09.17 modernism cont'd
TRANSCRIPT
Songs of the Day
“Shake Your Thang” by Salt-N-Pepa from 1988 album A Salt with a Deadly Pepa
“Take on Me” by Ah- Ha from the 1985 album Hunting High and Low
Songs of the Day
“We’re Not Gonna Take It” by Twisted Sister from 1984 album Stay Hungry and Still Hungry
“Ask” by The Smiths the 1986 single
Beginning the writing process / Introduction and a Thesis Statement. Group Activity – Pertaining to writing a strong thesis statement
Review Major Ideas from 09.10
Introduce some concepts of Modern Art
Today’s Schedule
Writing about Art
thesis statement a short statement, usually one sentence, that summarizes the main point or claim of an essay, research paper, etc., and is developed, supported, and explained in the text by means of examples and evidence.
Writing about Art – Thesis statement
Thesis Statement – Place it at the end of your first paragraph Examples of how you can word your thesis statement: In this paper I will analyze Mariana Wells,’ “The End of Earth” using formal and connotative description in order to explore the ways that the artwork expresses ideas of destruction and decay. Through analyzing Mariana Wells’ “The End of Earth,” this paper will reveal how the formal qualities of this sculpture express ideas related to the destruction and decay of the environment. Through analyzing Mariana Wells’ “End of Earth,” this paper will reveal how the use of color and texture in this sculpture express ideas of environmental decay. Tell me about the artist, the image, and the ideas /feelings being expressed.
Writing about Art – Thesis statement
I should understand! WHO – The artist – Mariana Wells WHAT – The artwork - title HOW – Analyzing using formal elements, connotation, etc. WHY – To demonstrate the art work expresses something
Writing about Art – Thesis statement
Class Activity
!Gregory!Crewdson,!un/tled!work!from!the!series!"Beneath!the!Roses",!2003>2005!!
Analyze!this!image!and!come!up!with!a!working!thesis!statement.!
From c. 1450-1870, ideas and techniques developed during the
Renaissance dominated Western art.
Three important ones:
BEAUTY ILLUSION
RELIGIOUS / SECULAR THEMES
Review from 09.10
Beauty in proportion The Golden Mean or The Golden Ratio
Beauty
Beauty in aesthetics
Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of art, beauty, and taste, with the creation and appreciation of beauty.
Beauty
Beauty in aesthetics
Beauty
Aesthetics change based on time and history Renaissance aesthetics Modern aesthetics Postmodern Aesthetics
observed Reality as a kind of Truth This was not always valued in art!
Illusion
observed Reality as a kind of Truth This was not always valued in art!
Illusion
Atmospheric!Perspec/ve ! !Linear!Perspec/ve!
Religious & Secular Themes
Giovanni Bellini San Zaccaria Altarpiece 1505
John Singer Sargent, Beatrice Golet, 1890
Modernism
The Modern Era
What major technological/social event in the 19th century changed the lifestyles of
most of the Western world?
Industrial Revolution!
Modernism
Modern Art / Artists Reacting to Modern existence = the effects of the
Industrial Revolution Reacting to Renaissance ideals
Five recurring themes in modernist art:
1. Seeing and perspective
2. Abstraction
3. Expression
4. Fantasy
5. Concept/idea
MEMORIZE THESE!
Claude Monet, Gare St-Lazare,,1877; French, oil on canvas, 32 1/2" x 39 1/9�, Fogg
Museum, Harvard University; Boston, Mass.
Captures the experience of modernity, of being in the station: the smoke, the light, the sensations
Spontaneous sensations and impressions of modernity
Impressionism Accurate depiction of reality – historical record
William Frith, Paddington Railway Station, 1882, oil on canvas, 117 x 257 cm, Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, Surrey, England
Claude Monet, Waterlilies with Clouds, 1903, oil on canvas
Claude Monet, Waterlilies with Clouds, 1903, oil on canvas
Compared with the Academic painting that came before, it looked messy and unfinished.
Thomas Cole, Landscape, 1825, oil on canvas
Claude Monet, Grainstacks in the
Sunlight, Morning Effect, 1890, oil on canvas
Haystacks were “neutral receptacles for light . . . [with] Each haystack . . . meant to be seen as a sample of something both commonplace and endless”
Claude Monet, Haystacks
Different times of day result in different lighting and colors
Claude Monet, Haystacks, End of Summer
Claude Monet, Grainstacks in the Sunlight, Morning Effect, 1890
Paul Cézanne, Le Cabanon de Jourdan, 1906, oil on canvas, 26” x 32”
Post-Impressionism
Interest in shapes and angles in addition to light and color
Cezanne’s concept of “the equivalent”
• The painting is not a secondary thing – a shadow or copy of the real thing
• The painting is a thing in itself, as real in the experience of the spectator as the scene the painter painted
• The painting should convey to the viewer an experience
• The painting isn’t an illustration but offers an equivalent sensation through its forms and colors
Paul Cézanne, Mont Sainte-Victoire, 1895
In contrast to Monet, the titles of Cézanne's landscapes do not indicate the time of day nor the season.
