Professional Documents
Culture Documents
The history of Modern art begins in the 18th century when the age of reason succeeded
the age of authority. The groups or movements enfolded by ‘modern’ represent different
approaches and fashions which overlap each other and have no fixed dates. In most cases
they react against one another, and seem to agree only on the liberty to experiment freely,
unrestricted by classical subjects and Renaissance techniques.
The so – called modern movement began in and around Paris as a declaration of
independence against the stronghold of official academic art had not only survived the
French revolution but had become even more conservative.
The academy imposed effected notions of classical beauty and unprogressive subjects
and methods. Anyone who revolted against its absolute standards had to pay the price of
ridicule and poverty since the official society of French Artists refused to exhibit his
works in the Salon, the annual art exhibition in Paris.
Painters like Millet, Courbet and Daumier rebelled against the popular subjects
imposed by the Academy and paid for their liberty with the costly price of poverty.
Others slowly began to rebel against the academic methods. While the academy favored
dull, unattractive colours, Delacroix introduced riotous ones considered barbaric at the
time. His observation that it is ‘advisable not to fuse the brush strokes as they will fuse
;natural at distance; thus colour gains energy and freshness’ had great influence on the
Impressionists.
In the 1860’s a group of young artists, each with a different temperament and origin,
met in from the restrictions of the official Academy and to remain in contact with nature
and life away from the cities. Monet, Boudin, Jongkind developed their colourful, fluid
and ethereal style.
2.
Olympia (1863)
- Manet himself considered this work to be his greatest
- But this painting evoked unprecedented abuse when it was first exhibited at
the Salon of 1865.
- Her direct, imperturbable gaze, made the picture seem shocking
- Olympia’s hand is bold in outline but rather flat
- Manet’s critics objected to the lack of traditional modeling through light and
shade.
- His direct frontal lighting gives the effect of a photograph taken by flash.
- The most important , skillful and daring of the Impressionists whose painting
‘Impression Sunrise’ gave the movement its name. He discovered from his on-
the-spot observation of sunlight on the banks of the Seine the technical principles
of the style, namely the fragmentation of colour into flickering spots.
- Monet noticed that the appearance of objects changes constantly, that a
landscape is not the same at sunrise or in twilight, in spring or summer.
(Monet used to go in the morning with several canvases to the spot he wanted to paint.
He worked on the first canvas until his eye detected a change of light. Then he put it
aside and worked on the next until he noticed another change of light. Then he began the
third and so on until the end of the day. The next day he continued each canvas in the
same light as on the previous day. In this way he painted 26 impressions of Rouen
cathedral and 16 of waterloo bridges ,haystacks ,poplars and lily ponds.)
- He painted chiefly landscapes with water providing movement
- He showed that no absolute colour exists in nature- only reflections of light.
Light was the main character of his paintings. He studied
the reflections and shimmer of the light on water and in
his study of light on snow he first noticed that shadows
are coloured.
CAMILLE PISSARRO
- He was the oldest of the Impressionist group.
- He was more interested in people than in atmosphere. His paintings stress
form and structure, and so his paintings had a great influence on Cezanne.
- By using small comma- like strokes he depicted bright light without distorting
the forms on which it shines
- His experiments with the Impressionist and Divisionist techniques resulted in
powerful yet subtle lines and rich , light colours.
- He loved vast stretches of green or yellow cornfields, trees in flower, delicate
leaves, dappled skies and running streams and delighted in imparting a gold or
silver sheen to his work.
- His serene pictures reflect his joy in life.
- He avoided anything ugly and presented his subjects in the most favorable
light.
ALFRED SISLEY
- He was of English origin.
- Surpassed Monet in retaining the structures of landscapes
- He did not dissolve the forms in atmosphere.
- He had the same skill in representing the movement of leaves and the
shimmer of light on water.
- In the last years of his life, he produced not less than 12 canvases, all of which
take the church as their central subject.
- Sisley used white to mix with his blues and ochres to create a subtle range of
colouristic effects.
Eg: The church at Morot
The church keeps its integrity as an architectural structure solidly wrought from
chiseled stone and set firmly in the heart of the village community. Despite its scale and
massiveness the church does not have an oppressive presence, the inclusion of ordinary
people busy about their every day affairs gives the sense of a pleasing human touch.
EDGAR DEGAS (1834-1917)
Eg.1. La Loge(1874)
Neo- Impressionism or scientific impressionism tried to link art even more closely
to science. The movement was founded by Seurat and Signac about 1885. These artists
wanted to replace the color instinct of impressionism.
The Neo-impressionists introduced the techniques of divisionism and pointillism.
The former uses large, mosaic like spots, which serve as bright decorations for dark urban
interiors. Pointillism consists of tiny round dots of pure colour carefully applied side by
side like a laboriously stippled engraving. This was a short-lived experimental phase
- In 1882 Georges Seurat began experimenting with little spots of pure color to
be blended by the eye like the short Impressionist strokes.
- He systematically distributed minute spots of color over the white ground
which remained partially exposed
- For him, the method of working was the chief consideration than the subject.
- He skillfully contrasted light and shade- his forms seem to emerge from dark
shadow and a mysterious light shines through his pencil strokes.
POST – IMPRESSIONISM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eV_ZntDBlW4&ab_channel=Philinthecircle
The Post- Impressionists completely different in character, never united into a school.
Each one isolated himself from his environment though at the same time they tried to
influence the world with their art, thus demonstrating the divorce of modern artists from
society.
Though they did represent the emotional possibilities of ordinary things and
people, they were less concerned with their actual appearance and much more with what
they meant to the artist.
They concentrated more on the technique and method by arranging what they saw
and felt into designs and symbols.
The post Impressionists were individuals working in their own way. These three
artists are important because they set the major trends.
PAUL CEZANNE (1839-1906)
Cezanne often called ‘The father of modern painting’ exerted great influence on
all subsequent movements. He was a transition artist between the realism of the
nineteenth and the abstractions of the early twentieth centuries. He tried to find a new
art without giving up the values of the old.
