Chap 22 notes

Chapter 22 Between the Wars

Dadaism was a controversial and exciting movement. Dadaism grew out of the earlier Cubism movement and it used collage and photomontage techniques. Many Dada works were overtly political. Dada was a European precursor to Surrealism and included artist Marcel Duchamp. The Dadaist movement extended to both visual art and literature. It was an anti-movement born in the second decade of the 20th century and affected by the disillusionment after World War I. Dadaism was out to shock, to shake up conventions, to be anti-art, to question the very definitions of art.

Duchamp was way ahead of his time and is considered the first exponent of conceptual art, a movement of the late 20th century. The most famous example of dada is Duchamp's entry into the 1917 Society of Independent Artists exhibition in New York - a 'found' urinal, titled Fountain.

Surrealism began as an official movement shortly after the end of the First World War. Some of the members of Dada went on to create the Surrealistic movement of the 1920's. Surrealistic painters had wildly divergent styles, but some of the elements they had in common were: the effect of the subconscious and dreams in art; the importance of the element of chance in art; the idea of an absolute, or 'super-reality' in art.

Salvador Dali was the most famous exponent of Surrealism. Dali was very prolific throughout his life, creating hundreds of paintings, prints, and even sculptures. He also produced surrealist films, illustrated books, handcrafted jewelry, created theatrical sets and costumes.

The Persistence of Memory by Dali, almost stands alone as a symbol of the movement.

Other Surrealists were Joan Miro, Max Ernst, and Rene Magritte. The surrealists admired the artwork of the insane for its freedom of expression as well as artworks created by children.

Rene Magritte constantly challenged our preconceptions about reality. His works contain extraordinary juxtapositions of ordinary objects or an unusual context that gives new meaning to familiar things.

Max Ernst was one of the founding members of surrealism, who had previously been linked to the dada movement.

Women Surrealists –
Leonora Carrington paints surreal visions combining mythological stories and childhood fantasies.
Frida Kahlo's art looked inward, to intensely personal expressions.

Diego Rivera was influenced by post-impressionism and cubism. Married to Frida Kahlo, they had one of the most famous alliances in the art world. Diego loved to paint images about Mexico's history and revolution.

De Stijl – The Style, An Art movement advocating pure abstraction and simplicity — form reduced to the rectangle and other geometric shapes. Color reduced to the primary colors with black and white.

Piet Mondrian was the De Stijl group's leading figure.

Constructivism took a radical step from representational to non-representational sculpture.

African-American Modernists - movement became known as the Harlem Renaissance, it embraced all art-forms including music, dance, film, theatre and cabaret.

Aaron Douglas painted murals for public buildings and produced illustrations and cover designs for many black publications.

Jacob Lawrence was the first American artist of African descent to receive sustained mainstream recognition in the United States.

Romare Bearden can best be described as a "descendent" of the Harlem Renaissance, for the majority of his works were created a couple of decades after the movement had ended. His paintings, collages and prints celebrate black history, music (jazz primarily an invention of black musicians), and black lifestyles. Bright colors, unusual spatial compositions, and a jubilant attitude frequently occupy his works.

The American Scene - Throughout the 1930s and into the early 1950s, many American artists sought an indigenous style of realism that would embody the values of ordinary people in the everyday working world. In the wake of severe economic uncertainty, social upheaval, and the political shifts that followed the disastrous Great Depression, American artists maintained a commitment to projecting a very personal view.

American Artists of note –
Andrew Wyeth
Grant Wood
Thomas Hart Benton
Edward Hopper
Norman Rockwell
Charles Burchfield
Arthur Dove
Georgia O’Keefe