-1Fauvism

-pervasive desire for expression

-simplified in design and shockingly bright in color
-fauves = wild beast
-desire to develop an art having the directness of Impressionism but also embracing
intense color juxtapositions and their emotional capacities
-portraits, landscapes, still lifes, and nudes
-exemplified both facets of Expressionism: combined outward and inward expression
-didn’t last long - wasn’t ever officially organized
***Henri Matisse
-believed that color could play a primary role in conveying meaning
-Woman with the Hat was conventional in its composition, but the arbitrary
colors and sharp lines are startling
-rejected imitative colors
-Red Room (Harmony in Red) makes the table and the wall merge together
because of the same color and pattern
*Andre Derain
-used color to produce aesthetic and compositional coherence, to increase
luminosity, and to elicit emotional responses
-The Dance: nude and clothed figures frolic in a bright landscape

Tribal African Art

-San: people who occupied the southeastern coast of South Africa

-they were hunter gatherers, and their art often depicted the animals they
hunted
-Bamboo Mountain was a San rock painting of a stock raid with cattle and may
represent a ritual leader in a trance state
-the San people were being pursued by government military and police - the
artwork was also made to record government action
-Fang and Kota
-The Fang people were famous for their reliquary garden figures
-made out of wood, and were stylized human figures or in some cases just
heads
-symmetrical with proportions that enlarge the head
-bieri: bodies resemble the body of an infant but the muscles are of an adult
(suggests the cycle of life)
-The Kota people also made reliquary garden figures called the mbulu ngulu.
-have severely stylized body shapes (like a diamond) covered in metal to repel
evil spirits
-Most popular art forms are sculptures and shrines connected with the veneration of
ancestors
-Kalabari ljaw screens are elaborately decorated with figures of the deceased
-the ultimate status symbol was the king’s throne
-Names to remember: Olowe of Ise and Osei Bonus (both sculptors)
-created multifigure veranda posts

Cubism

***Pablo Picasso
-began as a realist
-experimented with a wide range of visual expression
-epitomized modernism, but went from his famous Impressionistic phase to his
 Blue Period
-Les Demoiselles d’Avignon was influenced by Iberian sculpture and late
paintings of Cezanne
-he was wholly absorbed in finding a new way to represent the female
figures
-he fractured their shapes with jagged planes and empty space
-he depicted the figures inconsistently
-also experimented with 3D objects and made collages such as the Still Life
with Chair Caning (synthetic cubism)
***Georges Braque
-was influenced by Picasso’s Les Demoiselles
-changed his style from Fauvism to Cubism
-developed cubism with Picasso
-they would dissect their subject and then paint all aspects
-The Portuguese is a great example of Analytic Cubism
-composed the piece out of memories of a musician
-used subdued hues in order to focus the viewers attention to the form
*Robert Delaunay
-created a color version of cubism
-called “orphic” cubism
-Champs de Mars was a kaleidoscopic depiction of the Eiffel Tower

Futurism

-artists pursued many cubist ideas as long as their well-defined sociopolitical agenda
-began as a literary movement
-included manifestos advocating revolution
-championed war as a means of washing away the stagnant past of Italy
-focuses on motion in time and space, as well as the analysis of form taken from
cubism
*Giacomo Balla
-Dynamism of Dog on a Leash displays the dissection of form as well as the
effect of motion by repeating shapes.
*Umberto Boccioni
-created futurist sculpture
-Unique Forms of Continuity in Space highlights the formal and spatial effects
of motion rather than their source
*Gino Severini
-Armored Train depicts the futuristic idea that war is a cleansing action
-doesn’t capture the bad parts of war: no dead people or blood, just motion

Expressionism: Die Brucke

-Influenced by Edvard Munch whose paintings were mostly dark-toned and grotesque
-he added black into all his colors
-focused on the alienation of humans from each other
-The Scream was his most famous
***Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
-created the group Die Brucke
-wanted to pave the way to a perfect age by combining old and new age
-modeled themselves on their ideas of medieval craft guilds by living together
-Street, Dresden is jarring and dissonant in both composition and color
-used large and simple forms
-his works were visually unstable with complimentary colors and V-shaped
lines
 -portrayed a Romanesque body type
*Schmidt-Rottluff
-considered the “wild man” of expressionism
-paintings resembled African art
*Emil Nolde
-his work centered on religious imagery
-The Last Supper mocked the religion and was visceral and forceful

Expressionism: Der Blaue Reiter

-the group wanted to capture their feelings in visual form while also eliciting intense
visceral reactions
-tried to get something universal, not just national - INTERnational
**Vassily Kandinsky
-looked beyond the tragedy and depicted large landscapes
-colors were the major symbolic visual, but likes were the vehicles
-influenced by Russian orthodox religion
-created non-objective abstraction
*Franz Marc
-was pessimistic about the state of humanity
-Fate of the Animals “All being is flaming suffering”
-portrayed war’s anguish and tragedy
-believed that blue was a male color (severe) and yellow was a female color
(gentle and happy) and red was matter (brutal and heavy)

