Mo
N An Art Story
Design by Elizabeth Stackpole
TABLE OF CONTENTS Impressionism
1
Cubism
5
Arts and Crafts
9
Bauhaus
15
Dada
19
abstract expressionism
23
Postmodern
27
I M P R ESS I O N IS M Impressionism is at the root of all modern art, because it
was the first movement that managed to free itself from
preconceived ideas, and because it changed not only the way life was depicted but the way life was seen. – Francesco Salvi
1
V i n c e n t va n g o g h , w h e at f i e l d w i t h cy p r e s s e s . 1 8 8 9
I
mpressionism can be considered the first distinctly modern movement in painting. Developing in Paris in the 1860s, its influence spread throughout Europe and eventually the United States. Its originators were artists who rejected the official, government-sanctioned exhibitions, or salons, and were consequently shunned by powerful academic art institutions. In turning away from the fine finish and detail to which most artists of their day aspired, the Impressionists aimed to capture the momentary, sensory effect of a scene - the impression objects made on the eye in a fleeting instant. To achieve this effect, many Impressionist artists moved from the studio to the streets and countryside, painting en plein air.
the impression objects made on t h e e y e i n a f l e e t i n g i n s ta n t
Impressionism was a style of representational art that did not necessarily rely on realistic depictions. Scientific thought at the time was beginning to recognize that what the eye perceived and what the brain understood were two different things. The Impressionists sought to capture the former - the optical effects of light - to convey the passage of time, changes in weather, and other shifts in the atmosphere in their canvases.
V i n c e n t va n g o g h , i r i s e s . 1 8 8 9
2
mid-nineteenth-century renovation of Paris led by civic planner Georges-Eugène Haussmann, which included the city's newly constructed railway stations; wide, tree-lined boulevards that replaced the formerly narrow, crowded streets; and large, deluxe apartment buildings. Often focusing on scenes of public leisure - especially scenes of cafes and cabarets - the Impressionists conveyed the new sense of alienation experienced by the inhabitants of the first modern metropolis.
V i n c e n t va n g o g h , S ta r ry n i g h t. 1 8 8 9
Impressionism records the effects of the massive
Henri De Toulouse Lautrec, 'Salon Des Cent' poster. 1895
The Impressionists loosened their brushwork and lightened their palettes to include pure, intense colors. They abandoned traditional linear perspective and avoided the clarity of form that had previously served to distinguish the more important elements of a picture from the lesser ones. For this reason, many critics faulted Impressionist paintings for their unfinished appearance and seemingly amateurish quality. 3
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Bal du moulin de la Galette. 1876
CLAUDE MONET
i s p e r h a p s t h e m o s t c e l e b r at e d o f t h e I m p r e s s i o n i s t s .
He was renowned for his mastery of natural light and painted at many different times of day in an attempt to capture changing conditions. He tended to paint simple impressions or subtle hints of his subjects, using very soft brushstrokes and unmixed colors to create a natural vibrating effect, as if nature itself were alive on the canvas. He did not wait for paint to dry before applying successive layers; this "wet on wet" technique produced softer edges and blurred boundaries that merely suggested a three-dimensional plane, rather than depicting it realistically.
Monet's technique of painting outdoors, known as plein air painting, was practiced widely among the Impressionists. Inherited from the landscape painters of the Barbizon School, this approach led to innovations in the representation of sunlight and the passage of time, which were two central motifs of Impressionist painting. While Monet is largely associated with the tradition of plein air, Berthe Morisot, Camille Pissarro, and Alfred Sisley, among others, also painted outside in order to create their lucid portrayals of the transience of the natural world.
C l a u d e M o n e t, i r i s e s i n m o n e t ’ s g a r d e n . 1 9 0 0
4
Cubism 1907 – 1922
So I began to paint chiefly still lifes, because in nature there
is a tactile, I would almost say a manual space... that was the earliest Cubist painting – the quest for space.
– Georges Braque
5
C
Pa b l o p i c a s s o , g i r l w i t h a m a n d o l i n , 1 9 1 0
ubism was a truly revolutionary style of modern art developed by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braques. It was the first style of abstract art which evolved at the beginning of the 20th century in response to a world that was changing with unprecedented speed. Cubism was an attempt by artists to revitalise the tired traditions of Western art which they believed had run their course. The Cubists challenged conventional forms of representation, such as perspective, which had been the rule since the Renaissance. Their aim was to develop a new way of seeing which reflected the modern age.
