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ART IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE

TWENTIETH CENTURY:

EXPRESSIONISM-

NEO-PLASTICISM (De Stijl)- SURREALISM

Week 7

ExpressionismIn Germany, a group known as Expressionists insisted art should express the artists feelings rather

than images of the real world. The belief that the artist could directly convey some kind of inner

feeling- - emotional or spiritual- - through art was a fashionable idea in German artistic and intellectual

circles at the beginning of the twentieth century. Artists had been encouraged to ‗break free‘ from

civilized constraints and Academic conventions and somehow express themselves more freely; these

ideas are fundamental to what we call German ‗Expressionist‘ art.

From 1905 to 1930, Expressionism the use of distorted, exaggerated forms and colors for emotional

impact dominated German art.

This subjective trend, which is the foundation of much twentieth century art, began with Van Gogh,

Gauguin and Munch in the late nineteenth century, and continued with Belgian painter James Ensor

(1860-1849), and Austrian painters Gustav Klimt (1862-1918), Egon Schiele (1890- 1918), and Oscar

Kokoschka (1886-1980).

But it was in Germany, with two separate groups Die Brücke and Der Blaue Reiter, the Expressionism

reached maturity.

Die Brücke: Founded in 1905 by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880- 1938)

Der Blaue Reiter: Founded in Munich around 1911 by Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944).

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DIE BRÜCKE (BRIDGE): BRIDGING THE GAP

• Die Brücke founded by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880- 1938)

in 1905.

• The aim was to seize avantgarde spirit.

• Members believed their work would be a ―bridge‖ to the

future.

• Its credo is: ―to attract all revolutionary and fermenting

elements is the purpose implied in the name Brücke.‖

• Dissolved in 1913

• Artists lived and worked communally, first in Dresden then in

Berlin, producing intense anguished pictures with harshly

distorted forms and clashing colors.

• Their major contribution was a revival to the graphic arts,

especially woodcut.

• Their major subject was the sickness of the soul.

• The means to express this sickness were dramatic

arrangement of black and white contrasts, crude forms,

and jagged (çentikli) lines in woodcuts.

• Members include Ernst Ludwig

Kirchner (1880–1938), Erich

Heckel (1883–1970), and Emil

Nolde (1867–1956).

• Unlike the French avant-garde,

Expressionists privilege the artist's

inner emotional state, focusing

on the anxieties of modern life

and taboo subjects such as

sexuality, expressed in bright,

unnatural colors and

distorted forms.

Die Brücke artists attempt to challenge or rework the constrictions of the culture in which they lived:

Influence of Friedrich Nietzsche: Existentialist philosopher who challenged bourgeois norms of

aesthetics, religion, etc., urged the creative power of the individual in forms of expression and meaning

(writings span c. 1870 and 1880s). For Nietzsche ‗modernity‘ (the modern world) was decadent (çökmüş)

and needed to be overcome by the creative individual.

Notion of the ‗Obermensch‘ (‗Superman‘) who has overcome the powers of decadence.

Note: Nietzsche addresses his remarks solely to men, whom he sees as agents of cultural change.

Die Brücke probably took their name from Nietzsche‘s Also Sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spoke Zarathustra) in

which he writes of man‘s spirit as the bridge to freedom.

The Brücke associated rebellion against bourgeois commercial values with the ‗primitive‘.

‗Expressionist‘ meant:

crude unfinished brushwork,

distorted colors and forms,

sense of the artist‘s genuine physical and emotional involvement with both the

subject and the medium,

rejection of sophistication in favor of achieving a ‗direct‘ expression.

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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Marzella (1909–10)

In 1905, Kirchner, along with Bleyl and two other architecture students,

Karl Schmidt-Rottluff and Erich Heckel, founded the artists group Die

Brücke ("The Bridge"). From then on, he committed himself to art. The

group aimed to eschew the prevalent traditional academic style and find

a new mode of artistic expression, which would form a bridge

(hence the name) between the past and the present.They responded

both to past artists, as well as contemporary international avant-garde

movements.As part of the affirmation of their national heritage, they

revived older media, particularly woodcut prints.

Their group was one of the seminal

ones, which in due course had a

major impact on the evolution of

modern art in the 20th century and

created the style of Expressionism.

The group met initially in Kirchner's

first studio. Bleyl described it as:

―that of a real bohemian, full of paintings lying

all over the place, drawings, books and

artist‘s materials — much more like an artist‘s

romantic lodgings than the home of a well-

organised architecture student.‖

Street, Berlin (1913), one of a series on this

theme, depicting prostitutes

Commentary on contemporary urban

life and its institutions as decadent,

Berlin street scenes with their dandies

and prostitutes, images of the modern

city as the source of the consumption of

human souls and fermentation of

anxiety

Self-Portrait as a Soldier (1915)

The group composed a manifesto (mostly Kirchner's

work) in 1906, which was carved on wood and asserted

a new generation, "who want freedom in our work

and in our lives, independence from older,

established forces.‖ They continued:

‗With faith in progress and in a new generation of

creators and spectators we call together all

youth. As youth, we carry the future, and want

to create for ourselves freedom of life and of

movement against the long-established older

forces. We claim as our own everyone who

reproduces that which drives him to creation with

directness and authenticity.‘

Kirchner. Self-Portrait with Model. 1910

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The ‗modernity‘ of Kirchner‘s paintings also defined by

their overt sexuality, which was seen as part of free self-

expression. Bourgeois culture viewed the open sexuality

of prostitutes, dancers, etc. as deviant and decadent. This

was compounded by Kirchner‘s (and others) association of

‗natural‘ sexuality with African culture. Kirchner used

African models in his studio.

Kirchner. Bathers at Moritzburg. 1909

Kirchner. Nude. c. 1910

The affinity between ideas of :

nature/female versus culture/male

Kirchner. Self-Portrait as Soldier. 1915

•general disillusionment with the war common

amongst avant-garde groups as a direct result of

the decadence of bourgeois society

THE ‗PRIMITIVE‘:

• the idea of the ‗barbarian‘ or the ‗primitive‘

• an idea which would have a lasting presence in

modernist discourse

• connotations of untamed, direct expression, as

opposed to a ‗civilized‘ Westernism.

