Lesson 2 Towards Symbolism

Symbolism was a modernist movement that emerged in the early 20th century. The term was used
initially in poetry and painting. The poet Charles Baudelaire, in his poem, “correspondences” writes:
“Man passes through this forest of symbols.”

Several artistic styles are associated with symbolism since it is more of a creative strategy than a
singular style. The movement was considered by the art historian Robert William as absolute art because
of artist’s refusal to be confined to the limits of the natural world. Instead of copying nature, the artist
must rely on his imagination and render the world subjectively. An artist may also respond to the world
by expressing emotions and ideas that arise rom his or her intuition. Among the styles subsumed under
the symbolist movement, this lesson only covers expressionism, New Objectivism, and surrealism.

Expressionism and New Objectivism

On of the artistic style that leaned towards symbolism is expressionism. Edvard munch made a painting
called the scream (Norweigan, Skirk) in 1893. Using oil, tempera, pastel, and crayon, munch depicted an
agonized expression of human-like figure. The figure appears distorted and the scream is set against a
backdrop od orange skies. Munch called this painting by its German title, translated as the scream of
nature. It became iconic of expressionism in Europe.

The style called expressionism emerged in Germany at the biggening of the 20th century use by in
obscure writer describing a work. Artist describe as expressionists are known for distorting shapes and
using unnatural colors to make the representation of the world entirely subjective. Figures appear
unnatural and thus evoke emotions and moods. Expressionists sought to express emotional states than
documents reality. Expressionism was considered cutting edge or avant-garde before the first world war.
The Weimar republic ruled during this time and the center of power was in Berlin.
The expressionists artist puts emphasis on individual perspective. This way of looking at the world has
been characterized as a reaction to the preference for empirical truth and objectively. There were several
significant artist groups under this movement whose works were characterized by distinct stylistic traits.
Among these groups include Die Brucke or The Bridge Reiter. The name was taken after a title of
painting by Wassily Kandinsky.

Max Beckman (1884-1950) was a German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor, and writer. In the
1920s, he was associated with the Expressionists although he referred to his works as New Objectivity
(Neue Sacblichkeit). the Weimar republic recognized Beckmann. He received several accolades and
launched exhibitions. His works were well received in museums in Berlin and other German cultural
centers. However, Adolf Hitler rose to power.

The Nazi government led by Hitler dismissed Beckman from the Frankfurt Art School. He was only one
of the artists and intellectuals humiliated by the Nazi. The government took more than 500 of hid works
from museums in Germany. Hitler and the Nazis sponsored an exhibition called “Entartete Kunst” or the
Degenerate Exhibition in Munch. Bekmann along with other artists sought refuge in other countries.
Bekmann went on exile in Amsterdam ang the rest went the united states.

Bekmann work, entitled Die Nacth (1918-19) show the terror of one night. Three men have
invaded a small house. The man of the household was hung and tortured by the intruders. His arm was
violently twisted. The woman of the house was bound to one of the post of the room after having been
violated. A child on the rights is about to be forcibly taken by the intruders. Note the distorted shapes and
unrealistic somber colors used in the scene. The painting lacks spatial depth. Instead, angular lines and
rectilinear shapes fill up the scene. Flashes of red interrupt and disrupt the unity of forms to elicit horror.

Other artists associated with the Neue Sacblihkeit include Otto Dix who critiqued Weimar society and the
brutalities of the wars in Europe through his paintings. Otto Dix was also include in the Degenerate
Exhibit and humiliated by the Fuhrer Hilter and the Nazi Germans.
Surrealism

The word “surrealist” was used by a playwright named Guillaume Apollinaire. He wrote a preface to his
1903 play performed in 1917. his scenic backdrops and set design were considered dream-like and
irrational. It is from the use of this terms that artists converged around a movement called Surrealism.
Note that after the first World War, artists who flourished in Paris were scattered elsewhere in Europe and
America.
In the field of the sciences and academic circles, Sigmund Freud’s theory of the unconscious gained
momentum. Andre Breton, a writter who worked in a neurological hospital, observed the experiments on
soldier suffering from post-traumatic stress from the war. He became one of the leading figures of
Surrealism and published an essay in 1928. Salvador Dali painted The Persistence of Memory, a barren
landscape with distorted shapes that appear like melting rocks. The painting alludes to the tentativeness of
memory and the elusiveness of rationality.
Giorgio de Chirico was one of the artists allied with the Surrealists. La Rouge or The Red Tower shows a
dream-like barren landscape with a massive tower arising out of nowhere. There are no human figures in
the scene. The quiet and barren vastness appear desolate and the tower appears mysterious.