In the four decades from 1870-1910, western society witnessed more technological progress than in the previous four centuries. During this period, inventions such as photography, cinematography, sound recording, the telephone, the motor car and the airplane heralded the dawn of a new age. The problem for artists at this time was how to reflect the modernity of the era using the tired and trusted traditions that had served art for the last four centuries. Photography had begun to replace painting as the tool for documenting the age and for artists to sit illustrating cars, planes and images of the new technologies The artists abandoned perspective, which had been used to depict was not exactly rising s pa c e s i n c e t h e R e n a i s s a n c e , a n d t h e y a l s o t u r n e d away f r o m t h e to the challenge. Artists realistic modeling of figures. needed a more radical approach - a 'new way of seeing' that expanded the possibilities of art in the same way that technology was extending the boundaries of communication and travel. This new way of seeing was called Cubism - the first abstract style of modern art. Picasso and Braque developed their ideas on Cubism around 1907 in Paris and their starting point was a common interest in the later paintings of Paul CĂŠzanne. 6
THE INFLUENCE OF
CÉZANNE Cézanne was not primarily interested in creating an illusion of depth in his painting and he abandoned the tradition of perspective drawing. Perspective, which had been used since the Early Renaissance, was a geometric formula that solved the problem of how to draw three-dimensional objects on a two dimensional surface. Cézanne felt that the illusionism of perspective denied the fact that a painting is a flat two-dimensional object. He liked to flatten the space in his paintings to place more emphasis on their surface - to stress the difference between a painting and reality. He saw painting in more abstract terms as the construction and arrangement of colour on a two-dimensional surface. It was this flat abstract approach that appealed to the Cubists and their early paintings, such as Picasso's 'Factory at Horta de Ebbo' (1909) and Braque's 'Viaduct at L'Estaque' (1908,) took it to an extreme. Pa u l C e z a n n e , B i b e m u s Q u a r r y, 1 8 9 5 7
TWO PHASES, ONE
PICASSO
Pa b l e P i c a s s o, L e s D e m o i s e l l e s d ’Av i g n o n , 1 9 0 7 Pablo Picasso, Still Life with Compote and Glass, 1915 Cubists explored open form, piercing figures and objects by letting the space flow through them, blending background into foreground, and showing objects from various angles. Some historians have argued that these innovations represent a response to the changing experience of space, movement, and time in the modern world. This first phase of the movement was called Analytic Cubism.
In the second phase of Cubism, Synthetic Cubists explored the use of non-art materials as abstract signs. Their use of newspaper would lead later historians to argue that, instead of being concerned above all with form, the artists were also acutely aware of current events, particularly WWI.
8
W i l l i a m M o r r i s , S n a k e s h e a d, 1 8 7 6
lies in taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life.
1880 – 1910
The true secret of happiness
– William Morris
10
THE ARTS AND CRAFTS MOVEMENT
w a s a n E n g l i s h a e s t h e t i c m o v e m e n t o f t h e s e c o n d h a l f o f t h e 1 9 t h c e n t u r y t h at r e p r e s e n t e d t h e b e g i n n i n g o f a n e w a p p r e c i at i o n o f t h e d e c o r at i v e a r t s t h r o u g h o u t E u r o p e . By 1860 a vocal minority had become profoundly disturbed by the level to which style, craftsmanship, and public taste had sunk in the wake of the Industrial Revolution and its massproduced and banal decorative arts. Among them was the English reformer, poet, and designer William Morris, who, in 1861, founded a firm of interior decorators and manufacturers — Morris, Marshall, Faulkner, and Company (after 1875, Morris and Company)—dedicated to recapturing the spirit and quality of medieval craftsmanship. Morris and his associates (among them the architect Philip Webb and the painters Ford Madox Brown and Edward Burne-Jones) produced handcrafted metalwork, jewelry, wallpaper, textiles, furniture, and books. The “firm” was run as an artists’ collaborative, with the painters providing the designs for skilled craftsmen to produce. To this date many of their designs are copied by designers and furniture manufacturers.
