questions #3
Write a short essay discussing the differences between Fauvism and German Expressionism. Choose one artist from each movement and an example of their work as supporting evidence of your discussion. Then explain how both movements exemplify 20th century Expressionism.
Comparing the two art movements of Fauvism and German Expressionism is like looking at two sides of a coin. Both rest on the value of color as applied in painting, but where Fauvists used color to express joy, the artists of the German Expressionist movement manipulated it to convey the darker side of human emotions, ending up with a much different result. The Fauves The beginnings of Modernism are often dated by the appearance of the Fauves at the Parisian Salon d'Automne in 1905. At this exhibition, art critic Louis Vauxcelles saw the bold paintings surrounding a conventional sculpture, and declared it was like seeing a Donatello parmi les fauves ("among the wild beasts"). Although Fauvism was a shortlived art movement, which offered painters the freedom and expressive use of color to showcase their work, it also unleashed a new way of seeing art. Their style of painting, which incorporated non-natural coloring was one of the first Avant Garde developments in European art German Expressionism The German Expressionist movement began at nearly the same period as Fauvism (in 1905), with artists such as Kirchner and Nolde, who leaned toward a Fauvist use of bright color. As "expressionists," these German painters were interested in heightening the emotional landscape of art by placing emphasis on subjective feelings above the portrayal of an objective reality. Like Fauves, their paintings more acutely reflected a state of mind than the reality of the external world, again using color in a strong role. With the Expressionists, however, the importance of color was supplemented by strong linear effects and harsh outlining not seen in Fauvist work. While in Northern Europe, the Fauves celebrated color, pushing it to new emotional and psychological heights, Expressionism developed along a darker, more somber path, reflecting the societal influences of the day. Characterized by heightened symbolic colors and exaggerated images, German Expressionism tended to dwell on the heavier, more sinister aspects of the human psyche and plumbed its depths. Although Expressionism exudes a decidedly German character, the work of French painter Roualt links the Fauves to Expressionism better than any other painter in the genre. Using the decorative style of Fauvism in France with the symbolic color use of Expressionism, Roualt's palette and profound subject matter land him clearly as an early proponent of Expressionism. His work was frequently described as "Fauvism with dark glasses," and this perhaps better than any other comparison highlights the differences between the Fauvist and Expressionist styles of painting. Les Fauves (French for The Wild Beasts) were a short-lived and loose grouping of early 20th century artists whose works emphasized painterly qualities and strong colour over the representational or realistic values retained by Impressionism. While Fauvism as a style began around 1900 and continued beyond 1910, the movement as such lasted only three years, 1905-1907 and was inaugurated by a famous exhibition at the Salon d'Aurtomne in Paris in October 1905. The leaders of the movement were Henri Matisse and André Derain. Other artists included Albert Marquet, Charles Camoin, Louis Valtat, the Belgian painter Henri Evenepoel, Maurice Marinot, Jean Puy, Maurice de Vlaminck, Alfred Maurer, Henri Manguin, Raoul Dufy, Othon Friesz, Georges Rouault, the Dutch painter Kees van Dongen and Georges Braque. The paintings of the Fauves were characterised by seemingly wild brush work and strident colours, while their subject matter had a high degree of simplification and abstraction. Fauvism can be classified as an extreme development of Van Gogh's Post-Impressionism fused with the pointillism of Seurat and other Neo-Impressionist painters, in particular Paul Signac. Other key influences were Paul Cezanne and Paul Gauguin, whose employment of areas of saturated colour—notably in paintings from Tahiti—strongly influenced Derain's work at Collioure in Fauvism can also be seen as a mode of early 20th century Expressionism.
How did Cubism influence other art styles in the early 20th century?
