Lesson Proper for Week 9

DIFFERENT ART MOVEMENTS (Part 2)

·           Symbolism. In contrast to impressionism, which emphasizes the realities of a painting's

generated surface, symbolism implies ideas through symbols and stresses the meaning behind
shapes, lines, forms, and paints.

Example:

In this painting, the black dress and wings of the Angel of Death contrast with the white background
of the snow-covered graveyard. She was caught an old gravedigger by surprise, as evident from his
tense hand grasping at his own heart. The green light she holds most likely represents his soul.
Grass grows surrounding the grave where the old man is standing, which will be his ultimate resting
place. It symbolizes the start of a new life, while another one is ending.

·           Art Nouveau. Art Nouveau sought to modernize the design and avoid diverse historical
styles that are previously common. Artists were influenced by organic and geometric shapes that
emerged in elegant designs that brought together flowing, natural forms resembling plants and
blooms. 

Example:
As one of Gaudi’s most impressive designs, Casa Battlo sparks anyone’s imagination. Gaudi, similar
to most Art Nouveau artists, was inspired by nature. In this structure, few straight lines can be
observed, and the building seems to “move” similar to sea waves. Mosaic patterns remind the
viewers of fish scales, and the structure of the building has a skeletal look. Antoni Gaudi redesigned
the house in 1904 for Josep Batllo I Casanovas.

·           Fauvism. The Fauves were a loosely associated community of French painters with common
interests. Many of these painters were the pupils of Gustave Moreau. He was a symbolist that
admired the older artists’ focus on self-thought, such as Henri Matisse, Albert Marquet, and Georges
Rouault.

Example:

Matisse’s "Le Bonheur de Vivre (The Joy of Life)" is characterized by unnatural colors and simplified
forms. It was inspired by Paul Cézanne’s “Bathers,” which also depicted nude figures in a landscape.
The sense of depth and interplay of light and shadow have been replaced with flat surfaces and bold
pairings of complementary colors.

·           Expressionism. Expressionism has emerged as an answer to the widespread concern over

the increasing division between humankind and the world and the lost feelings of legitimacy and
spirituality in different cities around the globe at the same time.

Example:
Self-Portrait with Chinese Lantern Plant  features a depth of emotion despite its simplicity. The artist
sits at an angle, looking at the viewer with a look of skepticism. His head and facial features are
enlarged, and the body is twisted unnaturally, thereby insinuating a subtle tension that permeates
the piece. The plant in the background also cranes to the side, thereby mimicking the body
curvature of the artist. The face is rendered with intense color depth and muscular detail, unlike the
surrounding clothing and background, thereby suggesting an acutely psychological aspect to the
piece. 

·           Cubism. Through a focus on the underlying nature of the shape, Paul Cezanne utilized
several points of view to fragment photos into forms. The objects are represented as complex
arrangements of masses and planes where background and foreground combined instead of
constructed shapes in an illusionist vacuum.

Example:

Les Demoiselles d’Avignon  by Pablo Picasso depicts five nude women in a brothel in Barcelona. The
piece is rendered in muted, paneled block colors. All figures stand to confront the viewer with
slightly disconcerting facial expressions. Their bodies are angular and disjointed, standing as if they
are posing for the viewer. Below them sits a pile of fruit posed for a still life. The piece is one of the
most famous examples of Cubism’s divergence from traditional aesthetics.

·           Futurism. The Futurists concentrated on change and progressivism and attempted to

eradicate and replace conventional artistic conceptions with a robust affirmation of the era of
technology.  Emphasis was on developing a creative and vibrant future vision and artists integrating
urban landscape representation and emerging technology, such as trains, cars, and aircraft, in their
depictions.
Example:

This 1913 sculpture depicts a bronze, human-like figure expressing fluid movement. The
aerodynamic figure is armless similar to the incomplete Walking Man sculpture or armless Nike of
Samothrace, and it has no face. Boccioni created many paintings, but he found the lack of
constraints when creating 3D sculptures to be freeing and effective for conveying his message. It is a
figure in motion rendered in geometric shapes. At present, the sculpture is shown on the Italian-
issued 20 cent euro coin.

·           Dadaism. Dada's aesthetics is characterized by the spiteful ridicule of materialism and

nationalism that strongly influenced artists in several urban areas, including Berlin, Hannover, Paris,
New York, and Cologne. The trend disappeared from the development of surrealism, but its
concepts became the foundation of different styles of contemporary and modern artworks.

Example:

Direct Quote:  “Construction for Noble Ladies is an example of Schwitters’ use of abstraction in collage
and sculpture. This assemblage piece also exemplifies the “found object” style of sculpture because it
comprises broken and disjointed materials, such as a funnel, a metal toy train, broken wheels, and other
scrap objects. It also includes a horizontal portrait of a noble lady, from which the piece gets its title. The
assembly of the work is rough, and the painting has a rugged finish to it, thereby further adding to its
diversion from preceding artistic expectations. However, the entire piece has an elegant asymmetry,
showing that even scrap objects can create a masterpiece.” (Davis, 2020)

·           Surrealism. Surrealists attempted to incorporate the unconscious to open creativity.

