Industrialisa+on and the beginnings of Modernism
The Industrial Revolution was a period from the 18th to the 19th century where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, and transport had a profound effect on the socioeconomic and cultural conditions starting in the United Kingdom, then subsequently spreading throughout Europe, North America, and eventually the world.
18th & 19th centuries •
During the Industrial Revolu+on machines were developed that had the ability to perform tasks that had previously been restricted to human laborers.
• Industrializa+on marked a shi? to powered, special-‐purpose machinery, factories and mass produc+on. • While it brought about an increased volume and variety of manufactured goods and an improved standard of living for some, it also resulted in o?en grim employment and living condi+ons for the poor and working classes.
The Bri+sh enacted legisla+on to prohibit the export of their technology and skilled workers; however, they had liJle success in this regard. It spread from Britain to other European countries, including Belgium, France and Germany, and to the United States.
Mass Production • • • •
Conveyer-belt mechanisation Goods could be made quicker, more efficiently Could be ‘shipped’ around more easily Became cheaper/more accessible to more and more people
Singer Sewing Machine 1870
Kodak Box Brownie Camera 1888
Remington’s 1st Typewriter 1874
The first street-poster pillars erected in Berlin by Ernst Litfass (1855)
David E Hughes invents the printing telegraph.
The Great Exhibi+on 1851
• This was ‘Crystal Palace’, home to the Great Exhibi+on, an idea dreamt up by Queen Victoria's husband, Prince Albert, to display the wonders of industry and manufacturing from around the modern world. • There were some 100,000 objects, displayed along more than ten miles, by over 15,000 contributors. Britain, as host, occupied half the display space inside, with exhibits from the home country and the Empire. • These early exhibi+ons opened the flood gates for trade fairs all over the world.
In the 1870s, electricity was the cu^ng-‐edge technology. Like today’s Internet, it aJracted bright, young people, such as Bell who was only 29 in 1876. The field of electricity offered him the opportunity to create inven+ons that could lead to fame and fortune. •
10 March 1876: Bell transmits speech "Mr. Watson, come here! I want to see you!" using a liquid transmiJer
First short film Louis Le Prince
Roundhay Garden Scene 1888
Eiffel Tower 1889 The Exposi+on Universelle of 1889 was a World's Fair held in Paris, France from 6 May to 31 October The fair marked the first +me that visitors were allowed to go onto the yet unfinished Eiffel Tower. Though not yet completed, exhibi+on aJendees were allowed to walk up to the second floor plahorm
The tower is the tallest building in Paris and the most-‐visited paid monument in the world; millions of people ascend it every year. It is named a?er the engineer Gustave Eiffel, whose company designed and built the tower.
Modernism • Modernism was a broad movement encompassing all the avant-‐garde isms of the first half of the 20th century • They all rejected the dominance of naturalism and academicism in favor of experimental art • The common trend was to seek answers to fundamental questions about the nature of art and human experience
1860 – 1914 The Arts & Cra?s Movement (ACM) aimed to promote a return to hand-‐cra?smanship and to assert the crea+ve independence of individual cra?speople. • •
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•
It was a reac+on against the industrialised society that had boomed in Britain in the Victorian period, and aimed for social as well as ar+s+c reform. Arts and Cra?s objects were produced in all media: metalwork, ceramics, glass, tex+les and furniture. Architecture o?en provided a se^ng for a unified achievement in interior design. By the beginning of the 20th century, the ACM had established itself as the principal art movement in Britain, and was well known abroad, through illustra+on in European magazines. A?er the First World War the ACM declined. Although some adherents of the ACM accommodated themselves to the machine, and were involved in the founda+on of the Design and Industries Associa+on in 1915, its an+-‐machine stance no longer carried weight.
William Morris (1834-‐1896)
One of the main prac++oners of the ACM
'Tulip and Willow' Pencil and Watercolour sketch for print design, 1873
During the 1800's, wallpaper was printed with carved wooden blocks, some of which will s+ll pop up in an+que stores.
