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Jugendstyle/Art
Nouveau 1890-1910 |
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Tiffany
Lamp
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Art
Nouveau, Jugendstyle or Modern Style was an International style
within painting, architecture, interiors, posters, fashion, typography,
handicraft, and applied art which flourished in the late 19th
Century and early 20th Century.
The name "Art Nouveau" derived from the "Maison
de l'Art Nouveau", an interior design gallery which opened
in Paris in 1896. In Italy the style was named
"Liberty", in Germany and Austria "Jugend"
(Youth) after the magazine "Die Jugend" (München
1896), and in Denmark "Skønvirke" (beautiful work)
named after the magazine "Skønvirke" (1914).
The German name Jugend (Youth) stated, that the style was new
and young. The idiom of the style and its ideas were developed
in the late 19th in Brussels by the architect H. van de Velde.
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The style was against imitations and products of industrialism. The purpose of Jugendstyle
was to unite architecture and decorative art, to create high
quality, genuine effects of materials and forms, and decorations
based on writhing plants forms.
Sources of inspirations were the graphic artist Aubrey Beardsley,
in architecture Charles
Rennie Mackintosh and the Spanish architect
Antoni
Gaudi (Casa Milá in Barcelona)
and The English craftsman, painter and writer William Morris
known for his tapestries.
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Henri
Rousseau |
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Naivism
1900 |
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Fauvism
1905 |
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Paul Gauguin, "Riders on the Beach", 1902 |
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Fauvism, the first important
"ism" of the 20th century, a French style, essentially
expressionistic, influenced by the postimpressionistic/symbolistic
painters Van Gogh and
Paul Gauguin, the fauvist's style were
more primitive and less naturalistic, especially Gauguin's style
and his choice of colors had a strong influence.
In 1905 fauvist paintings upset the visitors to the annual Salon
d'Automne (exhibition of the works of young artists held every
fall in Paris since 1903). The word "fauvre"
means "wild beasts", and was invented by the art critic
Louis
Vauxelles, who found that this revolutionary style expressed a
wildness, however the artists themselves did not find the name suitable.
The fauvist paintings were cheerful, they used pure colors and
distort their simple primitive figures through elongation.
Most closely associated with Fauvism were e.g.:
Matisse,
Derain
and Vlaminck.
Fauvism had a important influence on some of the
expressionists. |
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Fauvists:
The French artists:
Henri
Matisse, Albert Marquet, Andre Derain, Maurice de
Vlaminck,
Georges Rouault, Louis Valtat, Jean Puy, Henri Manguin, Georges
Braque, Raoul Dufy, Othon
Friesz, Roger de la Fresnaye, Auguste Chabaud, Charles
Camoin.
The
Russian-French artist: Chaim Soutine.
The
Dutch artist: Kees van Dongen.
The Irish artist:
Francis Bacon. |
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Expressionism
1905-1925 |
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Emil Nolde, "Blumengarten (ohne Figur), 1908 |
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The Expressionism movement was
associated with Germany in particular, contemporary and parallel
to the French movement Fauvism. The traditional adherence to
realism and proportion were replaced by the artists emotional
connection to the subject, the inner state of the artists were
expressed in powerful brushwork, colors, contours
and angular shapes, the motifs were city life, landscapes,
portraits and religious painting (e.g. Emil Nolde).
The expressionists were influenced by primitive and gothic art.
The German expressionists influenced e.g. Oscar Kokoschka and
Marc Chagall.
The expressionist art journal, "Der Sturm" (The Storm)
was
published in 1910.
After the Nazi takeover in 1933, the modernist art were branded
as degenerate art (Entartete Kunst), certain artists were
forbidden to work and their works in the museums had been
confiscated by the Nazis e.g. the work of the German painter Emil
Nolde, who
during the ban painted his "Ungemalte Bilder"
(Unpainted Pictures), a collection of watercolours (1938-45,
Stiftung Seebüll Ada und Emil Nolde, Nolde-Museum Seebüll,
Germany). |
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The most important German expressionists belonged to the art
movements:
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Die Brücke
(The Bridge) (1905-13): Ernst Ludwig Kirchner,
Erich
Heckel, Karl
Schmidt-Rottluff, Otto Mueller,
Oskar Kokoschka, Emil
Nolde, Max
Beckmann,
Fritz Bleyl and Max
Pechstein. The group was established
in Dresden in 1905 and followed by the group Dresdner Sezession.
