Abstraction
To 'abstract' means to draw away from, to separate, not to refer to something particular
anymore. A movement of conscious and methodical destruction of particular and
recognizable in appearance. Artistic elimination of rational visual association.
In a way it is synthetical purification and intensification of colours, forms and ideas that leads to creation of artwork that either resembles a direct print of a soul that refused to undergo
rational filters of mind and cognoscence, or a quasi-scientific, almost mathematical picture that looks so rational it's difficult to believe how
irrational it actually is.
Franz Kline, C & O, 1958, oil
on canvas, 1.96 x 2.79 m
(77 x 110 inches), National
Gallery of Art, Washington,
DC.
Barnett Newman, Adam, 1951-2, oil
on canvas, 242.9 x 202.9 cm, Tate
Gallery, London.
Barnett Newman, Not There-Here, 1962, oil and casein on canvas,
198 x 89.4 cm, Georges Pompidou Center, Paris.
Constructivism
Constructivism was first created in Russia in 1913 when the Russian sculptor Vladimir Tatlin, during
his journey to Paris, discovered the works of Braque and Picasso. When Tatlin was back in
Russia, he began producing sculptured out of assemblages, but he abandoned any reference
to precise subjects or themes. Those works marked the appearance of Constructivism.
Constructivism art refers to the optimistic, non-representational relief construction, sculpture, kinetics and painting. The artists did not believe in abstract ideas, rather they tried to link art with
concrete and tangible ideas. Early modern movements around WWI were idealistic, seeking a new order in art and architecture that dealt with social and economic problems. They wanted to renew the idea that the apex of artwork does
not revolve around "fine art", but rather emphasized that the most priceless artwork can often be discovered in the nuances of
"practical art" and through portraying man and mechanization into one aesthetic program.
Vladimir Tatlin
Constructivist art is committed to complete
abstraction with a devotion to modernity, where themes are often
geometric, experimental and rarely emotional.
Objective forms carrying universal meaning were far
more suitable to the movement than subjective or
individualistic forms. Constructivist themes are also quite minimal, where
the artwork is broken down to its most basic elements.
Tatlin’s Tower or The Monument to the Third International was a grand monumental building envisioned by the Russian artist and architect
Vladimir Tatlin, but never built. It was planned to be erected in Petrograd (now St. Petersburg) after
the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, as the headquarters and monument of the Comintern
(the third international).
Suprematism
Suprematism considered the first systematic school of purely abstract pictorial composition in the modern movement, based on geometric
figures and was the expression "of the supremacy of pure sensation in creative art". It
is Russian art movement founded (1913) by Kazimir Malevich in Moscow, parallel to
constructivism.
Kazimir Malevich
Suprematism sought "to liberate art from the ballast of the representational world." The work of the painter no longer involved representing and
creating chromatic harmonies or formal compositions, but rather attaining the limits of painting. It consisted of geometrical shapes
flatly painted on the pure canvas surface. The pictorial space had to be emptied of all symbolic content and all content signifying form. It had to be decongested and cleared, so as to show a
new reality where thought was of prime importance.
Black Circle [1913]
1923-29; Oil on
canvas, 105.5 x
105.5 cm (41 1/2 x 41 1/2 in);
State Russian Museum,
St. Petersburg
Black Square [1913]
1923-29; Oil on
canvas, 106.2 x
106.5 cm (41 3/4 x 41 7/8 in);
State Russian Museum,
St. Petersburg
Black Square and Red Square
1915; Oil on canvas, 71.4 x 44.4 cm (28 x 17 1/2 in); The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Suprematist Painting:
Aeroplane Flying
1915; Oil on canvas, 57.3 x 48.3 cm (22 5/8
x 19 in); The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Suprematism: Self-Portrait in
Two Dimensions 1915; Oil on
canvas, 80 x 62 cm (31 1/2 x 24 3/8 in); Stedelijk
Museum, Amsterdam
De Stijl (The Style)
The De Stijl (literally, "the style") art movement was founded by the painter and architect Theo
van Doesburg in Leiden in 1917. It encompassed a new type of style in modern art and architecture.
This movement used the artistic talent of the artists by designing homes, buildings, and
furniture.
Art was seen as a collective approach, with a language that went beyond cultural, geographical and political divisions. The depersonalization of
the artwork was carried through into the execution which was anonymous and
impersonal. The artist's personality took a back seat to a conscious and calculated
working process.
Theo van Doesburg
Theo van Doesburg (born Christian Emil
Kuepper [or Küpper]) (Dutch, 1883-1931),
Composition X, 1918, oil on canvas, 64 x 43 cm,
Georges Pompidou Center, Paris.
