Modernist Exhibition
Welcome to the Modernist exhibition. Welcome to the Modernist Exhibition!! Here we will be exploring the hidden messages of abstract painting within the early twentieth century. In this time period the world was facing two devastating wars that are reflected in deformities of the art world. Three artists that express that are; Chaim Soutine, Piet Mondrian and Pablo Picasso. All three look at their own experiences of the wars and reflect on that in their creations, including symbolism inside the abstraction and deformity of objects. It was also in this era that artists started exploring the idea of ‘what is art?’ It changed the way artists think and the creations that were painted are incredible. Reflecting on my own practice, landscapes and the composition of them fascinate me. The incorporation of symbolic meanings, like a white house meaning purity, innocence in Soutine’s painting, Landscape at Céret and the flashing light translating to bombs in Guernica are intriguing within the layers of painting. In shows that the world is not perfect, that it is actually quite ugly.
No other artist explores true meaning than Soutine and his paintings. In his fascination of hidden meaning and layers of emotion, he explores truth in a shield of lies and false accusation. But most importantly Soutine explored the effects of war and the general condition the country was in. He looks at poverty and the real emotions that people feel behind smiling faces within uniforms. Linking more into my practice I have looked at his landscape paintings and how he expresses himself with these. Landscape at Céret is a classic example of post-war France within its countryside.
Next I looked at another war artist Piet Mondrian. Different in the aspect of Soutine, but in other ways very similar. He expresses nature in raw form, taking away the encouragement of branches, leafs and other visual formative properties but plays around with the emotional and expressive look on artwork. His earliest work shows landscapes in realistic qualities, but as he develops as an artist he looks more into spiritual communication inside his work. Exploring nature requirements, he looks at a tree and abstracts the object until there are little left but pastel colours and lines. As he moved around his work evolved into his surroundings. It was later in his life that his work explores the captivation of city living within New York. But I am looking at his middle ground, where he starts abstracting and moves away from detailed drawings/paintings. This is because his process of a developing artist, to me, is the most fascinating and intriguing qualities of Mondrian’s work. The Blooming Apple Tree is such painting that expresses his middle ground very well.
Finally I am looking at a slightly later artist, Pablo Picasso. Even though he looks at Cubism and is very different in style to the other two artists, his connections in symbolism and use of colours are amazing and can closely be connected to Soutine and Mondrian. In his reflection to the uprising of Nazi operation within Spain he made Guernica. In the painting he is expressing consequences, not just though colour (or lack off), he is using symbolism and deformity to encourage the actions of civilians and political powers. It is in relation to Picasso’s anti-war believes that something had to be done, politically done.
My choose to add this work from Picasso was to explore the meaning of symbolism and its exploration throughout art. He has inspired me to enhance symbolistic qualities and not just think of colour as bright cheerful, but as dark and gloomy, along with Soutine’s work. In words of connection of the three artists, not only are they war artists of early twentieth century but they have explored abstracting work in different manners. These artists are connected to landscape art and have explored the consequences of mood and emotion using colour formations instead of just the obvious looking before their generation, responding on distorting or spiritual formations of objects or topics.
All three are modern artists that have looked at different ways of applying art in similar context. This is in manners of exploring simple shapes, extending features for moody effects and capturing the enlightenment of honesty even without placing a detailed painting into a gallery. They are allowing the development of paint and medium to express a feeling or to push the connection of reality towards the audience. These are all accomplished though colour and form to link to the original theme at hand.
(Musée de l’Orangerie)2018
Chaim Soutine
Chaїm Soutine is a Russian-French artist who specialised in oil paintings is known for his abstraction expressionism relating to portraits, still life and landscapes.
