Other Art Movements

 Other art movements were Neo-impressionism, Symbolism, Art Nouveau, Fauvism,

Expressionism, Cubism, Futurism, abstract art or non-objective art, photo-realism
and installation art
Neo-impressionism
 is considered as a response to empirical realism of impressionism
 Neo-Impressionists applied scientific optical principles of light and color to create
strictly formalized compositions
 The eminent techniques were divisionism and pointillism (basically utilizes discrete
dots and dashes of pure color)
 Example: A Sunday Afternoon on La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat
Symbolism
 took its direction from the poets and literary theorists of the movement (but it also
represented a reaction against the objectivist aims of Realism and the increasingly
influential movement of Impressionism)
 Symbolist painters favored works based on fantasy and the imagination (turned to
the mystical and even the occult in an attempt to evoke subjective states of mind by
visual forms)
 Example: Gustave Moreau’s Jupiter and Semele (one of the most important
artworks in symbolism)
Art Nouveau
 use of a long, sinuous, organic line and was employed most often in architecture,
interior design, jewelry and glass design, posters, and illustration (It was a
deliberate attempt to create a new style, free of the imitative historicism that
dominated much of 19th century art and design)
 undulating, asymmetrical line, often taking the form of flower stalks and buds, vine
tendrils, insect wings, and other delicate and sinuous natural objects(line may be
elegant and graceful or infused with a powerfully rhythmic and whip-like force)
 in grahics art, the line subordinates all other pictorial elements—form, texture,
space, and color, to its own decorative effect)
 Example: Antoni Gaudi’s Casa Mila in Barcelona
Fauvism
 regarded as ‘Les Fauves’ (which meant wild beasts as they were painting with ‘pure,
highly contrasting colors’)
 Fauvists considered color of primary importance and they aimed at gay or startling
composition
 The paintings were have been done with great enthusiasm and intense passion
  Example: Henri Matisse’s Woman with Hat and Bonnard (made use of bold and
striking colors which were no longer confined within the planes but spilled over
freely)
Expressionism
 Originated in Germany
 use of violent colors to express violent emotional content
 expressionists painting were fear, loneliness, poverty, and suffering
 Example: Scream’ of Edward Munich (showed ‘isolation, pain, fear and emotional
pressure’)
Cubism
 presents ‘fragmentation and the multiple images’
 reduced three-dimensional objects into two-dimensional images
 Cubists ‘tried to show what they knew was there, not what they saw or felt’
 presented a new depiction of reality that may appear fragmented objects for
viewers
 Example: the Les Desmoiselles d’Avignon (Pablo Picasso is one of the prominent
cubists)
Futurist
 Futurist visual artists were inspired by the manifesto of Marinetti
 called for artists to have an emotional involvement in the dynamics of modern life
 (depict visually the perception of movement, speed, and change) Futurist painters
adopted the Cubist technique of using fragmented and intersecting plane surfaces
and outlines to show several simultaneous views of an object (sought to portray the
object’s movement, so their works typically include rhythmic spatial repetitions of
an object’s outlines during transit)
 Example: The City Rises which was made by Umberto Boccioni
Abstract art and non-objective art
 They are sometimes used interchangeably
 Reynoldson stated that, the fewer the similarities that the image has to its real-
world counterpart, then the higher its degree of abstraction ( means that any image
can be slightly abstracted like a photograph, or highly abstracted like Picasso’s
Guernica)
 artist pushes abstraction further and further, eliminating superfluous details to a
greater and greater degree, a point is reached wherein all resemblance to the
original referent disappears and we are left with a shape that seems to resemble
nothing (not a person, not a place, not an animal and not a thing)
 the word "abstract" no longer suffices and a different word must be used: "non-
objective"
a. Dadaism
 laws of beauty and social organization
 it was based on deliberate irrationality, anarchy, and cynicism.
