Post-Impressionism and Abstract Expressionism

Post-Impressionism: • • A diverse style in which the essentials of perception are portrayed through concentration on light, atmosphere, and color. Appeared similar to impressionist paintings—landscapes, familiar portraits, groups, and café and nightclub scenes—but gave their subject matter a complex and profoundly personal significance. Fauvism: • Cubism: • Abstract Expressionism: • • Originated in New York. Two characteristics: (1) non-traditional brushwork (2) nonrepresentational subject matter. Absolute individuality of expression and the freedom to pursue irrationality underlie this style. • Seeks to evoke a particular emotional response. Forces the viewer to confront what may well represent repulsive images. The painting has nightmarish qualities and yet the fluid watercolor medium gives it a softened, translucent quality. Realism: • Cubist space violated all usual concepts of two and three-dimensional perspective. The space within the composition had been thought of as entirely separate from the main subject of the work—if the subject were removed, the space would remain unaffected Futurism: • Neo-Expressionism: • From the French word “wild beasts,” characterized by violent distortion and outrageous coloring. Technological developments and new materials also encouraged the search for new forms to characterize the age. The term used is “futurism,” which constituted really more of an ideology than a style. It encompassed more than just the arts, and it sought to destroy the past—especially the Italian past— in order to institute a totally new society/ a new art. Dadaism: • • An artistic style based on the theory that the method of presentation should be true to life. An artistic and literary movement emphasizing the discovery of reality through the abolition of traditional cultural and aesthetic forms. Irrationality, meaningless, and harsh mechanical images occur as typical effects. Surrealism: Expressionism: • • A style in visual and performing arts that seeks to express the artist’s emotions rather than accurately represent form. It traditionally refers to a movement in Germany between 1905 to 1930. Broadly speaking, it includes a variety of approaches, mostly in Europe, that aimed at eliciting in the viewer the same feelings the artist felt in creating the work— a sort of joint artist/viewer response to elements in the work of art. Any element—line, form, color— might be emphasized to elicit this response. The subject matter itself did not matter. What mattered was the artist consciously tried to stimulate in the viewer a specific response similar to his or her own. • • An artistic style emphasizing discovery of reality through reliance on the subconscious. Works emerged by “pure psychic automatism.” Roman Arts: • Painting survives mainly in murals and panel portraits executed in a realistic style. Enlightenment: • Emphasized rationality and new ideas in the arts, seeking a balance between emotion and intellect. Baroque Art: • In fine art, the term Baroque (derived from the Portuguese 'barocco' meaning, 'irregular pearl or stone') describes a fairly complex idiom, originating in Rome. • Baroque art above all reflected the religious tensions of the age - notably the desire of the Catholic • Painting in the Baroque style appealed to the emotions and to a desire for magnificence through opulent ornamentation. • Color and the grandeur took emphasis, as well as dramatic use of light and shade (chiaroscuro). • Baroque style often exhibited intensely active compositions that emphasizes feelings rather than form, and emotion rather than intellect. • Baroque painting had a variety of applications. It glorified the church and religious sentiment, both Expressionism • is a style in visual and performing arts that seeks to express the artist’s emotions rather than accurately represent form. It traditionally refers to a movement in Germany between 1905 to 1930. Broadlyspeaking, it includes a variety of approaches, mostly in Europe, that aimed at eliciting in the viewer the same feelings the artist felt in creating the work— a sort of joint artist/viewer response to elements in the work of art. Any element—line, form, color— might be emphasized to elicit this response. The subject matter itself did not matter. What mattered was the artist consciously tried to stimulate in the viewer a specific response similar to his or her own. Lascaux Cave Arts: • • Pop Art: • • Evolved in the 1950s, focused on mass culture and commercial imagery. Subjects exist in popular culture, often critiquing consumerism. • • Lascaux is famous for its Palaeolithic cave paintings, found in a complex of caves in the Dordogne region of South western France and was discovered in 1940. Sections have been identified in the cave; the Great Hall of the Bulls, the Lateral Passage, the Shaft of the Dead Man, the Chamber of Engravings, the Painted Gallery, and the Chamber of Felines. Contains nearly 2,000 figures, mainly animals and abstract signs. Post-Modernism: Byzantine Art: • • • The content of Byzantine art focuses on human figures. The figures reveal three main elements (a) Holy Figures [Christ, the Virgin Mary, the saints, the apostles with bishops and angels portrayed in their company) (b) the Emperor (believed to be divinely sanctioned by God) (c) the Classical Heritage (images of cherubs, mythological heroes, gods and goddesses, and personification of virtues). Byzantine two-dimensional art increasingly reflected a consciously derived spirituality. Byzantine art was conservative, and for most part, anonymous and impersonal. • A departure from traditional forms, often blending different styles and media to challenge established norms. Aristocratic Baroque: • describes the art generally in the baroque style that reflected the visions and purposes of an aristocracy that at this time had become increasingly aware that its power was threatened by the growing bourgeoisie or middle class. Lyricism • • FRA ANGELICO (Guido di Pietro) known as the ‘angelic painter.’ Imaginative, emotive, expressive, personal, passionate and completely subjective. Outward reality loses favor to more abstract values, and classical intellect sublimates into a more emotional introspection. Max Ernst: • Juxtaposed strange unrelated items to produce unexplainable phenomena. Jackson Pollock: • An example of Abstract Expressionism, using action painting to convey energy. Mannerism: • • A movement in art characterized by a "mannered" or affected appearance of subjects. Mannerist paintings seem formal and inward-looking. Their oddly proportional forms, icy stares, and subjective viewpoint make them puzzling yet intriguing. Mannerism has an intellectual component that distorts reality, alters space, and makes often obscure cultural allusions. Mannerism originated as a reaction to the harmonious classicism and the idealized naturalism of High Renaissance art as practiced by Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael in the first two decades of the 16th century. Albrecht Durer: • Albrecht Durer whom many regard as Germany’s greatest artist, could be viewed as the Jerome in his Study Leonardo of the northern Renaissance. Durer shared Leonardo’s deep curiosity about the natural world, a curiosity expressed in his drawings, which explore physiognomy, animals, plants, and landscapes. George Seurat: • often describes as a ‘neo-impressionist’—he called his approach ‘divisionism’ —departed radically from existing painting technique with his experiments in optics and color theory. His patient and systematic application is called pointillism, because the artists apply paint with the point of the brush, in this case using a mixture of short, dash-like, as well as dot-like, strokes. • Seurat’s A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, illustrates both his theory of color perception and his concern for the accurate depiction of light and colorations of objects. Honore Daumier: • often depicted urban scenes. His work, The Third Class Carriage, shows the interior of a large horse-drawn bus in Paris. Daumier puts the viewer in the set opposite a grandmother, her daughter, and two grandchildren. They form a strong compositional triangle that contrasts them with the people behind them. It seemingly depicted urban alienation, which was an important topic during that era.Romantic Age: Romantic Age • The Romantic style had an emotional appeal, and its subjects tended toward the picturesque, including nature, Gothic images, and often, the macabre. • Romantic composition moved toward fragmentation of images, with the intention of dramatizing, personalizing, and escaping into imagination. The Swing by Fragonard: • is an “intrigue” picture. A young gentleman has enticed a suspecting old cleric to swing the gentleman’s sweetheart higher and higher so that he, strategically place, can catch a glimpse of her exposed limbs. The young lady, perfectly aware of his trick, gladly joins in the game, kicking off her shoe to the statue of the God of discretion, who holds his finger to his lips in admonishment of silence. This scene exudes frivolous,naughtiness and sensuality, with lush foliage, foaming petticoats, and luxurious colors. Death of the Virgin • • The composition is arranged around the Virgin, the painting's central theme. The compact mass of the assemblage and the posturing of the figures guide the viewer's eye toward the abandoned body. The theatrical drape of blood-red cloth heightens the scene's dramatic effect. The painter makes use of the nuances of light and shadow to model the volumes of the objects, figures, and clothing. But above all he accentuates, through this process, the physical presence of the Virgin, struck by a dazzling light. The artist creates the illusion of depth through a series of lighter areas: from the back of Mary Magdalene's neck in the foreground, the eye penetrates further into the painting, passing from Mary's face to the hands and heads of the apostles. The Scream by E. Munch: • is a proto-expressionist artwork realized by Norwegian painter in 1893. It depicts a deformed human figure disturbingly screaming in a landscape with unnatural colors. Representing a universal symbol of anxiety. • Munch's iconic Scream is preserved in the National Gallery of Oslo. The Scream is part of a series known as “The Frieze of Life,” which depicts highly charged, affective moments related to themes of life, mysticism, love, and death. Masaccio Heritage: • While the content of paintings might treat religious themes, the manner of expression turned toward • earthly observation and the application of mechanical perspective to the field of the painting changed the ethereal tone of medieval works to a new ‘reality’ that appeared as things appear in real life. • The champion of this new style of painting is Tommaso di Giovanni better known as “Masaccio,” who joined the paintersguild in Florence in 1422. The hallmark of Masaccio’s invention and development of a ‘new’ style lies in the way he employs in his figures. Garima Gospels: • world's most ancient illuminated gospel manuscript from Ethiopia. Mona Lisa: • also known as La Gioconda, the wife of Francesco del Giocondo; this painting is painted as oil on wood. The original painting size is77 x 53 cm (30 x 20 7/8 in) and is owned by the Government of France and is on the wall in the Louvre in Paris, France. • This figure of a woman, dressed in the Florentine fashion of her day and seated in a visionary, mountainous landscape, is a remarkable instance of Leonardo's sfumato technique of soft, heavily shaded modelling. The Mona Lisa's enigmatic expression, which seems both alluring and aloof, has given the portrait universal fame. Illuminated Manuscript: • The Garden of Earthly Delights: • is a big three-paneled painting. The left panel is called The Creation of Eve, contains a fairly straightforward portrayal. The figures are set in a landscape populated by exotic animals and unusual semi-organic hut-shaped forms. are hand-written books that had been decorated with gold or silver, brilliant colors, or elaborate designs or miniature pictures. The term “illumination” originally denoted the embellishment of the text of handwritten books with gold or, more rarely, silver, giving the impression that the page had been literally illuminated. Classifications of Post-Modern Arts: • Challenges traditional boundaries, often blending various media, styles, and concepts.