(LEA3) Module Overview

Later Europe and Americas III

Introduction

With the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the second half of the 19th century, new art styles and movements appeared and disappeared at an increasingly fast pace - thus reflecting the growing rate of changes in our society. By the mid-19th century, painting was no longer in service to either the church or royal court but was patronized by the upper and middle classes. Society was undergoing rapid change because of the growth of science and technology, industrialization, urbanization, and the fundamental questioning of religion. Artists began to reject traditional or academic forms and conventions in art in order to create an art that would better reflect the changing conditions of modern life. The invention of photography freed the artists from serving as the recorder of reality and to explore aesthetically in a formal context. The depiction of the world in an abstract or non-objective manner created seemingly infinite possibilities, which manifested in various movements. These modern movements include Social Realism, Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, Op Art, Minimalism, and Neo-Expressionism.

The destruction and extensive loss of life during World War II had long-term personal, cultural, political, and economic consequences. After the war, the United States and the Soviet Union emerged as rival superpowers. After World War II, disruption and dislocation took place throughout the world. Unrest continues in many countries. Hostilities and political uncertainty still characterize the world situation. In the 1960s and 1970s, there emerged in the United States a counterculture that had considerable societal impact and widespread influence. The civil rights movement and the women's liberation movement rejected racism and sexism. Feminists charged that Western society's institutions perpetuated male power and subordination of women.

Modernism shifted course in conjunction with the changing historical conditions and demands and became increasingly identified with a strict formalism. The influential art critic Clement Greenberg identified Modernism as a rejection of illusionism and an exploration of each artistic medium's properties. Meanwhile, the distance between progressive artists and the public widened. Postmodernism may be viewed as a rejection of modernist principles. Postmodernism accommodates a wide range of styles, subjects, and formats.

Module Lessons Preview

In this module, we will study the following topics:

• Why and how does art change?
• How do we describe our thinking about art?
• How does religion influence art and architecture?
• How has art been utilized to foster political beliefs?
• Is art a reflection of its culture or a force to form or shape culture?

Key Terms

In this module, we will study the following key terms:

