Surrealism

SURREALISM

(Started: 1924)

(Ended: Late 1966)

The movement was founded in Paris by the poet Andre Breton and it maintained Dadaist artists’ search for irrational and destructive things in the art. Surrealism aimed at creating the “automatic art” that comes directly from the subconscious and that is not shaped up by logical, moral, or aesthetic judgments. Subconscious was the main interest of the Surrealists. To them, subconscious was a large storage which is full with artistic creation and  has been suppressed till now, they saw the logic as a defender avoiding the entrance to this storage and they practiced various ways to unlock the entrance of subconscious. Surrealist artists blamed Naturalism and Realism for confusing the realities with objects and for approaching both to art and life in an ugly way as if they were old furniture. 

Main representatives were:

·         Andre Breton

·         Max Ernst

·         Salvador Dali

·         Pablo Picasso

·         Man Ray

 Salvador Dali

            Salvador Dali is of the most sophisticated and productive artists of the twentieth century. He is mainly known for his painterly works, but he turned to sculpture, printmaking, fashion, advertising, writing, and filmmaking in his long career life. He was renowned for his flashy character and for his indisputable technical mastership. Dali’s paintings reveal an attraction for Classical and Renaissance art, obviously apparent through his extremely realistic style and religious symbolism of his later achievements. He is mostly related with the Surrealist movement, although he was formally dismissed from the group in 1934 for his regressive political views.

 Sources:

Isms: Understanding Art by Stephen Little

            http://www.theartstory.org/movement-surrealism.htm

            http://www.theartstory.org/artist-dali-salvador.htm

Pittura Metafisica

PITTURA METAFISICA

(Started: 1910)

(Ended: 1921)

            Pittura Metafisica, Metaphysical Painting, is an art movement; a painting style began in Ferrara. The word metaphysical is the essence for the poetics of the movement. Metaphysical Painting artists represented dreamlike scenes having forms that look like frozen in time. Though they adopted depicting the visible world in the conventional manner, they preferred fool-like human forms, objects in absurd states, and delusive colors in their paintings. Providing a new perspective for seeing the world, Metaphysical Painting was a reaction to Futurism. There was the sense of uncertainty in terms of time and space in the works. They were mysterious paintings with no events. All these things created a new concept that is beyond the meaning of what is presented.

            


 Main representatives were:

·         Giorgio de Chirico

·         Carlo Cara

·         Giorgio Morandi

·         Italo Savino

Giorigo de Chirico

            Born in Volos, Greece, he was raised by Italian parents. He was a leader in the rebirth of Classicism which became a Europe-wide phenomenon in the 1920s. He is best known for the enigmatic paintings of empty town squares that he produced while living in Paris, suffering from homesickness. This work encouraged him to start the Metaphysical Art Movement, with the painter Carlo Carra. In the 1920s, his style started to obtain characteristics of Renaissance and Baroque art, however, he received criticism from his old followers after this move and this disapproval continued for many years. He could not achieve success with his new interpretations of Metaphysical paintings and backdating his work, but recently, his works has drawn attention, and it was effective on a new generation of Italian artists in the 1980s.

Sources:

            http://www.theartstory.org/artist-de-chirico-giorgio.htm#

            http://blackfacesound.com/intersilo/art.asp

            http://www.huntfor.com/arthistory/C20th/metaphyspaint.htm

DADA

DADA

(Started: 1916)

(Ended: 1924)

 Dadaism was an artistic and literary movement emerged during the World War I, in Zurich, Switzerland. The word “dada”, which means “hobby-horse” in French, was taken arbitrarily from a dictionary. Dadaist artists declared that all ethical, political, and aesthetic beliefs were ruined during the war. They supported a destructive, disrespectful, and liberating approach to art. Shocking was the basic tactic of Dadaists who hoped for society to leave the nationalism and materialism that caused the war and massacre. It was a literary movement as well as a visual one. Coincidence and senselessness was the main elements of the movement. A new conscious was defined with respect to the role of the subconscious in daily life and it objected developing an entire art theory that would be condemned to die in an art library. 

           Key artists:

·         Jean (Hans) Arp

·         Francis Picabia

·         Marcel Duchamp

·         Man Ray

·         André Breton

Francis Picabia

Francis Picabia was one of the main figures in the Dada movement both in Paris and New York. He was known for a rich variety of work ranging from strange, comic-erotic images of machine parts, to text-based paintings that foreshadow aspects of Conceptual art. Even after Dada had been supplanted by other styles, the French painter and writer went on to explore a diverse and almost incoherent mix of styles. He shifted easily between abstraction and figuration at a time when artists clung steadfastly to one approach, and his gleeful disregard for the conventions of modern art encouraged some remarkable innovations even later in his career, from the layered Transparencies series of the 1920s, to the kitsch, erotic nudes of the early 1940s. Picabia remains revered by contemporary painters as one of the century's most intriguing and inscrutable artists.

          

 Sources:

           

Isms: Understanding Art by Stephen Little

http://www.theartstory.org/movement-dada.htm

http://www.theartstory.org/artist-picabia-francis.htm

http://www.huntfor.com/arthistory/C20th/dadaism.htm

Synchromism

 

SYNCHROMISM

(Started: 1912)

            Synchromism is an art movement founded by Stanton MacDonald-Wright and Morgan Russell in Paris that focused on color. It was the first abstract art movement pioneered by American artists. The main idea was that the color and the sound were similar: These artists thought that the colors of a painting could be arranged harmoniously just like the notes in a symphony, and they believed that their paintings could evoke musical sensations with the utilization of color scales. So their abstract paintings, which they called "synchromies", were based on color scales with advancing and reducing hues. They had exhibitions in Paris, Munich, and New York. These abstract synchromies were new in America and they attracted many American painters.

           

Main representatives were:

·         Stanton MacDonald-Wright

·         Morgan Russell

·         Thomas Hart Benton

·         Patrick Henry Bruce

·         Andrew Dasburg

Stanton MacDonald-Wright

            He was an American painter and teacher who believed in the importance of the color in painting. He studied the color theory in Paris. Influenced by the abstractions of Cubist artists, Macdonald-Wright preferred conventional subjects in his initial works and rendered them in a representational manner, but his use of vibrant colors was experimental. After all, his paintings became pure color abstractions. Yet, by 1920, his works had expressed both Synchromist abstraction and a representative style. Ultimately, his interest shifted from painting to filmmaking, writing, and teaching art history.

Sources:

            http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/578271/Synchromism

            http://fineartsurrey.com/glossaryDetail.php?gid=169

            http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/354160/Stanton-Macdonald-Wright