CRITICISM OF MODERN LIFE,

RETURN BACK TO ‗PRIMITIVE‘

Portrait of a Man (Männerbildnis) (1919).

Erich Heckel (German, 1883-1970)

Woodcut, composition: (46.2 x 32.4 cm);

sheet (irreg.): (61.6 x 50.8 cm).

After seeing the Futurist exhibition in April 1912,

Heckel's style became Prismatic, organized in a

series of triangular planes.

His specialty was interior scenes that

express melancholy and loneliness.

His subjects are usually outsiders like circus

performers and madmen in anxious or fearful

situations.

•The idea that the true Expressionist artist was spontaneous

(unhampered by the weight of tradition and propriety); then

he could access his true inner feelings and responses.

•German Expressionism often associated with the idea of the

‗primitive‘, in the sense that the ‗primitive‘ was considered to

be closer to unmediated expression and more ‗authentic‘

than the civilized.

•Also the idea of ‗nature/culture‘, with ‗nature‘ being direct,

unfettered, instinctual, non-intellectual, anti-civilized, and

‗culture‘ being civilization, rationality, repression.

•The primitive was particularly worked out in representations

of the ‗other‘ ie. Africans, Polynesians etc. and in

‗Woman‘.

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At the same time he celebrated the spirit of

paganism in a pair of highly charged, Dionysian

dance scenes: Dance around the Golden Calf

(1910) and Candle Dancers (1912). Emil Nolde.

PROPHET

Woodcut. 1912.

Signed in pencil lower right Emil Nolde. On firm wove

paper. One of the icons of German Expressionist

printmaking. A particularly well-balanced printed

impression.

Size : 320 x 225 mm (406 x 336 mm)

Until 1912 he exhibited alongside other rejected

artists in the Neue Sezession in Berlin. He also

produced woodcuts of religious subjects (e.g.

Prophet, 1912; Seebüll, Stift. Nolde).

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SCHIFFE

Woodcut. 1906.

Signed in pencil lower right and dated Emil Nolde 06.

Brilliant, deep black impression, on chamois laid paper.

Scarce.

Size: 297 x 202 mm (364 x 233 mm)

Portrait of a Young Woman and a Child

Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russia

Portrait of a Man, ca.1926 Portrait of a Young Girl, 1913-14

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Wassily Kandinsky

• The Russian-born artist Wassily Kandinsky moved to Munich to study painting in 1896.

• There, he became one of the founding members of Der Blaue Reiter ("The Blue Rider"), a loose association of

artists formed in 1911 to promote a new art, one that would reject the materialist world in favor of the world of

emotion and the spirit.

• In accordance with his belief in the primacy of the inner, spiritual world, Kandinsky's art was abstract, meant to

express our preconscious selves, before the intervention of reason.

• By dematerializing the external appearance of his subject, without eliminating all visual reference to it, he could

reveal the subject's essence.

• Kandinsky often used musical terminology to describe his work, and in the subtitle of this painting, the word

improvisation suggests "a largely unconscious, spontaneous expression of inner character, the

nonmaterial nature."

DER BLAUE REITER (BLUE RIDER): COLOR ALONE

• A break through to pure abstraction.

• Dissolved in 1914

• Most outstanding artists of the group were:

– Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944), and Paul Klee (1879-1940).

The Garden of Love (Improvisation Number 27), 1912

Wassily Kandinsky (French, born Russia, 1866–1944)Oil on canvas 47 3/8 x 55 1/4 in. (120.3 x 140.3 cm)

The specific source for the

imagery in The Garden of

Love is most likely the

biblical story of Paradise

and the Garden of Eden, one

of several Old and New

Testament themes addressed

by the artist. The imaginary

landscape revolves around a

large yellow sun in the

center of the composition,

which pulses with rays of red.

The garden is occupied by

three abstract pairs of

embracing figures: a reclining

couple above the sun,

another at the lower right,

and a third, smaller pair

seated at the left.

Surrounding them are several

animals—certainly a snake

and perhaps a grazing horse

and sleeping dog. Kandinsky,

who was a master

watercolorist, successfully

achieved a similar effect in

this oil painting.

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The composition of Small

Pleasures is centered round two

hills, each crowned by a

citadel.

On the right-hand side is a boat

with three oars which is riding a

storm under a forbidding black

cloud.

A fiery sun flashes out wheels of

color.

The actual interpretation of these

elements has been the subject of

much controversy.

In an unpublished essay on the

painting written by Kandinsky in

June 1913, Kandinsky writes of

the 'joyfulness' of execution.

It is legitimate to see the work as

a celebration of Kandinsky's style

during this period, as affirming

the spiritual and practical

pleasures he manifestly derived

from painting; he speaks of

'pouring a lot of small

pleasures on to the canvas'.

Small Pleasures , 1913;

Oil on canvas, 110 x 120.6 cm

While giving the impression of

heavenly chaos, Small Pleasures

is obviously not the product of

pure spontaneity. The various

modes of paint application, and

the complexity of pigment

selection and mixing are

enormous. The way colors are

washed and blurred together, and

seldom contained by bounding

lines is typical of Kandinsky's

work at this time.

The predominantly curvilinear

aspect of the work, however, is

undermined by the angular

geometry of the citadel,

perhaps presaging Kandinsky's

Bauhaus style.

There are few monochrome

patches in the composition,

underlining the local scale of

execution, and part of

Kandinsky's pleasure in the work

was his reflection on a number of

minor technical achievements.

Small Pleasures , 1913;

Oil on canvas, 110 x 120.6 cm

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• Kandinsky, himself an accomplished

musician, once said ―Color is the

keyboard, the eyes are the harmonies, the

soul is the piano with many strings. The

artist is the hand that plays, touching one

key or another, to cause vibrations in the

soul.‖

• The concept that color and musical

harmony are linked has a long history,

intriguing scientists such as Sir Isaac

Newton.

• Kandinsky used color in a highly

theoretical way associating tone with

timbre (the sound's character), hue with

pitch, and saturation with the volume of

sound.

• He even claimed that when he saw color

he heard music.