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William Morris was a leading member of the Arts and Crafts Movement.
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Morris is mostly known as a designer of patterns for wallpaper and textiles.
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Morris was also an artist, designer, printer, typographer, bookbinder, craftsman, poet, writer and champion of socialist ideals.
Art Nouveau • • • •
• • •
1890 – 1914 Captivated Europe and North America but known globally. French for ’New Art’, ‘Stile Liberty’ in Italy, and ‘Jugendstil’ or ‘youth style’ in German. Art nouveau embraced all forms of art and design: architecture, furniture, glassware, graphic design, jewellery, painting, pottery, metalwork, and textiles. Influenced by the ‘Arts & Crafts movement’ that flourished between 1860 and 1910. Seen as an important transition between the prevalent styles of the 19th Century (Neo-Classicism, etc) and the Modernist Design of the 20th Century The stylistic elements of Art Nouveau evolved into the simpler, streamlined forms of modernism, influencing the movements like Art Deco.
What influenced the artists? • • •
The desire to abandon the historical styles of the 19th century was an important influence behind Art Nouveau and one that establishes the movement's modernism. The artifacts at that time were increasingly dominated by poorly made objects imitating earlier periods. The practitioners of Art Nouveau therefore sought to revive good workmanship, raise the status of craft, and produce genuinely modern design.
Charles Rennie Mackintosh 1868 - 1928
Alphonse Mucha 1860 - 1939
Victor Horta 1861 - 1947 Rene Lalique 1860 - 1945
Hector Guimard 1867 - 1942 Gustav Klimt 1862 – 1918
Louis Comfort Tiffany 1848 - 1933
Henry Van de Velde 1863 - 1957
Hector Guimard 1867 – 1942 Architect
Castel Beranger, Paris, 1898, was regarded as “deranged� by his contemporaries.
Metro entrance in Paris 1889, still in use today Agressive curves of plantlife
Hector avoided direct references to the natural world like insects, but often incorporated the energy and forms of organics like shells and vegetation such as plants.
René Lalique 1860 – 1945 French jeweller & glass designer .
Laliques jewellry pieces and vases showcased insects, plants, flowers and flowing lines Art Nouveau
Car mascot (hood ornament) 1925
Dragonfly woman corsage ornament, 1897 - 1898
Art Deco
In the 1920s , his style morphed from the Art Nouveau nature-inspired forms, to more streamlined pieces to suit the Art Deco look.
Louis Comfort Tiffany 1848 – 1933 Artist & designer of decorative arts Tiffany started out as a painter, but became interested in glassmaking The first Tiffany lamp was created in 1899 Designed on the plant wisteria, very flowing & ornate
Again, inspired by nature and the outdoors
Tree of Life glass window
Use of coloured glass to create stained glass pictures was motivated by the ideals of the Arts & Crafts movement
Key characteristics •
The style is characterized by a heavy influence from nature — flowing lines, aggressive curves and organic shapes
Alphonse Muncha ‘Job’ 1896
Bonnie Maclean Martha & the Vendellas 1967
Even today, the movement inspires many works & has done all through the 20th Century
Where can it now be found? Art Nouveau is a very influential movement. Even now.
The biggest work of Art Nouveau can be seen in Barcelona, the Sagrada Familia, by Antoni Gaudi. dresses with art nouveau prints by prada
It’s style is still being copied in magazines, websites, posters and pretty much all artifacts that are now created by real craftsmanship.
Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-‐1928) architect, designer and ar+st
He designed the building and interior as well as many other properties and businesses around Glasgow.
Charles was part of a group of artists at the Glasgow School of Art
Charles Rennie Mackintosh Like Lalique, he was also a practitioner of both Art Nouveau & Art Deco. Art Deco
Art Nouveau
Between 1915 and 1923 he produced over 120 textile designs, ranging from patterns based on stylized flowers and natural forms to more abstract motifs that look forward to Art Deco.
