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” | |
·
§ 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
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
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
_by_Matisse.jpg){kind=link}
No comments:
Post a Comment