Contrasting Sounds1924; Oil on cardboard, 70x49.5cm; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris

Composition VIII , 1923; Oil on canvas, 140 x 201 cm; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

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Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944)Transverse Line, 1923

141 x 202 cm Oil on canvas

Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Dusseldorf

Franz Marc

• Franz Marc was a pioneer in the birth of

abstract art at the beginning of the

twentieth-century.

• The Blaue Reiter group put forth a new

program for art based on exuberant (bol)

color and on profoundly felt emotional and

spiritual states.

• It was Marc's particular contribution to

introduce paradisiacal imagery that had as

its dramatis personae a collection of

animals, most notably a group of heroic

horses.

Deer in the Woods II , 1912 ; Oil on canvas, 110.5 x 80.5 cm;

Stadtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich

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Fighting Forms , 1914Oil on canvas, 91 x 131 cm; Staatsgalerie moderner Kunst, Munich

Paul Klee

• Swiss painter, draughtsman,

printmaker, teacher and writer.

• Klee‘s work forms a major

contribution to the history of 20th-

century art.

• He is associated most commonly

with the Bauhaus school in

Weimar and Dessau. He is

regarded as a major theoretician

among modern artists and as a

master of humor and mystery.

• In much of his work, he aspired to

achieve a naive and untutored

quality, but his art is also among

the most cerebral of any of the

20th century. Klee‘s wide-ranging

intellectual curiosity is evident in

an art profoundly informed by

structures and themes drawn

from music, nature and poetry.

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• Klee was born on December 18, 1879, in Switzerland, the second child of Hans Klee, a German music teacher,

and a Swiss mother. His training as a painter began in 1898 when he studied drawing and painting in Munich for

three years.

• By 1911, he had returned to that city, where he became involved with the German Expressionist group Der

Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider), founded by Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc in 1911.

• Klee and Kandinsky became lifelong friends, and the support of the older painter provided much-needed

encouragement.

• Until then, Klee had worked in relative isolation, experimenting with various styles and media, such as making

caricatures and Symbolist drawings, and later producing small works on paper mainly in black and white. His

work was also influenced by the Cubism of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, and the abstract

translucent color planes of Robert Delaunay.

• aKlee was one of the many modernist artists who wanted to practice what he called "the pure cultivation of the

means" of painting—in other words, to use line,

shape, and color for their own sake rather than to

describe something visible. That priority freed him

to create images dealing less with perception than

with thought, so that the bird in this picture seems

to fly not in front of the cat's forehead but inside it–the

bird is literally on the cat's mind. Stressing this point

by making the cat all head, Klee concentrates on

thought, fantasy, appetite, the hungers of the

brain. One of his aims as an artist, he said, was to

"make secret visions visible."

In 1914, Klee visited Tunisia. The

experience was the turning point in

his life and career. The limpid (duru)

light of North Africa awakened his

sense of color. During his stay, Klee

gradually detached color from

physical description and used it

independently, which gave him the

final needed push toward

abstraction.

The view of the mosque in

Hammamet with Its Mosque (1914)

demonstrates Klee's path toward

abstraction.

Hammamet with Its Mosque, 1914

Paul Klee (German, born Switzerland, 1879–1940)

Watercolor and pencil on paper

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He was so overwhelmed by the

intense light in Tunisia that he

wrote:

"Color has taken

possession of me; no

longer do I have to chase

(peşine düşmek) after it, I

know that it has hold of me

forever. That is the

significance of this blessed

moment. Color and I are

one. I am a painter."

After Tunisia , he built up

compositions of colored

squares that have the radiance

of the mosaics he saw on his

Italian sojourn. The watercolor

Red and White Domes (1914;

Collection of Clifford Odets, New

York City) is distinctive of this

period.

Red and White Domes , 1914; Watercolor and body color on Japanese, vellum

mounted on cardboard, 14.6 x 13.7 cm;

Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Dusseldorf

By 1915, he had turned his back to nature and never again painted after the model. With

abstracted forms and merry symbols, he expressed the most diverse subjects drawn from his

imagination , poetry, music, literature , and his reaction to the world around him.

Miraculous Landing, or the "112!", 1920

Paul Klee (German, 1879–1940)Watercolor, transferred printing ink, pen, and ink on paper

A boat of the type of Noah's Ark—the "112"—is moored to a boathouse. The

face of the girl in the left window is expressionless; her eyes are closed.

Perhaps this "miraculous landing" exists only in her imagination.

Tale à la Hoffmann, 1921Watercolor, pencil, and transferred printing ink on paper, bordered with metallic foil

The abstraction of the Hoffman‘s story ―Golden Pot‖ written in 1814.

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Abstract Trio, 1923, Paul Klee (German, 1879–1940) –the three forms might represent the abstract sound patterns of three voices or three instruments. An

accomplished violinist himself, music played a great role in Klee's life. His favorite composers were Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven. (Watercolor and transferred

printing ink on paper, bordered with gouache and ink)

His subjects reveal his impish humor and his

bent toward the fantastic and the meditative.

Always preoccupied with the ring of words,

titles played a major part in his work.

Whether ironic, poetic, irreverent, deadpan,

flippant, or melancholic, his titles set up the

perspectives from which he wanted the

works to be seen.

Adam and Little Eve, 1921

In this watercolor, Klee somewhat expanded the story of the creation of man. His

Eve, after growing from Adam's rib, stays right there. She also remains a child.

Evchen ("Little Eve") looks like a schoolgirl with flaxen hair tied in a braid. Adam is

a broad-faced, grown man who sports earrings and a mustache. By placing the

figures against a shallow ground with a reddish curtain, Klee seems to set the

oddly matched pair on a puppet-theater stage.

Ghost Chamber with the Tall

Door (New Version), 1925

In the early 1920s, Klee painted

a series of ghost chambers with

eerie lines of perspective that

reduce everything to skeletal

transparency. As Klee rarely

used perspective, he applied it

in these works—always

interiors—solely to show its

delusive (aldatıcı) effects, a

theory he relayed to his

students in his Bauhaus

lectures on the subject in

November 1921. He

demonstrates that perspective

can be playful in this watercolor

of an orange room cluttered with

black wire utensils and with a tall

violet door from which seemingly

radiate the black perspectival

lines.