While Soutine was born in 1893 on 13th January, his family Jewish meant he was commonly beaten by his older sisters and brothers on relation that their religion was not permitted to drew. On asking to draw his neighbour his siblings beat him cruelly. Therefore, his mother took action at court. But his upbringing was tinted to influence his still life of meat and food due to living quite poorly and within poverty within Russia. Later in Soutine’s life poverty returned to the artist. Shortly after the instant with his neighbour he was accepted into the School of Fine Arts in Vilnius where he found his inspiration off artists like Rembrandt, Tintoretto, Goya, El Greco and Gustave Courbet. After his education here, he immigrated to France, in 1912, where he lived most of his life.
In 1915 Soutine met Amedeo Mondigiliani, after returning from the WW1 where he dug trances, along with Maurice Utrillo. During their time together within the La Ruche he painted people in costumes. Most notable his series of bellboys, nurses and choir boys to name just a hand fall. Most of them capturing common life within Paris.
Finally, his landscape paintings were captured though France’s countryside. It is reflecting on the town of Cérent, since in 1918 he was encouraged by his dealer. Within his final years Soutine was forced to hide from Nazi operation in France because he was a Jew. Along with his illness he didn’t make it to the end of WW2 in 1945, but passed away on 9th August 1943 because of complications of surgery.
Landscape at Céret
Tate (2004) Size: 539mmx838mm, Oil on Canvas
Looking at the painting ‘Landscape at Céret by Chaim Soutine you can observe a white house, maybe
purity, that the eye itself is drawn to from the construction of the painting. Trees looking as a mess of being trapped and hopelessness of life itself. They are warping around the place of living, the houses, enclosing them off from the outside world. The whole painting is tilled towards the house, there for exploring difficulty and complexity of life and the struggles that a place of living can have. In other words I am saying that the painting above is communicating the struggles of reality and that to move forward you need to overcome the complications, even if it means to climb though a darkening forest to overcome the challenge.
Soutine’s work reflects his use of earthy, distorted points of view to capture emotional disturbance and poverty. The hacks and slashes created across the canvas give the impression of anger and discomfit relating to poverty and Jewish religions.
(Adams, B.) ‘…his self-destructive lifestyle as for his consummately worked canvases,’ In reflection to an exhibition called ‘The Impacts of Chaim Soutine’, Adams’ is describing Soutine’s style as being adapted through his own experiences. I understand from his biography that he had a difficult childhood both from his parent’s options towards art and the poverty that he went through in his home country. In anger and desperation he focuses on using his emotions onto the canvas. This is seen with the atmosphere that the painting has on its heavy paint.
Wikipedia (2018)
Piet Mondrian Piet Mondrian is best known for his work of coloured blocks (Which is his later work), but there is a creative process throughout Mondrian’s work that he developed within his career. This began as traditional paintings of landscapes and naturistic images which changed into blocks of artificial
colours. In his life he was one of the founding people of the De Stiji movement. A movement that was formed around abstraction work.
Mondrian was born in the Netherlands on March 7th 1872. His education was received in the Rijksadame van Beeldende , where he studied the impressionism work of artist like Van Gogh. Despite being born after Van Gogh, the art world was still teaching and advancing from the impressionist’s style and concept of art. A link between Mondrian and Van Gogh was their use of colours. In his early years of art, Mondrian was painting from a pure style with little or no abstraction in his paintings. In fact his cubist style didn’t start showing in till the 20th century. When his father was fallen ill in 1914, Mondrian returned from Paris to the Netherlands. He was unable to return to Paris because of an outbreak of WW1. Here Mondrian began using more natural colours and spiritual concepts, translated by naturistic qualities.
When WW2 started he went to London and then New York. It was within this time that he began exploring the fundamentals of the line within art work. In was here that he is most famous for. He then passed away in New York on February 1st 1944.
