WHAT IS ART? WHAT SHOULD ART CONVEY?

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WHAT IS ART?WHAT SHOULD ART CONVEY?
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ART IS

• the presentation or expression ofwhat is
  beautiful, appealing or of more than ordinary
  significance
• layered, complex, susceptible to many different
  interpretations
• the source of questions and ruminations, not tidy
  solutions

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SURREALISM

• is the imagination of the unconscious
• is a positive expression
• is an unification of the conscious / unconscious
• is where dreams and fantasy are joined to the
  rational, everyday world in an absolute reality
  surreality

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SURREALITY

• is surprising, spontaneous, unexpected,
  irrational
• Andre Breton, Paris art critic, coined the name
  Manifesto of Surrealism in the 1920s
• Breton admired Sigmund Freud
• Breton trained in medicine and psychiatry
• disdained traditional art forms

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EXAMPLES OF SURREALISTS

• Salvador Dali
• Maxwell Ernst
• Rene Magritte
• Joan Miró
• Picasso
• Jackson Pollock(an abstractionist who greatly
  admired the surrealists)

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The Persistence of Memory Salvador Dali, 1931
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The Tilled FieldJoan Miró, 1923-24
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SURREALISM AUTHORS

• authors considered surrealist
• Jean CocteauE.E. CummingsGarcia LorcaHenry
  MillerAnais NinDylan ThomasWilliam Carlos
  Williams

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REALISM

• is an art movement from France inthe 1850s
• is an objective reality true to life
• honesty / accuracy
• subjects in art appear as they do in everyday
  life
• no embellishment

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REALISM

• the realists rejected romanticism and
  neoclassicism from the late 1700s / early 1800s
• painters who painted from the world around them
• examples of realists
• John Singleton CopleyGustave CourbetHonore
  DaumierThomas EakinsJean-François
  MilletWilliam Sidney Mount

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The Death of Major PiersonJohn Singleton Copley
- 1784
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The Gleaners Jean-François Millet, 1857
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REALISM AUTHORS

• authors considered realists
• William DefoeHenry FieldingHamlin
  GarlandWilliam Dean HowellsHenry JamesSarah
  Orne JewettUpton SinclairMark TwainEdith
  WhartonWalt Whitman

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IMPRESSIONISM

• began in the 1860s after the Paris Worlds Fair
• accurately, objectively recording of visual
  reality in terms of transient effects of color
  and light
• the term comes from Monets painting Impression,
  Sunrise

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FEATURES OF IMPRESSIONISM

• visible brush strokes
• unusual angles
• light and changing light
• considered radical in its time
• very open composition, movement
• unmixed color not smoothly blended
• how the eye views the subject /not a re-creation
  of the subject

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• examples of impressionists
• Mary CassatPaul CezanneEdgar DegasEdouard
  ManetClaude MonetBerthe MorisotCamille
  PissarroPierre Auguste RenoirJohn Singer
  SargentAlfred Sisley

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Impression, SunriseClaude Monet, 1873
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The Boating PartyMary Cassat, 1893-94
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IMPRESSIONISM AUTHORS

• the Romantic writers
• William BlakeEmily BronteWilkie CollinsMary
  ShelleyWilliam WordsworthandJoseph
  ConradArthur RimbaudVirginia Woolf

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ABSTRACTIONISM

• no concrete objects at least no recognizable
  ones
• morally loaded themes(rebellion, a disgust with
  society)
• emphasis is on individual, spontaneity, mood,
  feelings, revolt(without being an actual
  representation)
• uses form / color / line to create composition
  existing independently of visual references to
  the world

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WHY ABSTRACTIONISM?

• at the end of the 19th century, artists felt they
  needed a new kind of art to encompass changes in
  Science / Technology / Philosophy
• it reflects diversity / turmoil of Western
  society
• artists include
• Theo van DoesburgWassily KandinskyPieter
  Cornelius Piet MondrianJackson Pollock

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Composition XWassily Kandinsky, 1939
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Composition with Yellow, Blue, and RedPiet
Mondrian, 1937-42
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ASSIGNMENT

• form groups of FOUR students
• choose from ONE of the four genres
• birthday partycafeteriasporting eventwedding
• illustrate your choice in each of the FOUR
  genres
• surrealismrealismimpressionismabstractionism
• your group will have FOUR total illustrations