Hey (back for more)!

One thing I forgot to mention about Kandinsky when discussing early Expressionism was that the subject matter of his art featured religious elements.  It was the Suprematists group who took this and developed it further.  From Russia, pioneered by Kasimir Malevich and Ed Lissitzky, the Suprematists believed that abstract art could have religious connotations.  For example, a painting by Malevich featured a black square on a white background (see "Black Square"), purposely exhibited in the traditional location for a Russian religious image or icon.  The black square symbolised the pure essence of sensation: "the supremacy of pure feeling" (as Malevich puts it).  Now, to be honest, I don't quite understand what he means by his famous quote. 

Around the same time, the Dutch got themselves into the action.  Abstract art was really taking off now, and artists were thinking of art more than just decoration.  Piet Mondrian, Theo van Doesberg, Georges van Tongerloo and Bart van der Leck formed the De Stijl group, based on the common belief that art could change society and create a new kind of human environment, in a similar light to what Cubism, Futurism and Expressionism did.  De Stijl broke down art into its essential elements: lines, colours and geometric shapes.  Where Cubism broke this down from an object, De Stijl had no object.  De Stijl paintings are literally lines and shapes on a canvas, and Mondrian's "Composition with Red, Yellow, and Blue".  They followed the theory on life that Cubism and Futurism initiated: that individuality should be sacrificed for the greater good of the community.

Interestingly, Mondrian saw metaphors in his geometric compositions.  Like Picasso and Cubism, he saw a balancing of opposing forces: such as man and nature, and individual and society.  I personally do not understand where he was coming from! =P

Cheers,

- Daz

(References: MSN Encarta Encyclopedia article on Modern Art)

Hey!

As we left Picasso and Cubism, we moved towards Cubism as a way to glorify technology.  This was actually the convergence of two artistic movements.  Futurism began in 1909 by a group of Italian artists, and continued until 1916.  Futurism explored technology and mechanics, they disregarded anything traditional.  For instance, the old paintings of royal or religious figures were not beautiful, automobiles were; sculptures were not beautiful, factories were!  The artists suggest that our lives should resemble machines: strong, energetic, and impersonal.  Why?  Because society would be better if we all sacrificed our individuality, and became like machines.  A perfect example of futurism is Umberto Boccioni's "Dynamism of a Soccer Player", where the emphasis is on motion.  Other futurists include Giacomo Balla, Carlo Carra and Gino Severini. 

At the same time, in Germany, a group of artists painted about human instinct rather than technology.  Instead of desiring a lifestyle of conformity, these artists craved individuality and saw the modern city as a place of alienation.  The group was referred to as Die Brucke.  This was an early form of expressionism, the styles, shapes and colours all portraying the artist's emotions.  A second group emerged in 1911 (the first group emerging in 1905), called Der Blaue Reiter, went back to spirituality, and set out to elicit emotions much the same way music did.  This group took Fauvism further than just intense colours and unnatural objects, expressionism used incomplete shapes, lines and colours.  Wassily Kandinsky was the one who started this, and many consider him to be the pioneer of abstract art - an example of his art is "Composition IV".  Die Brucke artists include Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (see his "Berlin Street Scene"), Max Pechstein and Emil Nodle.  Der Blaue Reiter had more famous artists, including Wassily Kandinsky, August Macke, Franz Marc and one of my personal favourites: Paul Klee.

Cheers,

- Daz

(Reference: MSN Encarta Encyclopedia article on Modern Art)

Hello,

As the 20th century emerged, various forms of artistic creativity appeared, in terms of literature, choreography, costume and particularly music.  Music was the most significant, philosophers claiming it the most powerful of all the arts because of its direct influence and explanation of emotions.  This impacted on the course of art, as critics and artists paid attention to it, and thus the movement Fauvism was created.  The emphasis on art describing emotion encouraged the use of intense colours and the unnatural look of objects.  It was even described as primitive, and coincidentially, the word fauves in French, means "wild beast".  Fauves was actually the word a French art critic used to label the movement's main artists: Henri Matisse (see painting "Red Room (Harmony In Red)", Andre Derain, Maurice de Vlaminck and Georges Braque!  That is where the name of the movement originated.  This short-lived movement only lasted ten years, as Pablo Picasso's Cubism took over.  However, Fauvism made a substantial impact on Expressionism.

