Abstraction

To 'abstract' means to draw away from, to separate, not to refer to something particular

anymore. A movement of conscious and methodical destruction of particular and

recognizable in appearance. Artistic elimination of rational visual association.

In a way it is synthetical purification and intensification of colours, forms and ideas that leads to creation of artwork that either resembles a direct print of a soul that refused to undergo

rational filters of mind and cognoscence, or a quasi-scientific, almost mathematical picture that looks so rational it's difficult to believe how

irrational it actually is.

Franz Kline, C & O, 1958, oil

on canvas, 1.96 x 2.79 m

(77 x 110 inches), National

Gallery of Art, Washington,

DC.

Barnett Newman, Adam, 1951-2, oil

on canvas, 242.9 x 202.9 cm, Tate

Gallery, London.

Barnett Newman, Not There-Here, 1962, oil and casein on canvas,

198 x 89.4 cm, Georges Pompidou Center, Paris.

Constructivism

Constructivism was first created in Russia in 1913 when the Russian sculptor Vladimir Tatlin, during

his journey to Paris, discovered the works of Braque and Picasso. When Tatlin was back in

Russia, he began producing sculptured out of assemblages, but he abandoned any reference

to precise subjects or themes. Those works marked the appearance of Constructivism.

Constructivism art refers to the optimistic, non-representational relief construction, sculpture, kinetics and painting. The artists did not believe in abstract ideas, rather they tried to link art with

concrete and tangible ideas. Early modern movements around WWI were idealistic, seeking a new order in art and architecture that dealt with social and economic problems. They wanted to renew the idea that the apex of artwork does

not revolve around "fine art", but rather emphasized that the most priceless artwork can often be discovered in the nuances of

"practical art" and through portraying man and mechanization into one aesthetic program.

Vladimir Tatlin

Constructivist art is committed to complete

abstraction with a devotion to modernity, where themes are often

geometric, experimental and rarely emotional.

Objective forms carrying universal meaning were far

more suitable to the movement than subjective or

individualistic forms. Constructivist themes are also quite minimal, where

the artwork is broken down to its most basic elements.

Tatlin’s Tower or The Monument to the Third International was a grand monumental building envisioned by the Russian artist and architect

Vladimir Tatlin, but never built. It was planned to be erected in Petrograd (now St. Petersburg) after

the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, as the headquarters and monument of the Comintern

(the third international).

Suprematism

Suprematism considered the first systematic school of purely abstract pictorial composition in the modern movement, based on geometric

figures and was the expression "of the supremacy of pure sensation in creative art". It

is Russian art movement founded (1913) by Kazimir Malevich in Moscow, parallel to

constructivism.

Kazimir Malevich

Suprematism sought "to liberate art from the ballast of the representational world." The work of the painter no longer involved representing and

creating chromatic harmonies or formal compositions, but rather attaining the limits of painting. It consisted of geometrical shapes

flatly painted on the pure canvas surface. The pictorial space had to be emptied of all symbolic content and all content signifying form. It had to be decongested and cleared, so as to show a

new reality where thought was of prime importance.

Black Circle [1913]

1923-29; Oil on

canvas, 105.5 x

105.5 cm (41 1/2 x 41 1/2 in);

State Russian Museum,

St. Petersburg

Black Square [1913]

1923-29; Oil on

canvas, 106.2 x

106.5 cm (41 3/4 x 41 7/8 in);

State Russian Museum,

St. Petersburg

Black Square and Red Square

1915; Oil on canvas, 71.4 x 44.4 cm (28 x 17 1/2 in); The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Suprematist Painting:

Aeroplane Flying

1915; Oil on canvas, 57.3 x 48.3 cm (22 5/8

x 19 in); The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Suprematism: Self-Portrait in

Two Dimensions 1915; Oil on

canvas, 80 x 62 cm (31 1/2 x 24 3/8 in); Stedelijk

Museum, Amsterdam

De Stijl (The Style)

The De Stijl (literally, "the style") art movement was founded by the painter and architect Theo

van Doesburg in Leiden in 1917. It encompassed a new type of style in modern art and architecture.

This movement used the artistic talent of the artists by designing homes, buildings, and

furniture.

Art was seen as a collective approach, with a language that went beyond cultural, geographical and political divisions. The depersonalization of

the artwork was carried through into the execution which was anonymous and

impersonal. The artist's personality took a back seat to a conscious and calculated

working process.

Theo van Doesburg

Theo van Doesburg (born Christian Emil

Kuepper [or Küpper]) (Dutch, 1883-1931),

Composition X, 1918, oil on canvas, 64 x 43 cm,

Georges Pompidou Center, Paris.

