Thursday, April 7, 2011

Modernism - the pictures might not show up

Birth of Modern Architecture


· Neoclassical tradition continued to dominate public buildings


· “Beaux-Arts” style of domes and arches were everywhere


· Architects were called upon to design structures that never existed: suspension bridges, grain elevators, train sheds, factories, warehouses, high-rise office buildings


o Break free from ancient Greek and Roman prototypes


o “form follows function”


· Sullivan: First Modern Architect


o Invented the skyscraper


o New vertical towers demanded a wholly new aesthetic


o Exterior designs echoed the interior designs


o Metropolitan image – grid-like appearance, rectangular steel framework, stark geometry


o Wished surface decoration to be fresh and inventive – rejected antique styles


· Radical freedom of expression – Fauvism, Cubism, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism


· Fauvism: Exploding color


o Matisse, Vlaminck, Derain, Dufy, Braque, Rouault


§ Sky was yellow instead of blue


§ Received criticism


§ Love of exaggerated, vibrant color to express feelings


o Vlaminck


§ Went to the extreme


§ Self-taught artist


§ Painted with clashing colors side by side to intensify their effect, making it move with motion


§ Favorite subject – bridge at Chatou


o Derain: Fireworks


§ Reduced brushstrokes to Morse code: dots and dashes of primary colors


§ Bold directional brushstrokes eliminated lines and distinction between light and shade




















§ “Big Ben”


o Dufy: Fauve’s animator


§ Cheerful canvases of garden parties, concerts, horse races, regattas, beach scenes


§ Drawing was fluid and his colors were vivacious – animate a scene


§ Switched drawing to drawing with left hand


§ Proved that Expressionism could be jovial, by using intense colors that have nothing to do with an object’s appearance but everything to do with his own outlook


o Rouault: Stained glass paintings


§ Expressive brushwork and glowing colors


§ His paintings were filled with pain and suffering


§ Devout catholic, so he wanted to redeem humanity through exposing evil, concentration with prostitutes and corrupt judges with savage brushstroke


§ Simplified the body to have a powerful, expressive function to communicate his religious faith


· 20th century Sculpture


o Brancusi


§ Greatest Modernist sculptor


§ Saw reality in terms of basic, universal shapes: the egg, the pebble, and the blade of grass à put things in its simplest form


§ First to abandon the accepted practice of letting professional stonecutters do carving of sculptor


· Matisse and Picasso


o Matisse: living color


· Color was designed so that we can express our own emotions


· Response to his work was violent


· Art does not represent, but reconstructs reality










"dance”


Henri Matisse


·


§ Art of Omission


· Matisse put overblown Salon style on a diet, stripping it down to bare bones


· Matisse sought eliminate nonessentials and retain only a subject’s most fundamental qualities


§ “feel-Good Paintings”


· Matisse believed that painting should not only be beautiful but also should bring pleasure to the viewer à master of curved line called an arabesque


· Son of bourgeois father, first was a lawyer, now an artist


§ Paper Cutouts


· When bed-ridden, Matisse was able to sketch huge figures on ceiling above bed but he enjoyed cutting out from brightly colored paper fanciful shapes


· Dissonant colors produce visual excitement and energy


· Vivid collages were his most original work


o Picasso


§ King of modern art


§ Led forces of artistic innovation, introducing a new style by inventing Cubism


§ His art was autobiographical



“The Blindman’s Meal”


§ Blue Period


· First original style came out of his down-and-out years as an impoverished artist


· Paintings about blind beggars and derelicts


§ Rose Period


· His depression vanished when he met his first love


o Began using pinks and earth colors to paint circus performers and romantic things


§ Negro Period


· Discovered the power of abstracted African masks


§ Harbinger of Cubism


· “Desmoiselles” – shattered every precept of aristic convention


o Five nudes are hazy on anatomy with lop-sided eyes, deformed ears, and dislocated limbs


§ Sculpture


· “Guitar” sheet metal assemblage broke with traditional methods of carving


§ Diversity


· Experimented with differing styles, drawing faithful likenesses and then violently distorted figures


· Re-inventing the shape of art


· Cubism


o Little cubes


o Liberated art by establishing that art consists of inventing not copying


o Analytic Cubism


§ Analyzed form of objects by shattering them into fragments spread out on canvas


o Synthetic Cubism


§ Collage, incorporating stenciled lettering and paper scraps into their paintings


§ Leger added curved forms to angular Cubist vocab – Tubist because his shaped were tubular


§ Teasing quality of Cubist art came from ambivalence between representation and abstraction


· Modernism Outside France


o Futurism


§ Kinetic art – literary movement that Marinetti used to challenged artists to show courage, audacity, and revolt


o Boccioni: Poetry in motion


§ Urged painters to forsake art of past from miracles of contemporary life


o Futurism caused an uproar


o With death of Boccioni, Futurism died fast


· Constructivism: seeing red


o Russian avant-garde flourished


§ They borrowed broken shapes from Cubism


§ They borrowed multiple overlapping images to express agitated modern life from Futurism


§ Stripped art of petty bourgeois anachronisms and tried to remake art from scratch


§ Tatlin originated Russian geometric art to construct art, not create it


§ Malevich pioneered abstract geometric art – floating squares on white background – tried to make his shapes and colors as pure as musical notes


§ Communist party declared art must be functional, an art for masses, propagandistic


· Precisionism: Modernism in America


o Sheeler, Demuth, O’Keeffe


§ Straddled borderline between representation and abstraction – simplified forms to an extreme of spare geometry, using clean-edged rectangles to indicate soaring skyscrapers and factories


o O’Keeffe


§ Best known for her huge blowups of single flowers


§ Evoked nature without describing it and approached the brink of abstraction





§ “City Night”


· Expressionism


o Use of distorted, exaggerated forms and colors for emotional impact


o Die Brucke


§ German artist


§ Demanded freedom of life and action against established and older forces


§ Produced intense, anguished pictures with distorted forms and clashing colors


§ Revival of graphic arts


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