Die Brücke wanted to show the connection (the bridge) between
different art styles. The artist felt that their work was
related to the work of Edvard
Munch. The name "Die Brücke" was
suggested by Karl
Schmidt-Rottluff and derived from a quotation in
"Also sprach Zarathustra" (Thus Spoke Zarathustra), a
book by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, 1883-85.
Der Blaue Reiter
(The Blue Rider) (1911-14), Gabriele
Münter, Wassily Kandinsky,
Franz Marc, August
Macke, Paul Klee
and Alexey Georgievich
Jawlensky. The name "Der
Blaue Reiter" derived from Kandinsky's fascination
with the color blue that symbolizes the spiritual, and
Marc's enthusiasm for horses. In
1903 Kandinsky titled a painting "Der
Blaue Reiter".
Their paintings had tendencies
towards abstraction. |
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Cubism
1907-1914 |
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Cubism was developed in
France about 1907 by Pablo Picasso and
Georges Braque
- in their
efforts to reach a visual art, without realistic illusions, they
broke down the natural forms of subjects into geometric shapes
and flats, created two-dimensional surface of the picture plane, and portrayed the
subjects from multiple perspectives.
Picasso's painting "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" (1905) ushered in a new reality in paintings, a simplification of painting,
showing five angular nude female figures placed in indefinable
surroundings.
Paul Cezanne paintings of bathers for
example "Large Bathers" (1898-1905) had influenced
the Cubists in their first stage of development just as African
art had mattered to them with its primitiveness and simplistic forms.
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The were three phases in the development of Cubism: |
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Facet Cubism, 1907-09, used sharp facet-like flats, the
motifs were often influenced by nature, and the paintings by
Cézanne.
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Analytical Cubism, 1910-12, the motifs were
disorganized in many small pieces of geometrical shapes. In this
phase the collage plays a considerably role.
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Synthetic Cubism, 1912-14, sought to create a whole - the
motifs consisted of for example individual larger figures
as well as well-known subjects and abstract elements, the colors were powerful, the
collage was central, and there were used several material such
as press cutting, wood and sand. The analytic works were
represented by Picasso, Braque, Juan
Gris and Fernand
Léger.
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"Les Demoiselles d'Avignon",
1907
Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Photo: Kirsten
Petersen |
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Futurism
1909-1918 |
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Futurism
was an
artistic movement in Italy that tried to express the
energy and values of the machine age - the futurists
expressed motion in their paintings by repetition of forms
e.g. wheeled traffic or walking people, and the most
famous painting is the "Dynamism of a Dog on a
Leash", 1912, by Giacomo Balla. The forms were simple
and influenced by Cubism. Futurism railed against
romanticism, moralism, sentimentalism and woman. The
futurist became important for the early Fascism in Italy,
some of the artists were active in the
"fascism-movement".
The Futurist journal "Lacerba" (1913-15)
was published by the poet and critics Giovanni Papini and
the painter Ardengo Soffici.
Futurist aeropittura: air painting or airplane
painting e.g. an airplane high above an Italian landscape.
Traditionally, the movement has been
divided into the "heroic" years, 1909-1916, and
the "Secondo
Futurismo", the generation of
futurism from 1917 on.
The futurist painters had influenced the contemporary
Russian art.
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Giacomo
Balla "Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash"
(Dinamismo di un cane
al guinzaglio), 1912,
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York. |
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Le Figaro published "The Founding and Manifesto of
Futurism" on February 20, 1909 by the poet and writer
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876-1944) (later Mussolini's minister
of cultural affairs):
- "We affirm that the world's magnificence has been
enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing car
whose hood is adorned with great pipes, like serpents of
explosive breath - a roaring car that seems to ride on grapeshot
is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace." (The
Winged Victory of Samothrace also known as "Nike of
Samothrace", the Greek goddess Nike).
- "We will glorify war - the world's only hygiene -
militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of
freedom-bringers, beautiful ideas worth dying for, and scorn for
woman".
The Technical Manifesto of Futurist Painting by Umberto
Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Luigi
Russolo, Giacomo Balla, Gino
Severini, 1910, said
e.g.:
- The construction of pictures has hitherto been foolishly
traditional. Painters have shown us the objects and the people
placed before us. We shall henceforward put the spectator in the
center of the picture.