William morris, Cray furnishing fabric, 1885 11
T
he main controversy raised by the movement was its practicality in the modern world. The progressives claimed that the movement was trying to turn back the clock and that it could not be done, that the Arts and Crafts movement could not be taken as practical in mass urban and industrialized society. On the other hand, a reviewer who criticized an 1893 exhibition as “the work of a few for the few” also realized that it represented a graphic protest against design as “a marketable affair, controlled by the salesmen and the advertiser, and at the mercy of every passing fashion.” In the 1890s approval of the Arts and Crafts movement widened, and the movement became diffused and less specifically identified with a small group of people. Its ideas spread to other countries and became identified with the growing international interest in design, specifically with Art Nouveau.
12
was
a
WILLIAM MORRIS
leading member of the Arts and Crafts Movement. He is best known for his pattern designs, particularly on fabrics and wallpapers. His vision in linking art to industry by applying the values of fine art to the production of commercial design was a key stage in the evolution of design as we know it today.
William Morris was an artist, designer, printer, typographer, bookbinder, craftsman, poet, writer and champion of socialist ideals. He believed that a designer should have a working knowledge of any media that he used and as a result he spent a lot of time teaching himself a wide variety of techniques. Like many designers of his time, Morris was skilled in a wide range of arts and crafts. For example, although he is famous for his wallpaper designs, he also founded the Kelmscott Press which published high quality hand bound books and was very influential in the revival of the private press. 13
M o r r i s f e lt t h at the 'diligent study o f N at u r e ' w a s i m p o r ta n t, a s n at u r e was the perfect example of God's design. He saw this as the spiritual antidote to the decline in social, moral and artistic s ta n d a r d s d u r i n g the Industrial Revolution.
William morris, acanthus wallpaper, 1875
14
– 19
19
3 3 19
If your contribution has been vital there will
always be somebody to pick up where you left off, and that will be your claim to immortality.
– Walter Gropius
15
T
he Bauhaus was the most influential modernist art school of the 20th century, one whose approach to teaching, and understanding art's relationship to society and technology, had a major impact both in Europe and the United States long after it closed. It was shaped by the 19th and early 20th centuries trends such as Arts and Crafts movement, which had sought to level the distinction between fine and applied arts, and to reunite creativity and manufacturing. This is reflected in the romantic medievalism of the school's early years, in which it pictured itself as a kind of medieval crafts guild. But in the mid 1920s the medievalism gave way to a stress on uniting art and industrial design, and it was this which ultimately proved to be its most original and important achievement. The school is also renowned for its faculty, which included artists Wassily Kandinsky, Josef Albers, Laszlo MoholyNagy, Paul Klee and Johannes Itten, architects Walter Gropius and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and designer Marcel Breuer.
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16
THE BAUHAUS SCHOOL
wa s f o u n d e d i n 1 9 1 9 by Wa lt e r G r o p i u s , w h o s e a i m wa s t o u n i f y a r t and industry through a universal language. The school focused on problems relating to form, and explored how geometric principles can be applied to design. Much like Scandinavian functionalism, the Bauhaus emphasized affordability, availability, and comfort. Gropius’s views on form influenced artists such as Kandinsky, Klee, and Itten. Gropius observed “There has arisen a demand for beauty of external form as well as for technical and economic perfection…A thing that is technically excellent in all respects must be impregnated with an intellectual idea – with form – in order to secure preference among the large quantity of products of the same kind”. The school was not only distinguished by its rationality and sans serif typefaces, but by its insistence on the collective. The names of artists and designers were not given. The work was intended to reflect the school as a whole. The basic pedagogical approach was to eliminate competitive tendencies and to foster individual creative potential and a sense of community and shared purpose.
17
T h e m o t i vat i o n s b e h i n d t h e c r e at i o n o f t h e B a u h a u s l ay i n t h e 1 9 t h c e n t u r y, i n a n x i e t i e s a b o u t t h e s o u l l e s s n e s s o f m a n u fa c t u r i n g a n d i t s p r o d u c t s , a n d i n f e a r s a b o u t a r t ' s l o s s o f p u r p o s e i n s o c i e t y. C r e at i v i t y a n d m a n u fa c t u r i n g w e r e d r i f t i n g a pa r t, and the Bauhaus aimed to unite them once again, r e j u v e n at i n g d e s i g n f o r e v e r y d ay l i f e .
