28 A Story Without End: The triumph of Modernism Flashcards
Identify, date, describe
Invisible ink, Kurt Schwitters, collage, 1947
Schwitters member of Hanover Dada group and is famous for his creation of “Merz,” a term he coined to describe his practice of making art from found objects and materials.
Kurt Schwitters dates?
1887-1948
Marcel Duchamp dates?
1887-1968
Jackson Pollock dates?
1912-1956
Identify, date, describe
One: Number 31, Jackson Pollock, 1950
Made by placing canvas on floor and dripping or pouring paint on it.
Satisfies two standards of 20th century art:
1) longing for child-like simplicity;
2) sophisticated interest in “pure painting”
These paintings done rapidly, like a spontaneous outburst.
Pollock had been Surrealist, but opted for abstract art.
Identify, date, describe
White Forms, Franz Kline, 1955
Abstract Expressionist movement in New York.
Strokes give impression of spatial arrangement –lower half receding towards centre.
Kline’s works seem as though completed spontaneously, but were meticulously composed.
Identify, date, describe
3 April, 1954, Pierre Soulages
Tachiste
Gradation of brushstrokes creates sense of texture. Movement towards exploring texture in abstract art.
Soulages is known as “the painter of black”, owing to his interest in the colour “both as a colour and a non-colour. When light is reflected on black, it transforms and transmutes it. It opens a mental field all its own.”
Term ‘Outrenoir’.
What is Op Art?
Optical art – a style of visual art that uses optical illusions.
Emerged in the 1960s out of experiments of Constructivism and Bauhaus.
Identify, date, describe
Agrigento, Nicolas De Staël, 1953
Evokes landscape, giving sense of light and distance without making us forget quality of the paint.
Exploring minimal conditions for landscape.
What is Tachisme?
Mid-20th-century European art movement. From the French “tache,” meaning “spot” or “stain.”
Abstract and non-figurative with emphasis on spontaneity and intuition in painting.
Gestural Brushwork –Energetic and rapid brushwork, varying in thickness.
Texture: Significant focus on texture, often achieved with unconventional tools.
Prominent Artists: Jean Dubuffet, Pierre Soulages, and Hans Hartung.
Influence: Contributed to the evolution of abstract art and gestural abstraction, influencing movements like Abstract Expressionism.
Identify, date, describe
Horseman, Marino Marini, 1947
Inspired by image from war of stocky Italian peasants fleeing from villages during air raids.
Contrast with usual heroism of equestrian statues.
Influence of Etruscan art.
Marini created almost only equestrian sculptures.
Giorgio Morandi dates?
1890-1964
2 years younger than De Chirico
Identify, date, describe
Still Life, Giorgio Morandi, 1960
Like Cézanne retreated from world to paint objects in studio.
Experiments with showing objects in different angles and lights.
What was the rationale for Pop Art?
To bridge the divide that had emerged between serious and commercial art.
If pop music successfully engaged the masses, could not art do the same?
What is action painting?
Action Painting is a dynamic abstract art style associated with Abstract Expressionism in US. Artists prioritize the creative process, using spontaneous, gestural brushwork to convey emotions.
Key figures are Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Franz Kline.
What are Gombrich’s five ideas explaining the current situation in contemporary art?
1 Sense of the march of ages –anything new is inevitable and to criticize it is to guarantee future ridicule (e.g., impressionism).
2 Art is like science, and requires experiments and new methods to progress. Led to ‘tradition of the new’.
3 Art is unreasonable and subjective and so the artist is free from all requirements to be technical proficient or understandable.
- If art is not pretty, it is a reflection of stark reality, and helps diagnose our predicament. Beauty is escapism.
- Art is taught at school as a form of self-expression, rather than technical mastery.
Identify, date, describe
AT&T Building, New York, Philip Johnson and John Burgee, 1982
Caused a stir because departure from pure functionalism.
Harks back to ancient device of pediment.
Post-modern architecture –incorporates historicism.
Identify, date, describe
Entrance to the Clore Gallery, Tate Gallery, London, James Stirling & Michael Wilford, 1982-6
Rejected austere aspect of Bauhaus in favour of light and colour.
Identify, date, describe
Two plants, Lucian Freud, 1977-1980
One of series of ‘plant portraits’
Took three years to complete.
Reminiscent of Durer’s ‘Great piece of turf’ (1502)
Lucian Freud dates?
1922-2011
Identify, date, describe
Aquila degli Abruzzi, Henri Cartier-Bresson, 1952.
Confessed to ‘passion for geometry’.
Would wait patiently for precise moment to shoot and get composition he wanted.
Identify, date, describe
My mother, David Hockney, 1982
Polaroid collage.
Reminiscent of Cubist paintings –captures different angles and movement of head.
Recognises that vision we have of a person or scene is composite, constructed in the mind.