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In 1920, Walter Gropius invited Klee to join

the faculty of the Bauhaus. A school of

architecture and industrial design operating

first in Weimar (1919–25) and then Dessau

(1925–32), it also included the study of arts

and crafts. Nearly half of Klee's some 10,000

works (mainly small-scale watercolors and

drawings on paper) were produced during the

ten years he taught at the Bauhaus, and they

vary widely. Some relate to the subject of his

courses, to his preoccupation with the

relationship of colors, such as Static-Dynamic

Gradation, produced in 1923.

Static-Dynamic Gradation, 1923

Paul Klee (German, 1879–1940)

While teaching at the Bauhaus, first in Weimar (1919–25)

and then in Dessau (1925–32), Klee created many works

that related to the subject of his courses. This watercolor

reflects the artist's preoccupation with color relationships.

Here, outer dark colors surround pure luminous ones in the

center. In this work Klee devised a systematic movement,

progressing from dark-hued brownish squares, which he

dubbed "static," toward the clear-colored ones, which he

called "dynamic" by virtue of the contrasts they offer.

In the same year, Klee painted Ventriloquist

and Crier in the Moor, which, with its humor

and grotesque fantasy, may strike many

viewers as the quintessential (en

mükemmel örneği) "Klee."

Ventriloquist (vantrilok) and Crier in the Moor,

1923

Paul Klee (German, 1879–1940)

Watercolor and transferred printing ink on paper,

bordered with ink 15 1/4 x 11 in. (38.7 x 27.9 cm)

Imaginary beasts float within a transparent

ventriloquist who appears to be all belly—except,

of course, for a pair of legs, tiny arms, and a sort of

head without a mouth. The little creatures inside

the ventriloquist might symbolize the odd noises

and voices that seem to emanate from him. The

moor is indicated by the background grid of warm

earth colors that turns dark toward the center and

against which the figure, as part of this grid, stands

out like a light-colored bubble in clear reds and

blues. As if attracted by the animal sounds above

him, a stray fish is about to enter a net dangling

from the lower part of the ventriloquist's anatomy—

perhaps to join the menagerie within.

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The cat is watchful, frighteningly so, but it is also calm, and Klee's palette too is calm, in a narrow range

from tawny to rose with zones of bluish green. This and the suggestion of a child's drawing lighten the air.

Believing that children were close to the sources of creativity, Klee was fascinated by their art, and

evokes it here through simple lines and shapes: ovals for the cat's eyes and pupils (and, more loosely, for

the bird's body), triangles for its ears and nose. And the tip of that nose is a red heart, a sign of the cat's

desire.

Cat and Bird

Paul Klee (German, born Switzerland. 1879-1940)

1928. Oil and ink on gessoed canvas, mounted on wood, (38.1 x 53.2 cm).

Highway and Byways , 1929; Oil on canvas, 32 5/8 x 26 3/8 in; Collection Christoph and Andreas Vowinckel

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Clarification, 1932

Paul KleeOil on canvas (70.5 x 96.2 cm)

In October 1931, Klee began teaching

at the Düsseldorf Academy. He felt

much at ease in that city, his well-being

reflected in his adaptation of a

pointillistic, loose mosaic style.

But Klee's merry "Pointillism" was

different from the method of Georges

Seurat and his followers, who broke

down the imagery of their paintings into

tiny dots of pure color.

Klee's works, rather, seem "built up"

with row upon row of blocklike units

of color chosen without regard to

optical laws.

In Clarification, due to the very small

size of the dots of color, the

foreground turns into a transparent

screen through which the

background is visible.

Klee divided the ground into large

areas of buff and grays, over which

he drew the brown geometric design

and the green crescent.

Then he covered the entire surface

with thousands of tiny color dots in

even horizontal rows.

Klee believed that: nature

was characterized by the

permutation (değişim) and

movement of fundamental

units of construction.

He wanted to achieve an

equivalent way of working in

painting. In addition to his

interest in the natural world,

interested also in the

theories of both color and

music, Klee worked on the

basis of units of construction

taken from nature.

Klee tried to create linear improvisations which he likened to the melody of the work. Klee evolved a system of

color organization in which all the colors of the spectrum were conceived of as moving around a

central axis dominated by the three pigmentary colors - red, yellow and blue.

From 1923 Klee created a series of imaginative color constructions which he called 'magic squares' in which he applied

his theories. This series came to a conclusion in 1932 with Ad Parnassum.

Ad Parnassum, 1932;Oil on canvas, 100 x 126 cm

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Detail...

Klee‘s imaginative color constructions

are named as 'magic squares' by him.

The end of this series was 1932 Ad

Parnassum:

Klee likened each element in the

painting to a theme in a polyphonic (çok

sesli) composition.

He defined polyphony as 'the

simultaneity of several independent

themes'.

In addition, each artistic element in Ad

Parnassum is itself a distillation of

several ideas and personal

experiences.

For example, the graphic element

illustrates the gate to Mount Parnassus,

the home of Apollo and the Muses, and

also may refer to the Pyramids which

Klee saw in 1928, and to a mountain

near Klee's home.

From 1931 to December 1933, Klee taught at the Academy of Fine Arts in Düsseldorf. When the

National Socialists declared his art "degenerate" in 1933, Klee returned to his native Bern.

Personal hardship and the increasing gravity of the political situation in Europe are reflected in the

somber (kasvetli) tone of his late work. Lines turn into black bars, forms become broad and

generalized, scale larger, and colors simpler, as in Comedians' Handbill (1938) or Angel Applicant

(1939).

Comedians' Handbill, 1938

In tune with the motto "the medium

is the message," Klee designed this

handbill on a sheet of newspaper

that he had covered with caramel-

colored gouache. Correcting here

and there the figures' contours, he

filled the spaces between them with

bone-colored gouache. Touches of

white and pink gouache add

animation.

Angel Applicant, 1939

It seems doubtful that this angel

applicant, resembling the offspring of

a bulldog and a Halloween mask,

will ever reach heaven.