Marianne Brandt, Tea Infuser and Strainer, 1924
A
wa lt e r g r o p i u s , 1 9 2 2
lthough the Bauhaus abandoned much of the ethos of the old academic tradition of fine art education, it maintained a stress on intellectual and theoretical pursuits, and linked these to an emphasis on practical skills, crafts and techniques that was more reminiscent of the medieval guild system. Fine art and craft were brought together with the goal of problem solving for a modern industrial society. In so doing, the Bauhaus effectively leveled the old hierarchy of the arts, placing crafts on par with fine arts such as sculpture and painting, and paving the way for many of the ideas that have inspired artists in the late 20th century.
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18
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“Thought is made in the mouth.” – Tristan Tzara
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19
1816 – 1924 F o u n ta i n , M a r c e l D u c h a m p, 1 9 1 7
0
Hannah Höch, Cut with the Dada Kitchen K n i f e t h r o u g h t h e L a s t W e i m a r B e e r - B e l ly C u lt u r a l E p o c h i n G e r m a n y, 1 9 1 9
D
ada was an artistic and literary movement that began in Zürich, Switzerland. It arose as a reaction to World War I and the nationalism that many thought had led to the war. Influenced by other avant-garde movements - Cubism, Futurism, Constructivism, and Expressionism - its output was wildly diverse, ranging from performance art to poetry, photography, sculpture, painting, and collage. Dada's aesthetic, marked by its mockery of materialistic and nationalistic attitudes, proved a powerful influence on artists in many cities, including Berlin, Hanover, Paris, New York, and Cologne, all of which generated their own groups. The movement dissipated with the establishment of Surrealism.
ual art movement D a d a wa s t h e f i r s t c o n c e p t i s t s wa s n o t o n where the focus of the art asing objects c r a f t i n g a e s t h e t i c a l ly p l e ften upended b u t o n m a k i n g w o r k s t h at o t h at g e n e r at e d bourgeois sensibilities and o c i e t y, t h e r o l e o f d i f f i c u lt q u e s t i o n s a b o u t s o f a r t. t h e a r t i s t, a n d t h e p u r p o s e
THIS IS
ART
So intent w ere membe rs of Dada norms of bo on opposin urgeois cult g all u re th a t th in favor of it e g ro u p was barely self:
"Dada is anti-Dada," they often cried. The group's founding in the Cabaret Voltaire in Zürich was appropriate: the Cabaret was named after the eighteenth century French satirist, Voltaire, whose novella Candide mocked the idiocies of his society. As Hugo Ball, one of the founders of both the Cabaret and Dada wrote, "This is our Candide against the times."
Raoul Hausmann, The Art Critic, 1919–20
20
J e a n A r p, N o. 8 , 1 9 1 9
A
rtists like Jean Arp were intent on incorporating chance into the creation of works of art. This went against all norms of traditional art production whereby a work was meticulously planned and completed. The introduction of chance was a way for Dadaists to challenge artistic norms and to question the role of the artist in the artistic process.
H e r b e r t B ay e r , L o n e ly M e t r o p o l i ta n , 1 9 3 2
21
“This humiliating a ge has not succeeded in winning our
RESPECT
Dada artists are known for their use of readymade objects everyday objects that could be bought and presented as art with little manipulation by the artist. The use of the readymade forced questions about artistic creativity and the very definition of art and its purpose in society.
I
n July of 1916, the first Dada evening was held, at which Hugo Ball read the first manifesto. There is little agreement on how the word Dada was invented, but one of the most common origin stories is that Richard Huelsenbeck found the name by plunging a knife at random into a dictionary. The term "dada" is a colloquial French term for a hobbyhorse, yet it also echoes the first words of a child, and these suggestions of childishness and absurdity appealed to the group, who were keen to put a distance between themselves and the sobriety of conventional society. They also appreciated that the word might mean the same (or nothing) in all languages - as the group was avowedly internationalist.