Theo van Doesburg, Counter-

Composition VI, 1925, oil on canvas, 50.0 x 50.0 cm, Tate

Gallery, London.

Piet Mondrian, Composition C,

1920, oil on canvas, 23 3/4 x 24 inches (60.3 x 61 cm), Museum

of Modern Art, NY.

Piet Mondrian, Color Planes in Oval, 1913-14, oil on canvas, 42

3/8 x 31 inches (107.6 x 78.8 cm), Museum of

Modern Art, NY.

Art Deco

Art Deco represented the rapid modernization of the world. While the style was already

widespread and was in fashion in the United States and in Europe, the term Art Deco was not

known. Modernistic or the "1925 Style" was used. The name Art Deco was derived from the

1925 "Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs Industriels et Modernes", held in

Paris.

Art Deco was primarily an elegant design style dominant in decorative art, fashion, jewelry,

textiles, furniture design, interior decoration, and architecture. It began as the Modernist

follow-up style on Art Nouveau but more simplified and closer to mass production.

Tamara de Lempicka

Tamara de Lempicka, Calla Lilies, 1941, oil, private collection, CA.

Tamara de Lempicka (born in Poland, from the

age of 20, active in Paris and America, 1898-1980), Self-

Portrait in the Green Bugatti,

1925, oil on wood panel, private

collection.

William van AllenWilliam Van Alen

(American, 1882-1954), Chrysler Building, 1930,

New York City. An archetypal American Art

Deco skyscraper, the exterior of the building reflects the Chrysler

automobile. The building was faced with Nirosta

stainless steel, because of its low-maintenance,

and the beauty of its color.

In the lobby of the Chrysler Building are

more Art Deco designs. The outer doors for each elevator are

decorated with stylized papyrus motif decor of exotic "Metyl-Wood" veneers produced by the Tyler Company,

1928-1930.

Bauhaus

The Bauhaus is one of the first colleges of design. It came into being from the merger of the

Weimar Academy of Arts and the Weimar School of Arts and Crafts. It was founded by

Walter Gropius in 1919 and was closed in 1933 by the Nazis.

The Bauhaus holds a place of its own in the culture and visual art history of 20th century. This outstanding school affirmed innovative training

methods and also created a place of production and a focus of international

debate. It brought together a number of the most outstanding contemporary architects and artists. The Bauhaus stood almost alone in attempt to

achieve reconciliation between the aesthetics of design and the more commercial demands

of industrial mass production.

Bauhaus - A very influential German school of art and design. Underlying the Bauhaus

aesthetic was a fervent utopianism, based upon ideals of simplified forms and unadorned

functionalism, and a belief that the machine economy could deliver elegantly designed items for the masses, using techniques and materials employed especially in industrial

fabrication and manufacture — steel, concrete, chrome, glass, etc. All students took a

preliminary course before moving on to specialist workshops, including carpentry, weaving, pottery,

stagecraft, graphic arts, and graphic design.

Wassily Kandinsky, Swinging, 1925, oil

on board, 70.5 x 50.2 cm, Tate Gallery,

London. Kandinsky's book Point and Line to Plane, published

in 1926, explains the meanings he

ascribed to the geometric imagery

he put into such paintings as Swinging.

Wassily Kandinsky (Russian, 1866-1944), In the Gray, 1919, oil on canvas, 129 x 176 cm,

Georges Pompidou Center, Paris.

Paul Klee, Comedy, 1921, watercolor and oil on paper, 30.5 x 45.4 cm, Tate Gallery, London.

Paul Klee, A Young Lady's Adventure, 1922, watercolor on

paper, 43.8 x 32.1 cm, Tate Gallery, London.

Dadaism

Dadaism or Dada is a post-World War I cultural movement in visual art as well as literature (mainly poetry), theatre and graphic design.

The movement was, among other things, a protest against the barbarism of the War and

what Dadaists believed was an oppressive intellectual rigidity in both art and everyday

society; its works were characterized by a deliberate irrationality and the rejection of the prevailing standards of art. It influenced later

movements including Surrealism.

According to its proponents, Dada was not art; it was anti-art. For everything that art stood for,

Dada was to represent the opposite. Where art was concerned with aesthetics, Dada ignored

them. If art is to have at least an implicit or latent message, Dada strives to have no meaning--

interpretation of Dada is dependent entirely on the viewer. If art is to appeal to sensibilities, Dada

offends. Perhaps it is then ironic that Dada is an influential movement in Modern art. Dada

became a commentary on art and the world, thus becoming art itself.