Here in these thick-stemmed, black pictographs, Klee makes his

abbreviated black figures from the previous year even thicker. Leaping

into our vision as boldly as an advertisement, these signs symbolize

syncopated movement, frolicking creatures, and stick figures.

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De Stijl (1917-1931)• While German Expressionists wallowed in fear, a Dutch group of Modernists led by painter Piet

Mondrian (1872-1944) tried to eliminate emotion from art.

• Called De Stijl, which means ―The Style,‖ this movement of artists and architects advocated a severe art of

pure geometry.

• Among those associated with De Stijl were:

– the architects: Rietveld, Oud, van t‘Hoff and van Eesteren

– the painters: Mondrian , Vander Leck, and Huzsar

– and the sculptor, Vantongerloo.

• De Stijl was one of the formative factors in the developments of ‗twenties and ‗thirties in

architecture, product and graphic design, and in painting and sculpture.

• De Stijl is an international and Dutch phenomenon related to Art Nouveau, Cubism, Futurism,

Constructivism and the Bauhaus.

Mondrian‘s most famous works are his

paintings made up of pure red, yellow, and blue,

as well as black and white, but for a while he

used shades of gray as well, and even his lines

were dark gray instead of pure black.

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Piet Mondrian: Harmony of Opposites

The goal: ―to create a precise, mechanical order , lacking in the natural world.‖

LINING UP: Mondrian based his style on lines and rectangles. Theorizing that straight lines do not exist in

nature, he decided to use straight lines exclusively to create an art of harmony and order — qualities

conspicuously missing from the world.

When De Stijl was transferred to architecture, it would supposedly bring all chaotic forces into line, achieving a

balance of opposites as in the Cross. For Mondrian,

- Vertical lines represent vitality

- Horizontal lines represent tranquility.

- The point where two lines crossed in right angle was

the point of ―dynamic equilibrium.‖

Piet Mondrian was the main creator and the most important proponent of geometric abstract language in

Holland. Along with other members of the De Stijl group, Mondrian's work was intended to convey "absolute

reality," construed as the world of pure geometric forms underlying all existence and related according to the

vertical-horizontal principle of straight lines and pure spectral colors.

Intention: to convey ―absolute reality‖→ the world of pure → the vertical-horizontal

geometric forms principle of straight lines

and pure spectral colors.

Mondrian termed his geometric style, as "Neoplasticism.‖ He further developed this style between 1915 and

1920. In 1920, he published his manifesto "Le Néoplasticisme" and for the next two-and-a-half decades, he

continued to work in his characteristic geometric style. His style:

eliminated all references to the real world, and

posited on the geometric division of the canvas through black vertical and horizontal lines of varied

thickness, complemented by blocks of primary colors, particularly blue, red, and yellow.

Similar compositional principles underlie the work

of the De Stijl artists, who applied them with slight

formal modifications to achieve their independent,

personal expression.

Mondrian‘s most famous works are his

paintings made up of pure red, yellow, and blue,

as well as black and white, but for a while he

used shades of gray as well, and even his lines

were dark gray instead of pure black.

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Over time, though, his artwork became cleaner and

more simple.

Strong fields of color dominated his paintings,

separated by thick black lines and sections of pure

white.

Then white itself became the focus, along with

a judicious use of accent colors (still primaries,

however) and the same black lines to break up

the space.

Composition with Red, Yellow and

Blue, 1921, by Piet Mondrian

This is Mondrian's expression of

going back to basics: vertical and

horizontal lines and only the three

basic colors.

Here, Mondrian painted

smaller squares of color in

between a few of his double

lines, without any black

bounding their edges.

And although it might not

jump off the screen to us,

unbounded color was a

serious departure for

Mondrian, indicating a big

change of direction for him.

Mondrian then began

experimenting with double and

triple lines, crisscrossing his

canvases with more black than

ever before. That

experimentation eventually led to

a major adjustment on his part—

do you see anything different in

the next painting?

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22

It actually culminated in Mondrian‘s last

and greatest works, which he made

near the end of his life after moving to

New York.

Trafalgar Square, by Piet Mondrian

vertical and horizontal lines and only

the three basic colors, but this time

there is also unbounded fields of

color.

Escaping to New York after the start of

World War II, Mondrian delighted in

the city's architecture, and, an adept

dancer, was fascinated by American

jazz, particularly boogie–woogie. He

saw the syncopated beat, irreverent

approach to melody, and

improvisational aesthetic of boogie–

woogie as akin to his own "destruction

of natural appearance; and construction

through continuous opposition of pure

means— dynamic rhythm."

Broadway Boogie WoogiePiet Mondrian (Dutch, 1872-1944)1942-43. Oil on canvas, 50 x 50" (127 x 127 cm). Given anonymously

As you can see, Mondrian completely

emptied his canvas of any black lines,

using instead squares of pure color to

separate and delineate the larger blocks of

white in the painting.

It would have been interesting to see

Mondrian‘s style continue to evolve,

especially since he‘d just made such a big

stylistic change—but unfortunately he died

shortly after completing Broadway Boogie

Woogie, in 1944.

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Revision: De Stijl and Mondrian

De Stijl: “The Style”• The major contribution of De Stijl to art was its

derive towards absolute abstraction, without any

reference whatsoever to objects in nature.

• The goal was to ―create a precise, mechanical

order lacking in the natural world.‖

• The elements of the Modern world was abstracted

to the intersecting mesh of vertical and

horizontal lines and planes, dyed in primary

colors.

• This style was an advocation toward a severe art of

pure geometry.

• When De Stijl was transferred to architecture, it

brought all the two dimensional meshing system

into a three-dimensionality, forming a chaotic

togetherness of 2D Neoplasticism with 3D

identically systematized mesh.

Mondrian: Neoplasticism• For Mondrian, ―Art systematically eliminates the

world of nature and man.‖

• He wanted art as mathematical as possible,

a blueprint for an organized life.

• He restricted himself to black lines forming

rectangles.

• He used only the primary colors of red,

yellow and blue, and three noncolors: gray,

black and white.

• By carefully calculating the placement of those

elements, Mondrian counterpointed competing

rhythms to achieve ―a balance of unequal but

equivalent oppositions.‖

• He made grid paintings.