- For Cezanne art should give nature the thrill of continuance. He believed it
was the artists` function to discover the enduring, permanent reality behind
nature`s manifold appearances. Thus he arrived at the basic shapes but did not
try to replace these by geometric forms as the cubists did.
- In his desire for permanence and solidity he made even air, mist and vapour
sky and sea as substrates as houses rocks and trees. He wanted to show nature
consistency -to represent the all embracing atmosphere and air, but without
using the shimmer of impression or classical chiaroscuro.
- He painted from nature, not from his imagination, his work has solidity,
power and integrity.
- Instead of suggesting depth by the traditional method of perspective and
chiaroscuro, he used overlapping planes as in Chinese and Japanese art
- Cezanne modeled his forms not by the use of light and
shade but by the modulation of colors as the Venetian
painters did.
- Every touch of his brush was carefully planned though
the paintings appear rough and sketchy . He created
his forms by means of these short, rectangular chisel –
like strokes which give them a sculptures appearance
Dutch Post- impressionist painter. Van Gogh painted in order to create a new
world according to his mind and feelings, not to imitate nature or to please fashionable
tastes.
- He emphasis on personal expression above all influences the Expressionists.
- He tried to paint his feelings for things-his passion for universal love for which
he found expression only in his art.
- Character interested him rather than appearances. He stressed the psychological
rather than the physical, feeling his way into a personality.
- His paintings reveal his basic kindness and inner beauty ,free of all dross.
- The pre-dominance of yellow in his paintings proclaims his emphatic love for
everything.
- He imparted life and humanity even to lifeless things
- His work shows fine balance and arrangement, distinct contours, almost
dazzling colors and light without shadow.
- Instead of the divided strokes of the Impressionists, he used long streaks of
colors expressive of his stronger emotional drive. At times he squeezed the
tube right on to the canvas.
- He worked at a terrific speed without concern for detail.
- He used intensely loud and bright colors, which express his sanguine
temperament. Bright yellow sunshine and whirling suns against a blue
background occur very often to express the beautiful. He loved blue and
yellow best of all.
- He experimented constantly with the effects of various brush strokes and of
heavy paint. He used simple
brush strokes, standing out
separately to give the paintings
texture.
- Though his simple design lacks
the lasting subtlety of
Cezanne’s, Van Gogh’s quiver
with movement, spiraling stars
blaze like fireworks and his
landscapes gyrate with emotion
- His abstractions are symbolic
rather than geometrical.
3. Sunflowers (1888)
The greatest influence on Gauguin’s art came from E. Bernard. At the age of 20,
Bernard had worked out the theory of synthesism and the technique of cloisonnisim.
- He worked out his priniciples -simple and unmodelled massive forms without
shadows but with heavy contours and flat colors and designs unrelated to
natural appearance.
- Gauguin’s is chiefly a decorative art. He lacked Van Gogh’s emotional power
and Cezanne`s interesting structure. While Cezanne’s work is symbolized by
his sculpturesque forms and Van Gogh’s by his soaring flames, the patterned
flower characterizes Gauguin.
- He aimed at creating his own beauty rather than representing what he found in
nature.
- Gauguin pioneered in the abstract use of colors -green or blue horses, red
dogs- to represent emotion through unexpected combinations.
- He preferred large areas of bright tropical color `since a
meter of green is greener than a centimeter of green’.
- He used unusual exotic colors emotionally selected in
exciting combinations to arouse interest. While he filled
his figures with the most daring colors, he usually made
his backgrounds soft.
What is Fauvism?
• Fauvism is the style of les Fauves (French for "the wild beasts"), a short-lived
and loose group of early twentieth-century modern artists.
Timeline of Fauvism
• Style began around 1900 and continued beyond 1910,
• Seurat’s Pointillism
• Paul Cezanne
Characteristics of Fauvism
• The movement's emphasis on
– Line
– brilliant color,
– expressive brushwork
– flat composition
– Emphasized painterly qualities and strong colour over the realistic values
retained by Impressionism.
– wild brush work
• Henri Matisse
• Andre Derain
• Albert Marquet
• Charles Camoin
Influences of Fauvism
• Although Fauvism was a short-lived movement, it was influential;
• The movement's emphasis on formal values and expressive use of color, line, and
brushwork helped liberate painting from the representational expectations that had
dominated Western art since the Renaissance.
The fauves like most 20th century art associations were casually held together by a
general similarity of outlook. The painters were not bound by theory as much as by
temperament and soon dispersed to develop individually. The undoubted leader was
Matisse although Vlaminck, an extrovert personality given to extravagant gestures, has
claimed the invention of fauvism.
Pictorial characteristics
The pictorial characteristics of fauvism are an excited and highly exaggerated use
of color with perspective and subject matter of the impressionists (landscapes ,still life,
figures in commonplace action).
The name
Essentially a French and primarily a Parisian art movement, the name ‘Fauves’ to
describe the painters has a certain relevance. It is French for ‘ wild beasts’ and was
coined by the art critic Louis Vauxcelles as a disparaging comment on the extravagant,
vivid and turbulent painting that the group exhibited in the Autumn salon of 1906.
Fauvism as a movement had a short life, really only between 1905 and 1907. Its
origins and the influences, which moulded it, can be traced back to the beginning of the
century and to the career of Matisse during these years.
French painter, sculptor and lithographer. One of the leaders of the ‘Fauve group,
Matisse had earlier been influenced by Cezanne and impressionists. His daring joyful
color was given further impetus when in 1910, he saw an exhibition of Far Eastern art
There after his interest in flat patterns and pure contrasting colors in juxtaposition was
upper most in his work.
Matisse preferred flowers, women and fruit as subjects for his highly decorative
painting. After moving to the south of France in 1914 ,his work took on a new subtley of
form and color, permitted by the intense light of the Mediterranean. His last major work
was designs for the stained glass windows of the small Dominican church in Venice,
France. The decorations by Matisse lend the church the fundamental characteristics of his
art simplicity, serenity and joy. Matisse had a natural sense of design and rhythm.
