Министерство образования и науки Российской Федерации ФЕДЕРАЛЬНОЕ ГОСУДАРСТВЕННОЕ БЮДЖЕТНОЕ ОБРАЗОВАТЕЛЬНОЕ УЧРЕЖДЕНИЕ ВЫСШЕГО ОБРАЗОВАНИЯ «Санкт-Петербургский государственный университет промышленных технологий и дизайна» Кафедра иностранных языков ИЗ ИСТОРИИ ИСКУССТВА XX ВЕКА Методические указания для студентов по направлению подготовки: 50.03.04 - Теория и история искусств Составитель А. И. Кузьмичев Санкт-Петербург 2017 Утверждено на заседании кафедры 06.03.2017., протокол № 6 Рецензент О.В. Шведова Методические указания содержат оригинальные текстовые материалы на английском языке и художественные иллюстрации с комментариями, и сопровождаются лексическими упражнениями и заданиями смыслового и искусствоведческого характера. Цель методических указаний - расширение профессионального лексического запаса английского языка и совершенствование навыков перевода с английского языка на русский на примере подобранных текстов, знакомящих с важнейшими направлениями изобразительного искусства ХХ века. Работа с текстами и заданиями пособия требует от студентов творческого отношения. Методические указания включают задания для развития понимания иностранного текста и ознакомления с познавательным материалом в увлекательной форме. Методические указания разработаны для студентов очной и заочной формы обучения по направлению подготовки 50.03.04 «Теория и история искусств». Методические указания можно также использовать в качестве домашнего чтения для всех студентов по направлению подготовки 50.03.04 «Теория и история искусств». Учебное электронное издание сетевого распространения Издано в авторской редакции Системные требования: электронное устройство с программным обеспечением для воспроизведения файлов формата PDF Режим доступа: http://publish.sutd.ru/tp_get_file.php?id=2017 518, по паролю. – Загл. с экрана. Дата подписания к использованию 01.06.2017 г. Рег. № 518/17. ФГБОУВО «СПбГУПТД» Юридический и почтовый адрес: 191186, Санкт-Петербург, ул. Большая Морская, 18. http://sutd.ru/ INTRODUCTION The twentieth century was one of particular worldwide upheaval, ranging from wars to economic downturns to radical political movements. No one can disagree that the years between 1900 and 2000 were years of extreme change for artists all over the world. These changes were boldly reflected in the works of avante-garde artists throughout the century. Classical art was being challenged more and more as waves of nationalism and imperialism spread over the world in the early half of the twentieth century. Artists explored extreme and varying themes in the years before and after World War I, and those same themes were revisited in the aftermath of World War II, creating an interesting parallel. The twentieth century has seen huge changes in the modes and meanings of artistic production that mirror the enormous social changes that have occurred during the same time period. Continuing with the break with the academic values such as the hierarchy of genres, many movements and many countries reevaluated aesthetics, technique, color, media, meaning, and many other aspects of artistic enterprise. Technology has had not only an indirect impact on artists, but often is the subject matter, or even the media that artists have worked with. Arguably the most eventful period in the history of art, the 20th century witnessed the birth (foreshadowed at the end of the 19th century) and outgrowth of abstraction, along with innumerable movements that came and went amidst radical changes across the globe. Here we try to focus on the most prominent and well-known movements and artists of the XX century art history. 3 Unit 1 Expressionism “True dreams and visions should be as visible to the artist as the phenomena of the objective." Oskar Kokoschka Key Ideas. Expressionism emerged simultaneously in various cities across Germany as a response to a widespread anxiety about humanity's increasingly discordant relationship with the world and accompanying lost feelings of authenticity and spirituality. In part a reaction against Impressionism and academic art, Expressionism was inspired most heavily by the Symbolist currents in late nineteenth-century art. Vincent van Gogh, Edvard Munch, and James Ensor proved particularly influential to the Expressionists, encouraging the distortion of form and the deployment of strong colors to convey a variety of anxieties and yearnings. The classic phase of the Expressionist movement lasted from approximately 1905 to 1920 and spread throughout Europe. Its example would later inform Abstract Expressionism, and its influence would be felt throughout the remainder of the century in German art. It was also a critical precursor to the Neo-Expressionist artists of the 1980s. Exercise 1. Consult the above “Key Ideas” text and find equivalents to the following: классический период; появляться; влияние; вдохновлять; противоречивое отношение; потерянные чувства; использование резких цветов; течения и направления; подлинность и духовное начало; предшественник; искажение формы; академическое искусство; широко распространенное беспокойство. 