- "...all forms of imitation must be despised, all forms of
originality glorified"
- "... the name of "madman" with which it
is attempted to gag all innovators should be looked upon as a
title of honor."
In the period 1909-31 21 Futurist manifestos were published -
manifestos about sculpture, painting, architecture, literature,
theatre, set design, film, women, noise and the futurist
kitchen. |
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Fantasy
1910 |
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Fantasy art is influenced by the artists own inner world
of dreams, the real surroundings does not play a big role,
fantasy and reality are often mixed together, there are
some similarities between Fantasy and Surrealism - to a
large extent Fantasy art depend on a state of mind more
than a special style. The painters have in common a belief
in fantasy - the inner eye is more important than the outside
world. A painting seen with the artists inner eye can seem
very private, which it not necessarily is - it has passed
through subconsciousness filters and appears in that way
the artist wish to show it. |
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Assemblage
1910 |
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Assemblage,
the French name of an artistic technique, which used the collage
in a three-dimensional way and created spatial constructions in
new forms out of the stuff of everyday life
such as pre-formed
manufactured or natural materials, fragments
or objects not originally intended as art. Assemblage was used early in the 20th Century of dadaist, cubists and
futurist for example Schwitters
and Picasso.
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Orphism/Simultanism
1912 |
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Suprematism
1913
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| Russian avant-garde. After the
revolution in 1917 the State took an aversion to the style. The
Latin word supremus means the supreme good, and Suprematism was
the absolute consequence of the cubist and abstract painting,
which meant a style based on unmistakable geometrical forms. The
Russian painter Kazimir
Malevich, the founder of the style,
formulated the manifest of Suprematism in 1915. |
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Dadaism
1916 |
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Dadaism,
a nihilistic movement in visual art, poetry,
theatre and graphic design, arose in 1916 in an
international circle of artist, who gathered at
the night-club Cabaret
Voltaire in Zurich in neutral Switzerland -
Zurich became a place of refuge during World War
I, artist in exile acted in the Cabaret e.g. Jean
Arp and the poet Tristan Tzara. Cabaret Voltaire
was founded and run by the German poet and
pacifist Hugo Ball and his partner Emmy Hemmings.
Hugo Ball gave name to the ism.
As early as 1914, independent of the Zurich
Dadaism, a similar movement arose in New York in
the circle of artists around the gallery
"291", run by the European artists Marcel
Duchamp and Francis Picabia, who already practiced
a nihilistic conception of art.
The Russia nihilism was replaced with socialism -
the ideas of nihilism continued in
anarchism.
The Dadaist wish to change stereotype conceptions
of art, e.g. with his ready-mades or
Objet Trouvé Duchamp produced anti-art -
nature objects or objects from everyday life were isolated and
shown as they were or in a surprising composition, e.g. the
exhibition of a toilet bowl provoked discussions on
art.
The Dadaist were a kind of anarchists, they attempt to destroy
old social and aesthetic ideas about art and shocked the bourgeoisie,
the Dadaist expressed themselves in performances of the
Cabaret and in the periodical "Dada" - they
advocates of nonsense, the grotesque, the meaningless,
abstract sound poetry and paintings created through chance.
According to the Anarchists political understanding (corresponding
to the nihilistic) the State should be condemned, all humans
were born free and equal. The Anarchists used every means to
destroy the State - the anarchist shot and killed the
president of the USA William McKinley, Umberto
I of Italy, the president of France Carnot and empress Elisabeth
of Austria.
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"cabaret
voltaire. Dada Zürich". Ein Eingriff von Rossetti +
Wyss, Zürich 2004 |
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The
Dadaism spread to France (André Breton),
Germany (G.
Grosz, Max
Ernst, K.
Schwitters). A German Dadaism
arose in 1918 when some of the movements founders
returned from Zurich. In visual art the style
manifest itself with greatest effect in political illustrations, photomontages
(G. Grosz) and collages (K.
Schwitters).
A branch of the German Dadaism was leading directly to
Surrealism (Max Ernst). The Paris Dadaist were influenced by
the central figures of New York Dadaism Duchamp and Picabia.
