ARTH 207 Test 2 Study Guide

Futurism

An early 20th-century Italian art movement founded by F.T. Marinetti that glorified speed, technology, dynamism, and violence.

Suprematism

A 1915 abstract art movement, founded by Kazimir Malevich, that completely abandoned references to the outside world by mapping boundless space.

Kazmir claimed…

The “supremacy of pure feeling or perception of the pictorial arts,” and rejected representational painting

Dada

An anti-art satirical movement from Zurich that formed in reaction to the horror and absurdity of World War I.

“Revolted by the butchery of the 1914 World War, we in Zurich devoted ourselves to the arts. While the guns rumbled in the distance, we sang, painted, made collages, and wrote poems with all of our might.”

Hans Arp

Readymade

An ordinary manufactured object from material culture transformed into an artwork through the artist's selection

Surrealism

A 20th-century literary, philosophical, and artistic movement that explored the unconscious mind and championed the irrational.

Automatism

A surrealist form of making art in the 1920’s that came from the unconscious mind without conscious control

Automatism…

Allowed the hand to flow freely across a surface, embracing chance and accidental mark

Exquisite Corpse

“Cadacre exquis,” A surrealist collective of media that is collectively assembled

Each collaborated on the composition in a sequence, allowed to only see the end of what the previous person drew

The result of the Exquisite Corpse

Final result believed to exhibit collective unconscious

Paranoiac critical method

A surrealist technique by Salvador Dalí in the early 1930s that created multiple shifting images within a single scene.

The Paranoiac Critical Method allowed…

artists to tap into their subconscious through systematic irrational thought and a self

De Stijl

“The Style,” a peaceful movement led by Piet Mondrian that rejected nature and embraced plastic art rooted in geometry, horizontals, primary colors, and universal beauty

Bauhaus

A revolutionary art school, established in Weimar, Germany, in 1919 by Walter Gropius, sought to bring art back into contact with everyday life.

What does Bauhaus mean?

A combination of German words building (bau) and house (haus), invoking guild and fraternity

Umberto Boccioni

Italian Supremacist Flagship artist of the Futurist movement that believed Italy should be looking forward to the machine rather than to war or the past, with the Renaissance

Kazimir Malevich

Created Suprematism in 1915 and rejected representational painting, claiming his art form as pure feeling

Hannah Höch

Devout feminist and the queen of photo montage, even though people considered her artwork as lesser

What did Hannah Höch’s work do?

Point out faults of the German government, mostly sexism and corruption within politics

Salvador Dali

A classically trained Master of surrealism whose goal was to be as surreal as possible while still being sober

Who was Dali a fan of?

Hieronymus Bosch

Ren é Magritte

A straightforward, classically trained commercial artist with a deep dislike for formal education

How did Ren é Magritte approach surrealism

His form of surrealism was so real that small discrepancies were exacerbated because he believed that paintings were not real depictions of things, just the artist’s interpretation

Frida Kahlo

A self-taught artist who explored themes of identity, pain, and the human body after her bus accident. Her paintings are surrealist, but she doesn’t consider herself one. A feminist

Why are Frida Kahlo’s paintings mostly self portraits and small?

Because she was constantly alone and bedridden because of the pain

Piet Mondrian

Believed that art should be a universal language, so stripped represnetations of what he deemed unnecessary 

Josef Albers

An elementary school teacher turned Bauhaus professor turned Black Mountain College professor that taught color theory and foundations

Umberto Boccioni, “Dynamism of a Soccer Player,” 1913

A massive Italian futurist work featuring the dynamism of a soccer player glorifying Italian nationalism and their athletic skills

How does “Dynamism of a Soccer Player,” differentiate itself from Cubist works?

It uses color and texture where cubist works wanted people to focus on the subject matter. It also uses force lines to signify action.

Kasimir Malevich, “Black Square,” 1915

Suprematist Artwork that served as the emblem of anti-monarchy. It was featured in a blasphemous exhibition where it replaced where religious portraits would be in the household, defining suprematism as a new religion.

What play did Kasimir do stage backgrounds for that inspired Black Square?

Victor of the Sun, an antimonarchy play about capturing the sun, or the monarchy.

Zaum

an experimental poetic language that stripped words of conventional meaning and focused on sound and rhythm

Salvador Dalí, “The Persistence of Memory,” 1931

He was incredibly afraid of ants after an incident with a dead bat when he was young; the eye is a self-portrait of himself sleeping, the painting could be interpreted as a way of healing

Where did Dali grow up? It is featured in The Persistence of Memory.

The Cap de Creus in Spain

What do the melting clocks in The Persistence of Memory represent?

They are a metaphor for time, but also when he ha a bad dream after he saw melting cheese at a party with a fly on it.

Andre Breton

A medical student interested in psychiatry that insisted that healing occured through dreams

Frida Kahlo, “The Two Fridas,” 1939 

Representative of her two identities; German side with the lighter skin and the white dress and her Mexican side which caused discourse between her and her husband

What does Frida have in her hand?

A locket with a portrait of her ex-husband, Diego Rivera, as a child; she considered him her other half

Why is the painting so large?

Because she was actually able to stand while making it

What is the purpose of the surgical clamp on her heart?

Representative of her severe medical trauma; she had polio when she was young and was later in a bus accident.

*Piet Mondrian, “Composition with Yellow, Red, and Blue,” 1927

Craved stability and structure after WWI and rejected nature because it was too chaotic. He created his style as a way of life and order was all humanity needed.

The artist can be a creator only when the forms in his picture have nothing in common with nature…

Kasimir Malevich, “From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism: New Painterly Realism”

The futurist manifesto

F.T. Marinetti, wrote in the French paper Le Figaro, branded traditional culture, museums, libraries, and schools as cemeteries. Later became a part of facism during Mussolini’s regime

Technical Manifesto of Futurist Painting

Written by Umberto Boccioni and assisted by Giancomo Balla, it insisted that movement was continuous, even in painting. It favors pointilism and rejects academic formalism. based on the manifesto of futurism