Day 48: Contextual Lecture

Avant Garde (Groundbreaking Art)

"Artists who have led the way with a new way of thinking"
(Cottington David, 2005, Modern Art, Oxford University Press)








Impressionism

• Edouard Manet, Le Dejeuner Sur L'herbe, 1863, was the break away from modernism
• Was refused by Salon(French exhibition) but was 'the highlight' of the Salon de Refuses in Paris
• Was controversial as modern day dressed men with naked women, with no perspective and lots of puzzles to the painting
• Manet started impressionism but Monet kept it going and developed it. Monet's Waterlillies captures essence, colour, pattern and surface

Ballet Russes (The Russian Ballet)

• Sergei Diaghileu and Vaslav Nijinsky(dancer) moved to France and set up ballet
• controversial as exotic, erotic and colourful
• Leon Bakst created set designs for Scheherazade and Sleeping Beauty

DADA

• french for childs rocking horse (nonsense)
• an anti art movement
• international movement that began in WW1 in neutral Switzerland as it was a place of sanctuary
•  "for us art is not an end itself...but is an opportunity for the true perception and criticism of the times we live in" Hugo Boss
• Duchamp foundation (toilet) also part of DADA
• George Grosz- artwork- Fit for Service shows men being pieced together and sent back to war and People in the Street is simple and first look but further study shows everyone looking straight ahead

Expressionism

• Oskar Kokoschka painted Bride of the Wind but it is the story behind the painting which I find interesting. It is a self portrait with Alma Mahler who had an affair with him but she made him go to war. When he returned she had run off with another man which drove Kokoscka to madness and made a life size doll of her

The Bauhaus

• set up by Walter Gropius
• brought design and fine art together to teach, principles now used for art foundation
• "form follows function"- if you follow the function the form will be good-simple
• Marcel Breur made the Slatted chair in 1924 then only two years later he made Wassily chair in 1926
• Oskar Schlemmer designed ballet costumes for the Triadic ballet