Video Review: Module 11

Dada and Surrealism

I chose this video because Dada seems like a really inspiring and interesting movement and I wanted to learn more about it. Surrealism is also one of my favorite styles in art I can never get bored with it.

Key Points:

·         Kurt Schwitters assembles the elements in an act of discovery as well as design. No limit to the materials that could be used. Looking at the work in small recognizable pieces and then transforming it into a whole.

·         Dada- meaning ‘yes yes’ and ‘hobby horse.’ This was a state of mind, a storm that broke over the world of art.

·         Hannah Hoch was the only woman in the Berlin dada group. Her art ‘tore into’ society like an angry dog. Chaos is carefully planned. Political messages and support for spontaneity and the dada revolution.

·         George Grosz fled Berlin and his work was destroyed by Nazis, he gained many friends but many enemies as well, especially of the people he attacked with his work. More humor arrived in his 1926 painting ‘Pillars of Society.” His social variance was great. He used directness to show both what he sees and how he feels about it.

·         Jeon Miro was a Spanish surrealist who used still life to create an abstract image and reflects a ‘new world’ image that corresponds with the real world. These pictures have much more additional meaning. Shapes and lines take on a life of their own.

·         Salvador Dali explored the darkets regions of the human subconscious. This resulted in disturbing images in which ‘the windows of the mind were opened fully wide.’ He illustrates every part of his female figure in her sickly and horrifying looking shape. His paintings seem to show decay of civilization and deeper meaning to their ‘spooky wilderness.’  He was fascinated with psychology and Freud’s theories of the mind. Dali had a faddish with crutches. “Chest of drawers” was a natural Freudian pun.

·         Man Ray’s “La Fortune” displays familiar objects in an unfamiliar arrangement. This isn’t something the artist has seen, but a collection of thoughts and pieced together fragments of imagination. 

·         The juxtaposition of unrelated objects with normality in colors intruiged Man Ray as he was inspired by the writer who talked about the beauty in the odd and unnatural. This is where most surrealists derived their idea of beauty from.

·         The work of surrealists cannot be pinned down to a single interpretation. Nothing is completely relevant or obvious.

I was surprised at how political the dada movement really was. I thought it was more about being free spirits and rebelling in the art world alone (sort of like the 60s flower power era) but it actually included political figures and statements in much of the artwork itself. I didn’t know this and it definitely added to the outline in the text.

Expressionism

I chose this video because expressionism really speaks to the viewer. I wanted to see more of the behind the scenes of how artists really make a painting come alive with emotion.

Key Points:

·         Edward Munch was one of Oslo’s most powerful painters. He painted “Ashes” that explores the dramatic and troublesome relationship between man, women, and sexuality. You can see this in her eyes, her expression, the way she tears at her hair, etc. This painting takes on an Adam and Eve resemblance in the “what have we done” kind of sense, this was his original intent for naming this painting. He is painting an emotional experience.

·         This painting caused outrage. It showed emotional despair and sexuality.

·         He continued to paint this same female picture in “Ashes” often changing her emotions and expression to convey different meaning.

·         Suffering and death haunted munch.

·         The scream was painted after an experience he had while walking home and observing the “scream” in nature.

·         He depicts pure emotion and extreme states of mind in facial expression, or loneliness in blurred ambiguous faces.

·         Most of his works can be loosely related to each other with an overall theme of pessimism towards life.

·         Franz Marc painted animals. He found men ugly and animals clean and refined.  ‘The Tiger’ shows great supremacy for animals and protest against traditional German art which glorified man.

·         Kirchner painted mysterious and tale-telling street scenes, often to portray a point of view about a certain group of people or a situation happening in time.  He explains that there really is no use in trying to paint objectively when painting a modern metropolis at night.

·         Kirchner’s anxiety eventually led to a nervous breakdown.

·         Max Beckmann created actors while in exile. The picture was personal and its entire meaning is unknown. The characters resemble puppets.

·         George Baselitz inverts and undermines tradition by allowing imitations of brutality and anxiety into his pictures. The setting of his characters explains many things about them but also confuses the viewer, such as in The Great Friends.

·         In the Hunter Baselitz upsets the natural view and focus and forces us to put back together a familiar scene in our imagination.  

·         Anselm Keifer’s work reflects the dark aspects of world war two which was ending when he was born. He uses dark colors, shadows, empty places, and coarse appearing texture.  The texture and feel of the details and architecture in his paintings was very important.  He often alluded to the cold irony of Germany’s ‘spiritual heroes.’

·         Keifer drew inspiration from actual existing buildings and imagining them in a certain context. He was influenced by Leonardo Da Vinci.

This illustrated some of the ‘darker times’ in art history. I was intrigued by the depth and mood that simple color changes could give a painting. I liked this video and I do love the portrayal of anxiety and emotion in paintings such as the scream (one of my favorites) but I don’t like over analyzing so much about such heavy emotions, sometimes I think that things could be painted for a million reasons and we don’t have to know all of them. It’s part of the mystery. This related to the text because we talked about expressionism and how it was a movement that essentially grew off of and into other art movement in time but was very monumental in and of itself.

Dance at the Moulin de la Galette

I chose this film because I got to see this painting in person and so many were so interested by it I wanted to know more about it and why it had acquired such fame.

Key points:

·         Dance at the Moulin de la Galette by Renoir is one of art history’s most celebrated paintings, it transports the Paris to the viewer and the viewer to Paris.

·         The Moulin de la Galette was characterized by and associated with revolution. These were NOT happy times like the painting suggested because the city was still stained with the blood of young men and soldiers from the war.