4 Let us have a look at the picture above. Der Blaue Reiter (1903) Artist: Wassily Kandinsky Artwork description & Analysis: This breakthrough canvas is a deceptively simple image — a lone rider racing across a landscape — yet it represents a decisive moment in Kandinsky's developing pictorial language. Here, the sundappled hillside reveals a keen interest in contrasts of light and dark as well as movement and stillness, all major themes throughout his oeuvre. Constituting a link between Post-Impressionism and the burgeoning Expressionist movements, Kandinsky's canvas became the emblem of the expressive possibilities embraced by the Munich avant-garde. This is the eponymous work from which the collective derived its name in 1911. Oil on canvas - Private collection Exercise 2. Find equivalents to the following words and phrases from the above text: выразительные возможности; частная коллекция; контрасты света и тени; холст, масло; образный язык; обманчиво простой; главная тема. - The arrival of Expressionism announced new standards in the creation and judgment of art. Art was now meant to come forth from within the artist, rather than from a depiction of the external visual world, and the standard for assessing the quality of a work of art became the character of the artist's feelings rather than an analysis of the composition. - Expressionist artists often employed swirling, swaying, and exaggeratedly executed brushstrokes in the depiction of their subjects. These techniques were meant to convey the turgid emotional state of the artist reacting to the anxieties of the modern world. - Through their confrontation with the urban world of the early twentieth century, Expressionist artists developed a powerful mode of social criticism in their serpentine figural renderings and bold colors. Their representations of the modern city included alienated individuals - a psychological by-product of recent urbanization - as well as prostitutes, who were used to comment on capitalism's role in the emotional distancing of individuals within cities. Exercise 3. Read the sentences and decide whether they are true or false. 1. According to Expressionists the source of art was to be found in the artist himself rather than in the outside world. 5 2. Conventional reserved brushstrokes were very characteristic of Expressionist artists. 3. The Expressionists representations of the modern city praised all products and achievements of recent urbanization. The Term "Expressionism" The term "Expressionism" is thought to have been coined in 1910 by Czech art historian Antonin Matejcek, who intended it to denote the opposite of Impressionism. Whereas the Impressionists sought to express the majesty of nature and the human form through paint, the Expressionists, according to Matejcek, sought only to express inner life, often via the painting of harsh and realistic subject matter. It should be noted that in the early years of the century the term was widely used to apply to a variety of styles, including PostImpressionism. The Russian-French Jewish artist Marc Chagall drew upon currents from Cubism, Fauvism, and Symbolism to create his own brand of Expressionism in which he often depicted dreamy scenes of his Belarusian hometown, Vitebsk. While in Paris during the height of the modernist avant-garde, Chagall developed a visual language of eccentric motifs: "ghostly figures floating in the sky, the gigantic fiddler dancing on miniature dollhouses, the livestock and transparent wombs and, within them, tiny offspring sleeping upside down." In 1914, his work was exhibited in Berlin, and had an impact on the German Expressionists extending beyond World War I. He never associated his work with a specific movement, and considered his repertoire to be a vocabulary of images meaningful to himself, but they inspired many, including the Surrealists. Pablo Picasso remarked in the 1950s, "When Matisse dies, Chagall will be the only painter left who understands what colour really is." Exercise 4. Find answers to the following questions. 1. How can we describe the difference between Expressionism and Impressionism? 2. What influenced Marc Chagall in creating his own artistic style? 3. What kind of visual language did Chagall develop? 4. What movement did Chagall associated his work with? Edvard Munch in Norway The late nineteenth-century Norwegian Post-Impressionist painter Edvard Munch emerged as an important source of inspiration for the Expressionists. His vibrant and emotionally charged works opened up new possibilities for 6 introspective expression. In particular, Munch's frenetic canvases expressed the anxiety of the individual within the newly modernized European society; his famous painting The Scream (1893) evidenced the conflict between spirituality and modernity as a central theme of his work. By 1905 Munch's work was well known within Germany. The Scream (1893) Artist: Edvard Munch Artwork description & Analysis: Throughout his artistic career, Munch focused on scenes of death, agony, and anxiety in distorted and emotionally charged portraits, all themes and styles that would be adopted by the Expressionists. Here, in Munch's most famous painting, he depicts the battle between the individual and society. The setting of The Scream was suggested to the artist while walking along a bridge overlooking Oslo; as Munch recalls, "the sky turned as red as blood. I stopped and leaned against the fence...shivering with fear. Then I heard the enormous, infinite scream of nature." Although Munch did not observe the scene as rendered in his painting, The Scream evokes the jolting emotion of the encounter and exhibits a general anxiety toward the tangible world. The representation of the artist's emotional response to a scene would form the basis of the Expressionists' artistic interpretations. The theme of individual alienation, as represented in this image would persist throughout the twentieth century, captivating Expressionist artists as a central feature of modern life. Tempera and crayon on cardboard - National Museum, Oslo Developments. While certain artists rejected Expressionism, others would continue to expand upon its innovations as a style. For example, in the 1920s, Kandinsky transitioned to completely non-objective paintings and watercolors, which emphasized color balance and archetypal forms, rather than figurative representation. However, Expressionism would have its most direct impact in Germany and would continue to shape its art for decades afterwards. After World War I, Expressionism began to lose impetus and fragment. The original Expressionist movement's ideas about spirituality, primitivism, and the value of abstract art would also be hugely influential on an 7 array of unrelated movements, including Abstract Expressionism. The Expressionists' metaphysical outlook and instinctive discomfort with the modern world impelled them to antagonistic attitudes that would continue to be characteristic of various avant-garde movements throughout the century. Exercise 5. Find answers to the following questions. 