Embedded Files
and the art world moves to the USA
Module 15
Why do we have to reproduce only what we see?
Why do we have to reproduce only what we see?
Wassily Kandinsky, is considered the "father" of Non Representational Art.
The word abstraction is commonly use to mean Non- Representational, but that is technically wrong. As we have seen , many artists have "abstracted" things... Cezanne, Matisse, Picasso, while still remaining representational, at least to some degree. The definition of abstracted, remember, is to simplify, exaggerate and distort. While Non Representational art doesn't represent any THING. Kandinsky was an artist who walked his artwork down this path. Let's go with him: Look at the progression of these paintings...
Do you remember this work of art from Module 2?
Cow Going Abstract by Roy Lichtenstein. 1982
A great example of the journey from Representational Art to Abstract (ed) Art to finally, Non- Representational Art
Abstract art is more ambiguous than figurative art.
"The quality of being open to more than one interpretation; inexactness; uncertainty."
We are all familiar with classical music, ie. guitar, symphonic, jazz etc. We find ourselves purely enjoying "sound", and not needing meaning. That is what it is like to enjoy non-representational art.
Mostly, we are just being asked to enjoy the elements and principles in their basic sense. Can we enjoy the different hues of red, or green? Can we feel the vibrancy or steadiness of the line? This is what I hope you come to experience this week.
Here I think we would all agree that this looks like some houses, (a village?) under a mountain. Yes?
Hmmmm.. Maybe, we think, we might be able to see a pathway and a couple of hills.
Here? Shapes, that maybe look like a sun, a watch, a musical score..but no one thing that we would agree on. This is the definition of Non-Representational art.
RECAP....Work that does not depict anything from the real world (figures, landscapes, animals, etc.) is called nonrepresentational.
Nonrepresentational art may simply depict shapes, colors, lines, etc., but may also express things that are not visible – emotions or feelings for example.
Imagine that when you are listening to jazz, or classical music, you could see what the sounds looked like.........
Dada...Art as provocation
Dada...Art as provocation
Key Dates: 1916-1920
An international movement among European artists and writers between 1915 and 1922, characterized by a spirit of anarchic revolt. Dada reveled in absurdity, and emphasized the role of the unpredictable in artistic creation.
Characteristics of Dada:
Characteristics of Dada:
Humor. Laughter is often one of the first reactions to Dada art and literature. ...
Whimsy and Nonsense. Much like humor, most everything created during the Dada movement was absurd, paradoxical, and opposed harmony. ...
Artistic Freedom. ...
Emotional Reaction. ...
Irrationalism. ...
Spontaneity.
While perhaps seeming flippant on the surface, the Dada movement was a protest against the barbarism of World War I, the bourgeois interests that Dada adherents believed inspired the war, and what they believed was an oppressive intellectual rigidity in both art and everyday society. the ultimate aim of the movement was to shock people out of complacency.
Among the leading Dadaists were Marcel Duchamp (whose L.H.O.O.Q. Mona Lisa adorned with moustache and goatee is a Dada classic), George Grosz, Otto Dix, Hans Richter and Jean Arp.
The readymade involves taking mundane, often utilitarian objects not generally considered to be art and transforming them, by adding to them, changing them, or (as in the case of his most famous work Fountain) simply renaming and reorienting them and placing them in an appropriate setting.
In L.H.O.O.Q. (above) the objet trouvé ("found object") is a cheap postcard reproduction of Leonardo da Vinci's early 16th-century painting Mona Lisa onto which Duchamp drew a moustache and beard in pencil and appended the title.
My husband and I in 2010..104 years later!
I can't remember what year the ready made 'Objet indestructable' that I saw was from....fun/odd none the less.
Man Ray, Objet indestructible (Indestructible object), 1965
Man Ray’s Objet indestructible consists of two elements: a metronome and, attached to its pendulum, a cut-out black-and-white photograph of a woman’s eye. Following Marcel Duchamp’s tradition of the readymade, Man Ray took a mass-produced object as the work’s basis. When activated, the eye would swing rhythmically, suggesting a kind of hypnosis through the eye-to-eye connection with the viewer. Man Ray frequently lost or destroyed his works and then reimagined them in replicas, which he treated as equivalent substitutes.
And of course Duchamp's Fountain
Fountain is one of Duchamp’s most famous works and is widely seen as an icon of twentieth-century art. The original, which is lost, consisted of a standard urinal, usually presented on its back for exhibition purposes rather than upright, and was signed and dated ‘R. Mutt 1917’.
In 1917, some of Europe’s leading avant-garde artists worked together on a project: the ballet Parade. This 'ballet/play' presented the talents of Jean Cocteau, Erik Satie, Pablo Picasso, and the Ballets Russes dance company in a cubist slice of dreamlike life.
Watch this with the sound turned off, and see if it reminds you of the Dada movement! :)
Meanwhile, in America.....THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE:
Meanwhile, in America.....THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE:
The Harlem Renaissance was a period of rich artistic and cultural activity started among African Americans between the end of World War I (1917) and the onset of the Great Depression and lead up to World War II (the 1930s) and beyond. These artists worked in painting, sculpture, printmaking, as well as in literary and musical persuits. Artists associated with the movement asserted pride in black life and identity, a rising consciousness of inequality and discrimination, and interest in the rapidly changing modern world—many experiencing a freedom of expression through the arts for the first time. The movement celebrated African heritage and embraced self-expression, rejecting long-standing—and often degrading—stereotypes.