• He was the artist who opposed the cult of

subjective feeling.

• His style, Neoplasticism, became a symbol of

Modern art.

The Fountain by R. Mutt by Marcel DuchampAlfred Stieglitz (American, 1864–1946)Published in Blind Man, no. 2 (May 1917)Gelatin silver print; (11 x 17.9 cm)Philadelphia Museum of Art

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A landmark exhibition of

contemporary art is made at New

York City's Grand Central Palace in

1917. Any artist could submit to

this open exhibition, the only

requirement was to pay a $6 entry

fee.

Entering under a false name,

Duchamp submitted a urinal signed

"R. Mutt (1917)" and labeled it

Fountain. Not only was the

pseudonym a clever remark on both

"Mott Works," the company that

manufactured this industrial product,

and the popular cartoon strip "Mutt

and Jeff," but also, the strategic

placement of the signature

necessitated that the urinal be

presented on its back in order to

allow the artist's name to be viewed.

The shock of seeing Fountain on a platform cannot be overestimated. The intrusion of this industrial object into the sacred

space of the gallery was certainly controversial, but due to the fact that the object itself presented such rude and distasteful

connotations that was inappropriate for the exhibition, Fountain was rejected by the organizers. Although Duchamp himself was on

the organizing committee, this rejection had effectively demonstrated the limits of the American avant-garde, and forced a

reconsideration of their self-styled boldness and radicalism.

With his provocative gesture, Duchamp had decontextualized the urinal from its practical function, though his

manipulation of its position seemed to draw even more attention to its traditional usage, and consequently provided a discomforting

experience for the viewer. As the legacy of Fountain, contemporary art is grounded in the notion that artists may utilize the

resources of everyday life to produce their works, and are no longer bound by the perimeters of the easel, the canvas, or other

traditional modes of production.

SurrealismSurrealism originated in the late 1910s and early '20s as a literary movement that experimented with a new

mode of expression called automatic writing, or automatism, which sought to release the unbridled

imagination of the subconscious.

Officially consecrated in Paris in 1924 with the publication of the Manifesto of Surrealism by the poet and

critic André Breton (1896–1966), Surrealism became an international intellectual and political movement.

Breton, a trained psychiatrist, along with French poets Louis Aragon (1897–1982), Paul Éluard (1895–1952),

and Philippe Soupault (1897–1990), were influenced by the psychological theories and dream studies of

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) and the political ideas of Karl Marx (1818–1883).

Using Freudian methods of free association, their poetry and prose drew upon the private world of the

mind, traditionally restricted by reason and societal limitations, to produce surprising, unexpected

imagery. The cerebral and irrational tenets of Surrealism find their ancestry in the clever and whimsical

disregard for tradition fostered by Dadaism a decade earlier.

Surrealist poets were at first reluctant to align themselves with visual artists because they believed that the

laborious processes of painting, drawing, and sculpting were at odds with the spontaneity of uninhibited

expression. However, Breton and his followers did not altogether ignore visual art. They held high regard for

artists such as Giorgio de Chirico (1888–1978), Pablo Picasso (1881–1973), Francis Picabia (1879–1953),

and Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) because of the analytic, provocative, and erotic qualities of their work. For

example, Duchamp's conceptually complex Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass)

(1915–23; Philadelphia Museum of Art) was admired by Surrealists and is considered a precursor to the

movement because of its bizarrely juxtaposed and erotically charged objects.

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The Potato, 1928

Joan Miró (Spanish, 1893–1983)Oil on canvas (101 x 81.6 cm)

Born in the Spanish province of Catalonia in 1893, Joan

Miró was deeply influenced by his country's native landscape

and artistic heritage. During the early part of his career, he

lived in Paris, where he was associated with the French

Surrealists and its practitioners, but he returned to settle in

Spain after World War II. This deliberate remove from the

center of the art world is symptomatic of Miró's

independence, a temperament that would mark his art as

well as his life. Mining the possibilities of free invention

encouraged by Surrealism, Miró developed a style that

drew from highly personalized and psychological

references. Often beginning with a recognizable starting

point, Miró transformed his subjects through whimsical

(acayip) color and free play with form.

The Potato is emblematic of Miró's poetic riffs on reality. It takes as its

subject a gigantic female figure who stretches her arms wide, against a

blue sky and above a patch of earth—perhaps a potato field. The billowing

white shape of the figure is attached to a red post in the center of the

composition like a scarecrow on a pole. Miró surrounded his merry

"potato-earth-woman" with fanciful decorative objects, some of which are

"earthy" and some not. The figure has one brown-and-black breast that

"squirts" a long, black, winding thread, as elfin creatures flutter in the sky

around her. At the left, a red and yellow "butterfly-woman" takes flight from

her brown banana-like nose as other creatures climb a ladder—one of

Miró's favorite motifs. Beyond the earthiness of the subject, the painting's

title appears to be derived from the representation of an actual,

recognizable potato—the small, brown, oval object with three tendrils

growing out of its upper edge, which is lodged in the woman's forehead.

The Potato of 1928 by Miró uses organic forms and

twisted lines to create an imaginative world of fantastic figures.

Photo: This Is the Color of

My Dreams, 1925

Joan Miró (Spanish, 1893–1983)Oil on canvas (96.5 x 129.5 cm)

Between 1924 and 1927, Miró created a group of paintings that are radically different from his earlier work. Known as peinture-

poésie, these canvases, with broad and loosely brushed fields of color, are animated by just a few enigmatic signs. They are linked

to his association, in the early 1920s, with the poets who later joined the Surrealist movement. The poets were the friends of his

neighbor, the painter André Breton.

The present work, with its simple composition, is the most evocative of these works. Only three elements float on the white empty

canvas: the word "Photo," the patch of blue, and the sentence "ceci est la couleur de mes rêves" (this is the color of my

dreams). The black letters sit on faint, barely visible pencil lines that serve as guides for their sizes, as in a child's writing primer.

When asked by the writer Georges Raillard about the meaning of the word "Photo," Miró said, "I started with the idea of a

photo—I don't remember at all what photo it was. I neither did a collage nor a reproduction of it. I simply painted the word

'photo.'"

