ARTH 176: Unit 4 Study Guide
Images for Ids
For this test, rather than memorize specific dates, group the works by the date range
given below.
Group 1: Date Range: 1870-1899
IMPRESSIONISM
Manet, A Bar at the Folies-Bergere, 1881
Monet, Impression: Sunrise, 1872
Degas, Absinthe, 1876
POST – IMPRESSIONISM
Cézanne Still Life with Apples c. 1875
Seurat A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte 1884-6
Van Gogh , Wheat Field with Reaper, 1889
Gauguin, Self Portrait with Halo, 1889
Rodin, The Thinker, 1881
SYMBOLISM
Munch, The Voice, 1893
Group 2: Date Range: 1900-1914 (turn of the century to WWI)
FAUVISM
Madame Matisse (The Green Line), 1905
MATISSE (after Fauvism):
Dance I, 1909
GERMAN EXPRESSIONISM
Die Brücke: (know this term and its English translation)
Kirchner, Five Women in the Street, 1913
Nolde, Still Life with Masks, 1911
Der Blaue Reiter: (know this term and its English translation)
Kandinsky, Panel for Edwin R. Campbell No 4, 1914
Marc, Large Blue Horses, 1911
PICASSO (pre-Cubism):
Les Demoiselles D’Avignon 1907
CUBISM
Analytic Cubism: (know this term)
Braque, Violin and Pitcher, 1909
Synthetic Cubism: (know this term)
ARTH 176: Unit 4 Study Guide
Picasso, Three Musicians, 1921; (this date is an exception in this group, don’t worry about
memorizing it)
FUTURISM
Boccioni, Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, 1913
Group 3: Date Range: 1918-1935 (between the World Wars)
HARLEM RENAISSANCE
Douglas, From Slavery through Reconstruction, 1934
DADA
Duchamp, L.H.O.O.Q. 1919
Man Ray, Indestructible Object, 1964 (replica of 1923 orig.)
SURREALISM
Dali, Persistence of Memory, 1931
Magritte, The Betrayal of Images, 1928
Group 4: Date Range: 1940-1960
Independents, inspired by/derived from Surrealism :
Giacometti, Large Standing Woman III, 1960
Kahlo, Thinking about Death, 1943
ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM
Pollock, White Light, 1954 ;
De Kooning, Woman and Bicycle, 1952
Rothko, Number 15, 1957
Vocabulary (most terms are found in the glossary, or in the call-out boxes in each chapter; for
others, Dictionary.com is a good source to consult):
abstract
non-objective
en plein air
avant-garde
collage
pointillism (or fin de siècle
‘ism’
Japonisme
fauve
divisionism)
primitivism
manifesto
automatism
Cabaret Voltaire biomorphic
ready-made
Analytic Cubism Synthetic Cubism Die Brücke
Der Blaue Reiter
Events/Dates to know:
Salon d’Atomne, 1905 (what style of works were shown here?)
The Armory Show, 1913 (why is it important?)
WWI (1914-18)
WWII (1939-45)
A Summary of Movements: c. 1870-1940
ARTH 176: Unit 4 Study Guide
Impressionism is 19th-century art movement that began as a loose association of Paris-based
artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence in the 1870s and 1880s.
The name of the movement is derived from the title of a work by Claude Monet, Impression,
Sunrise (Impression, soleil levant), which provoked the critic Louis Leroy to coin the term in
a satiric review of the exhibition.
Characteristics of Impressionist paintings include relatively small, thin, yet visible brush
strokes, open composition, emphasis on the accurate depiction of light in its changing
qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage of time), ordinary subject matter, the
inclusion of movement as a crucial element of human perception and experience, and unusual
visual angles. (artists: Monet, Degas, Cassatt, Morisot, Pissarro, Renoir)
Post-Impressionism is a term coined by the British artist and art critic Roger Fry in 1910.
