Cubism, Futurism, Suprematism and Constructivism Mike Mitchell

TOK What do we expect from art? Truth? Seduction? Provocation? Beauty?

Cubism, Futurism, Supremativism and Constructivism (1905 - 1920) Overview Cubism, Futurism, Supremativism and Constructivism (1905 - 1920) characteristics chief artists major works manifestos modernism influenced art by contributing geometric shapes, dynamic lines, and sleek, hard, cold man-made objects; influence of science, technology and mathematics; subject matters were represented in multiple dimensions and perspectives representing time and space Pablo Picasso Georges Braque Giacomo Balla Umberto Boccioni Giovanni Segantini Alexander Rodchenko Liubov Popova Alexander Vesnin Varvara Stepanova Le guitariste Portrait of Picasso Three Musicians Woman's Head The City Rises Unique Forms of Continuity in Space Cyclist Agitprop poster “MANIFESTO OF FUTURISM We want to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and rashness. The essential elements of our poetry will be courage, audacity and revolt. Literature has up to now magnified pensive immobility, ecstasy and slumber. We want to exalt movements of aggression, feverish sleeplessness, the double march, the perilous leap, the slap and the blow with the fist. We declare that the splendor of the world has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing automobile with its bonnet adorned with great tubes like serpents with explosive breath ... a roaring motor car…“ –excerpts from Manietti’s Futurist Manifesto

Cubism, Futurism, Supremativism, Constructivism, De Stijl (1905–1920) Cubism was invented around 1907 in Paris by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. It was the first abstract style of modern art. Cubist paintings ignore the traditions of perspective drawing and show you many views of a subject at one time. Futurism was a revolutionary Italian movement that celebrated modernity. They glorified industrialization, technology, and transport along with the speed, noise and energy of urban life.  Suprematism was developed in 1915 by the Russian artist Kazimir Malevich. It was a geometric style of abstract painting derived from elements of Cubism and Futurism. Constructivism used the same geometric language as Suprematism but abandoned its mystical vision in favor of their ’socialism of vision’. this was not an art that was easily understood, it was eventually repressed and replaced by Socialist Realism. De Stijl was a Dutch 'style' of pure abstraction developed by Piet Mondrian, Mondrian gradually refined the elements of his art to a grid of lines and primary colors which he configured in a series.

Cubism When: 1907-1914 Where: France Who: Picasso & Braque What: Early Cubism 1907-1909   Aimed to: Sought to flatten out the picture plane.   Influenced by: Cezanne and Primitive art.   Characteristics: extremely bright colours, hard edged forms, and flattened space.   Though previous art movements (Impressionism and Post Impressionism) began to evolve into flatter forms, Picasso and Braque were more radical in their approach.   German Expressionism and Fauvism were going on simultaneously, and the works of those artists also tended towards flattened pictorial space.   A primary difference between Cubism and those movements is that Cubism is based much less on the expression of emotion than it is an intellectual experiment with structure.

Picasso Les Demoiselles Les Demoiselles de Avignon was Picasso's earliest work which broke dramatically from his figurative and poetic works of the first part of his life. Relates directly to the prostitution district of Paris. The women's facial features disintegrate into primitive masks, and their bodies are so hard-edged that it looks as if it would cut you if you touched them. At this time, Picasso was increasingly influenced by the raw expressive power of African and Oceanic tribal arts. The women are simultaneously seductive and horrifying.

Picasso The Guitarist

Juan Gris Portrait of Picasso (right)

Georges Braque “Violin with Palette” (left) “Violin with Pitcher” (right)

Fernand Leger “The City”

Artist’s Sketch Jean Metzinger “Portrait of Albert Gleizes”

Max Weber Amedeo Modigliani “Chinese Restaurant” “Jacques Lipchitz and his Wife”

Futurism The most important Italian avant-garde art movement of the 20th century, Futurism celebrated advanced technology and urban modernity. Committed to the new, its members wished to destroy older forms of culture and to demonstrate the beauty of modern life - the beauty of the machine, speed, violence and change. Although the movement did foster some architecture, most of its adherents were artists who worked in traditional media such as painting and sculpture, and in an eclectic range of styles inspired by Post-Impressionism.