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The Birth of the World, 1925Joan Miró (Spanish, 1893-1983)Oil on canvas, (250.8 x 200 cm). MoMA

Here Miró applied paint to an

unevenly primed canvas in an

unorthodox manner—pouring,

brushing, and flinging—so that the

paint soaked into the canvas in

some places while resting on the

surface in others. On top of this

relatively uncontrolled application of

paint, he added schematic lines and

shapes planned in preparatory

studies. The bird or kite (uçurtma),

shooting star, balloon, and figure with

white head may all seem somehow

familiar, yet their association is

illogical. Miró once said that The Birth

of the World describes "a sort of

genesis," an amorphous beginning out

of which life may take form.

Untitled, 1973Joan Miró (Spanish, 1893-1983)

Lithograph, Sheet and Comp. (89.8 x 61.0 cm). MoMA

The Escape Ladder, 1940Joan Miró (Spanish, 1893-1983)Gouache, watercolor and ink on paper, (40.0 x 47.6 cm). MoMA

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Nude Standing by the Sea, 1929

Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881–1973)Oil on canvas (129.9 x 96.8 cm)

Although never an official member of the Surrealists,

despite Breton's efforts to coopt him, Picasso

nevertheless participated in many of their exhibitions

and activities in Paris. His work between 1926 and

1939 has been called surrealist because of its

fanciful imagery and sexually charged motifs,

but despite many shared features, Picasso's desire to

interpret the real world was at odds with Surrealism's

imaginary inner-generated visions. Here, he was

inspired by bathers on a beach that he had previously

sketched, painted, and sculpted in Cannes (1927) and

Dinard (1928). In these earlier works, as in this 1929

painting, Picasso ultimately transforms the human

figure into a strange mutated being, part geometric

masonry, part inflated balloon. The features of the

female physique metamorphose into one another—the

rounded buttocks also suggesting breasts, the pointed

breasts suggesting sharp teeth, and the horizontal slit, a

reference to both navel and genitals. The overall effect is

conflicted, showing both monumentality and vulnerability,

sensuality and cold detachment, as if two different

sensibilities inhabit this figure. Such imagery may have

been a reflection of the artist's own anguished love life at

the time. Married to Olga Khokhlova since 1918, he had

been having an affair with a beautiful young teenager,

Marie-Thérèse Walter, since the summer of 1927, which

would last through the 1930s.

The Eternally Obvious, 1948

René Magritte (Belgian, 1898–1967)Oil on canvas laid on board (182.9 x 40.6 cm)

Magritte painted the body of a naked blonde model, cut from the canvas the body's five choicest bits,

surrounded them in gold frames, and reassembled the figure with blank spaces in between on a sheet

of glass. This work is a variant of the artist's famous, same-titled prototype from 1930 for which his

wife Georgette posed. In that earlier work, Georgette's face is seen in three-quarter view, she stands

in a contrapposto stance, and her body is not as rigidly aligned frontally as in this later work, for which

the artist chose a younger model with firmer breasts. Magritte plays tricks with our perception in

these "picture-objects," whose fame—that of the earlier version—coincided with its role in the cult of

the Surrealist object in the 1930s. Although the body is truncated, we automatically fill in the

missing areas and see a "complete" nude woman, never mind that her arms and hands are

missing.

In 1927, the Belgian artist René Magritte (1898–1967) moved from Brussels to Paris and

became a leading figure in the visual Surrealist movement. Influenced by de Chirico's

paintings between 1910 and 1920, Magritte painted erotically explicit objects juxtaposed in

dreamlike surroundings. His work defined a split between the visual automatism fostered by

Masson and Miró (and originally with words by Breton) and a new form of illusionistic

Surrealism practiced by the Spaniard Salvador Dalí (1904–1989), the Belgian Paul

Delvaux (1897–1994), and the French-American Yves Tanguy (1900–1955).

In The Eternally Obvious, Magritte's artistic display of a dismembered female nude is

emotionally shocking.

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Ceci n’est pas une pipe (This is not a pipe), Rene Magritte (Paris, 1928–29) Oil on canvas, 25 in × 37 in, Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Such pictures exemplified the Surrealist preoccupation with dreams and the unconscious. Painted in the summer of 1929, The Accommodations of Desire is a

small gem that deals with the twenty-five-year-old Dalí's sexual anxieties over a love affair with an older, married woman. The woman, Gala, then the wife of

Surrealist poet Paul Éluard, became Dalí's lifelong muse and mate. In this picture, which Dalí painted after taking a walk alone with Gala, he included seven

enlarged pebbles on which he envisioned what lay ahead for him: "terrorizing" lions' heads (not so "accommodating" to his "desire" as the title of the painting

facetiously suggests), as well as a toupee, various vessels (one in the shape of a woman's head), three figures embracing on a platform, and a colony of ants

(a symbol of decay). Dalí did not paint the lions' heads but, rather, cut them out from what must have been an illustrated ch ildren's book, slyly matching the

latter's detailed style with his own. These collaged elements are virtually indistinguishable from the super-saturated color and painstaking realism of the rest of

the composition, startling the viewer into questioning the existence of the phenomena recorded and of the representation as a whole.

The Spanish-born artist

Salvador Dalí was

officially allied with

Surrealism from 1929 to

1941, and even after that

his work continued to

reflect the influence of

Surrealist thought and

methodology. His

flamboyance, flair for

drama and self-promotion,

and hyperactive

imagination reinvigorated

the group and its public

popularity. Dalí, who was

given to hallucinations and

paranoiac visions,

cultivated these

outrageous subjects for

his paintings, rendering

them so meticulously that

they were unsettling in

their clinical matter-of-

factness.

The Accommodations of Desire, 1929, by Salvador Dalí (Spanish, 1904–89) Oil and cut-and-pasted printed paper on cardboard (22.2 x 34.9 cm)

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In 1929, Dalí moved from Spain to Paris and made his first Surrealist paintings. He expanded on Magritte's

dream imagery with his own erotically charged, hallucinatory visions. In The Accommodations of Desire of 1929,

Dalí employs Freudian symbols, such as ants, to symbolize his overwhelming sexual desire. In 1930, Breton

praised Dalí's representations of the unconscious in the Second Manifesto of Surrealism. They became the main

collaborators on the review Minotaure (1933–39), a primarily Surrealist-oriented publication founded in Paris.