Francis Picabia (born "Francis Martinez de

Picabia") (French, 1879-1953; active in New York and Barcelona, 1913-

17), Dada Movement, 1919,

ink on paper, 20 1/8 x 14 1/4 inches

(51.1 x 36.2 cm), Museum of Modern

Art, NY.

Theo van Doesburg (born Christian Emil Kuepper [or

Küpper]) (Dutch, 1883-1931) with Kurt Schwitters (German, 1887-1948), Kleine Dada Soirée,

1922, lithograph, sheet: 11 7/8 x 11 7/8 inches (30.2 x 30.2 cm), Museum of Modern Art, NY.

Jean Arp, Collage Arranged According

to the Laws of Chance, 1916-17, torn-and-pasted

papers on gray paper, 19 1/8 x 13 5/8 inches

(48.6 x 34.6 cm), Museum of Modern

Art, NY.

Arp was a founding member of the first Dada group that coalesced in Zurich in 1916 around the

Cabaret Voltaire of Hugo Ball, the poet and performer. "Dada," wrote Arp, "wished to

destroy the hoaxes of reason and to discover an unreasoned order." While this work is far less

violent than some of the rhetoric of Dada, Arp's use of serendipitous composition here embodies what has been called the heart of Dada practice:

the gratuitous act.

Marcel Duchamp, Bicycle Wheel, 1913

/ 1964, metal, painted wood, 126.5

x 31.5 x 63.5 cm, Georges Pompidou

Center, Paris. Duchamp called this

"an assisted readymade."

Marcel Duchamp, L.H.O.O.Q., 1919,

rectified readymade, pencil on a

reproduction — a chromolithograph, 7 3/4 x 4 7/8 inches, private collection,

Paris.

As if the addition of mustache and beard weren't enough of a poke at this most famous of

paintings, the letters Duchamp penciled — L.H.O.O.Q. — at the bottom of his altered image are meaningless in themselves, but when read

aloud in French, make the sound of "Elle a chaud au cul," meaning, "She has a hot ass."

In 1965 Duchamp produced L.H.O.O.Q. Shaved, New York, 1965, playing card with colored ink on printed invitation, 8 1/4 x 5 3/8 inches (21 x 13.8

cm), Museum of Modern Art, NY.

Metaphysical Paintings

Metaphysical Painting (Pittura Metafisica) is an Italian art movement, born in 1917 with the work

of Carlo Carrà and Giorgio de Chirico in Ferrara. The word metaphysical, adopted by De

Chirico himself, is core to the poetics of the movement.

They depicted a dreamlike imagery, with figures and objects seemingly frozen in time.

Metaphysical Painting artists accept the representation of the visible world in a

traditional perspective space, but the unusual arrangement of human beings as dummy-like models, objects in strange, illogical contexts, the

unreal lights and colors, the unnatural static of still figures.

Giorgio de Chirico

Giorgio de Chirico, Ariadne, 1913, oil and graphite on canvas, 53 3/8 x 71 inches (135.6 x

180 cm), Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY.

Giorgio de Chirico, The Uncertainty of the Poet, 1913, oil on canvas, 106.0 x 94.0 cm, Tate

Gallery, London.

Giorgio de Chirico, The Painter's Family, 1926, oil on canvas, 146.4 x

114.9 cm, Tate Gallery, London. Several years after World War I, de

Chirico reimages mannequins as

members of a painter's family. The grouping of

mannequins is reminiscent of

traditional depictions of the Holy Family.

Surrealism

It was an artistic movement that brought together artists, thinkers and researchers in hunt of sense of expression of the unconscious. They were searching for the definition of new aesthetic,

new humankind and a new social order. Surrealists had their forerunners in Italian

Metaphysical Painters (Giorgio de Chirico) in early 1910's.

Salvador Dalí, Lobster Telephone, 1936, plastic, painted plaster and mixed media, 17.8 x 33.0 x

17.8 cm, Tate Gallery, London. This sculpture is a classic example of the Surrealist practice of juxtaposing otherwise unrelated everyday

items. The Surrealists valued the mysterious and provocative effect of such incongruities. Dalí

believed that his objects expressed the secret desires of the unconscious, and that lobsters and telephones reveal the prominence of the

sexuality.

René Magritte, The Reckless Sleeper, 1928, oil on canvas, 116.0 x 81.0 x 2.0 cm, Tate Gallery,

London.

Man Ray (American, 1890-1976),

Pisces, 1938, oil on canvas,

60.0 x 73.0 cm, Tate Gallery, London.