Key Points The Futurists were fascinated by the problems of representing modern experience, and strived to have their paintings evoke all kinds of sensations - and not merely those visible to the eye. At its best, Futurist art brings to mind the noise, heat and even the smell of the metropolis. Unlike many other modern art movements, such as Impressionism and Pointillism, Futurism was not immediately identified with a distinctive style. Instead its adherents worked in an eclectic manner, borrowing from various aspects of Post-Impressionism, including Symbolism and Divisionism. It was not until 1911 that a distinctive Futurist style emerged, and then it was a product of Cubist influence. The Futurists were fascinated by new visual technology, in particular chrono-photography, a predecessor of animation and cinema that allowed the movement of an object to be shown across a sequence of frames. This technology was an important influence on their approach to showing movement in painting, encouraging an abstract art with rhythmic, pulsating qualities.

Marcel Duchamp “Nude Descending a Staircase No.2”

Luigi Russolo
The Revolt 1911

“We declare … a new beauty, the beauty of speed “We declare … a new beauty, the beauty of speed. A racing motor car … is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace” (the celebrated ancient Greek sculpture in the Louvre museum in Paris). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJTzl9ee-0k

Suprematism Suprematism, the invention of Russian artist Kazimir Malevich, was one of the earliest and most radical developments in abstract art. Its name derived from Malevich's belief that Suprematist art would be superior to all the art of the past, and that it would lead to the "supremacy of pure feeling or perception in the pictorial arts." Heavily influenced by avant-garde poets, and an emerging movement in literary criticism, Malevich derived his interest in flouting the rules of language, in defying reason. He believed that there were only delicate links between words or signs and the objects they denote, and from this he saw the possibilities for a totally abstract art.

Key Points The Suprematists' interest in abstraction was fired by a search for the 'zero degree' of painting, the point beyond which the medium could not go without ceasing to be art. This encouraged the use of very simple motifs, since they best articulated the shape and flat surface of the canvases on which they were painted. (Ultimately, the square, circle, and cross became the group's favorite motifs.) It also encouraged many Suprematists to emphasize the surface texture of the paint on canvas, this texture being another essential quality of the medium of painting. Though much Suprematist art can seem highly austere and serious, there was a strong tone of absurdism running through the movement. One of Malevich's initial inspirations for the movement was zaum, or transrational poetry, of some of his contemporaries, something that led him to the idea of 'zaum painting.' The Russian Formalists, an important and highly influential group of literary critics, who were Malevich's contemporaries, were opposed to the idea that language is a simple, transparent vehicle for communication. They pointed out that words weren't so easily linked to the objects they denoted. This fostered the idea that art could serve to make the world fresh and strange, art could make us look at the world in new ways. Suprematist abstract painting was aimed at doing much the same, by removing the real world entirely and leaving the viewer to contemplate what kind of picture of the world is offered by, for instance, a Black Square (c. 1915).

White on White is an abstract painting by Kasimir Malevich White on White is an abstract painting by Kasimir Malevich. It is one of the more well-known examples of the Russian suprematism movement Kazimir Malevich White on White, 1918

Kazimir Malevich, Supremus No. 55, 1916

Constructivism Art into life!

Constructivism Avant-garde tendency in 20th-century painting, sculpture, photography, design and architecture, with associated developments in literature, theatre and film. The term was first coined by artists in Russia in early 1921 and achieved wide international currency in the 1920s. Russian Constructivism refers specifically to a group of artists who sought to move beyond the autonomous art object, extending the formal language of abstract art into practical design work. This development was prompted by the Utopian climate following the October Revolution of 1917, which led artists to seek to create a new visual environment, embodying the social needs and values of the new Communist order. The concept of International Constructivism defines a broader current in Western art, most vital from around 1922 until the end of the 1920s, that was centred primarily in Germany. International Constructivists were inspired by the Russian example, both artistically and politically. They continued, however, to work in the traditional artistic media of painting and sculpture, while also experimenting with film and photography and recognizing the potential of the new formal language for utilitarian design. The term Constructivism has frequently been used since the 1920s, in a looser fashion, to evoke a continuing tradition of geometric abstract art that is ‘constructed’ from autonomous visual elements such as lines and planes, and characterized by such qualities as precision, impersonality, a clear formal order, simplicity and economy of organization and the use of contemporary materials such as plastic and metal.

Constructivism - Naum Gabo - 'Head no 2' 1916

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De Stijl Originally a publication De Stijl was founded in 1917 by two pioneers of abstract art, Piet Mondrian and Theo van Doesburg. De Stijl means style in Dutch. The magazine De Stijl became a vehicle for Mondrian’s ideas on art, and in a series of articles in the first year’s issues he defined his aims and used, perhaps for the first time, the term neo-plasticism. This became the name for the type of abstract art he and the De Stijl circle practised.

Piet Mondrain http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fmiKOOvLUo

TOK What do we expect from art? Truth? Seduction? Provocation? Beauty?