Paul Cézanne, Mont Sainte-Victoire, 1904-1906
Notice the breaking down of the picture plane into planes and areas of color
Paul Cézanne, Mont Sainte-Victoire, 1904-1906
Color is laid down as abstract shapes, defined by the horizontal, vertical, or diagonal directions in which it was laid down – precursor to Cubism
1. Seeing and Perspective
Impressionism • Pleasure • Light • Color • Spontaneity
Post-Impressionism • Color • Light • Shape • angles
Five recurring themes in modernist art:
1. Seeing and perspective
2. Abstraction
3. Expression
4. Fantasy
5. Concept/idea
MEMORIZE THESE!
2. Abstraction
• Shapes are abstracted – simplified or reduced to geometric forms
• Often nonrepresentational
• General; non-specific
• Not well defined (the opposite of concrete)
• Emphasis on formal qualities and relationships over narrative or specific meaning
Georges Braque La Roche-Guyon, 1909
Cubism The next step beyond Cezanne… The Cubists compressed all possible views of an object - top, sides, back, front – into one moment for a synthesized view. (new kind of seeing and perspective)
Georges Braque, Chateau at La Roche-Guyon, 1909
Abstracted to be an arrangement of prisms & triangles, cascading down Based on a real place
Cubism
Pablo Picasso, Glass of Absinthe, c. 1913
Shapes are broken down into cubes and other geometric fragments
Pablo Picasso, The Guitar Player, summer 1910, Oil on canvas, 100 x 73 cm Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris
Cubists were resistant to the illusionism developed in the Renaissance (linear perspective, atmospheric perspective) Shows multiple sides/views of an object simultaneously A kinetic view - the eyes are always in motion
Umberto Boccioni, The City Rises, 1910, oil on canvas, 79 x 119”, The Museum of
Modern Art, New York
Futurism Began as a rebellion of young intellectuals against bourgeois society and the cultural apathy into which Italy had sunk in the 19th century Related to Cubism
“A roaring motorcar
which looks as though running on shrapnel, is
more beautiful than the Victory of
Samothrace!”
Futurism The Futurist Manifesto was written by poet and propagandist Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and published in the Paris newspaper Le Figaro on February 20, 1909. According to Marinetti, what needed to be destroyed: libraries, museums, academies, cities of the past (seen as mausoleums). He extolled the beauty of revolution, war, speed, and modern technology.
A synthesis of labor, light and movement
We see: violent action, speed, and disintegration of objects by light
Note too the strong diagonals of the composition that destabilize it and give it a sense of dynamic energy
Umberto Boccioni, The City Rises, 1910, oil on canvas, 79 x 119”, The Museum of
Modern Art, New York
Futurism
Giacomo Balla, Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash,I 1912, 35 x 45.5”, Buffalo Fine Arts
Academy, New York
Futurism Multiplication of legs shows simultaneity This later became the device for showing movement in comic strips and cartoons
2. Abstraction
Cubism • Shape and angle • Multiple perspectives
Futurism • Motion, speed, energy • Dynamics of modern living
Five recurring themes in modernist art:
1. Seeing and perspective
2. Abstraction
3. Expression
4. Fantasy
5. Concept/idea
MEMORIZE THESE!
3. Expression
The distortion (exaggeration or abstraction) of reality for an emotional effect. Form and composition are intended to express intense emotion. (the content/subject matter of the artwork might also be emotional, but that is unrelated – Expressionism refers to form only, not content)
Expressionism
According to art historians, Expressionism is the opposite of Impressionism.
"An Expressionist wishes, above all, to express himself....[An Expressionist rejects] immediate perception and builds on more complex psychic structures.
Czech art historian Antonín Mat�j�ek, 1910
According to art historians, Expressionism is the opposite of Impressionism.
"An Expressionist wishes, above all, to express himself....[An Expressionist rejects] immediate perception and builds on more complex psychic structures.
Czech art historian Antonín Mat�j�ek, 1910
Henri Matisse, Red Studio, 1911, oil on canvas, 71 x 86”, Museum of Modern Art, New York
Expression
Les Fauves Color as expression of emotion “fauve” = “wild beast” in French
Henri Matisse, Open Window, Collioure, 1905, oil on canvas, 22 x 18”
Paris & northern Europe = drab and gray Southern France = sunny, colorful and delightful
Henri Matisse, Harmony in red (La chambre rouge: La desserte--Harmonie rouge), 1908-1909, oil on canvas, 71 x 96”, The
Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Russia
Colors represent the feeling or experience of a thing, not its actual appearance in the real world
André Derain, Charing Cross Bridge, London, 1906, National Gallery of Art, Washington
“It was the era of photography. That may have influenced us and contributed to our reaction against anything that resembled a photographic plate taken from life.”