1. What were most frequent themes of Munch’s art? 2. Does Munch’s famous The Scream depict an actual scene the artist has observed? 3. Were there any transitions in Kandinsky artistic development? 4. Was it Denmark where Expressionism was most influential? 5. Can we say that Expressionists lived in a comfortable agreement with the modern world? Unit 2 Beginnings of Cubism “Let them eat their fill of their square pears on their triangular tables!” Marc Chagall A watershed moment for the development of Cubism was the posthumous retrospective of Paul Cézanne's work at the Salon d'Automne in 1907. Cézanne's use of generic forms to simplify nature was incredibly influential to both Picasso and Braque. In the previous year, Picasso was also introduced to non-Western art: seeing Iberian art in Spain, and African-influenced art by Matisse, and at the Trocadero anthropological museum. What drew Picasso to these artistic traditions was their use of an abstract or simplified representation of the human body rather than the naturalistic forms of the European Renaissance tradition. The Cubism of Picasso and Braque The close collaboration between Picasso and Braque beginning in 1909 was crucial to the style's genesis. The two artists met regularly to discuss their progress, and at times it became hard to distinguish the work of one artist from another (as they liked it). Both were living in the bohemian Montmartre section of Paris in the years before and during World War I, making their collaboration easy. Though Picasso and Braque returned to Cubist forms periodically throughout their careers and there were some exhibitions of work up until 1925, the two-man movement did not last much beyond World War I. 8 Further Developments Cubism spread quickly throughout Europe in the 1910s, as much because of its systematic approach to rendering imagery as for the openness it offered in depicting objects in new ways. Critics were split over whether Cubists were concerned with representing imagery in a more objective manner - revealing more of its essential character - or whether they were principally interested in distortion and abstraction. The movement lies at the root of a host of early twentieth styles including Constructivism, Futurism and Suprematism. Many important artists went through a Cubist phase in their development. Exercise 1. Answer the questions. 1. Can we say Picasso and Braque were very similar in their Cubism artworks? 2. What is considered to be the starting point of the Cubism development? 3. Did European Renaissance tradition help to bring Picasso to abstract and simplified representation of the human body? 4. Do you think distortion and abstraction were ultimate goals of Cubists? Bottle and Fishes (1910-12), Georges Braque Artwork description & Analysis: Braque depicted both bottles and fishes throughout his entire painting career, and these objects stand as markers to differentiate his various styles. Bottle and Fishes is an excellent example of Braque's foray into Analytic Cubism, while he worked closely with Picasso. This painting has the restricted characteristic earth tone palette rendering barely perceptible objects as they disintegrate along a horizontal plane. While there are some diagonal lines, Braque's early paintings tended to work vertically or horizontally. Oil on canvas - Tate London Exercise 4. Read the above artwork description and find the words that describe the Braque early artistic style. 9 Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), Pablo Picasso This painting was shocking even to Picasso's closest artist friends both for its content and its execution. The subject matter of nude women was not in itself unusual, but the fact that Picasso painted the women as prostitutes in aggressively sexual postures was novel. Picasso's studies of Iberian and tribal art is most evident in the faces of three of the women, which are rendered as mask-like, suggesting that their sexuality is not just aggressive, but also primitive. Picasso also went further with his spatial experiments by abandoning the Renaissance illusion of three-dimensionality, instead presenting a radically flattened picture plane that is broken up into geometric shards, something Picasso borrowed in part from Paul Cezanne's brushwork. For instance, the leg of the woman on the left is painted as if seen from several points of view simultaneously; it is difficult to distinguish the leg from the negative space around it making it appear as if the two are both in the foreground. The painting was widely thought to be immoral when it was finally exhibited in public in 1916. Braque is one of the few artists who studied it intently in 1907, leading directly to his Cubist collaborations with Picasso. Because Les Demoiselles predicted some of the characteristics of Cubism, the work is considered proto or pre Cubism. Oil on canvas - Museum of Modern Art, New York. Exercise 2. Find equivalents to the following words and phrases: тема; содержание и исполнение; часть композиции; пространственные эксперименты; передний план; трехмерность. The ideas in the movement also fed into more popular phenomena, like Art Deco design and architecture. Later movements such as Minimalism were also influenced by the Cubist use of the grid, and it is difficult to imagine the development of non-representational art without the experiments of the Cubists. Like other paradigm changing artistic movements of twentieth-century art, like Dada and Pop, Cubism shook the foundations of traditional art making by 10 turning the Renaissance tradition on its head and changing the course of art history with reverberations that continue into the postmodern era. Exercise 3. Point out the questions that are not relevant to the above two passages. Answer those that are relevant. 1. Was Cubism responsible for any Renaissance tradition abuse? 2. How did Minimalism adepts influence the Cubism experiments? 3. Did Dada and Pop artists have anything to do with shaking the traditional art foundations? 4. How important was the influence of Art Deco design and architecture on the American architecture, design and art in the second quarter of the 20th century? 5. Do you think the development of non-representational art has anything to do with the experiment of the Cubists? Summary of Cubism Ideas - The artists abandoned perspective, which had been used to depict space since the Renaissance, and they also turned away from the realistic modeling of figures. - Cubists explored open form, piercing figures and objects by letting the space flow through them, blending background into foreground, and showing objects from various angles. Some historians have argued that these innovations represent a response to the changing experience of space, movement, and time in the modern world. This first phase of the movement was called Analytic Cubism. - In the second phase of Cubism, Synthetic Cubists explored the use of non-art materials as abstract signs. Their use of newspaper would lead later historians to argue that, instead of being concerned above all with form, the artists were also acutely aware of current events, particularly WWI. - Cubism paved the way for non-representational art by putting new emphasis on the unity between a depicted scene and the surface of the canvas. These experiments would be taken up by the likes of Piet Mondrian, who continued to explore their use of the grid, abstract system of signs, and shallow space. Exercise 5. Answer the questions: 1. How did Cubists treat background and foreground? 2. Give examples of the Cubists going away from the Renaissance painting techniques achievements? 11 3. Can we say that Cubists tried to stick to some of the current events in their artwork? 4. How did Cubism pave the way for non-representational art? Unit 3 Synopsis of Suprematism Suprematism, the invention of Russian artist Kazimir Malevich, was one of the earliest and most radical developments in abstract art. Its name derived from Malevich's belief that Suprematist art would be superior to all the art of the past, and that it would lead to the "supremacy of pure feeling or perception in the pictorial arts." Heavily influenced by avant-garde poets, and an emerging movement in literary criticism, Malevich derived his interest in flouting the rules of language, in defying reason. He believed that there were only delicate links between words or signs and the objects they denote, and from this he saw the possibilities for a totally abstract art. And just as the poets and literary critics were interested in what constituted literature, Malevich came to be intrigued by the search for art's barest essentials. It was a radical and experimental project that at times came close to a strange mysticism. Although the Communist authorities later attacked the movement, its influence was pervasive in Russia in the early 1920s, and it was important in shaping Constructivism, just as it has been in inspiring abstract art to this day. Exercise 1. Find equivalents to the following words and phrases: экспериментальный проект; пренебрежение правилами; абстрактное искусство; вызов разуму; сущности искусства. 12 Beginnings Suprematism was an art movement founded in Russia during the First World War. The first hints of it emerged in background and costume sketches that Kazimir Malevich designed in 1913 for Victory Over the Sun, a Futurist opera performed in St. Petersburg. While the drawings still have a clear relationship to Cubo-Futurism (a Russian art movement in which Malevich was prominently involved), the simple shapes that provide a visual foundation for Suprematism appear repeatedly. Rich color is also discarded in favor of black and white, which Malevich later used as a metaphor for creation in his writings. Of particular importance is the Black Square (c. 1915), which became the centerpiece of his new movement. In 1915, the Russian artists Kseniya Boguslavskaya, Ivan Klyun, Mikhail Menkov, Ivan Puni and Olga Rozanova joined with Kazimir Malevich to form the Suprematist group. Together, they unveiled their new work to the public at 0.10, The Last Futurist Exhibition of Paintings (1915). Their work feature an array of geometric shapes suspended above a white or light-colored background. The variety of shapes, sizes and angles creates a sense of depth in these compositions, making the squares, circles and rectangles appear to be moving in space. - The Suprematists' interest in abstraction was fired by a search for the 'zero degree' of painting, the point beyond which the medium could not go without ceasing to be art. This encouraged the use of very simple motifs, since they best articulated the shape and flat surface of the canvases on which they were painted. (Ultimately, the square, circle, and cross became the group's favorite motifs.) It also encouraged many Suprematists to emphasize the surface texture of the paint on canvas, this texture being another essential quality of the medium of painting. - Though much Suprematist art can seem highly austere and serious, there was a strong tone of absurdism running through the movement. One of Malevich's initial inspirations for the movement was zaum, or transrational poetry, of some of his contemporaries, something that led him to the idea of 'zaum painting.' 