Art History For Dummies. Jesse Bryant Wilder
life with a rugged honesty — or at least they claimed to. The Realists tried to elevate middle- and upper-class consciousness regarding the struggles of the poor (factory workers and agricultural laborers) by illustrating them plainly and honestly. The invention of tin tubes for oil paint in 1841 enabled these artists to paint outdoors (en plein air), capturing laborers and other working-class people on canvas while they worked.
Impressionism (1869–late 1880s)
The Impressionists painted slices of everyday life in natural light: people on a picnic, a walk in the park, or an outdoor summer dance. They sought to catch fleeting moments on canvas and the changing effects of light (see Chapter 19). Their rapid brushstrokes (you have to paint fast if you’re going to catch a fleeting moment) give their work a fuzzy, slightly out-of-focus look.
Post-Impressionism (1886–1892)
The Post-Impressionists (see Chapter 20) didn’t have one guiding vision like the Impressionists. In fact, each Post-Impressionist did his own thing:
Van Gogh pursued a universal life force behind all things.
Gauguin tracked primitive emotions and the “noble savage” all the way to Tahiti.
Cézanne painted the geometrical building blocks of nature.
Ensor unmasked society by giving everyone a mask!
So what did Post-Impressionists have in common? Most of them started as Impressionists but broke away to launch new styles that retained some aspects of Impressionism and rejected others.
Moving Off the Rails in the 20th Century
The rapid social and political changes of the 20th century and the inventions that sped up and improved global communication — radio, cinema, the airplane, television, transistors and on and on — triggered a plethora of art movements that responded in a variety of ways to those changes. Here are examples:
Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and Freud’s and Jung’s theories about the unconscious helped define Cubism, Futurism, and Surrealism.
Ghastly world wars caused many artists to react intensely and creatively. The first, called the Great War, because its scale was unimaginable until WWII, spurred the Dada movement and Modernism. It also motivated Expressionists like Kirchner, Heckel, Kollwitz, Otto Dix, and others to make anti-war art.
The rise of communism and fascist movements in the wake of WWI — and the subsequent horrors they unleashed before, during, and after WWII — affected the art of Surrealists such as Joan Miró and René Magritte and post-war art from Abstract Expressionism to Pop Art.
The Viet Nam War helped to spawn ’60s protest art in America and elsewhere.
The women’s movement, as well as civil rights, anti-war, and environmental movements of the ’50s and ’60s, also fostered and helped shape activist art movements in those decades and beyond.
The gay rights movement of the ’70s and ’80s spawned a new wave of protest art.
Fauvism and Expressionism
Both of these early 20th-century movements pushed art in the direction of abstraction by simplifying or distorting form and by using expressive rather than naturalistic colors (see Chapter 21).
Fauvism (1905–1908)
Fauvism was a short-lived movement headed by Henri Matisse and André Derain. The Fauves simplified form by stylizing it. They also flattened perspective, which made their paintings look less like windows into the world and more like wallpaper. The leading Fauve, Henri Matisse, believed that art should be inspiring and decorative, fun to look at. It’s art you could hang in a child’s playroom — if your kid weren’t clamoring for SpongeBob and Elmo.
Expressionism (1905–1933)
Expressionism is two German movements: Die Brücke (The Bridge) and Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider). Die Brücke Expressionist artists distort the exterior of people and places to express the interior. On an Expressionist canvas, a scream distorts not just the face but the whole body and even the person’s surroundings. The madness in a war zone or inside an insane asylum would twist the architecture and surrounding environment so that they, too, look “deranged.” Der Blaue Reiter artists strove to depict the spiritual side of life, which led many of them to pure abstraction.
Cubism, Futurism, Dada, and Surrealism
Both Cubism and Futurism fractured physical reality into bite-size units, but for different reasons. Led by artists disillusioned with the unprecedented destruction and misery from World War I, Dada and Surrealism rejected the traditional values and art forms of the culture that they believed triggered the war.
Cubism (1908–1920s)
Cubism could be called the artsy side of Einstein’s theory of relativity. All is relative; what you see depends upon your point of view. Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso invented Cubism so people could observe all views of a person or an object at once, from any angle.
Futurism (1909–1940s)
Unlike other art movements, instead of turning their backs on the machine age, the Futurists embraced technology, speed, and, unfortunately, violence and Fascism. They felt Fascism was the only type of government that could carry out the cultural housecleaning they believed society needed. Their movement was based mostly in Italy and pre-Revolution Russia.
Dada (1916–1920)
The madness of World War I provoked artists to create Dada, which started in neutral Switzerland and quickly spread across Europe. Their “art” was to mock the prevailing culture, including mainstream art, with demonstrations, “actions,” and mock-art. The Dadaists assumed that rational thinking had caused the war; therefore, the antidote to war must be irrational thinking.
Surrealism (1924–1940s)
Surrealism was inspired by Dada and Freud’s theories of the unconscious. Like the Dadaists, the Surrealists (many of whom had been Dadaists) hoped to fix humanity by snubbing the rational world. But instead of mocking earlier art traditions like the Dadaists, they sought ways to get in touch with the deeper, instinctual reality of one’s unconscious. They painted their dreams, practiced free association, and mixed up the rational order of life in their art by