Art History For Dummies. Jesse Bryant Wilder

Art History For Dummies

World War I Dada The so-called “anti-art” movement, Dada was a direct reaction to World War I and the old order that triggered it. If war was rational, artists would be irrational. See Chapter 23. Sigmund Freud’s Theories Surrealists Freud’s theories of the role of the unconscious (the home of the irrational) inspired the Surrealists (the offspring of Dada) to paint their dreams and coax the unconscious to the surface so they could channel it into their art. Also in Chapter 23. Einstein’s Theory of Relativity Futurists Published in 1905, Einstein’s theory of relativity stimulated the Futurists to include the fourth dimension, time, in their work. See Chapter 22. Global Depression, Racism, and World War II Activist Art Horrendous acts of injustice fired up many artists, including photographers, to create activist art. New technology enabled photographers to capture people quickly and discreetly, showing life more “honestly,” more unposed than ever before. Pioneering photojournalists like Henri Cartier-Bresson and Dorothea Lange zoomed in on urban life, poverty, and war, and showed the world grim realities that had previously been swept under the carpet. See Chapter 25. Psychoanalysis Abstract Expressionism After the Holocaust and Hiroshima, humankind seemed overdue for an appointment on the psychoanalyst’s couch. This inspired postwar American artist Jackson Pollock to pioneer Abstract Expressionism, the first international art movement spawned in the U.S. Pollock’s works look like he dropped a paint bomb on his canvases. Actually, he just dripped, poured, and threw on paint instead of slathering it on with a brush. See Chapter 23.

Conceptualizing the craft

Pollock’s and de Kooning’s action painting — as dripping and throwing paint came to be called — signaled that art had moved away from craft toward pure expression and creative conceptualization. Many new forms of art grew out of the notion that process is more important than product. Craft had been the cornerstone of art for millennia. But after the war, Pollock and de Kooning seemed to drop an atom bomb on art itself, to release its pure creative energy (and shatter form to smithereens — or to splashes and drips).

Conceptualization began to drive the work of more and more artists. However, while this trend continued in performance art, installation art, and conceptual art, some artists backtracked to representation. The Photorealists, for example, showed that painting could reclaim realism from the camera (see Chapter 25).

Expressing mixed-up times

Postmodernism (see Chapter 26) is an odd term. It suggests that we’ve hit a cultural dead end, that we’ve run out of ideas and can’t make anything new or “modern.” All that’s left is to recycle the past or crab-leg it back to the cave days. Postmodern artists do recycle the past, usually in layers: a quart of Greece, a cup of Constructivism, a pound of Bauhaus, and a heaping tablespoon of Modernism. What’s the point of that?

Postmodern theorists believe society is no longer centered. In the Middle Ages, art revolved around religion. In the 19th century, Realist art centered around social reform. But since the 1970s, point of view has become fluid. To express our uncentered existence, artists try to show the relationships between past eras and the present. Some critics argue that Postmodernism is a spiritual short circuit, a jaded view that cuts off meaning from real life. You be the judge.

Chapter 2

Why People Make Art and What It All Means

IN THIS CHAPTER

Exploring the reasons artists make art

Understanding the design elements of art

Decrypting those deep meanings

Art is sometimes a mysterious form of communication. What did so-and-so mean to convey when he or she carved a stone into a fat fertility goddess or a fractured geometric shape? In this chapter, I help you demystify the visual language that we call art.

Focusing on the Artist’s Purpose

Why do artists make art? To celebrate god, glorify the state, overthrow governments, make people laugh or think, or win fame and fortune? Or do they make art because, for them, creating is like breathing — they have to do it?

Artists create for all these reasons and more. Above all, great artists want to express something deeper than ordinary forms of communication — like talking or writing — can convey. They strive to suggest meanings that are beyond the reach of everyday vocabularies. So they invent visual vocabularies for people to interpret. Each person can “read” this picture language — which doesn’t come with a dictionary — differently.

This difference in the way each person “reads” a piece of art is especially true of art made in the past 500 years. Ancient as well as medieval art (art made before 1400) often had a communal purpose and a common language of symbols that was widely understood; often that communal purpose was linked to religion, ritual, or mythology.

Recording religion, ritual, and mythology

The earliest works of art — prehistoric cave paintings from 30,000 BC to 10,000 BC (see Chapter 4) — were likely to have been a key part of a shamanistic ritual (a priest acting as a medium enters the spirit world during a trance). In many prehistoric cultures, people thought religion and ritual helped them to prepare for an afterlife or control their environment. For example, fertility rituals were linked to a god or goddess of crops and were designed to guarantee a successful harvest. Art (and often dance and music) frequently had a role in these religious rituals.

Scholars don’t know much about the religion of prehistoric humans (people who lived between 30,000 BC and 3500 BC). But they know a great deal about the religions of the earliest civilizations in Mesopotamia and Egypt (which began around 3500 BC). Some Mesopotamian art and most Ancient Egyptian art have a religious theme. Egyptian art typically focuses on the afterlife and humans’ relationship with the gods.

During the Roman period (476 BC–AD 500), religious art was less common than secular art (art about humankind’s life on earth). But religious art dominated the Middle Ages (500–1400), lost some ground during the humanistic Renaissance (1400–1520) and Mannerist periods (1520–1600), and made a comeback in the Baroque period (1600–1700) during the religious wars between Catholics and Protestants.

Art History For Dummies. Jesse Bryant Wilder