Though a master in auto my, he distorted his subject to show the inner tension of
muscles. They show expression not
through the face and gestures but my
means of the general arrangements.
Sometimes he merely suggested form by
filling the areas between the outlines
incompletely. Matisse who was gifted
many new combinations such as
balancing the most brilliant pigments with
quiet, delicate neutrals. By subtle accents
of color he gave his flat surfaces a three
dimensional appearance. Though not
naturalistic, his colors are always
harmonious and pleasing. Yet strong too –
squeezed right out of the tube.
French painter, one of the original Fauve, Derain tried many styles influenced by
the ‘pointillism’ of Seurat, by the broken planes of Cezanne, and by the verve color of old
masters and painted in a conservative style the also produced etchings, book illustrations
and stage designs. In his West Minister Bridge painted in 1907, Derain has used curved
lines, such as these of the road, which move closer together as they approach the horizon.
The top of the tree in the foreground strengthens the effect of effect of depth. Through his
highly personal color. Derain achieves dynamic activity in the foreground in contrast to
the static city in the background.
Derain was a man who, despite his initial enthusiasm for the explosive colour of
Fauvism, was constantly haunted by a concept of painting more ordered and classical in a
traditional sense.
The career of Maurice de Vlaminck presents many parallels with Derain's, even though
the artists were so different in personality and in their approach to the art of painting. He
was influenced by Van Gogh. In his fauve paintings, Vlaminck characteristically used the
short, choppy brushstrokes of the Dutchman to attain a comparable kind of coloristic
dynamism.
Eg. 1. Picnic in the country (1905)
The two figures,modelled freely but rather
literally, are isolated within the coil of
swirling colour patches, they are foreigners
from the world of nature, picnicking in a
forest of paint.
Vlaminck had moved toward a kind of expressive realism by 1915, which he continued to
pursue for the rest of his life. His characteristic later landscapes takes us back to the 17th
century Dutch landscape interpreted in heavily textured brush painting. His colour
became geneally tonal, the effect of the threatening skies over a road winding through a
desolate countryside. The formula ultimately arrived at by vlaminck proved highly
effective, skillfully presented and charged with emotion. He was content simply to play
variations on it throughout most of his life.
.
CUBISM 1907- 1919
A Movement in painting originated in 1907 by Picasso and Braque, which
transposed natural forms into abstract arrangements of overlapping on transparent planes.
It was based on Cezanne’s later works and was also much influenced by Negro art and
Picasso’s interest in Iberian sculpture and African sculpture with their furice distortions
acutely faceted surfaces and severe shapes, Cubists rejected values upheld in European
and since the Renaissance.
All the most important Cubists, including Picasso and Braque, moved from
Cubism proper to other forms of painting, most of them before the First World War.
Pictorial characteristics.
Great variation occurs in the appearance of Cubist paintings, but they are all in
some degree distortions of the visible world and not invented abstracts.
They do not use the conventional perspective, or realist color, nor do they
necessarily conform to a single viewpoint.
The resultant paintings may vary from small interlocking facets or planes in dull
color to bold patterns of large shapes in strong non-realist color.
The Name
Cubism was primarily a Parisian art movement deriving from the inquisitive
energy of the atmosphere of Paris at the turn of the century. Like fauvism the name was
coined by the art critic Louis Vauxcelles, when he referred to the paintings of Braque in
1908 as composed of Cubes.
Cubism has probably been the most important single movement in 20th century art
and contained in various form much after 1914.
Cubist painters broke down reality and rearranged it according to their own fancy.
They stopper short of complete abstraction retaining traces of reality man made articles
rather than nature to give unity interest and authority to their works. The cubists true to
represent collective inner feeling by means of symbols. The power of an image depends
on its ability to communicate feelings as if it had a life of its own. The cubits wanted to
create something new to convey the impression that it had a life of its own.
It combines several views of the object, all more or less fragmented and
superimposed expressing the idea of the object rather than any one view of it. Colors are
mostly gray, brown and ochre (dull colors only). During this period Picasso and Braque
eliminated the heavy, squat Iberian sculptures of ancient Spain. They produced grotesque
forms which bore little resemblance to human beings, since they broke up the shape in
order to present all aspects at once, as they exist in the mind rather than as observed by
the eye.
Spanish painter, sculptor, graphic and ceramic artist. The most influential artist of
our times the developed his incredible technical mastery at an exceptionally early age in
Barcelona. By time he made his first visit to pairs in 1900 he had already mastered such
different techniques and those employed by Toulouse Lautrec, Munch and Renoir.
He settled in Paris in 1901 and there he set off an artistic journey through a
succession of different styles or periods which through the years, have revealed a creative
imagination of extraordinary richness.
The Blue period extended from 1901 to 1905 and was dominated by a melancholy
atmosphere peoples with emaciated beggars, sick children.
In the pink period 1906 Picasso’s subjects included dancers, animals and portraits
He has reduced the colors. He has used ochre, pink and blue. He did with
sober colors and put away the rich colors.
(3). Distortion
The extreme right figure seated is distorted. He showed objects as they are
and not as they are seen. So the reality is conceptual realism and he had simultaneous
vision
4. Guernica (1935)
Out of the same phase came his most famous single work the ‘ Guernica’ a
powerful protest against the suffering of the Spanish people during the civil war. This
was a elongated painting- the length like a rural the restricted himself to black and white
combination. Picasso imagined bomb to fall into the courtyard of a farm house. This
composition is a pitch (3 parts). The horse is chopped out because of the cubistic
treatment. There is a head of a bull in an angry mood. A woman looks up, tongue is thorn
like (grief stricken) cries over the dead child. The death of the child is shown by the head
hung loose. To balance the crying woman, on the right side is a person trembling because
of the roof that has given way into darkness. Distortion in these figures is seen because of
the shock of unexpected fall (glaring eyes, land and feet flung apart and other details). In
the middle panel is the poignancy impact through imagery and placement cruel effects of
war is represented. The pictorial art is combined with simple device strength of caricature
and satire.