Dadaism became the base for Surrealism and got great influence
on the art of the 20th century. |
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De
Stijl/Neoplasticism 1917 |
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De
Stijl, aka Neoplasticism, was a Dutch art movement, founded in Leiden
in 1917 by Theo van Doesburg
and Piet Mondrian. Van Doesburg edited the periodical
entitled De Stijl (The Style).
Mondrian,
the leading figure, invented Neoplasticism, named after his publication "Le
néoplasticisme", 1920 - the style's manifesto. The Neoplasticists based their style on
Cubism.
The Neoplasticists were advocates of absolute abstraction consisting of straight lines
and the three primary colors (red, yellow and blue) and black and white.
De Stijl played a big role in the 1920s and was connected with other avant-garde
movements in Europe. In the 1920s Mondrian
and van Doesburg broke with each other, and van Doesburg
became the leading figure, he wrote
"Elementarism", 1926, a manifesto which declared a new phase of
De Stijl - the abstraction should be
more dynamic and diagonals were allowed. De Stijl became important for the architecture
of e.g. the architects J.J.P. Oud
and Gerrit
Rietveld. Moholy-Nagy brought the Neoplasticism to Bauhaus
in Weimar.
In 1931 De Stijl became a part of Abstraction-Création
(in 1945 Réalités Nouvelles), an international
group founded in Paris, consisting of more than
a hundred abstract painters and sculptors, whose ideal value was a strict nonfigurative
idiom.
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Neue
Sachlichkeit/New
Objectivity 1920 |
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Functionalism
1920-1940 |
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Functionalism in architecture was
widely influential - identical with the International Style.
Stylistically Functionalism had common feature to the
contemporary Constructivism
and De
Stijl.
The German Darmstadt artists’ colony was founded in 1899 by the
Grand Duke of Hesse Ernst Ludwig,
and was, until World War I, the centre of the Art
Nouveau style. The first exhibition of the
Artists' Colony took place in 1901 at the Mathildenhöhe in
Darmstadt, Germany. The members of the colony had built nine
houses, they were interiorly decorated and fully furnished in
the same style intended to serve as an example how to build and
live in a modern way - e.g. the houses of Peter
Behrens and Joseph Maria Olbrich were characterized by a simple
style ushering in a new epoch, the Functionalism.
In 1919 Walter
Gropius founded The Bauhus School in Weimar, in which a basis for Functionalism
was made. At the same time Functionalism had been put into practice
in France by the architect Le
Corbusier.
The Bauhaus
in
Germany, 1919-33, the most
important school of architecture, art and design of the 20th century. Cooperation between architects, painters,
sculptors, designers and craftsmen - interplay between art and technology
should create a harmonic whole, and all sorts of applied art and artistic products should be summarized into a common manifesto.
Design could improve society, not just be a reflection of society. Bauhaus style was
characterized by economy of method, a severe geometry of form and design
that took into account the nature of the materials employed. The Bauhaus
had a great influence on industrial designing and the Bauhaus-ideas about artistic design
of everyday objects were spread all over Europe and to the USA.
The
Bauhaus
was founded in Weimar in 1919 by Gropius with
a faculty that included Paul
Klee, Lyonel Feininger, Wassily
Kandinsky, László
Moholy-Nagy and Marcel Breuer.
In 1925 the school was relocated in Dessau where Gropius designed special buildings to house the various departments.
Gropius resigned in 1928, and the leadership was continued by the
architect Hannes Meyer,
who in turn was replaced in 1930 by Ludwig Mies
van der Rohe.
The school's
concepts aroused strong opposition among e.g. right-wing politicians, and
in the summer of 1932 opposition to
the school had increased to such an extent that the city of Dessau
withdrew its support. The school was then moved to Berlin, where the
faculty endeavored to carry on their ideas. In 1933 the Nazi government closed the
Bauhaus school in Berlin.
In 1937 Bauhaus was re-established as
New Bauhaus in
Chicago (now Chicago
Institute of Design) the founder and head of the Chicago-school was the Hungarian-American
painter, photograph and art critic
László
Moholy-Nagy.
Functionalism was the principle that the architecture should be
an aesthetically functional humane building, the architects had
to throw away the ornamentation and found beauty in the
practical constructions and machinery.
