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Abstract art
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Abstract art uses a visual language of shape, form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world. Western art had been, from the Renaissance up to the middle of the 19th century, underpinned by the logic of perspective, the arts of cultures other than the European had become accessible and showed alternative ways of describing visual experience to the artist. By the end of the 19th century many artists felt a need to create a new kind of art which would encompass the fundamental changes taking place in technology, science and philosophy. The sources from which individual artists drew their theoretical arguments were diverse, Abstract art, non-figurative art, non-objective art, and nonrepresentational art are loosely related terms. They are similar, but perhaps not of identical meaning, Abstraction indicates a departure from reality in depiction of imagery in art. This departure from accurate representation can be slight, partial, or complete, even art that aims for verisimilitude of the highest degree can be said to be abstract, at least theoretically, since perfect representation is likely to be exceedingly elusive. Artwork which takes liberties, altering for instance color and form in ways that are conspicuous, total abstraction bears no trace of any reference to anything recognizable. In geometric abstraction, for instance, one is unlikely to find references to naturalistic entities, Figurative art and total abstraction are almost mutually exclusive. But figurative and representational art often contains partial abstraction, both geometric abstraction and lyrical abstraction are often totally abstract. It is at level of visual meaning that abstract art communicates. One can enjoy the beauty of Chinese calligraphy or Islamic calligraphy without being able to read it, in Chinese painting, abstraction can be traced to the Tang dynasty painter Wang Mo, who is credited to have invented the splashed-ink painting style. While none of his paintings remain, this style is seen in some Song Dynasty Paintings. A late Song painter named Yu Jian, adept to Tiantai buddhism and his paintings show heavily misty mountains in which the shapes of the objects are barely visible and extremely simplified. This type of painting was continued by Sesshu Toyo in his later years, another instance of abstraction in Chinese painting is seen in Zhu Deruns Cosmic Circle. The painting is a reflection of the Daoist metaphysics in which chaos, in Tokugawa Japan some zen monk-painters created Enso, a circle who represents the absolute enlightenment. Usually made in one spontaneous brush stroke, it became the paradigm of the minimalist aesthetic that guided part of the zen painting, three art movements which contributed to the development of abstract art were Romanticism, Impressionism and Expressionism. Artistic independence for artists was advanced during the 19th century, patronage from the church diminished and private patronage from the public became more capable of providing a livelihood for artists. Expressionist painters explored the use of paint surface, drawing distortions and exaggerations
2.
Jackson Pollock
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Paul Jackson Pollock, known professionally as Jackson Pollock, was an American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. He was well known for his style of drip painting. During his lifetime, Pollock enjoyed considerable fame and notoriety, he was a major artist of his generation, regarded as reclusive, he had a volatile personality, and struggled with alcoholism for most of his life. In 1945, he married the artist Lee Krasner, who became an important influence on his career, Pollock died at the age of 44 in an alcohol-related single-car accident when he was driving. In December 1956, four months after his death, Pollock was given a retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. A larger, more comprehensive exhibition of his work was held there in 1967, in 1998 and 1999, his work was honored with large-scale retrospective exhibitions at MoMA and at The Tate in London. Pollock was born in Cody, Wyoming, in 1912, the youngest of five sons and his parents, Stella May and LeRoy Pollock, were born and grew up in Tingley, Iowa and were educated at Tingley High School. Pollocks mother is interred at Tingley Cemetery, Ringgold County, Iowa and his father had been born with the surname McCoy, but took the surname of his adoptive parents, neighbors who adopted him after his own parents had died within a year of each other. Stella and LeRoy Pollock were Presbyterian, they were of Irish and Scots-Irish descent, LeRoy Pollock was a farmer and later a land surveyor for the government, moving for different jobs. Stella, proud of her familys heritage as weavers, made, in November 1912, Stella took her sons to San Diego, Jackson was just 10 months old and would never return to Cody. He subsequently grew up in Arizona and Chico, California, while living in Echo Park, California, he enrolled at Los Angeles Manual Arts High School, from which he was expelled. He had already been expelled in 1928 from another high school, during his early life, Pollock explored Native American culture while on surveying trips with his father. In 1930, following his older brother Charles Pollock, he moved to New York City, bentons rural American subject matter had little influence on Pollocks work, but his rhythmic use of paint and his fierce independence were more lasting. In the early 1930s, Pollock spent a summer touring the Western United States together with Glen Rounds, an art student. Pollock was introduced to the use of paint in 1936 at an experimental workshop in New York City by the Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros. He later used paint pouring as one of techniques on canvases of the early 1940s, such as Male and Female. After his move to Springs, he began painting with his canvases laid out on the studio floor, from 1938 to 1942 Pollock worked for the WPA Federal Art Project. Henderson engaged him through his art, encouraging Pollock to make drawings, jungian concepts and archetypes were expressed in his paintings
3.
No. 5, 1948
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5,1948 is a painting by Jackson Pollock, an American painter known for his contributions to the abstract expressionist movement. The painting was created on fibreboard, also known as composition board, for the paint, Pollock chose to use liquid paints. More specifically, they were synthetic resin paints but are referred to as oil paints for classification of the work, on inspection it was grey, brown, white and yellow paint drizzled in a way that many people still perceive as a dense bird’s nest. Initial reactions to the work by the uninitiated were underwhelming, You spent money on that, the initial reaction of Ted Dragon, Ossorios partner. The painting has changed by Pollock since it was originally created. During January 1949, it was being shown in a solo Pollock show at the Betty Parsons gallery and it was from here that Alfonso A. Ossorio decided to purchase a paint drip composition, he chose No.5,1948 and paid $1,500. It was the only sold from the show. At some point, presumably during the process, the painting became damaged according to Grace Hartigan. The shipping company Home Sweet Home came in with a painting in one hand, Hartigan gave Pollock some paint and he patched the painting before it went to Ossorio saying He’ll never know, never know. Pollock offered to rework the painting but, according to Hartigan, he repainted the whole thing again, No one knows how to look at my paintings, he won’t know the difference. After three weeks, Ossorio visited Pollock’s studio to inspect the painting, Ossorio was confronted with an artwork which had new qualities of richness and depth as a result of Pollock’s thorough but subtle overpainting. It was, and still is a display of control. Pollock repaired the damage to the painting by completely altering the original, the reconstruction had not only retained but reinforced the metaphysical concept of the painting and has become what Ossorio calls a wonderful example of an artist having a second chance. Jackson Pollock,1948 - January 1949 Alfonso A. Ossorio, January 1949 - Unknown Samuel Irving Newhouse and it is speculated that Geffen sold the painting, along with two others, to raise enough funds to bid for the Los Angeles Times. In addition to the refutation issued by Shearman & Sterling, the auction expert Josh Baer indicated that Martinez was not the buyer of the painting, in November,2006, Steven A. Cohen purchased Number 5,1948 for $140. David Cook, deputy director of painting at Sothebys Australia, stated that the price of Pollocks paintings will continually rise in value, Cook has also stated that another of Pollocks paintings, Blue Poles, is worth at least 180 million AUD and possibly even more than No. The lyrics of The Stone Roses song Going Down include a reference to the painting, between 1988 and 1989, The Stone Roses guitarist John Squire created cover artwork for many of the bands releases on Silvertone Records in a style similar to that of Jackson Pollock. The painting played a role in the film Ex Machina
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World War II
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World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945, although related conflicts began earlier. It involved the vast majority of the worlds countries—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing alliances, the Allies and the Axis. It was the most widespread war in history, and directly involved more than 100 million people from over 30 countries. Marked by mass deaths of civilians, including the Holocaust and the bombing of industrial and population centres. These made World War II the deadliest conflict in human history, from late 1939 to early 1941, in a series of campaigns and treaties, Germany conquered or controlled much of continental Europe, and formed the Axis alliance with Italy and Japan. Under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union partitioned and annexed territories of their European neighbours, Poland, Finland, Romania and the Baltic states. In December 1941, Japan attacked the United States and European colonies in the Pacific Ocean, and quickly conquered much of the Western Pacific. The Axis advance halted in 1942 when Japan lost the critical Battle of Midway, near Hawaii, in 1944, the Western Allies invaded German-occupied France, while the Soviet Union regained all of its territorial losses and invaded Germany and its allies. During 1944 and 1945 the Japanese suffered major reverses in mainland Asia in South Central China and Burma, while the Allies crippled the Japanese Navy, thus ended the war in Asia, cementing the total victory of the Allies. World War II altered the political alignment and social structure of the world, the United Nations was established to foster international co-operation and prevent future conflicts. The victorious great powers—the United States, the Soviet Union, China, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and the United States emerged as rival superpowers, setting the stage for the Cold War, which lasted for the next 46 years. Meanwhile, the influence of European great powers waned, while the decolonisation of Asia, most countries whose industries had been damaged moved towards economic recovery. Political integration, especially in Europe, emerged as an effort to end pre-war enmities, the start of the war in Europe is generally held to be 1 September 1939, beginning with the German invasion of Poland, Britain and France declared war on Germany two days later. The dates for the beginning of war in the Pacific include the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War on 7 July 1937, or even the Japanese invasion of Manchuria on 19 September 1931. Others follow the British historian A. J. P. Taylor, who held that the Sino-Japanese War and war in Europe and its colonies occurred simultaneously and this article uses the conventional dating. Other starting dates sometimes used for World War II include the Italian invasion of Abyssinia on 3 October 1935. The British historian Antony Beevor views the beginning of World War II as the Battles of Khalkhin Gol fought between Japan and the forces of Mongolia and the Soviet Union from May to September 1939, the exact date of the wars end is also not universally agreed upon. It was generally accepted at the time that the war ended with the armistice of 14 August 1945, rather than the formal surrender of Japan
5.
Art movement
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Art movements were especially important in modern art, when each consecutive movement was considered as a new avant-garde. According to theories associated with modernism and the concept of postmodernism, the period of time called modern art is posited to have changed approximately halfway through the 20th century and art made afterward is generally called contemporary art. Postmodernism in visual art begins and functions as a parallel to late modernism, the postmodern period began during late modernism, and according to some theorists postmodernism ended in the 21st century. During the period of time corresponding to modern art each movement was often considered a new avant-garde. Also during the period of time referred to as modern art movement was seen corresponding to a somewhat grandiose rethinking of all that came before it. Generally there was a commonality of visual style linking the works, postmodernist theorists posit that the idea of art movements are no longer as applicable, or no longer as discernible, as the notion of art movements had been before the postmodern era. There are many theorists however who doubt as to whether or not such an era was actually a fact, the term refers to tendencies in visual art, novel ideas and architecture, and sometimes literature. In music it is common to speak about genres and styles instead. See also cultural movement, a term with a broader connotation, as the names of many art movements use the -ism suffix, they are sometimes referred to as isms. 20th-century Western painting Art periods List of art movements Post-expressionism Western art history the-artists. org Art movements since 1900, 20th-Century Art Compiled by Dr. Witcombe, Sweet Briar College, Virginia. WebMuseum, Paris Themes index and detailed glossary of art periods
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New York City
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The City of New York, often called New York City or simply New York, is the most populous city in the United States. With an estimated 2015 population of 8,550,405 distributed over an area of about 302.6 square miles. Located at the tip of the state of New York. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy and has described as the cultural and financial capital of the world. Situated on one of the worlds largest natural harbors, New York City consists of five boroughs, the five boroughs – Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, The Bronx, and Staten Island – were consolidated into a single city in 1898. In 2013, the MSA produced a gross metropolitan product of nearly US$1.39 trillion, in 2012, the CSA generated a GMP of over US$1.55 trillion. NYCs MSA and CSA GDP are higher than all but 11 and 12 countries, New York City traces its origin to its 1624 founding in Lower Manhattan as a trading post by colonists of the Dutch Republic and was named New Amsterdam in 1626. The city and its surroundings came under English control in 1664 and were renamed New York after King Charles II of England granted the lands to his brother, New York served as the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790. It has been the countrys largest city since 1790, the Statue of Liberty greeted millions of immigrants as they came to the Americas by ship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and is a symbol of the United States and its democracy. In the 21st century, New York has emerged as a node of creativity and entrepreneurship, social tolerance. Several sources have ranked New York the most photographed city in the world, the names of many of the citys bridges, tapered skyscrapers, and parks are known around the world. Manhattans real estate market is among the most expensive in the world, Manhattans Chinatown incorporates the highest concentration of Chinese people in the Western Hemisphere, with multiple signature Chinatowns developing across the city. Providing continuous 24/7 service, the New York City Subway is one of the most extensive metro systems worldwide, with 472 stations in operation. Over 120 colleges and universities are located in New York City, including Columbia University, New York University, and Rockefeller University, during the Wisconsinan glaciation, the New York City region was situated at the edge of a large ice sheet over 1,000 feet in depth. The ice sheet scraped away large amounts of soil, leaving the bedrock that serves as the foundation for much of New York City today. Later on, movement of the ice sheet would contribute to the separation of what are now Long Island and Staten Island. The first documented visit by a European was in 1524 by Giovanni da Verrazzano, a Florentine explorer in the service of the French crown and he claimed the area for France and named it Nouvelle Angoulême. Heavy ice kept him from further exploration, and he returned to Spain in August and he proceeded to sail up what the Dutch would name the North River, named first by Hudson as the Mauritius after Maurice, Prince of Orange
7.
