NEW MEDIA, NEW ART FORMS (FAUVISM, CUBISM, DADA, SURREALISM,

ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM, POP ART, OPTICAL ART, PHOTOREALISM)

A. Fauvism
Fauvism developed in France to become the first new artistic style of the twentieth
century. In contrast to the dark, vaguely disturbing nature of much fin-de-siècle, or turn-of-
the-century, Symbolist art, the Fauves produced bright cheery landscapes and figure
paintings, characterized by pure vivid color and bold distinctive brushwork.
When shown at the 1905 Salon d’Automne (an exhibition organized by artists in
response to the conservative policies of the official exhibitions, or salons) in Paris, the
contrast to traditional art was so striking it led critic Louis Vauxcelles to describe the artists
as “Les Fauves” or “wild beasts,” and thus the name was born.
One of several Expressionist movements to emerge in the early twentieth century,
Fauvism was short lived, and by 1910, artists in the group had diverged toward more
individual interests. Nevertheless, Fauvism remains signficant for it demonstrated modern
art’s ability to evoke intensely emotional reactions through radical visual form.
The best known Fauve artists include Henri Matisse, André Derain, and Maurice
Vlaminck who pioneered its distinctive style. Their early works reveal the influence of Post-
Impressionist artists, especially Neo-Impressionists like Paul Signac, whose interest in
color’s optical effects had led to a divisionist method of juxtaposing pure hues on canvas.
The Fauves, however, lacked such scientific intent. They emphasized the expressive
potential of color, employing it arbitrarily, not based on an object’s natural appearance.

B. Cubism
Color-field painting is a style of abstract painting that emerged in New York City
during the 1950s and 1960s. It is closely linked to abstract expressionism, post-painterly
abstraction, and lyrical abstraction.
Distinct from the emotional energy and gestural surface marks and paint handling seen in
the work of abstract expressionists like Jackson Pollock, color-field painting came across as
cool and austere.
The movement places less emphasis on gesture, brushstrokes, and action in favor of
an overall consistency of form and process, with color itself becoming the subject matter.
Mark Rothko, Frank Stella, Clyfford Still, Barnett Newman, Adolph Gottlieb, and Morris Louis
are among the many artists who used color-field techniques in their work.
Color-field painters revolutionized the way paint could be effectively applied, through
their use of acrylic paint and techniques such as staining and spraying.
The Cubist painters rejected the inherited concept that art should copy nature, or that
artists should adopt the traditional techniques of perspective, modeling, and foreshortening.
They wanted instead to emphasize the two-dimensionality of the canvas. So they reduced
and fractured objects into geometric forms, and then realigned these within a shallow, relief
like space. They also used multiple or contrasting vantage points.

C. Dada
Dada was an artistic and literary movement that began in Zürich, Switzerland. It
arose as a reaction to World War I and the nationalism that many thought had led to the war.
Influenced by other avant-garde movements - Cubism, Futurism, Constructivism, and
Expressionism - its output was wildly diverse, ranging from performance art to poetry,
photography, sculpture, painting, and collage. Dada's aesthetic, marked by its mockery of
materialistic and nationalistic attitudes, proved a powerful influence on artists in many cities,
including Berlin, Hanover, Paris, New York, and Cologne, all of which generated their own
groups. The movement dissipated with the establishment of Surrealism, but the ideas it gave
rise to have become the cornerstones of various categories of modern and contemporary
art.

Key Ideas
 Dada was the first conceptual art movement where the focus of the artists was not on
crafting aesthetically pleasing objects but on making works that often upended
bourgeois sensibilities and that generated difficult questions about society, the role of
the artist, and the purpose of art.
 So intent were members of Dada on opposing all norms of bourgeois culture that the
group was barely in favor of itself: "Dada is anti-Dada," they often cried. The group's
founding in the Cabaret Voltaire in Zürich was appropriate: the Cabaret was named
after the 18th century French satirist, Voltaire, whose novella Candide mocked the
idiocies of his society. As Hugo Ball, one of the founders of both the Cabaret and
Dada wrote, "This is our Candide against the times."
 Artists like Hans Arp were intent on incorporating chance into the creation of works of
art. This went against all norms of traditional art production whereby a work was
meticulously planned and completed. The introduction of chance was a way for
Dadaists to challenge artistic norms and to question the role of the artist in the artistic
process.
 Dada artists are known for their use of readymade objects - everyday objects that
could be bought and presented as art with little manipulation by the artist. The use of
the readymade forced questions about artistic creativity and the very definition of art
and its purpose in society.