Since the world war II he lived in the south of France, following no one style, but
expressing his subjects according to his particular interpretation in lithograph, ceramic,
sculpture and painting. His ‘Accordionist’ is a contraction of large interesting planes in
which the longer edges and longer angles suggest the original subjects a man host of
small shapes hover and interpenetrate.
Sculptures
Eg. 1. Head of a woman (1909)
French painter and sculptor. Braque began his career as an apprentice in his
father’s decorating business.He then turned to painting and in 1905 was part of the fauve
group. In 1909, he began a collaborative work, with Picasso, developing the branch of
painting known as ‘Analytical Cubism’. He was one of the first to experiment with
‘collage’ using sack cloth and a great variety of materials and textures to obtain
decorative and expressive effects. By 1902 he had exhausted his interest in synthetic
cubism and began to develop a very personal interpretation of reality, especially in still
life and figure composition. His palette is a particularly subtle one, mainly variations of
browns, greys, green and white. Braque produced some sculptures mostly relief in plaster
and also lithographs and etchings. In his Musical Forms the surface texture is the most
important element in the soulful harmonious and elegant shapes.
Braque could more readily attain a conceptualized image of reality when working
from landscape or still-life,both motifs free of the Expressionist psychological
subjectivity implicit in the human face and figure.
Eg. Landscape at La Ciotat,
Landscape with Houses,
Houses at L’ Estaque
Violin and Palette
FERNAND LEGER (1881 – 1955)
French painter and designer. An early acquaintance with Braque and Picasso led
to Leger’s development of a particular form of cubism in which appear the shapes of
geometric and mechanical devices. Leger produced machines – like forms called Tubism
or Block Cubism. Men are depicted as Massive, they resemble the robot like creatures
surrounded by machines and vast buildings precise, the over all mechanical effect is
accentuated by his use of large areas of primary colors with black and clear greys. Leger
also designed settings for ballets, mosaics, ceramics and in 1924 produced the first
abstract film ‘Le ballet mechanique’ using actual subjects instead animated drawings.
His influence on modern painting has been tremendous.
Development
Expressionism really took root in Germany, in Dresden, Munich and Berlin.
Three separate groups emerged, which are collectively referred to by art historians
as German Expressionism:
Die Brucke -The Bridge group(1905-13)
Der Blaue Reiter – The Blue Rider(1909-14)
and the post-war Die Neue Sachlichkeit (1920s).
Though there are Expressionistic paintings from all periods and many countries, however
it is unusally used to described certain German movements occurring between 1905 and
the 1920’s and concentrated into 2 groups.
1. The Bridge group – It is very German’s in character and formed in Dresden in
1905.
2. Blue Rider group- The more international group founded in Munich 1911
The subject matter frequently comments on the human situation with the use of
raw color brilliant, contrasting and unrelated to the objects portrayed. Unlike their
contemporaries in France, the Fauves, who used color in such a way that their paintings
cheered and soothed, many Expressionists cause us to shudder with discomfort when we
look at their work when the landscape is their subject, it is treated with an attitude of
distrust that is for removed from the self-confident coolness of classical art.
Expressionism characteristics
brilliant/clashing colors
reflect mysticism, self-examination, speculation on the infinite
nature used to interpret the universe
distorted forms
art to convey truth or psychological truth
artists grouped in "schools" like Die Brücke and Der Blaue Reiter; were more
concerned with the emotional impact that their work can have on its viewers
two main themes - alienation, loneliness
In 1905, Central Germany , three student architects Ernest Kirchaer (1880 – 1938)
along with Fritz Blergl, founded the Bridge group. These founder members were later
joined by Max Pechstan, Emile Nolde, Olto Mueller and many others.
The Blue Rider group was followed by Kandinsky who in 1910 in Munich
gathered around him a heterogeneous collection of artists like Jawlensky, Bohemian
Alfred Kubin, France Marc. August marks etc. Paul klee’s place in the Blue Rider group
(joined in 1914) was only a peripheral one.
Apart from these groups there were several independent Expressionists like Oscar
Kokoschka (1886) Max Beckmann (1844 – 1950)
Norwegian Expressionist painter and graphic artist. In his early years Munch
spent considerable time in Paris and Berlin. He was the first Expressionist to be
influenced by Gauguin’s colors and patterns but he showed much greater emotional force
in the turn influenced and provided a strong impulse for German Expressionists. Though
frightful colors and violently distorted symbols he revealed his
inner temper ant and obsessions. A sense of doom oppressed him
from his childhood when his mother and sister died. His brooding
themes on death, sickness, fear and loneliness are dramatized by
the use of patterns of lines and flat heavy colors. Moreover the
vastness of nature filled him with melancholy and fear while the
power of love haunted him with a nameless terror.
Belgian artist. His work is haunted by the fiendish mask, symbolic of human
beings trying to conceal their true self. He satirized contemporary society in the manner
of a cartoonist. In his best known work,
The Entry of Christ into Brussels’ (1889),
hideous crowed of marked men, unworthy to be
these followers, surrounded the savior. The
strident blot ended colors and tonal discords
represent these repulsive creatures.
This painting was refused admission and was never publicly exhibited before 1929.
Ensor’s mature paintings still, decades later, have the capacity to shock. During the
1890’s Ensor focused his talents for invective on the antagonists of his paintings,
frequently with devastating results. This decade saw some of his
most `brilliant , morbid, gruesome, and at time obscene drawings
and etchings
Portrait of the artist surrounded by masks (1899)
German Expressionist painter and engraver. Nolde began painting in the manner
of the Impressionists but generously his color became more violent and his forms more
grotesque. Profoundly religious, Nolde treated with terrifying harshness subjects inspired
by the life of Christ.
Eg. THE SISTERS shows his often violent brand of Expressionism, fauvism and the
variety of preventive art forms.
Despite his heavy impasto technique, he was a great artist with an inborn sense of
design this work combines the spirit and vitality of Van Gogh with the powerful
expressiveness of Grunewald and large religious compositions like the Last Supper and
white sun (1909). He did not remain long in the Bridge group.