Art world
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The art world comprises everyone involved in producing, commissioning, presenting, preserving, promoting, chronicling, criticizing, and selling fine art. It is a wider term than art market, though that is a part of it. In her book, Seven Days in the Art World, Sarah Thornton describes it as a network of overlapping subcultures held together by a belief in art. They span the globe but cluster in art capitals like New York, London, Los Angeles, and Berlin. Other cities sometimes called art capitals include Beijing, Brussels, Hong Kong, Miami, Paris, Rome and Tokyo, due to their large art festivals, followings, and being the centers of art production. It developed a culture, hype and mystique through lists and texts, it had a centre, insiders, outsiders and this is of course not a failure, this is unavoidable, groups form, even anarchism is an institution. New York Magazine art critic Jerry Saltz has referred to William Powhidas, key Terms in Popular Music and Culture. Seven Days in the Art World New York, WW Norton,2008
8.
Der Sturm
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Der Sturm was a German art and literary magazine covering Expressionism, Cubism, Dada and Surrealism, among other artistic movements. It was published between 1910 and 1932, Der Sturm was established in Berlin in 1910 by Herwarth Walden. It ran weekly until monthly in 1914, and became a quarterly in 1924, the magazine modelled on the Italian literary magazine La Voce published in Florence from 1908 to 1916. Der Sturm ceased publication in 1932, Der Sturm consisted of pieces such as expressionistic dramas, artistic portfolios, essays from artists, and theoretical writings on art from Herwarth Walden. The most well-known publications resulting from the magazine were the Sturmbücher, the term Sturm was branded by Walden to represent the way in which modern art was penetrating Germany at the time. Regularly, poems and other texts of French and/or French-speaking expressionists were published and this relationship was renewed after the war despite the hostilities between the two countries caused by the fighting. The magazine also fostered the Galerie Der Sturm, started by Walden to celebrate its 100th edition, the gallery became the focus for Berlins modern art scene for a decade. Despite this, the gallery declined in importance after the war and closed in 1924, accordingly, Walden organized, until 1932, more than 200 exhibitions in its premises in Berlin plus multiple other touring exhibitions in Germany and also in most other major European cities. List of magazines in Germany Die Aktion Proto-Cubism Cubism Orphism
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German Expressionism
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German Expressionism refers to a number of related creative movements beginning in Germany before the First World War that reached a peak in Berlin during the 1920s. These developments in Germany were part of a larger Expressionist movement in north and central European culture in such as architecture, dance, painting, sculpture. This article deals primarily with developments in German Expressionist cinema before, the German Expressionist movement was initially confined to Germany due to the isolation the country experienced during World War I. In 1916, the government had banned foreign films, the demand from theaters to generate films led to an increase in domestic film production from 24 films in 1914 to 130 films in 1918. With inflation also on the rise, Germans were attending films more freely because they knew that their moneys value was constantly diminishing, by the time the 1916 ban on imports was lifted, Germany had become a part of the international film industry. Various European cultures of the 1920s embraced an ethic of change, the plots and stories of the Expressionist films often dealt with madness, insanity, betrayal and other intellectual topics triggered by the experiences of World War I. Later films often categorized as part of the history of German Expressionism include Metropolis and M. This trend was a reaction against realism. Its practitioners used extreme distortions in expression to show an inner emotional reality rather than what is on the surface, the extreme anti-realism of Expressionism was short-lived, fading away after only a few years. However, the themes of Expressionism were integrated into films of the 1920s and 1930s, resulting in an artistic control over the placement of scenery, light. This dark, moody school of film making was brought to the United States when the Nazis gained power, Nazi film theorist Fritz Hippler though was a supporter of expressionism. Two further films produced in Nazi Germany using the expressionist style were “Das Stahltier” in 1935 by Willy Zielke, das Leben eines Titanen” in 1940 by Curt Oertel. Two genres that were influenced by Expressionism are horror film and film noir. Carl Laemmle and Universal Studios had made a name for themselves by producing such famous films of the silent era as Lon Chaneys The Phantom of the Opera. The German silent cinema was arguably far ahead of Hollywood during the same period, the cinema outside Germany benefited both from the emigration of German film makers and from German expressionist developments in style and technique that were apparent on the screen. The new look and techniques impressed other contemporary film makers, artists and cinematographers, in 1924, Alfred Hitchcock was sent by Gainsborough Pictures to work as an assistant director and art director at the UFA Babelsberg Studios in Berlin on the film The Blackguard. The immediate effect of the environment in Germany can be seen in his expressionistic set designs for that film. Hitchcock later said, I. acquired a strong German influence by working at the UFA studios Berlin, German expressionism would continue to influence Hitchcock throughout his career
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Wassily Kandinsky
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Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky was a Russian painter and art theorist. He is credited with painting one of the first recognised purely abstract works, born in Moscow, Kandinsky spent his childhood in Odessa, where he graduated at Grekov Odessa Art school. He enrolled at the University of Moscow, studying law and economics, successful in his profession—he was offered a professorship at the University of Dorpat—Kandinsky began painting studies at the age of 30. In 1896 Kandinsky settled in Munich, studying first at Anton Ažbes private school and he returned to Moscow in 1914, after the outbreak of World War I. Kandinsky was unsympathetic to the theories on art in Communist Moscow. There, he taught at the Bauhaus school of art and architecture from 1922 until the Nazis closed it in 1933. He then moved to France, where he lived for the rest of his life, becoming a French citizen in 1939 and he died at Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1944. Kandinskys creation of work followed a long period of development. He called this devotion to beauty, fervor of spirit. Kandinsky was born in Moscow, the son of Lidia Ticheeva and Vasily Silvestrovich Kandinsky, Kandinsky learned from a variety of sources while in Moscow. He studied many fields while in school, including law and economics, later in life, he would recall being fascinated and stimulated by colour as a child. His fascination with colour symbolism and psychology continued as he grew, in 1889, he was part of an ethnographic research group which travelled to the Vologda region north of Moscow. In Looks on the Past, he relates that the houses and churches were decorated with such shimmering colours that upon entering them and this experience, and his study of the regions folk art, was reflected in much of his early work. The artist is the hand plays, touching one key or another. Kandinsky was also the uncle of Russian-French philosopher Alexandre Kojève, in 1896, at the age of 30, Kandinsky gave up a promising career teaching law and economics to enroll in the Munich Academy where his teachers would eventually include Franz von Stuck. He was not immediately granted admission, and began learning art on his own and that same year, before leaving Moscow, he saw an exhibit of paintings by Monet. He was particularly taken with the style of Haystacks, this. Later, he would write about this experience, That it was a haystack the catalogue informed me and this non-recognition was painful to me
11.
David Smith (sculptor)
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Roland David Smith was an American abstract expressionist sculptor and painter, best known for creating large steel abstract geometric sculptures. Roland David Smith was born on March 9,1906 in Decatur, Indiana and moved to Paulding, Ohio in 1921, from 1924-25, he attended Ohio University in Athens and the University of Notre Dame, which he left after two weeks because there were no art courses. In between, Smith took a job working on the assembly line of an automobile factory. He then briefly studied art and poetry at George Washington University in Washington, moving to New York in 1926, he met Dorothy Dehner and, on her advice, joined her painting studies at the Art Students League of New York. Among his teachers were the American painter John Sloan and the Czech modernist painter Jan Matulka, Matulka introduced Smith to the work of Picasso, Mondrian, Kandinsky, and the Russian Constructivists. In 1929, Smith met John D. Graham, who introduced him to the welded-steel sculpture of Pablo Picasso. Through the Russian émigré artist John Graham, Smith met avant-garde artists such as Stuart Davis, Arshile Gorky and he also discovered the welded sculptures of Julio González and Picasso, which led to an increasing interest in combining painting and construction. In the Virgin Islands in 1931–32, Smith made his first sculpture from pieces of coral, in 1932, he installed a forge and anvil in his studio at the farm in Bolton Landing that he and Dehner had bought a few years earlier. A single work may consist of materials, differentiated by varied patinas. In 1940, the Smiths distanced themselves from the New York art scene and moved permanently to Bolton Landing, at Bolton Landing, he ran his studio like a factory, stocked with large amounts of raw material. The artist would put his sculptures in what is referred to as an upper and lower field, during World War II, Smith worked as a welder for the American Locomotive Company, Schenectady, NY assembling locomotives and M7 tanks. He taught at Sarah Lawrence College, after the war, with the additional skills that he had acquired, Smith released his pent-up energy and ideas in a burst of creation between 1945 and 1946. His output soared and he went about perfecting his own, very personal symbolism, traditionally, metal sculpture meant bronze casts, which artisans produced using a mold made by the artist. Smith, who said, I belong with the painters. He made sculptural landscapes, still life sculptures and even a sculpture of a page of writing and his wealth of response is as great as his draftsmanship. Smith was awarded the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship in 1950, which was renewed the following year, freed from financial constraints, he made more and larger pieces, and for the first time was able to afford to make whole sculptures in stainless steel. He also began his practice of making sculptures in series, the first of which were the Agricolas of 1951-59 and he steadily gained recognition, lecturing at universities and participating in symposia. He separated from Dehner in 1950, with divorce in 1952, during his time as a visiting artist at Indiana University, Bloomington, in 1955 and 1956, Smith produced the Forgings, a series of eleven industrially forged steel sculptures
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Cubi
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The Cubi series is a group of stainless steel sculptures built from cubes, rectangular solids and cylinders with spheroidal or flat endcaps. These pieces are among the last works completed by the sculptor David Smith. The artist died in a car accident on May 23,1965, soon after the completion of Cubi XXVIII, the Cubis are among Smiths final experiments in his progression toward a more simplified, abstract form of expression. As an example of Modernism, these are representative of the works in industrial materials that characterized much of the sculpture from this period. Although the Cubis are abstract works composed of shapes, they are ambiguously figural. For example, the pictured Cubi VI appears to be standing on a pair of crossed legs, like many of the Abstract Expressionists, Smith possessed the ability to easily switch between an abstract and figurative style of working. His process also involved going back and forth between the different stages of development within a certain style or serial group, as suggested by the Cubis. These sculptures were not completed in the order in which they are numbered, in 2005, Cubi XXVIII was sold at Sothebys for $23.8 million, breaking a record for the most expensive piece of contemporary art ever sold at auction. This exceedingly rare work was the pinnacle of a career, said Tobias Meyer, Sothebys worldwide head of contemporary art. Washington, National Gallery of Art,1982, “A Critic Calls David Smith ‘Greatest of All American Artists. ’” New York Times Magazine, February 16,1969, 40-62. Krauss, Rosalind E. Terminal Iron Works, The Sculpture of David Smith, Cubi XII at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D. C. Cubi XIII at the Princeton University Art Museum, in Princeton, Cubi XXVII at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Cubi XXVIII purchased at auction in 2005 by Eli Broad
13.
