Reminder: the bonus point opportunity (posted on October 16) is due Monday, November 10.

Today’s class focused on dada and how it influenced art in terms of imagery, attitude, and technique. We keyed in on several artists who were directly involved in the movement and produced work that still has a lasting influence on the art world.

We looked at Marcel Duchamp who, through image, text, and ideas, developed a new type of artistic literacy. Not the least of which is the readymade.

Marcel Duchamp "L.H.O.O.Q." 1919

We discussed Man Ray who worked as painter, sculptor, photographer, and filmmaker. He manipulated objects of the commonplace that transformed their meanings and developed many photographic techniques still in use today such as the photogram and solarization.

Man Ray, "Gift" 1921

And Kurt Schwitters, who created his art out of what society threw away. Taking the concept developed by synthetic cubism to an extreme.

Kurt Schwitters "Picture with Light Center" 1919

Next class we will discuss the influences that dada had on the art world and other artists as well as begin our discussion on another major influence on the history of art: surrealism.

Viewings:

• Slides from Lecture 19

Readings:

• Chapter 13: From Fantasy to Dada and the New Objectivity

Today we reviewed the last three weeks of the semester.

The second quiz will be on Wednesday, October 29.

This lecture we viewed and discussed futurism and some of the more radical extensions of cubism in the work Malevich and Mondrian.

In futurism, a movement centered in Italy, we discussed how this movement was a literary one: the first of the 20th century to issue a manifesto. This would become commonplace in many of the new artistic movement of the 20th century.

Umberto Boccioni, "The City Rises" 1910

The movement was concerned (among many things) with capturing the power, speed, and dynamism of modern urban culture. Much of its imagery was influenced by cubism but also how the camera (photography) captured motion: in ways impossible to for the human eye to see.

Kazimir Malevich "Black Square" 1913

We then viewed and discussed the work of Kazimir Malevich, a Russian artist who took the cubist style, with its emphasis on geometric form, to its most extreme in a style he referred to as suprematism.

His concern was reducing the artistic image down to its most fundamental and simple shapes that could suggest a higher spiritual ideal.

We then closed the lecture with the work of the Dutch artist Piet Mondrian.

Piet Mondrian, "Lozenge Composition with Yellow, Black, Blue, Red, and Gray" 1921

Mondrian, much like Malevich, reduced his art down to its most basic: right angles, the primary colors, as well as white and black. Mondrian’s approach was much more restrictive than Malevich as he was concerned with creating a perfect equilibrium in his art.

Next class we summarize and review to prepare for the next quiz on Wednesday, October 29.

Viewings:

• Slides from Lecture 15

Readings:

• Chapter 11: Futurism, Abstraction in Russia, and de Stijl

Today we closed our discussion on cubism by viewing and discussing another form known as synthetic cubism.

Synthetic cubism was a formal experiment that was an outgrowth of analytical cubism that began with the inclusion of papier collé (stuck or pasted paper) into drawings and paintings as seen in this work by Braque.

Georges Braque, "Fruit Dish and Glass" 1912

Picasso took this a few steps further by including elements from the “real” world into his works creating what we call collage.

Pablo Picasso, "Still Life with Chair Caning" 1912

The overall effect produced is one of flatness through the inclusion of text, newspaper clippings, and other non-traditional art materials that is integrated with drawing and painting to produce what we might call mixed media. This is significant as it signals the new fact that art could be constructed out of anything and is a complete break from creating an illusion of physical reality.

We then moved on to discussing some of the outgrowths of cubism by viewing works by Juan Gris and Fernand Leger. We also looked at orphism and the work of Robert Delaunay and Frantisek Kupka.

We closed the lecture with a look at the various ways photography captured motion, showing us the world in ways that could never be seen by the human eye alone. We looked at some of the photography of Eadweard Muybridge and Étienne-Jules Marey.

Eadweard Muybridge, "Galloping Horse (animated)"

We ended the lecture with Marcel Duchamp’s (in)famous work Nude Descending A Staircase.

Next class we will look at the influence of motion on cubism and the movement known as futurism.

Viewings:

• Slides from Lecture 14

Readings:

• Chapter 10: Cubism
• Chapter 11: Futurism, Abstraction in Russia, and de Stijl

Todays class focused on cubism and the work of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. We discussed how cubism was a synthesis of the influences of non-western art (African masks and Iberian sculpture) and the late work of Paul Cezanne.

Pablo Picasso "Young Girls of Avignon" 1907

Our primary discussion was about one aspect of the cubist style known as analytical cubism.

Georges Braque "The Portuguese" 1911

We discussed how Braque and Picasso worked simultaneously (and practically identically) on this new style and began to change what a work of art could be by breaking with the tradition of illusionistic painting.

Pablo Picasso "The Accordionist" 1911

This early form of cubism was an overall concern with form and playing with the “reality” of what painting on a two-dimensional surface could be.

Next class we will continue our survey of cubism and its influence on other art and artists.

Viewings:

• Slides from Lecture 13

Readings:

• Chapter 10: Cubism

Today we completed our look at expressionism by looking at some of the work by the German Franz Marc, the Russian Vasily Kandinsky, the Austrian Egon Schiele, and how the expressionist style evolved due to the influence of the radical new movement known as cubism.

Franz Marc "The Little Blue Horses" 1911

Marc and Kandinsky were members of a group known as The Blue Rider. This group was highly concerned with the spiritual: Marc with animals in nature and Kandinsky with his ventures into non-representational art to try to reach a higher spiritual visual plane.

Vasily Kandinsky "Composition VII" 1913

We also viewed a selection of work by Schiele and his work with portraiture, self-portraits, and other images around relationships, sex, and death.

Egon Schiele "Reclining Woman with Green Stockings" 1917

We then briefly looked at later expressionist work and how their styles were being influenced by cubism.

Franz Marc "Stables" 1913-14

We then began our discussion about cubism by discussing the artists, styles, and non-western art that influenced this ground-breaking style.

Next class we will focus primarily on cubism, Picasso, and Braque.

Viewings:

• Slides from Lecture 12

Readings:

• Chapter 8: Expressionism in Germany
• Chapter 10: Cubism