(LEA3) Art Gallery

Art Gallery

AP Art Gallery

This review has been designed to help you narrow down the most important works of art covered in this Module. It is NOT meant be a replacement for reading the text, but to serve as a supplement. You are responsible for keeping up with the reading in your text as well as provided supplemental readings/websites.

What are the Key Characteristics of German Expressionism?

German Expressionism evolved into two main artistic factions: those who were more socially and politically conscious were accommodated by Die Brücke, while those of a more spiritual nature were drawn towards Der Blaue Reiter.

  1. Aims to reflect the artist's psyche rather than the reality of the outside world.
  2. Expressiveness of style by means of exaggerations and distortions of line and color.
  3. Abandonment of naturalism in favor of a simplified style, which would carry a far greater emotional impact.
  4. Symbolic colors and distorted forms.
  5. Rough brushwork and violent colors in often brutal combination.

What are the Key Characteristics of Cubism?

Two stages: Analytic and Synthetic

  1. Adopted Cezanne's idea that artists used simple geometric shapes to represent nature in art.
  2. Analyze forms from every possible viewpoint and combine views into one pictorial whole.
  3. Paintings and drawings constructed from objects and shapes cut from paper or other materials to represent parts of a subject; could also be painted.
  4. Neutral color schemes.
  5. Splintered shapes, flattened space and geometric blocks of color.

What are the Key Characteristics of Futurism?

  1. A celebration of the machine age.
  2. Especially concerned with expressing movement and the dynamics of natural and man-made form.
  3. Irregular, agitated lines.
  4. Communicates the energy of movement and speed.

What are the Key Characteristics of Dada Art?

  1. Dada had only one rule: Never follow rules.
  2. Dada was intended to provoke an emotional reaction from the viewer (typically shock or outrage).
  3. Dada art is nonsensical.
  4. Abstraction and Expressionism were the main influences on Dada, followed by Cubism and, to a lesser extent, Futurism.
  5. There was no predominant medium in Dadaist art, but assemblage, collage, photomontage and the use of readymade objects gained acceptance due to the influence of Dada.
  6. Dada was directly responsible for Surrealism.

What are the Key Characteristics of Precisionism?

  1. Industrialization and the modernization of the American landscape.
  2. Depiction of industrialization in precise, sharply defined, geometrical forms.
  3. Themes are strictly American and tried to avoid European artistic influences.

What are the Key Characteristics of Surrealism?

  1. Cubist Realism.
  2. Emphasis was on accessing the unconscious, as viewed by psychiatrist Sigmund Freud.
  3. Automatic drawing - discards the conscious production of art and would instead rely on the unconscious for inspiration in art.
  4. Dream imagery - "beyond reality."
  5. Topics and shapes are presented in small forms in comparison to the huge background of reality in order to let the observer feel that he is in a world of infinity, dreams, and imagination.
  6. Biomorphic shapes and abstract simplification. (Klee)
  7. High degrees of realism with juxtapositions of time, place, and iconography. (Dali, Magritte)

What are the Key Characteristics of Constructivism?

  1. Non-objective paintings based on geometric shapes.
  2. Use of industrial materials such as sheet metal and glass.
  3. Rejection of "art for art's sake." Art is used as an instrument for social purposes.

What are the Key Characteristics of De Stijl?

  1. Pure abstraction.
  2. Reducing art to the bare essentials: form and color.
  3. Emphasis on vertical and horizontal directions.
  4. Use of primary colors of red, blue and yellow along with black and white.

What are the Key Characteristics of the International Style?

  1. A radical simplification of form.
  2. The rejection of ornamentation.
  3. The adoption of glass, steel and concrete as preferred materials.
  4. Form follows function.

Later 20th Century Art

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.

The Art World's Focus Shifts West

The art world also changed as the center of Western art shifted from Paris to New York.

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.

Postmodern Art

Influenced by the civil rights movement, feminist movement, Vietnam and Watergate, counter cultures, sexual revolution, computer age, challenges to traditions/hierarchies/powers, multi-culturism, and egalitarianism.

  • Interest in....
    • neglected others (women, blacks, Hispanics, etc.)
    • other places (Third World nations, regional art)
    • underprivileged media (fabrics, photography, video, advertising, etc.)
  • Emphasis on...
    • cultural conditions
    • displacing in the process traditional concepts of originality, quality, and meaning

Review the Later Europe and Americas Part III works in the Art Gallery presentation below.

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