Israel Museum
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The Israel Museum was founded in 1965 as Israels national museum. It is situated on a hill in the Givat Ram neighborhood of Jerusalem, near the Bible Lands Museum, the Knesset, the Israeli Supreme Court, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. An urn-shaped building on the grounds of the museum, the Shrine of the Book, houses the Dead Sea Scrolls and it is one of the largest museums in the region. Jerusalem mayor Teddy Kollek was the spirit behind the establishment of the Israel Museum, one of the leading art. Since its establishment in 1965, the Museum has built up a collection of nearly 500,000 objects, James S. Snyder, former Deputy Director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, was appointed director of the museum in 1997. From 1965, the museum was housed in a series of buildings designed by the Russian-born Israeli architect Alfred Mansfeld. A $100-million campaign to renovate the museum and double its space was completed in July 2010. The wings for archaeology, the arts, and Jewish art and life were completely rebuilt. The passageways that connect between the buildings and five new pavilions were designed by James Carpenter, the museum covers nearly 50,000 sq. meters and attracts 800,000 visitors a year, including 100,000 children who visit and attend classes in its Youth Wing. This narrative is supplemented by thematic groupings highlighting aspects of ancient Israeli archaeology that are unique to the history, among them Hebrew writing, glass. A special gallery at the entrance to the wing showcases new findings, the Shrine of the Book houses the Dead Sea Scrolls, the oldest biblical manuscripts in the world, as well as rare early medieval biblical manuscripts. The scrolls were discovered in 1947–56 in 11 caves in and around the Wadi Qumran, the building consists of a white dome over a building located two-thirds below the ground. The dome is reflected in a pool of water that surrounds it, across from the white dome is a black basalt wall. The interior of the shrine was designed to depict the environment in which the scrolls were found, there is also a permanent display on life in the Qumran, where the scrolls were written. The entire structure was designed to resemble a pot in which the scrolls were found, the shrine was designed by Armand Bartos and Frederick Kiesler, and was opened in 1965. As the fragility of the scrolls makes it impossible to display all on a continuous basis, after a scroll has been exhibited for 3–6 months, it is removed from its showcase and placed temporarily in a special storeroom, where it rests from exposure. The museum also holds other rare ancient manuscripts and displays the Aleppo Codex, originally constructed on the grounds of Jerusalem’s Holyland Hotel, the model, which includes a replica of Herods Temple, is now a permanent feature of the museums 20-acre campus. The Israel Museum holds a collection of paintings representing a wide range of periods, styles, subjects
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Jerusalem
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Jerusalem is a city located on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is considered a city in the three major Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. During its long history, Jerusalem has been destroyed at least twice, besieged 23 times, attacked 52 times, the part of Jerusalem called the City of David was settled in the 4th millennium BCE. In 1538, walls were built around Jerusalem under Suleiman the Magnificent, today those walls define the Old City, which has been traditionally divided into four quarters—known since the early 19th century as the Armenian, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim Quarters. The Old City became a World Heritage Site in 1981, and is on the List of World Heritage in Danger, Modern Jerusalem has grown far beyond the Old Citys boundaries. These foundational events, straddling the dawn of the 1st millennium BCE, the sobriquet of holy city was probably attached to Jerusalem in post-exilic times. The holiness of Jerusalem in Christianity, conserved in the Septuagint which Christians adopted as their own authority, was reinforced by the New Testament account of Jesuss crucifixion there, in Sunni Islam, Jerusalem is the third-holiest city, after Mecca and Medina. As a result, despite having an area of only 0, outside the Old City stands the Garden Tomb. Today, the status of Jerusalem remains one of the issues in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. During the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, West Jerusalem was among the captured and later annexed by Israel while East Jerusalem, including the Old City, was captured. Israel captured East Jerusalem from Jordan during the 1967 Six-Day War and subsequently annexed it into Jerusalem, one of Israels Basic Laws, the 1980 Jerusalem Law, refers to Jerusalem as the countrys undivided capital. All branches of the Israeli government are located in Jerusalem, including the Knesset, the residences of the Prime Minister and President, the international community does not recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital, and the city hosts no foreign embassies. Jerusalem is also home to some non-governmental Israeli institutions of importance, such as the Hebrew University. In 2011, Jerusalem had a population of 801,000, of which Jews comprised 497,000, Muslims 281,000, a city called Rušalim in the Execration texts of the Middle Kingdom of Egypt is widely, but not universally, identified as Jerusalem. Jerusalem is called Urušalim in the Amarna letters of Abdi-Heba, the name Jerusalem is variously etymologized to mean foundation of the god Shalem, the god Shalem was thus the original tutelary deity of the Bronze Age city. The form Yerushalem or Yerushalayim first appears in the Bible, in the Book of Joshua, according to a Midrash, the name is a combination of Yhwh Yireh and the town Shalem. The earliest extra-biblical Hebrew writing of the word Jerusalem is dated to the sixth or seventh century BCE and was discovered in Khirbet Beit Lei near Beit Guvrin in 1961. The inscription states, I am Yahweh thy God, I will accept the cities of Judah and I will redeem Jerusalem, or as other scholars suggest, the mountains of Judah belong to him, to the God of Jerusalem
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Surrealism
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Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for its visual artworks and writings. The aim was to resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream, leader André Breton was explicit in his assertion that Surrealism was, above all, a revolutionary movement. Surrealism developed out of the Dada activities during World War I, the word surrealist was coined by Guillaume Apollinaire and first appeared in the preface to his play Les Mamelles de Tirésias, which was written in 1903 and first performed in 1917. The Dadaists protested with anti-art gatherings, performances, writings and art works, after the war, when they returned to Paris, the Dada activities continued. Meeting the young writer Jacques Vaché, Breton felt that Vaché was the son of writer. He admired the young writers anti-social attitude and disdain for established artistic tradition, later Breton wrote, In literature, I was successively taken with Rimbaud, with Jarry, with Apollinaire, with Nouveau, with Lautréamont, but it is Jacques Vaché to whom I owe the most. Back in Paris, Breton joined in Dada activities and started the literary journal Littérature along with Louis Aragon and they began experimenting with automatic writing—spontaneously writing without censoring their thoughts—and published the writings, as well as accounts of dreams, in the magazine. Breton and Soupault delved deeper into automatism and wrote The Magnetic Fields, continuing to write, they came to believe that automatism was a better tactic for societal change than the Dada form of attack on prevailing values. They also looked to the Marxist dialectic and the work of such theorists as Walter Benjamin, freuds work with free association, dream analysis, and the unconscious was of utmost importance to the Surrealists in developing methods to liberate imagination. They embraced idiosyncrasy, while rejecting the idea of an underlying madness, as Salvador Dalí later proclaimed, There is only one difference between a madman and me. Beside the use of analysis, they emphasized that one could combine inside the same frame, elements not normally found together to produce illogical. The more the relationship between the two juxtaposed realities is distant and true, the stronger the image will be−the greater its emotional power, the group aimed to revolutionize human experience, in its personal, cultural, social, and political aspects. They wanted to people from false rationality, and restrictive customs. Breton proclaimed that the aim of Surrealism was long live the social revolution. To this goal, at various times Surrealists aligned with communism and anarchism, in 1924 two Surrealist factions declared their philosophy in two separate Surrealist Manifestos. That same year the Bureau of Surrealist Research was established, leading up to 1924, two rival surrealist groups had formed. Each group claimed to be successors of a revolution launched by Guillaume Apollinaire, the other group, led by Breton, included Louis Aragon, Robert Desnos, Paul Éluard, Jacques Baron, Jacques-André Boiffard, Jean Carrive, René Crevel and Georges Malkine, among others. Goll and Breton clashed openly, at one point literally fighting, at the Comédie des Champs-Élysées, in the end, Breton won the battle through tactical and numerical superiority
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Surrealist automatism
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Surrealist automatism is a method of art making in which the artist suppresses conscious control over the making process, allowing the unconscious mind to have great sway. Early 20th century Dadaists, such as Hans Arp, made use of this method through chance operations. Surrealist artists, most notably André Masson, adapted to art the automatic writing method of André Breton, the Automatic Message was one of Bretons significant theoretical works about automatism. Automatism has taken on many forms, the writing and drawing initially explored by the surrealists can be compared to similar or parallel phenomena. Pure psychic automatism was how André Breton defined Surrealism, and while the definition has proved capable of significant expansion, the technique of automatic drawing was transferred to painting, and has been adapted to other media, there have even been automatic drawings in computer graphics. Pablo Picasso was also thought to have expressed a type of drawing in his later work. Automatic drawing was developed by the surrealists, as a means of expressing the subconscious, in automatic drawing, the hand is allowed to move randomly across the paper. In applying chance and accident to mark-making, drawing is to a large extent freed of rational control, hence the drawing produced may be attributed in part to the subconscious and may reveal something of the psyche, which would otherwise be repressed. Examples of automatic drawing were produced by mediums and practitioners of the psychic arts and it was thought by some Spiritualists to be a spirit control that was producing the drawing while physically taking control of the mediums body. Most of the surrealists automatic drawings were illusionistic, or more precisely, in the 1940s and 1950s the French-Canadian group called Les Automatistes pursued creative work based on surrealist principles. They abandoned any trace of representation in their use of automatic drawing, the computer, like the typewriter, can be used to produce automatic writing and automatic poetry. For instance, filters have been run in some bitmap editor programs such as Photoshop and GIMP. Grandview — a software application created in 2011 for the Mac — displays one word at a time across the screen as a user types. Automatic writing Cut-up technique Free improvisation Intuitive music Scribbling Surrealism Surrealist music Pseudohallucination An automatic drawing by Jean Arp What is an automatic drawing
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Max Ernst
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Max Ernst was a German painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was a pioneer of the Dada movement. Max Ernst was born in Brühl, near Cologne, the third of nine children of a middle-class Catholic family and his father Philipp was a teacher of the deaf and an amateur painter, a devout Christian and a strict disciplinarian. He inspired in Max a penchant for defying authority, while his interest in painting and sketching in nature influenced Max to take up painting himself, in 1909 Ernst enrolled in the University of Bonn, studying philosophy, art history, literature, psychology and psychiatry. In 1911 Ernst befriended August Macke and joined his Die Rheinischen Expressionisten group of artists, in 1912 he visited the Sonderbund exhibition in Cologne, where works by Pablo Picasso and post-Impressionists such as Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin profoundly influenced his approach to art. His own work was exhibited the same year together with that of the Das Junge Rheinland group, at Galerie Feldman in Cologne, in 1914 Ernst met Hans Arp in Cologne. The two soon became friends and their relationship lasted for fifty years, after Ernst completed his studies in the summer, his life was interrupted by World War I. Ernst was drafted and served both on the Western and the Eastern front, such was the devastating effect of the war on the artist that in his autobiography he referred to his time in the army thus, On the first of August 1914 M. E. died. He was resurrected on the eleventh of November 1918, however, for a brief period on the Western Front, Ernst was assigned to chart maps, which allowed him to continue painting. Several German Expressionist painters died in action during the war, among them Macke, Ernst was demobilized in 1918 and returned to Cologne. He soon married art history student Luise Straus, whom he had met in 1914, in 1919, Ernst visited Paul Klee in Munich and studied paintings by Giorgio de Chirico, which deeply impressed him. Also in 1919 Ernst, social activist Johannes Theodor Baargeld, in 1919–20 Ernst and Baargeld published various short-lived magazines such as Der Strom and die schammade, and organized Dada exhibitions. Ernst and Luises son Ulrich Jimmy Ernst was born on 24 June 1920, Ernsts marriage to Luise was short-lived. In 1921 he met Paul Éluard, who became a lifelong friend. Éluard bought two of Ernsts paintings and selected six collages to illustrate his poetry collection Répétitions, a year later the two collaborated on Les malheurs des immortels, and then with André Breton, whom Ernst met in 1921, on the magazine Litterature. During his first two years in Paris Ernst took various odd jobs to make a living and continued to paint, in 1923 the Éluards moved to a new home in Eaubonne, near Paris, where Ernst painted numerous murals. The same year his works were exhibited at Salon des Indépendants, although apparently accepting the ménage à trois at first, Éluard eventually became more concerned about the affair. In 1924 he abruptly left, first for Monaco, and then for Saigon and he soon asked his wife and Max Ernst to join him, both had to sell numerous paintings to finance the trip
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David Alfaro Siqueiros