The aim of Dada a war an d to ven rt and activit ies was tf convent bot i o n s t h a r u s t r at i o n w i t h the na h to help to st t had le made fo o t d t o i t. r a pro Their an ionalist and b p the tean mo group l o v t u i-autho ement a eadersh r i ta r i a n r g e o i s s ip or gu iding ide they opposed s ta n c e any for o l o g y. m of
22
EXPRESSIONISM 1943 – 1965 It came into existence because I had to paint
it. Any attempt on my part to say something about it, to attempt explanation of the inexplicable, could only destroy it.
– Jackson Pollock
23
A
Jackson Pollock, Number 14 Gray, 1948
b s t r a c t E x p r e s s i o n i s m wa s n e v e r a n i d e a l l a b e l for the movement which grew
up in New York in the 1940s and 1950s. It was somehow meant to encompass not only the work of painters who filled their canvases with fields of color and abstract forms, but also those who attacked their canvases with a vigorous gestural expressionism. Yet Abstract Expressionism has become the most accepted term for a group of artists who did hold much in common. All were committed to an expressive art of profound emotion and universal themes, and most were shaped by the legacy of Surrealism, a movement that they translated into a new style fitted to the post-war mood of anxiety and trauma. In their success, the New York painters robbed Paris of its mantle as leader of modern art, and set the stage for America's post-war
dominance of the international art world. Most of the artists associated with Abstract Expressionism
matured in the 1930s. They were influenced by the era’s
leftist politics, and came to value an art grounded in personal
experience. Few would maintain their earlier radical political views, but many continued to adopt the posture of outspoken avant-gardists protesting from the margins. 24
H
aving matured as artists at a time when America suffered economically and felt culturally isolated and provincial, the Abstract Expressionists were later welcomed as the first authentically American avant-garde. Their art was championed for being emphatically American in spirit - monumental in scale, romantic in mood, and expressive of a rugged individual freedom.
Political instability in Europe in the 1930s brought several leading Surrealists to New York, and many of the Abstract Expressionists were profoundly influenced by the style and by its focus on the unconscious. It encouraged their interest in myth and archetypal symbols and it shaped their understanding of painting itself as a struggle between self-expression
and the chaos of the
UNCONSCIOUS
Willem de Kooning, Woman I, 1950-1952 25
Jackson Pollock, mural, 1943
Jackson Pollock, Number 32, 1950
POLLOCK POLLOCK POLLOCK POLLOCK POLLOCK
Photo by Martha Holmes, Time & Life Pictures In its edition of August 8th, 1949, Life magazine ran a feature article about Jackson Pollock that bore this question in the headline: "Is he the greatest living painter in the United States?" Could a painter who flung paint at canvases with a stick, who poured and hurled it to create roiling vortexes of color and line, possibly be considered "great"? New York's critics certainly thought so, and Pollock's pre-eminence among the Abstract Expressionists has endured, cemented by the legend of his alcoholism and his early death. The famous 'drip paintings' that he began to produce in the late 1940s represent one of the most original bodies of work of the century. At times they could suggest the life-force in nature itself, at others they could evoke man's entrapment - in the body, in the anxious mind, and in the newly frightening modern world. 26
1950 –
Post Modern
P o s t m o d e r n i s m is best understood by defining
the modernist ethos it replaced - that of the avant-garde who were active from 1860s to the 1950s. The various artists in the modern period were driven by a radical and forward thinking approach, ideas of technological positivity, and grand narratives of Western domination and progress. The arrival of Neo-Dada and Pop art in post-war America marked the beginning of a reaction against this mindset that came to be known as postmodernism. The reaction took on multiple artistic forms for the next four decades, including Conceptual art, Minimalism, Video art, Performance art, and Installation art. These movements are diverse and disparate but connected by certain characteristics: ironical and playful treatment of a fragmented subject, the breakdown of high and low culture hierarchies, undermining of concepts of authenticity and originality, and an emphasis on image and spectacle. Beyond these larger movements, many artists and less pronounced tendencies continue in the postmodern vein to this day. 27
Post-modernism is modernism with the optimism taken out. – Robert Hewison
28
Content courtesy of The Art Story: Modern Art Insight