Swiss painter, teacher, printmaker and one of the major figures of 20th century
painting. His art the product of many thoroughly assimilated and recombined influences.
It is always distinguished by the intelligence and poetic sensibility of the artist.trained in
Munch, he worked and taught there. Until 1914 he worked mainly in black and white.
After the visit to North Africa, there was a great change in his work and he became
seriously interested in color. In his contempt for illusionistic art, he turned to the art of
children and primitive people. His paintings and drawings strongly reveal the real world
and the reality which were in the life of beings, animals and even inanimate to objects
discovered with wit and charm. His paintings and drawings were very small in size. His
Work helped to pave the way for Abstract Expressions.
In a water color such as ‘At the Mountain of the Bull’, the interpenetrating
planes of cubism, the geometrical character of Non-objective art and the instinctive linear
structure of children’s drawings satirize those current noses but the oddly sacrificial
feelings of the subject matter provokes deep into the sources of religious experiences as
old as human history.
He was a Russian painter. He carried his research into the emotional and psychological
properties of color line and shape to the point were subject matter and even
representational elements were entirely limited. He approached the canvas with no
preconceived theme but allowed the colors to come as they would prompted by
subconscious feelings.
In Improvisation the brilliant colors flow effortlessly across the canvas with as
little conscious order or control as possible on the artists part. In thus exploiting
subconscious sensations Kandinsky uncovered an area of feeling which was soon to be
exploited by other artists notably by the surrealists.
FUTURISM
What is Futurism?
• Futurism was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy in the early
20th century.
• It was largely an Italian phenomenon, though there were parallel movements in
Russia, England and elsewhere.
• The Futurism movement lasted from 1909 to 1944.
• Sole Italian avant-garde movement
• The Futurists practiced in every medium of art, including
– painting
– sculpture
– ceramics
– graphic design
– industrial design
– interior design
– theatre
– film
– fashion
– textiles
– literature
– music
– architecture
– gastronomy
Who founded Futurism?
• The founder of Futurism and its most influential personality was the Italian writer
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti.
• Marinetti launched the movement in his Futurist Manifesto, which he published
for the first time on 5 February 1909 in La gazzetta dell'Emilia, an article then
reproduced in the French daily newspaper Le Figaro on 20 February 1909.
• He was soon joined by the painters
– Umberto Boccioni
– Carlo Carrà
– Giacomo Balla
– Gino Severini
What did the Manifesto say?
1. Destroy the cult of the past, the obsession with the ancients, pedantry and academic
formalism.
4. Bear bravely and proudly the smear of “madness” with which they try to gag all
innovators.
5. Regard art critics as useless and dangerous.
6. Rebel against the tyranny of words: “Harmony” and “good taste” and other loose
expressions which can be used to destroy the works of Rembrandt, Goya, Rodin...
7. Sweep the whole field of art clean of all themes and subjects which have been used in
the past.
8. Support and glory in our day-to-day world, a world which is going to be continually
and splendidly transformed by victorious Science.
CUBISM FUTURISM
Static Dynamic
Monochrome or subdued colors Vibrant use of colour
Rational form of experimentation, and intellectual Vociferous and emotive exhortation for the mutual
approach to the artistic process involvement of art and life, with expressions of total art
and provocative demonstrations in public
Interest in the objective value of form Images and the strength of perception and memory
• Giacomo Balla,
• Gino Severini,
• Carlo Carra,
• Luigi Russolo
• Umberto Boccioni.
Just before the world war I, the short lived futurist movement appeared in Italy, with the
aim of revolutionizing the very foundation of art. In 1909, the poet Marinetti issued the
first of the blatant manifestoes of this movement wherein he started that art can be
nothing but violence, cruelty injustice. The following year the sculptor Boccioni, with
Balla, Severini and others proclaimed in the second manifesto that they intended to
glorify was which they considered the only health given of the world. They idolized
machines and made speed their aesthetic rule. For the Futurists the machine was the ideal
of beauty. They tried to represent movement by showing the limbs or wheels a number of
times in different stage of progress or by stretching the object in the direction of the
movement like magnetic lines of force. Yet the effect remains static one does not get the
impression of movement, nor movements itself. In the art only the interaction of
opposing volumes indicating motion are depicted. A basic rhythm gives unity to their
composition.
DADAISM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABNwtDyx7T4&ab_channel=nationalgalleries
Hatred gave birth to the Dada anti-art-loathing for the war, dissatisfaction with
victory in France and despondency in defeated Germany, post-war social unrest and
inflation, the destruction of the earth through mechanization. Culture seemed to have lost
its reason. They tried to fight senselessness, futility, and destruction with greater
senselessness. They organized meetings only to abuse and insult their audiences and their
demonstrations to show that culture had gone mad, became even more insane. They took
as their slogan ‘destruction is also creation’.
They declared that ‘Dada is against everything even Dada’. This anti-artistic
counter- revolution wanted to destroy the distinctions between painting and sculpture and
to declare that ‘all is art’.
Why Dada?
• to counter the logic that was used to justify the killing and mutilation of millions
• to show disgust with bourgeois values
• to create a better life after WWI through the irrational
Dada: What Is It?
• international movement in art and literature that used ridicule and nonsense to
reflect what was considered to be the meaninglessness of the modern world
• anti-war, anti-art, and anti-bourgeois movement
• anarchistic movement that challenged traditional perceptions of art as well as
provoked a reexamination of social and moral values
Founding of the Movement
• originated in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1916
– Zurich was neutral territory, the place where many artists went to find
refuge from World War I
– Lenin, James Joyce, and Carl Jung were also in residence here
• founded by exiles
• other Dada cells located in Paris, Barcelona and New York
Aims
DE STIJL – 1910
This group comprised painters, sculptors, architects, designers and illustrators.
The most typical figures in the group are Van Doesburg and Mondrian in that the former
was the creator and inspiration and the latter the best known member.