The idea of the humane aesthetic building very often remained an
idea more than reality, e.g. Le Corbusier's buildings were both
beautiful and ugly - the beauty could be seen in his
single-family houses, the ugliness in some apartment houses or
colossus of concrete. In Charles Jencks's "Le Corbusier and
the Tragic View of Architecture", 1973, examples were given
of beautiful ideas of habitation and well-being which converted
into reality did not show the original ideas lying behind.
Within furniture design chairs and tables were low and made of
chromium-plated steel tubes, leather upholsteries and glass
table tops. Articles for everyday use were characterized by industrial
designing - practical, handy and simple.
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Johannes
Itten (1888-1967), Swiss Painter. At the
Bauhaus he designed an innovative introductory
course, he let students explore form, colour,
rhythm and contrast. In the mid 1900s he
developed the colour circle, that changed the
way colour was seen - the subjective and
psychological colour experience interested
him, he named his chromatology the
"aesthetic chromatology" and his
theories was built on the laws of the physics. |
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The solar
spectrum: If sunlight passes through a prism,
the colours red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo
and violet will appear.
A rainbow is an example of a solar spectrum,
sunlight is being refracted by many water droplets
falling down to earth. In a rainbow, there are also
the seven colours.
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The photos showing the catalogues
are used with permission of
Akademisk
Antikvariat v/lektor, cand.mag. Klavs Verholt.
The front page of
"Grosse Deutsche Kunstausstellung"
shows the Nazi's symbols, the Roman
eagle, a symbol of strength, the swastika,
the torch and the warrior.
The front page of
"Ausstellungsfürer, Entartete
Kunst" shows an abstract
sculpture influenced by African Art.
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Entartete Kunst/Degenerate
Art was the Nazi's name for work of art, which did not fit into their art appreciation
(or the lack of same).
In 1933 after the NSDAP (Nationalsozialistische
Deutsche Arbeiterpartei) had got relative majority in the two elections in
1932, president Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler
as chancellor in 1933. After the German
parliament building, the Reichstag, was set
on fire in 1933, the German Communist Party
were forbidden and Hitlers party got the majority
in the parliament. When Hindenburg died in
1934 Hitler comitted coup d'état and
installed himself as head of state and
Führer, and German became a National Socialist
totalitarian state "the Third Reich",
led by Hitler from 1933 to 1945. Hitlers
Nazi Germany replaced the Weimar Republic,
1919-33, which had replaced the German empire,
the Weimar Republic was the first parliamentary
democracy in German history, Weimar was the capital
(the city of Goethe and Schiller).
More than 40 million people lost their life |
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in the Nazi War, 6 million Jews was killed
during Holocaust - the systematic murder of
millions of European Jews and others deemed
undesirable by Nazi Germany. The Nazis got influence everywhere - they
suppressed artistic freedom - The Nazi
Germany regulated and controlled the art
produced between 1933 and 1945, within visual art
particularly Abstract Art, Cubism,
Expressionism and Surrealism were categorized
as degenerate, several artist were forbidden
to paint e.g. the German Expressionist Emil
Nolde, who painted his "Ungemalte
Bilder" (unpainted paintings) - watercolours, which he hide from the Nazi
censors under the carpets in his home.
In 1937 the Nazi authorities confiscated
more than 15000 works of art from German
museums, many of the paintings were shown in
Munich at the official Nazi exhibition of
"Entartete Kunst", the show
was produced to encourage the audience to
mock the works - at the same time "Grosse
Deutsche Kunstausstellung" (Great
German Art Exhibition) was held, the
exhibition showed traditional paintings and
sculptures (e.g. genre paintings, still-lifes,
landscapes, mythological paintings,
paintings of workers and industry) - said to
be the best of German art and glorifying
Nazism and the German virtues "Kinder,
Küche, Kirche" (children, kitchen,
church or the family, the home and the
church).
In 1939 some paintings exhibited at "Entartete
Kunst" were sold at auction in Switzerland,
e.g. the "The Sick Child", 1907
(Tate Gallery, London) by the Norwegian
Symbolist painter Edvard Munch.
The Nazi Art, influenced by the Romantic
Realism, glorified the the Third Reich and
race - e.g. oversized muscular men, plump
women with red cheeks, proud strong heroic warriors,
the clenched fist and of course the Führer
himself.
The Nazi art was a mirror image of the
Socialist Realism in Soviet Russia.
