Emotions In Modern Art:

from realism to expressionism

• This presentation will document the change from realism to expressionism that took place in art in the beginning of the 20th Century, it will highlight the increasing importance of emotions and emotional expression in this period and it will also attempt to explain why this shift in the nature of art occurred.

• In the beginning of the 20th Century a new art movement known as ‘expressionism’ began to surface in Europe.

• Expressionist artists rejected traditional ideas of ideas of art, especially the classical focus on realistic forms and the simple depiction of objects which had no real meaning or significance.

• Instead, they looked into themselves for subjects for their paintings, into their own life experiences and emotions.

• Emotions and importantly, emotional expression became the focus of many leading modernist artists of the period.

• The very nature of art was questioned, was art simply meant to be stylistically and technically perfect, to be beautiful and to have no real emotional significance or was art a way for people to express their inner feelings and experiences and to recreate those feelings in the observer?

Realism vs. Expressionism

Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa.

Alexej von Jawlensky, Schokko with Wide Brimmed Hat.

Luis Meléndez, Still Life with Apples, Grapes, Melons, Bread, Jug and Bottle.

Georges Braque, Violin and Candlestick.

The Rise of Expressionism

• It is difficult to establish a rigid timeframe for the rise of expressionism. However the decline of Impressionism at the end of the 19th Century is a good place to start.

• Impressionist painters (e.g. Monet, Manet, Renoir etc.) were focused on trying to document patterns of light in their paintings, they were concerned with nature and colour and how light could influence and change these things.

• As the Impressionist focus on light and the objectivity of naturee intensified, their paintings became more and more abstract as they tried to capture the dispersal of light on the landscape.

• Artists struggled to find ‘meaning’ in Impressionist abstract depictions of nature and light. What was the point??

• Impressionism eventually began to decline as many artists became tired of its intense focus on capturing light, it was fruitless and by the beginning of the 20th century, urban development, industrialisation and the rise of socialism rendered nature and landscape painting old-fashioned and irrelevant.

Modernism and the search for something new.

• Ezra Pound: ‘Make it new!’• Early 20th Century radical innovations in technology, science, philosophy,

literature and psychology.• Art was outdated, it had little emotional significance in the age of self-

consciousness.• Rejection of old now-obsolete forms of art, literature, music etc.• Artists needed a new way to express their new feelings about this modern

world.• Freud and the subconscious, promoted ideas of the instinctual, primitive

side of human nature, a rejection of enlightenment ideas.• Matisse and Les Fauves (The Wild Beasts) colour as expression, attempt

for a return to a primitive, natural state.• ‘What I am after, above all, is expression’ – Matisse in Notes of a Painter

(1908).

• Expressionism as a reaction to the objective naturalism of Impressionism.• A retreat into the private world of the self.• Comes from the ideas of Delacroix and the Romantic painters: colour as

expressive rather than exclusively descriptive.• 1886 Symbolist Manifesto: ‘to clothe the idea in sensual, perceptile form.’• The relationship between the artist and the subject was reversed, instead

of seeking inspiration in the external world, they now looked inwards, so that feelings and ideas became the starting points of works of art.

Matisse, Harmony in Red. (1908)

Van Gogh and Munch• With the end of Impressionism came two artists who were both considerable

influences on future expressionist painters: Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) and Edvard Munch (1863-1944).

• Although Impressionist styles of painting are evident in both artist’s works, there was considerable emotional influence in their paintings.

• The bold colours and large sweeping brushstrokes in Van Gogh’s paintings (e.g. The Starry Night, 1889) had considerable influence on later expressionist styles of painting.

• The relationship of Van Gogh’s mental illness to his painting’s has been debated for decades but it is accepted that his depression had some influence on his work, most notably in his ‘Blue Period’ where his use of shades of blue and black in places where they are not usually found has been linked to his feelings of sadness and isolation.

• Van Gogh: ‘I use colour more arbitrarily in order to express myself more powerfully’.

• ‘The terrible passions of humanity’ The Night Cáfe (1888). Disharmonies of red, green and yellow.

Van Gogh The Night Cafe (1888)

• The emotional symbolism of colour is important in Van Gogh’s work. He was especially interested in cold colours (eg. Black and blue) and warm colours (yellow, red) and how these contrasted.

• He used colour to express his emotions and to create an emotional response in the viewer. The subject or objects in the painting were not important.

