09.17 modernism cont'd

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.


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


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



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



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



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



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.



2.  Abstraction

3.  Expression

4.  Fantasy

5.  Concept/idea

MEMORIZE THESE!

Spiritual

09.17 modernism cont'd