Jesse Bryant Wilder - Art History For Dummies

Neoclassicism ( neo means “new”) looked back to the pure air and refined beauty of the classical era. Often, artists dressed contemporary heroes like George Washington or Voltaire in Roman togas and posed them like Roman statesmen or Olympians. In Neoclassical art, no one sweats or strains; no one’s hair is ever mussed; everything is elegant, balanced, and orderly (see Chapter 16).

Romantic artists often criticized the Industrial Revolution, championed the rights of the individual, and supported democratic movements and social justice; they opposed slavery and the exploitation of labor in urban factories.

Freedom, liberty, and imagination were the Romantics’ favorite words, and some were willing to die for these ideals. Many Romantics tried to reform humankind by emphasizing a spiritual kinship with nature. (see Chapter 17).

After Romanticism, art is divided into movements rather than periods (see Chapter 3).

By the beginning of the 20th century, the camera seemed to have a monopoly on realism. That may be one reason painters turned toward abstraction. But it’s not the only reason. Following Cézanne’s example, many artists strove to simplify form (the human body, for example) into its geometrical components; that goal was partly the impetus for Cubism (see Chapter 22). For others, expressing feeling was more important than painting realistic forms. The Fauves expressed emotion with color while simplifying form, and the Expressionists suggested it by distorting form (see Chapter 21for details).

Table 1-1offers a breakdown of some specific art movements that happened in response to modern political, social, and cultural pressures.

TABLE 1-1:Art Movements of the 20 thCentury

Pollock’s and de Kooning’s action painting — as dripping and throwing paint came to be called — signaled that art had moved away from craft toward pure expression and creative conceptualization. Many new forms of art grew out of the notion that process is more important than product. Craft had been the cornerstone of art for millennia. But after the war, Pollock and de Kooning seemed to drop an atom bomb on art itself, to release its pure creative energy (and shatter form to smithereens — or to splashes and drips).

Conceptualization began to drive the work of more and more artists. However, while this trend continued in performance art, installation art, and conceptual art, some artists backtracked to representation. The Photorealists, for example, showed that painting could reclaim realism from the camera (see Chapter 25).

Postmodernism (see Chapter 26) is an odd term. It suggests that we’ve hit a cultural dead end, that we’ve run out of ideas and can’t make anything new or “modern.” All that’s left is to recycle the past or crab-leg it back to the cave days. Postmodern artists do recycle the past, usually in layers: a quart of Greece, a cup of Constructivism, a pound of Bauhaus, and a heaping tablespoon of Modernism. What’s the point of that?

Postmodern theorists believe society is no longer centered. In the Middle Ages, art revolved around religion. In the 19th century, Realist art centered around social reform. But since the 1970s, point of view has become fluid. To express our uncentered existence, artists try to show the relationships between past eras and the present. Some critics argue that Postmodernism is a spiritual short circuit, a jaded view that cuts off meaning from real life. You be the judge.

Chapter 2

IN THIS CHAPTER

Exploring the reasons artists make art

Understanding the design elements of art

Decrypting those deep meanings

Art is sometimes a mysterious form of communication. What did so-and-so mean to convey when he or she carved a stone into a fat fertility goddess or a fractured geometric shape? In this chapter, I help you demystify the visual language that we call art.

Why do artists make art? To celebrate god, glorify the state, overthrow governments, make people laugh or think, or win fame and fortune? Or do they make art because, for them, creating is like breathing — they have to do it?

Artists create for all these reasons and more. Above all, great artists want to express something deeper than ordinary forms of communication — like talking or writing — can convey. They strive to suggest meanings that are beyond the reach of everyday vocabularies. So they invent visual vocabularies for people to interpret. Each person can “read” this picture language — which doesn’t come with a dictionary — differently.

This difference in the way each person “reads” a piece of art is especially true of art made in the past 500 years. Ancient as well as medieval art (art made before 1400) often had a communal purpose and a common language of symbols that was widely understood; often that communal purpose was linked to religion, ritual, or mythology.