Art Movements A rough outline of art movements

Renaissance The movement started from roughly 1150- 1600, this means that the movement started during the period of the middle ages and carried on into the period of time which was also called Renaissance, Renaissance means ‘re-birth’ this was because the middle ages was though as of a period of darkness, this was because it involved a period of 100 year war, the plague and chaos in the catholic church this was said to unsettle people’s faith in the government and religion. The period of unsettling circumstances lead to the movement occurring in Europe first as people wear searching out a different culture than they had hence the renaissance. The meaning of ‘Renaissance’ represents how at the time the art period began things resumed after the decline in trade and the feudal system which was the system used for structuring society and how relationships were based around the holding of land and exchanged for services and labour work.The movement was driven by the sudden want from society to learn classically again this was from the: paintings, sculpture, architecture, music and literature work which was created in the 14th, 15th and 16th centauries increased societies awareness of nature and classical learning, the movement also influenced: politics, art, literature, philosophy, music, science and religion. The movement started in Italy first this was because Rome was thought have as been a ‘glorious empire’ when..The art was characterized by a humanist aspect which meant that they were trying to capture the human element of emotion within the art.

Arts and CraftsThe art and crafts movement occurred from 1861-1914, in Great Britain in the 1880's the movement spread throughout Europe, the movement happened because they didn't like the the Industrial age where there was mass production of goods during this time which relied on heavy machinery rather than hand production. This happened because of the writer John Ruskin who wrote about the effects of Industrialization aesthetic effects (the principles underlying the work) and also social effects (at a earlier time period. The textile designer William Morris put this into practice by producing hand-printed, hand-woven, hand-dyed designs. The movement involved a very humane view toward workers and labor. Morris's goal was never reached because the expense which was needed to complete the process, the goal to create art for the masses. The movement was progressed mainly because of the arts and crafts exhibition society in 1888. In this movement textiles, books, wallpaper, stained glass and furniture as well. Artists who produced work for the movement include: William Morris, Walter Crane, Norman Shaw and Phillip Webb. The style of the work was characterized by a hand made style which had a slight medieval style. The work was often rough- hewn oak furniture or textile or wallpaper design ('Finely crafted'), the pieces are connate the style of medieval art because of the 'linear, opaque colors angular, simplified quality intricate, sometimes geometric, detail'. http://www2.palomar.edu/users/mhudelson/StudyGuides/19thCent_WA.html.

William Morris This piece is one of William Morris's wallpaper designs for the arts and crafts movement the piece is made from pencil, water colour. The piece is a sketch for a wallpaper design although it isn’t the finished product it shows the way they choose to keep to the traditional process this is in the way they choose to work from scratch and hand-render their work rather than produce it by machine. This therefore means that they were had the intention of keeping quality in design rather than the purpose of mass producing to make money. The piece has the movements characteristics of being linear because of the lines which are used in the form of the design for example the way the flower leaves have many lines these help with making the flowers in the illustration have a 3-D look and therefore have more of a flowing movement in the way that the leaves are positioned so that they are curving and gives the piece a relaxed feel in the way the that the piece has smooth curving shapes the piece has a relaxed feel and atmosphere because of the smooth flowing and soft edged shapes and also with the pale soft looking colours, the composition is very busy but because the colours

very soft in the way that the colour scheme which has been used of blue, yellow, beige, lavender and brown. The colours of yellow and beige are quiet pale colours whereas lavender can be quiet intense but the media which the artist has used means that the tone has quiet an translucent look to it because of the way the media is water based and has been used in a traditional way whereas if the paints had been used in a dry brushing technique then the colour would be less watered down and more pigment would be placed on the page. The piece is also very characteristic of the movement because of the way the piece is very detailed there are also ‘intricate’ details that are small and delicate the whole piece has lots of small details but each detail is in the same high quality throughout the piece like it has been thought about, the lavender colour in the piece has been used to create a focus point because the hues of yellow, beige and brown are all earthy tones whereas the purple tone is more vibrant and isn’t really a natural hue tone. I think although there is a focus point created in the piece with contrast the piece has a very busy appearance in the way the flowers seem to be placed extremely close together.