Cubism focised on lines as opposed to colour.  Cubism is a complex and harsh painting style, where subjects are fragmented into geometric planes, ambiguity is emphasised and opposites are merged.  Consider Picasso's "Ma Jolie", where the opposites of solid and void, figure and environment, background and foreground are merged, challenging the logic of traditional paintings and the logic of everyday experience.  This classic example of cubism also shows a lack of colour, and the incorporation of lettering. 

Picasso's experimentation with Cubism won the art world over.  He brought Georges Braque over, and together they experimented by bringing foreign materials into their art pieces.  This was the beginning of Collage, a violation of traditional painting techniques!  Now, all materials could be incorporated to form art.

Other artists in Cubism include Albert Gleizes, Jean Metzinger, Robert Delauney, Juan Gris and Fernand Leger, although they distinguished themselves from Picasso and Braque by exploring Cubism in analysing the relationship between life and technology.  Instead of the personal vision of Cubism, this group of artists took a more mechanical view, reflecting the belief that individual personality should succumb to the demands of society as a whole.  See Leger's "The City"

Cheers,

- Daz

(References: MSN Encarta Encyclopedia article on Modern Art & Artcyclopedia article on Fauvism)

Hey,

I read a really simple and interesting article today explaining the history and development of modern art.

Essentially, modern art became what it was when artists stopped painting and sculpting for religious purposes or for the government. 

In the mid 1800s in France, a group of people known as the Impressionists, who painted quick "sketches" of settings and moments, capturing landscapes, streets and pubs.  Their style featured quick bright broken brush strokes.  Main artists included Eduardo Manet, Claude Monet, Edgar Degas and Berthe Morisot!  This was an important contribution to the development of art, because it was as if these paintings were not finished - how could sketches be finished pieces of work?  They had always been considered the beginning, the prelimilary exercise. 

Soon after, in the late 1800's, Post-Impressionism arrived.  This was not a group of artists as such, rather, it was a group of key artists in the same era that made fundamental developments.  Paul Ganguin went against the small brushstrokes, and instead went with large colour areas bound by heavy contour lines.  Vincent Van Gogh (everybody's favourite), like the Impressionists, used colour, but he put more emphasis on the brushstrokes to explain or express his famously insane emotional state.  Edvard Munch (who was also crazy) furthered Vincent's emotional explorations, by painting in a style where truth was sacrificed for expression.  His extremely difficult childhood impacted on his artwork, which visualised alienation in society.  As you can see, these guys paved the way for Expressionism.

Going the other direction, some Post-Impressionists saw faults in the Impressionists movement, that the painting's objects were not solid and tangible.  Interestingly, this was not a movement towards making paintings as realistic as possible, back when they were commissioned by important people, governments and religions.  Paul Cezanne was the pioneer of this, producing art pieces with objects that didn't quite work: vases seen from the front having rims seen from above, objects not resting naturally on their surfaces.  These subtle inaccuracies showed the beginning of artists deconstructing and destabilising the natural form of things.  Cezanne showed that the depiction of the real world is not as important as the painting on canvas.  In his painting, "Mont Sainte-Victorie", he introduced the concept that the canvas was different from the real world: the separation of art from reality.  And guess who and what this introduced?  The one and only Pablo Picasso and Cubism.

Cheers,

- Daz

(Reference: MSN Encarta Encyclopedia article on Modern Art)

I was bored at work today so I decided to check out some websites.  Found a few contemporary art ones!

Now we already know about:

• The Peggy Guggenheim Collections
  • Peggy Guggenheim collections are in Venice, Berlin, Bilbao, New York and Las Vegas
• The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York
• The Artcyclopedia and Mark Harden's Artchive
  • Thanks Tamara for the links!

But I found the following:

• The Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia
  • This section specifically hosts a few modern and contemporary art pieces from essential artists like Picasso, Miro and Duchamp
• San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMA), San Francisco
• Tyler Green's Modern Art Notes 
  • Tyler Green is the art critic for Bloomberg News, and has been so since September 2004.  This site claims itself to be the most read visual arts blog, and has been publicised as one of the best art blogs too!  NIICE!
• A Yahoo! Directory of Modern and Contemporary Art Museums/Galleries
• the-artists.org
  • An essential research database for modern and contemporary arts.  It sorts information by artist and movement, where it provides brief information before showing links to other sites.  It's a bit disappointing because some of the links are bad.  But anyway...
• MSN Encarta Encyclopedia: Modern Art
• WebMuseum: Artist Index

I have to go to gym now, I'll read through those websites eventually...

Cheers,

- Daz