Abstract art sprang up in widely separated countries but with the rapid modern
communications they kept in close contact. Abstract or unrealistic are flourishes in a
climate of alienation in a seemingly arbitrary world at the mercy of forces beyond ones
control.
Abstract art began in 1910, when the danger of war hung over the world. Men
sought in art something unchanging and absolute, an escape from the depersonalization
of industrialism, and liberation from an apparently arbitrary existence. They wanted to
create a new simple reality of order and harmony to escape from the complexity, discords
and impending destruction.
PICTORIAL CHARACTERISTICS
The most unsurprisingly abstract of all modern painting de style work can be
recognized by the use of the primary colors (red, yellow and blue) or near primaries, and
horizontal and vertical lines dividing the areas of the canvas. In one characteristic of De
style, the vertical and horizontal lines give way to diagonals but the same use of primaries
is observed.
The name
De style is Dutch for the style it was the name given by Van Doesburg to the
periodical of the arts that he first produced in 1917.
Neo- plasticism was the term Mondrian preferred to De style as descriptive of the
movement. Mondrian said that Neo-plasticisim was the means by which the variety and
ingenuity of nature could be reduced to a plastic configuration defining the method of
communicating the immanent order of nature.
WASSILY KANDINSKY
In 1910, the half Asiatic Russian Kandinsky, born near the Chinese border of
Siberia, created the first completely non-representative art with color spots dynamically
juxtaposed, and wrote a book on the basics of abstract art. He had been a co-founder of
the Expressionist blue Rider group. He carried on research into the psychological and
emotional values of lines, their direction and relationship. While Gauguin and the Fauves
had divorced color from its natural representation, Kandinsky dissociated art completely
from all relationship with reality, not even making any allusion to it in his titles, unlike
Klee. By scientific study he also trued the to discover the laws of color and their
emotional impact. He retained the bright colors and flowing lines of Fauvism, but
rejected the planes and facets typical of Cubism. Thus he gave modern art a new
direction.
1. His Pier and Ocean (1914) composed of plus and menus sings, derives from a
natural scene.
2. His ‘Composition’ (1921) Characteristic of his later work, shows a delicate
balance of thrusts and checks. Black lines of different thickness cross the white
background to form rectangles of different proportions, filled at times with
primary colors or grey tto produce effect of advancing or receding movement.
3. Broadway Boogie Woogie – He was influenced by the American scene without
forsaking the vertical and horizontal or the primaries, Mondrian is here suggesting
the range and variety, the excited mechanism of American life the dancing steps
of the asphalt jungle as well as revealing his own inherent romanticism.
SURREALISM (1924)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XA_WzdlEBdI&ab_channel=Spencer
%27sPaintingoftheWeek
From this standpoint of subject matter Surrealism passed through two stages.
1. Before the First World War there Rousseau, G. Chirico, Marc Chagall
contemporaries of the Cubists, had produced fantastic paintings that reveal a
romantic escape mechanisms into memory and imaginations together with
expressions of psychotic fear.
2. After the war the French poet Breton, who had learned Freud’s ideas from his
study of neurology, started the second more sophisticated stage and gave it much
cleverly organized publicity through his manifesto of surrealism.
Like many other modern movements surrealism was an escapist art, a mad escape
from a mad world a romantic retreat into a world of dreams. The artists merely translated
their ideas into the language of shape and color. By breaking through the barrier of the
conscious to the unconscious and subconscious of psychological research, they wanted to
create a new world of fantasy a new mythology, a super or surreality more real than new
mythology, a super or surreality more real than reality by combining the psychological
levels.
They looked at human psychology rather than the anatomy of human physiology
which occupied the cubists. The subject rather than the objective interested them. Art for
them served to deepen their sacrifice knowledge, not as an object of contemplation or
enjoyment.
PICTORIAL CHARACTERISTICS
Dealing with the fantastic, surrealist painting may take a number of distinct forms,
each of which however, is recognizable through the irrational approach and the
construction of unreal, unworldly mysterious figures, either painted extremely
meticulously or constructed in near abstract shapes.
FANTASY PAINTER
French painter the greater primitive painter of modern times. He exerted great
influence on contemporary art, and his native paintings won him many admirers. He
painted from the heart, naturally and gracefully. He accepted criticism gracefully and
even cultivated his childlikeness without any affection. He remained a child a heart
loving and gentle and always siding with the defenseless. He looked at his world
sympathetically with a lively sensibility. His pictures mirror the kindness of his attractive
personality.
Though self- taught, he developed his natural talent for design and his masterly
color sense through obstinate toil. He rejected studio tricks to give his work a realistic
illusion. Both perspective and chiaroscuro are subdued and he did not trouble himself
with solidity and proportions. The details in his smaller paintings did not spoil their unity.
The bigger, even tones of color.
Rousseau’s jungle and dream pictures with their rhythmic designs of interwoven
lines and shapes and their unusual color effects constitute his best work. The figures and
leaves intertwine as in enlarging the branches and magnifying the leaves. The delicate
foliage produces a subtle rhythm and pleasing decorative design with the artistic meeting
and crossing of the leaves. Generally he outlines the contours directly with his brush.
Egg. Sleeping gypsy:- This shows the impossible dream situation, mirroring the
subconscious. This is one of the first examples of surrealist method and one of the best
surrealist paintings even before Chirico and Chagall. Instinctively he created an endless
desert landscape by using a series of planes one behind the other. And by subtle tones he
gave it a dramatic atmosphere. Some of the important surrealist painters are Marc
Chagall, Joan Miro and Salvador Dali.
Chirico was inspired by the sculpture and architecture in Turin, beautiful arcs
which leave room for imagination.
Eg. 1. Souvenir of Italy, the joys and enigmas of a strange hour (1913)
- This illustrates his combination of past, present and future as if a person in the
time of locomotives were trying to return to the past while the setting sun
casts a long slanting shadow before.
- The medical tower, the long stretch of loggia and street, and the large
restlessly sleeping classical sculpture in the foreground recall the past, and
contrast with the tiny people and locomotive in the background, who bring us
to the present while the shadow seems to point to the future.