Influences in the Philippine Context

In the Philippine context, the Crucifixion series of National Artist Ang Kiukok underscores pain and
suffering. In his paintings, the corpus of Christ and the cross are often distorted and the figures
unnaturally colored. Onib Olmedo’s paintings of protest against social inequities often show distorted
human figures. The stylistic characteristics of their works are similar to those of the Expressionists. These
artists were associated with the Neorealist movement in the Philippines. The movement does not prefer a
single style but is a broad term used for artists exploring new ways of figuration. Their works were
initially seen in a series of exhibitions hosted by the Philippine Art Gallery in the 1960s. Meanwhile,
some of the painters who have deployed surrealist imagery in their works include Charlie Co, Rishab
Tibon, Mariano Ching, and many more. It must be noted however that Filipino artists do not associate
themselves with European Expressionism and Surrealism. The approaches to figuration and manipulation
of artistic media introduced in Europe and America have been transmitted through the art education
system as well as books on art. Filipino artists borrow only some of these approaches and transform them
locally.
Making Meaning
Get to know the important terms that can help you better understand this lesson.

Empirical truth Exact conformity as learned by observation or experiment; truth as knowable

from what we can be scientifically proven.

Subjectivity Knowledge arising from personal feelings, tastes, opinions, imaginations,

thoughts, internal in the mind; from Latin subject meaning existing in the mind
or the thinking subject.

objectivity Knowledge arising from tangible, visible, stable in form, external to the mind;
from Latin object(us) which means to see.

unconscious The part of the mind that is only rarely accessible to awareness nut that has a
pronounced influenced on behavior.

Absolute art Art does not defer to the natural world arises from the artist’s imagination

intuition The artist perceives truth independent of reason and immediately apprehends the
natural world, immediate cognition of an object not inferred previously,
untaught, unschooled, from Latin intuit(us) which means to contemplate.

Lesson 3
Searching for pure Forms
In the early 20th century, several artists sought freedom from the necessity to depict realistic landscapes,
objects, and people as practiced in the academies of fine art and as preferred in exhibitions at the salons.
Artists then sought for pure forms. One of the two stylistics tendencies in this lesson include the reduction
of a figure into a cone, sphere, and cube. Another stylistics tendency is the use of geometric and
biomorphic shapes as a way to take away a viewer’s sense of familiarity with the object of perception.
Some artists do not even find it necessary to have a reference in reality. The lesson is about the search for
pure form, as seen in cubism painting, De Stijl, abstract sculpture.

