Here Comes Modern Art…Materialism

• Realism• Manet (Father of Impressionism)• Impressionism

– Pointillism• Post-Impressionism Modernism

• Fauvism• German Expressionism• DaDa• Abstract Art

- Cubism - Nonobjective Art

- Surrealism

Realism

Materialism

The Gleaners, 1857—Jean François Millet

Realism (1830ish to 1880ish):In general, realists render everyday characters, situations, dilemmas, and objects, all in a "true-to-life" manner. Realists tend to discard theatrical drama, lofty subjects and classical forms of art in favor of commonplace themes.

Bonjour, Monsieur Courbet, 1854—Gustave Courbet

Green Plums, 1885—Joseph Decker

The Artist’s Studio, 1854-1855—Gustave Courbet

They Did not Expect Him, 1888—Ilya Repin

Ēdouard Manet—Father of Impressionism & controversy maker

• One of the first 19th-century artists to approach modern-life subjects, he was a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism.

• His early masterworks, The Luncheon on the Grass (Le déjeuner sur l'herbe) and Olympia, engendered great controversy and served as rallying points for the young painters who would create Impressionism. Today, these are considered watershed paintings that mark the genesis of modern art.

The Luncheon on the Grass (Le déjeuner sur l'herbe), 1863—ManetIt was not unusual to see nudes in paintings; however, nudes were always in reference to mythological characters or scenes long past. This woman is seated unapologetically naked next to clothed men in a modern (for the time), public setting.

Olympia, 1863—Ēdouard Manet

• The painting was controversial partly because the nude is wearing some small items of clothing such as an orchid in her hair, a bracelet, a ribbon around her neck, and mule slippers, all of which accentuated her nakedness, sexuality, and comfortable courtesan (prostitute) lifestyle. The orchid, upswept hair, black cat, and bouquet of flowers were all recognized symbols of sexuality at the time. This modern Venus' body is thin, counter to prevailing standards; the painting's lack of idealism rankled viewers. The painting's flatness, serves to make the nude more human and less voluptuous. A fully dressed black servant is featured, exploiting the then-current theory that black people were hyper-sexed.[1] That she is wearing the clothing of a servant to a courtesan here, furthers the sexual tension of the piece.

• Olympia's body as well as her gaze is unabashedly confrontational. She defiantly looks out as her servant offers flowers from one of her male suitors. Although her hand rests on her leg, hiding her pubic area, the reference to traditional female virtue is ironic; a notion of modesty is notoriously absent in this work.

A Bar at the Folies-Bergère, 1881-1882—Ēdouard Manet

Impressionism

Materialism

Impression, Sunrise, 1872—Claude Monet

Impressionism: 1870-1915Characteristics of Impressionist paintings include relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes; open composition; emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage of time); common, ordinary subject matter; the inclusion of movement as a crucial element of human perception and experience; and unusual visual angles.

• Radicals in their time, early Impressionists violated the rules of academic painting. They began by constructing their pictures from freely brushed colors that took precedence over lines and contours. They also painted realistic scenes of modern life, and often painted outdoors. The Impressionists found that they could capture the momentary and transient effects of sunlight by painting en plein air. They portrayed overall visual effects instead of details, and used short "broken" brush strokes of mixed and pure unmixed color—not blended smoothly or shaded, as was customary—in order to achieve the effect of intense color vibration.

Rouen Cathedral

Monet did numerous painting of the same cathedral at different times of day to show how light affected a subject and changed the “impression”.

Le Moulin de la Galette, 1876—Pierre-Auguste Renoir,

The Tub, 1886—Edgar Degas

The Floor Scrapers, 1875—Gustave Caillebotte

The Dance Class, 1873-1876—Edgar Degas

The Child’s Bath, 1893—Mary

Cassatt

Hoarfrost, 1873—Camille Pissarro

Autumn, Banks of the Seine near Bougival, 1873—Alfred Sisley

Water Lilies Series—Claude Monet

La Récolte des Foins, Eragny, 1887--Camille Pissarro

Pointillism is a technique of painting in which small, distinct dots of pure color are applied in patterns to form an image. Georges Seurat and Paul Signac developed the technique in 1886, branching from Impressionism

A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, 1884—Georges Seurat

Comblat-le-Chateau, 1886—Paul Signac

Post-Impressionism

Materialism

Post-Impressionists continued using vivid colors, thick application of paint, distinctive brush strokes, and real-life subject matter, but they were more inclined to emphasize geometric forms, to distort form for expressive effect, and to use unnatural or arbitrary color.