Expressionism: Vienna

*Gustav Klimt
-influenced by art neveaux
-opened up space
-used quickly applied, unbalanced patterns of paint that were both decorative
and symbolic
-Death and Life showed larger parental figures shielding their kids
-reality surrounded by darkness
-The Kiss shows people intertwined with each other, and loses himself in the
patterns
*Egon Schiele
-was trained in a high technical background
-Edith was painted in rugged strokes
-the expression is bolder than the German expressionist
-Death and the Man had a harsh, angular rhythmic line
-applied colors without mixing them
*Kokoshka
-immersed in the intellectual atmosphere
-responded to the degenerate aura
-Black Portraits intended to agitate and shock: “shock art”
-The Tempest depicted lovers caught in the eye of the storm (paradox)
-WWI was the ideal expressionist drama; wanted to destroy old order

**Kathe Kollowitz
-concentrated on graphic media
-attempted to depict the good of human kind
-bold realism
-showed a need for social reform (pity for the poor)
-Woman with Dead Child displayed general anguish and animalistic passion
Expressionism: The New Objectivity

-full of general cynicism

*Otto Dix
-horrors of war
-Cardplaying Cripples displays his sharp eye for detail, dark humor, and
mockery of war
-Dr. Meyer Herman showed an interesting perspective of his doctor
*George Grosz
-displayed human horrors in postwar German society
-focused on people who profited from the war
-Metropolis shows people who will trample over anyone for the sake of their
own profit
-he was fascinated with machine forms
-angular lines and faces
-Dame and Automotron Get Married makes individuality seem unnecessary
**Max Beckmann
-used extreme color and contrast with attenuated bodies
-Descent from the Cross was in your face, showed a deep interest in life and
death
-Night tried to make reality to stimulate change
-was a comment on society’s condition
-stilted angularity and roughness of paint surface
-Departure was a triptych that was full of religious symbols and mythological
symbols that illuminated the departure from life

Vassily Kandinsky

-displayed his own personality in his art

-part of the Blue Riders: wanted to send a message
-wrote a book called Concerning the Spiritual and Art
-created his own world
-Compositions, Impressions, and improvisations
-sinesthetic: the sight of sound
-you could play his pieces as though they were music
-reveal sensory feelings through visual lines, space and color
-iconography: blue à far away, warmth à attacking, white à silence
-forms are just a means to an end
-Munich Years
-his search for the language of sight
-Bauhaus Period
-the circle is the dominant motife
-Parisian Years
-the arabesque and the biomorphic shapes are prominent

Russian Avant Garde

-Constructivism came out of a background of architecture

-”artists who see the world through the prism of technology”
-goal: produce pure art
*El Lissitizky used “prouns” to create painting and architecture
-became Productivism in the service of the revolution: posters
-Supremitism
*Malevich
 -pure, primary artwork
-Semifores in Space and 8 Red Rectangles
-movement of flight
-art proceeds feeling
-White on White showed space on space in space

Dada

***Marcel Duchamp
-Nude Descending a Staircase showed no purpose or human form
-showed his work at the Cabaret Voltaire (Gallery Dada)
-aims: anti-abstract
-neither realistic or idealistic
-it was born from what we hated
-Fountain urinal turned upside down called signed R. Mutt
-LHOOQ was a mustache and goatee on Mona Lisa
-Bride Stripped Bare was painted on a mirror
*Schwitters
-did collages
-labeled his work “Merz” paintings because he wasn’t invited to the Dada
group
-found beauty in junk he picked up off the street
*Max Ernst
-Elephant of the Celebes was a means of unconscious exploration
-decalcomania was used: transferred pictures to other surfaces
-combined this with rubbings
-Two Children are Threatened by a Nightingale combined wood with painting

Pittura Metaphysica

**Georgio de Chirico
-time is always in the late afternoon
-something is always about to happen
-painted enigmas
-showed meticulous details of realism mixed with strange distortions of
shadows
-Melancholy and Mystery of a Street had spaces and buildings which evoke a
strange foreboding
-”metaphysical” means that his paintings transcended the physical
appearances
-enjoyed juxtaposition (Bust and Bananas)
Surrealism

*Salvador Dali
-exploration of the human psyche and dreams
-created the “paranoiac-critical method”
-The Persistence of Memory is a haunting allegory of empty space
-convincingly realistic though impossibly real
**Rene Magritte
-his art subverted the viewers expectations based on logic and common sense
-The Treachery (or Perfidy) of Images shows a discrepancy between image
and caption
*Joan Miro
-used automatism and various types of planned accidents in order to provoke
reactions closely related to the subconscious
 -contained elements of fantasy and hallucinations
-Still Life of Old Shoe
**Paul Klee
-shunned formal association with groups
-sought clues to humanity’s deeper nature in primitive shapes and symbols
-Fish Magic
-Twittering Machine is far from illusionistic
-subtly created a world of ambiguity and understatement
-Death and Fire