Cubism was a truly revolutionary style of modern art developed by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braques. It was the first style of abstract art which evolved at the beginning of the 20th century in response to a world that was changing with unprecedented speed. Cubism was an attempt by artists to revitalise the tired traditions of Western art which they believed had run their course. The Cubists challenged conventional forms of representation, such as perspective, which had been the rule since the Renaissance. Their aim was to develop a new way of seeing which reflected the modern age. In the four decades from 1870-1910, western society witnessed more technological progress than in the previous four centuries. During this period, inventions such as photography, cinematography, sound recording, the telephone, the motor car and the airplane heralded the dawn of a new age. The problem for artists at this time was how to reflect the modernity of the era using the tired and trusted traditions that had served art for the last four centuries. Photography had begun to replace painting as the tool for documenting the age and for artists to sit illustrating cars, planes and images of the new technologies was not exactly rising to the challenge. Artists needed a more radical approach - a 'new way of seeing' that expanded the possibilities of art in the same way that technology was extending the boundaries of communication and travel. This new way of seeing was called Cubism - the first abstract style of modern art. Picasso and Braque developed their ideas on Cubism around 1907 in Paris and their starting point was a common interest in the later paintings of Paul Cézanne. Definition of Style & Subject Matter: Cubism was a highly influential visual arts style of the 20th century that was created principally by the painters Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque in Paris between 1907 and 1914. The Cubist style emphasized the flat, two-dimensional surface of the picture plane, rejecting the traditional techniques of perspective, foreshortening, modeling, and chiaroscuro and refuting time-honoured theories of art as the imitation of nature. Cubist painters were not bound to copying form, texture, colour, and space; instead, they presented a new reality in paintings that depicted radically fragmented objects, whose several sides were seen simultaneously. Typical cubist paintings frequently show letters, musical instruments, bottles, pitchers, glasses, newspapers, still lifes, and the human face and figure. The Name: Cubism derived its name from remarks that were made by the painter Henri Matisse and the critic Louis Vauxcelles, who derisively described Braque's 1908 work "Houses at L'Estaque" as composed of cubes. In Braque's work, the volumes of the houses, the cylindrical forms of the trees, and the tan-and-green colour scheme are reminiscent of Paul Cézanne's landscapes, which deeply inspired the Cubists in their first stage of development, until 1909. It was "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon", a work painted by Picasso in 1907, that forecast the new style; in this work, the forms of five female nudes became fractured, angular shapes. As in Cézanne's art, perspective was rendered by means of colour, the warm reddish browns advancing and the cool blues receding.
Discuss the differences between Analytical and Synthetic Cubism. Then go on to explain why Cubism is considered such an important movement in the development of 20thcentury art. Be sure to refer to one artist from each period of cubism and cite examples of their work.
In the analytic phase (1907-12) the cubist palette was severely limited, largely to black, browns, grays, and off-whites. In addition, forms were rigidly geometric and compositions subtle and intricate. Cubist abstraction as represented by the analytic works of Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, and Juan Gris intended an appeal to the intellect. The cubists sought to show everyday objects as the mind, not the eye, perceives them—from all sides at once. The trompe l'oeil element of collage was also sometimes used. During the later, synthetic phase of cubism (1913 through the 1920s), paintings were composed of fewer and simpler forms based to a lesser extent on natural objects. Brighter colors were employed to a generally more decorative effect, and many artists continued to use collage in their compositions. The works of Picasso, Braque, and Gris are also representative of this phase In Analytical Cubist paintings, subjects were typically at least somewhat recognizable. Picasso's 1907 "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" and Braque's 1908 "Large Nude" obviously depict female forms. His "Arlequin," 1909, is recognizably a man. These early Cubist works were often composed of muted tones. While "breaking down," or analyzing, imagery, they still maintained some vestige of visual realism. Paintings were often more detailed, with images gathered tightly toward the center of the work, growing sparser toward the edges. The muted colors drew attention to the subtle shifting of perspective that embodied the artist's viewpoint. Synthetic Cubism took the movement to its extreme -- all sense of three-dimensionality disappeared. Instead of breaking down and reassembling facets of the original image, it was a matter of synthesizing entirely new, expansive structures. Sometimes the subject was recognizable as a unified structure; at other times, it was hardly legible. Instead, artists started using collage methods; overlapping various media; and including words, graphics and patterns, to achieve a desired thematic result. Colors were much brighter, geometric forms were more distinct, and textures began to emerge with additives like sand, paper or gesso. Picasso's "Bowl of Fruit" and Braque's "Bottle, Newspaper, Pipe and Glass" are in the Synthetic style. Art historians distinguish between Analytical and Synthetic, signifying the progression of the Cubist movement. In the end, though, the time limits of Analytical and Synthetic are rather flexible. Works partly fitting the Analytical aesthetic were produced after 1912, and paintings with features of Synthetic Cubism date back to the start of the movement. Picasso and Braque are considered the founders of Cubism, and their work is central to the movement as a whole. They're not, however, the only important Cubists.
What caused artists in the early 20th century to reject observational naturalism in art?
