Modern Trends in Painting
ART LESSON 18: The aim of the lesson is to teach you to explain how the visible world is interpreted by artists of different trends. You will also learn to identify the means the artist uses to reveal his/her attitude to the world.
1. The artist is not just a copyist of Nature’s appearance; he is part of the fabric of society, an involuntary revelation of its character. He uses nature, the visible world, but his whole purpose is the interpretation of his personal – and necessarily limited – understanding. Although he uses nature, this is not to say that his paintings must resemble nature. Indeed “abstraction” is a device much used in art (and not only in modern art). It is therefore unfortunate that it should be so thoroughly misunderstood, and since it is so much a part of modern painting, some examination of it is essential. To abstract has two general senses: to deduct, or take away, and to summarize. In relation to modern art, it partakes of something of both senses, but predominantly of the first. These two kinds of abstraction are easily distinguished and represent the main preoccupation of painters in this century. The ways in which they manifest themselves vary considerably. Abstraction is, however, only the method, not the inspiration. The painters use it only insofar as it helps them realize their intention – to communicate their experience, not as an end in itself. The extent of the abstraction reflects the painter’s attitude to the world, to his society, to the future, to the changing character of man. The modern painter has found varying degrees of abstraction necessary to express his sense of the loss of urgency in academic art and of its lack of relevance to the way we live now, to the modern machine, to modern war, to great events, and perhaps most important, to the feeling that man himself has become increasingly depersonalized, subjected to the power of science he has invented. His art is the result of an attempt, sometimes desperate, usually groping, to find a truth, an order and a faith that will allow him to live in dignity. This necessitates and inspires his new language.
Sum up the given information, emphasising the urgent character of abstract art.
2. The characteristics of Expressionist painting are similar to those of Fauvism, except that Expressionist painters tend to use stronger linear effects. More heavy colour, black and browns, with the object of expressing the sense of tension in life that they felt. So “Expressionism” as a term, in its broadest sense, is used to describe widely different works from various periods in history, as well as the present, which exhibit only a strong emotional content in common. In another and more limited sense, the term may be used to describe all art since Impressionism. The Expressionist nature of Kandinsky’s work tends to more abstraction in form and colour. Kandinsky has described his first experience of the abstract in some detail. He had regarded the object as indispensable, but at the same time he realised that the “ends (and hence also the means) of nature and art differ essentially, organically, and by virtue of a universal law.” The original natural forms, as Kandinsky presumes, can be seen extended and distorted towards the freer pattern of abstraction. In some cases, the reference to any natural form has disappeared, and the relationship of shapes, the colour, and the web of lines are the only means. Out of these springs an emotion, a growth of energy and movement.
Describe a picture by Kandinsky (or Franz Marc, Paul Klee, Joan Miró, Robert Delaunay) and formulate your attitude to the “expressive” possibilities of line and colour.
3. Abstract Expressionism was based on a radical reinterpretation of drawing. Jackson Pollock’s work introduced a new set of terms, extending the interpretation of the basic Cubist structure to one that seemed spatially limitless and expressively transcendent. He put together automatic drawing and painting in a new way, pouring paint directly from a can and using the brush as an extension of the movement of his body to direct its flow onto a horizontal surface without actually touching it. He created a separate linear existence for each of the three basic elements of pictorial construction – contour, colour and shadow – incorporating kinetic effects as spattered paint. In his classic works of 1947-1950, these lines, layered over one another and constantly re-crossing, create and evenly accentuate non-hierarchical division of the pictorial surface that gives the impression of a field of energy. Line in this field is wholly non-objective; in fact, it does not even describe abstract contours, but is only the trace of its own energetic movement. This field became the condition for advanced art.
Mark Rhothko was a leading figure in Abstract Impressionism, and his formless canvases evoke the true spirit of the movement – an ultimate response to the unattainable mysteries of human psyche. Rothko’s works were visionary in their aim. Through their large scale, which dominates the spectators’ field of vision, the artist seeks to draw them into the painting, which becomes an object of contemplation. The floating rectangles can be seen as ‘doors’ or ‘windows’ leading to a transcendent reality.