Theo van Doesburg, Counter-
Composition VI, 1925, oil on canvas, 50.0 x 50.0 cm, Tate
Gallery, London.
Piet Mondrian, Composition C,
1920, oil on canvas, 23 3/4 x 24 inches (60.3 x 61 cm), Museum
of Modern Art, NY.
Piet Mondrian, Color Planes in Oval, 1913-14, oil on canvas, 42
3/8 x 31 inches (107.6 x 78.8 cm), Museum of
Modern Art, NY.
Art Deco
Art Deco represented the rapid modernization of the world. While the style was already
widespread and was in fashion in the United States and in Europe, the term Art Deco was not
known. Modernistic or the "1925 Style" was used. The name Art Deco was derived from the
1925 "Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs Industriels et Modernes", held in
Paris.
Art Deco was primarily an elegant design style dominant in decorative art, fashion, jewelry,
textiles, furniture design, interior decoration, and architecture. It began as the Modernist
follow-up style on Art Nouveau but more simplified and closer to mass production.
Tamara de Lempicka
Tamara de Lempicka, Calla Lilies, 1941, oil, private collection, CA.
Tamara de Lempicka (born in Poland, from the
age of 20, active in Paris and America, 1898-1980), Self-
Portrait in the Green Bugatti,
1925, oil on wood panel, private
collection.
William van AllenWilliam Van Alen
(American, 1882-1954), Chrysler Building, 1930,
New York City. An archetypal American Art
Deco skyscraper, the exterior of the building reflects the Chrysler
automobile. The building was faced with Nirosta
stainless steel, because of its low-maintenance,
and the beauty of its color.
In the lobby of the Chrysler Building are
more Art Deco designs. The outer doors for each elevator are
decorated with stylized papyrus motif decor of exotic "Metyl-Wood" veneers produced by the Tyler Company,
1928-1930.
Bauhaus
The Bauhaus is one of the first colleges of design. It came into being from the merger of the
Weimar Academy of Arts and the Weimar School of Arts and Crafts. It was founded by
Walter Gropius in 1919 and was closed in 1933 by the Nazis.
The Bauhaus holds a place of its own in the culture and visual art history of 20th century. This outstanding school affirmed innovative training
methods and also created a place of production and a focus of international
debate. It brought together a number of the most outstanding contemporary architects and artists. The Bauhaus stood almost alone in attempt to
achieve reconciliation between the aesthetics of design and the more commercial demands
of industrial mass production.
Bauhaus - A very influential German school of art and design. Underlying the Bauhaus
aesthetic was a fervent utopianism, based upon ideals of simplified forms and unadorned
functionalism, and a belief that the machine economy could deliver elegantly designed items for the masses, using techniques and materials employed especially in industrial
fabrication and manufacture — steel, concrete, chrome, glass, etc. All students took a
preliminary course before moving on to specialist workshops, including carpentry, weaving, pottery,
stagecraft, graphic arts, and graphic design.
Wassily Kandinsky, Swinging, 1925, oil
on board, 70.5 x 50.2 cm, Tate Gallery,
London. Kandinsky's book Point and Line to Plane, published
in 1926, explains the meanings he
ascribed to the geometric imagery
he put into such paintings as Swinging.
Wassily Kandinsky (Russian, 1866-1944), In the Gray, 1919, oil on canvas, 129 x 176 cm,
Georges Pompidou Center, Paris.
Paul Klee, Comedy, 1921, watercolor and oil on paper, 30.5 x 45.4 cm, Tate Gallery, London.
Paul Klee, A Young Lady's Adventure, 1922, watercolor on
paper, 43.8 x 32.1 cm, Tate Gallery, London.
Dadaism
Dadaism or Dada is a post-World War I cultural movement in visual art as well as literature (mainly poetry), theatre and graphic design.
The movement was, among other things, a protest against the barbarism of the War and
what Dadaists believed was an oppressive intellectual rigidity in both art and everyday
society; its works were characterized by a deliberate irrationality and the rejection of the prevailing standards of art. It influenced later
movements including Surrealism.
According to its proponents, Dada was not art; it was anti-art. For everything that art stood for,
Dada was to represent the opposite. Where art was concerned with aesthetics, Dada ignored
them. If art is to have at least an implicit or latent message, Dada strives to have no meaning--
interpretation of Dada is dependent entirely on the viewer. If art is to appeal to sensibilities, Dada
offends. Perhaps it is then ironic that Dada is an influential movement in Modern art. Dada
became a commentary on art and the world, thus becoming art itself.