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David Alfaro Siqueiros was a Mexican social realist painter, better known for his large murals in fresco. Along with Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco, he established Mexican Muralism and he was a Marxist-Leninist in support of the Soviet Union and a member of the Mexican Communist Party who participated in an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Leon Trotsky in May 1940. His surname would normally be Alfaro by Spanish naming customs, like Picasso and Lorca, Siqueiros changed his given name to David after his first wife called him by it in allusion to Michelangelos David. Another factual confusion is the year of his birth, he was born in 1896, but many sources state 1898 or 1899. Many details of his childhood, including date, birthplace, first name. Often, he is reported to have been born and raised in 1898 in a town in the state of Chihuahua, Siqueiros was born in Chihuahua in 1896, the second of three children. He was baptized José de Jesús Alfaro Siqueiros and his father, Cipriano Alfaro, originally from Irapuato, was well-off. Siqueiros had two siblings, a sister, Luz, three years older, and a brother Chucho, a year younger, davids mother died when he was four, their father sent the children to live with their paternal grandparents. Davids grandfather, nicknamed Siete Filos, had a strong role in his upbringing. In 1902 Siqueiros started school in Irapuato, Guanajuato and he credits his first rebellious influence to his sister, who had resisted their fathers religious orthodoxy. Around this time, Siqueiros was also exposed to new political ideas, one such political theorist was Dr. Atl, who published a manifesto in 1906 calling for Mexican artists to develop a national art and look to ancient indigenous cultures for inspiration. Their protests eventually led to the establishment of an academy in Santa Anita. At the age of eighteen, Siqueiros and several of his colleagues from the School of Fine Arts joined Venustiano Carranzas Constitutional Army fighting Huertas government and his military travels around the country exposed him to Mexican culture and the raw everyday struggles of the working and rural poor classes. After Carranzas forces had gained control, Siqueiros briefly returned to Mexico City to paint before traveling to Europe in 1919, first in Paris, he absorbed the influence of cubism, intrigued particularly with Paul Cézanne and the use of large blocks of intense color. Although many have said that Siqueiros artistic ventures were frequently interrupted by his political ones, by 1921, when he wrote his manifesto in Vida Americana, Siqueiros had already been exposed to Marxism and saw the life of the working and rural poor while traveling with the Constitutional Army. The manifesto also claimed that a spirit is essential to meaningful art. Through this style, Siqueiros hoped to create a style that would bridge national and universal art, in 1922, Siqueiros returned to Mexico City to work as a muralist for Álvaro Obregóns revolutionary government. Then Secretary of Public Education José Vasconcelos made a mission of educating the masses through public art and hired scores of artists, Siqueiros, Rivera and José Orozco worked together under Vasconcelos, who supported the muralist movement by commissioning murals for prominent buildings in Mexico City
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Wolfgang Paalen
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Wolfgang Robert Paalen was a German-Austrian-Mexican painter, sculptor and art philosopher. A member of the Abstraction-Création group from 1934–35, he joined the influential Surrealist movement in 1935 and was one of its prominent exponents until 1942 and he rejoined the group between 1951 and 1954, during his sojourn in Paris. Wolfgang Paalen was born in one of the famous Wienzeilenhäuser designed by Otto Wagner in Vienna and he was the first of four sons of the Austrian-Jewish merchant and inventor Gustav Robert Paalen, and his German wife, the actress Clothilde Emilie Gunkel. Gustav Robert, who had Polish-Ashkenazi and Spanish-Sephardic origins, converted to Protestantism in 1900, in a relatively short period Gustav R. Paalen managed to ascend into the distinguished Viennese upper-class of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. As a friend of Wilhelm von Bode and member of the Freundeskreis des Kaiser-Friedrich Museums, Berlin, in Tobelbad Paalen senior received such prominent guests as Gustav Mahler, poet and artist Fritz von Herzmanovsky-Orlando, Julius Meier-Graefe, Ida Zweig, among others. Some sources claim that it was Paalen who introduced Alma Mahler, during her visit in Tobelbad in 1910, to the German architect Walter Gropius, whom she married later. 1912 the Paalen family moved to Berlin and to the Silesian city of Sagan, Wolfgang attended different schools in Sagan, and during the war his parents also engaged a private tutor. The teacher was also an organist who specialized in Johann Sebastian Bach and it was in Rome, under the guidance of his father´s friend, the archeologist Ludwig Pollak, that he became an expert in Greek and Roman archaeology. In 1923 he returned to Berlin alone to apply for the Academy, although unsuccessful, he met his lifelong friend, companion and patron, the Swiss violinist and photographer Eva Sulzer. In 1925 he exhibited at the Berlin Secession and studied further in aesthetics, deeply influenced by Julius Meier-Graefe, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and the Gestalt theory of Max Wertheimer. It is here and with hypnopompic hallucinations in the castle in Sagan that he found the base for his ideas of a deep entanglement of vision. After another year of studies, in Paris and Cassis, where he met Roland Penrose, Jean Varda and Georges Braque, he visited the art school of Hans Hofmann in Munich and, in 1928 and he then decided to settle in Paris. The year 1928 marks also the beginning of the decline of the family´s splendour, a later tragedy, crucial to Paalens development, was his beloved brother Rainers shooting himself in head with a pistol. Wolfgang witnessed the event, although Rainer survived, following treatment in a Berlin hospital and he died in a mental hospital in Czechoslovakia in 1942. In Paris he studied for a time with Fernand Léger. He left the group in 1935, together with Hans Arp and his work at this time was inspired by Paul Valery´s Eupalinos and tends to macerate and condensate the abstract hardliners with regard to the Surrealists. The pictorial results may be seen as language games, testing the point to which concrete forms may be reduced to latency, in the summer of 1935 he spent some time at the castle home of Lise Deharme, where he met the Parisian Surrealists and André Breton. Here, Paalen showed L´heure exacte, a clock with glass eyes and feather hands and that same year Paalen had a solo exhibition of paintings in Paris at the Galerie Pierre, owned by Breton´s friend Pierre Loeb
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DYN (magazine)
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DYN was an art magazine founded by the Austrian-Mexican surrealist Wolfgang Paalen, published in Mexico City, and distributed in New York City, Paris, and London between 1942 and 1944. One of the main underlying notions of DYN was the attempt to reconcile diverging materialist, Breton, however, reacted as deeply offended, and in the preface of VVV argued, We reject the lie of an open surrealism, in which anything is possible. Paalen dominated its contents as editor and contributed its major topics in seven large essays and numerous smaller reviews and articles. DYNs editorial board later enlisted a number of associated thinkers and artists, including Miguel Covarrubias, César Moro, Henry Miller, Anaïs Nin, Gordon Onslow Ford and Robert Motherwell. In the first number Paalen emphasized his will to some of the fundamentals in surrealist theory. Paalens main intention of this provocation was to tease the dogmatic attitudes implicit in surrealist theory, in a provocative and straightforward way Paalen enquires after the academic validity of the philosophy of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels as a science. Half of the addressees replied, amongst them Albert Einstein, Clement Greenberg, the majority answered all questions No. Russell answered bluntly, I think the metaphysics of both Hegel and Marx plain nonsense - Marxs claim to be science is no more justified than Mary Baker Eddys, the number contained also Paalen´s pleading for a cognitive perception of inspiration. It contained also essays and poetical texts by Gustav Regler, Edward Renouf, Henry Miller, Anais Nin, Valentine Penrose, César Moro, Paalen is winning on the whole line. The number Possibilities, in which the young New York artists published their first statements, was the number of this series. The positive impact on New Yorks younger generation of artists and their first publications, Motherwell translated Paalens programatical essay Image Nouvelle into English. Motherwells collage Surprise and Inspiration was named after Paalens essay with the same title, Motherwell had translated this article for DYN and the collage was published next to it. Kloyber, Christian, ed. Wolfgang Paalen’s DYN, The Complete Reprint, vienna and New York, Springer,2000. Winter, Amy, Wolfgang Paalen, Artist and Theorist of the Avant-Garde, westport, Connecticut and London, Praeger,2003
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Quantum mechanics
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Quantum mechanics, including quantum field theory, is a branch of physics which is the fundamental theory of nature at small scales and low energies of atoms and subatomic particles. Classical physics, the physics existing before quantum mechanics, derives from quantum mechanics as an approximation valid only at large scales, early quantum theory was profoundly reconceived in the mid-1920s. The reconceived theory is formulated in various specially developed mathematical formalisms, in one of them, a mathematical function, the wave function, provides information about the probability amplitude of position, momentum, and other physical properties of a particle. In 1803, Thomas Young, an English polymath, performed the famous experiment that he later described in a paper titled On the nature of light. This experiment played a role in the general acceptance of the wave theory of light. In 1838, Michael Faraday discovered cathode rays, Plancks hypothesis that energy is radiated and absorbed in discrete quanta precisely matched the observed patterns of black-body radiation. In 1896, Wilhelm Wien empirically determined a distribution law of black-body radiation, ludwig Boltzmann independently arrived at this result by considerations of Maxwells equations. However, it was only at high frequencies and underestimated the radiance at low frequencies. Later, Planck corrected this model using Boltzmanns statistical interpretation of thermodynamics and proposed what is now called Plancks law, following Max Plancks solution in 1900 to the black-body radiation problem, Albert Einstein offered a quantum-based theory to explain the photoelectric effect. Among the first to study quantum phenomena in nature were Arthur Compton, C. V. Raman, robert Andrews Millikan studied the photoelectric effect experimentally, and Albert Einstein developed a theory for it. In 1913, Peter Debye extended Niels Bohrs theory of structure, introducing elliptical orbits. This phase is known as old quantum theory, according to Planck, each energy element is proportional to its frequency, E = h ν, where h is Plancks constant. Planck cautiously insisted that this was simply an aspect of the processes of absorption and emission of radiation and had nothing to do with the reality of the radiation itself. In fact, he considered his quantum hypothesis a mathematical trick to get the right rather than a sizable discovery. He won the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for this work, lower energy/frequency means increased time and vice versa, photons of differing frequencies all deliver the same amount of action, but do so in varying time intervals. High frequency waves are damaging to human tissue because they deliver their action packets concentrated in time, the Copenhagen interpretation of Niels Bohr became widely accepted. In the mid-1920s, developments in mechanics led to its becoming the standard formulation for atomic physics. In the summer of 1925, Bohr and Heisenberg published results that closed the old quantum theory, out of deference to their particle-like behavior in certain processes and measurements, light quanta came to be called photons
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Martha Graham
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Martha Graham was an American modern dancer and choreographer. Her influence on dance has been compared with the influence of Picasso on modern visual arts, the influence of Stravinsky on music, and she danced and choreographed for over seventy years. Graham was the first dancer to perform at the White House, travel abroad as an ambassador, and receive the highest civilian award of the US. In her lifetime she received honors ranging from the Key to the City of Paris to Japans Imperial Order of the Precious Crown and she said, in the 1994 documentary The Dancer Revealed, I have spent all my life with dance and being a dancer. Its permitting life to use you in an intense way. Her style, the Graham technique, fundamentally reshaped American dance and is taught worldwide. Graham was born in Allegheny City – later to become part of Pittsburgh and her father George Graham practiced as what in the Victorian era was known as an alienist, a practitioner of an early form of psychiatry. Dr. Graham was a third-generation American of Irish descent and her mother Jane Beers was a second-generation American of Irish, Scots-Irish, and English descent and was also a sixth-generation descendant of Myles Standish. While her parents provided an environment in her youth, it was not one that encouraged dancing. The Graham family moved to Santa Barbara, California when Martha was fourteen years old, in 1911, she attended the first dance performance of her life, watching Ruth St. Denis perform at the Mason Opera House in Los Angeles. In the mid-1910s, Martha Graham began her studies at the newly created Denishawn School of Dancing and Related Arts, founded by Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn, at which she would stay until 1923. In 1925, Graham was employed at the Eastman School of Music where Rouben Mamoulian was head of the School of Drama, among other performances, together Mamoulian and Graham produced a short two-color film called The Flute of Krishna, featuring Eastman students. Mamoulian left Eastman shortly thereafter and Graham chose to leave also, in 1926, the Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance was established. On April 18 of the same year Graham debuted her first independent concert and this performance took place at the 48th Street Theatre in Manhattan. She would later say of the concert, Everything I did was influenced by Denishawn, on November 28,1926 Martha Graham and others in her company gave a dance recital at the Klaw Theatre in New York City. One of Grahams students was heiress Bethsabée de Rothschild with whom she became close friends, when Rothschild moved to Israel and established the Batsheva Dance Company in 1965, Graham became the companys first director. Grahams technique pioneered a principle known as Contraction and Release in modern dance, in 1936, Graham created Chronicle which brought serious issues to the stage in a dramatic manner. That same year, she declined Hitlers invitation to perform at the International Arts Festival,1938 became a big year for Graham, the Roosevelts invited Graham to dance at the White House, making her the first dancer to perform there
