C20th Expressionisms
Expressionistic Movements
Expressionism developed during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Expressionis was opposed to academic standards that had prevailed in Europe and emphasized artist's subjective emotion, which overrides fidelity to the actual appearance of things. The subjects of expressionist works were frequently distorted, or otherwise altered. Landmarks of this movement were violent colors and exaggerated lines that helped contain intense emotional expression. Application of formal elements is vivid, jarring, violent, or dynamic. Expressionist were trying to pinpoint the expression of inner experience rather than solely realistic portrayal, seeking to depict not objective reality but the subjective emotions and responses that objects and events arouse in them.
The expressionistic tradition was significantly, rose to the emergence with a series of paintings of Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh from the last year and a half of his life. There was recorded his heightened emotional state. One of the earliest and most famous examples of Expressionism is Gogh's "The Starry Night." Whatever was cause, it cannot be denied that a great many artists of this period assumed that the chief function of art was to express their intense feelings to the world.
The Belgian painter and printmaker James Ensor was such an artist - with his sense of isolation.
The Norwegian painter and printmaker Edvard Munch dealt - with different fears.
The Vienesse painters Oskar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele first started with their expressionistic styles within Klimt's circle of the Vienna Secession. Vienesse Expressionism later gained significance between years 1905 and 1918 during a politically and culturally turbulent era of revelation of the profoundly problematic conditions of the turn-of-the-century Europe.
In the years just around 1910 the expressionistic approach pioneered by Ensor, Munch, and van Gogh, in particular, was developed in the work of three artists' groups: the Fauves, Die Brucke, Der Blaue Reiter.
Fauvism
Fauvism is a movement in French painting that revolutionized the concept of color in modern art. Fauves earned their name ("les fauves"-wild beasts) by shocking exhibit visitors on their first public appearance, in 1905.
At the end of the nineteenth century, neo Impressionist painters were already using pure colors, but they applied those colors to their canvases in small strokes. The fauves rejected the impressionist palette of soft, shimmering tones in favor of radical new style, full of violent color and bold distortions.
These painters never formed a movement in the strict sense of the word, but for years they would nurse a shared ambition, before each went his separate and more personal way.
Die Brucke
Die Brucke was the association of artist expressionists from Dresden, Germany. Their first exhibition was held in 1906.
Die Brucke made use of a technique that was controlled, intentionally unsophisticated and crude, developing a style hallmarked by expressive distortions and emphases. Die Brucke artists often used color similar to the Fauves, and they were also influenced by art form from Africa and Oceania.
Some of the painters in the group sympathized with the revolutionary socialism of the day and drew inspiration from Van Gogh's ideas on artists' communities. Die Brucke expressionists believed that their social criticism of the ugliness of modern life could lead to a new and better future.
School of Paris
Paris was the inviolable center of international art until after WWII. The School of Paris was the name of a period when Paris was attracting artists from all over the world - a time when the French capital was regarded by one and all as the greatest laboratory of modern art. Even with New York City's emergence as a center of contemporary international art, Paris has continued to this day to produce artists of major significance.
The name Ecole de Paris (School of Paris) was still in use after World War II. Its use was then extended to encompass all non-figurative artists. The name finally ended up referring to so many different artists that it lost all specific meaning. In the early 1920s it encompasses more than one style and movement; including fauvism, cubism, and orphism.
School of Paris described a group of artists, most of them of foreign extraction, who had elected to live and work in Paris. Modigliani, Soutine, Chagall, Pascin, Fujita and Kisling, are just a handful of the School's most illustrious representatives. Modigliani's oval faces and almond eyes, Fujita's stunning detail and mix of the West and East, and Soutine's haste and frenzy were all aspects that suggested the "School of Paris" referred more to a community of artists than to any precise style or movement.
When critics referred to the School of Paris, their intent was above all to combat the modern hegemony of the New York School. In the end the name veiled the diversity of the artists, and the later School of Paris never earned the success and recognition of its earlier years.
Der Blaue Reiter
The Blue Rider (or in German Der Blaue Reiter) was a German Expressionist movement that was established in December 1911 by Kandinsky, Marc and Gabriele Münter.
Painters Kandinsky and Marc worked on an almanac in which they showed their artistic conceptions. The title of the almanac, which then became the name of the group, Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider), came from the painting by Kandinsky. His Blaue Reiter ( Blue Rider ) was an adventure in the simplification and stylization of forms and the connection between music and painting.
The Blue Riders believed that colors, shapes and forms had equivalence with sounds and music, and sought to create color harmonies which would be purifying to the soul. Although in this very earliest works, the impressionistic influence was recognizable, the artists who took part in The Blue Rider were considered to be the pioneers of abstract art or abstract expressionism. Their work promoted individual expression and broke free from any artistic restraints. These Nietzsche's words sum up the group's motto, "Who wishes to be creative must first blast and destroy accepted values."
The first exhibitions of The Blue Rider included works by Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, Pablo Picasso, Paul Klee, Henri Rousseau, Robert Delaunay, and Arnold Schönberg. These artists, who early in their careers broke from the mainstream, were later to become the driving force behind modern art as we know it today.
Cubism
Cubism is the most radical, innovative, and influential ism of twentieth-century art. It is complete denial of Classical conception of beauty.