Both the Art Nouveau and Art Deco movements emerged as reactions to major world events; the Industrial Revolution and World War I. While both embraced modernist elements, the difference between the two is like night and day… Aubrey Beardsley Romain de tirtoff (erte) 1872-1898 1892-1990
• English author & illustrator • Early inspiration for Art Nouveau • Founder of ‘Yellow Book’
• Russian illustrator, costume designer & bronze sculptorer • Most influential artist of Art Deco movement
Erte (Roman Tyrtov/Romain de Tirtoff)
Art Deco • Art Deco differed from other Modernist movements in that it’s aim was decora+ve rather than func+onal and minimalist, and lacked a manifesto on social philosophies. However, the structure of Art Deco forms are based on mathema+cal geometric shapes. • It is an eclec+c style of elegant and glamorous modernism. Eclec+c in terms of its influences: neo-‐classicism, construc+vism and shows elements taken from Egyp+an and Aztec forms. • Started in Paris in the 1920s it flourished interna'onally in the 30s.
Art Nouveau to Art Deco Rounded edges, scrolls & curves to geometric, angular and streamlined motifs like zigzags and chevrons
Egyptomania  Â
The discovery of Tutankhamun and the freedom to travel abroad hugely influenced the Art Deco movement
Advertising media
Adolphe Jean-Marie Mouron (AJM Cassandre)
1901 – 1968 Ukrainian-‐French painter, commercial poster ar+st, and typeface designer
Tamara de Lempicka
1898 – 1980 born Maria Górska in Warsaw, Poland was a Polish Art Deco painter and "the first woman ar+st to be a glamour star”
Jacques-Emile Ruhlmann
1879 – 1933 was a renowned French designer of furniture and interiors, epitomising for many the glamour of the French Art Deco style of the 1920s.
Conclusion • • •
Art Nouveau is very feminine (old fashioned) in style and Art Deco is masculine (avante garde, modern.) Nouveau is a flowery organic form, and Deco is machine-like, and sleek. Both movements keep being reinvented to this day.
The Toilet Seat
A devise to understand socio-‐poli+cal history and ideology of the 20th Century Le? Wing Ideology
Le?: A sharing of resources amongst all.
Companies -‐ essen+ally ‘co-‐opera+ves’. Socialism More extreme form: Communism A belief that private ownership should be abolished and all work and property should be shared by the community. Extreme: The State rules over all aspects of life…
Right Wing Ideology
Right: ‘The Law of the Jungle’ – only the powerful (successful) survive. In essence, in extreme form, racist, eli+st, purist, white suprema+st, Aryan. (Nazis, KKK, BNP, etc) Capitalism (acceptable form – majority of the world) – ‘entrepeneurs’ and risk-‐takers make money and profits for share-‐holders and employing people… Only fit and robust companies and workforce survive…
Created by Chris Halliwell
Post World War One developments Russian Construc+vism (originated in 1919)
Ar+sts Aleksandr Rodchenko (1891-‐1956) Varvara Stepanova (1894-‐1958) Vladimir Tatlin (1885-‐1953) Theo Van Doesburg (1883-‐1931) Kurt SchwiJers (1887-‐1948) Naum Gabo (1890-‐1977)
Keywords Geometric abstrac+on Kine+cs Technology Social u+lity Social progress Non-‐spiritual
Russian construc+visim was a Utopian movement within the ongoing social revolu+on that followed the Communist coup of 1917. They rejected the idea that works are ‘composed’, and are, therefore, ‘composi+ons’. They adopted the term ‘construc+on’ to break down the barriers between the ar+s+c and the industrial.
Tatlin was the leading sculptor of the movement. He was very much influenced by Cubism and tried to develop a sculptural technique which could convey movement through +me.