Time is the theme here,

from the melting watches

to the decay implied by the

swarming ants (kaymaşan

karıncalar). The monstrous

fleshy creature draped

across the paintings center

is an approximation of

Dalís own face in profile.

Mastering what he called

"the usual paralyzing tricks

of eye-fooling," Dalí painted

this work with "the most

imperialist fury of

precision," but only, he said,

"to systematize confusion

and thus to help discredit

completely the world of

reality." There is, however,

a nod to the real: The

distant golden cliffs are

those on the coast of

Catalonia, Dalís home.

Dalí: Painting and Film

June 29–September 15, 2008

The Persistence of Memory, 1931. Salvador Dalí (Spanish, 1904-1989)Oil on canvas, (24.1 x 33 cm).

Madonna, 1958

Salvador Dalí (Spanish, 1904–1989)Oil on canvas (225.7 x 191.1 cm)

Dalí's paintings feature intellectual puzzles and

visual ambiguities, and his style is marked by

superrealistic illusionism that is used to

describe completely unrealistic, fanciful

subjects. Madonna is one of several works

Dalí made after 1941 that uses classical

imagery as the basis for Surrealist invention.

Here, he paints two different simultaneous

subjects with a profusion of gray and pink

dots: a Madonna and Child based on

Raphael's Sistine Madonna (Gemäldegalerie,

Dresden, after 1513), and a large ear, whose

ridged interior surface is defined by the

presence of these two figures. Each motif is

designed to come into focus at a different

distance. At close range, the painting looks

completely abstract; from about six feet

away, it reveals the Madonna and Child;

and from fifty feet, it is what the artist

called "the ear of an angel." To the left of the

main images is a trompe-l'oeil detail of a red

cherry suspended on a string from a torn and

folded piece of paper; its shadow is cast onto

another piece of paper bearing the signature

of the artist.

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Ernst's Surrealist paintings are steeped in Freudian metaphor, private mythology, and childhood memories.

One of his major themes centered on the image of the bird, which often incorporated human elements.

Their mere presence appears to be ominous (uğursuz).

Between 1919 and

1920, Max Ernst was

one of the most

enthusiastic leaders of

the Dada movement in

Cologne. Before long,

he attracted the

attention of André

Breton, who in 1921

organized an exhibition

in Paris of Ernst's

collages. By 1922,

Ernst had moved to the

French capital, and

never again worked in

his native country. In

1924, in Paris, the

thirty-three-year-old

artist became one of

the founding members

of the Surrealist group.

The Satin Tuning Fork, 1940

Yves Tanguy (American, born France, 1900–

1955)Oil on canvas (99 x 81.3 cm); MET

By 1927, the self-taught Tanguy had found his

own personal style and acquired amazing

technical skill. From then until his death in

1955, he focused on the same dreamlike

subject—an imaginary landscape, deserted

except for various fantastical rocklike

objects, rendered with precise illusionism.

Usually filled with an overcast sky, the plain

below stretches toward infinity without an

exact horizon line.

Uncanny (esrarengiz, tekinsiz) vistas ,

biomorphic objects

Tanguy's style varied little throughout the

years. Even his move to the United States had

little effect on his work, although it would bring

about important changes in his personal life. In

New York, he joined the American Surrealist

painter Kay Sage (1898–1963), and they

married in 1940, the year of this painting. The

long phallic form in the center of the

composition may in fact reference this new

relationship.

In The Satin Tuning Fork, Tanguy fills an illusionistic space

with unidentifiable, yet sexually suggestive, objects rendered

with great precision. The painting's mysterious lighting, long

shadows, deep receding space, and sense of loneliness also

recall the ominous settings of de Chirico. Paris in 1925,

Tanguy had met André Breton and joined the Surrealist group.

His ensuing friendship with the older poet proved decisive for

Tanguy. Breton served as both mentor and advocate. Until

Tanguy's departure for the United States in 1939, he remained

deeply devoted to Breton; Breton in turn regarded Tanguy as

one of the purest painters among the Surrealists.

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The organized Surrealist movement in Europe dissolved with the onset of World War II.

Breton, Dalí, Ernst, Masson, and others, including the Chilean artist Matta (1911–2002), who

first joined the Surrealists in 1937, left Europe for New York. The movement found renewal in

the United States at Peggy Guggenheim's (1898–1979) gallery, Art of This Century, and the

Julien Levy Gallery. In 1940, Breton organized the fourth International Surrealist Exhibition in

Mexico City, which included the Mexicans Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) and Diego Rivera (1886–

1957) (although neither artist officially joined the movement).

Surrealism's surprising imagery, deep symbolism, refined painting techniques, and disdain

for convention influenced later generations of artists, including Joseph Cornell (1903–1972) and

Arshile Gorky (1904–1948), the latter whose work formed a continuum between Surrealism and

Abstract Expressionism.

Revision: SurrealismThe Power of Unconscious

• It began as a literary movement,

fostered by its godfather André Breton.

• It grew out of Freudian free-association

and dream analysis.

• Poets, and later painters, experimented

with automatism: a form of creating

without conscious control— to tap

unconscious imaginary.

• Surrealism implies going beyond realism.

• It deliberately courted the bizarre and the

irrational to express buried truths

unreachable by logic.

Surrealism took two forms:

– Joan Miró and Max Ernst practiced

improvised art, distancing

themselves as much as possible

from conscious control.

– Salvador Dalí and René Magritte

used thoroughly realistic

techniques to present

hallucinatory scenes that defy

common sense.

IMPROVISATIONAL DEPICTIONS OF

UNCONSCIOUSNESS, DREAM

WORLD...

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The Potato, 1928

Joan Miró (Spanish, 1893–1983)Oil on canvas (101 x 81.6 cm)

Max Ernst

Rene Magritte (Paris, 1928–29) Oil on canvas

The Persistence of Memory, 1931. Salvador Dalí (Spanish, 1904-1989)Oil on canvas, (24.1 x 33 cm).