The Flowering Tree
Art and AllPosters International (2018) 1912, Oil on Canvas 78.5 x 107.5
Piet Mondrian was interested in exploring a new way of exploring art and its possibilities, along with the other modernist artists. In this topic of a minimalistic tree he explores the separation from the
branches and deforms the tree into its natural colours and simple twigs. This was done by Mondrian’s believes that abstraction resembled reality more than realistic art. Chadwick, S (1993) ‘he believed that abstraction
provokes a truer picture of reality than illusionistic depictions of objects in the visual world.’ That idea came because abstraction plays with the simple raw elements of line, form and colour expressing the movement and contrast of feeling from an object and communicating it from the image to the audience with a little bit of understanding of the subject at hand. As for the realistic replication of a subject is just the subject presented in front of the viewer. With The Flowering Apple Tree, Mondrian is playing around with the natural colours of decaying apples and thick lines of the twigs, overcome the movement and rising of a realistic apple tree. The earthy colours express nature’s elements and discards the heavy bright colours of manufactured hands.
In emotional exploring abstraction, Mondrian took close observations of a subject first so that he could understand the complex formations of an object and explore different possibilities to capture his feeling towards that subject matter that he was studying. Because he had an understanding of the subject he was able to successfully communicate emotion.
Wikipedia (2018)
Pablo Picasso Born in 1881, Picasso was delivered by creative parents that drove Picasso’s passion and encouraged him to practice drawing and painting from an early age. Taking inspiration from Edvard Munch and Henri Toulouse-Lautrec he became very fluent in the Art Nouveau and Symbolism.
Between 1900 – 1904, Picasso began traveling between Paris, Madrid and his home city Barcelona. It was also within this time that he lost a close friend to suicide, Carlos Casegemas. In this period of his life a blue palate was often seen, along with paintings of beggars and prostitutes. After 1904 he began exploring a cubistic style that he is most famously known for. In his early recognisable work he looked at performances and circus work, very similar to Toulouse-Lautrec ‘s theme.
In the 1920’s he started to become influenced by Surrealistic qualities. In this time of his life began looking at a more expressive look towards his work.
During WW2 he work was confiscated by Nazi operation within the France. This impacted his work on reflecting on the war and the death of his Jewish friends. In his later years, he left the celebrity life and focused on portraits. Critics believe that these are his best works. He died in South France in 1973.
Guernica
My Pinacoteca (2012), Oil on Canvas, 137.5x305.5 inch
Made in 1937, Guernica is massive at over 137 by 305 inches. Its black, white and pastel colours indicate the scramble dictates death, panic and destruction. A losing battle as people merge and stumble in a hectic frenzy trying to escape and fend for their lives. The use of a colourless atmosphere show sadness and breathe taking actions. One of the most common symbols within the painting was of a deformed star appearing on the hands and faces of some of the citizens. This could be expressing the massacres of Jews (Or kidnapping because it wasn’t found till after the war that Nazi Germany was torturing them.)
With the Nazis over taking the European continent, Rosenblum, R (1998) ‘in order to pinpoint the historical reality of the Nazi saturation bombing of helpless civilians as they went about their business,’ Picasso expressed bombing of innocents with a light bulb at the top of scene, which to some views also symbolises an eye looking down. It gives the impressionism of flickering and flashes that the bombs would have done coming closer to the civilians. Critic R.Rosenblum describes the importance of Guernica in a beautiful quote,(Rosenblum, R.) 1998 ‘,in Guernica, Picasso’s heretical use of Catholic iconography took on a new and tragic pervasiveness whose sense of total malevolence matched not only it’s prototypes in Goya, but also the historical events on the eve of World War II.’ For people who are not familiar with Guernica, it is about the
uprising and destruction of the Nazi occasion during WW2. Explaining my understand of the quote above it is explaining that Picasso used Catholic icons and symbols to express the danger of war. This is seen as a tail less fish scattered throughout the oil painting. In Roman times Christians was
slaughtered, in response their catacombs were given this fish symbol. In other words it gives the sense, in this painting of great death over innocents.
Conclusion After studying these artists, I started realizing that there is more to abstraction in relation to the colours and topic at hand. When observing the paintings I found that richness in colour also affected the painting and image drastically. In this case looking at Mondrian’s Flowering Tree, he has separated the branches to expose human likeness, while applying a hint of green to show the trees raw form.
