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Impressionism
Impressionism was an art style that marked the beginning of the Modernism movement and the start of the breaking of traditional conventions of global art. Impressionism's core was about creating an atmosphere quickly and experimenting with the effects of light or exposure to light and movement. Impressionism started and was very popular in Europe, particularly France where the painters Claude Monet and Edgar Degas originated - who are wellknown for there contribution to Impressionism. -
'Impression, Sunrise' - Claude Monet
- Intentions were to capture beauty, modern life and light.
- Contains typical Monet technique of very loose brushstrokes to form a suggestion of mist and the experimentation of light and making it the subject of the artwork. -Artwork delivered fantastically by the audience and the term 'Impressionism' came from title of the artwork.
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'The Dance Class' - Edgar Degas
- One of Degas' most ambitious figural compositions. There is no one focal point and the view point is oblique, which symbolises that the artist was attempting to simply capture a mundane moment and turn it into something beautiful.
- Artwork is very personal to the artist
- Degas inspired people to capture snatched moments and develop mastery of movement, colour and line.
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Post-Impressionism
Post-Impressionism is the term used to describe the style of art after Manet, a French painter, and the style is very similar however it was more pointedly emphasizing geometric forms and more bold and distorted images that had no real subject matter. Important artists from the Post-Impressionism period were Vincent Van Gogh and Georges Pierre-Seurat. -
'Bathers at Asnières' - Georges Pierre Seurat
- Monumental scale, long period of time to create the work, and meticulous detail of the artwork (pointillism) shows how personal it was to Seurat.
- Picture was not widely acclaimed until many years after Seurat's death, and was rejected by the gallery he tried to enter it into.
- One of the most important artworks of Modernism, shows the invention of pointillism - lots of little dots to create colours being mixed together as your eye is further away.
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'The Starry Night' - Vincent Van Gogh
- Van Gogh's most popular piece. Was greatly delivered by worldwide audience and considered his best work.
- Artist painted the artwork from memory during the day, and was not as happy with it as the people surrounding him. He felt it lacked individual intention and 'feeling in the lines'.
- Depicts the view from his New York apartment window and the magic it created in the atmosphere because of the small, meticulous brushstrokes.
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'The Scream' - Edvard Munch
- A very popular and well known artwork and considered an icon of modern art - and a target of many high-profile art thefts.
- Depicts a frightful experience of his youth in which he had a vision where the air turned red and an endless scream rang in his ears. -Artwork expresses stress, anxiety and personal tragedies he has experienced.
- It is very popular in modern culture and parodied, imitated and copied in art, literature, film, television and other aspects of society.
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Fauvism
Fauvism was a short-lived however very effective art movement lead by French artists Henri Matisse and Andre Derain. These artists further rebelled against the conventions of traditional artworks and used bold colour and harsh brushstrokes to create expressive images that would go down in history. -
'The Green Stripe' - Henri Matisse
- Picture of Matisse's wife in which he uses simply colour alone to express the image.
- Expresses the rebelling of traditional conventions of art as the green strip acts as an artificial shadow line, dividing the face into a cool and warm side (breakdown of shapes). Colour and brushstrokes both create great artistic drama.
- Deliberate crudeness of the painting made it one of the most controversial paintings of the gallery it was on display in.
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'Big Ben' - Andre Derain
- Brushstrokes made to distort reality and create an impression of the landscape, but still make it bold and beautiful.
- Creates an exciting mood from the bright, contrasting colours and the use of all the space on the canvas
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'Les Demoiselles d'Avignon' - Pablo Picasso
- Very confronting and bold image of five prostitues in Barcelona with disturbing faces and masculine qualities.
- Wellknown artwork and one of Picasso's most popular because of the controversy it caused - first deemed immoral and scandalous.
- A lot of effort and time put into the final work. Picasso had hundreds of sketches before his final piece and many influences such as African tribal masks (which are seen on two of the girls) and Iberian sculpture.
- Two dimensional and simplified.
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Expressionism
Expressionism was a movement that wanted to develop a style with greater emotional force that effected the audience in a greater way - through emotion. Expressionism began in Germany before the outbreak of WWI and used techniques such as discordant colours and distorted shapes to relate to the intensity of the artist's feelings. Significant artists of this period include Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Edvard Munch. -
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Cubism
Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque were the main leaders and founders of the art movement Cubism of the early twentieth century. Cubism effected all aspects of culture and art and was essentially the idea of taking objects or visual pictures, breaking them down and reassembling them to a simplified, abstract geometric form. A lot of influence of the Cubism style came from former Post-Impressionist painter Paul Cezanne who was also known for his planes of colour and small brushstrokes of Cubism. -
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Futurism
Futurism was an exciting and glorious movement obsessed with the beauty of speed and concets of the future, for example noise, technology, youth and cities. The Futurists explored every medium of art and aimed at eliminating the basic symmetry of traditional culture by using agitated lines and irregular paintings. Prominent Futurist artists include Italians Carlos Carra and Umberto Boccioni. -
'Vioin and Candlestick' - Georges Braque
- Fragmentation and flattening of the objects in the painting make the artist feel closer and more aware of the work.