The term is limited to visual arts derived from Impressionism, and concentrating on French art
between 1886 and 1914. Post-Impressionists extended Impressionism while rejecting its
limitations: they continued using vivid colors, thick application of paint, distinctive brush
strokes, and real-life subject matter, but they were more inclined to emphasize geometric
forms, to distort form for expressive effect, and to use unnatural or arbitrary color.
The Post-Impressionists were dissatisfied with the loss of structure in Impressionist paintings,
and each sought different ways of bringing more structure back into their works. Georges
Seurat and his followers concerned themselves with pointillism (divisionism), the systematic
use of tiny dots of color. Paul Cézanne set out to restore a sense of order and geometric
structure to painting, to "make of Impressionism something solid and durable, like the art of
the museums". He achieved this by reducing objects to their basic shapes while retaining the
bright fresh colors of Impressionism. Vincent van Gogh used color and vibrant swirling brush
strokes to convey his feelings and his state of mind. (artists: Cezanne, Seurat, van Gogh,
Toulouse-Lautrec, Gaugin)
Symbolism: based on a literary movement, there are two types of painterly Symbolism in
the19th century: a more academic type and a more inventive type. The academic Symbolists
are especially concerned with literary and mythological subjects. Most are not concerned with
finding a new way of representation. The more “inventive” Symbolists try to express the idea
through the colors and technique. Some of these artists try to express a sense of alienation or
estrangement from reality. Munch is usually included with this group. For all of the
Symbolists, a painting is like a poem: it is the combinations of lines, forms, shadows, and
colors that make up a vocabulary for a mysterious but expressive language.
Fauvism: received its name from the intensity of colors in the artists’ paintings. This very
short-lived movement (1904-08) emphasized saturated hues, planarity of forms, and linearity-especially curvilinearity. The Fauves simplify technique and the use of symbols--line is
emphasized, colors are unmodulated (pure), an academic finish is neglected. The goal is to
communicate the direct experience of a single emotional state. (artists: Matisse, Derain,
Vlaminck.)
Expressionism: this style is difficult to define, because all artists "express" themselves, and
difficult to describe, since it appears to look different in all the artists called “expressionist.”
The term was first used to describe the expression of strong emotions in art; then it was used
to designate a particular German form of art, which was a rejection of Impressionism by
ARTH 176: Unit 4 Study Guide
changing the focus from capturing the effects of light to one of depicting a personal, interior
response to the world. This subjective response leads to paintings which seem to place
distortion above an objective depiction of the world. In particular, it seems to be an emotional
response to urbanism and a world which is believed to be in a state of decadence and decline.
[Artists: Kirchner, Heckel, Schmidt-Rottluff, Marc, Kandinsky, Nolde, Modersohn-Becker,
Kollwitz.]
Cubism: if Expressionism is an emotional response to the world, Cubism is an
intellectual/conceptual response. It is about perception, but perception as a process which
includes memory of what is seen and the experience of seeing something over time (which
leads to the focus on including multiple angles or viewpoints of a single object). Cubism
rejects Renaissance perspective, and it rejects the idea of the art work as a representation of
some reality that exists outside of the art work. In this respect, the Cubist work of art is its
own reality; it represents itself.
There are several varieties and stages of Cubism: In this class, we focus ONLY on Analytic
and Synthetic Cubism.
• Analytic or "true" Cubism: characterized by faceting of objects, the appearance of
multiple points of view, architectonic composition, grid-like structure uniting object with
background (artists: Picasso and Braque)
• Synthetic Cubism: almost the reverse process of the above--a record of the
materialization of an object as it emerges from planes and shapes. Also seen as the second
stage of Cubism when color is returned to the painting, faceting disappears but it is more
apparent that one can see various sides or parts of the object (artists: Gris, Leger, later
Picasso)
Futurism: an art which rejects traditional political and cultural values; it insists on
experiencing the present in terms of speed, movement, dynamism; modern life should be the
subject. Instead of the Cubist fragmentation of an object, the focus in Futurism is on "force
lines" and the vibrations of movement. Whereas in Cubism, daily life often becomes the
subject matter, in Futurism the subject is war, riots, athletes, and the diffusion of electric light.
