experience of intimacy and love. The subject matter comes from symbolism and psychoanalysis.

Frida Kahlo, Surrealism (oil on canvas)

The Two Fridas Kahlo was a rebellious loner, often dressed in indigenous clothing. Kahlo flouted both conventions of beauty and social expectations in her self-portraits. These powerful and unflinching self images explore complex and difficult topics including her culturally mixed heritage, the harsh reality of her medical conditions, and the repression of women. The two seated figures holding hands and sharing a bench in front of a stormy sky. The Fridas are identical twins except in their attire, a poignant issue for Kahlo at this moment. The year she painted this canvas she was divorced from Diego Rivera. Why would Kahlo paint herself twice? this painting represent her suffering, exhibits resilience. Kahlo utilized blood. She returns to this metaphor in The Two Fridas, though with the added impact of two hearts, both vulnerable and laid bare to the viewer as a testament to her emotional suffering.

Henri Matisse, Fauvism (oil on canvas)

The Woman with the Hat Marked a stylistic change from the regulated brushstrokes of Matisse's earlier work to a more expressive individual style. His use of non-naturalistic colors and loose brushwork, which contributed to a sketchy or "unfinished" quality, seemed shocking to the viewers of the day. Is not a portray, the subject matter is color putting attention to details in terms of color and form.

Constantine Brancusi, Cubism (sculpture)

Torso of a Young Man Unadorned and reduced in form, fulfilled his famous principle: "What is real is not the appearance, but the idea, the essence of things." Industrial appeal, minimalist, use of geometric shapes with simple forms.

Umberto Boccioni, Futurism (bronze)

Unique Forms of Continuity in Space The Futurists' celebration of the fast pace and mechanical power of the modern world is emphasized here in the sculpture's dynamism and energy. The figure's marching silhouette appears deformed by wind and speed, while its sleek metal contours allude to machinery. World War I broke out the year after Boccioni created this work. Believing that modern technological warfare would shatter Italy's obsession with the classical past, the Futurists welcomed the conflict. Free standing sculpture, he wasn't trying to reinterpret old ideas. It looks like he is going -movement- against nature elements such a wind, rain. Celebrating futurism obsession of movement and the figure of a machine as the ideal of humans.