- Outcome of Braque's desire to create an illusion in the viewer's mind and allow them to move freely within the painting.
- Well received by the audience and influenced artists to take styles such as Cubism even further.
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'The Funeral of the Anarchist Galli' - Carlos Carra
- Painting depicts a scene of a funeral of anarchist Angelo Galli, whom was murdered by police. The funeral turned into a forceful, violent protest as the Italian state were afraid of mourning anarchists being let in.
- Picture depicts the tension and chaos of the scene, exoressed through the contrasting and bold colours and obvious movement of the bodies.
- Image is from particular viewpoint of the ground to capture the motif of black flags swirling in the sky.
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'Unique Forms of Continuity in Space' - Umberto Boccioni
- Expression of movement and fluidity
- Intention of Boccioni was to portray speed, forceful dynamism and synthetic continuity. This is achieved by the fluid form of the angle of the human form.
- Has had influences on modern day society including music and art, and the image of the artwork made it's way onto the Italian 20-cent euro coin.
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Dada
Dada was a movement that began due to the horrors of WWI and lay the foundations of Surrealism abstract art. Dada created an anti-war and anti-bourgeois community among art, literature, music and other aspects of society, and its leading pioneers in visual arts were Marcel Duchamp and Max Ernst. Dada art is whimsical, colourful, wittily sarcastic and satirical and in some cases silly, and was created to provoke emotion from the audience. -
'Self Portrait as a Soldier' - Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
- Depicts the artist after his nervous breakdown and subsequent dismisal from the military service. Shows his psychological and physical suffering.
- Used dominiative, bold red colours and harsh, visible strokes, whose aggressive impact is further expressed through their contrast on the soldier's blue uniform.
- Deliberately raw and shocking.
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'Black Circle' - Kazimir Malevich
- Depicts a monumental perfect circle floating on a flat white background - pure abstraction and geometric shapes.
- Malevich intended to create new icons of modern art through these kinds of artworks and wanted to free art from the ballast of the objective world.
- The work was well received and was displayed in the St. Petersburg exhibition along with 34 of his other abstract works.
- Audience identified with it saying it was utterly selfless and anonymous yet distinct.
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Suprematism
Suprematism was an art style invented by Russian artist Kazimir Malevich and was one of the earliest forms of abstract art. It focussed on geometric shapes and motifs such as the circle, square, rectangle and cross and block colours. Texture was also an essential quality to this movement, and the art was based upon 'pure artistic feeling'. Another key artist of this period was El Lissitzky. -
'Compostition VII (The Three Graces)' - Theo van Doesburg
- Wanted to place the concept of a utopian society into an artwork.
- Resulted in an image of irreducible forms that disrupts the usual distance between background and foreground, creating a unified and self-contained work of art in which all elements are independent.
- Heavily influenced by the geometric forms created by Piet Mondrian.
- Artworks of Doesburg has influenced all parts of modern day society, nameingly furniture and architecture.
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'Fountain' - Marcel Duchamp
- Manufactured urinal signed and placed in an exhibition.
- Influenced and shocked the world around Duchamp and made people think about what art really was.
- Intention of Duchamo was to express that art did not ahve to be aesthetically pleasing or restrained, it was simply about capturing the audience's eye with a new idea or expressing your inner self.
- Has influenced modern society as we know it today, creating new ideas everywhere in literature, art, film, television, architecture and more.
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Neo-Plasticism
Also known as De Stijl (Dutch for 'The Style'), Neo-plasticism was a Dutch artistic movement, whose essential artists were Theo van Doesburg and Piet Mondrian. De Stijl's main cultural idea was utopia and spiritual harmony by taking the world and futher abstracting and simplifying it to basic, geometric forms and primary forms - the new plastic art. Neo-plasticism can be found in everyday art such as furniture, architecture and even visual art such as painting. -
'Beat The Whites With The Red Wedge' - El Lissitzky
- Lithographic Soviet propoganda poster.
- Motif of the red wedge symbolizes the bolsheviks, penetrating and defeating their opponents during the civil war. -Image has been used often in modern day society - simplified and used in posters, music album covers, television shows and logos.