Abstract Sculpture
Constantin Brancusi redefined sculpture. He was born in Romania but he moved to paris after 1904.
Brancusi tried to develop an approach that broke free from the realistic rendering of forms, as seen in the
Renaissance, Baroque, and Neoclassical periods in European art, rather than attempt to copy the likeness
of forms based on nature, Brancusi chose to render figures symbolically. Only a few elements of the
composition refer to the subject. In the kiss, the male and female figures are suggested by the differences
in figuration. The tall block of stone has been symmetrically divided in two inter-related figures. The
woman is depicted as having a rounded breast and long falling hair. As a whole, the image shows the
horizontality and flatness of stone. The eyes are indicated by slits, almost almond -like in shape, the
figures as a whole are geometric, almost as if both male and female are compressed in one stone. The
artists reduced details associated with masculinity and ferminity. Brancusi carved anthropomorphic or
human-like forms in stone as a departure from a well-known iconographical representation from Dante’s
Infero, in which Francesca and Paolo were cast in the gates of hell because of their adulterous
relationship. Sculptors like Auguste Rodin have also rendered his own version of The Kiss but the human
figures are more realistic in representation. Brancusi’s sculpture bears no reference at all to Dante’s
Inferno. Henry Moore was a British sculptor. He took his inspiration from non-Western art. His
sculptures typically show biomorphic forms with no references to allegory ,person, object, or historical
event. He did not render figures for symbolic purpose and delights in the material properties of the work
its pure formal elements. He chose to work directly on his materials so that the end-results is not per-
conceived. The creation therefore takes into account the spontaneous decisions of the artists. Moore also
believed that the characteristics of the material be it wood, stone, steel, and so on must be part of the
creation and that there should be no attempt to conceal the rough and unrefined surfaces.
Cubism
Elsewhere, Geogres Braque experimented with geometrical shapes and simultaneous perspective in his
paintings. He studied the effects of light to actual geometric shapes and rendered these through variations
in tint, tone, and shade. He began experimenting with cubism in 1908 and worked closely with Pablo
Picasso in 1909. they painted side in 1911 in the french Pyrenees. They also experimented with collage in
1912. sometimes textures of everyday objects would find hemselves into their works. The term “Cubism”
emerged in 1911 when critics referred to artists then exhibiting at the salon des Independants. Cubism
became a byword in Paris and Europe. Braque retreated to Normandy in 1916 and worked alone. He
made sure that a human surfaced and titled the painting as Blue Guitar. For Braque, am artists experiences
beauty in terms of pure formal elements.
Pablo Picasso continued to develop his own unique style. Patrons were always hungry for the new and the
cutting edge. Art galleries were always looking for innovation. Pablo Picasso was a Spaniard who moved
to Paris and entrenched himself in the avant-garde scene. Art historians have classified his works
according to the dominant color palette at certain periods in his artistic growth and personal turmoils. An
important work, Guernica, was made in 1973 to reference the bombing of Guernica, spain. The painting
was a critique against a brutal regime that massacred innocent people. However, Picasso chose to abstract
the idea for human brutality and dehumanization using figures reduced into geometric shapes and forms
that resemble animal and human forms. These figures appear fragmented in the picture plane. Instead of
creating a realistic representation of dead bodies, Picasso uses a Cubist approach to make the message
come across in a subtle manner.
De Stijl
Elsewhere, artists have sought of further abstract forms by using pure colors and shapes. Pieter Cornelis
or Piet Mondrain (1872-1944) is a Dutch painter from the Netherlands who studied at the academy of fine
art in Amsterdam. He encountered the Cubists in an exhibit in Amsterdam in 1911. he then moved to
Paris and engaged in experiments with Cubism as he interacted with artists from the Parisian avant-garde.
Mondrian is associated with a movement known as De Stijl. Mondrian refers to his personal approach to
art as neo-plasticism, or the search for new ways of manipulating forms and materials. Neoplasticism
reduces an artwork to the simplest and most abstract forms using straight line and primary colors, often
relying on their interrelationships. This allows Mondrian to derive a composition free from representation
characteristics and his words, “abstract the harmony of the universe”. His painting called Victory Boogie
Woogie (1942-43) is a later work now housed at the Museum of Modern Art. The work is composed of
rectilinear shapes. It is as though squares of pure vivid colors pop out the canvas. Form afar, they look
like brilliant lights on a busy district.
Influences in Philippine Comtext
In the Philippine context, the sculptures of national artists napoleon abueva and arturo luz are abstracted,
such tthat they revael the research for pure geometric and biomorphic forms. Spme of the Philippine
abstract painters include National Artists Hernando Ocampo, known for his biomorphic forms rendered
on painting, Lao Lianben became well-rocognized in the late 1980s, producing canvases that seem yo
allow the viewer to meditate on pure visual properties such as color and texture. Some of the works of
Prudencio Lamaroza bear a practical abstraction of human figures, terrains, and rivers. Constancio
Bernardo’s body of works are characterized by the use of pure geometric shapes. Art books aften discribe
National Artists Vicente Manansala as one who introduced transparent cubism, however, his human
figures are more idealized than deconstructed into pure shapes.
Biometric - having form of a living organism
Symbolic - to stand for something other than the objective reality
Neoplasticism - new ways of exploring the meduim of painting and sculpture
Iconographic - symbolic representation arrived st by convention