13 - The Russian Formalists, an important and highly influential group of literary critics, who were Malevich's contemporaries, were opposed to the idea that language is a simple, transparent vehicle for communication. They pointed out that words weren't so easily linked to the objects they denoted. This fostered the idea that art could serve to make the world fresh and strange, art could make us look at the world in new ways. Suprematist abstract painting was aimed at doing much the same, by removing the real world entirely and leaving the viewer to contemplate what kind of picture of the world is offered by, for instance, a Black Square (c. 1915). Concepts and Styles Suprematist painting abandoned realism, which Malevich considered a distraction from the transcendental experience that the art was meant to evoke. Suprematism can be seen as the logical conclusion of Futurism's interest in movement and Cubism's reduced forms and multiple perspectives. The square, which Malevich called "the face of a new art," represented the birth of his new movement, becoming a figurehead to which critics and others artists rallied in support of the new style. But many others accused it of nihilism: the artist and critic Alexandre Benois attacked it as a "sermon of nothingness and destruction." Malevich published a manifesto to coincide with the 1915 exhibition, called From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism in Art. He claimed to have passed beyond the boundaries of reality into a new awareness. With this, the motifs in his paintings narrowed to include only the circle, square and rectangle. Critics have sometimes interpreted these motifs as references to mystical ideas, and some of Malevich's more florid pronouncements seem to offer support for this: of his use of the circle, he said, "I have destroyed the ring of the horizon and escaped from the circle of things"; and he talked of the Black Square as "a living, royal infant." But, in fact, Malevich scorned symbolism: for him, the motifs were only building blocks, the most fundamental elements in painting, or, as he put it, "the zero of form." Malevich divided the progression of Suprematism into three stages: "black," "colored," and "white." The black phase marked the beginnings of the movement, and the 'zero degree' of painting, as exemplified by Black Square. The colored stage, sometimes referred to as Dynamic Suprematism, focused on the use of color and shape to create the sensation of movement in space. This was pursued in depth by Ilya Chasnik, El Lissitzky and Alexander Rodchenko; El Lissitzky was particularly influenced by Malevich and developed his own personal style of Suprematism, which he called 'Proun'. The culmination of Suprematism can be seen in the white stage, exhibited by Malevich during the Tenth State Exhibition: Non-objective Creation and Suprematism in 1919. His 14 masterpiece, White on White (1918), dispensed with form entirely, representing only "the idea." This work provoked responses from other artists that led to new ventures, such as Alexander Rodchenko's Constructivist exploration of the roles of specific materials in his Black on Black series (1919). Exercise 2. Choose your interpretation of the Black Square idea: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. That is the end of all previous Art. That is a full stop to the artist’s former experiments. That is a total escape from depicting reality. That is absorption of all painting styles that existed before. Life and death have merged into one here. That is the Universe, and non-parallel edges of the square refer to the Lobachevski’s geometry and foresee the Einstein’s idea that space and time bend. Later Developments As time went on, the movement's spiritual undertones increasingly defined it, and although these put it in jeopardy following the Russian Revolution of 1917, the tolerant attitude of the early Communists ensured that its influence continued. By the late 1920s, however, attitudes had changed, and the movement lost much of its popularity at home, especially after being condemned by the Stalinists. Between 1919 and 1927, Malevich stopped painting altogether to devote himself to his theoretical writings, and following a long hiatus, he even returned to representational painting. The introduction of Suprematism to the West during a 1927 Berlin exhibition was well-received, sparking interest throughout Europe and the United States. Alfred Barr later brought several of Malevich's Suprematist works to the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where they were included in Cubism and Abstract Art (1936), a groundbreaking exhibition that greatly influenced American modernism. Lissitzky played a key role in the promotion of Suprematism outside of Russia, having previously exhibited Proun works that left a deep impression on Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, and possibly even Kandinsky. El Lissitzky later used Suprematist forms and concepts to great effect in graphic design and architecture, which helped to shape the Constructionist movement. Today, these echoes are still seen in contemporary architecture, most famously in the recent "Suprematist" work of Zaha Hadid. 