On Monday, April 24th, we focused on the Modernism movement. We began class focusing on The Manifesto, an organization of a group of artists who published The Manifesto on September 18, 1886 in hopes to promote modernist work and their individual views on it. French poet, Gustave Kahn states, modernism art “Objectif[ies] the subjective . . . instead of objectifying the objective.”
We continued class depicting Gustave Moreau’s, The Apparition (Dance of Salome). The work, in Albert Aurier’s terms is “ideal, symbolist, synthetist, subjective, and decorative.” The image displays a scene of the head of St. John the Baptist comes to haunt Salome. The painting is rich with lots of details, erotic, and elegant. Salome is represented as beautiful, poised, standing tall, confident, and unafraid, almost inviting the head of St. John to haunt her. We then looked at Norwegian painter, Edvard Munch’s The Scream. The Scream, a painting known for its’ anxiety-provoking work.
Moving on, we began our studies on Early twentieth-century art, specifically looking at the term “fauvism” and expressionism. Henri Matisse’s Femme au Chapeau is known for encompassing fauvism, a term coming from “fauve,” also known as “wild beast.” Femme au Chapeau displays vibrant, unrealistic colors on the woman’s face, blending her skin into the modern background and rest of the painting, allowing the viewer to undergo visual harmony. Matisse utilizes abstract forms and brushstrokes, but the work is modern and minimalist. I particularly like the intensity of the blues, reds, greens, and oranges of the painting. We also looked at the bright colors and short, intricate lines of André Derain’s, Mountains at Collioure and Matisse’s and the work’s expressive, important balance and placement of the nude women in his Le Bonheur de vivre.
Continuing on, we briefly talked about German Expressionism, studying Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s Street, Dresden and Peter Schlemihl: Tribulations of Love, a color woodcut from two blocks of wood on woven paper, along with Franz Marc’s Large Blue Horses. Marc’s Large Blue Horses displays geometrical, abstract forms, vibrant, rich blues, reds, and yellows. Marc’s color choices are purposeful, as he states, “[b]lue is the male principle, stern and spiritual. Yellow the female principle, gentle, cheerful and sensual. Red is matter, brutal and heavy and always the colour which must be fought and vanquished by the other two” (PowerPoint from class). We continued class touching on art abstraction, specifically Wassily Kandinsky’s works typifying pre-World War II Surrealism works through chaos, nuanced focal points, and myriad forms, along with human figures in which demonstrate a spectrum of human experience. To wrap up the class on Monday, we discussed Sigmund Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams, first published in 1900. We also focused on Freud’s theosophy on psychic conflict.
Lastly, we focused on Pablo Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. Picasso emphasizes escapism, a way of inhabiting a different place perhaps when the current reality is a little difficult. Picasso’s work is abstract, geometrical, yet shows a sense of sensuality and eroticism of the female body. Showing similarities to Paul Cézanne’s works, Picasso’s work is primitive and nonmodern or Western art. I found it particularly interesting to talk about the African masks in comparison to the face shape and body dimension and shapes of the women’s bodies and faces.