Social Realism

Social Realism is a term used to describe visual and other realistic art works which chronicle

the everyday conditions of the working classes and the poor, and are critical of the

social environment that causes these conditions. Social Realism should be seen as a democratic tradition of socially prompted artists of liberal or left-wing conviction. Social Realism fully presents an international phenomenon, rooting in

Realism of the 19th century.

Jose Clemente Orozco

Creative Man1936

University of Guadalajara

, Mexico

Jose Clemente OrozcoChrist Destorying his Cross

1943

Socialist Realism

Socialist Realism is Soviet artistic doctrine, realistic in its nature which has a purpose the

furtherance of the goals of socialism and communism. It was institutionalized by Joseph

Stalin in 1934, and later by allied Communist parties worldwide. New role of art in Soviet society defined that successful art depicts and glorifies

the proletariat's struggle toward socialist progress.

The art produced under socialist realism is realistic, optimistic, and heroic. Its purpose was education in the spirit of socialism. Its practice

is marked by strict adherence to party doctrine and to conventional techniques of realism.

Waiting, 1945. Post-Stalin (1975-1985), set in 1945 at the end of WWII. Painted by Ivan

Babenko. Oil on canvas, 123x167 cm.

Lenin With Villagers. Post-Stalin (1959). Painted by Evdokiya Usikova (Ukraine). Oil on canvas,

133cm x 197cm.

Steel Workers. Stalin-era (1950). Painted by V.Malagis. Oil on Canvas, 162 x 200cm.

Pop Art

Pop Art has started in England in late 50's and grown in United States in early 60's. Among the

Pop Art forerunners are two unique models - prototypes of the modern artists: the French artist

Marcel Duchamp and the German Kurt Schwitters.

Marcel Duchamp's work and his thoughts have altered the definition of the art and our way of

understanding it. He was famous with his "ready-mades," objects torn from their usual contexts

and exhibited as art.

Kurt Schwitters produced collages and assemblages that lay somewhere between painting and sculpture. The work of his art

turned into an environment that was no longer something only to be looked at.

Pop stresses frontal presentation and flatness of unmodulated and unmixed color bound by hard edges. They suggest the depersonalized

processes of mass production. Pop Art investigates in areas of popular taste and kitsch previously considered outside the limits of fine art. It was rejecting the attributes associated with

art as an expression of personality. Works were close enough to reality and at the same time

it was clear that they were no ready-mades but artificial re-creations of real things.

Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol, Mao, 1973, silkscreened acrylic on canvas, 448.3 x 346.1 cm, Nationalgalerie,

Berlin.

Edward Ruscha (American, 1937-), Large Trademark with Eight Spotlights, 1962, Whitney

Museum of American Art, New York, NY.

Roy Lichtenstein, Whaam!, 1963, acrylic and oil on canvas, 172.7 x 406.4 cm, Tate Gallery, London. You may wish to see a preparatory

drawing for this painting, 14.9 x 30.5 cm, Tate Gallery, London.

Roy Lichtenstein, Vicki, 1964, enamel on

steel, 42 x 42 inches,

Minneapolis Institute of

Arts.

Op Art (Optical Art)

Branching from the geometric abstraction movement, Op Art includes paintings concerned with surface kinetics. It was a movement which

exploits the fallibility of the eye through the use of optical illusions. The viewer gets the

impression of movement by flashing and vibration, or alternatively of swelling or warping.

Two techniques used to achieve this effect are perspective illusion and chromatic tension.

Artists used colors, lines and shapes repetitive and simple ways to create perceived

movement and to trick the viewer's eye. Many of first, the better known pieces were made in only

black and white.

Kinetic Art

Kinetic art explores how things look when they move and refers mostly to sculptured works,

made up of parts designed to be set in motion by an internal mechanism or an external

stimulus, such as light or air. The movement is not virtual or illusory, but a real movement that might be created by a motor, water, wind or

even a button pushed by the viewer. Over time, kinetic art developed in response to an

increasingly technological culture.

Naum Gabo 1890-1977

Kinetic Construction (Standing Wave) 1919-20, replica 1985

Metal, painted wood and electrical mechanism

object: 616 x 241 x 190 mmsculpture

In the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, when this work was made, materials were hard to

come by. 'It was the height of civil war, hunger and disorder in Russia. To find any part of

machinery … was next to impossible', said Gabo. Originally made to demonstrate the principles

of kinetics to his students, it reflects the artist's belief in a sculpture in which space and time

were active components. A strip of metal is made to oscillate so that a standing wave is set up. This

movement in real time creates the illusion of volumetric space.