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Isamu Noguchi
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Isamu Noguchi was an American artist and landscape architect whose artistic career spanned six decades, from the 1920s onward. His work lives on around the world and at the Noguchi Museum in New York City, Yone had ended his relationship with Gilmour earlier that year and planned to marry The Washington Post reporter Ethel Armes. After proposing to Armes, Yone left for Japan in late August, settling in Tokyo and awaiting her arrival, their engagement fell through months later when she learned of Léonie, in 1906, Yone invited Léonie to come to Tokyo with their son. She at first refused, but growing anti-Japanese sentiment following the Russo-Japanese War eventually convinced her to take up Yones offer, the two departed from San Francisco in March 1907, arriving in Yokohama to meet Yone. Upon arrival, their son was given the name Isamu. However, Yone had married a Japanese woman by the time they arrived, after again separating from Yone, Léonie and Isamu moved several times throughout Japan. In 1912, while the two were living in Chigasaki, Isamus half-sister, pioneer of the American Modern Dance movement Ailes Gilmour, was born to Léonie, here, Léonie had a house built for the three of them, a project that she had the 8-year-old Isamu oversee. Nurturing her sons artistic ability, she put him in charge of their garden, however, they moved once again in December 1917 to an English-speaking community in Yokohama. In 1918, Noguchi was sent back to the U. S. for schooling in Rolling Prairie, after graduation, he left with Dr. Edward Rumely to LaPorte, where he found boarding with a Swedenborgian pastor, Samuel Mack. Noguchi began attending La Porte High School, graduating in 1922, during this period of his life, he was known by the name Sam Gilmour. As one of Borglums apprentices, Noguchi received little training as a sculptor, his tasks included arranging the horses and he did, however, pick up some skills in casting from Borglums Italian assistants, later fashioning a bust of Abraham Lincoln. At summers end, Borglum told Noguchi that he would never become a sculptor and he then traveled to New York City, reuniting with the Rumely family at their new residence, and with Dr. Rumelys financial aid enrolled in February 1922 as a premedical student at Columbia University. Another influence was his mother, who in 1923 moved from Japan to California, in 1924, while still enrolled at Columbia, Noguchi followed his mothers advice to take night classes at the Leonardo da Vinci Art School. The schools head, Onorio Ruotolo, was impressed by Noguchis work. Only three months later, Noguchi held his first exhibit, a selection of plaster and terracotta works and he soon dropped out of Columbia University to pursue sculpture full-time, changing his name from Gilmour to Noguchi. After moving into his own studio, Noguchi found work through commissions for portrait busts, during this time, he frequented avant garde shows at the galleries of such modernists as Alfred Stieglitz and J. B. Neuman, and took a particular interest in a show of the works of Romanian-born sculptor Constantin Brâncuși, in late 1926, Noguchi applied for a Guggenheim Fellowship. He was awarded the grant despite being three years short of the age requirement, Noguchi arrived in Paris in April 1927 and soon afterward met the American author Robert McAlmon, who brought him to Constantin Brâncușis studio for an introduction
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Mark Rothko
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Mark Rothko, born Markus Yakovlevich Rothkowitz, was an American painter of Russian Jewish descent. Although Rothko himself refused to adhere to any art movement, he is identified as an abstract expressionist. With Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, he is one of the most famous postwar American artists, Mark Rothko was born in Dvinsk, Vitebsk Governorate, in the Russian Empire. His father, Jacob Rothkowitz, was a pharmacist and an intellectual who initially provided his children with a secular and political, rather than religious, according to Rothko, his pro-Marxist father was violently anti-religious. In an environment where Jews were often blamed for many of the evils that befell Russia, despite Jacob Rothkowitzs modest income, the family was highly educated, and Rothko was able to speak Russian, Yiddish, and Hebrew. Fearing that his sons were about to be drafted into the Imperial Russian Army. Markus remained in Russia, with his mother and elder sister Sonia and they arrived as immigrants, at Ellis Island, in late 1913. From that point, they crossed the country, to join Jacob, jacobs death, a few months later, from colon cancer, left the family without economic support. Sonia operated a cash register, while Markus worked in one of his uncles warehouses and his fathers death also led Rothko to sever his ties with religion. After he had mourned his fathers death for almost a year at a local synagogue, Markus had started school in the United States in 1913, quickly accelerating from third to fifth grade. In June 1921, he completed the level, with honors, at Lincoln High School in Portland. He learned his fourth language, English, and became a member of the Jewish community center. Like his father, Rothko was passionate about issues such as workers’ rights, at the time, Portland was the epicentre of revolutionary activity in the U. S. and the region where revolutionary syndicalist union Industrial Workers of the World, was strongest. He heard Emma Goldman speak on one of her West Coast activist lecture tours, with the onset of the Russian Revolution, Rothko organised debates about it. Despite the repressive political atmosphere, he wished to become a union organiser. Rothko received a scholarship to Yale, at the end of his freshman year in 1922, the scholarship was not renewed, and he worked as a waiter and delivery boy to support his studies. He found the Yale community to be elitist and racist, Rothko and a friend, Aaron Director, started a satirical magazine, The Yale Saturday Evening Pest, which lampooned the schools stuffy, bourgeois tone. In any event, Rothkos nature was more that of a man than a diligent pupil, One of his fellow students remembers that he hardly seemed to study
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Barnett Newman
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Barnett Newman was an American artist. He is seen as one of the figures in abstract expressionism. His paintings are existential in tone and content, explicitly composed with the intention of communicating a sense of locality, presence, Newman was born in New York City, the son of Jewish immigrants from Poland. He studied philosophy at the City College of New York and worked in his fathers business manufacturing clothing and he later made a living as a teacher, writer and critic. From the 1930s on he made paintings, said to be in an expressionist style, Newman met art teacher Annalee Greenhouse in 1934, they were married on June 30,1936. What is the explanation of the seemingly insane drive of man to be painter and poet if it is not an act of defiance against mans fall, for the artists are the first men. Newman wrote catalogue forewords and reviews and also organized exhibitions before becoming a member of the Uptown Group and having his first solo show at the Betty Parsons Gallery in 1948. Soon after his first exhibition, Newman remarked in one of the Artists Session at Studio 35, We are in the process of making the world, to a certain extent, in our own image. Utilizing his writing skills, Newman fought to reinforce his newly established image as an artist, an example is his letter on April 9,1955, Letter to Sidney Janis. it is true that Rothko talks the fighter. He fights, however, to submit to the philistine world and my struggle against bourgeois society has involved the total rejection of it. Throughout the 1940s he worked in a surrealist vein before developing his mature style and this is characterised by areas of color separated by thin vertical lines, or zips as Newman called them. In the first works featuring zips, the fields are variegated. Newman himself thought that he reached his fully mature style with the Onement series, the zips define the spatial structure of the painting, while simultaneously dividing and uniting the composition. Already 1944 Barnett Newman tried to explain Americas newest art movement, ex-Surrealists, like Matta are mentioned, Wolfgang Paalen Paalen is mentioned twice together with Gottlieb, Rothko, Pollock, Hofmann, Baziotes, Gorky and others. Motherwell is mentioned with a question mark, the zip remained a constant feature of Newmans work throughout his life. In some paintings of the 1950s, such as The Wild, which is eight feet tall by one and a half inches wide, Newman also made a few sculptures which are essentially three-dimensional zips. The Stations of the Cross series of black and white paintings, the series is subtitled Lema sabachthani - why have you forsaken me - the last words spoken by Jesus on the cross, according to the New Testament. Newman saw these words as having universal significance in his own time, the series has also been seen as a memorial to the victims of the holocaust
26.
Arshile Gorky
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Arshile Gorky was an Armenian-American painter, who had a seminal influence on Abstract Expressionism. He spent most his life as a national of the United States, along with Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, Gorky has been hailed as one of the most powerful American painters of the 20th century. As such, his works were often speculated to have been informed by the suffering, Gorky was born on April 15,1904, in the village of Khorgom, situated on the shores of Lake Van in the Ottoman Empire. In later years he was vague about his date of birth, in 1908 his father emigrated to America to avoid the draft, leaving his family behind in the town of Van. In 1915, Gorky fled Lake Van during the Armenian Genocide and escaped with his mother, in the aftermath of the genocide, Gorkys mother died of starvation in Yerevan in 1919. Arriving in America in 1920, the 16-year-old Gorky was reunited with his father, but they never grew close. In the process of reinventing his identity, he changed his name to Arshile Gorky, claiming to be a Georgian noble, in 1922, Gorky enrolled in the New School of Design in Boston, eventually becoming a part-time instructor. During the early 1920s he was influenced by Impressionism, although later in the decade he produced works that were more postimpressionist, during this time he was living in New York and was influenced by Paul Cézanne. In 1925 he was asked by Edmund Greacen of the Grand Central Art Galleries to teach at the Grand Central School of Art, in 1927, Gorky met Ethel Kremer Schwabacher and developed a lifelong friendship. Gorky said, The stuff of thought is the seed of the artist, dreams form the bristles of the artists brush. As the eye functions as the sentry, I communicate my innermost perceptions through the art. In 1931, Gorky sent a group of works ranging in price from $100 to $450 to the Downtown Gallery in New York, the exact nature of their relationship is unknown. Mrs. John D. Rockefeller purchased from the gallery a Cézannesque still life by Gorky titled Fruit, Gorky may have been introduced to the gallery owner by Stuart Davis who regularly exhibited there. In 1933, Arshile Gorky became one of the first artists employed by the Works Progress Administration Federal Art Project and this later came to include such artists as Alice Neel, Lee Krasner, Jackson Pollock, Diego Rivera and Mark Rothko. In 1935, Gorky signed a contract with the Guild Art Gallery. Co-owned by Anna Walinska and Margaret Lefranc, but funded and directed by Lefranc, notable paintings from this time include Landscape in the Manner of Cézanne and Landscape, Staten Island. At the close of the 1920s and into the 1930s he experimented with cubism, the painting illustrated above, The Artist and His Mother, is a memorable, moving and innovative portrait. His The Artist and His Mother paintings are based on a photograph taken in Van in which he is depicted standing beside his mother
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Mark Tobey
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Mark George Tobey was an American painter. His work was recognized throughout the United States and Europe. Along with Guy Anderson, Kenneth Callahan, Morris Graves, and William Cumming, senior in age and experience, he had a strong influence on the others, friend and mentor, Tobey shared their interest in philosophy and Eastern religions. Similar to others of the Northwest School, Tobey was mostly self-taught after early studies at the Art Institute of Chicago, in 1921, Tobey founded the art department at The Cornish School in Seattle, Washington. Tobey was an incessant traveler, visiting Mexico, Europe, Palestine, Israel, Turkey, Lebanon, China, after converting to the Baháí Faith, it became an important part of his life. Whether Tobeys all-over paintings, marked by oriental brushwork and calligraphic strokes, were an influencer on Jackson Pollocks drip paintings has been left unanswered, Tobey was the youngest of four children in the Congregationalist family. His parents were George Tobey, a carpenter and house builder, the father carved animals from stone and sometimes drew animals for young Mark to cut out with scissors. In 1893, the family settled in Chicago and he studied at the Art Institute of Chicago from 1906 to 1908, but, like others of the Northwest School, was mostly self-taught. In 1911, he moved to New York City where he worked as an illustrator for McCalls. His first one-man show was held at Knoedler & Company in lower Manhattan, the following year, Tobey came in contact with New York portrait artist and Baháí Juliet Thompson—an associate of Khalil Gibran—and posed for her. During the session, Tobey read some Baháí literature and accepted an invitation to Green Acre where he converted to the Baháí faith and his conversion led him to explore the representation of the spiritual in art. In the following years, Tobey delved into works of Arabian literature, Tobeys arrival in Seattle in 1921 was in part an effort for a new start following a marriage and quick divorce. When his ex-wife found Tobeys address, she sent him a box of his clothes topped with a copy of Rudyard Kiplings The Light That Failed, the beginning of his lifelong travels occurred in 1925 when he left for Europe, settling in Paris where Tobey met Gertrude Stein. He spent a winter at Châteaudun, and also traveled to Barcelona, in Constantinople, Beirut and Haifa, he studied Arab and Persian writing. Upon returning to Seattle in 1927, Tobey shared a studio in a house near the Cornish School with the teenage artist, Robert Bruce Inverarity, inspired by Inveraritys high-school project, Tobey developed interest in three-dimensional form and carved some 100 pieces of soap sculpture. The next year, Tobey co-founded the Free and Creative Art School in Seattle with Edgar Ames, in 1929, he participated in a show that marked a change in his life, a solo exhibition at Romany Maries Cafe Gallery in New York. Alfred H. Barr, Jr. then a curator at the Museum of Modern Art, saw the show and selected several pictures from it for inclusion in MoMAs 1930 exhibition, Painting and Sculpture by Living Americans. In 1931, Tobey became a resident artist of the Elmhurst Progressive School while teaching at Dartington Hall in Devon and he became a close friend of Bernard Leach, who was also on the faculty
28.