Aaron Douglas, Into Bondage, 1936
Jacob Lawrence,Tombstone 1942
Surrealism
Surrealism
Key Dates: 1920-1930
A literary and art movement, dedicated to expressing the imagination as revealed in dreams, free of the conscious control of reason and convention. Surrealism inherited its anti-rationalist sensibility from Dada, but was lighter in spirit than that movement. Like Dada, it was shaped by emerging theories on our perception of reality, the most obvious influence being Freud’s model of the subconscious. Freud's work with free association, dream analysis, and the unconscious was of utmost importance to the Surrealists in developing methods to liberate imagination.
Founded in Paris in 1924 by André Breton with his Manifesto of Surrealism, the movement’s principal aim was ‘to resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality into an absolute reality, a super-reality’. Its roots can be traced back to French poets such as Arthur Rimbaud, Charles Baudelaire and Lautreamont, the latter providing the famous line that summed up the Surrealists’ love of the incongruous; “Beautiful as the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on a dissecting table.”
The major artists of the movement were Salvador Dali, Max Ernst, René Magritte, Dorothea Tanning and Joan Miró. Surrealism’s impact on popular culture can still be felt today, most visibly in advertising.
Not to be Reproduced (La reproduction interdite, 1937) by Rene Magritte
In the early 20th century, Rene Francois Magritte was part of the Surrealist movement in Paris that created unexpected, often dreamlike imagery.
Read more here about "Soluble Fish!"
The painting 'Not to be Reproduced' by Rene Magritte was commissioned by poet and patron Edward James. It is considered a portrait of James although James' face is not depicted. The work depicts a man standing in front of a mirror, but whereas the book on the mantelpiece is reflected correctly, the man can see only the back of his head.
The book on the mantel is a well-worn copy of an Edgar Allan Poe book. Poe was one of Magritte's favorite authors and he made other references to the author and his work.
Characteristics of Surrealism:
Characteristics of Surrealism:
Dream-like scenes and symbolic images.
Unexpected, illogical juxtapositions.
Bizarre assemblages of ordinary objects.
Automatism and a spirit of spontaneity.
Games and techniques to create random effects.
Personal iconography.
Visual puns.
Distorted figures and biomorphic shapes.
"Feet, what do I need you for when I have wings to fly?"
Frida Kahlo
Read about Dali and The Persistence of Memory in this article
Eine kleine Nachtmusik, Dorothea Tanning 1943
Click on the image of Dali and the Cats below to hear more.......
We are moving closer to " contemporary art"and I hope you are still finding things to interest you. This is where it gets interesting..where we look at art that doesn't seem to make any sense to us, where we see things that look as if "a child could do it". Art reflects the times, and the artists are making commentary on what they perceive as 'the times.'
American Regionalism is an American realist modern art movement that included paintings, murals, lithographs, and illustrations depicting realistic scenes of rural and small town America primarily in the Midwest and deep south. It arose in the 1930s as a response to the Great Depression, and ended in the 1940s due to the end of World War II and a lack of development within the movement.
Regionalist art in general was a relatively conservative and traditionalist style that appealed to popular American sensibilities, while strictly opposing the perceived domination of French art.
Grant Wood was an active painter from an extremely young age until his death, and although he is best known for his paintings, he worked in a large number of media, including lithography, ink, charcoal, ceramics, metal, wood and found objects.
He is best known for his painting American Gothic, 1930
The 20th Century after WWII
The 20th Century after WWII
The emphasis on the unconscious, myths, symbols and dreams that we saw with surrealism had a decisive effect on American art after World War II, and gave birth to the first, internationally recognized, truly American art form Abstract Expressionism.
Abstract Expressionism
Abstract Expressionism
Abstract expressionism is the term applied to new forms of abstract art developed by American painters such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Willem de Kooning in the 1940s and 1950s. It is often characterised by gestural brush-strokes or mark-making, and the impression of spontaneity.
TYPES OF ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM
TYPES OF ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM
Within abstract expressionism were two broad groupings: the so-called action painters, who attacked their canvases with expressive brush strokes; and the color field painters who filled their canvases with large areas of a single color.
The action painters were led by Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, who worked in a spontaneous manner often using large brushes to make sweeping gestural marks. Pollock famously placed his canvas on the ground and danced around it pouring paint from the can or trailing it from the brush or a stick. In this way the action painters directly placed their inner impulses onto the canvas.
The painting became a record of inner world and the expressive brushstroke, and accompanying drips, blobs and squiggles, became ‘charged’ as it were with the individuality of the artist. The acknowledged leader of the movement, Jackson Pollock, became famous for his drip painting, earning him the nickname, ‘Jack the Dripper’ – he became an icon of the American dream (Hollywood style!). The rugged good looking Midwest-boy moves to the big city and becomes famous, doesn’t fit in with snobbish city life, then becomes an alcoholic, and dies in a high speed car crash in the prime of his career. The James Dean of the art world! A tragic American hero.
Jackson Pollock c. 1952
Movie Trailer from 2020 about Pollock :
The second grouping, The Color Field painters included Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman and Clyfford Still. They were deeply interested in religion and myth and created simple compositions with large areas of color intended to produce a contemplative or meditational response in the viewer. This approach to painting developed from around 1960 into what became known as color field painting.
Mark Rothko
Mark Rothko
One of my all time favorite artists, was an American painter of Russian Jewish descent. Although Rothko himself refused to adhere to any art movement, he is generally identified as an Abstract Expressionist. He moved through many artistic styles until reaching his signature 1950s motif of soft, rectangular forms floating on a stained field of color. Heavily influenced by mythology and philosophy, he was insistent that his art was filled with content, and brimming with ideas. A fierce champion of social revolutionary thought, and the right to self-expression, Rothko also expounded his views in numerous essays and critical reviews.
Some of Rothko's works c. 1957-68
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