In sculpture and in painting, a sense of the object unfolding in space and in time is a goal; the
viewer should be thrust into the center of the painting. Cubism is an intellectual and
conceptual response to reality; Futurism is an emotional and dynamic response. [artists:
Boccioni, Carra, Balla, Severini.]
Suprematism: a Russian movement, developed by Kasimir Malevich. This movement asserts
the "supremacy" of the plane (rectangle or square) of color. The term itself implied the
supremacy of this new art in relation to the past. Malevich saw it as purely aesthetic and
concerned only with form, free from any political or social meaning. He stressed the purity of
shape, particularly of the square, and he regarded Suprematism as primarily an exploration of
visual language comparable to contemporary developments in writing. Black Square is the
first Suprematist painting, and Malevich refers to it as the "zero" of form, an end to old
conventions and the origin of a new pictorial language. The forms of this language were
strictly geometrical, but they rapidly evolved into increasingly complex paintings in which the
geometrical elements employed richer colors and inhabited an ambiguous and complex
pictorial space. The goal of this movement is transcendence of the logical world, to reach the
ARTH 176: Unit 4 Study Guide
fourth dimension: time. Malevich believed in an extreme of reduction: What he wanted was a
non-objective representation, ``the supremacy of pure feeling.'' (other artists: Natalia
Goncharova and Liubov Popova.)
Constructivism: a Russian post-revolutionary movement expressed in stage design,
architecture, and graphics primarily, and to a much lesser extent in painting. The movement is
dominated by a goal of expressing the transformative properties of the materials used and the
fulfillment of social and aesthetic goals in an efficient manner. Further goals included
bringing art “to the people,” and resolving social and visual chaos in the real world. [Artists:
Tatlin, Rodchenko, Stepanova, Popova, and others.]
Dada is impossible to define because its manifesto is based on an infinite series of
contradictions. But contradiction IS the point – Dada is neither for art nor against art despite
its frequent proclamations of being anti-art. Dada is definitely for the development of new
sources of imagery, of techniques which challenge the artist’s control over the art work, and
for the disruption of bourgeois and traditional expectations of art. [artists: Hoch, Duchamp,
Grosz, Arp, Schwitters, and many others]
Surrealism: the goal is to express the true functioning of the mind, through such means as
dream imagery, drawing that is not consciously directed (psychic automatism), fantastic
imagery, art that is not censored by the conscious mind. Some Surrealism is dominated by
automatist practices; some Surrealism uses illusionary techniques and depicts dream-like
or"otherworldly" objects and events. The art of women Surrealists does not seem to fit this
goal of unconsciously directed, uncensored art, and it is very questionable to call Frida Kahlo
a surrealist, since she herself denies it. [artists: Ernst, Masson, Matta, Tanguy, Dali, Magritte,
Oppenheim.]
Abstract Epressionism was an American post–World War II art movement. It was the first
specifically American movement to achieve worldwide influence and put New York City at
the center of the western art world, a role formerly filled by Paris. In practice, the term is
applied to any number of artists working (mostly) in New York who had quite different styles
and even to work that is neither especially abstract nor expressionist. Pollock's energetic
"Action paintings", with their busy feel, are different, both technically and aesthetically, from
the violent and grotesque Women series of Willem de Kooning's figurative paintings) and the
rectangles of color in Mark Rothko's Color Field paintings (which are not what would usually
be called expressionist and which Rothko denied were abstract). Yet all three artists are
classified as abstract expressionists. Although the Abstract Expressionist school spread
quickly throughout the United States, the major centers of this style were New York City and
the San Francisco Bay area of California.
Abstract expressionism has many stylistic similarities to the Russian artists of the early
twentieth century such as Wassily Kandinsky. Although it is true that spontaneity or the
impression of spontaneity characterized many of the Abstract Expressionist works, most of
these paintings involved careful planning, especially since their large size demanded it.