Like the Futurists, the construc+vists were also convinced that art and technology could transform society for the beJer. Many of the leading members emigrated West, encouraging the development of Interna+onal Construc+vism.
Futurism 1909-1914 Revolutionary Italian movement that celebrated modernity.
Key Artists Marinetti, Boccioni, Martelli, Balla, Prampolini and Russolo. • They glorified industrialization, technology, and transport along with the speed, noise and energy of urban life • Characteristics of Futurism include irregular, agitated lines that communicate the energy of movement. Futurists wanted to illustrate images in perpetual motion.
The Futurists adopted the visual vocabulary of Cubism to express their ideas - but with a slight twist.
Pablo Picasso Les Demoiselles d'Avignon 1907
Giacomo Balla Speed of a Motorcycle 1913
In a Cubist painting as shown in the Picasso the artist records selected details of a subject as he moves around it, whereas in a Futurist painting the subject itself seems to move around the artist.
Marinetti (1876  –1944) founder of futurism. He used his poems as collages, cutting numbers and letters from newspapers as well as drawing some elements. Â
1914 Zang Tumb Tumb: F.T. Marinetti The cover for this book, written and designed by Marinetti, exemplifies the futurist esthetic.
Giacomo Balla, (1871-‐ 1958) was also one of the founders of Futurism
In Girl Running on a Balcony 1912, Balla uses a mosaic style, by breaking up the image and repea+ng the representa+on of the subject. By doing so, we see the girl in the blurred stages of her movement.
Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash 1912, the image is based on the study of mul+ple exposure. With the advent of the camera people were able to see the stages of movement that the normal eye does not no+ce.
Umberto Boccioni (1882-‐1916) painter, printmaker, writer, and a sculptor. "Everything moves, everything runs… owing to the persistence of images on the retina, objects in motion are multiplied, distorted, following one another like waves though space."
Umberto Boccioni A fight in the arcade
Umberto Boccioni's 'Dynamism of a Human Body', 1913
Boccioni was trained from 1898 to 1902 in the studio of the painter Giacomo Balla, where he learned to paint in the manner of the Poin+llists.
Enrico Prampolini 1894-1956) painter, decora+ve ar+st, stage designer, architect, sculptor and writer.
Francesco Cangiullo, Poesia pentagrammata 1923 Cover by Enrico Prampolini.
Prampolini: "Aerodynamic Construction" (1914)
Probably the most prominent member of the second generation of Futurists
The Futurists practiced in every medium of art, including painting, sculpture, ceramics, graphic design, industrial design, interior design, theatre, fashion, textiles, literature, music, architecture and even gastronomy.
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Umberto Boccioni The Lancers Umberto Boccioni futurist sculpture 1911
Futurism all but ended in 1944 when Marinetti died, and by that time, Prampolini and others had turned to Abstraction.
Expressionism 1905-‐1920
Ar+sts Wassily Kandinsky (1866-‐1944) Franz Marc (1880-‐1916) George Grosz (1893-‐1959) Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880-‐1938) Kees Van Dongen (1887-‐1968)
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Keywords Strong colour Distor+on Abstrac+on Community Aliena+on Social cri+que Masquerade Purifica+on
Expressionism emerged in different ar+s+c circles across Europe It was not a dis+nct, self-‐ contained movement but used strong colour, distorted figures, and some+mes abstrac+on to explore themes of belonging and aliena+on Expressionism is the art of unrest and the search for truth In Germany its leading ar+sts were loosely gathered in two groups called Die Brucke (the bridge) and Der Blaue Reiter (the blue rider) Both explored the genuine feelings by a society which they felt needed to be ‘cleansed’ or ‘purified’
The ar+sts o?en visualised this process through depic+ons of natural disasters or through reference to Biblical scenes such as Apocalypse in which the world is destroyed and remade by a wrathful god
What both groups shared with other Expressionists was the convic+on that art could express an intrinsic human truth and restore meaning to people’s lives
Dadaism Ar+sts Jean Arp (1886-‐1966) Marcel Duchamp (1887-‐1986) Hannah Hoch (1889-‐1978) Francis Picabia (1879-‐1953) Man Ray (1890-‐1976)
Keywords Destruc+on Libera+on The unconscious Chance Nonsense Nilhis+c wiJy
• Dadaism emerged during WW1 • The word dada means ‘hobby horse’ in French and was randomly picked out of the dic+onary • The dadaists proclaimed that all received moral, poli+cal and aesthe+c beliefs had been destroyed by the war • They advocated a destruc+ve, irreverent and libera+ng approach to art • (parallels with the ‘Punk’ movement in the 1970s)
The first Dada manifesto claimed that Dadaism was ‘a new reality’ and accused the Expressionists, ‘of sen+mental resistance to the +mes’.