15 Exercise 3. Answer the questions. 1. Was the Malevich’s Black Square a symbol of nothingness and destruction? 2. How did Malevich treat realism? 3. What were the immediate artistic sources of Suprematism? 4. What were the three stages of Suprematism according to Malevich? 5. What could be the starting point of the Suprematism decline in Russia? 6. Who was a key promoter of Malevich’s ideas outside Russia? 7. Who is the most famous modern follower of Suprematism ideas? Unit 4 Constructivism Synopsis Constructivism was the last and most influential modern art movement to flourish in Russia in the 20th century. It evolved just as the Bolsheviks came to power in the October Revolution of 1917, and initially it acted as a lightning rod for the hopes and ideas of many of the most advanced Russian artists who supported the revolution's goals. It borrowed ideas from Cubism, Suprematism and Futurism, but at its heart was an entirely new approach to making objects, one which sought to abolish the traditional artistic concern with composition, and replace it with 'construction.' Constructivism called for a careful technical analysis of modern materials, and it was hoped that this investigation would eventually yield ideas that could be put to use in mass production, serving the ends of a modern, Communist society. Ultimately, however, the movement foundered in trying to make the transition from the artist's studio to the factory. Some continued to insist on the value of abstract, analytical work, and the value of art per se; these artists had a major impact on spreading Constructivism throughout Europe. Others, meanwhile, pushed on to a new but short-lived and disappointing phase known as Productivism, in which artists worked in industry. Russian Constructivism was in decline by the mid 1920s, partly a victim of the 16 Bolshevik regime's increasing hostility to avant-garde art. But it would continue to be an inspiration for artists in the West, sustaining a movement called International Constructivism which flourished in Germany in the 1920s, and whose legacy endured into the 1950s. Exercise 1. Find the Russian equivalents to the following words and phrases: art per se; artistic concern; legacy; new approach to making objects; mass production; “construction”; inspiration; decline. Concepts and Styles Constructivism developed side by side with Suprematism, the two major modern art forms to come out of Russia in the 20th century. But unlike Suprematism, whose concerns with form and abstraction often seem tinged with mysticism, Constructivism firmly embraced the new social and cultural developments that grew out of World War I and the October Revolution of 1917. Concerned with the use of 'real materials in real space', the movement sought to use art as a tool for the common good, much in line with the Communist principles of the new Russian regime. Many of the Russian Constructivist works from this period involve projects in architecture, interior and fashion design, ceramics, typography and graphics. Many of the pioneers in Constructivism had also studied Suprematist ideas, but they increasingly experimented with three-dimensional designs. They also began to attack traditional forms of art, which it was thought Constructivism could supplant: painting was officially declared "dead" at the '5 x 5 = 25' exhibition, where Aleksandra Ekster, Lyubov Popova, Alexander Rodchenko, Varvara Stepanova, and Alexander Vesnin each presented five works. Paintings were included, but Popova declared that they should only be considered as designs for eventual constructions. Rodchenko's Black on Black series of paintings, however, made a statement. Directly confronting Malevich's White on White, which was meant to be the ultimate representation of a new reality, Rodchenko's black paintings announced the end of an era "Representation is finished; it is time to construct." 17 Design for the Monument to the Third International (1919-1920) Artist: Vladimir Tatlin Artwork description & Analysis: Monument to the Third International, also sometimes known simply as Tatlin's Tower, is the artist's most famous work, as well as the most important spur to the formation of the Constructivist movement. The Tower, which was never fully realized, was intended to act as a fully functional conference space and propaganda center for the Communist Third International, or Comintern. Its steel spiral frame was to stand at 1,300 feet, making it the tallest structure in the world at the time - taller, and more functional—and therefore more beautiful by Constructivist standards—than the Eiffel Tower. There were to be three glass units, a cube, cylinder and cone, which would have different spaces for meetings, and these would rotate once per year, month, and day, respectively. For Tatlin, steel and glass were the essential materials of modern construction. They symbolized industry, technology and the machine age, and the constant motion of the geometrically shaped units embodied the dynamism of modernity. Although the tower was commissioned as a monument to revolution, and although it was given considerable prominence by the Bolshevik regime, it was never built, and it has continued to be an emblem of failed utopian aspirations for many generations of artists since. Oil on canvas - Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow Exercise 2. Answer the questions. 