Expressionism
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Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, Expressionist artists sought to express the meaning of emotional experience rather than physical reality. Expressionism was developed as an avant-garde style before the First World War and it remained popular during the Weimar Republic, particularly in Berlin. The style extended to a range of the arts, including expressionist architecture, painting, literature, theatre, dance, film. The term is sometimes suggestive of angst, in a general sense, painters such as Matthias Grünewald and El Greco are sometimes termed expressionist, though in practice the term is applied mainly to 20th-century works. The Expressionist emphasis on individual perspective has been characterized as a reaction to positivism, though an alternate view is that the term was coined by the Czech art historian Antonin Matějček in 1910, as the opposite of impressionism, An Expressionist wishes, above all, to express himself. Immediate perception and builds on more complex psychic structures, in 1905, a group of four German artists, led by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, formed Die Brücke in the city of Dresden. This was arguably the founding organization for the German Expressionist movement, a few years later, in 1911, a like-minded group of young artists formed Der Blaue Reiter in Munich. The name came from Wassily Kandinskys Der Blaue Reiter painting of 1903, among their members were Kandinsky, Franz Marc, Paul Klee, and Auguste Macke. However, the term Expressionism did not firmly establish itself until 1913, though mainly a German artistic movement initially and most predominant in painting, poetry and the theatre between 1910–30, most precursors of the movement were not German. Expressionism is notoriously difficult to define, in part because it overlapped with other major isms of the modernist period, with Futurism, Vorticism, Cubism, Surrealism, more explicitly, that the expressionists rejected the ideology of realism. The term refers to a style in which the artist seeks to depict not objective reality but rather the subjective emotions. It is arguable that all artists are expressive but there are examples of art production in Europe from the 15th century onward which emphasize extreme emotion. Expressionism has been likened to Baroque by critics such as art historian Michel Ragon, according to Alberto Arbasino, a difference between the two is that Expressionism doesnt shun the violently unpleasant effect, while Baroque does. Expressionism throws some terrific fuck yous, Baroque doesnt, brazil, Anita Malfatti, Cândido Portinari, Di Cavalcanti, Iberê Camargo and Lasar Segall. Estonia, Konrad Mägi, Eduard Wiiralt Finland, Tyko Sallinen, Alvar Cawén, Juho Mäkelä, there were a number of groups of expressionist painters, including Der Blaue Reiter and Die Brücke. Der Blaue Reiter was based in Munich and Die Brücke was based originally in Dresden, Die Brücke was active for a longer period than Der Blaue Reiter, which was only together for a year. The Expressionists had many influences, among them Edvard Munch, Vincent van Gogh and they were also aware of the work being done by the Fauves in Paris, who influenced Expressionisms tendency toward arbitrary colours and jarring compositions
29.
Futurism
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Futurism was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy in the early 20th century. It emphasized speed, technology, youth, and violence, and objects such as the car, the aeroplane, although it was largely an Italian phenomenon, there were parallel movements in Russia, England, Belgium and elsewhere. It glorified modernity and aimed to liberate Italy from the weight of its past, Cubism contributed to the formation of Italian Futurisms artistic style. Important Futurist works included Marinettis Manifesto of Futurism, Boccionis sculpture Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, to some extent Futurism influenced the art movements Art Deco, Constructivism, Surrealism, Dada, and to a greater degree Precisionism, Rayonism, and Vorticism. Futurism is a movement founded in Milan in 1909 by the Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. He was soon joined by the painters Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Giacomo Balla, Gino Severini, Marinetti expressed a passionate loathing of everything old, especially political and artistic tradition. We want no part of it, the past, he wrote, publishing manifestos was a feature of Futurism, and the Futurists wrote them on many topics, including painting, architecture, religion, clothing and cooking. The founding manifesto did not contain an artistic programme, which the Futurists attempted to create in their subsequent Technical Manifesto of Futurist Painting. This committed them to a universal dynamism, which was to be represented in painting. The motor bus rushes into the houses which it passes, the Futurist painters were slow to develop a distinctive style and subject matter. In 1910 and 1911 they used the techniques of Divisionism, breaking light and color down into a field of stippled dots and stripes, which had been originally created by Giovanni Segantini and others. Later, Severini, who lived in Paris, attributed their backwardness in style and method at this time to their distance from Paris, the centre of avant-garde art. Severini was the first to come into contact with Cubism and following a visit to Paris in 1911 the Futurist painters adopted the methods of the Cubists, Cubism offered them a means of analysing energy in paintings and expressing dynamism. They often painted modern urban scenes, carràs Funeral of the Anarchist Galli is a large canvas representing events that the artist had himself been involved in, in 1904. The action of an attack and riot is rendered energetically with diagonals. His Leaving the Theatre uses a Divisionist technique to render isolated, Boccionis The City Rises represents scenes of construction and manual labour with a huge, rearing red horse in the centre foreground, which workmen struggle to control. The Futurists aimed through their art thus to enable the viewer to apprehend the inner being of what they depicted, Boccioni developed these ideas at length in his book, Pittura scultura Futuriste, Dinamismo plastico. Ballas Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash exemplifies the Futurists insistence that the world is in constant movement
30.
Bauhaus
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The Bauhaus was founded by Walter Gropius in Weimar. Nonetheless, it was founded with the idea of creating a work of art in which all arts, including architecture. The Bauhaus style later became one of the most influential currents in modern design, Modernist architecture and art, design, the Bauhaus had a profound influence upon subsequent developments in art, architecture, graphic design, interior design, industrial design, and typography. Although the school was closed, the continued to spread its idealistic precepts as they left Germany. The changes of venue and leadership resulted in a constant shifting of focus, technique, instructors, many Germans of left-wing views were influenced by the cultural experimentation that followed the Russian Revolution, such as constructivism. Such influences can be overstated, Gropius did not share these radical views, thus, the Bauhaus style, also known as the International Style, was marked by the absence of ornamentation and by harmony between the function of an object or a building and its design. In its first seven years, the Werkbund came to be regarded as the body on questions of design in Germany. The entire movement of German architectural modernism was known as Neues Bauen, beginning in June 1907, Peter Behrens pioneering industrial design work for the German electrical company AEG successfully integrated art and mass production on a large scale. Behrens was a member of the Werkbund, and both Walter Gropius and Adolf Meyer worked for him in this period. The Bauhaus was founded at a time when the German zeitgeist had turned from emotional Expressionism to the matter-of-fact New Objectivity, beyond the Bauhaus, many other significant German-speaking architects in the 1920s responded to the same aesthetic issues and material possibilities as the school. They also responded to the promise of a minimal dwelling written into the new Weimar Constitution, ernst May, Bruno Taut, and Martin Wagner, among others, built large housing blocks in Frankfurt and Berlin. The acceptance of modernist design into everyday life was the subject of publicity campaigns, well-attended public exhibitions like the Weissenhof Estate, films, the Vkhutemas, the Russian state art and technical school founded in 1920 in Moscow, has been compared to Bauhaus. Founded a year after the Bauhaus school, Vkhutemas has close parallels to the German Bauhaus in its intent, organization, the two schools were the first to train artist-designers in a modern manner. Vkhutemas was a school than the Bauhaus, but it was less publicised outside the Soviet Union. With the internationalism of modern architecture and design, there were exchanges between the Vkhutemas and the Bauhaus. In addition, El Lissitzkys book Russia, an Architecture for World Revolution published in German in 1930 featured several illustrations of Vkhutemas/Vkhutein projects there. The school was founded by Walter Gropius in Weimar in 1919 as a merger of the Grand Ducal School of Arts and Crafts and the Weimar Academy of Fine Art. Its roots lay in the arts and crafts founded by the Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach in 1906
31.
Cubism
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Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture. Cubism has been considered the most influential art movement of the 20th century, the term is broadly used in association with a wide variety of art produced in Paris during the 1910s and extending through the 1920s. The movement was pioneered by Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, joined by Andre Lhote, Jean Metzinger, Albert Gleizes, Robert Delaunay, Henri Le Fauconnier, Fernand Léger and Juan Gris. A primary influence that led to Cubism was the representation of form in the late works of Paul Cézanne. The impact of Cubism was far-reaching and wide-ranging, Cubism spread rapidly across the globe and in doing so evolved to a greater or lesser extent. In essence, Cubism was the origin of a process that produced diversity. In France, offshoots of Cubism developed, including Orphism, Abstract art, in other countries Futurism, Suprematism, Dada, Constructivism, De Stijl and Art Deco developed in response to Cubism. Other common threads between these movements include the faceting or simplification of geometric forms, and the association of mechanization. Cubism began between 1907 and 1911, Pablo Picassos 1907 painting Les Demoiselles dAvignon has often been considered a proto-Cubist work. Georges Braques 1908 Houses at L’Estaque prompted the critic Louis Vauxcelles to refer to bizarreries cubiques, Gertrude Stein referred to landscapes made by Picasso in 1909, such as Reservoir at Horta de Ebro, as the first Cubist paintings. A second phase, Synthetic Cubism, remained vital until around 1919, english art historian Douglas Cooper proposed another scheme, describing three phases of Cubism in his book, The Cubist Epoch. Douglas Coopers restrictive use of terms to distinguish the work of Braque, Picasso, Gris. Alternative interpretations of Cubism have therefore developed, wider views of Cubism include artists who were later associated with the Salle 41 artists, e. g. John Berger identifies the essence of Cubism with the mechanical diagram. The metaphorical model of Cubism is the diagram, The diagram being a symbolic representation of invisible processes, forces, structures. A diagram need not eschew certain aspects of appearance but these too will be treated as not as imitations or recreations. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Europeans were discovering African, Polynesian, Micronesian, artists such as Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse, and Pablo Picasso were intrigued and inspired by the stark power and simplicity of styles of those foreign cultures. Around 1906, Picasso met Matisse through Gertrude Stein, at a time when artists had recently acquired an interest in primitivism, Iberian sculpture, African art and African tribal masks. Picassos paintings of 1907 have been characterized as Protocubism, as seen in Les Demoiselles dAvignon
32.
