Modern Art

Question 1

Modern Art 1900-1920

Answer 1

1. photography replaced painting totally in the faithful reproduction of reality
2. value of art -> creativity and originality
3. artists were united by an attitude, not by style
   — avant-garde -> standing at the most advanced position
   — age of “-ism” -> transgressing limits of established art forms
4. major approaches to artistic creations
   — turned to exotic cultures for inspirations
   — explored machine aesthetic - total trust in technology
   — explored formal qualities of art through abstraction

Question 1

Major current (1900-1920)

Answer 1

1. fauvism (1905-10) paris
2. cubism (1908-1914) paris
3. german expressionism (1905-1917)
4. futurism (1910-1914) italy

Question 2

Fauvism

Answer 2

1. Les Fauves - the wild beast
   — in an independent exhibition of 1905, an art critic commented on a Neo-Renaissance sculpture surrounded by boldly coloured, violently brushed canvases as “Donatello among the wild beasts!”
2. returned to the purity of artistic means, namely colour and form
3. a bold release of internal feelings in order to awake the viewer’s emotions
4. colour - became expressive and structural, emancipated from its role of describing physical reality
5. juxtaposition of unblended “savage colours” to create clashing, shocking effect to communicate the artist’s emotion directly
6. form - stylized and abstract, learnt from exotic art, especially african

Question 3

Henri Matisse

Answer 3

1. Fauvism
2. early works in conservative academic style
3. befriended paul Signac and adopted the pointillist technique and a bright colour palette
4. started the first avant-garde movement of 20thc with bright colours and energetic brushwork
5. other fauvism artists
   — andre derain
   — maurice de vlaminck
   — kees van dongen

Question 4

Henri Matisse - Woman with a hat

Answer 4

1. sitter: the painter’s wife, Amelie matisse, in a rather conventional composition
2. complete freedom in the use of colour and brushstrokes
3. colour - not to imitate the nature, but produce a reactionin the viewer
4. juxtaposition of patches and splotches of colour - arbitrary but powerful
5. references from an african sculpture
   — Mask of the Dan tribe
   — Matisse collected African sculpture and got inspirations from exotic art for his works
   — emphasizes liftings and contours of the physiognomic features of the figure - leading to further simplification and abstraction

Question 5

Henri Matisse - Le Bonheur de Vivre (Joy of Life)

Answer 5

1. an arcadian theme drawing inspirations from classical art, prehistoric cave paintings, Persian painting(colour) and African sculpture (exaggerated limbs and body curves)
2. content - a utopian landscape with things conceived independently but arranged together arbitrarily
3. composition
   — ingres on the left
   — greek art - folk dance group; 9 muses in the middle
   — reclining venuses in middle
   — cave painting in left
   — titan in lower right corner
4. details
   — lines -> fluid lines, create a curvilinear rhythm
   — from -> powerful plasticity of forms, exaggeration of breasts and buttocks (African influence)
   — colour - intense, brillant colour taken fromPersian art and Neo + Post Impressionism

Question 6

henri Matisse - Harmony in Red (The Dessert)

Answer 6

1. flatness of space - table has no edge
2. ambiguity of “real” objects and decorative pattern blended with a single unmodulated area of red
3. arabesques of plant forms - from an islamic carpet in matisse’s collections

Question 7

Cubism

Answer 7

1. complete dismissal of pictorial illusionism
2. based on Cezanne’s analysis of form, Cubists dissected objects and disintegrated geometric forms into fragments, and then recomposed them with overlapping, juxtaposing and interlocking planes and lines to create a new reality/solidity
3. artists
   — pablo picasso
   — georges braque

Question 8

Pablo Picasso

Answer 8

1. Cubism
2. childhood - learnt art from his father, an art teacher
3. 1895 - went to Barcelona’s school of fine arts
4. 1897 - stayed in Madrid, learnt from collection of Pardo museum
5. 1900 - stayed in Paris, suffered from Poverty
6. 1901-04 - Blue Period
7. 1905-06 - Rose Period, influenced by Matisse, started to collect African sculpture
8. 1908 - started Analytic cubism with Georges Braque
9. 1912 - started Synthetic Cubism, created collage
10. late 1920s began surrealist period

Question 9

Pablo Picasso - La Vie (Life)

Answer 9

1.gloomy painting of his blue period
2. expresses human misery, hunger and cold, death of a good friend, hardships he experienced as he was trying to establish himself
3. right - adam and eve
left - virgin and child

Question 10

Pablo Picasso - family of Saltimbanques

Answer 10

1. acrobatic performers depicted during moments of rest or quiet contemplation
2. favourite subject of his Rose Period

Question 11

Pablo Picasso - Les Demoiselles d’Avignon

Answer 11

1. 5 prostitutes in a brothel in Barcelona’s red light district, Avignon street
2. african-influence period
3. Egyptian art, classical beauty, african masks, multiple perspective

Question 12

Pablo Picasso - Medical student, sailot and five nudes in a Bordello (study for les demoiselles d’avignon)

Answer 12

1. earlier version including 2 men and 5 female nudes with still life
2. in the final painting, picasso reduced the number of figures to focus on the space - jagged planes of drapery and empty space

Question 13

Primitivism in Picasso’s art

Answer 13

1. example of an Iberian sculpture
   — use of features of per-roman iberian (spain and portugal)
   — sculpture - big almond-shaped eyes, triangular nose, elongated decorative ears
   — established a connection with his racial rotos
2. Primitivism - an attitude to liberate art from its western tradition and adopt stylistic elements of tribal objects and other non-western art forms
3. goddess Hathor and King Sety I
   — in egyptian art, figures are represented in multiple perspective
   — head and feet - in profile
   — eye and torso - frontal
4. examples of African sculpture, figures with nails, figure of a male ancestor
   — disproportioned
   — powerful, curvilinear rhythm
   — exorcist function in their culture

Question 14

Pablo Picasso - Ambroise Vollard

Answer 14

1. belongs to “analytic cubism” (1901-1911)
2. forms are analyzed, broken down and merged again on different perspectival planes arranged in grids and diagonals
3. Femme Isant by Georges Beaque
   — originator or co-founder of Analytic Cubism

Question 15

Pablo Picasso - still life with chair caning

Answer 15

1. collage - belongs to “synthetic cubism” (1912-1914)
2. painting is used to create illusory real objects and real objects are used to created illusions
   — imitation of newspaper fragments
   — a real rope to imitate metalwork of a tray
   — oilcloth with print
   — cubist objects

Question 16

Pablo Picasso - large nude in red armchair

Answer 16

1. belongs to his “surrealistic period”
2. distortion of the human body to express violence and anxiety
3. figure - hysterically screaming, in extreme agony
4. a psychoanalytic picture of his troubled marriage with Olga Koklova

Question 17

Pablo Picasso - Guernica

Answer 17

1. title - a town destroyed during the spanish civil war
2. horse and bull - life vs death republicans vs fascists
3. has features of both cubism and surrealism