Hannah Hoch

Dada

-photographic, collage-like elements using material already there (chance-like)

-showing chaos, absurdity

-only female allowed in artistic circles

-”Da Dandy” 

-man portrayed as having always women on his mind

-funny and ironic but also depicting a serious situation (for her)

-absurdness of whole situation (moral rule of having only one partner at a time)

John Heartfield

Dada

Berlin

Kurt Schwitters

Dada

-not a founder of Dada, but wanted to be part of the movement

-collage built up of randomly found materials from the street

-chaotic, fragmented look but coming together around ’31’

-built up carefully to show ‘building up from the chaos, starting over again’

-also performances, poetic composition (“Ursonate”)

-”merz”: word he made up and used for his work

-also made buildings, transformed his house into a 3-dimensional collage

Max Ernst

Dada

-sliding scale between Dada and Surrealism

Marcel Duchamp

Dada

-urinal (“Fountain”)

-simply ordered it and signed R. Mutt (pseudonym) 1917

-famous for use of ‘ready-mades’ (ready made material, unaltered, presented as art)

-ideas of authenticity, handmade paintings questioned; the difference between kitsch and art

-who decides art of high or low value?

-not about artwork but about situation (twisted critics etc.)

-first conceptual artist (when it becomes artwork)

-”If an artist says so, it is art.” -Marjon

-‘The Large Glass’

-machinery made to fail and not work, dysfunctional

-1919 made imitation of the Mona Lisa titled “L.H.O.O.Q.”

-pronounced in a way that says “she has a hot ass” in French

Man Ray

Dada

-American artist born Emmanual Ravlaski

-1921 ‘Gift’

-readymade art

-dysfunctional with nails on a flat iron

-absurd and destructive combination, ‘gift’ of destruction

Dada=anarchism, chaos, nonsensical

Surrealism=constructivist, building up new things also not according to laws of reason, unconscious and subconscious

Giorgio de Chirico

Surrealism

Pittura Metafisica

-distorted perspective, interesting vanishing points, displaced horizon

-manipulation of light, contrast of sky and shadows

-dark colors, strange light and architecture, sense of doom makes the painting mysterious, melancholy and a bit off

-different from surrealism because of time period and it is possible, not just something of the mind

Max Ernst

Surrealism

-1921 ‘Elephant of Celibus’

-well composed with matching elements but still no conclusion for the viewer

-1923 ‘Meeting of Friends’

-meeting of all the surrealists

-1924 ‘Two Children Threatened by a Nightingale’

-strange coloring, nonrealistic, odd perspective

-escape from absurdist dream

Joan Miro

Surrealism

-more playful, still strange creatures

-biomorphic indications of kidneys, horns, claws etc.

Salvador Dali

Surrealism

-most absurd but more realistic style of painting

-vast landscapes, emptiness, weird combinations

-ants (fear)

-distorted/melted/half completed faces

-elongated figures

-‘Mae West Face’

-collage with lip bench

Rene Magritte

Surrealism

-‘This is not a Pipe’ 

-(it is a painting)

-viewer makes his/her own stories out of the text/images

-strange light, odd mirror images painted in realistic style

-painting within a painting

Kathe Kollwitz

Neue Sachlichkeit

New Objectivity

(German expressionism after WWII)

-pacifist, ‘Never More War’

-expressionist qualities

-drawings, prints and sculpture

Max Beckmann

New Objectivity

-one of the most important German expressionist painters

-claustrophobic

-”Carnaval” , two art dealers, who discovered him, and himself as monkey

Otto Dix

New Objectivity

-very caricature like

George Grosz

New Objectivity

-educated in Dresden, Die Bruck and also Berlin and France

-paintings take time to discover what is going on

-chaotic

-evaded military career in an asylum

-‘Pillars of Society’ , a social commentary

-objectivity

-self portrait: warning against Hitler

George Bellows

Ashcan School

-“Stag at Sharkey’s” (1909)

-illegal boxing marches

-movement, light, everyday scene, fleeting, brushstrokes, blurry atmosphere, no outlines, harsh reality of life

John Sloan

Ashcan School

-”Hairdresser’s Window” (1907)

-fleeting moment, everyday scene, no outlines, light (impressionism)

-social commentary

-illustrator for Philadelphia Press

Georgia O'Keeffe

Precisionism

-”Black Iris III” (1926)

-married Alfred Stieglitz

-photographic neons, close-ups

-organic abstraction, organic landscape

-realism: related to female body, feminist

-”Radiator Building, New York” (1927)

-not as photographic/realistic as Sheeler, more abstract, more geometric, simplified

-lighting, steam

Charles Sheeler

Precisionism

-”Rolling Power” (1939)

-photograph and painting

-“River Rouge Plant (1932)

Charles Demuth

Precisionism

-”Modern Conveniences” (1921)

-building, cubism, Futurism, machinery, no brushstrokes, photographic, no people, distance from real life

-“I saw the Figure 5 in Gold” (1928)