Walter Crane This was an invitation which was created for one of the arts and crafts exhibitions which they had during the time of the movement. This piece of design for the invitation has a hand rendered style which is characteristic of the movement which by the way it also has an illustrative style by the way the two people in the scene have been drawn using a slight linear style for example on their clothing where the material falls lines have been used to show this detail, this means that it still keeps a simple style because the people haven’t been drawn in a tonal way so that the piece is too detailed which would make it complex and therefore harder to find a focus point for the eye and too make it’s way around the piece with too much detail which would make it confusing. The piece also uses a very simple colour scheme of brown and beige, this means that because the piece contains a lot of small details for example in the top corners where some branches with many leaves are illustrated there have been fine details drawn for example the line which is usually present in the middle of the leaf, but because there are some many small leaves the piece appears quiet detailed but because the colour scheme is simple it means that the eye is likely to get less confused because if there were many colours then it would be looking at the range of different colours rather than the illustration work. This also means that if there was a wide colour scheme the piece would have too many details in the design elements of the piece. The composition of the piece has been designed so that the eye looks at the two medieval looking men who are shaking hands and then be drawn up to the title of the exhibition which lets you know what the invitation is for this therefore is a piece of vital information to gain interest in the exhibition. The title is emphasized by the way the text has been illustrated using negative space around the positive space to make the letter shapes up, this helps emphasize them because the brown background colour of the negative space and then the cream light colour of the positive space contrast each other and therefore draw your eye to the text with the contrast of light and dark colours. But the piece does include many details although there are less details at the bottom of the piece I thought that the way there are quiet a lot of linear marks used in the illustration this makes the piece seem quiet detailed and therefore I think busier than it should be so that you don’t have to spend a long time looking at it in order to understand what the pieces purpose is, although the piece has been balanced out by the colour scheme and could have been more complex I still think that there are too many details for it’s purpose however this gives it a medieval style which is often present in work from this movement. The medieval style has also been conveyed with the way the men who are illustrated are dressed this is because they are wearing an old style of dressing such as the loose style of top they are wearing which appears almost like a tunic which is not often worn by men now but in previous history.

Norman Shaw He was the architect who influenced the 1890’s arts and crafts architecture, he explored several styles including gothic styles although he is most know for his ‘urban queen anne’ style. is a notable example. ‘Shaw’s Queen Anne buildings combined modern materials and construction methods with authentic 17th-century town-house motifs.’ http://www.countrylife.co.uk/culture/article/304990/Great-British-Architects-Richard-Norman-Shaw.html

He was alive during the dates of 1831 and 1912, and he worked from the 1870’s to the 1900’s. The reason he shaped the arts and crafts movement was because he was said to have ‘recreated late Victorian architecture and late Victorian England’ (rosemary hill interviewed in the Guardian), this means that he embraced the past style of Victorian architecture which had a more handmade method and less industrial which was what the movement was fighting against. This also meets the characteristic of arts and crafts pieces which tended to have an old look such as how the Walter crane invitation had a medieval look to it. An example of how he created this appearance in his work ‘was its soaring chimneys, pre-Raphaelite stained glass and blue-and-white china glimmering against dark wood’ the part where rosemary mentions dark wood is significant this is because the material is a very common characteristic in Victorian architecture. Also the fact that she picks up on the ‘pre- Rahaelite’ stained glass is also apart of common characteristics because this artists in the movement were often influenced by this.

He was also known for being a good draughtsman this meant that he sketched the properties/ buildings he intended to build before hand this meant that the process happened from scratch.

Queen Anne’s Gate This building was famous for it’s ‘queen Anne style’ which is characterized by ‘: decoration in redbrick; tall pedimented or Dutch gables; towering chimney stacks; sunflower motif.’ The building had Stone dressings and followed the characteristics of queen Anne's revival style in a lose way. http://www.architecture.com/LibraryD

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Art Deco Art deco became popular in the 1920’s it was a very modern looking movement like its predecessor Art Nouveau it was said to be an ‘electric style’ this was because work created in the movement had a vibrant and modern appearance, the inspiration for art deco came from many sources not just one theme of movement, the art movement was a mixture of dull traditions which were outdated and a bit dull with new life in order to create a new exciting style which is a ‘decorative new language’, the movement came about from the social pressure of the war to have a clean cut style and also because art and design was put to a standstill and also the things produced during the war tending to be dull and uninspiring, this therefore ‘they borrowed from historic European styles, as well as from the pictorial inventions of contemporary Avant Garde art, the rich colours and exotic themes of the Ballets Russes, and the urban imagery of the machine age. They also drew on more distant and ancient cultures. The arts of Africa and East Asia provided rich sources of forms and materials. Archaeological discoveries fuelled a romantic fascination with early Egypt and Meso-America http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/a/art-deco/ It affected all sorts of art and design including fine art, decorative, film, photography, transport and product design. Artists which were involved are : Eileen Gray, Clarice cliff, Frank Lloyd Wright, Rene Lalique, Josef Hoffman, Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Louis Comfort tiffany. It was also influenced by neoclassical, constructivism, cubism, modernism and futurism. Inspiration also came from Africa and East Asia, these countries provided materials and forms for the art movement. Africa provided exotic imagery for the designers of the movement, they used: geometric zig zags, hatch marks, circles and triangles which are often seen in African textiles.