Starry Night, 1889—Vincent Van Gogh

Van Gogh greatly admired Gauguin, and desperately wanted to be treated as his equal. But Gauguin was arrogant and domineering, a fact that often frustrated Van Gogh. They quarreled fiercely about art; Van Gogh felt an increasing fear that Gauguin was going to desert him, as a situation he described as one of "excessive tension" reached crisis point. On 23 December 1888, frustrated and ill, Van Gogh confronted Gauguin with a razor blade, but in panic, left and fled to a local brothel. Deeply lonely at the time, he often visited the prostitutes at a brothel as his single emotional and sensuous point of contact with other people. While there, he cut off his left ear, though it is often claimed

that it was only the lower part of his left earlobe. He wrapped the severed ear in newspaper and handed it to a prostitute named Rachel, asking her to "keep this object carefully." He staggered home, where he was later found by Gauguin lying unconscious with his head covered in blood.

Day of the Gods, 1894—Paul Gauguin

Oeuvres de Paul Gauguin

Paul Gauguin

1893

Musée D’Orsay

Monte-Sainte Victoire, 1902-1904—Paul Cezanne

Landscape with viaduct: Montagne Sainte-Victoire - Paul Cezanne

Still Life with a Curtain, 1895—Paul Cezanne

Tahitian Women on the Beach, 1891—Paul Gauguin

Sunflowers #2, 1888—

Vincent Van Gogh

The Card Players, 1892—

Paul Cezanne

Gauguin’s Chair, 1888—Vincent Van Gogh

Fauvism

Modernism

Fauvism (1900-1910): the classification of work of early twentieth-century Modern artists whose art emphasized painterly qualities or wild brush strokes and strong color over the representational or realistic values retained by Impressionism. The paintings of the Fauves (the wild beasts) focused on color and a high degree of simplification and abstraction.

Madame Matisse

“The Green Stripe”, 1905—Henri Matisse

The Turning Road, L’Estaque, 1906—André Derain

André Derain, 1905—

Maurice de Vlaminck

The Red Room, 1908—Henri Matisse

Woman with a Hat,

1905—Henri

Matisse

Expressionism

Modernism

The Scream, 1893—Edvard Munch

Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas. Expressionist artists sought to express meaning or emotional experience rather than physical reality.

Portrait of a Man

(Self Portrait), 1919—

Erich Heckel

The Drinker (Self-Portrait),

1915—Ernst Ludwig

Kirchner

The Dance of Life, 1899-1900—Edvard Munch

Street, Berlin, 1913—Ernst

Ludwig Kirchner

Expressionism began in 1905 in Germany as a response to harshness of industrialization, but faded in Germany by the end of World War II, but was reinvented in America as Abstract Expressionism where it lasted until the late 1950’s.

Infant Mortality,

1925—Käthe Kollwitz

DADA

Modernism

Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. "Dada was born out of negative reaction to the horrors of World War I. This international movement was begun by a group of artists and poets associated with the Cabaret Voltaire. Dada rejected reason and logic, prizing nonsense, irrationality and intuition. The movement primarily involved visual arts and literature, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a rejection of the prevailing standards in art through anti-art cultural works. Its purpose was to ridicule the meaninglessness of the modern world. In addition to being anti-war, Dada was also anti-bourgeois and socialist in nature.

Bicycle Wheel, 1913

—Marcel DuChamp

Fountain, 1917—Marcel

Duchamp

Abstract Art which includes Cubism, Non

Objective Art, Surrealism and many others we don’t

have time to discuss.

Modernism

Cubism

Modernism

Cubism (1907-1918): In cubist artworks, objects are broken up, analyzed, and re-assembled in an abstracted form—instead of depicting objects from one viewpoint, the artist depicts the subject from a multitude of viewpoints to represent the subject in a greater context. Often the surfaces intersect at seemingly random angles, removing a coherent sense of depth. The background and object planes interpenetrate one another to create the shallow ambiguous space.

Les Demoiselles D’Avignon,

1907—Pablo

Picasso

Violin and Pitcher,

1909-1910—Georges

Braque

The Round Table, 1929—Georges Braque

La Femme au Cheval,

1911-1912—Jean

Metzinger

Guernica, 1937—Pablo PicassoPicasso’s later master work that relies heavily, but not

exclusively on his technique of Cubism

Non objective Art

Modernism

Nonobjective or Abstract art uses a visual language of form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world.

Deluge, 1913—Wassily

Kandinsky

Le Premiere Disque,

1912-1913—Robert

Delaunay

Supermatism, 1916—Kazimir

Malevich

Composition with Large Red Plane,

Yellow, Black, Gray, and

Blue, 1921—Piet

Mondrian

Composition VI, 1913—Wassily Kandinsky

Red Balloon, 1922—

Paul Klee

The Nightingale’s Song at Midnight and Morning Rain, 1940—Joan Miro

Surrealism

Modernism

Surrealism (1920-1950): a movement which developed especially from dada, characterized by the evocative juxtaposition of incongruous images in order to include unconscious and dream elements.

The Persistence of Memory, 1931—Salvador Dali

The Elephant Celebes, 1921—

Max Ernst

The Son of Man, 1964—

Rene Magritte

Street of the Trams, 1938-1939—Paul Delvaux

Rape, 1945—René Magritte

One Second Before

Awakening from a Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee

Around a Pomegranate,

1944—Salvador Dali