Final American Art Review

 “Get yourself to a vantage point of seclusion and view the world with your eyes alone.

Think of the infinite spaces of the skies and the world beneath. “

~Charles Burchfield

Artists and Style

Realism

Style Characteristics

• Attempted to show what life is “really” like.
• Painted subjects to look realistic.
• Painted common, ordinary, even ugly images of life.
• Painted the common people instead of the upper class.
• Showed subjects doing everyday tasks.
• Brought people into their studios and posed them.

Jean-François Millet ( 1814-1875)

• Born in France.
• Visited the Louvre Museum often
• Painted signs and portraits in his early career.
• Painted landscapes and people in common everyday activities later in life.
• Used water color and pastels.

Impressionism

Style

• Used quick, choppy brush strokes
• Tried to capture effects of light
• Placed unmixed colors next to each other to create impression of third color
• Created shadows using colors instead of using black
• Painted spontaneously
• Captured “vibrating quality of light.”

Claude Monet (1840-1926)

• Biographical information on Duckster

Art Nouveau

Style

• World-wide art movement characterized by:
•  natural themes — especially floral   (Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species)
•   flowing, curving lines and forms
•  useful art designs–furniture, architecture, jewelry, etc.

Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848-1933)

• He was trained as a painter.
•   He became interested in glass making.
•   He used opalescent glass and   “impurities” in the glass  to   create beautiful works.
•   Patented his “Favrile” (handmade)   iridescent glass in 1894.
•   In 1893 he started a factory and hired   skilled glass artisans and   designers–even women.

Fauvism

Style

• Color instead of form
• Color to express feeling instead of to show reality
• Unrealistic color
• Simplified shapes
• Patterns and repeated shapes
• Contrasting color

Henri Matisse (1869-1954)

Biography on Ducksters

Cubism

Style

• Created by our featured artist in collaboration with Georges Braque (French) to create a “new way of seeing things”
• Attempted to show multiple viewpoints at once
• Used combinations of basic geometric shapes
• Painted pictures that look like fractured glass
• Used bright colors and hard-edged forms to create a flattened picture
• Distorted reality

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)

• Born in Spain
• Father taught art
• Went to a prestigious art school at 14
• Painted so well his father supposedly vowed never to paint again
• Officially named Pablo(Pablito) Diego Jose Santiago       Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno Crispin   Crispiniano de los Remedios Cipriano de la   Santisima Trinidad Ruiz Blasco y Picasso Lopez!
• Duckster biography

Neoplasticism

Style — History and Characteristics

• The movement started in early 1900s.
• Artists reverted to the basic fundamentals of art such as color, form, and line.
• They felt that art shouldn’t be the reproduction of real objects, but the expression of the absolutes of life.
• The only absolutes are lines and primary colors.
• Primary colors–red, blue, and yellow or “non-colors”–gray, black, and white
• Geometric shapes such as rectangular planes or prisms
• Balance by use of opposition
• Straight lines or rectangular areas
• No symmetry
• Balance and rhythm through proportion and location

Piet Mondrian (1872-1944)

• He was born Pieter Cornelis Mondriaan, Jr. in the Netherlands.
• Father was a teacher and artist.
• He studied art at National Academy of Art in Amsterdam.
• He left his parents’ church and could be regarded as a “hippy.”
• He loved nature and painted landscapes and flowers.
• He taught elementary school.

Dada

Style –history and characteristics

• French for “hobbyhorse”
• Randomly chosen name (according to historians—knife in dictionary)
• Anti-art instead of art
• A reaction to World War I
• Expression of the disorder of the world
• Meant to “enrage” instead of “engage”
• Collage of unrelated subjects
• Cut up photographs and other printed images
• Photo mantage

Raoul Hausmann (1886-1971)

• Born in Austria
• Moved to Germany when he was 14
• Studied with his father, a painter
• Studied art, philosophy, and literature
• Wrote poems and articles
• Edited magazine titled “Dada”
• Helped found the “Dada” art movement

Futurism

Style–History and Characteristics

• 1909-1918 (1920s)
• Began as a literary movement in Italy
• Started after poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti wrote a manifesto in 1909
• create a new art for ourselves
• throw out the ideas of the past, especially political and artistic ideas.
• glorify speed, noise, machines, pollution and industrialization of cities
• see industrialization and the invention of cars and airplanes as man’s triumph over nature
• oppose “pastists” and “pastism”
• glorify war and violence
• Repetition of lines to create rhythm
• Use of time lapse photography to capture the element of time
• Illusion of movement
• Brilliant colors
• Flowing brush strokes

Giacomo Balla  (1871-1958)

• Born in Turin Italy in 1871
• Studied art
• Worked as an illustrator, caricaturist and portrait painter
• Taught artists
• Signed futurist manifesto and devoted work to that style
• Painted, sculpted, made furniture and clothing in the futurist style
• Continued working in the style into the 1920s.

Surrealism

Style — History and Characteristics

• People should free their minds and exercise their “unconscious minds.”
• Perhaps dreams are more true than everyday reality.
• Art should be mysterious.
• Art is images of reality but NOT reality.
• Fantasy mixed with reality
• Surprising and imaginative
• Dream-like and mysterious
• Images that are not reality but look “real”
• Juxtaposing (like Dada) unrelated things

René Magritte (1898-1967)

• He was born in Belgium in 1898.
• His mother committed suicide when he was 13.
• At 16 he studied art at a fine arts academy.
• He served in the military.
• He worked as a graphic designer designing wallpaper and as a portrait painter.
• In 1926 began painting in a “surreal” way like Salvador Dali from Spain.

Abstract Expressionism

Style — History and Characteristics

• The movement had its roots in cubism and   surrealism.
• Abstract Expressionism started in America after   World War II.
• With the beginning of Abstract Expressionism,   New York replaced Paris as the center of   the art world.
• The movement had its roots in cubism and   surrealism.
• Abstract Expressionism started in America after   World War II.
• With the beginning of Abstract Expressionism,   New York replaced Paris as the center of   the art world.
• Painting abstract images
• Focusing on surface qualities such as brush   strokes and texture
• Using huge canvases
• Embracing accidents as part of the art process
• Glorifying the act of painting
• Attempting to capture pure emotion on canvas

Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) about him and his unique style

In the 1940’s he began to develop his own unique techniques

• He affixed the canvas to the floor   or wall.
• Paint was poured or dripped on the   canvas.
• Sticks, trowels and knives were   used instead of brushes.
• Sometimes he mixed broken glass   or sand into the paint.
• He wanted an All-over style where   no part of the painting is   emphasized over another.

Website with biographical information:  Tate

Pop Art

Style

• Every day objects drawn in bold colorful ways
•   Short for Popular Art
•   Inspired by comic strips, advertising, and   popular entertainment.

Andy Warhol (1928-1987)

• Born in 1928 with a natural talent for art.
• Studied design and illustration in college.
• Worked in New York City after graduation doing magazine illustrations, decorating store windows, designing greeting cards, record   albums, book covers, etc.  He even designed the images used in TV weather reports.
• Wanted to be famous, so he started his own style of   painting images from everyday life.
• Made a movie once of a man sleeping for 6 hours.