1. Where did Constructivism borrow ideas? 2. Were there any other important art forms apart from Constructivism to evolve in Russia in the 20th century? 18 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. Was it composition or construction that prevailed in that movement? Explain the idea of “real materials in real space”. Was there any ideological foundation for the Constructivism aspirations? What were the differences between Suprematism and Constructivism? What did Tatlin consider the most essential materials for modern construction? 8. Did art objects functionality matter anything to Constructivists? Textile Design (c. 1924) Artist: Lyubov Popova Artwork description & Analysis: Popova first emerged as an Impressionist painter, but she was later drawn into Constructivist and Suprematist circles. By 1921 she had abandoned painting to pursue the Constructivist ambition to leave behind traditional art forms and to make work for mass production. She concentrated on textile design, such as in this work, Popova uses repeating geometric patterns which were thought more appropriate to modern life and mass production than the floral designs that had previously been popular for such textiles. The intersecting circles and spacing of the stripes add tension and movement within the pattern, while also visually creating the effect of different textures. Popova's prominence within Constructivism is indicative of the significant role played by women in driving the movement's concerns; other avant-garde movements of the period were dominated by men. Pencil and ink on paper - Private collection Later Developments Echoes of Constructivism came to be seen in modern sculpture, even in the work of Henry Moore, who was also inspired by natural forms. The movement also had an impact in the United States, where the sculptor George Rickey became the first to write a comprehensive guide to Constructivism, in 1967. Today, the legacy of Russian Constructivism flourishes in the graphic arts and advertising. Street artists, such as Shepard Fairey, have also gained recognition by employing the propagandistic style of the Russian Constructivists in their work. 19 Exercise 3. Read the sentences and decide whether they are true or false. 1. The Tatlin Tower if built would be higher and more beautiful than the Eiffel Tower. 2. Concrete and steel were the materials that Constructivists considered the best for modern construction. 3. Creating for mass production was the ultimate ambition for many Constructivism artists. 4. All avant-garde movements of the period were dominated my men. 5. Modern graphic arts and advertising follow classic tradition rather than any 20th century developments. Unit 5 Surrealism Synopsis The Surrealist artists sought to channel the unconscious as a means to unlock the power of the imagination. Disdaining rationalism and literary realism, and powerfully influenced by psychoanalysis, the Surrealists believed the rational mind repressed the power of the imagination, weighting it down with taboos. Influenced also by Karl Marx, they hoped that the psyche had the power to reveal the contradictions in the everyday world and spur on revolution. Their emphasis on the power of personal imagination puts them in the tradition of Romanticism, but unlike their forbears, they believed that revelations could be found on the street and in everyday life. The Surrealist impulse to tap the unconscious mind, and their interests in myth and primitivism, went on to shape many later movements, and the style remains influential to this today. Key Ideas - André Breton defined Surrealism as "psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express - verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner - the actual functioning of thought." What Breton is proposing is that artists bypass reason and rationality by accessing their unconscious mind. In practice, these techniques became known as automatism or automatic writing, which allowed artists to forgo conscious thought and embrace chance when creating art. - The work of Sigmund Freud was profoundly influential for Surrealists, particularly his book, The Interpretation of Dreams (1899). Freud legitimized the importance of dreams and the unconscious as valid revelations of human emotion and desires; his exposure of the complex and repressed inner worlds of 20 sexuality, desire, and violence provided a theoretical basis for much of Surrealism. - Surrealist imagery is probably the most recognizable element of the movement, yet it is also the most elusive to categorize and define. Each artist relied on their own recurring motifs arisen through their dreams or/and unconscious mind. At its basic, the imagery is outlandish, perplexing, and even uncanny, as it is meant to jolt the viewer out of their comforting assumptions. Nature, however, is the most frequent imagery: Max Ernst was obsessed with birds and had a bird alter ego, Salvador Dalí's works often include ants or eggs, and Joan Miró relied strongly on vague biomorphic imagery. Exercise 1. Find equivalents to the following words and phrases: вскрывать противоречия; предшественник; сила воображения; передавать подсознательное; диковинный; поздние течения; самый узнаваемый элемент; одержимость; откровение; повторяющийся мотив. Beginnings Surrealism grew out of the Dada movement, which was also in rebellion against middle-class complacency. Artistic influences, however, came from many different sources. The most immediate influence for several of the Surrealists was Giorgio de Chirico, their contemporary who, like them, used bizarre imagery with unsettling juxtapositions. They were also drawn to artists from the recent past who were interested in primitivism, the naive, or fantastical imagery, such as Gustave Moreau, Arnold Bocklin, Odilon Redon, and Henri Rousseau. Even artists from as far back as the Renaissance, such as Giuseppe Arcimboldo and Hieronymous Bosch, provided inspiration in so far as these artists were not overly concerned with aesthetic issues involving line and color, but instead felt compelled to create what Surrealists thought of as the "real." Exercise 2. Explain the following expressions in your own words: automatism or automatic writing; to tap the unconscious mind; to embrace chance when creating art; to bypass reason and rationality. 