Shock was a key tac+c for dadaists who hoped to shake society out of the na+onalism and materialism which had led to carnage of WW1
Dadaism was a literary movement as well as a visual one and there were independent groups of dadaists in Zurich, New York, berlin and Paris
Dadaism gave way to Surrealism in the mid 1920’s
Surrealism Keywords • The unconscious • Irra+onal • Dreams • Automa+sm • Juxaposi+on • Destruc+on • Ero+cism Founded in Paris in 1924 by the poet Andre Breton
Introduc+on • It con+nued Dadaism’s explora+on of everything irra+onal and subversive in art. • Surrealism was more explicitly preoccupied with Spiritualism, Freudian psychoanalysis and Marxism then Dadaism was. • It aimed to create art which was ‘automa+c’, meaning that it had emerged directly from the unconscious without being shaped by reason, morality or aesthe+c judgements.
Key Ar+sts Andre Breton 1896-‐1966 Hans Arp 1886-‐1966 Salvador Dali 1904-‐1989 Max Ernst 1891-‐1976 Frida Kahlo 1907-‐1954 Paul Klee 1879-‐1940 Rene MagriCe 1898-‐1967 Andre Masson 1896-‐1987 Joan Miro 1893-‐1983 Yves Tanguy 1900-‐1955 The unconscious was central to surrealists. To them it resembled a vast storehouse full of astonising, hitherto repressed ar+s+c crea+vity
The Surrealists also explored dream imagery which Ernst and Dali introduced into their pain+ng with all the aJen+on to detail of Realist painters
Miro’s pain+ngs on the other hand, contain bio-‐morphic shapes which could be amoeba, viruses, or thoughts glimpsed in the psyche’s unchartered synap+c spaces They adopted various techniques to unlock the unconscious. Automa+c wri+ng was perhaps the most used. Surrealists characterised naturalism and Realism as fundamentally bourgeois, claiming that ar+s+c movements confused truth with objects and treated both life and art as though they were old furniture: solid, ugly and dusty.
Bauhaus and German modernism 1919-‐1933
The founder of Bauhaus, Walter Gropius was greatly affected by the horrors of the War and wanted to create a school where industrial methods were used, not for destruc+ve purposes but for the beJerment of social condi+ons He offered the 1st model for the modern Art School An alterna+ve way of life (Socialist)
Bauhaus Manifesto • The decora+on of buildings… the noblest func+on of fine arts • Schools (of Art) must return to the ‘workshop’ • … (a) young person who rejoices in crea+ve ac+vity (should) now begin his/her career… by learning a cra6 • There is no essen+al difference between the ar+st and the cra?sman • ‘Let us desire, concieve, and create the new building of the future together.’
The Bauhaus Curriculum combined theore+cal educa+on and prac+cal training in the workshops
Modernist interior design
Walter Gropius
Sleeping Compartment railway carriage 1914 Compact efficiency was to influence apartment design
Le Corbusier
Interior at The Paris Expo 1925
Modern City Design – Le Corbusier
Plan for Paris 1922-‐25
Le Corbusier designs were the major influence in the building of the Parkhill flats
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Idealism Iconoclasm Puritanism Socialism Revolu+on
The Interna+onal Typographic Style, also known as the Swiss Style, is a graphic design style developed in Switzerland in the 1950’s that emphasizes cleanliness, readability and objec+vity.
