Blogging the Arts.

Art Movements: Bauhaus

By cobwebsandstrange on 7/21/10 7:59pm
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Arts of any variety had a rough go of it in Germany during the twentieth century. During the earliest years of the nineteen hundreds there were moments of incalculable influence, though.

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Art Movements: De Stijl

By cobwebsandstrange on 7/20/10 7:02pm
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Like any good art movement, movie, film or music, the history of De Stijl is steeped in political upheaval from the earliest portion of the twentieth century.

Prior to World War I there was an open exchange in Europe that allowed for artists to move between countries, take in whatever was happening, stay a while and then perhaps head home and spread around new ideas.

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Art Movements: Synchromism

By cobwebsandstrange on 7/16/10 1:08pm
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It’s founders believed Synchromism to be "....the only possible version of reality capable of expressing the totality of different qualities applicable exclusively to painting.''

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Art Movements: Dada

By cobwebsandstrange on 7/13/10 12:59pm
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In my uninformed estimate, Dada seems like its probably the most widely recognized – if not necessarily identifiable – early 20th century art movement. People can look at Impressionist paintings reaching into the early years of the 1900s or even any work by Picasso and not be able to place it in context. That’s not really the case with Dada.

Salvador Dali had more than a bit to do with that as he eventually worked his renown into an ill fated partnership with Walt Disney yielding one of the most shocking cartoons of all time, though, not released at the time of its completion.

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Art Movements: Futurism

By cobwebsandstrange on 7/12/10 9:43am
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In direct opposition to nature, the Italian Futurists prized human ability over nature. Oddly, as negatively as some of the group’s ideas would be portrayed, what the sought to impart was a sort of over-wrought humanism.

What’s interesting is that, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti conceived of his Futurist tenets while figuring that his beliefs were transferable to any art medium, but just as importantly to actual life and politics. There’s an over nationalism displayed amongst the pages of the Futurist manifesto, first written by Marinetti in 1908 and re-printed in a French newspaper the following year.

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Art Movements: Cubism

By cobwebsandstrange on 7/11/10 10:25am
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Overlapping with any number of other movements on the march towards total abstraction, Cubism, in some ways, was an extension of the Fauves blurring of reality.

In that earlier movement, ridiculously bright colors were utilized to create canvases depicting relatively traditional subjects. What made the Fauves unique, though, was their collective extension of Impressionism. But in referencing that approach to painting, the Fauves found it necessary to insert some sort of commentary on the subject and its surroundings – in part related through the apparent brushstrokes.

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Art Movements: Fauvism

By cobwebsandstrange on 7/10/10 11:17am
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Yes, they were wild beasts. But in the best way, I suppose.

Fauvism, like so many other early twentieth century art movements, in retrospect, simply looks like a flash in the pan, existing in notable form for no more than five years. Of course, one of the best known painters of the century was a founder of the movement. So, that doesn’t hurt the chances of this brief moment in time being anthologized endlessly.

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Art Movements: Die Brücke, Der Blaue Reiter, Expressionism

By cobwebsandstrange on 7/8/10 10:29am
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Compounding the problems of affixing a singular name to any art movement is the fact that each of these innovations, or stylistic changes occur at the same time and count the same names over a few decade period. Moving from Impressionism to full on abstraction didn’t take too long. But the endless and divisive separation of approaches apparently warranted a litany of genre names.

By the time Expressionism had been totally disseminated, replicated and plundered, its main adherents and the figures directly influencing those folks had been affiliated with any number of art strains dating back to the beginning of the twentieth century.

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Art Movements: Vorticism

By cobwebsandstrange on 7/6/10 10:02am
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England had a lot to feel silly about during the first half of the twentieth century.

Its empire was in the process of being dismantled, the threat of two wars fought on the continent proper had threatened autonomy and the culture was basically required to demur to art forms (literature, painting, etc.) coming from France, Italy and the rest of Europe. Even today, most folks would be hard pressed to name a specific art movement tied to that island nation. Punk might have been its largest, international contribution, but even that music really came from the States.

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George Grosz at the Arts Club of Chicago

By cobwebsandstrange on 7/3/10 7:19pm
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Coming out of the fertile German arts scene of the early twentieth century, George Grosz was unique even amongst some of the most thoughtful artists of his assumed cohort. Combining some of the ridiculous nature Dada sought impart and social criticism rendered the paintings and drawings Grosz worked up through beginning of the thirties as the most astute observations landed upon canvas.

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