Francis Picabia (born "Francis Martinez de
Picabia") (French, 1879-1953; active in New York and Barcelona, 1913-
17), Dada Movement, 1919,
ink on paper, 20 1/8 x 14 1/4 inches
(51.1 x 36.2 cm), Museum of Modern
Art, NY.
Theo van Doesburg (born Christian Emil Kuepper [or
Küpper]) (Dutch, 1883-1931) with Kurt Schwitters (German, 1887-1948), Kleine Dada Soirée,
1922, lithograph, sheet: 11 7/8 x 11 7/8 inches (30.2 x 30.2 cm), Museum of Modern Art, NY.
Jean Arp, Collage Arranged According
to the Laws of Chance, 1916-17, torn-and-pasted
papers on gray paper, 19 1/8 x 13 5/8 inches
(48.6 x 34.6 cm), Museum of Modern
Art, NY.
Arp was a founding member of the first Dada group that coalesced in Zurich in 1916 around the
Cabaret Voltaire of Hugo Ball, the poet and performer. "Dada," wrote Arp, "wished to
destroy the hoaxes of reason and to discover an unreasoned order." While this work is far less
violent than some of the rhetoric of Dada, Arp's use of serendipitous composition here embodies what has been called the heart of Dada practice:
the gratuitous act.
Marcel Duchamp, Bicycle Wheel, 1913
/ 1964, metal, painted wood, 126.5
x 31.5 x 63.5 cm, Georges Pompidou
Center, Paris. Duchamp called this
"an assisted readymade."
Marcel Duchamp, L.H.O.O.Q., 1919,
rectified readymade, pencil on a
reproduction — a chromolithograph, 7 3/4 x 4 7/8 inches, private collection,
Paris.
As if the addition of mustache and beard weren't enough of a poke at this most famous of
paintings, the letters Duchamp penciled — L.H.O.O.Q. — at the bottom of his altered image are meaningless in themselves, but when read
aloud in French, make the sound of "Elle a chaud au cul," meaning, "She has a hot ass."
In 1965 Duchamp produced L.H.O.O.Q. Shaved, New York, 1965, playing card with colored ink on printed invitation, 8 1/4 x 5 3/8 inches (21 x 13.8
cm), Museum of Modern Art, NY.
Metaphysical Paintings
Metaphysical Painting (Pittura Metafisica) is an Italian art movement, born in 1917 with the work
of Carlo Carrà and Giorgio de Chirico in Ferrara. The word metaphysical, adopted by De
Chirico himself, is core to the poetics of the movement.
They depicted a dreamlike imagery, with figures and objects seemingly frozen in time.
Metaphysical Painting artists accept the representation of the visible world in a
traditional perspective space, but the unusual arrangement of human beings as dummy-like models, objects in strange, illogical contexts, the
unreal lights and colors, the unnatural static of still figures.
Giorgio de Chirico
Giorgio de Chirico, Ariadne, 1913, oil and graphite on canvas, 53 3/8 x 71 inches (135.6 x
180 cm), Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY.
Giorgio de Chirico, The Uncertainty of the Poet, 1913, oil on canvas, 106.0 x 94.0 cm, Tate
Gallery, London.
Giorgio de Chirico, The Painter's Family, 1926, oil on canvas, 146.4 x
114.9 cm, Tate Gallery, London. Several years after World War I, de
Chirico reimages mannequins as
members of a painter's family. The grouping of
mannequins is reminiscent of
traditional depictions of the Holy Family.
Surrealism
It was an artistic movement that brought together artists, thinkers and researchers in hunt of sense of expression of the unconscious. They were searching for the definition of new aesthetic,
new humankind and a new social order. Surrealists had their forerunners in Italian
Metaphysical Painters (Giorgio de Chirico) in early 1910's.
Salvador Dalí, Lobster Telephone, 1936, plastic, painted plaster and mixed media, 17.8 x 33.0 x
17.8 cm, Tate Gallery, London. This sculpture is a classic example of the Surrealist practice of juxtaposing otherwise unrelated everyday
items. The Surrealists valued the mysterious and provocative effect of such incongruities. Dalí
believed that his objects expressed the secret desires of the unconscious, and that lobsters and telephones reveal the prominence of the
sexuality.
René Magritte, The Reckless Sleeper, 1928, oil on canvas, 116.0 x 81.0 x 2.0 cm, Tate Gallery,
London.
Man Ray (American, 1890-1976),
Pisces, 1938, oil on canvas,
60.0 x 73.0 cm, Tate Gallery, London.
