It's photography's fault. It changed art by opening up a world of new possibilities in compositional form for artists. Since photography took over recording the past, artists had to create themselves anew if they wanted to eat. This they did very successfully. Artists moved away from idealism and the use of strict formalist elements toward realism and subject matter of everyday life. Artists began painting not how objects look but how they feel. This was a time of intense experimentation and excitement for artists. Of course these movements are not actually so clearly divided, but here it is in a nutshell.
Impressionism:
- France in early 1860s
- Manet, Monet, Renoir, and Degas
- Rejected formalist rules of the past
- Captured a moment in time, like photography, but painting did what photography couldn't
- About color and light
Post-Impressionism:
- France 1880-1905
- Wanted art to be more substantial
- Two groups: Neoclassical - formal and scientific design through planes of color. Seurat and Cezanne
Lautrec
Modern art grew out of these movements. The focus in twentieth century art was more on inner vision than on physical reality. Artists had the freedom to express art through their own experiences and imagination. This brought about the rejection of precisely representing nature and moving toward the emotion of pure abstraction. The isms continue:
Fauvism:
- France - Short period but influential for future 1904-1908
- Matisse, Derain, Dufy, Vlaminck, Rouault, Braque
- Express emotions through COLOR that does not reflect nature, distorted forms, flat, linear pattern
- Influences were Post-Impressionist and African art
Cubism:
- Pure form 1908-1914
- Picasso, Braque, Gris, and Leger
- Two phases: Analytic reduced objects to fragments and used subdued color for less distraction. Synthetic employed the use of found objects, dismantling them, and reassembling into a new expression called collage.
Futurism:
- Italy 1909
- Boccioni, Balla, Carra, Russolo, and Severini
- Combined Fauvism's color and Cubist's planes to create the force, movement, and speed of the industrial age.
- Died with Boccioni, the most influential artist of this movement
Constructivism:
- Russia 1914
- Revolutionary art
- Construct art not create it
- Abstract and geometric to reflect modern age of technology
Precisionism:
America 1920s- Sheeler, Demuth, O'Keeffe
- Ashcan School changed from fantasy to real life subject matter.
- Others had a new ideas about form
- Range between representation to abstraction
Expressionism:
- Germany 1905-1930
- Art about feeling
- Two groups: Die Brucke means "bridge" as in to the future. Distorted simple forms, clashing colors, intense emotions, Kirchner and Nolde. Der Blaue Reiter, the Blue Rider, pure abstraction, uses color to convey emotions, Kandinsky and Klee
- Kandinsky develops two types of paintings: conscious compositions and intuitive improvisations
- Klee simple, ambiguous childlike forms, studied hieroglyphs and cave paintings
Dutch expressionism:
- Mondrian 1917-1931
- Totally obliterated emotion and nature from art
De Stijl "The Style"- Neo-Plasticism - extreme geometry, precision, and mechanical order
To be continued...
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