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Surrealism
A cultural movement in art and literature, that sought to release the creative potential of the unconscious ming and express the imagination as revealed in dreams, free of the conscious control of reason and convention. This style was largely influenced by neurologist Sigmund Freud's theory of the unconscious, and its main artists were Salvador Dalí and René Magritte. These painters were wellknown for their striking and bizarre images which affected many aspects of society. -
'Composition II in Red, Blue and Yellow' - Piet Mondrian
- Alternative to Mondrian's other pieces as it contains a large block of colour, adding brightness to the image. Demonstrates his focus on simplicity and and deep understanding of contrast and composition.
- Works of Mondrian's have impacted parts of society such as architecture, fashion designers and music.
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'The Persistence of Memory' - Salvador Dalí
- Salvador Dalí's most recognisable work and frequently referenced in popular culture.
- The image contains all of Dalí's ideaologies and motifs - time, decay, unconscious, fear and the unreachable.
- Intention of Dalí was to release his unconscious mind to create representations of his dreams, which is the main characteristic of this artwork.
- Has inspired many modern artists and been described as a curious blend of reality and fantasy.
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'L'ange Du Foyer' - Max Ernst
- Vivid creature in a moment of joyous expression. Bursts of colour and extremely confronting and disturbing image.
- Intention to express the motif of a terrifying human creature.
- Ernst wanted to have a deep impact on the audience and capture their eye and stem the flow of imagery from his spontaneous unconscious mind.
- Juxtaposition and contrast of the colours such as the deep blue, magenta and sickly green express the horror of the creature and feelings inside the artist.
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'Zebra' - Victor Vasarely
- Made up entirely of black stripes curved in a way to give a three-dimensional impression of zebras.
- The artwork that influenced Vasarely to create more Op Art adn dubbed him the father of the movement.
- Artwork impacted artists internationally to create Op Art of larger scales and take it to the next level.
- Experimentation of perspective, shadow and light.
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Op Art
Also known as Optical Art, Op Art is an image which contains a optical illusion and was an idea originated in Germany and most popular during the late 1960's. Many of these pieces of art were black and white and would spin when the image is remaining still or contained and unexpected image hidden in lines or dots. Two prominent artists of this time period were Victor Vasarley - dubbed the father of Op Art - and Bridget Riley - one of the earliest Op Artists. -
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Abstract Expressionism
Abstract Expressionism is also considered 'action painting' because of the broad movements and energy that goes into creating the artworks. The most prominents artist of this style were Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. These artists used extremely large canes and energy to express their inner self and used different style such as the 'drip techinque', violent brushstrokes, splattering of paint and fields of colour. -
'No.5' - Jackson Pollock
- Painted onto fiberboard with drips of painted, creating a nest like effect and texture.
- Clear example of his invention of the drip technique
- Intention of Pollock was to grab the audience's attention and drag them into the painting with every inch of the canvas and the small found objets embedded into the paint.
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'Woman III' - Willem De Kooning
- One of a series of 6 paintings where the central theme was of a woman.
- Extremely confronting with harsh lines and dreary colours, showing the woman not exactly in a feminine light.
- Received some criticism and was not allowed in exhibitions for a long while due to strict regulations and what the image depicted.
- Went on to become the 2nd most expensive painting of all time and has had much influence on other art movements and artists.
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Pop Art
The most wellknown artists of Pop Art were Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. It emerged in the mid-1950's and was the most prominent art movement that focussed on challenging the traditional conventions of art and questioning what art really is. It incorporated aspects of popular culture and found objects into its artworks and uses irony, humour, text, captions and much incongruency to express itself. -
'Movement in Squares' - Bridget Riley
- The key principle of the artwork is visual disturbance.
- Intention of Riley was to express stabilities and instabilities, certainties and uncertainties.
- Emotional resonance with Riley.
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'Campbell's Soup Cans' - Andy Warhol
- One of the most popular images of the art period and the essence of Pop Art and of Warhol.
- Warhol intended to break the conventions of traditional and fine art and including imagery from popular culture.
- Grew very large in the United States.
- The commercial subject of the artwork initially caused offence to society and was seen as poking fun at art and a direct affrontation of the style of abstract expressionism.
- Wanted to express great liking to modern culture.
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'Drowning Girl' - Roy Lichtenstein
- Painting is representative of Lichtenstein's affinity for single-frame drama that reduces the viewer's ability to identify with the artwork and that abstracts emotion.
- Involves Ben Ray Dots, which is distinctly related to comic books and the style of the artwork.
- Highlights cliched melodrama, and therefore is also related to newspapers and magazines.
- Artwork was received very well even when Pop Art was receiving criticism, and the artwork was described as a broad and powerful painting.
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'The Son of Man' - René Magritte
- Intended as a self portrait.
- Magritte quoted that 'Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see', referring to the hovering green apple.
- Painting is expressing Magritte's intense feelings. -Is very prominent in popluar culture and motif in many films and television shows.