Let me finish by asking you a question; what do you see. Now knowing a little bit about the modernists in relation to their artwork; do you see a deformed object? Or do you clearly see other subjects within the creations? If you do not understand the piece, do not walk away to the next but think and read the artist statement. Learn about it. Engage yourself into their world and learn about the history or what inspired them. You might be pleasantly surprised. Reflecting on the selected pieces for this exhibition, it grabs our attention to the material properties capable from the media, paint, and how flexible it is. In response to manipulating emotion, it can be used to stun, amaze and make people feel happy. It can be used in sending messages out as well as for decorative pieces. More complicated artwork to simple lines and blocks.
When studying Chaim Soutine’s work, I found his deformation intriguing and found that it dragged me into looking at the paintings. I encouraged this by looking at branches outside the window as fingers, using my hands to create a mix of human creation. In my observation, I didn’t go for perfection but looked at slight deformation throughout the project. In response to this, a model of clay that I created for my portfolio has a small, highchair with the legs extended to the ground. The nose and ears larger on the face, giving the person a mythology look. I also learned of hidden signs behind the development of the artwork. Thinking of the sun and its feelings, I wanted to capture people’s attention using bright, warm colours that people want to indulge in to enjoy the feeling of life, birth but also experience death within the fires of the sun. From observing how Soutine uses paint, I was able to create energised marks to express life and movement.
With Piet Mondrian, I found his work simple and unconsidered until I started looking deeper into his artwork. Created using inspiration from Mondrian’s work, I have been looking at reforming and taking away from the object into simpler forms. This was done with the sunset and trees. Here I took raw elements and explored using them. An example is stitching to recreate bark, swirls to recreate a sun.
Developing and abstracting a sunset, I moved from a simple sunset to a big sun radiating colour and warm feelings over the audience.
Finally I looked at Pablo Picasso. I wasn’t observing his creations on colour, but behind the meanings of his work. This is why I choose to include Guernica, where there are lots of different symbolic meanings to do with Nazi Operation with Spain, Picasso’s homeland. I used that in understanding the creation and completion of meaning and purpose of artwork.
Biology Images for Catalog
Image of Chaim Soutine Musée de l’Orangerie (2018), Chaim Soutine, [Online] [27/4/2018] Available at: http://www.musee-orangerie. fr/en/artist/chaim-soutine Image of Piet Mondrian: Wikipedia (2018), Piet Mondrian, [Online] [30/04/18], Available at: http://www.wikiwand.com/de/Piet_ Mondrian
Image of Pablo Picasso: Wikipedia (29April 2018), Pablo Picasso,[Online] [1/05/2018], Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Pablo_Picasso
Image: Tate (2004), Landscape at Céret [Online]. [27/04/2018] Available at http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/soutine-landscapeat-ceret-t00692 Image- 20/4/2018 Available at: https://www.art.co.uk/products/p35597119955-sa-i9449959/piet-mondrian-floweringappletree-1912.htm
Image of Guernica: My Pinacoteca (2012) Guernica, [Online] (01/05/18) Available at: https://chechar.wordpress.com/2012/09/02/ guernica/
Information for Catalog:
Alfred Werner(1977) Soutine. New York: Harry N. Abrams Inc.
Olga’s Gallery Chaim Soutine’s Biography [online]. [26/01/2018] Available at: (http://www.abcgallery.com/S/soutine/soutinebio.html Adams, B. (2002) Soutine’s Legacy, Art in America, April 2002, p140-143
The Art Story Foundation (2018) Piet Mondrian {Online} (21/02/2018) Available at: http://www.theartstory.org/artist-mhttp://
www.piet-mondrian.org (2011) Piet Mondrian and his paintings {Online} (21/02/2018) Available at: http://www.piet-mondrian.org/ The Art Story Foundation [2018] Pablo Picasso [online]. [24/02/2018]http://www.theartstory.org/artist-picasso-pablo.htm
Steven A.Nash with Robert Rosenblum (1998) Picasso and the war years 1937-1945 Hong Kong: Publications Department of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco P. 39-54