1. Abstract Expressionism - Abstract Expressionism, also known as the New York School, is the first major American avant-garde movement; Abstract Expressionism emerged in New York City in the 1940s. The artists produced abstract paintings that expressed their state of mind and were intended to strike emotional chords in viewers. The movement developed along two lines: gestural abstraction and chromatic abstraction.
2. Action Painting - Action painting is also called gestural abstraction. The kind of Abstract Expressionism practiced by Jackson Pollock, in which the emphasis was on the creation process, the artist’s gesture in making art. Pollock poured liquid paint in linear webs on his canvases, which were laid out on the floor, thereby physically surrounding himself in the painting during its creation.
3. Analytic Cubism - Analytic Cubism is the first phase of Cubism, developed jointly by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, in which the artists analyzed form from every possible vantage point to combine the various views into one pictorial whole.
4. Avant-garde - Avant-garde is French, for “advance guard” (in a platoon). This term applies to late-19th and 20th century artists who emphasized innovation and challenged established convention in their work. Also used as an adjective.
5. Color Field Painting - Color Field painting is a variant of Post-Painterly Abstraction whose artists sought to reduce painting to its physical essence by pouring diluted paint onto unprimed canvas, allowing these pigments to soak into the fabric.
6. Conceptual Art - Conceptual art is an American avant-garde art movement of the 1960s that asserted that the “artfulness” of art lay in the artist’s idea rather than its final expression.
7. Constructivism - Constructivism is an early-20th-century Russian art movement formulated by Naum Gabo, who built up his sculptures piece by piece in space instead of carving or modeling them in the traditional way. In this way the sculptor worked with “volume of mass” and “volume of space” as different materials.
8. Cubism - Cubism is an early-20th-century art movement that rejected naturalistic depictions, preferring compositions of shapes and forms abstracted from the conventionally perceived world. See also Analytic Cubism and Synthetic Cubism.
9. Dada - Dada is an art movement prompted by a revulsion against the horror of World War I. Dada embraced political anarchy, the irrational, and the intuitive, and the art produced by the Dadaists was characterized by a disdain for convention, often enlivened by humor or whimsy.
10. De Stijl - De Stijl is Dutch, meaning “the style.” It is an early-20th-century art movement (and magazine) founded by Piet Mondrian and Theo van Doesburg, whose members promoted utopian ideals and developed a simplified geometric style.
11. Expressionism - Expressionism is a 20th-century modernist art that is the result of the artist’s unique inner or personal vision and that often has an emotional dimension. Expressionism contrasts with art focused on visually describing the empirical world.
12. Environmental Art - Environmental art is an American art form that emerged in the 1960s. Often using the land itself as their material, Environmental artists construct monuments of great scale and minimal form. Permanent or impermanent, these works transform some section of the environment, calling attention both to the land itself and to the hand of the artist. Sometimes referred to as Earth art or earthworks.
13. Fauvism - Fauvism comes from the French word fauve, “wild beast.” An early-20th-century art movement led by Henri Matisse, for whom color became the formal element most responsible for pictorial coherence and the primary conveyor of meaning.
14. Formalism - Formalism is a strict adherence to, or dependence on, stylized shapes and methods of composition. It is an emphasis on an artwork’s visual elements rather than its subject.
15. Futurism - Futurism is an early-20th-century movement involving a militant group of Italian poets, painters, and sculptors. These artists published numerous manifestos declaring revolution in art against all traditional tastes, values, and styles and championing the modern age of steel and speed and the cleansing virtues of violence and war.
16. German Expressionism - German Expressionism is an early-20th century art movement; German Expressionist works are characterized by bold, vigorous brushwork, emphatic lines, and bright colors. Two important groups of German Expressionists were Die Brücke in Dresden and Der Blaue Reiter in Munich.
17. Happenings - Happenings is a term coined by American artist Allan Kaprow in the 1960s to describe loosely structured performances, whose creators were trying to suggest the aesthetic and dynamic qualities of everyday life; as actions, rather than objects. Happenings incorporate the fourth dimension (time).
18. Harlem Renaissance - The Harlem Renaissance is a particularly fertile period of cultural production for African Americans. During the 1920s and 1930s, African American artists, writers, and musicians celebrated their heritage and culture and redefined artistic forms of expression.
19. Installation - An installation is an artwork that creates an artistic environment in a room or gallery.
20. Minimalism (Minimal art) - Minimalism is a predominantly sculptural American trend of the 1960s whose works consist of a severe reduction of form, oftentimes to single, homogeneous units.
21. Neoplasticism - Neoplasticism is a theory of art developed by Piet Mondrian to create a pure plastic art composed of the simplest, least subjective elements, primary colors, primary values, and primary directions (horizontal and vertical).
22. Performance art - Performance art is an American avant-garde art trend of the 1960s that made time an integral element of art. It produced works in which movements, gestures, and sounds of persons communicating with an audience replace physical objects. Documentary photographs are generally the only evidence remaining after these events.
23. Photomontage - Photomontages are a composition made by pasting together pictures or parts of pictures, especially photographs. See also collage.
24. Pop Art - Pop art is a term coined by British art critic Lawrence Alloway to refer to art, first appearing in the 1950s, that incorporated elements from consumer culture, the mass media, and popular culture, such as images from motion pictures and advertising.
25. Post-Painterly Abstraction - Post-painterly abstraction is an American art movement that emerged in the 1960s and was characterized by a cool, detached rationality emphasizing tighter pictorial control. See also color field painting and hard-edge painting.
26. Postmodernism - Postmodernism is a reaction against modernist formalism, seen as elitist. Far more encompassing and accepting than the more rigid confines of modernist practice, postmodernism offers something for everyone by accommodating a wide range of styles, subjects, and formats, from traditional easel painting to installation and from abstraction to illusionistic scenes. Postmodern art often includes irony or reveals a self-conscious awareness on the part of the artist of the processes of art making or the workings of the art world.
27. Modernism - Modernism is a movement in Western art that developed in the second half of the 19th century and sought to capture the images and sensibilities of the age. Modernist art goes beyond simply dealing with the present and involves the artist’s critical examination of the premises of art itself.
28. Surrealism - Surrealism is a successor to Dadaism; Surrealism incorporated the improvisational nature of its predecessor into its exploration of the ways to express in art the world of dreams and the unconscious. Biomorphic Surrealists, such as Joan Miró, produced largely abstract compositions. Naturalistic Surrealists, notably Salvador Dalí, presented recognizable scenes transformed into a dream or nightmare image.
29. Synthetic Cubism - Synthetic Cubism is a later phase of Cubism, in which paintings and drawings were constructed from objects and shapes cut from paper or other materials to represent parts of a subject, in order to engage the viewer with pictorial issues such as figuration, realism, and abstraction.

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