-fire-truck, poem written by friend, William Carlos Williams

-Cubo-futurism: moving tense unheeded, siren, rumbling

Edward Hopper

American Scene

-”Early Sunday” (1930)

-dreariness, desperation of urban life, realistic, inspired by Mondriaan (geometirc shapes)

-Impressionism: shadows, lighting, brushstrokes, blurry, dusty

-Street scene: houses, windows; different. No people but there must be life

-”The New York Movie” (1939)

-no excitement, happiness, one sad lonely woman, warm and cold Dark colors

-”Gas” (1940)

-one isolated person mundane tasks

-loneliness, no car, no work

Grant Wood

American Scene

-”American Comic” (1930)

-glorifying American landscape, perseverense, roughing it

-painted in realistic simplicity

-(sister and dentist)

Jacob Lawrence

Social Realist!!! [GRIFF]

-simplified forms, flat colors

Nadar

Photography

-photographer with a hot air balloon ‘elevating photography’

-also famous portrait photographer (one of Sarah Bernhardt)

-portrait photos very similar to renaissance portraits

Muybridge

Photography

- famous for motion-photography

-how animals move (also people)

-how movement naturally takes place

Man Ray

Dada and Surrealist Artists/Photographers

Hannah Hoch

John Heartfield

Dada and Surrealist Artists/Photographer

Rodchenko

Photography/Photomontage

Jean Dubuffet

Art Brut

-experiments a lot with materials

-inspired by untrained people and cave paintings

-‘Beards’, a series of paintings

Francis Bacon

Existentialist Art

-known for emotionally raw imagery

-used to be a catholic, then converted to atheism

-inspired by diseases of mouth book, used white horizontal lines to signify cage

-cagelike constructions around figures

-uses unprimed canvas

-three furies to show violence, power, blood

-red a yelling color

-christian themes=element of suffering

-‘intensely real as I can for myself’

-‘the more strongly you feel about life, the more strongly you must be aware of death’

Jean Fautrier

Existentialist Art

-manipulation of materials with layered and scored surfaces to lead to appearence of mutilated flesh

-explicit violence

-commemorate victims and record atrocities after WWII

Alberto Giacometti

Existentialist Art

-‘archtypal existentialist artist’

-rework subjects over and over again to evoke fragility

-wide open spaces 

-mankind is fragile

-clay or wax attached with a wire frame

-rough surface, much like painters

-combination of people, also shows isolation

-usually depicts females as standing still

Wols

Art Informel

-communicating energy and at the same time a feeling of vulnerability

Karel Appel

CoBrA

-‘children very honest and real when making paintings, and that is how we want to make art, projecting our direct soul onto the canvas, as does a child’

-direct true way to deal with your feelings (another sort of expressionism)

-deliberately uses characteristic’s of a children’s drawings, ‘cry for freedom’

Asger Jorn

CoBrA

-mythology, in nature you imagine odd things

-discovering things that are not really there, but upon further become scary

-less explicit than Appel

Arshile Gorky

Abstract Expressionism

-armenian fled from Europe in 1920

-admired Picasso, Kandinsky

-colorful, living swinging creatures (biomorphic forms [like Miro])

Willem de Kooning

Abstract Expressionism

-very poor, sometimes only black and white paintings

-focus on women, inspired by very old goddesses of fertility

-never covers older versions, can see previous faces of paintings

-later in life he painted landscapes

Jackson Pollock

Abstract Expressionism

-interested in Egyptian/Indian woodcuts and symbols

-underwent Jung’s psycho-analysis

-movement

-drip paintings

-a nonrepresentational, ‘painting as a battlefield’; focus on the process of creating the painting

-his whole body moved, walking into his canvas, sometimes leaving cigarette ashes

-LARGE size

-‘danced around edges’ of canvas on bottom of his studio

-enormous emerging expanding ‘all-over image’

Marc Rothko

Abstract Expressionism

-‘colorfield’ painter

-uses wider blocks, slightly blurred at edges

-shapes seem to hover in front of the background with soft thin texture

-light seems to emanate a bit off the background

-slight trembling movement because of undefined edges

connections between colors are used to find out whick combinations work to convey emotion the best

-individual experience

-stepping into a space with light shining through

-triptychs representative of religion

-‘Rothko chapel’ in Houston, for all religions

Adolph Gottlieb

Abstract Expressionism

-everything placed in a box

-influenced by Jung; ‘collective archtypes’

-universal symbols

Lee Krasner

Abstract Expressionism

-married Pollack

-bring figure back into abstract art, while retaining it’s automatic handwriting. defines rudimentary shapes, suggesting human forms without actually depicting them

Helen Frankenthaler

Abstract Expressionism

-action and colorfield painter

-diluted paint and soaked it into canvas (her own invention)

-transitional painter

Barnett Newman

Abstract Expressionism

-another ‘colorfield’ painter

-harder to appreciate, obviously painted, show craftsmanship

--son of Polish-Jewish immigrants

-‘zips’ representing moment of creation

-swallowed by color, ‘zips’ go on forever; physical relation with painting with the color

-stand close, be enveloped in painting