Within music jazz (the "negro
music") was forbidden under the Nazis.
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Art
Déco 1920-1940 |
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European
and American movement of the 1920s and 30s (The
Chrysler Building). It attempted to
resist mass production by returning to the values and techniques
of pre-industrial craftsmanship. It also used expensive and rare
materials like ebony and ivory to create elegant and
conspicuously individual forms. The style was influenced by Jugendstyle
and Functionalism.
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Constructivism
1920 |
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Surrealism
1924 |
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Surrealism - a movement of visual art and
literature, flourishing in primarily Europe between World War I and World
War II. The style arose in Paris in
1921 influenced by Symbolism, Dadaism, the Italian Scuola Metafisica and the
theories of the pioneer of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud.
The French writer André Breton (1896-1966)
published the literary manifesto "Manifeste
du surréalisme" in 1924, the manifesto became important for the visual art.
André Breton believed in the political,
artistic, and spiritual powers of Surrealism. However surrealism and its
relation to Marxism became a drag on both the surrealists and the Communists.
The word surrealism translated literally from French, means
"over-reality. The goal for surrealism was to reach the really real,
the over-real - an absolute reality.
Influenced by Freud, the surrealist search their motifs in the dream world
(creating dream-like scenes) and the
subconscious.
Surrealism could be divided into two main directions: Veristic Surrealism
and Automatism (Absolute Surrealism, Organic Surrealism).
Veristic Surrealism: the objects were reproduced almost photographic and
placed in a connection which was over-real, dream-like, imaginative (e.g. Max
Ernst, Salvador
Dali, Paul
Delvaux, Giorgio
de Chirico, René
Magritte, Vilhelm Bjerke Petersen, Wilhelm
Freddie and Alfred Pellan).
Automatism: thoughts dictation, free
association, the
automatic way in which the images of the subconscious reach the conscience,
a form of abstraction, spontaneous without recognizable objects (e.g. Joan
Miro and André
Masson). The automatists believed that lack of form was a way to
rebel against them - and the Academic painters/the academic training.
Surrealism was the most
influential art movement of the 20th century, the only one to spread outward
from galleries and museums to movies. The movement got great influence on
the American Abstract Expressionism of the 1950s.
Magic Realism/Magical Realism was an American style of art during the 1920s with Surrealist
overtones - an unusual realism (Ivan Albright, Paul Cadmus,
George Tooker).
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Concrete Art 1930 |
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Social Realism
1930 |
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Abstract
Art/Abstract
Expressionism 1940 |
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Abstraction,
art style or painterly tendencies which had begun in the early
1900s. Abstract art (paintings and sculptures) quit the
illusionistic representation of the surroundings in some way -
the artists did no try to reproduce things as they appeared in
the real world (naturalistic), the artist's ideas and feelings
were expressed in shapes and colours. Abstract art partially
were nonfigurative art - without recognizable objects. Abstract
works stylize or schematize.
Abstract Expressionism an American post-World War II art
movement developed in the late 1940s in New York - "Action
painting" and "Colour Field painting" were
characterized by a more or less nonfigurative style.
It was the first American art movement to achieve worldwide
influence. In
1946 The term was applied by the art critic Robert
Coates. Technically, its most important predecessor was often
said to be surrealism (Max
Ernst), with its emphasis on spontaneous, automatic
or subconscious creation. The action painter Jackson Pollock's
(Jack the Dripper) dripping paint onto a canvas laid on the
floor. The movement got its name because it was seen as
combining the emotional intensity and self-expression of the German
Expressionists with the anti-figurative aesthetic of the European
abstract schools such as Futurism, the Bauhaus and Synthetic
Cubism. Additionally, it has got an image of being rebellious
and anarchic.
In practice, the term was applied to any
number of artists working in New York who had quite different
styles, and even applied to work which was not especially
abstract nor expressionist.
Artists:
Jackson Pollock, Mark
Rothko, Barnett Newman, Willem de Kooning, Lee
Krasner and Helen Frankenthaler.
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Action
Painting/Tachism 1950 |
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Action
Painting, a style of abstract painting, was an American painting
technique within Abstract Expressionism with effect on art
styles such as Art Informel and Tachism (the French name for
European Action Painting).