So there were a lot of artists who experimented with a non-naturalistic and even completely abstract mode of art making in the early 20th century. There are many possible reasons for this shift. First, artists in the 19th and 20th century were exposed to the art of many non-Western cultures, which prompted artists to explore other types of representation. Historical events may play a part as well. Dada artists in part reacted to the horrors of World War I, challenging the ideas of progress, rationality, and artistic conventions in their work. Marcel Duchamp is well-known for buying a porcelain urinal, turning it on its side, signing and dating it, and submitting it to an art exhibition. He declared that art was not something that had to be made by hand. Instead, any object could become art if the artist said so. After World War II, many artists responded to the unfathomable horrors by retreating from the observable world into abstraction to deal with their feelings and emotions (see Art Informel or Tachism). WWII also caused many artists and intellectuals to flee to the United States, bringing an influx of new ideas with them and helping to contribute to rise of Abstract Expressionism, or the New York School. Artists also responded to the intellectual climate of the late 19th and early 20th century. For example, the writings of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung concerning dreams, free association, the human subconscious, and the collective unconscious were explored by the Surrealists. Some of them, like Salvador Dali, explored dream-like imagery that was nonetheless very realistically painted. Others, such as Joan Miro, created "biomorphic" Surrealist works that included organic, free-flowing shapes that were far from realistic. Naturalism was politically controversial in its heyday—conservatives called Zola a "literary anarchist," while liberals saw his work as a "calumny of the people"—and its place in literary history has been hotly debated by scholars. By the mid-twentieth century, three major strands of thinking about naturalism's legacies had emerged in Europe. In the early part of the century, Zola was adopted by the French left and elevated to the status of one of France's great writers. Thanks in part to Zola's courageous role in the Dreyfus affair, a political scandal that rocked France in the 1890s, naturalism—once reviled for its unsympathetic portrayals of the working class—was reassessed as an eye-opening portrait of the exploitation of the weak. As a result Zola, spurned by the literary establishment and prosecuted by the French government during his lifetime, was eventually laid to rest in the Pantheon, France's secular cathedral to the "Great Men" of France. Twentieth-century critics who favored the difficult modernist writing of James Joyce or Marcel Proust, however, were suspicious of this popularity. Naturalism's accessibility and faith in science were incompatible with the modernist turn toward self-consciousness, interiority, opacity, and style; from the modernist perspective, Zola's naturalism looked like a kind of dead end of realism, an overextension of realist strategies at a time when modernist artists were turning away from representational art forms. As the critic James McFarlane put it, naturalism "exhausted itself taking an inventory of the world while it was still relatively stable, [and as a result] could not possibly do justice to the phenomena of its disruption" (p. 80). http://www.encyclopedia.com/literature-and-arts/language-linguistics-and-literary-terms/literature-general/naturalism
Why are the innovations of collage and Duchamp's idea of the Readymade object important for Pop Art?
Synopsis Few artists can boast having changed the course of art history in the way that Marcel Duchamp did. Having assimilated the lessons of Cubism and Futurism, whose joint influence may be felt in his early paintings, he spearheaded the American Dada movement together with his friends and collaborators Picabia and Man Ray. By challenging the very notion of what is art, his first readymades sent shock waves across the art world that can still be felt today. Duchamp's ongoing preoccupation with the mechanisms of desire and human sexuality as well as his fondness for wordplay aligns his work with that of Surrealists, although he steadfastly refused to be affiliated with any specific artistic movement per se. In his insistence that art should be driven by ideas above all, Duchamp is generally considered to be the father of Conceptual art. His refusal to follow a conventional artistic path, matched only by a horror of repetition which accounts for the relatively small number of works Duchamp produced in the span of his short career, ultimately led to his withdrawal from the art world. In later years, Duchamp famously spent his time playing chess, even as he labored away in secret at his last enigmatic masterpiece, which was only unveiled after his death in 1968. Key Ideas Coined by Duchamp, the term "readymade" came to designate mass-produced everyday objects taken out of their usual context and promoted to the status of artworks by the mere choice of the artist. A performative act as much as a stylistic category, the readymade had far-reaching implications for what can legitimately be considered an object of art. Duchamp rejected purely visual or what he dubbed "retinal pleasure," deeming it to be facile, in favor of more intellectual, concept-driven approaches to art-making and, for that matter, viewing. He remained committed, however, to the study of perspective and optics which underpins his experiments with kinetic devices, reflecting an ongoing concern with the representation of motion and machines common to Futurist and Surrealist artists at the time. A taste for jokes, tongue-in-cheek wit and subversive humor, rife with sexual innuendoes, characterizes Duchamp's work and makes for much of its enjoyment. He fashioned puns out of everyday expressions which he conveyed through visual means. The linguistic dimension of his work in particular paved the way for Conceptual art.
How did the Bauhaus further European Modernism? Be sure to refer to specific works of art or design and be sure to explain what the Bauhaus was, where it was, when it was open, and what its goals were.