Hallmarks of the style are asymmetric layouts, use of a grid, sans-‐serif typefaces like Akzidenz Grotesk, and flush le?, ragged right text. The style is also associated with a preference for photography in place of illustra+ons or drawings. Many of the early Interna+onal Typographic Style works featured typography as a primary design element in addi+on to its use in text, and it is for this that the style is named.
Modern Aesthe+cs • • • • • • • •
A reac+on against the decora+ve excesses of art nouveau Abstrac+on favoured over figura+ve (bauhaus) ‘Form Follows Func+on’ Plain geometric forms over ornamenta+on A move towards simplicity and, eventually, minimalism The excitement of the ‘new’ and a strive towards ‘perfec+on’ and ‘progress’ Art and culture could influence human des+ny Belief in the perfec+bility of ‘man’ – can create a beJer, if not perfect society
Post-‐modernism Post-‐modernism developed from cri+ques of architectural modernism in the 1970’s. By the 1980’s, visual art which cri+cised society was also being referred to as ‘post-‐modernism’.
Keywords Elec+cism An+-‐corporate Cri+que of ins+tu+ons Deconstruc+on Rela+vism Mass media
Architects took the lead in the development of Post-‐Modernism. They critciised the Interna+onal Style of Modernist architecture for being too fromal, austere and func+onal. They felt it had become a repressive orthodoxy. It had been adopted by the corporate world and exploited at the expense of its social vision.
Post-‐Modern architecture New trends became evident in the last quarter of the 20th century as some architects started to turn away from modern Func+onalism which they viewed as boring, and which some of the public considered unwelcoming and even unpleasant. Auditorio de Tenerife
The McCormick Tribune Campus Center at Chicago's IIT Campus
The func+onal and formalized shapes and spaces of the modernist style are replaced by diverse aesthe+cs: styles collide, form is adopted for its own sake, and new ways of viewing familiar styles and space abound. Perhaps most obviously, architects rediscovered the expressive and symbolic value of architectural elements and forms that had evolved through centuries of building which had been abandoned by the modern style.
Conceptualism Ar+sts John baldessari (b.1931) Joseph Beuys (1921-‐1986) Jan Dibbets (b.1941) Marcel Duchamp (1887-‐1968) Jenny Holzer (b.1950) Barbara Kruger (b.1945) Jean Tinguely (1925-‐1991) Lawrence Weiner (b.1940) Sol LewiJ (b1928)
Keywords Idea Concept Inten+on Cri+que language
• Conceptualism emerged in the 1960’s and was first defined and promoted as an ism by Sol LewiJ in 1967. • Its central claim is that art is a ‘concept’, rather than a material object. • There are strong precedents for Conceptualism in the work of the Dadaist ar+st Marcel Duchamp.
Conceptualism is shaped by four basic tenets. The first is that the art work is an idea, or concept, rather than a material object. To understand the idea that shapes an art work is to understand the work itself – so it is possible to understand an art work without ever having seen it. This work is composed of five elements: a photograph of a clock, a clock and entries from an English/ La+n dic+onary for the words ‘+me’, ‘machine’ and ‘object’. By placing a real clock beside a photograph of one, Kosuth ques+ons why we consider a photograph but not the object itself to be art. This juxtaposi+on also challenges the idea that art is beau+ful and/or func+onless.
clock (one and five) joseph kosuth 1965, 1997
By emphasising the concept over the art work Conceptualists aJempt to disrupt the process by which ownership translates into social status and cultural authority. Individuals become important collectors because of their wealth, not because of what they know about art.
