Cubism, Futurism,
Suprematism and
Constructivism
Mike Mitchell
TOK
What do we expect from art?
Truth? Seduction?
Provocation? Beauty?
Overview
Cubism, Futurism, Supremativism and Constructivism (1905 - 1920)
characteristics
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
chief artists
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Pablo Picasso
Georges Braque
Giacomo Balla
Umberto Boccioni
Giovanni Segantini
Alexander
Rodchenko
Liubov Popova
Alexander Vesnin
Varvara Stepanova
major works
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Le guitariste
Portrait of Picasso
Three Musicians
Woman's Head
The City Rises
Unique Forms of
Continuity in Space
Cyclist
Agitprop poster
manifestos
“MANIFESTO OF FUTURISM
1. We want to sing the love of danger, the
habit of energy and rashness.
2. The essential elements of our poetry
will be courage, audacity and revolt.
3. 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.
4. 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
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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
“Chinese Restaurant”
Amedeo Modigliani
“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 PostImpressionism.
Key Points
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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 PostImpressionism, 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. 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. 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?