Expressionism art

The Scream (1893)

Artist: Edvard Munch

Throughout his artistic career, Munch focused on scenes of death, agony, and anxiety in distorted
and emotionally charged portraits, all themes and styles that would be adopted by the
Expressionists. Here, in Munch's most famous painting, he depicts the battle between the
individual and society. The setting of The Scream was suggested to the artist while walking
along a bridge overlooking Oslo; as Munch recalls, "the sky turned as red as blood. I stopped and
leaned against the fence...shivering with fear. Then I heard the enormous, infinite scream of
nature." Although Munch did not observe the scene as rendered in his painting, The Scream
evokes the jolting emotion of the encounter and exhibits a general anxiety toward the tangible
world. The representation of the artist's emotional response to a scene would form the basis of
the Expressionists' artistic interpretations. The theme of individual alienation, as represented in
this image would persist throughout the twentieth century, captivating Expressionist artists as a
central feature of modern life.
Tempera and crayon on cardboard - National Museum, Oslo
 Cubism art

Les Desmoiselles d'Avignon (1907)

Artist: Pablo Picasso

Picasso's painting was shocking even to his closest artist friends both for its content and for its
formal experimentation. The subject matter of nude women was not in itself unusual, but the fact
that Picasso painted the women as prostitutes in aggressively sexual postures was novel. Their
blatant sexuality was heightened by Picasso's influence from non-Western art that is most
evident in the faces of three of the women, which are rendered as mask-like, suggesting that their
sexuality is not just aggressive, but also primitive. The unusual formal elements of the painting
were also part of its shock value. Picasso abandoned the Renaissance illusion of three-
dimensionality, instead presenting a radically flattened picture plane that is broken up into
geometric shards. For instance, the body of the standing woman in the center is composed of
angles and sharp edges. Both the cloth wrapped around her lower body and her body itself are
given the same amount of attention as the negative space around them as if all are in the
foreground and all are equally important.
 Pop art

President Elect (1960-61)

Artist: James Rosenquist

Artwork description & Analysis: Like many Pop artists, Rosenquist was fascinated by the
popularization of political and cultural figures in mass media. In his painting President Elect, the
artist depicts John F. Kennedy's face amidst an amalgamation of consumer items, including a
yellow Chevrolet and a piece of cake. Rosenquist created a collage with the three elements cut
from their original mass media context, and then photo-realistically recreated them on a
monumental scale. As Rosenquist explains, "The face was from Kennedy's campaign poster. I
was very interested at that time in people who advertised themselves. Why did they put up an
advertisement of themselves? So that was his face. And his promise was half a Chevrolet and a
piece of stale cake." The large-scale work exemplifies Rosenquist's technique of combining
discrete images through techniques of blending, interlocking, and juxtaposition, as well as his
skill at including political and social commentary using popular imagery.

Oil on masonite - Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris

 Surrealism art

Harlequin's Carnival (1924)

Artist: Joan Miró

Artwork description & Analysis: Miró created elaborate, fantastical spaces in his paintings that
are an excellent example of Surrealism in their reliance on dream-like imagery and their use of
biomorphism. Biomorphic shapes are those that resemble organic beings but that are hard to
identify as any specific thing; the shapes seem to self-generate, morph, and dance on the canvas.
While there is the suggestion of a believable three-dimensional space in Harlequin's Carnival,
the playful shapes are arranged with an all-over quality that is common to many of Miró's works
during his Surrealist period, and that would eventually lead him to further abstraction. Miró was
especially known for his use of automatic writing techniques in the creation of his works,
particularly doodling or automatic drawing, which is how he began many of his canvases. He is
best known for his works such as this that depict chaotic yet lighthearted interior scenes, taking
his influence from Dutch seventeenth-century interiors such as those by Jan Steen.

Oil on canvas - Albright-Knox Art Gallery

 Optical art

Duo-2 (1967)

Artist: Victor Vas

Artwork description & Analysis: The contrasting warm and cool shades here create the
ambiguous illusion of three-dimensional structures. Are they concave, or convex? The illusion is
so effective that we are almost led to forget that it is a painted image, and made to think it is a
volumetric construction. Although black and white delivered perhaps the most memorable Op
images, color also intrigued many Op artists. The scientific study of color had been central to
teaching at the Bauhaus, and Vasarely certainly benefited from his education at what was often
called the "Budapest Bauhaus." Bauhaus teachers such as Joseph Albers encouraged students to
think not of the associations or symbolism of colors, which had so often been important in art,
but simply of the effects they had on the eye.

Gouache and acrylic on board - Private Collection