Modern Art part 2

Perhaps best summed up by the famous Dadaist poet Hugo Ball, the Dadaist goal of art was not to have art be “an end in itself, but [to be] an opportunity for the true perception and criticism of the times we live in.” And surely enough the times of Dadaism were filled with grief, destruction, and chaos, as they witnessed the rampant mass devastation of WWI.

The movement was a loosely knit international network that was prominent in Zürich, Switzerland; New York City; Berlin, Cologne, and Hanover, Germany; and Paris. Dadaists were not connected by their styles, mediums, or techniques. Instead, they were connected by their uniform practices and beliefs. They saw themselves as crusaders against rational thought, which they believed to be responsible for the declination of social structures, the growth of corrupt and nationalist politics, and the spread of violence and war.

They challenged and mocked the definition of art and its elitist establishment with such works as Marcel Duchamps Fountain (1917), which was a porcelain urinal, and they utilized photomontages, as well as a plethora other artistic mediums, in their public meetings to protest against the nascent Nazi party in Germany. Dadaists fought strongly across the globe against such repressive social institutions, though were written-off by some as merely absurdist and inconsequential based on their plentiful antics and scattered network ("10 Modernist Art Movements").

The name De Stijl (Dutch for “The Style”) adequately sums up this movement’s aim while also characterizing their intentions on how to achieve that aim: with a simple, direct approach. Founded by a cohort of Dutch artists in Amsterdam that included Theo van Doesburg (who founded the group’s periodical De Stijl), Piet Mondrian, and Jacobus Johannes Pieter Oud, De Stijl was infused with a great deal of mysticism resulting primarily from Mondrian’s devotion to Theosophy.

The movement also had a great deal of influence from Parisian Cubism, though members of De Stijl felt that Picasso and Braque failed to go far enough into the realm of pure abstraction. They, like Suprematists, worked mainly in an abstract style and with unadorned shapes—such as straight lines, intersecting plane surfaces, and basic geometrical figures—and the primary colors and neutrals. With these techniques, they sought to investigate the laws of equilibrium apparent in both life and art.

Although the movement comprised painters, sculptors, typographers, poets, those in the decorative arts, it was the architects, most prominently Oud with his Worker’s Housing Estate in Hoek van Holland (1924–27), who were able to best capture the austere and harmonic essences of the movement ("10 Modernist Art Movements").

As Cubism and Futurism spread west to Russia at the end of the 1910s, they were absorbed into the utopian spirit of the October Revolution, thus creating a new art movement known as Constructivism, which embraced theory that art should be “constructed” from modern industrial materials such as plastic, steel, and glass in order to serve a societal purpose instead of merely making an abstract statement.

Often credited with serving as the impetus for the movement is Vladimir Tatlin, who in 1913, while studying in Paris, was highly influenced by the geometric constructions of Picasso. After migrating back to Russia, he, along with Antoine Pevsner and Naum Gabo, published the Realist Manifesto in 1920, which, like the Futurists and Vorticists, declared an admiration of machines and technology as well as their functionalism. One of the most iconic artworks of this movement is Tatlin’s Monument for the Third International (1919–20), a strangely spiral-shaped structure that was intended to serve as a government building.

Most Constructivists, like Tatlin, thought painting to be a “dead” art form, unless it was to serve as a blueprint for something to be physically built. Therefore, they worked mainly with ceramics, fashion design, graphics, and in architecture. As Soviet opposition to their movement increased, many Constructivists fled from Russia and inspired the movement is Western countries such as Germany, France, and England, where they gained a great deal of significance ("10 Modernist Art Movements").

A precise definition of Surrealism can be difficult to grasp, but it’s clear that this once avant-garde movement has staying power, remaining one of the most approachable art genres, even today. Imaginative imagery spurred by the subconscious is a hallmark of this type of art, which started in the 1920s. The movement began when a group of visual artists adopted automatism, a technique that relied on the subconscious for creativity.

Tapping into the appeal for artists to liberate themselves from restriction and take on total creative freedom, Surrealists often challenged perceptions and reality in their artwork. Part of this came from the juxtaposition of a realistic painting style with unconventional, and unrealistic, subject matters ("13 Revolutionary Art Movements That Have Shaped Our Visual History").

As one of the most famous art movements of the Modernist era, thanks mainly to the indelible work The Persistence of Memory (1931) by Salvador Dalí, Surrealism has come to be remembered for its production of visceral, eye-grabbing and aesthetic images. Leaping off from the absurdist inclinations of the Dadaists and the psychoanalytical writings of Sigmund Freud, André Breton, a well-known poet and critic of his time, published “The Surrealist Manifesto” in 1924, in which he declared the group’s intention to unite consciousness with unconsciousness so that the realms of dream and fancy could merge with everyday reality in an “absolute reality, a surreality.” Although they were best-remembered for the work of their painters—such as Jean Arp, Max Ernst, and André Masson—Surrealists worked with a variety of mediums, including poetry, literature, sculpture, and the then-new medium of film. Because Breton was militant in the adherence to his manifesto by the members of the movement, many members splintered off into new art forms, though still incorporating techniques and motifs of Surrealism ("10 Modernist Art Movements").

The seemingly contemporary art movement actually has its roots in Impressionism, when artists first began attempting to express movement in their art. In the early 1900s, artists began to experiment further with art in motion, with sculptural machine and mobiles pushing kinetic art forward. Russian artists Vladimir Tatlin and Alexander Rodchenko were the first creators of sculptural mobiles, something that would later be perfected by Alexander Calder.

In contemporary terms, kinetic art encompasses sculptures and installations that have movement as their primary consideration. American artist Anthony Howe is a leading figure in the contemporary movement, using computer-aided design for his large-scale wind-driven sculptures ("13 Revolutionary Art Movements That Have Shaped Our Visual History").

Op Art is short for 'optical art'. It was an abstract style that emerged in the 1960's based on the illusionistic effects of line, shape, pattern and color.

Op Artists such as Victor Vasarely, Bridget Riley and Richard Anuszkiewicz play with the perception of the viewer by subverting the picture plane with ambiguous shapes, shifting tones and dynamic color relationships. Although Op Art images are static they generate the illusion of movement with perceptual tricks that create an unstable picture surface. The effects of this can be so strong that you have to look away for fear of losing your balance or hurting your eyes. Needless to say that the fairground fun aspect of Op Art was very popular with the public and was quickly commercialized by the design and fashion industries ("Modern Art Timeline 2 - Dada And Surrealism To Minimalism").