Unlike Modernists, Post-‐Modernists place liJle or no faith in the unconscious as a source of crea+ve and personal authen+city. They value art not for its universality and +melessness but for being imperfect, low-‐brow, accessible, disposible, local and tempoorary. Pop art, with its interest in mass media, marke+ng and adver+sing, can be seen as an early form of Post-‐Modernism. Warhol’s work explores the cult of celebrity and the way an individual can be consumed by, or lost behind, their own image. The loss of an original and its displacement copies is a central preoccupa+on of Post-‐Modern art of which Pop was a forerunner. This piece was produced in the months following Monroe’s suicide. It is an explora+on of the way individuals, a?er death, can achieve ‘immortality’ through endlessly replicated images in magazines and adver+sing
Marilyn Diptych 1962 andy warhol
While it ques+ons the nature and extent of our freedom and challenges our acquiescence to authority, Post-‐Modernism has been cri+cised for its pessimism: it o?en fails to provide a posi+ve vision or redefini+on of what it aJacks.
Psychedelia The impact of psychedelic drugs on western culture in the 1960s led to seman+c dri? in the use of the word “psychedelic”, and it is now frequently used to describe anything with abstract decora+on of mul+ple bright colours, similar to those seen in drug-‐induced hallucina+ons.
The counterculture of the 1960s had a strong influence on the popular culture of the early 1970s. It later became linked to a style of electronic dance music commonly known as psychedelic trance.
Minimalism Ar+sts Carl Andre (b.1935) Dan Flavin (1933-‐1996) Eva Hesse (1936-‐1970) Donald Dudd (1928-‐1994) Yves Klein (1928-‐1962) Sol LewiJ (b.1925) Robert Morris (b.1931) Robert Rauschenberg (b.1925) Ad Reinhardt (1913-‐ 1967) Frank Stella (b. 1936)
Keywords Simplicity Austerity Repe++on Non-‐tradi+onal material Sterile Impersonal
• This term came into general use in the 1960’s to describe sculpture which is highly influed by abstract Expressionalism • Minimalists works are o?en composed of mul+ple, uniform elements (e.g bricks, or sec+ons of tubular ligh+ng) and tend to favour industrial materials
Minimalists o?en favour the repe++ve use of an element which has its own formal simplicity or wholeness. Each part of the sculpture is a self-‐contained unit or whole, and the construc+on of the art work is a mul+plica+on of this basic cons+tu+ve unit.
steel zinc plain 1969 carl andre
monument for v tatlin dan flavin
The believe was that basic forms of a square, rectangle or circle inevitably arouse certain emo+ons in the viewer. Minimalist sculpture is part of the general tendency towards conceptualism in contemporary art.
Sensa+onalism Ar+sts
Jake and Dinos Chapman (b.1966, b.1962} Tracey Emin (b.1963) Damien Hirst (b.1965) Mark Wallinger (b.1959)
Keywords Contemporary experience Dark humour Diverse media Insincerity Irony Obscurity Shock tac+cs saatchi
• This term refers to the ‘Young Bri+sh Ar+sts’ who first rose to prominence in the late 1980’s • Influenced by conceptualism, their work is characterised by its irony, diverse materials and its explora+on of contemporary experience • The ar+sts themselves are recognised as expert exploiters of mass media and are closely iden+fied with the collector and adver+sing mogul, Charles Saatchi
Most of the YBA’s met at Goldsmiths College, London in the late 1980’s. Freeze, their first group exhibi+on, established their reputa+on and began to draw aJen+on to London as a vibrant centre of ar+s+c innova+on.
Damien Hirst
CAPTIONS FROM THE REAL WORLD Jake and Dinos Chapman
The YBA’s has been praised for its dark humour and determina+on to explore contemporary experience as well as the tradi+onal ‘big themes’ of art, such as mortality and human iden+ty. However, cri+cs have aJacked them for’insincerity’ and ‘obscurity’, but these charges cannot detract from the fact that many works by YBA have entered the popular imagina+on, weathered the hype and remained there.