D. Abstract Expressionism
Abstract expressionism was an American, post–World War II art movement.

Key Points
 Abstract expressionism has an image of being rebellious, anarchic, highly
idiosyncratic, and nihilistic. In practice, the term is applied to any number of artists
working (mostly) in New York who had quite different styles, and even to work that is
neither especially abstract nor expressionist.
 Although it is true that spontaneity or the impression of spontaneity characterized
many of the abstract expressionists works, most of these paintings involved careful
planning, especially since their large size demanded it.
 Abstract expressionist paintings share certain characteristics, including the use of
large canvases and an all-over approach, in which the whole canvas is treated with
equal importance.
 Action painting was developed as part of the abstract expressionism movement that
took place in post–World War II America, especially in New York, during the 1940s
through until the early 1960s.
 Action painting places the emphasis on the act of painting rather than the final work
as an artistic object.
  Jackson Pollock challenged traditional conventions of painting by using synthetic,
resin-based paints, laying his canvas on the floor, and using hardened brushes,
sticks, and even basting syringes to apply paint.
 Color-field painting is a style of abstract painting that emerged in New York City
during the 1950s and 1960s. It is closely linked to abstract expressionism, post-
painterly abstraction, and lyrical abstraction.
 Distinct from the emotional energy and gestural surface marks and paint handling
seen in the work of abstract expressionists like Jackson Pollock, color-field painting
came across as cool and austere.
 The movement places less emphasis on gesture, brushstrokes, and action in favor of
an overall consistency of form and process, with color itself becoming the subject
matter.
 Mark Rothko, Frank Stella, Clyfford Still, Barnett Newman, Adolph Gottlieb, and
Morris Louis are among the many artists who used color-field techniques in their
work.
 Color-field painters revolutionized the way paint could be effectively applied, through
their use of acrylic paint and techniques such as staining and spraying.

E. Pop Art
Pop art started with the New York artists Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, James
Rosenquist, and Claes Oldenburg, all of whom drew on popular imagery and were actually
part of an international phenomenon. Following the popularity of the Abstract Expressionists,
Pop's reintroduction of identifiable imagery (drawn from mass media and popular culture)
was a major shift for the direction of modernism. The subject matter became far from
traditional "high art" themes of morality, mythology, and classic history; rather, Pop artists
celebrated commonplace objects and people of everyday life, in this way seeking to elevate
popular culture to the level of fine art. Perhaps owing to the incorporation of commercial
images, Pop art has become one of the most recognizable styles of modern art.

Key Ideas
 By creating paintings or sculptures of mass culture objects and media stars, the Pop
art movement aimed to blur the boundaries between "high" art and "low" culture. The
concept that there is no hierarchy of culture and that art may borrow from any source
has been one of the most influential characteristics of Pop art.
 It could be argued that the Abstract Expressionists searched for trauma in the soul,
while Pop artists searched for traces of the same trauma in the mediated world of
advertising, cartoons, and popular imagery at large. But it is perhaps more precise to
say that Pop artists were the first to recognize that there is no unmediated access to
anything, be it the soul, the natural world, or the built environment. Pop artists
believed everything is inter-connected, and therefore sought to make those
connections literal in their artwork.
 Although Pop art encompasses a wide variety of work with very different attitudes
and postures, much of it is somewhat emotionally removed. In contrast to the "hot"
expression of the gestural abstraction that preceded it, Pop art is generally "coolly"
ambivalent. Whether this suggests an acceptance of the popular world or a shocked
withdrawal, has been the subject of much debate.
  Pop artists seemingly embraced the post-WWII manufacturing and media boom.
Some critics have cited the Pop art choice of imagery as an enthusiastic
endorsement of the capitalist market and the goods it circulated, while others have
noted an element of cultural critique in the Pop artists' elevation of the everyday to
high art: tying the commodity status of the goods represented to the status of the art
object itself, emphasizing art's place as, at base, a commodity.
 The majority of Pop artists began their careers in commercial art: Andy Warhol was a
highly successful magazine illustrator and graphic designer; Ed Ruscha was also a
graphic designer, and James Rosenquist started his career as a billboard painter.
Their background in the commercial art world trained them in the visual vocabulary of
mass culture as well as the techniques to seamlessly merge the realms of high art
and popular culture.

F. Optical Art
Artists have been intrigued by the nature of perception and by optical effects and
illusions for many centuries. They have often been a central concern of art, just as much as
themes drawn from history or literature. But in the 1950s these preoccupations, allied to new
interests in technology and psychology, blossomed into a movement. Op, or Optical, art
typically employs abstract patterns composed with a stark contrast of foreground and
background - often in black and white for maximum contrast - to produce effects that confuse
and excite the eye. Initially, Op shared the field with Kinetic art - Op artists being drawn to
virtual movement, Kinetic artists attracted by the possibility of real motion. Both styles were
launched with Le Mouvement, a group exhibition at Galerie Denise Rene in 1955. It attracted
a wide international following, and after it was celebrated with a survey exhibition in 1965,
The Responsive Eye, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, it caught the public's
imagination and led to a craze for Op designs in fashion and the media. To many, it seemed
the perfect style for an age defined by the onward march of science, by advances in
computing, aerospace, and television. But art critics were never so supportive of it, attacking
its effects as gimmicks, and today it remains tainted by those dismissals.