Social Realism
Social Realism is a term used to describe visual and other realistic art works which chronicle
the everyday conditions of the working classes and the poor, and are critical of the
social environment that causes these conditions. Social Realism should be seen as a democratic tradition of socially prompted artists of liberal or left-wing conviction. Social Realism fully presents an international phenomenon, rooting in
Realism of the 19th century.
Jose Clemente Orozco
Creative Man1936
University of Guadalajara
, Mexico
Jose Clemente OrozcoChrist Destorying his Cross
1943
Socialist Realism
Socialist Realism is Soviet artistic doctrine, realistic in its nature which has a purpose the
furtherance of the goals of socialism and communism. It was institutionalized by Joseph
Stalin in 1934, and later by allied Communist parties worldwide. New role of art in Soviet society defined that successful art depicts and glorifies
the proletariat's struggle toward socialist progress.
The art produced under socialist realism is realistic, optimistic, and heroic. Its purpose was education in the spirit of socialism. Its practice
is marked by strict adherence to party doctrine and to conventional techniques of realism.
Waiting, 1945. Post-Stalin (1975-1985), set in 1945 at the end of WWII. Painted by Ivan
Babenko. Oil on canvas, 123x167 cm.
Lenin With Villagers. Post-Stalin (1959). Painted by Evdokiya Usikova (Ukraine). Oil on canvas,
133cm x 197cm.
Steel Workers. Stalin-era (1950). Painted by V.Malagis. Oil on Canvas, 162 x 200cm.
Pop Art
Pop Art has started in England in late 50's and grown in United States in early 60's. Among the
Pop Art forerunners are two unique models - prototypes of the modern artists: the French artist
Marcel Duchamp and the German Kurt Schwitters.
Marcel Duchamp's work and his thoughts have altered the definition of the art and our way of
understanding it. He was famous with his "ready-mades," objects torn from their usual contexts
and exhibited as art.
Kurt Schwitters produced collages and assemblages that lay somewhere between painting and sculpture. The work of his art
turned into an environment that was no longer something only to be looked at.
Pop stresses frontal presentation and flatness of unmodulated and unmixed color bound by hard edges. They suggest the depersonalized
processes of mass production. Pop Art investigates in areas of popular taste and kitsch previously considered outside the limits of fine art. It was rejecting the attributes associated with
art as an expression of personality. Works were close enough to reality and at the same time
it was clear that they were no ready-mades but artificial re-creations of real things.
Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol, Mao, 1973, silkscreened acrylic on canvas, 448.3 x 346.1 cm, Nationalgalerie,
Berlin.
Edward Ruscha (American, 1937-), Large Trademark with Eight Spotlights, 1962, Whitney
Museum of American Art, New York, NY.
Roy Lichtenstein, Whaam!, 1963, acrylic and oil on canvas, 172.7 x 406.4 cm, Tate Gallery, London. You may wish to see a preparatory
drawing for this painting, 14.9 x 30.5 cm, Tate Gallery, London.
Roy Lichtenstein, Vicki, 1964, enamel on
steel, 42 x 42 inches,
Minneapolis Institute of
Arts.
Op Art (Optical Art)
Branching from the geometric abstraction movement, Op Art includes paintings concerned with surface kinetics. It was a movement which
exploits the fallibility of the eye through the use of optical illusions. The viewer gets the
impression of movement by flashing and vibration, or alternatively of swelling or warping.
Two techniques used to achieve this effect are perspective illusion and chromatic tension.
Artists used colors, lines and shapes repetitive and simple ways to create perceived
movement and to trick the viewer's eye. Many of first, the better known pieces were made in only
black and white.
Kinetic Art
Kinetic art explores how things look when they move and refers mostly to sculptured works,
made up of parts designed to be set in motion by an internal mechanism or an external
stimulus, such as light or air. The movement is not virtual or illusory, but a real movement that might be created by a motor, water, wind or
even a button pushed by the viewer. Over time, kinetic art developed in response to an
increasingly technological culture.
Naum Gabo 1890-1977
Kinetic Construction (Standing Wave) 1919-20, replica 1985
Metal, painted wood and electrical mechanism
object: 616 x 241 x 190 mmsculpture
In the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, when this work was made, materials were hard to
come by. 'It was the height of civil war, hunger and disorder in Russia. To find any part of
machinery … was next to impossible', said Gabo. Originally made to demonstrate the principles
of kinetics to his students, it reflects the artist's belief in a sculpture in which space and time
were active components. A strip of metal is made to oscillate so that a standing wave is set up. This
movement in real time creates the illusion of volumetric space.