Avant GardeAvant Garde art means ‘ front guard’ in French which is a term which is used to describe works or people that are experimental or extremely talented, in the areas of art, culture and politics. The purpose of the art movement was to push the boundaries of what was accepted and is accepted with art, culture and reality this means what is accepted as the normal in the world whereas something which crosses the boundaries and in a way makes people look and think about the piece, this therefore means that it catches their attention and makes them think about the way it is different. In some sense this relates to culture today meaning an example of this is how people are accepted in society an example would be how someone who is extremely short in society or who is a different race or even someone who dresses very loudly and who wears a lot of patterns might not been seen by some people in society as someone who is normal they might shock certain people if they have a particular idea of what normal or beauty is but this could have something to do with the way the media have conveyed beauty to be, this is in the way in women’s lifestyle magazines and advertisements and throughout the media when models have been used they have used generally women or people who a symmetrical face, clear glowing skin, skinny, dressed well. This is the image the media has perceived as the ‘norm’ this means that if people don’t live up to this standard or are not similar to the image/standard of this then they are perceived as abnormal.

Cubism It was created in the early 20th centaury by the artists ‘Pablo Picasso’ and the artist Georges Braque in Paris between 1907 and 1914, the movement started from their common interest in the painter Paul Cézanne, he was a Post-Impressionism artist this is a type of art movement where they pleased with the colour and vitality which came from Impressionism but felt the movement had limitations he used a different method in the way he painted, this was in the way that he didn’t try to apply illusion in the depth meaning to create a 3-D dimension whereas he used a different technique in his painting which was to be aware of the 2-D dimension of the paper, he instead wanted to emphasize the texture of the paper this therefore was more modern because not many artists have done this before, this was done by applying regular brush strokes

The movement was influenced by Primitivism and non-Western sources. The movement was characterized by being highly geometric, modern and a distorted perspective. The movement was also influenced by the new technologies of the era ‘such as photography, cinematography, sound recording, the telephone’, http://www.artyfactory.com/art_appreciation/art_movements/cubism.htm this therefore meant that artists needed a new way of presenting their work so that the perspective still appeared interesting now that the new modern technologies were about and had appeared this was because photography had become such as good use for documenting things it meant that the camera had taken over painting which was used as a form of documenting things and because the camera invention made it easier and quicker to document things such as events etc. This meant that painters were being employed less since the invention and needed a new style so that the work had a new way of seeing things which was interesting to set it apart from the camera which produced a hyper realistic image. The movement was the first abstract movement in art.

Fauvism The art movement was the first avant- garde movement the movement happened between 1900 and beyond 1910, the art movement which was a group of artists experimenting with new ideas and methods. The fauve painters were the first to make impressionism popular, the style of the art movement used ‘bold brush strokes, high keyed vibrant colors’, they painted nature and people. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/fauv/hd_fauv.htm Artists who were apart of this movement included: Matisse, Maurice de Vlaminck, Kees van Dongen, Charles Camoin, Henri-Charles Manguin, Othon Friesz, Jean Puy, Louis Valtat, and Georges Rouault. These were joined in 1906 by Georges Braque and Raoul Dufy.In 1908 Paul Cézanne had order and structure in his work which made many of the artists reject the emotionalism of fauvism for the structure of cubism.

This art movement (1919-1933) was founded by a German Architect, the concept of it was to…. ‘to reimagine the material world to reflect the unity of all the arts. Gropius explained this vision for a union of art and design in the Proclamation of the Bauhaus (1919), which described a utopian craft guild combining architecture, sculpture, and painting into a single creative expression’ http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/bauh/hd_bauh.htm Bauhaus was a fine arts and design course it taught a prelimary course which included: colour theory, materials and formal relationships. After learning the theory behind ‘Bauhaus’ they were then taught in more specialized workshops in the following subjects: metalworking, cabinetmaking, weaving, pottery, typography, and wall painting. Bauhaus artists include: Josef Albers, Herbert Bayer, Vasily Kandinsky and Paul Klee, the artists come from different backgrounds from art, architecture and design.

Bauhaus

Futurism This art movement was brought out by a small group of Italian artists working just before the first world war, they were inspired by the poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. The movement was inspired by the idea of creating a new Italy because ‘of its oppressive past’. http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/futurism The aim of futurism was to celebrate the modern world of industry and technology, the took inspiration from the new technology of the motor car. The artists who were involved in the movement are: Giacomo Balla, Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carra, Gino Severini and Luigi Russolo.