Jay Meuser
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Jay Meuser was an American abstract expressionist painter. Meusers style was versatile and his works prolific, in his lifetime he worked as an illustrator, portrait painter and he married Dorothy Ellen Morris in 1938. Their only child, Jacqueline Ellen Meuser, married Suren Saroyan, MD, ive led a most full life, he said to his wife just before his death. Besides teaching at the Art School of San Francisco, he had been a pitcher, a vaudeville performer, a sailor working around the world twice. He had worn 14 different law enforcement badges, at 31, he was the youngest chief of police in Marin County, California. As a member of the Sheet Metal Workers International, he worked at the Terminal Island Naval Shipyard, there he was awarded the Navys Certificate of Award for a suggestion that was adopted concerning the building of naval ships. He also wrote a column in the unions newspaper, Meuser painted many of the 20th century prominent personalities, including Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Harry S. Truman, Richard M. Nixon and John F. Kennedy. His portrait of Roosevelt hung in the White House and he received a letter of thanks from the late president. While at the shipyard, he was commissioned to paint the portraits of Rear Admiral and Mrs. Paul Hendren, USN and he drew two sketches of General Douglas MacArthur in 1950, each accompanying editorials in the Long Beach Press Telegram. The latter sketch prompted an oil painting commissioned by a prominent businessman in the San Francisco Bay Area, shortly after his death, the original sketch of General MacArthur was donated to Fort MacArthur, San Pedro CA by his wife in 1964. In addition to his oil, water and casein paint colors, by 1949, Meuser had devoted his life to painting full-time. Around 1950 he became interested in abstraction, previously, his subjects were depicted in realistic terms. He wrote about his painting Mare Nostrum, It is far better to capture the spirit of the sea than to paint all of its tiny ripples. The vast majority of his artwork was painted between 1949 and 1957, the variety and quality of his work, as well as the quantity, during this period was significant. As President of the San Pedro Art Association in 1953, he oversaw three galleries and designed, renovated and constructed plans for the groups first permanent gallery. In 1955 he was elected a member of the nationwide California Water Color Society and he participated and won awards in scores of art exhibitions across the country. His award winning painting Occultation went on tour in the section of the California Water Color Societys Annual Exhibition of 1962. His abstract work Northward was requested by the Long Beach Museum of Art in 1957, California Legislature, State Assembly Certificate of Recognition, July 7,2011
33.
Action painting
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Action painting, sometimes called gestural abstraction, is a style of painting in which paint is spontaneously dribbled, splashed or smeared onto the canvas, rather than being carefully applied. The resulting work often emphasizes the act of painting itself as an essential aspect of the finished work or concern of its artist. The style was widespread from the 1940s until the early 1960s, a comparison is often drawn between the American action painting and the French tachisme. According to Rosenberg the canvas was an arena in which to act, to Greenberg, it was the physicality of the paintings clotted and oil-caked surfaces that was the key to understanding them. – Clement Greenberg, Post Painterly Abstraction and it is essential for the understanding of action painting to place it in historical context. Action painting took this a further, using both Jung and Freud’s ideas of the subconscious as its underlying foundations. The paintings of the Action painters were not meant to portray objects per se or even specific emotions, instead they were meant to touch the observer deep in the subconscious mind, evoking a sense of the primeval and tapping the collective sense of an archetypal visual language. This was done by the artist painting unconsciously, and spontaneously, creating an arena of raw emotion and action. Action painting was influenced by the surrealist emphasis on automatism which influenced by psychoanalysis claimed a more direct access to the subconscious mind. Important exponents of this concept of art making were the painters Joan Miró, however the action painters took everything the surrealists had done a step further. Action Writing, Jack Kerouacs Wild Form, Carbondale, IL, auction record including a color image of a 1960 action painting by Elaine Hamilton. 9th Street Art Exhibition-abstract expressionist artists reminisce—YouTube video
34.
Willem de Kooning
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Willem de Kooning was a Dutch-American abstract expressionist artist who was born in Rotterdam, Netherlands, and moved to New York in 1927. Willem de Kooning was born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, on April 24,1904 and his parents, Leendert de Kooning and Cornelia Nobel, were divorced in 1907, and de Kooning lived first with his father and then with his mother. He left school in 1916 and became an apprentice in a firm of commercial artists, until 1924 he attended evening classes at the Academie van Beeldende Kunsten en Technische Wetenschappen, now the Willem de Kooning Academie. In 1926 de Kooning travelled to the United States as a stowaway on the Shelley, a British freighter bound for Argentina and he stayed at the Dutch Seamens Home in Hoboken, New Jersey, and found work as a house-painter. In 1927 he moved to Manhattan, where he had a studio on West Forty-fourth Street and he supported himself with jobs in carpentry, house-painting and commercial art. De Kooning began painting in his time and in 1928 he joined the art colony at Woodstock. He also began to some of the modernist artists active in Manhattan. None of them were executed, but a sketch for one was included in New Horizons in American Art at the Museum of Modern Art, De Kooning met his wife, Elaine Fried, at the American Artists School in New York. She was 14 years his junior, thus was to begin a lifelong partnership affected by alcoholism, lack of money, love affairs, quarrels and separations. They were married on December 9,1943, at this time, de Koonings work borrowed strongly from Gorkys surrealist imagery and was influenced by Picasso. This only changed when de Kooning met the younger painter Franz Kline, Kline died young and he was one of de Koonings closest artist friends. Klines influence is evident in de Koonings calligraphic black images of this period, in the late 1950s, de Koonings work shifted away from the figurative work of the women and began to display an interest in more abstract, less representational imagery. He became a US citizen in 1961 and moved to East Hampton in 1963 and this became his primary residence and he remained there until the end of his life. On Long Island de Kooning, in addition to his painting, inspired in part by the work of Henry Moore, de Kooning created highly abstracted figurative sculpture very reminicent of his figurative paintings. It was revealed toward the end of his life that de Kooning began losing his memory in the late 1980s and had been suffering from Alzheimers disease for some time. This revelation has initiated considerable debate among scholars and critics about how responsible de Kooning was for the creation of his late work, succumbing to the progress of his disease, William de Kooning painted his final works in 1991. He passed away in 1997 at the age of 92, upon death William de Kooning was cremated. His final place of rest is publicly unknown, De Koonings paintings of the 1930s and early 1940s are abstract still-lifes characterised by geometric or biomorphic shapes and strong colours
35.
Figurative art
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However, abstract is sometimes used as a synonym for non-representational art and non-objective art, i. e. art which has no derivation from figures or objects. Figurative art is not synonymous with figure painting, although human, the difference is that in figurative art these elements are deployed to create an impression or illusion of form and space, and, usually, to create emphasis in the narrative portrayed. Figurative art is based upon a tacit understanding of abstracted shapes. Eventually idealization gave way to observation, and an art which balanced ideal geometry with greater realism was seen in Classical sculpture by 480 B. C. The Greeks referred to the reliance on visual observation as mimesis, until the time of the Impressionists, figurative art was characterized by attempts to reconcile these opposing principles. From the early Renaissance, Mannerism and the Baroque through 18th-, 19th- and he was a major inspiration for such classically oriented artists as Jacques-Louis David, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres and Paul Cézanne. Abstract art Illustration Narrative art Neofigurative Art Realism Stuckism
36.
Color Field
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Color Field painting is a style of abstract painting that emerged in New York City during the 1940s and 1950s. It was inspired by European modernism and closely related to Abstract Expressionism, Color Field is characterized primarily by large fields of flat, solid color spread across or stained into the canvas creating areas of unbroken surface and a flat picture plane. The movement places less emphasis on gesture, brushstrokes and action in favour of a consistency of form. In color field painting color is freed from objective context and becomes the subject in itself, the focus of attention in the world of contemporary art began to shift from Paris to New York after World War II and the development of American Abstract Expressionism. During the late 1940s and early 1950s Clement Greenberg was the first art critic to suggest and identify a dichotomy between differing tendencies within the Abstract Expressionist canon. Mark Rothko was one of the painters that Greenberg referred to as a Color Field painter exemplified by Magenta, Black, Green on Orange, for Rothko, color was merely an instrument. What is common among these stylistic innovations is a concern for tragedy, ecstasy, by 1958, whatever spiritual expression Rothko meant to portray on canvas, it was growing increasingly darker. His bright reds, yellows and oranges of the early 1950s subtly transformed into dark blues, greens, grays and his final series of paintings from the mid-1960s were gray, and black with white borders, seemingly abstract landscapes of an endless bleak, tundra-like, unknown country. In 1947, during a subsequent semester teaching at the California School of Fine Art, Rothko, Still was considered one of the foremost Color Field painters – his non-figurative paintings are largely concerned with the juxtaposition of different colors and surfaces. His jagged flashes of color give the impression that one layer of color has been torn off the painting, revealing the colors underneath, reminiscent of stalactites, stills arrangements are irregular, jagged, and pitted with heavy texture and sharp surface contrast as seen above in 1957D1. Another artist whose best known works relate to abstract expressionism and to color field painting is Robert Motherwell. Robert Motherwells Elegy to the Spanish Republic No.110 is the work of a pioneer of both Abstract Expressionism and Color Field painting. Robert Motherwells Elegy to The Spanish Republic series embodies both tendencies, while Motherwells Open Series of the late 1960s, 1970s and 1980s places him firmly within the Color Field camp. Barnett Newman is considered one of the figures in abstract expressionism. Newmans mature work is characterised by areas of pure and flat separated by thin vertical lines, or zips as Newman called them. Newman himself thought that he reached his fully mature style with the Onement series seen here, the zips define the spatial structure of the painting while simultaneously dividing and uniting the composition. Newmans late works, such as the Whos Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue series, use vibrant, pure colors, another critical view advanced by Clement Greenberg connects Pollocks allover canvasses to the large-scale Water Lilies of Claude Monet done during the 1920s. In several paintings that Pollock painted after his classic drip painting period of 1947-1950, he used the technique of staining fluid oil paint, during 1951 he produced a series of semi-figurative black stain paintings, and in 1952 he produced stain paintings using color
37.
Paul Klee
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Paul Klee was a Swiss-German artist. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included Expressionism, Cubism and he and his colleague, Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky, both taught at the Bauhaus school of art, design and architecture. His works reflect his dry humor and his sometimes childlike perspective, his personal moods and beliefs, and his musicality. First of all, the art of living, then as my ideal profession, poetry and philosophy, Paul Klee was born in Münchenbuchsee, Switzerland, as the second child of German music teacher Hans Wilhelm Klee and Swiss singer Ida Marie Klee, née Frick. His sister Mathilde was born on 28 January 1876 in Walzenhausen and their father came from Tann and studied at the Stuttgart Conservatory singing, piano, organ and violin, meeting there his future wife Ida Frick. Hans Wilhelm Klee was active as a teacher at the Bern State Seminary in Hofwil near Bern until 1931. Klee was able to develop his skills as his parents encouraged and inspired him until his death. In 1880, his family moved to Bern, where they moved 17 years later after numerous changes of residence into a house at the Kirchenfeld district. From 1886 to 1890, Klee visited primary school and received, at the age of 7 and he was so talented on violin that, aged 11, he received an invitation to play as an extraordinary member of the Bern Music Association. He stated, I didnt find the idea of going in for music creatively particularly attractive in view of the decline in the history of musical achievement. As a musician, he played and felt emotionally bound to traditional works of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, at sixteen, Klee’s landscape drawings already show considerable skill. Around 1897, Klee started his diary, which he kept until 1918, during his school years, he avidly drew in his school books, in particular drawing caricatures, and already demonstrating skill with line and volume. He barely passed his exams at the Gymnasium of Bern. With his characteristic dry wit, he wrote, After all, it’s rather difficult to achieve the exact minimum, and it involves risks. On his own time, in addition to his interests in music and art, Klee was a great reader of literature. With his parents reluctant permission, in 1898 Klee began studying art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich with Heinrich Knirr and he excelled at drawing but seemed to lack any natural color sense. He later recalled, During the third winter I even realized that I probably would never learn to paint, during these times of youthful adventure, Klee spent much time in pubs and had affairs with lower class women and artists models. He had a son in 1900 who died several weeks after birth
38.