Surrealists assumed that the rational brain was disdainful for rationality and literary realism and
strongly influenced by psychoanalysis, and the force of creativity was suppressed by tabus. Inspired
by Karl Marx, they believed that the psyche would have the strength to expose and spur revolution
on contradictions in the daily world.

Example:

American painter Leonora Carrington, one of the many unpopular female surrealist artists, was a
bold artist who managed to establish herself as a key figure of surrealism despite her male peers'
discrimination. Many male surrealist artists were misogynistic and would solely acknowledge
women as mere objects of sexual desire. Thankfully, women such as Leonora Carrington depicted
more profound experiences of women, especially in male-dominated societies and environments. In
this self-portrait, she explored her femininity by creating mimesis between her and a hyena and
relating herself to the animal’s rebellious nature.

·           Constructivism. It drew inspiration from Cubism, surrealism, and futurism. However, in

essence, it was a completely new approach to create objects, which attempted to remove through
composition conventional artistic considerations and substitute them for “construction.”
Constructivism required rigorous scientific study of new materials and intended to develop
innovations for mass manufacturing that suited the aims of a new, communist state.
Example:

Monument to the Third International, also known as Tatlin's Tower (Vladimir Tatlin’s Monument to
the Third International , n.d.), “is the artist's most famous work. It was also the most important spur
to the formation of the constructivist movement. The Tower, which was never fully realized, was
intended to be a fully functional conference space and propaganda center for the Communist Third
International or Comintern. Its steel spiral frame was to stand at 1,300 feet” (Constructivism -
Important Art, n.d.), thereby making it the tallest structure in the world at the time. It was taller and
more functional—and therefore more beautiful by constructivist standards—than the Eiffel Tower.
Three glass units, a cube, cylinder, and a cone, which would have different spaces for meetings,
would be present, and these would rotate once per year, month, and day, respectively. (Vladimir
Tatlin’s Monument to the Third International , n.d.)

·           De Stijl. The De Stijl transformation in the Netherlands involves an abstract wall-down

aesthetic concentrating on important design content such as geometric shapes and primary colors.
The decreased quality of De Stijl art was seen as a universal visual style suitable to contemporary
days in a new, spiritualized global order as a reaction in part to the decorative exaggerations of Art
Deco.

Example:
This work employs the signature geometric shapes of the De Stijl aesthetic, but its layers shapes and
forms and the combination of horizontal, vertical, and diagonal lines without color. This artwork
reflects a different approach from that of the movement's leading artists, such as van Doesburg and
Mondrian. The work's suggestion of a human figure, which is accomplished by the arrangement of
geometric forms and placement of a cube at the top, possibly representing a head, is also unique in
De Stijl art. 

·           Pop Art. The subjects were not conventional “great art” but spiritual, mythological, and
historical stories; instead, modern artists depicted ordinary artifacts and characters to lift popular
culture to the level of fine art. Pop art may have become one of the most recognized forms of visual
art due to the introduction of advertising images. 

Example:

Roy Lichtenstein’s “Whaam!” is a large, two-canvas painting similar to a comic book strip of a rocket
explosion in the sky. Lichtenstein was interested in portraying highly charged situations in a
detached, calculated manner.

·           Minimalism. Modern art prefers sleek over “dramatic;” minimalist works are mostly made of
recycled resources and stressed abstract expressionism’s anonymity. Artists avoided the open-
ended metaphors and emotional substance instead of the materiality of their art.

Example:
Carl Andre’s 144 Magnesium Square in 1969 is an example of minimalist art. Factory-manufactured
or shop-bought materials: Carl Andre frequently used bricks or tiles as the medium for his sculpture.
Dan Flavin created his works from fluorescent bulbs purchased from a hardware store. Judd's
sculptures are built by skilled workers following the artist’s instructions

·           Conceptual Art. Conceptual art is a trend that rewards concepts about the visual or formal
components of pieces of art. Conceptualism has adopted many forms, including performance,
events, and ephemera instead of a firmly unified movement.

Example:

Ewa Partum’s Active Poetry in 1971 is an example of conceptual art. Ewa Partum used performance
as a means of creating her poetry. Her poetry works were created by taking individual letters of the
alphabet cut from paper and scattering them in city and countryside locations. Ewa Partum aimed to
explore its structures by deconstructing language.

·           Photorealism. Photorealists (also known as hyperrealists or superrealists) refer to artists

who rely heavily on photographs and often project them onto canvas to reproduce images correctly
and accurately.

Example:
Brooklyn-born photorealist Robert Cottingham is best known for his depiction of urban American
landscapes and typefaces, “focusing on building facades, neon signage, movie marquees, and
storefronts. His works are displayed in radically cropped compositions” (Photorealism and Its Impact
on Contemporary Art, 2019) that can be seen in some of his famous compositions, such
as Candy (1979) and Women-Girls (2000). Robert Cottingham’s Ritz Hotel  in 1982 was sold for $8,000
via Doyle New York.

·           Installation Art. Installation art is a term that is widely used to characterize artworks found
in 3D interior spaces because “install” denotes inside something else. His artwork is also site-specific;
it was built to provide an architectural, abstract, or social connection, whether temporal or
permanent, with space or environment.

Example:

Thomas Dambo’s Troll Hunt is a fun take on the concept of an art installation. It comprises
approximately six “sneaky” trolls situated around Illinois’ Morton Arboretum during summer 2018.