- André Derain
Vincent van Gogh, 15 Sunflowers, 1888,
oil on canvas
Van Gogh was a contemporary of Cezanne, and worked before the Cubists, Futurists, and Fauves
“A sun, a light. . . How beautiful yellow is!”
Vincent van Gogh, The Sower, 1888, oil on canvas
Gabrielle Münter, View with Church, 1910-1911, oil on board, 33 x 45 cm
German Expressionism
Color is an independent expressive element rather than a representational vehicle
Edvard Munch, The Scream, 1893, oil on cardboard
The self in internal conflict
Nature as other The city is equated with internal anxiety
Käthe Kollwitz, Widows and Orphans, 1919
Social Expression
In Germany after WWI, there was tremendous hardship amongst the working class, and especially women and children. Kollwitz’s subjects are the visible outgrowth of the war and its senseless destruction. !
Kathe Kollwitz, The Widow I, 1922-23, woodcut on paper, 15x9”, Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita State University
A frequent theme was the impact war had on women and children
Käthe Kollwitz, Death and the
Mother
Munch grieved for himself;
Kollwitz grieved for humanity
Five recurring themes in modernist art:
1. Seeing and perspective
2. Abstraction
3. Expression
4. Fantasy
5. Concept/idea
MEMORIZE THESE!
4. Fantasy
Interest in the irrational and fantastic Use of dream-like images Desire to help people achieve absolute freedom Belief that art had the power and duty to change life
Marc Chagall, Birthday, 1915, oil on cardboard, 32 x 39”, Museum of Modern Art, New York
Influenced by: • Russian-Jewish
folk tales • Fauves’ use of
color • Cubist use of
space
Marc Chagall, Paris Through the Window,
1913, oil on canvas, 52 x
55”, Guggenheim
Museum, New York
Salvador Dali, The Persistence of Memory, 1931
Dali’s “paranoiac -critical’ method: looking at one thing and seeing another He defined his paintings as "hand-done color 'photography' of 'concrete irrationality' and the imaginary world in general"
Rene Magritte, The Listening Room, 1952
George Melly on Magritte: “He is a secret agent; his object is to bring into disrepute the whole apparatus of bourgeois reality. Like all saboteurs, he avoids detection by dressing and behaving like everybody else”
Rene Magritte, Threatening Weather, 1929, 54 x 73 cm,
National Galleries of Scotland
Characteristics/Themes:
• Use of familiar objects in an unexpected manner
• Dream-like
• Unsettling and uncanny
• Erotic
• Interrelatedness of plant, animal, human, and mechanical worlds
• Fear & loss of innocence
Dorothea Tanning, Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, 1946
Five recurring themes in modernist art:
1. Seeing and perspective
2. Abstraction
3. Expression
4. Fantasy
5. Concept/idea
MEMORIZE THESE!
5. Concept/Idea • A work of art resides in the idea of the artist, not
the physical object that emerges from that idea • Artist’s skill is irrelevant
• Often uses Readymades and objets trouves/ found objects
• Often incorporates humor and irony
Dada
Marcel Duchamp, Fountain, 1917
Dada artists were united not by a common style, but by a rejection of conventions in art and thought, seeking through their unorthodox techniques, performances and provocations to shock society into self-awareness
“I threw the urinal in their faces and now they admire it for its beauty . . . [this is a] critical misunderstanding. The choice of ready-mades was not aesthetic, but one of visual indifference and absence of good taste.”
Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp, Bicycle Wheel, 1913, Paris
, bicycle fork and wheel
screwed upside down onto stool
painted white, no dimensions recorded
Readymade
Marcel Duchamp, Bottle Rack or Bottle Dryer, 1914,Paris, galvanized iron bottle rack inscription, no dimensions recorded, original lost
"I just bought it at the bazaar of
the town hall."
Marcel Duchamp, In Advance of a Broken Arm, Nov. 1915, New York, wood and galvanized-iron American snow shovel (readymade), no dimensions recorded, original lost
Readymade
Marcel Duchamp, L.H.O.O.Q., 1919, 7 3/4”
x 4 1/8”
Rene Magritte, The Treason of Images, 1928-1929, oil on canvas, 24 x 37”, LA County
Museum of Art
Magritte is reminding us that a painting is not what is depicted, but paint on a canvas.
Joseph Kosuth One and Three Chairs, 1965
Conceptual Art (1960s) • Art resides in idea, not
object
• An object is only art when placed in the context of art
• Self-referential
• Includes written statements, spoken statements, artist performances, numerical repetitions in addition to more familiar things like images, sculptures, and installations.
Five recurring themes in modernist art:
1. Seeing and perspective
2. Abstraction
3. Expression
4. Fantasy
5. Concept/idea
MEMORIZE THESE!