Post on 08-Aug-2015
In the next phase of our journey through art history we will observe the Cubist works of Pablo Picasso and George Brauque. We will focus on the
attempts of these artists to depict the passing time and the idea that multiple perspectives that can exist in one moment. The main idea behind
their work is to find a more real “truth”
TIME WARP: Caravaggio TO PICASSO
IDEAS ARE BUILT UPON IDEAS• Movements in Art and literature are visibly and conceptually noticeable as a progression
of thought.
• Artists and writers are often REACTING to the concepts, ideas and methods that have come before them.
• Artists “build” from the rules and guidelines of past movements with the goal to either:
Push current conventions further
• OR
• React against conventions to create a new mode of expression.
• Art is never created in a void! Internal (personal experience, health and culture) and external (war, money and technological advancements etc) realities impact all creation.
Caravaggio painted his reality, his version of the TRUTH
AMERICAN NATURALISM • Prior to the impressionist art movement painters were highly trained and skilled masters
of their craft.
• They most often would paint commissioned portraits of the elite
• OR
• Still lives that were used to show wealth as well.
• Art in American began to focus on the wild landscape, resources and change. But all in all are still based in Imitationism or Realism
• Realism (or naturalism) in the arts is the attempt to represent subject matter truthfully, without artificiality and avoiding artistic conventions, implausible, exotic and supernatural elements.
STILL LIFE'S AND PORTRAITS
AMERICAN NATURALISM
• In fine art panting, "naturalism" describes a true-to-life style which involves the representation or depiction of nature (including people) with the least possible distortion or interpretation.
Impressionism
• LIFE= A series of “fleeting moments” (move or pass quickly, lasting a very short time)
• Attempted to capture these moments and forever freeze them in time.
• RADICALS in their time, early impressionists violated the rules of academic painting.
• FREE BRUSH STROKES Short and Broken.
• Scenes of modern life and often painted outside.
HOW IMPRESSIONISTS PAINTED THEIR REALITY• LIGHT. REAL SUNLIGHT is the most important factor for Impressionist painters.
• Focused on How sunlight illuminates, fades and reflects.
• Simple subjects such as a landscape or simple ordinary movements or moment of daily life.
• Formal Qualities:
• Big Smushy brush strokes.
• Blending
• Undefined lines
• NO BLACK
• Color Harmonies
Why did they focus on LIGHT?
They focused on light to illustrate the passing of time. Claude Monet: 1908
• Claude Monet once wrote ““when you go out to paint, try to forget what objects you have before you- a tree, a house, a field, or whatever, merely think, Here is a little square of blue, here an oblong of pink, here a streak of yellow and paint it just as it looks to you, the exact color and shape, until it give your own naïve impression of the scene before you.”
• He said he wishes he was born blind and then suddenly gained his sight so that he could have begun to paint this way without knowing what the objects were that he saw before him. He held that the first real look at the motif was likely to truest and most unprejudiced one.
What do you think he meant by this statement?
LITERATURE AND MUSIC FOLLOW AND INFLUENCE ARTISTIC MOVEMENTS.
• For writers: Pages = Canvas
• Verbs and adjectives = Colors on their pallet.
• Literary Devices = Painter's Technique
• Authors of this time used literary devices to SLOW the passing of time, allowing us to linger on every image of a FLEETING scene.
• Examples: Catching someone’s eye from across a crowded room.
• The moment before a long anticipated kiss.
• A sunset.
• The split second before the light fades from a stage.
• “The lights grow brighter as the earth lurches away from the sun, and now the orchestra is playing yellow cocktail music and the opera of voices pitches a key higher.” Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Expanded the sentence to slow the syntax so the reader can linger on every image and involve their senses. He attempts to bring the reading into the scene, to see, to hear, to feel and to be a part of the moment.
POST IMPRESSIONISM TAKING THE FLEETING MOMENT A BIT FURTHER
• Building and expanding from IMPRESSIONISM, POST-IMPRESSIONISM opened the door for artist to become more experimental with technique and imbed personal and emotional elements into their work.
• Take Risks and push painting to the outermost limits to see what they could get away with.
• How did they do this?
Cropping/Composition
Color Harmonies
Multiple Light Sources
Reintroduction of black outlines
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
(1864-1901) Moulin Rouge 1893
• Also in this movement, artists begin to manipulate the depth and balance of their compositions, distort proportions and balance and manipulate and exaggerate the use of color.
Clockwise from top left:CezanneCezanneDegasSeuratVan Gogh
Paintings began to “Flatten” and distort therefor exposing the multiple perspectives that exist in one
moment. A new truth that lead to cubism.
VINCENT VAN GOGH
HENRI TOULOUSE LAUTREC
PAUL CEZANNE
PAUL GAUGUIN
EDWARD DEGAS