·         The painting is rarely seen in public and kept at a secret location.

·         The painting is bright sunny happy and pleasing, so pleasing that Renoir painted it twice changing only the size

·         The large version hangs in the Museum D’Orsay in Paris (I saw this!!); the other is half as big and is kept in private. We do not know which one was painted first.

·         Renoir apparently never missed the Sunday dance that he lovingly painted, it’s a very personal ‘lifestyle’ based painting.

·         He wants us to see the Dance at the Moulin de la Galette as a place where women and men came to classily enjoy each other’s company, even though in real life there was much prostitution and women especially worked in terrible conditions so it was often a necessity. These were dark and dirty times, the polar opposite of what Renoir shows us in the socializations of Dance at the Moulin de la Galette. It’s his fantasy of women’s lives at the time, not how they actually lived; an escapists world.

·         The painting becomes as interesting for what it doesn’t show as what it does.

·         The Moulin de la Galette was actually occupied by the commune during the war. That’s actually how the Sacre Coeur came about to atone for the crimes during the siege and political oppression that was taking place while this painting was being created.

·         20,000+ died in the week of blood and during this time navy guns were actually stored in The Moulin de la Galette.

·         Transforming a politically sensitive site into one full of people enjoying themselves was an act of defiance on Renoir’s part.

·         Many other artists painted the Moulin de la Galette very differently and not in the same light as Renoir, literally.

·         Light was key for Renoir (and changing light in nature and dappling across forms etc)

·         This impressionist style was criticized and risky in the 19^th century; it made no attempt to conceal the presence of the bus and looked ‘unfinished’ or ‘untamed.’

·         He always went to the dancehall to paint this picture according to one account. The account was written so much later after he actually painted them it that the chronology of the paintings is debated.

·         The little one could have been created first as a prototype, it was sketchy and more portable it was. Then again could have been a small replica; there is not strong enough evidence to prove which one came first.

·         It really is a page out of a history book.

·         The painting sold for a disgusting 78.1 million dollars!

·         The painting should have remained in public for the people to enjoy, not in a warehouse where no one can enjoy it. ‘It’s a cynical way to look at art.’

·         We don’t know who owns the painting now, or where it is.

·         The painting spreads prettiness and happiness on a commercial level.

·         Rod Stewart used it as one of the most sophisticated examples of the rock and roll lifestyle.  

I really enjoyed learning more about this painting. Even after seeing this I had NO IDEA the controversy it held or the irony and contrasts with fantasy and reality that it held. The text didn’t give such a fascinating explanation of the paintings and their mystery so this really added to my understanding behind the fame of these works.

A Sunday on La Grande Jatte

I chose this film because I became curious with this painting in the past (primarily because of the monkey) and I thought maybe the video would give me some insight about the monkey.

Key points:

·         This is a sweet summer scene with odd peculiarities such as the regal women with the monkey on the leash.

·         Seurat was discrete and reserved; he didn’t communicate much with his family.

·         He secluded himself.

·         Studies of art were interrupted by military service and he never returned to them but continued his very personal and unique drawings.

·         Subjects of his early paintings were landscapes.

·         Classes mixed and environments mixed at this social relaxing place La Grande Jatte, prostitution was also prominent here.  This is reason for the theory that the woman fishing might be a prostitute or many of the unaccompanied women.

·         The Grande Jatte could be innocent or dodgy.

·         Monkeys clearly fascinated Seurat. The monkey in this painting was added after the painting was completed.

·         The woman the monkey is with is believed to be not a prostitute but a woman with a few lovers. (A caucaut?)

·         You can see the differences in the classes of the people in the two different paintings.

·         This painting was created with pointillism. The intricate strokes and dots are an amazing product of an immense amount of work.

·         He developed a new style much more focused on the light in color.

·         He used tiny brush strokes to cover the entire surface of what he had already painted once. Such a daunting task! It’s almost obsessive how the little strokes are so pure in color and precise. This hints at his meticulous character.

·         There are two different experiences looking at it up close and from far away as a whole.

·         This could be a formula, or a series of risks.

·         There is a pureness in the little girl in the middle. Her presence may also relate to color theory. This is also very relative to fashion’s influence on art and vies versa.

·         There were classical sculpture influences for Seurat who strived to combine the ancient and the modern.

·         The painting met much criticism originally, finding something perhaps offensive, or not in keeping with impressionist practice. It was quarantined and shown alone, it was also largely ignored, except by young male intellectuals.

·         Serauts entire career lasted just ten years when he died from dyptheria.

·         Eventually it was proudly displayed in America, just when the French realized they had lost such a precious prize. They tried to buy it back but Bartlet was right in predicting this and now it is the only truly great French masterpiece that is not in France.

·         It was transported with great fame to New York where it survived a fire and never left Chicago again after that.

·         Seeing the original becomes an act of pilgrimage.

·         It was made into a musical that depicted Seurat as a manipulative artist who used the characters in his paintings for his own device.

·         Ohio has a garden dedicated to the painting! One acre of land depicts the scene of man and nature living cohesively together.

·         Pop culture has altered it adding characters, and advertising loves to use it as a quotation practically! The source is always obvious.

Seeing the original work certainly does become an act of pilgrimage. I haven’t seen this painting yet but after watching this it gives me one more reason to want to visit the windy city! I can’t imagine the experience of putting all those dots and strokes together slowly as your backing away from the image. We talked about Seurat in the text but I think this video really added to understanding his meticulousness and possibly his social behavior. It’s easy to see now the obsession and the risk both involved in this masterpiece.