Russian born painter of brightly colored fantasies Chagall has spent most of his
life in France and for a while experimented with cubism, though he is primarily an
expressionist. His paintings embody memories of his childhood in Russian villages, folk
tales and fables, as well as symbolic figures. During the last war Chagall was profoundly
disturbed by the persecution of the Jews. His tragic paintings from this period are full of
the sufferings of the Jews from the time of Christ until the advent of the Nazis.
Eg. Crucifixion (1943):- This demonstrates the importance of faith which brings hope
and courage in the midst of cruelty and terror. Over the small pathetic human figures and
the village in the background appears an angel the scroll of the Jewish scriptures and the
rabbi-like figure of Christ on the cross.
One of the founders of the later surrealist movement, Max Ernst, exerted great
influence by the techniques he introduced such ‘frontage’ which bear some resemblance
to the Rorschach test used in psychiatry. He created a piece of paper with paint, placed
another paper on top, and made a sandwich of them. After separating the sheets he
saluted the most suitable one, leaving it as it was or working on it. His fantastic
imagination discovered landscapes in the most ordinary things like floorboards. His
compositions have balance with attractive color and texture.
He was a Spanish painter and one of the leading surrealist. So his Baroque
treatment he added studies of the 17th century art of realistic painter. But Freud’s research
into psychological illness was his chief inspiration in his development of a new way of
painting which he called ‘paranoiac-critical activity. It consists of creating startling
effects by combining the unreal with real. In order to make the unreal appear more real he
painted in the precisely detailed manner of the miniaturists. In this way his paintings
resemble hallucinations.
He holds a unique place in modern art with his whimsical elementary forms
resembling amoeba, larva, germs or filaments. Like a primitive man or child he invents
his own decorative style with basic curbed forms and sparing colors without concern for
modeling or composition. Often he uses the automatic techniques. For his collages he
tears papers haphazardly scatters the fragments and then gives permanence to the
accidental shapes.
Characteristics of Miro’s paintings
• His work has been characterized as psychic automatism, an expression of the
subconscious in free form.
• By 1930 Miró had developed a lyrical style that remained fairly consistent.
• It is distinguished by the use of brilliant pure color and the playful juxtaposition
of delicate lines with abstract, often amoebic shapes.
Throughout his life, Miro felt a deep connection to his Catalan heritage and much of
the symbolism that is so prevalent in his work is deeply rooted in this bond.
In 1940 Miro returned to Spain and began to explore new media including large scale
sculpture, ceramics, murals and tapestries.
Following his first retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art in 1941, Miro
achieved international acclaim and is recognized as a pioneer of Modernism.
After 1941, Miró lived mainly in Majorca.
He painted murals for hotels in New York City and Cincinnati and for the Graduate
Center at Harvard.
Eg. 1. Harlequin’s Carnival (1924) – One of the first Surrealist pictures takes place
within the suggested confines of a room. The perspective of the window opening on the
right gives an od inversion of space. A wild party reges inside, where only the human
being is staring sadly at the spectator. Surrounding him is every sort of animal, beasts or
organism, all having a fine time .There is no specific symbolism, simply a brilliant,
fantastic imagination that has been given full rein. Certain favorite motifs recur in a
number of paintings. The ladder with the ubiquitous ear, the eye, the man with the pipe,
the arrowbird – but the salient points of Miro’s art is not iconographical or structural.
3. Dutch
- The ex-Dadaist Jean Arp, a close friend of Max Ernst, was a participant in
the first surrealist exhibition in Paris at Gallerie Pierre in 1925, and a
regular contributor to Surrealism until 1930.
- Known originally for his Dadaist wood-reliefs, cardboard cut-outs and torn
paper collages, his surrealist works comprised simple biomorphic shapes
sometimes with echoes of primitive art.
- He also experimented with automatic composition (automatism). In 1930,
he joined Cercle et Carré (Circle and Square) a Parisian discussion and
exhibition society for (mainly) geometric abstract artists, and in 1931
became a member of the larger Abstraction-Creation group, with whom he
began producing his sensuous organic abstract sculptures in marble or
bronze. This terminated his rather short involvement with Surrealism.
- Despite this, he was a forceful personality within both Dada and
Surrealism, while his signature biomorphic forms have had a strong
influence on a number of other sculptors, notably Henry Moore, as well as
the school of Organic Abstraction.
Eg. Before my birth (1914)
Starting from surrealism all the other movement was not viewed as regional perspective
but as an International and universal style. The pictorial art shifted from Europe to United
States. After the World War II around 1940, there was no real movement or art genius
active in Europe because it pardoned the movement and many of the artists migrated to
states. There was a sort of canalization in Europe countries to USA. In states there was 3
or 4 major origin for their style.
An American painter the foremost exponent of action painting and one of the
major artists of the mid 20th century. Jackson Pollock’s brush action painting stressed the
uncontrolled process of applying colors over the content.. He let the paint mixed with
impasto, sand or broken glass etc drip on the huge canvases as he walked over them. A
Pupil of Thomas hart Benton, he worked in the regionalist until the late 1930’s share his
style was radically influenced by the Mexican muralist, surrealism (especially as
exemplified by Miro) and south, western American Indian sand painting. In his
characteristic works of the 1940’s and early 1950’s he laid large expanses of unscratched
canvas on his studio floor and crouching over them, let paint drip upon them, in chewing
the use of brushes and other conventional tools, in an effort towards the direct expression
of his emotion,. Typically his large pains are densely impacted tracks left by his own
comings and goings actions and gestures as he hovered above the canvas surface.
He poured, plotted, sprinkled and dripped liquid paint is stained into the while
cotton duck so as to become part of the warp and waft of the weave rather than an
autonomous film on top of the canvas. The result is an image scintillating with light like a
work of late impressionism but containing an almost apocalyptic intensity in the clarity of
the improvisation. It constitutes a contemporary interpretation of the ‘sublime of the late
18th and early 19th centuries. Ideally, each of his works is a continuous without beginning
or end with references to nothing outside the work itself.