Social realism
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While the movements characteristics vary from nation to nation, it almost always utilizes a form of descriptive or critical realism. Social realism traces back to 19th-century European Realism, including the art of Honoré Daumier, Gustave Courbet, in Russia Peredvizhniki or Social Realism was critical of the social environment that caused the conditions pictured, and denounced the evil Tsarist period. Ilya Repin, said that his art work was aimed “To criticize all the monstrosities of our vile society” of the Tsarist period, similar concerns were addressed in 20th-century Britain by the Artists International Association, Mass Observation and the Kitchen sink school. Social realist photography draws from the traditions of the late 19th century, such as the work of Jacob A. Riis. In about 1900, a group of Realist artists led by Robert Henri challenged the American Impressionism and academics, the term was suggested by a drawing by George Bellows, captioned Disappointments of the Ash Can, which appeared in the Philadelphia Record in April 1915. In paintings, illustrations, etchings, and lithographs, Ashcan artists concentrated on portraying New Yorks vitality, with a eye on current events. Barbara Weinberg of The Metropolitan Museum of Art has described the artists as documenting an unsettling, transitional time that was marked by confidence and doubt, excitement and trepidation. Ignoring or registering only gently harsh new realities such as the problems of immigration and urban poverty, notable Ashcan works include George Luks’ Breaker Boy and John Sloan’s Sixth Avenue Elevated at Third Street. The Ashcan school influenced the art of the Depression era, including Thomas Hart Benton’s mural City Activity with Subway, Social Realism with roots in European Realism became an important art movement during the Great Depression in the United States in the 1930s. As an American artistic movement it is related to American scene painting. In Mexico the painter Frida Kahlo is associated with the realism movement. The Mexican muralist movement is characterized by its political undertones, the majority of which are of a Marxist nature, diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, José Clemente Orozco, and Rufino Tamayo are the best known proponents of the movement. Santiago Martínez Delgado, Jorge González Camarena, Roberto Montenegro, Federico Cantú Garza, the term dates on a broader scale to the Realist movement in French art during the mid-19th century. The social realist style fell out of fashion in the 1960s but is influential in thinking. Many artists who subscribed to social realism were painters with socialist political views, in certain contexts, socialist realism has been described as a specific branch of social realism. Social realism has been summarized as follows, Social Realism developed as a reaction against idealism, consequences of the Industrial Revolution became apparent, urban centers grew, slums proliferated on a new scale contrasting with the display of wealth of the upper classes. With a new sense of consciousness, the Social Realists pledged to “fight the beautiful art”. They focused on the realities of contemporary life and sympathized with working-class people
39.
Great Depression
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The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression that took place during the 1930s. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, in most countries it started in 1929 and it was the longest, deepest, and most widespread depression of the 20th century. In the 21st century, the Great Depression is commonly used as an example of how far the economy can decline. The depression originated in the United States, after a fall in stock prices that began around September 4,1929. Between 1929 and 1932, worldwide GDP fell by an estimated 15%, by comparison, worldwide GDP fell by less than 1% from 2008 to 2009 during the Great Recession. Some economies started to recover by the mid-1930s, however, in many countries, the negative effects of the Great Depression lasted until the beginning of World War II. The Great Depression had devastating effects in both rich and poor. Personal income, tax revenue, profits and prices dropped, while international trade plunged by more than 50%, unemployment in the U. S. rose to 25% and in some countries rose as high as 33%. Cities all around the world were hit hard, especially dependent on heavy industry. Construction was virtually halted in many countries, farming communities and rural areas suffered as crop prices fell by about 60%. Facing plummeting demand with few sources of jobs, areas dependent on primary sector industries such as mining and logging suffered the most. Even after the Wall Street Crash of 1929 optimism persisted for some time, john D. Rockefeller said These are days when many are discouraged. In the 93 years of my life, depressions have come, prosperity has always returned and will again. The stock market turned upward in early 1930, returning to early 1929 levels by April and this was still almost 30% below the peak of September 1929. Together, government and business spent more in the first half of 1930 than in the period of the previous year. On the other hand, consumers, many of whom had suffered losses in the stock market the previous year. In addition, beginning in the mid-1930s, a severe drought ravaged the agricultural heartland of the U. S, by mid-1930, interest rates had dropped to low levels, but expected deflation and the continuing reluctance of people to borrow meant that consumer spending and investment were depressed. By May 1930, automobile sales had declined to below the levels of 1928, prices in general began to decline, although wages held steady in 1930
40.
Mexican muralism
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It was headed by “the big three” painters, Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros. The modern tradition has its roots in the 19th century, with use of political and social themes. The first Mexican mural painter to use philosophical themes in his work was Juan Cordero in the mid 19th century, the latter 19th century was dominated politically by the Porfirio Díaz regime. This government was the first to push for the development of the country, supporting the Academy of San Carlos. However, this left out indigenous culture and people, with the aim of making Mexico like Europe. Gerardo Murillo, also known as Dr. Atl, is considered to be the first modern Mexican muralists with the idea that Mexican art should reflect Mexican life, Academy training and the government had only promoted imitations of European art. Atl and other early muralists pressured the Diaz government to allow them to paint on building walls to escape this formalism, Atl also organized an independent exhibition of native Mexican artists promoting many indigenous and national themes along with color schemes that would later appear in mural painting. The first modern Mexican mural, painted by Atl, was a series of female nudes using “Atlcolor” a substance Atl invented himself, very shortly before the beginning of the Mexican Revolution. Another influence on the artists of the late Porfirian period was the graphic work of José Guadalupe Posada. The Mexican Revolution itself was the culmination of political and social opposition to Porfirio Díaz policies, one important oppositional group was a small intellectual community that included Antonio Curo, Alfonso Reyes and José Vasconcelos. These ideas gained power as a result of the Mexican Revolution, however, there was nearly a decade of fighting among the various factions vying for power. Governments changed frequently with a number of assassinations, including that of Francisco I and it ended in the early 1920s with one-party rule in the hands of the Álvaro Obregón faction, which became the Partido Revolucionario Institucional. During the Revolution, Atl supported the Carranza faction and promoted the work of Rivera, Orozco and Siqueiros, through the war and until 1921, Atl continued to paint murals among other activities including teaching the Mexico’s next generation of artists and muralists. In 1921, after the end of the phase of the Revolution. At the time, most of the Mexican population was illiterate and it was Vasconcelos’s idea have a government-backed mural program for this purpose. Similar to mural use in the pre Hispanic period and during the period, the purpose of these murals were not simply aesthetic. These ideals or principles were to glorify the Mexican Revolution and the identity of Mexico as a mestiza nation, the government began to hire the country’s best artists to paint murals, calling some of them home from Europe including Diego Rivera. These initial muralists included Dr. Atl, Ramón Alva de la Canal, Federico Cantú and others and his time as secretary was short but it set how muralism would develop
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Mexico
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Mexico, officially the United Mexican States, is a federal republic in the southern half of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States, to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean, to the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea, and to the east by the Gulf of Mexico. Covering almost two million square kilometers, Mexico is the sixth largest country in the Americas by total area, Mexico is a federation comprising 31 states and a federal district that is also its capital and most populous city. Other metropolises include Guadalajara, Monterrey, Puebla, Toluca, Tijuana, pre-Columbian Mexico was home to many advanced Mesoamerican civilizations, such as the Olmec, Toltec, Teotihuacan, Zapotec, Maya and Aztec before first contact with Europeans. In 1521, the Spanish Empire conquered and colonized the territory from its base in Mexico-Tenochtitlan, Three centuries later, this territory became Mexico following recognition in 1821 after the colonys Mexican War of Independence. The tumultuous post-independence period was characterized by instability and many political changes. The Mexican–American War led to the cession of the extensive northern borderlands, one-third of its territory. The Pastry War, the Franco-Mexican War, a civil war, the dictatorship was overthrown in the Mexican Revolution of 1910, which culminated with the promulgation of the 1917 Constitution and the emergence of the countrys current political system. Mexico has the fifteenth largest nominal GDP and the eleventh largest by purchasing power parity, the Mexican economy is strongly linked to those of its North American Free Trade Agreement partners, especially the United States. Mexico was the first Latin American member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and it is classified as an upper-middle income country by the World Bank and a newly industrialized country by several analysts. By 2050, Mexico could become the fifth or seventh largest economy. The country is considered both a power and middle power, and is often identified as an emerging global power. Due to its culture and history, Mexico ranks first in the Americas. Mexico is a country, ranking fourth in the world by biodiversity. In 2015 it was the 9th most visited country in the world, Mexico is a member of the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the G8+5, the G20, the Uniting for Consensus and the Pacific Alliance. Mēxihco is the Nahuatl term for the heartland of the Aztec Empire, namely, the Valley of Mexico, and its people, the Mexica and this became the future State of Mexico as a division of New Spain prior to independence. It is generally considered to be a toponym for the valley became the primary ethnonym for the Aztec Triple Alliance as a result. After New Spain won independence from Spain, representatives decided to name the new country after its capital and this was founded in 1524 on top of the ancient Mexica capital of Mexico-Tenochtitlan
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Diego Rivera
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Diego María de la Concepción Juan Nepomuceno Estanislao de la Rivera y Barrientos Acosta y Rodríguez, known as Diego Rivera was a prominent Mexican painter. His large frescoes helped establish the Mexican mural movement in Mexican art, between 1922 and 1953, Rivera painted murals among others in Mexico City, Chapingo, Cuernavaca, San Francisco, Detroit, and New York City. In 1931, a exhibition of his works was held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Rivera had a marriage with fellow Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. Rivera was born in Guanajuato, Mexico, to a well-to-do family, Diego had a twin brother named Carlos, who died two years after they were born. Rivera was said to have Converso ancestry, Rivera wrote in 1935, My Jewishness is the dominant element in my life. Rivera began drawing at the age of three, a year after his brothers death. He had been drawing on the walls. His parents, rather than punishing him, installed chalkboards and canvas on the walls, as an adult, he married Angelina Beloff in 1911, and she gave birth to a son, Diego. Maria Vorobieff-Stebelska gave birth to a daughter named Marika in 1918 or 1919 when Rivera was married to Angelina and he married his second wife, Guadalupe Marín, in June 1922, with whom he had two daughters, Ruth and Guadalupe. He was still married when he met art student Frida Kahlo and they married on August 21,1929 when he was 42 and she was 22. Their mutual infidelities and his violent temper led to divorce in 1939, Rivera later married Emma Hurtado, his agent since 1946, on July 29,1955, one year after Kahlos death. His mural Dreams of a Sunday in the Alameda depicted Ignacio Ramírez holding a sign which read and this work caused a furor, but Rivera refused to remove the inscription. The painting was not shown for nine years – until Rivera agreed to remove the inscription. He stated, To affirm God does not exist, I do not have to hide behind Don Ignacio Ramírez, I am an atheist, from the age of ten, Rivera studied art at the Academy of San Carlos in Mexico City. He was sponsored to study in Europe by Teodoro A. Dehesa Méndez. In those years, Paris was witnessing the beginning of Cubism in paintings by such eminent painters as Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, from 1913 to 1917, Rivera enthusiastically embraced this new school of art. Around 1917, inspired by Paul Cézannes paintings, Rivera shifted toward Post-Impressionism with simple forms and his paintings began to attract attention, and he was able to display them at several exhibitions