 Example: Kurt Schwitters’ Merz Barn manifested negation of the
laws of beauty.
b. Surrealism
 linked symbols between the conscious and unconscious mind
 explored the subconscious (to ‘search hidden motives’ and it tended
to ‘analyze the suppressed desires, irrational acts, and dreams’)
 defined as beneath the real
 Example: Hieronymus Bosch’s ‘The Damned Hell in Garden of
Delights’
c. Constructivism
 borrowed ideas and concepts from cubism, suprematism and futurism
( but it has abolished the traditional artistic concern with composition
and replaced it with construction)
 Created objects were not to express beauty or to present the artist’s
outlook or to represent the world, ‘but to carry out a fundamental
analysis of the materials and forms of art
 Example: Valdimir Tatlin who created the Monument to Third
International.
d. De Stijl
 started in the Netherlands and it espoused a visual language ( which
precisely rendered geometric shapes like straight lines, squares, and
rectangles, and the use of primary colors)
 artists sought laws of equilibrium and harmony applicable to art and
life as a response to the horrors of war
 Example: Piet Mondrian is a prominent de stijl artist who made the
Composition A.
e. Abstract expressionism
 filled the canvasses with fields of color and abstract forms
 abstract expressionists attacked their canvasses with vigorous
gestural expressionism
 They underscore ‘free, spontaneous, and personal expression (they
exercise considerable freedom of technique and execution to attain
this goal, with a particular emphasis laid on the exploitation of the
variables’ physical character of paint to evoke expressive qualities’)
 Example: Jackson Pollock’s Number 1
f. Optical art
 Popularly known as “op art”
  relied on creating an illusion to inform the experience of the artwork
using color, pattern, and other perspective tricks that artists had on
their sleeves
 deals with optical illusion (achieved through the systematic and
precise manipulation of shapes and colors)
 wherein, the effects are based on perspective illusion or on chromatic
tension and surface tension
 Example: Bridget Riley’s Blaze
g. Pop art
 became far from traditional “high art” (themes of morality, mythology,
and classic history)
 celebrated commonplace objects and people of everyday life, in this
way seeking to elevate popular culture to the level of fine art
 popular (designed for a mass audience), transient (short-term
solution), expendable (easily forgotten), low cost, mass produced,
witty, sexy, gimmicky, glamorous, big business
 Example: Campbell’s Soup Cans by Andy Warhol
h. Minimalism
 seen as an extreme type of abstraction that favored geometric shapes,
color fields
 the use of objects and materials that had an “industrial” sense”
 created works that resembled factory-built commodities
 upended traditional definitions of art whose meaning was tied to a
narrative or to the artist
 Example: Tony Smith’s Die
i. Conceptual art
 makes use of an ‘environmental object’ or an ‘environmental
composition’
 objects could be styrofoam pieces shaped and painted to resemble
such objects as loaves of bread and arranged in interesting patterns
on the floor or wall of a gallery
 influenced by minimalism (reduced the material presence of the work
to an absolute minimum – a tendency that some have referred to as
the “dematerialization” of art)
 Examples: Joseph Kosuth’s One and Three Chairs
Photorealism
 also known as hyperrealism or superrealism
 complicates the notion of realism by successfully mixing together that which is real
with that which is unreal.
  the artist often based their work upon photographs rather than direct
observation(therefore, their canvases remain distanced from reality factually and
metaphorically)
 Photorealist drawing and paintings “are so immaculate in their precision these start
to look like photos without a direct reference to the artist who created it
Example: McDonalds Pickup by Ralph Goings.
Installation art
 form of conceptual art
 involves the configuration of objects in a space
 allows the viewer to enter and move around the configured space and/or interact
with some of its elements
 may engage several of the viewer’s senses including touch, sound and smell, as well
as vision
 Example: Etant donnes by Marcel Duchamp
Perfomance art
 it is presented live
 “performed” by artists who became “discontented with the conventional forms of
art” ( they “have often turned to performance as a means to rejuvenate their work)
 It is particularly focused on the body which is why it is often referred to as body art
 Example: Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece was performed in 1964 which invited audience to
participate in an “unveiling of the female body”