Timeline Of Art Essays - Visual Arts, Culture, Art Movements

Timeline of Art The Thread: The thread which joins all the isms in the twentieth century are its slow evolution from one period to another. As artists from one concepts were exploring a certain idea that led to another either just for the sake of the curiosity or by sheer boredom. Therefore my paper deals with the evolution of different isms in this century. Fauvism: From 1904-7, for a very brief period, a few Paris painters evolved a style of painting that earned the name Les Fauves (wild beasts). Henri Matisse, Andre Derain and Maurice Vlaminck were the major contributors to this style of painting which gained popularity due to its apparent freedom of expression with the use of pure colors and exaggeration of drawing. Among all of the twentieth century art movements, this was the most transient and least definable. The three major painters' work was highly individual and shared only for brief periods. The momentary excitement that held these painters aloft and allowed them the maximum of freedom, deserted them as their work developed and matured. The hangover from this movement led to new means of expression. It was never a movement with aims that could be realized such as successive movements as Cubism was, but was a erratic process of experiments with possibilities suggested by the post-impressionist painters. Cubism: Cubism, which began very shortly after Fauvism, is exemplified by Pablo Picasso. In this movement the flattened space including background and foreground are related in a new and more abrupt manner. The first effect is of a camera in motion, a kaleidoscopic impression of the solid portions of the figure. This certain feature can be contrasted to the impressionist movements' works. Added to this kaleidoscopic quality is another new element. Picasso and his Cubist colleagues disintegrated the form into a series of simultaneously viewed but different aspects of the same subject. A cubist painter, to achieve a greater understanding, walked about the subject, observing it from significant various angles and recording them as his impressions of form. But this procedure led to actual destruction of form and its reduction to a series of decorative elements. Negro art and sculpture had a profound effect and it was quite extensively used by Picasso. Negro sculpture approved his subject in a more conceptual way than a naturalistic depiction, mostly by a western view. This resulted in forms that were more abstract and stylized and in a sense more symbolic. Picasso held the view that it was art that held the key to the young twentieth century painters to liberate themselves and was more representational and anti-naturalistic. The rational, geometric breakdown of the human head and body provided Picasso re-appraisal of his subjects. This style gave birth to the next phase of development, known as synthetic Cubism. Georges Barque was major contributor to this style, in which he joined bits of real wallpaper, playing cards, tobacco package labels and other materials. These were selected not to form impact but for decorative and compositional-making. In this form, the Cubists were more concerned with textural and decorative values. Cubism was an art of experiment which stripped bare the mechanics of pictorial creation and destroyed the artificial barriers between abstraction and representation. It still remains the pivotal movement in the art of the first half of this century. Abstract Expressionism: Since the World War II the paintings' movement had gathered considerable momentum. The political realities of the time- from 1943 to early 1950s- the War, the Holocaust in Europe, the apparent threat of the world destruction by atomic bomb, the conservative reaction of McCarthyism in United States and even intensified hurly burly of city life-resulted in a movement called Abstract Expressionism. Abstract Expressionism combined two tendencies already evident in the twentieth century; the drive to create totally abstract works and express emotion through the use of brilliant colors. The leading figure of this new painting style was Jackson Pollock, who produced his large works by dribbling strands of paint on the canvas, involving his whole body in the activity and creating sensations of sparkling energy and movement. The term "Action Painting" was coined to describe how Pollock worked. Pollock felt, he could become emotionally involved with his work and through it communicate his emotions to the viewer. A more violent and intense form of Action Painting was devised by Willem de Kooning from whose seeming destruction of form gradually emerged a bodily image. During the fifties, older and younger artists alike were affected by the trend towards discarding all standards of form. Mark Rothko developed a uniquely personal, reserved, almost mystical mode of painting in which colors interacted as they appeared to shift in space. In