Key Ideas
 The Op art movement was driven by artists who were interested in investigating
various perceptual effects. Some did so out of sheer enthusiasm for research and
experiment, some with the distant hope that the effects they mastered might find a
wide public and hence integrate modern art into society in new ways. Rather like the
geometric art from which it had sprung, Op art seemed to supply a style that was
highly appropriate to modern society.
 Although Op can be seen as the successor to geometric abstraction, its stress on
illusion and perception suggests that it might also have older ancestors. It may
descend from effects that were once popular with Old Masters, such as trompe l'oeil
(French: "deceive the eye"). Or indeed from anamorphosis, the effect by which
images are contorted so that objects are only fully recognizable when viewed from an
oblique angle. Or, equally, Op may simply be a child of modern decoration.
 During its years of greatest success in the mid-1960s, the movement was sometimes
said to encompass a wide range of artists whose interests in abstraction had little to
do with perception. Some, such as Joseph Albers, who were often labeled as Op
 artists, dismissed it. Yet the fact that the label could seem to apply to so many artists
demonstrates how important the nuances of vision have been throughout modern art.
 Long after Op art's demise, its reputation continues to hang in the balance. Some
critics continue to characterize its designs as "retinal titillations." But others have
recently argued that the style represented a kind of abstract Pop art, one which
emulated the dazzle of consumer society but which refused, unlike Pop artists like
Andy Warhol, to celebrate its icons.

G. Photorealism
The name Photorealism (also known as Hyperrealism or Superrealism) was coined in
reference to those artists whose work depended heavily on photographs, which they often
projected onto canvas allowing images to be replicated with precision and accuracy. The
exactness was often aided further by the use of an airbrush, which was originally designed
to retouch photographs. The movement came about within the same period and context as
Conceptual art, Pop art, and Minimalism and expressed a strong interest in realism in art,
over that of idealism and abstraction. Among several male practitioners of Photorealism
there is an interest in themes of machinery and objects of industry such as trucks,
motorcycles, cars, and even gumball machines, whereas Audrey Flack, the sole female
practitioner, infuses her works with greater emotionality and the transience of life. Ultimately,
the Photorealists were successful in attracting a wide audience, but they are often
overlooked by art historians as an important avant garde style.

Key Ideas
 To a degree not previously accomplished, Photorealism complicates the notion of
realism by successfully mixing together that which is real with that which is unreal.
While the image on the canvas is recognizable and carefully delineated to suggest
that it is accurate, the artist often based their work upon photographs rather than
direct observation. Therefore, their canvases remain distanced from reality factually
and metaphorically.
 Many Photorealists adamantly insist that their works, which are laden with such mass
and consumer culture icons as trucks, fast food restaurants, and mechanical toys,
are not communicative of social criticism or commentary. However, it is hard to deny
that these works are recognizably American. At times, the actual work rather than the
artist's words is our most useful guide. In this manner, there is the contrast between
the reality and primacy of the word or text, over the visual within our society.
 Since the advent of photography in the early-19th-century artists have used the
camera as a tool in picture making; however, artists would never reveal in paint their
dependency on photographs as to do so was seen as "cheating". In contrast,
Photorealists acknowledge the modern world's mass production and proliferation of
photographs, and they do not deny their dependence on photographs. In fact, several
artists attempt to replicate the effects of photography (getting away from the natural
vision of our eyes) such as blurriness or multiple-viewpoints, because they favor the
aesthetic and look. Therefore, while the resulting image is realistic, it is
simultaneously one-stage away from reality by its dependence on the reproduced
image. These works question traditional artistic methods, as well as the differences
between reality and artificiality.
  The representation of light, as well as the interaction of light and color together has
concerned artists throughout the ages. By using slide machines to project images
onto bare canvas Photorealism for the first time unites color and light together as one
element. The capturing of light is most especially evident in the highly reflective
surfaces of steel and chrome.
 Photorealists, along with some practitioners of Pop art, reintroduced the importance
of process and deliberate planning over that of improvisation and automatism, into
the making of art, draftsmanship, and exacting brushwork. In other words, the
traditional techniques of academic art are again of great significance, and painstaking
craftsmanship is prized after decades of the spontaneous, accidental, and
improvisational.

H. Surrealism
Surrealism, movement in visual art and literature, flourishing in Europe between
World Wars I and II. Surrealism grew principally out of the earlier Dada movement, which
before World War I produced works of anti-art that deliberately defied reason; but
Surrealism’s emphasis was not on negation but on positive expression. The movement
represented a reaction against what its members saw as the destruction wrought by the
“rationalism” that had guided European culture and politics in the past and that had
culminated in the horrors of World War I. According to the major spokesman of the
movement, the poet and critic André Breton, who published The Surrealist Manifesto in
1924, Surrealism was a means of reuniting conscious and unconscious realms of experience
so completely that the world of dream and fantasy would be joined to the everyday rational
world in “an absolute reality, a surreality.” Drawing heavily on theories adapted from
Sigmund Freud, Breton saw the unconscious as the wellspring of the imagination. He
defined genius in terms of accessibility to this normally untapped realm, which, he believed,
could be attained by poets and painters alike.
Many surrealist artists used automatic drawing or writing to unlock ideas and images from
their unconscious minds, and others sought to depict dream worlds or hidden psychological
tensions.