The artists painted with broad brushes and dripped, threw or
sprayed the colors on the canvas to achieve a spontaneous
effect. The works of art could be treated in a destructive way,
the artists could stamp on, or
ride on a bicycle
over, the canvases, as Jackson Pollock, called "Jack the
dripper" did. The creating process became a part of the
work of art and left clear tracks.
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Neo-Dadaism
1950 |
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Happenings
1957 |
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Op Art
1957 |
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Pop
Art
1960 |
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In the late 1950s David Hockney,
Peter Blake and Richard Hamilton, influenced by the dadaist Marcel
Duchamp,
created the first Pop Art paintings and founded the style - a parallel to
the American style. Pop Art was grounded in Dadaism using elements of collage and
assemblage.
Pop Art arose in the US in the early 1960s. The style was a reaction
against the Abstract Expressionism or Nonfigurative Art in the 1950s, and Americanism and its popular
culture gave new
inspiration to the Abstract Expressionists. Unlike British Pop Art artists,
American Pop Art artists did not romanticize their imagery, they attempted to
create purely realistic paintings.
Pop
Art reflected the American society and culture. Andy Warhol and Roy
Lichtenstein were standard bearers of the American style of art - other
Pop Art artist were e.g. Claes
Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg, Tom Wesselmann,
Jim Dine, Arman,
Christo, Robert Indiana, Jasper Johns, Howard
Kanovitz, Edward
Kienholz and George Segal.
Also in Europe the style was established - in France in close connection
to the New Realism, e.g. Martial
Raysse, in Italy in connection
to the abstract painting e.g. Valerio Adami. In Germany and Scandinavia
the style was influenced by the US style.
A direction within Pop Art had its roots in the Abstract Expressionism and
used assemblage (scrap sculptures) and combine painting (painting with
e.g. an object), e.g. Robert Rauschenberg. The typical Pop Art style was recognizable,
it used
a simple and clear figurative language.
The favourite subjects for the artists were the
objects produced by the consumer society e.g. advertisings, comic strips, consumer durables, food and film stars.
A tin could be a motif, and the idea of using everyday objects as motifs
was to show, that these objects could be art, and the artists took exception to
the conventional understanding of art - an industrial product had its own aesthetics,
which normally was not noticed because we put function ahead of aesthetics.
To describe the everyday object as exact as possible many Pop Art artist
had used the photography and silk screen printing e.g. Andy Warhol.
The Pop Art sculpture was characterized by a further development of
Duchamps ready-mades (mass-produced object exhibited as work of art).
Other artist worked with sculptures of foodstuffs, tins and garments out of
all proportion.
Anti-Pop movements reacted against Pop Art e.g. the NO!art
movement - founded by the Russian artist Boris Lurie, who
settled down in New York in 1946. |
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Tom
Wesselmann (1931), American artist, "Smoker number 1 (Mouth number 12)",
1967, Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Photo: Kirsten Petersen |
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The
New Realists 1960 |
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Video Art
1960 |
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Body Art
1960 |
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Minimal
Art/Minimalism 1965 |
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synonymous with ABC Art/Cool
Art/Rejective
Art/Reductive Art. Minimalism arose in 1965 in a New York Artists
Circle. The minimalist were influenced by Suprematism, e.g. the
works of the Russian painter Kasimir Malevich and the Dadaist
Marcel Duchamp. In 1968 Minimalism was introduced to Europe at the exhibition
"Minimal Art" in the Hague, the Netherlands.
The minimalists reacted against the Abstract Expressionists use of strong
colours,
their uncontrolled brushstrokes etc, in their paintings, sculptures and
installations, the minimalists aimed at bringing the object as an object into focus
and to reduce its historical and expressive content to an absolute minimum.
Minimalism related to movements as e.g. Conceptual Art, where the work of
art just were a result of the idea behind, Pop Art and its interest in the
impersonal and Land Art with its simple shapes. The term Minimal Art was created by the English art philosopher Richard |
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Wollheim, in his essay "Minimal Art", 1965, he tried to identify
or explain the phenomenon Minimal Art/Minimalism. He used the term to
describe contemporary art, which seemed to base its aesthetics on a lack of artistic content
e.g. Duchamp's ready mades. The art critics used the term for a special
kind of simplified sculptures, which at the time were created in the USA
- these worked were named Primary Structures, the title of an exhibition at
the Jewish Museum in New York, 1966, an the movement got the name
Structuralism. Among the artists who participated at this exhibition were
Larry Bell, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Sol
LeWitt, John McCracken and Robert Morris.
