Expressionism

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  • Expressionism
    • Intro Points
      • Autonomy of feelings - about the artist's experience
      • French movement expressed in Fauvism
        • Using more primary colours and looking outwards
      • German movement split into The Blue Rider and The Bridge
        • More sombre and internalised
      • Kandinsky one of first artists of 20th c. to move to pure abstraction
      • Lipps talks about perceptional psychology through testing emotional responses to colour
        • Concerned with aesthetics, admired by Freud
      • Influence of Delacroix's liberal use of colour
        • Recently popular due to publication of journals and Signac's 'From Eugene Delacroix to Neo-Impressionism'
      • Many Expressionists labelled 'degenerate' by Nazis and moved to US
    • Matisse 'Woman with the Hat' (1905)
      • Description
        • Non naturalistic
        • Distorted scale
        • Impasto brushwork applied directly from tubes
          • Direct and vigorous, staccato lines
        • Figure separated from background due to impasto
          • Bold outline of facial features
        • Elimination of spatial recession and shadow
        • Hat as fashion statement, reflects confidence
          • Dressed as member of French bourgeoisie
      • Context
        • Displayed at Salon de Autumne
          • One of the paintings Vauxcelles called a 'Wild Beast'
        • Portrait of wife Amelie
          • Bold, reckless personality, a equal marriage
          • Power and confidence in stance
          • Tried to hold out for full price of 500 francs when Steins offered 300
        • Influence of Nietzsche in expressive, wild approach
        • Gauguin's ideas of return to purity of means
          • But more exotic subject matter meant his was more acceptable
        • Described as 'crude graffiti', even young artists found it hard to identify with
    • Kirchner 'Five Woman on a Street' (1913)
      • Description
        • Five women, all with similar features
        • Predominant use of green and black -sickly
        • Have side profiles, flatly painted, unclear which side we're viewing from
        • Shapeless and elongated, seem bird-like and animalistic
        • Space quite enclosive- wall down side makes it claustrophobic
        • Enormous collars made from feathers and beak-like chins
          • Sinister birds of paradise
        • Immediacy of brushstrokes- broken and scribbled
          • Ugly in subject, colour and technique
        • Rejects decorative nature of Fauves
      • Context
        • Kirchner an architectural student
          • Main source of inspiration the streets of Dresden
            • City on the verge- pre-war uneasiness
        • One of several paintings of street walkers, some featuring men
          • Sense of alienation in the city and sense of anxiety- colour creates tension
        • Threat of sexual violence- red lips create a disturbing sensuality
          • Plight of women in the prey of man, but they are the ones doing the preying
          • Nervousness about STDs with sickly green
        • Figures look like death, dressed in black like harpies
      • Influences
        • Influence of African masks in sharp features and pointed chins
        • Some see as brothel scene, which he did several times e.g. in woodcuts in 1913
        • Relates to illustration of Adelbert Von Chemisso's story about man who sells his soul to the devil
        • Claimed to not have influences, but can see elements of Munch, Fauvism and Van Gogh
    • Kandinsky 'Composition VII' (1913)
      • Description
        • Large scale 'cataclysmic event'
        • Colours evoke violence and chaos but also calm
          • Warm colour palette of reds, oranges, yellows
        • Rhythmic and decorative
        • Rejects traditional representation and moves to abstraction
          • 'shows nothing of calculation, only feeling'
        • Flatter forms refer to Garden of Eden
        • Ladder form references piano keys and the Russian folklore of climbing to salvation
        • Desert-like sandunes at top
        • Range of angles- acute angles warm and yellow because found in nature, right angle cold and manmade in red
        • Verticals seen as positive, horizontals seen as negative
        • Mixture of strong, saturated colour and layered forms
      • Influences
        • Romanticism in individuality of the artist
        • Wagner concert 1896, convinced he should focus on art over law
          • 'I saw all the colours in my mind...wild almost crazy lines sketched in front of me
        • Wagner's The Ring talked of Gesmtkunstwerk - immersive experience of aesthetics
        • Title references music
          • Tries to achieve visually what music does spiritually
        • Close relationship with Schoenberg- changing music how Kandinsky was with art
          • Did away with melodic, tonal composition, more about experience
        • Taught at Bauhaus and learnt about colour theory and spirituality
        • Influence of Fauvists in use of colour and Surrealists in drawing dreams
          • Primitivism and children's art
          • Biomorphic forms of Miro
        • Munch and Van Gogh in interior world interpreted in art
      • Context
        • Kandinsky said it resembled the great flood
        • Took 3 days to complete and the most prep of any of his works
        • Set up Blue Rider Group- blue associated with spirituality
        • Bright yellow reflects Lubok prints in Russian homes
        • Encourages synaesthesia - link between senses
          • Kandinsky may have had relationship between colour, music and numbers
        • Experienced Russian Revolution and rise of Nazism- art labelled degenerate

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