2 papers Art history visual analysis (5-7 pages)
Reborn0804
unit_3_cubism_dutch__russian.pptCubism:
Dutch & Russian
ART HISTORY 132
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De Stijl
- Piet Mondrian (1872-1944)
- early work: naturalistic
- context: Theosophy
- a type of philosophical mysticism that seeks to unite material and spiritual worlds
- to disclose concealed essences of reality
- aestetic: “non-objective”
- aim: take Cubism to logical its conclusion
- inspired by Cézanne
- breaks down compositional elements into geometric facets of color
- schema: rigid, strictly imposed
- pure geometry
- surface grid of horizontal & vertical lines at 90º
- color limited to primaries and b/w
Mondrian’s Red Tree
(1911)
Mondrian’s Grey Tree
(1912)
Mondrian’s Composition
(1913)
Mondrian’s Composition in Grey and Ochre
(1918)
De Stijl
- Composition (1920)
- style: non-objective
- severe
- iconoclastic
- theme: renounces world of appearances (see Theosophy)
- subject: formalist
- spatial order: emphasis on 2-d, flattened plane of canvas surface
- line: two directions (horizontal & vertical) of varying widths
- composition: irregular
- color: limited schema
- black & white lines
- primaries on perimeter
De Stijl
- Broadway Boogie Woogie (1943)
- subject: painted upon arrival in NYC
- spatial order: emphasis on 2-d, flattened plane of canvas surface
- line: two directions (horizontal & vertical) of varying widths
- composition: irregular
- color: less restricted schema
- eliminates black & white lines
- primaries w/in centralized area
Mondrian’s De Stijl (“Neo-Plasticism”) Broadway Boogie Woogie (1943)
vs.
Trowbridge’s Politics of Time (2012)
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Russian Avant Garde:
Suprematism
- Malevich (1878-1935)
- training:
- Kiev School of Art
- Moscow Academy of Fine Arts (1904-10)
- political context: Communist Revolution
- aesthetic: non-objective
- aim: to reduce painting to most simplified elements
- color: pure geometric zones
- aims: to free art from material world
- no longer bound to canvas (picture plane)
- pure, unapplied form
- to set up genuine world order, new philosophy of life
- publications:
- From Cubism to Suprematism (1915)
- The Non-Objective World (1927)
Suprematism:
Malevich
- Suprematism (1915)
- aim: “to free art from burden of object”
- effect: radical geometric simplicity
- aesthetic: non-objective
- an art of extreme reduction
- no reference at all to reality
- limited to formal elements of line, form & color
- spatial order negated
- influence: Theosophy
- “The object in itself is meaningless... the ideas of the conscious mind are worthless”
Suprematism:
Malevich
- Airplane Flying (1915)
- theme: utopian
- aesthetic: non-objective
- forms: large, geometric areas of unmodulated color (see Synthetic Cubism)
- composition: dynamic
- diagonal arrangement
- interlocking forms
- spatial order: emphasizes 2-d surface of canvas
- color: primaries + b/w
- light/shadow: obviated
- brushwork: deemphasized
Russian Avant Garde:
Constructivism
- Rodchenko (1891-1956)
- biography: childhood in St. Petersburg
- training:
- 1910-14: provincial art school
- 1915: moves to Moscow
- mature work: investigates material & formal logic of art
- artistic maturity w/ rise of Bolshevik Revolution (1917)
- deeply committed to ideals of Communist Revolution
- rose to prominence in Lenin’s new cultural bureaucracy (1918-21)
- Stalin era: (1924-53)
- embroils him in great tragedy
- utopian aspiration yields to violent dictatorship
Constructivism:
Rodchenko
- Line & Compass Drawing (1915)
- medium: compass-and-ruler drawing
- aesthetic: non-objective
- mechanical precision
- artistic self-image as technician or engineer
- spatial order: emphasizes 2-d
- forms: fractured by quasi-Cubist network of lines
- composition: dynamic sense of movement (see Futurism)
- color: reduced to black & white
Constructivism:
Rodchenko
- Two Circles (1920)
- aim: revolutionary goal to achieve ordered, technologically advanced society
- aesthetic: non-objective
- impersonal; mechanically precise
- stripped of narrative
- meaning:
- devoid of spiritual/metaphysical trappings
- arrangement of forms implies political ideology
- perspective: reduced to 2-d
- emphasizes planar surface of canvas
- composition: centralized
- color: completely absent
Russian Avant Garde:
Constructivism
- Tatlin (1885-1953)
- early work:
- exhibited at several avant-garde exhibitions in Russia (1910)
- visited Berlin and Paris (1914)
- met Picasso
- responds to Synthetic Cubism
- Post-Communist Revolution (1917)
- worked for new Soviet Education Commissariate
- used art to educate the public
- an officially authorized art
- utilized “real materials in real space”
- design principles based on inner behavior and loading capacities of material
Constructivism:
Tatlin
- Third International Tower (1920)
- patron: Dept. of Artistic Work of the People’s Commissariat for Enlightenment
- site: intended for central Moscow; never constructed
- aesthetic: utopian
- aim: “union of purely plastic forms for utilitarian purpose”
- power/benefits of industrialization
- visual reinforcement of social & political reality
- forms: reductive geometry
- function:
- monument to honor Russian Revolution
- propaganda & news center
- materials: “the culture of materials”
- revolving glass & iron
- sheet metal & wood
- scale: envisioned as twice as tall as Empire State Building (c. early 1930s)
- composition: dynamic
- tilted spiral cage
- three (3) geometrically shaped chambers to rotating at different speeds around central axis
Constructivism:
Tatlin
- Third International Tower (1920)
- arrangement: decreasing size of chambers paralleled decision-making hierarchy in political system
- most authoritative, smallest group at apex
- bottom
- huge cylindrical glass structure
- used for lectures & meetings
- revolves once/year
- middle
- cone-shaped chamber
- administrative functions
- monthly rotations
- top
- cubic information center
- issues news bulletins & proclamations via most modern means of communication
- open-air news screen (illuminated @ night)
- instrument to project words on clouds on overcast days
- daily revolution
IMAGE INDEX
- Slide 2: Photograph of Piet MONDRIAN.
- Slide 3: MONDRIAN. Red Tree (1911), Oil on canvas, 30 7/8 x 42 3/8 in., Haags Gemeentemuseum, The Hague.
- Slide 4: MONDRIAN, Piet. Gray Tree (1912).
- Slide 5: MONDRIAN. Composition in Line and Color (1913), Oil on canvas, 34 5/8 x 45 1/4 in., Riksmuseum, The Netherlands.
- Slide 6: MONDRIAN, Piet. Composition in Grey and Ochre (1918), oil on canvas, 80.5 x 49.5 cm., Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX.
- Slide 7: MONDRIAN, Piet. Composition in Red, Yellow, and Blue (c. 1920), Oil on canvas, 20 ½ x 23 ½ in., Museum of Modern Art, New York.
- Slide 8: MONDRIAN, Piet. Broadway Boogie Woogie (c. 1945).
IMAGE INDEX
- Slide 9: MALEVICH, Vladimir. Self Portrait (1933), Oil on canvas, 73 x 66 cm, The Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia.
- Slide 10: MALEVICH, Vladimir. Suprematism (1915), Oil on canvas, 34 1/2” x 28 3/8”, State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia.
- Slide 11: MALEVICH, Vladimir. Aeroplane Flying (1915), Oil on canvas, 22 5/8 x 19 in., The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York.
- Slide 12: Photograph of Alexsandr RODCHENKO.
- Slide 13: RODCHENKO, Aleksandr. Line and Compass Drawing (1915), pen and ink on paper, 10 1/16 x 8 1/16 in., Rodchenko Archive, Moscow.
- Slide 14: RODCHENKO, Aleksandr. Construction, No. 127 (1920), Oil on canvas, 24 5/8 x 20 7/8 in., The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Department of Private Collections, Moscow.
IMAGE INDEX
- Slide 15: TATLIN, Vladimir. Self-portrait as a Sailor (1911), Tempera on canvas, 28 1/8 x 28 1/8 in., Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia.
- Slide 16: TATLIN, Vladimir. Monument to the Third International (c. 1920), Museum of Modern Art, Stockholm, Sweden.
- Slide 17: PUNIN, Nikolai. Monument to the Third International (1920), Cover with letterpress illustration on front, 11 x 8 5/8 in., Gift of The Judith Rothschild Foundation.
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