In Minimal Art the objects were of no particular importance, the essential
were the theoretical and philosophic content. Painting and sculptures were
simple in shapes and content - the work of art were reduced to a minimum
of colours, shapes (pyramids, cubes, cylinders), lines and structures. In
the painting the colour areas were delimited and repetition of shapes were
seen in e.g. geometric serial sculptures and wall objects, the works were
drained for artistic
content, they were concrete in their abstraction. The sculptures were made
of prefabricated anonymous simple geometric objects. The artist aimed
at eliminating every sign of personal expression. The audience should be
allowed to intense experiences without being distracted by e.g.
compositions or subjects - it was about the concrete experience of art in time and space,
the artists did not set the scene for a symbolic
interpretation.
Artists: Dan Flavin, Carl Andre, Donald Judd,
Sol LeWitt, Robert Morris,
Ellsworth Kelly, Larry Bell, John McCracken, Richard Serra,
Frank
Stella. |
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Antiform/Postminimalism
1966 |
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Arte Povera
1967 |
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Conceptual Art
1967/68 |
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or Idea Art (only the idea counts, Language
Art/verbal or literary art) arose in the USA in the late 1960s - as an
international movement Conceptual Art took on different forms depending on
its location, however it was a controversial artform, dissimilar to
traditional paintings and sculptures, including e.g. photos, diagrams,
maps, sketches, written texts, documents, linguistic statements, Video Art
and Performance Art.
In Conceptual Art the idea behind the work was the main thing, the
physical presentation the secondary, some works did not have a physical
existence in the normal understanding. The artists brought up the eternal
question "What is art?" - Conceptual Art was filled with
information, it was up to the audience to decode or interpret the ideas.
Sometimes the artists dwelt on serious political or social problems, however
most often they were engaged in unintelligible analyses of art's nature.
Conceptual Art can be traced back to the dadaist Marcel
Duchamp's revolutionary works. However the form of art was not
named or accepted before the late 1960's, at the same time as e.g. Arte
Povera, Land Art and Performance Art, artforms which also tried to avoid
commercializing by creating non-collectibles. Sol
LeWitt was the first to use the term Conceptual Art in his
essay "Paragraphs on Conceptual Art", 1967.
In the 1980s and 1990s Conceptual Art got its renaissance in
Neo-Conceptual Art.
Artists:
Robert Barry,
"Telepathic
Piece", 1969. Douglas Huebler.
Joseph Kosuth. Lawrence Weiner. Klaus Rinke.
Vito Acconci. Bruce Naumann. Dennis Oppenheim. Hans Hacke. Keith
Sonnier.
Mel Bochner, Yoko Ono.
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Land Art
1969 |
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Super
Realism/Hyper Realism/Photo
Realism 1970 |
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Super Realism was characterized by
a realism of photographic accuracy in sculptures and paintings.
Artist: Duane Hanson,
Ron Mueck, Robert Gober,
Chuck Close, Robert Bechtle, Ralph Goings, Audrey Flack, Richard
Estes, Kurt
Trampedach, Thomas
Kluge.
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New
Expressionism
1972 |
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Postmodernism
1974 |
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Light
and Space Art 1975 |
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New
Image Painting 1978 |
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Italian Transavantgarde
1979 |
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The
Italian art critic Aschille Bonito Oliva formed
the idea of The Italian Transavantgarde - a group of painters, who did not
fit into the traditional understanding of avant-garde were given this
name. The artists spoke ironically about and commented on works of well-known artists and works
from Renaissance and Futurism.
In 1980 the artists exhibited at the Venice Biennale, and they got their
international breakthrough at the exhibitions "A
New Spirit in Painting" London, 1981 and in Germany in 1982 at
"Documenta VII" and "Zeitgeist".
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The Italian Transavantgarde
practitioners included Sandro Chia, Francesco Clemente, Enzo Cucchi, Nicola
de Maria and
Mimmo
Paladino. |
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Graffiti
1980 |
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Die
Neue Wilden 1982 |
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New Figuration
1990 |
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Performance Art/Body Art
1990 |
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