21 The Accommodations of Desire (1929) Artist: Salvador Dalí Artwork description & Analysis: Painted in the summer of 1929 just after Dalí went to Paris for his first Surrealist exhibition, The Accommodations of Desire is a prime example of Dalí's ability to render his vivid and bizarre dreams with seemingly journalistic accuracy. He developed the paranoid-critical method, which involved systematic irrational thought and self-induced paranoia as a way to access his unconscious. He referred to the resulting works as "hand-painted dream photographs" because of their realism coupled with their eerie dream quality. The narrative of this work stems from Dalí's anxieties over his affair with Gala Eluard, wife of artist Paul Eluard. The lumpish white "pebbles" depict his insecurities about his future with Gala, circling around the concepts of terror and decay. While The Accommodations of Desire is an exposé of Dalí's deepest fears, it combines his typical hyper-realistic painting style with more experimental collage techniques. The lion heads are glued onto the canvas, and are believed to have been cut from a children's book. Oil and cut-and-pasted printed paper on canvas - Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York The Human Condition (1933) Artist: Rene Magritte Artwork description & Analysis: Magritte's works tend to be intellectual, often dealing with visual puns and the relation between a representation and the thing itself. In The Human Condition a canvas sits on an easel before a curtained window and reproduces exactly the scene outside the window that would be behind the canvas, thus the image on the easel in a sense becomes the scene, not just a reproduction of the landscape. There is in effect no difference between the two as both are fabrications of the artist. The hyperrealist painting style often used by Surrealists makes the odd setup seem dreamlike. Oil on canvas - Los Angeles County Museum of Art 22 Concepts and Styles Surrealism shared much of the anti-rationalism of Dada, the movement out of which it grew. The original Parisian Surrealists used art as a reprieve from violent political situations and to address the unease they felt about the world's uncertainties. By employing fantasy and dream imagery, artists generated creative works in a variety of media that exposed their inner minds in eccentric, symbolic ways, uncovering anxieties and treating them analytically through visual means. Exercise 3. Find the Russian equivalents to the following words and expressions: narrative; collage techniques; bizarre dreams; hyper-realistic painting style; oil and cut-and-pasted printed paper on canvas; visual pun; visual means; dream imagery; a variety of media; a reprieve from violent political situations. Surrealist Paintings There were two styles or methods that distinguished Surrealist painting. Artists such as Dalí, Tanguy, and Magritte painted in a hyper-realistic style in which objects were depicted in crisp detail and with the illusion of threedimensionality, emphasizing their dream-like quality. The color in these works was often either saturated (Dalí) or monochromatic (Tanguy), both choices conveying a dream state. Several Surrealists also relied heavily on automatism or automatic writing as a way to tap into the unconscious mind. Artists such as Miró and Ernst used various doodling techniques to create unlikely and often outlandish imagery including collage, doodling, frottage, decalcomania, and grattage. Artists such as Arp also created collages as stand-alone works. Hyperrealism and automatism were not mutually exclusive. Miro, for example, often used both methods in one work. In either case, however the subject matter was arrived at or depicted, it was always bizarre - meant to disturb and baffle. Exercise 4. Answer the questions. 1. What is a hyper-realistic style that some Surrealists were sticking to? 2. Were hyper-realism and automatism mutually exclusive? 3. Were there a prevailing colour and tone in the Surrealist paintings? 23 Conclusion Here we have focused on the most prominent and well-known movements and artists of the 1st part of the XX century art history. The views and opinions can be very different especially as related to the Modern Art but we hope the presented texts and illustrations should give a good picture of what was of interest and influence in th 20th Century Art History. You should find it instructive and entertaining to get to know the major facts and theories of different arts movements. We are sure it would help you to find your favourites and allow you to speak about art in English with better confidence. List of references and recommended links: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 24 http://www.theartstory.org http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary https://www.artsy.net/gene/20th-century-art http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art https://www.guggenheim.org/ www.nga.gov https://owlcation.com/humanities/20th-Century-Art-Movements-withTimeline