Action Painting
In 1947, Jackson Pollock developed a radical new technique (one that both Hofmann
and Krasner had tried earlier) called "action-painting", which involved dripping
thinned paint onto raw canvas laid on the ground using wide and rhythmic sweeps of
a large and loaded brush (if a brush was used) or, more usually direct from the can -
a far cry from the traditional painterly method whereby pigment was applied by
brush to a canvas on an easel. Pollock worked in a highly spontaneous improvisatory
manner, famously dancing around the canvas pouring, throwing and dripping paint
onto it. By doing this, he claimed to be channelling his inner impulses directly onto
the canvas, in a form of automatic or subconscious painting.
Pollock's paintings smashed all conventions of traditional American art. Their subject
matter was entirely abstract, their scale was huge, and their iconoclastic production
method became almost as important as the works themselves. This was because, for
these Abstract Expressionists, the authenticity of a painting lay in its directness and
immediacy of expression: in how the artist conveyed his inner impulses, his
unconscious being. In a sense, the painting itself became an event, a drama of self-
revelation. Hence the term "action painting".
Op-Art (1965-70)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=Sc7jYj39_LY&ab_channel=ChrissySyracuse
Op art exploits the functional relationship between the eye's retina (the organ that "sees" patterns) and
the brain (the organ that interprets patterns). Certain patterns cause confusion between these two organs,
resulting in the perception of irrational optical effects. These effects fall into two basic categories: first,
movement caused by certain specific black and white geometric patterns, such as those in Bridget Riley's
earlier works, or Getulio Alviani's aluminium surfaces, which can confuse the eye even to the point of
inducing physical dizziness. Second, after-images which appear after viewing pictures with certain colours,
or colour-combinations. The interaction of differing colours in the painting - simultaneous contrast,
successive contrast, and reverse contrast - may cause additional retinal effects. For example, in Richard
Anuszkiewicz's "temple" paintings, the arrangement of two highly contrasting colours makes it appears as
if the architectural shape is encroaching on the viewer's space.
Despite its strange, often nausea-inducing effects, Op-Art is perfectly in line with traditional canons of fine
art. All traditional painting is based upon the "illusion" of depth and perspective: Op-Art merely broadens
its inherently illusionary nature by interfering with the rules governing optical perception.
Famous Op Artists
The senior exponent, and pioneer of Op art effects even as early as the 1930s, is Victor Vasarely,
Hungarian in origin, but working in France since 1930. He has taken a radically sceptical view of traditional
ideas about art and artists: in the light of modern scientific advances and modern techniques, he claims
that the value of art should lie not in the rarity of an individual work, but in the rarity and originality of its
meaning - which should be reproducible. He began as a graphic artist; much of his work is in (easily
reproducible) black and white, though he is capable of brilliant colour. His best work is expressed in
geometric, even mechanistic terms, but integrated into a balance and counterpoint that is organic and
intuitive. He claims that his work contains "an architectural, abstract art form, a sort of universal folklore".
His mission is of "a new city - geometrical, sunny and full of colours", resplendent with an art "kinetic,
multi-dimensional and communal. Abstract, of course, and closer to the sciences". Vasarely's work can
sometimes dazzle the eye, but he does not aim to disturb the spectator's equilibrium.
The effect of the work of British artist Bridget Riley can be to produce such vertigo that the eye has to
look away. Though carefully programmed, her patterns are intuitive and not strictly derived from scientific
or mathematical calculations, and their geometrical structure is often disguised by the illusory effects (as
Vasarely's structure never is). Riley refuses to distinguish between the physiological and psychological
responses of the eye.
Pop-Art Movement
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qr7cdpGDRo&ab_channel=nationalgalleries
Leading British Pop artists included: Sir Peter Blake (b.1932), Patrick Caulfield
(1936-2006), Richard Hamilton (b.1922), David Hockney (b.1937), and Allen
Jones (b.1937).
Pop-art, like nearly all significant art styles, was in part a reaction against
the status quo. In 1950s America, the main style was Abstract
Expressionism, an arcane non-figurative style of painting that - while
admired by critics, serious art-lovers, and experienced museum-visitors -
was not "connecting" with either the general public, or with many artists.
Very much a painterly style, the more abstract and expressive it became, the
bigger the opportunity for a new style which employed more figurative, more
down-to-earth imagery: viz, something that the wider artist fraternity could
get its teeth into and that viewers could relate to. Thus Pop-art, which duly
became the established art style, and which in turn was superceded by other
schools after 1970.
Electric Chair (1965) Andy Warhol
In some ways, the emergence of Pop-art (and its ascendancy over Abstract
Expressionism) was similar to the rise of Dada and its broader based
successor Surrealism (and their ascendancy over Cubism). Both the
superceded schools (Abstract Expressionism and Cubism) involved highly
intellectual styles with limited appeal to mainstream art lovers. True, Dada
was essentially anti-art, but the years during which it flourished 1916-1922
were marked by great polarization and political strife, and as soon as things
calmed down most Dadaists became Surrealists. In any event, as explained
below under Aims and Philosophy, Pop-art shares many of the characteristics
of Dada-Surrealism and is indebted to it for several techniques derived from
Floor Burger (1971) Claes Oldenburg Kurt Schwitters' collages, the "readymades" of Marcel Duchamp, the iconic
imagery of Rene Magritte and the brash creations of Salvador Dali (eg. Mae
West Lips Sofa; Lobster Telephone).
And if Surrealism was essentially internalist, and escapist in nature, while
Pop-art was defined by external consumerist forces, both were consumed by
the need to make a strong visual impact on the general public.
Another artist who may have had an impact on Pop-art, is Edward Hopper
(1882-1967) the realist painter of urban America. Although his painterly
style is very different from most pop works, his simple images of ultra-
American everyday scenes (eg. "Night Hawks", 1942 and "Gas", 1940) were
well known to the pop generation, and may have informed their paintings.