Cubism was the joint invention of two men, Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. Their achievement was built the foundation of Picasso's early work then developed to a Synthetic Cubism. As the various phases of Cubism emerged from their studios, it became clear to the art world that something of great significance was happening. The radical innovations of the new style confused the public, but the avant-garde saw in them the future of art and new challenge.
Proportions, organic integrity and continuity of life samples and material objects are abandoned. Canvas resembles "a field of broken glass" as one vicious critic noted. This geometrically analytical approach to form and color, and shattering of object in focus into geometrical sharp-edged angular pieces baptized the movement into 'Cubism'. A close look reveals very methodical destruction or rather deconstruction into angular 3-dymensional shaded facets, some of which are caving others convex. Cubism distrusts "whole" images perceived by the retina, considers them artificial and conventional, based on the influence of past art. It rejects these images and recognizes that perspective space is an illusory, rational invention, or a sign system inherited from works of art since the Renaissance.
Instead of an image of external world we are given a world of its own, analogous to nature but built along different principles. Cubism seeks to reproduce different perspectives or forms simultaneously, as they might be seen by the mind's eye. It attempts to mimic the mind's power to abstract and synthesize its different impressions of the world into new 'wholes'.
Among numerous responses on these Cubistic challenges some artists put these innovations into the service of a less radical art, or at the other end of the spectrum was the radical painting of Robert Delaunay who attempted to take an antisocial Analytic Cubism into a wholly different direction. Among other twentieth century's isms emerged as responses on challenge of Cubism were Futurism, Suprematism, Constructivism, Rayonism, Abstraction, and Precisionism.
Futurism
Futurism came into being with the appearance of a manifesto published by the poet Filippo Marinetti on the front page of the February 20, 1909, issue of Le Figaro. It was the very first manifesto of this kind.
Marinetti summed up the major principles of the Futurists. He and others espoused a love of speed, technology and violence. Futurism was presented as a modernist movement celebrating the technological, future era. The car, the plane, the industrial town were representing the motion in modern life and the technological triumph of man over nature. Some of these ideas, specially the use of modern materials and technique, were taken up later by Marcel Duchamp (French, 1887-1968), the cubist, the constructivist and the dadaist.
Futurism was inspired by the development of Cubism and went beyond its techniques. The Futurist painters made the rhythm of their repetitions of lines. Inspired by some photographic experiments, they were breaking motion into small sequences, and using the wide range of angles within a given time-frame all aimed to incorporate the dimension of time within the picture. Brilliant colors and flowing brush strokes also additionally were creating the illusion of movement. Futurism influenced many other 20th century art movements, including Art Deco, Vorticism, Constructivism and Surrealism.
Futurists mixed activism and artistic research. They organized events that caused scandal. Everything was there to help them to glorify Italy and lead their country into the age of modernity. Certain Futurists vehemently promoted themselves to try to join forces with the Fascists, who were coming to power at the time. But Mussolini showed a preference for the Novecento Italiano, movement of artists who identified with the classical order and Italian heritage.
Futurism was a largely Italian movement, although it also had adherents in other countries, France and most notably Russia. Close to Futurism with its inspirations and motivations was Precisionism, an important development of American Modernism.
Although Futurism itself is now regarded as extinct, having died out during the 1920s, powerful echoes of Marinetti's thought, still remain in modern, popular culture and art. Futurism influenced many other 20th century art movements, including Art Deco, Vorticism, Constructivism and Surrealism.
Naïve Art
Naïve art ideally describes the work of an artist who has not received any kind of formal education in an art school or academy. It has a childlike simplicity.
Naive art has strong use of pattern,unrefined colour and simplicity.
Some Naïve artists are Edward Hicks, Ferdinand Cheval, Jules Lefranc, Émile Crociani, Pilar Sala and Bracha Turner to name a few.
Folk Art
Folk Art is a decoartive form of art. It includes art produced by various indigenous cultures or peasants or tradespeople. Folk art is specific to a particular culture.
Folk Art reflects traditional art forms of diverse community groups-ethnic, tribal, religious, occupational, geographical, age- or gender-based-who identify with each other and society at large.
Folk Artists traditionally learn skills and techniques through apprenticeships in informal community settings, though they may also be formally educated.
African Folk Art consists of a wide variety of items such as household objects, metal objects, toys, textiles, masks, and wood sculpture, among others.
Chinese folk art are artistic forms inherited from a regional or ethnic scene in China. Usually there are some variation between provinces. Individual folk arts have a long history, and many traditions are still practiced today. The general definition of folk art incorporates Chinese art forms that are not classified as fine arts.
Japanese folk art movement, was developed in the late 1920s and 1930s in Japan. Its founding father was Yanagi Sōetsu (1889-1961). It is also known as Mingei.
Warli or Varli folk art is by an Indian Scheduled Tribe. These indigenous people live in talukas of the Thane, Nasik and Dhule districts of Maharashtra, the Valsad District of Gujarat, and the Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu union territories. They have their own beliefs, life and customs which have little in common with Brahminical Hinduism. The Warlis people speak an unwritten Varli language mingling Sanskrit, Marathi and Gujarati words. The word Warli is derived from warla, meaning "piece of land" or "field".