The Bauhaus was the most influential modernist art school of the 20th century, one whose approach to teaching, and understanding art's relationship to society and technology, had a major impact both in Europe and the United States long after it closed. It was shaped by the 19th and early 20th centuries trends such as Arts and Crafts movement, which had sought to level the distinction between fine and applied arts, and to reunite creativity and manufacturing. This is reflected in the romantic medievalism of the school's early years, in which it pictured itself as a kind of medieval crafts guild. But in the mid 1920s the medievalism gave way to a stress on uniting art and industrial design, and it was this which ultimately proved to be its most original and important achievement. The school is also renowned for its faculty, which included artists Wassily Kandinsky, Josef Albers, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Paul Klee and Johannes Itten, architects Walter Gropius and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and designer Marcel Breuer. The motivations behind the creation of the Bauhaus lay in the 19th century, in anxieties about the soullessness of manufacturing and its products, and in fears about art's loss of purpose in society. Creativity and manufacturing were drifting apart, and the Bauhaus aimed to unite them once again, rejuvenating design for everyday life. Although the Bauhaus abandoned much of the ethos of the old academic tradition of fine art education, it maintained a stress on intellectual and theoretical pursuits, and linked these to an emphasis on practical skills, crafts and techniques that was more reminiscent of the medieval guild system. Fine art and craft were brought together with the goal of problem solving for a modern industrial society. In so doing, the Bauhaus effectively leveled the old hierarchy of the arts, placing crafts on par with fine arts such as sculpture and painting, and paving the way for many of the ideas that have inspired artists in the late 20th century. The stress on experiment and problem solving at the Bauhaus has proved enormously influential for the approaches to education in the arts. It has led to the 'fine arts' being rethought as the 'visual arts', and art considered less as an adjunct of the humanities, like literature or history, and more as a kind of research science. Bauhaus building in Dessau, Germany (1919-1925) Artist: Walter Gropius Gropius's complex for the Bauhaus at Dessau has come to be seen as a landmark in modern, functionalist design. Although the design seems strongly unified from above, each element is clearly divided from the next, and on the ground it unfolds a wonderful succession of changing perspectives. The building consists of an asphalt tiled roof, steel framework, and reinforced concrete bricks to reduce noise and protect against the weather. In addition, a glass curtain wall - a feature that would come to be typical of modernist architecture - allows in ample quantities of light. Gropius created three wings that were arranged asymmetrically to connect different workshops and dormitories within the school. The asymmetry expressed the school's functionalist approach and yet retained an elegance that showed how beauty and practicality could be combined.
How are the Mexican murals a powerful means for the expression of sociopolitical concerns?
The Mexican mural movement, or Mexican muralism, began as a government-funded form of public art—specifically, large-scale wall paintings in civic buildings—in the wake of the Mexican Revolution (1910-20). The Revolution was a massive civil war helmed by a number of factions with charismatic leaders—Francisco Madero, Venustiano Carranza, Pancho Villa, Emiliano Zapata, to name a few—all of whom had very specific political and social agendas. After the Revolution, then, the government took on the very difficult project of transforming a divided Mexico of maderistas, carrancistas, villistas, zapatistas, and so on, into a coherent nation of mexicanos. To do so, it needed to create an official history of Mexico in which its citizens would find themselves, and it needed a medium that could propagate this to a largely poor, illiterate populace. Enter Mexican muralism. Out of a host of Mexican artists, three emerged as its most devoted, celebrated, and prolific, to the extent that they came to be referred to as los tres grandes ("the three greats"): José Clemente Orozco (1883-1949), Diego Rivera (1886-1957), and David Alfaro Siqueiros (1896-1974). While the mural project employed a host of artists from across the country, the influence and prominence of Orozco, Rivera, and Siqueiros was so great that it makes sense to limit a discussion of muralism largely to them for an introductory lecture on the topic. Each had a different personality, ideology, style, and sphere of influence, and a well-developed survey on Mexican muralism can be taught through their works. This unit is an excellent opportunity to talk about the ways that artistic representation expresses cultural values: in the 1920s when muralism began, there was a concern with defining a new "Mexican" character. This often led to themes of mestizaje (celebration of Mexico's mixed-race heritage), but also recognition of the native value of the indigenous Indian. Stemming from a 1921 manifesto written by Siqueiros, muralism was pitched as an art of social and political engagement. Muralism provides a chance to talk about the intersection of art and politics, which may seem commonplace to your students now, but was widely debated throughout the twentieth century. What is the goal of art? To what extent is art supposed to be autonomous and separated from everyday life? Does art that has a function cross the line from art to propaganda, or is there a hazier area between the two that is explored in works like these? Another major theme to discuss is the value of public art in society. What does public art accomplish? If muralism is monumental and public, how are its conditions different than small, private works of art that are made for consumption by the art market and institutions like museums?
