What set the Fauves apart from their nineteenth-century predecessors was their use of harsh, non-descriptive color, bold linear patterning, and a distorted form of perspective.
They saw color as autonomous, a subject in and of itself, not merely an adjunct to nature. They chose colors based on their emotional qualities.
Their vigorous brushwork and emphatic line grew out of their desire for a direct form of expression, unencumbered by theory.
Their skewed perspective and distorted forms were also inspired by the discovery of ethnographic works of art from Africa, Polynesia, and other ancient cultures.
Fauvist subject matter centered around: traditional nudes, still life and landscape.
We briefly looked at Expressionism in the last chapter with Munch and Kollwitz as examples.
Die Brucke (The Bridge)
The artists who began the movement chose the name Die Brucke because, in theory, they saw their movement as bridging a number of disparate styles.
Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider)
This group of artists depended less heavily on content to communicate feelings and evoke an emotional response from the viewer.
The New Objectivity (Neue Sachlichkeit)
Following World War I, some artists reacted to the horrors and senselessness of wartime suffering with an art that commented bitterly on the bureaucracy and military with ghastly visions of human torture.
Cubism can trace its heritage to Neoclassicism and art of Cézanne
Cézanne’s geometrization of nature, abandonment of scientific perspective, his rendering of multiple views, and his emphasis on the two-dimensionality of the canvas
Pablo Picasso was Cubism’s driving force
Picasso’s first major artistic phase has been called his Blue Period
Subjects from Picasso’s Rose Period were drawn primarily from circus life and rendered in tones of pink.
This is a form of Cubism from
c. 1910 with the faceting of form
Cubism as a new treatment of pictorial space
The Cubists’ idea that the most basic reality involved consolidating optical vignettes
Instead of presenting us with a single view, the Cubists realized that we perceive many views
This form of Cubism spanned from 1909-1912
Artists pasted objects, such as pieces of paper, found objects, rope, etc., to their works
Papier collé
Some of their compositions consist entirely of found objects
Guernica and Picasso’s 1937 return to Cubism
Cubism began with two-dimensional surfaces, but it was limited by the surface itself
With Cubist sculpture, one could walk around and observe the many facets of a work of art
Lipchitz and Archipenko
Void space now becomes a solid form, but the Cubist principles of fragmented forms are observed
Futurism was a radical Italian movement that began after a 1909 manifesto called for an art of “violence, energy, and boldness”
Futurism owed much to Cubism
Dynamism is a word also used by the Futurists, fond of technology
The Futurists disliked any past artistic traditions, especially those of the 19th century
At this time, two dynamic schools of art arise in Europe-Constructivism and De Stijl
Throughout the history of art, most critics and patrons have seen the accurate representation of visual reality as a noble goal.
Those artists who have departed from this goal, who have chosen to depict their personal worlds of dreams or supernatural fantasies, have not had it easy.
Responding to the absurdity of war and the insanity of a world that gave rise to it, the Dadaists declared that art-a reflection of this sorry state of affairs-was stupid and must be destroyed.