• He said: ‘In both figure and landscape... I want to get to the point where people say of my work: that man feels deeply, that man feels keenly.’ (Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van GoghThe Hague, 21 July 1882.)

Colour and Emotion in Van Gogh

Portrait of the artist without beard (1889)

Sorrowing Old Man (At Eternity’s Gate) (1890)

Starry Night (1889)

• Edvard Munch’s The Scream (1893) was a huge influence on Expressionism. Munch was one of the first artist’s in the 19th Century to express his own emotion through a painting.

• He said: ‘I stood there trembling with anxiety and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature, it seemed to me that I heard the scream. I painted this picture, painted the clouds as actual blood. The colour shrieked. This became The Scream.’

• This shows the importance of emotional experience in Munch’s work. For him, this was not a painting of a landscape or of a sunset but an emotion itself, the painting was the fear and anxiety he felt, it was not simply a description.

• ‘A work of art can only come from the interior of man. Art is the form of the image formed upon the nerves, heart, brain and the eye of man.’

Edvard Munch, The Scream (1893)

German Expressionism: Die Brücke and Der Blaue Reiter.

• Expressionism centred in Germany at the beginning of 20th Century.• Historical Context: Political and Social tensions, Two World Wars, Poor

Economy and unemployment led to dissatisfaction with the modern external world.

• The aim was to stir moods of anxiety, despair, fear and isolation in the observer in order to communicate disenchantment with modern European society. Political motives? Revolution?

• Die Brücke (The Bridge) founded in Dresden by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner in 1905 He stated that: ‘My goal was always to express emotion and experience’.

• Wassily Kandinsky and Der Blaue Reiter (Founded Munich c. 1911). They viewed art as salvation or a refuge for humanity. (emotional refuges?)

• Kandinsky: ‘A work of art consists of two elements, the inner and the outer. The inner is the emotion in the soul of the artist, this emotion has the capacity to evoke a similar emotion in the observer.’

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Berlin Street Scene. (1913)

Cubism and Surrealism: New ways of seeing.

• Picasso: ‘what I want is that my picture should evoke nothing but emotion.’• Use of geometrical shapes which is meant to have a strong impact on the

viewer, who is then meant to provide his own emotional meaning to the artistic representation.

• Abstraction and fragmentation used to challenge perception.• Powerful emotions in Picasso’s Guernica (1937). Painted in response to the

bombing of the village of Guernica in Northern Spain by Franco’s Nationalist forces during the civil war.

• It depicts the suffering of both animals and people who’s homes have been destroyed by war and violence. Sense of chaos and despair. Loss of hope represented by the lack of colour. Abstraction adds to sense of chaos and disunity.

• Anti-war, Picasso refused to have it exhibited in Spain until peace had been achieved.

• Surrealism and new ways of seeing, Dali: ‘Surrealism is destructive, but it only destroys what it considers to be shackles limiting our vision.’

Guernica (1937)

Modern Art and Emotions?• Major developments in psychology, philosophy and literature. Emotions were

suddenly fashionable due to Freud’s Psychoanalysis and The Interpretation of Dreams. Innermost thoughts in Literature, Joyce and ‘stream of consciousness’.

• Thus, it was becoming more acceptable to express and talk about emotions.• Increasing social and political tensions in Europe led to disillusionment with

modernity. For many this led to feelings of fear, despair and isolation.• Modernity and industrialisation brought with it new feelings and ideas that

needed to be expressed.• These feelings and ideas were prevalent in many contemporary works on of

literature and music. It was acceptable to have these feelings and to express them through art.

• Explosion of expressionism after WWI most likely because of the need to express the extreme and terrifying emotions experienced during the war, fear, despair, anxiety etc.

• Expressionism fundamental to our present day perception of art and the use of colour today. Made popular the idea that one’s true emotions and subconscious can be expressed through art, that they are even present in art itself.

Art and the study of the History of Emotions

• The status of emotions in art has changed throughout history, emotions gradually became more and more central to artistic inspiration.

• Socially constructed? Certain emotions of their time. Modernism, WWI and II.

• Or Universalism?• Oskar Kokoschka: ‘The life of the consciousness is boundless.

It interpenetrates the world and is woven in all its imagery... Therefore, we must hearken closely to out inner voice.’ Do we all have the same ‘inner voice’?

• Or is the ‘meaning of art’ relative?