Modern Art Final Terms

Modernity

Being in the now, unattached to the past, severing times with what had been

Neoclassicism

“Neo” = “revival,” anatomy, humanistic/idealistic image of man. Stylistically: defined lines, chiaroscuro, iconography, one point linear perspective

allegorical figure

human, usually female figure, meant to represent an abstract ideal

Bourgeois/Bourgeoisie

city dweller, urban person. New way of living: mobile, lived by means of appearances and monetary exchange

Academy

institution in which art is producedand taught, emphasizing traditional techniques and styles.

Salon System

Gallery, entirely controlled of by the government in which they would purchase out of. Hierarchy of genres - history at top and landscapes lower

Avant-Garde

taking risks, pushing boundaries, and leaving the salon system, tied to new dominant class - bourgeoisie

Manifesto

a public declaration of the intentions, motives, or views of an artist or artistic movement (characteristic of avant-garde)

Pastoral/Idyll

Genre containing characteristics - female nudes, clothed male figures, in nature doing some artistic thing, indication of civilization somewhere (the people are away from), female figures are allegorical, sense of harmony not possible in everyday life

Sublimation

taking animal instincts and turning them into a high cultural form - the ability to stare at nude women and not feel shame

Impressionism

Decoupling of artistic production and reception from state institutions. Judgment about artistic importance shift from the salon to critics. Bourgeois patrons replace state patronage. Domestic scenes were extremely popular, often reflecting women experiences

Fine art during impressionistic era

paintings, needing to be something that photography can’t do (experience of the artist)

Visual culture during impressionistic era

Photographs - undermined literacy of female nude as high art form

Plein-air painting

going into nature to paint directly from nature

Primitivism

Dense interweave of racial and sexual fantasies and power - both colonial and patriarchal. Feels like referring to western culture as inferior or not as advanced.

Indexical

direct impressions of something on a surface

Subject Position

each artist comes from different background, so they have access to different subjects and different parts of life

Oceanic feeling

sensation of eternity; dissolution with ego and boundaries of the self

Phenomenological/Phenomenology

a concern with sensory perception

Autonomous

independent of other things

Non-localized use of color

color not meant to replicate reality, design choice

Plenitude

Sense of oneness with the world/wholeness with the world

Cosmopolitan

including or containing people from many different countries; multilingual, multicultural

Privacy/Publicity

about constructing different faces for social purposes, think Die Brucke

Art Nouveau, Jugendstil

decentralized model of avant-garde, desire to combine traditional mediums into more decorative works, use of architecture, construction, sculpture, take down line of applied and fine arts, protest to modernity

Decorative/Applied arts

Jewelry making, wood working, considered more craft-like, architecture

Gesamtkunstwerk

total work of art, immersive experience, making everything in the home a work of art

German expressionism

Die brucke → worpswede → der blaue reiter

Die Brucke (The Bridge)

Group of expressionist artists, including Kirchner, Manifesto about power of youth and reaching back into older forms of art

Worpswede artist’s community

artist colony, more traditional stylistically and compositionally, idealized vision of country life, nostalgia and homey, escape modernity

Der Blaue Reiter (Blue Rider)

Group founded in 1911, motivated by dissatisfaction with modern life, a community, Franz Marc, Wassily Kandinsky, & Gabrielle Munter

Lebensreform (life reform)

Emphasis on living closer to nature, moving away from the bourgeois way of life. Chosen family relationships, hippie, nude, dancing

Gemeinschaft

community. Family as a part of the way community works. Rural, old, homeland, living organism

Gesellschaft

Society. Set of distinction that hadn’t been seen before. Urban, new foreign land, superficial.

Synesthesia

cross-sensory experience, seeing sounds, attempting to paint the experience

Conventions of representation

techniques in order to produce 3D illusion on 2D surface. Perspective, shading, foreshortening

Trompe l’oeil

deceive the eye

Sign, signified, signifier

sign- concept. Signifier: sound image “Tree". Signified: image in brain.

Collage

pasted paper, not concerned with image, form, and what’s printed on it

Cubism

shatters assumption of painting as a window; revolutionary

Futurism

goal was to shock the bourgeoisie; disrupt expectations that art should be beautiful, change people’s perspectives, defamiliarize perceptions, larger performative process that emphasizes technology, desire to embrace modern life and bury the past, logic of inversion - things liked are bad and bad things are celebrated.

Center/Periphery

Awareness of Paris at the center of the avant-garde model

Abstract/Abstracted

art that doesn’t attempt to represent external reality, but seeks to achieve its effect using shapes, forms, colors, and textures

Non-Objectivity

refusal of representation

Monochrome

painting that’s all one color

Readymade

associated with Marcel Duchamp, modern sculpture, but also comes from thinking about painting. Painting an object in itself → sculpture

Photomontage

pasting paper, paper cut to form with purpose

Shellshock, Neurasthenia

disruption in sense of perception

Aura

uniqueness

Cult value

exists for itself, like a relic, unique presence, authority

Exhibition value

purpose to be seen, comes to you and shifts power to the view, reproducible, viewer feels authorized to act on the image

Dada

meaning is contextual, means many different things, not repetitive or done again has forms of manifesto but empties it out, manifestation of a state of mind, experience together, not a way of making art. Less to do with object itself and more the institutions around it

Zurich Dada

anti-community, promote difference

Berlin Dada

Rougher around edges, politicized

Dictatorship of the proletariat

ruling of the working class

Design

Industrially produced, utilitarian, solving problem for user

constructivism

made of pure abstraction, same propaganda function, different questions that arise than subjective paintings (How’s it made? What is it made from?). Anti-illusionistic

Productivism

everyday objects - utilitarian, purposeful. deterrent to change

Laboratory construction/non utilitarian construction

experimental, unfinished. No purpose other than to think through theoretical things

Composition

aesthetics, pleasing to the eye, taste (bourgeois ideal), subjective

Construction

Universality (communist), fact of the material, objective, no sense of artistic hand