The art world has a limitless array of mediums and different artistic periods, challenging the opinion of what should be accepted by the masses. "Expressionism is the art of the emotive, the art of tension provoked by consciousness of the forces which surround modern humankind." Challenging the academic traditions of the previous centuries, Edvard Munch impacted the art world as an instrumental leader in the development of modern German expressionism. His painting The Scream has made its mark in questioning the ideals of what is acceptable concerning the history of art. The paper will discuss Munch’s life history, uncovering the influences which led him to expressionism, as well as a detailed description and analysis of The Scream, including the historical art background of the times and how his work has survived today.
Edvard Munch, a Norwegian artist was instrumental in the development of expressionism. Born on December 12, 1863 at Engelhaug Farm in Loton, Norway, Edvard was the son of an Army Medical Corps Doctor and a loving religious mother. His family moved to Oslo in 1864 where he received his art training. In 1868 his mother died of tuberculosis and in 1877 his fifteen year old sister died of the same disease. Throughout his life he experienced tragedy and death.
Early on in life Munch frequently visited the Art Association and collections in the National Gallery. Pictorial art had become his key interest in life. He was accepted into the Technical College in 1879 but soon had to drop out due to his frequent problems with illness. At the age of seventeen he received a state grant making it possible for him to study in Paris. However each summer he would go back to Norway. During this time period international style, Na...
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.... Munch: The Scream. New York: Viking Press, 1973
Heller highlights the life of Edvard Munch during the rise of expressionism. He goes into great detail about many of the works Munch created from The Frieze of Life to The Scream of Despair. Each painting is described in detail beginning with the thought process and sketches and concluding with a description of the end result, the painting. The book describes Munch’s beliefs and experiences which pertain to his artwork. Heller is very descriptive when talking about the painting The Scream, delving into the psychological aspects of the piece and he tries to explain the painting as though it were Munch explaining his vision and thoughts. He provides numerous quotes from the artist himself and other critiques. Each piece is explained in great detail, allowing the reader to fully understand every work of art in the book
Visually, both Wassily Kandinsky’s Composition VII and Jackson Pollock’s No. 2 constitute a chaotic arrangement of colors and images with no apparent relation to one another. The randomly scattered paint, large canvas, and over-clamped figures all build a similar visual chaos in both paintings. Despite the mayhem, the two paintings differ in the inner emotions each artist wanted to express and the nature of the “chaos.” While for Kandinsky the chaos represents the smooth and melodic sentiments raised by music, for Pollock the chaos depicts the more spontaneous and impulsive emotions. The authors’ differing goals lead Kandinsky to ponder and refine his painting to capture a more universal theme and Pollock to develop his “drip” painting method
“There are no ghosts in the paintings of Van Gogh, no visions, no hallucinations. This is the torrid truth of the sun at two o’clock in the afternoon.” This quote that Antonin Artraud, stated from, Van Gogh, the Man Suicided by Society, explains the way in which Van Gogh approached his artwork. He believed in the dry truth and as a result his work was remarkably straightforward in the messages that he portrayed. While visiting Paris, France this past April, I was fortunate enough to have visited Musée d’Orsay, a museum that contains mostly French art from 1848-1914 and houses a large collection of impressionist and post-impressionist masterpieces and 19th century works from the Louvre [The Oxford Companion to Western Art]. I was also favored in having the opportunity to see the Vincent Van Gogh/Antonin Artaud exhibition, The Man Suicided by Society. The exhibition captured Antonin Artaud’s text about Van Gogh’s, “exceptional lucidity that made lesser minds uncomfortable,” or better known as his mental illness that had a major effect on his artwork [Musee d’Orsay]. In this exhibition, Vincent Van Gogh’s works visually present his life experience having spent 9 years in a mental institution and the way his imbalanced mind played a direct role on the outcome of his artwork. The darkness of Vincent Van Gogh’s illness that had a major impact on his art, was a form of expressionism which led to a collection of works that both told his life story, and later, led to his own suicide.
Kellner, Douglas. "Expressionism and Rebellion.'" Passion and Rebellion: The Expressionist Heritage. Eds. Stephen Eric Bronner & Douglas Kellner. New York City, NY: Columbia University Press, 1988. 3-39. Print.
Georges Seurat was a French born artist born on December 2nd 1859 in Paris, Frrance. He study at École des Beaux-Art, which was one of the most prestige art schools in the world, which is also known for training many of the renounced artist we know. George Seurat left the École des Beaux-Art and began to work on his own; he began to visit impressionist exhibitions, where he gained inspiration from the impressionist painters, such as Claude Monet. Seurat also was interested in the science of art; he explored perception, color theory and the psychological effect of line and form. Seurat experimented with all the ideas he had gained, he felt the need to go beyond the impressionist style, he started to focus on the permanence of paintin...
Artists in the early 1900s commonly utilized techniques of distortion and exaggeration, characteristics of expressionism, to establish the element of emotion. According to Wolf (2017), expressionist artists often incorporate “swirling, swaying, and exaggeratedly executed brushstrokes to convey the turgid emotional state of the artist reacting to the anxieties of the modern world” (p. 1). Amplification of the human figure often evokes strong emotions for audiences of many different cultures. Additionally, the style reflects the consequences of urbanization, such as the alienation of individuals in society (Wolf, 2017).
The article Artists Mythologies and Media Genius, Madness and Art History (1980) by Griselda Pollock is a forty page essay where Pollock (1980), argues and explains her views on the crucial question, "how art history works" (Pollock, 1980, p.57). She emphasizes that there should be changes to the practice of art history and uses Van Gogh as a major example in her study. Her thesis is to prove that the meaning behind artworks should not be restricted only to the artist who creates it, but also to realize what kind of economical, financial, social situation the artist may have been in to influence the subject that is used. (Pollock, 1980, pg. 57) She explains her views through this thesis and further develops this idea by engaging in scholarly debates with art historians and researcher, and objecting to how they claim there is a general state of how art is read. She structures her paragraphs in ways that allows her to present different kinds of evidences from a variety sources while using a formal yet persuasive tone of voice to get her point across to the reader.
Black smoke stained the sky and scarlet blood darkened the earth, as global war, once again, ravaged twentieth-century society. The repercussions of the Second World War rippled across the Atlantic and spread like an infectious disease. As the morality of humankind appeared to dissipate with each exploding bomb, anxiety, frustration, and hopelessness riddled the American public and began to spill into the art of New York City’s avant-garde (Paul par. 4). By the mid-1940s, artists reeling from the unparalleled violence, brutality, and destruction of war found a shared “vision and purpose” in a new artistic movement: Abstract Expressionism (Chave 3). Critics considered the most prominent artists of the movement to comprise the New York School
This notion of Abstract Expressionism has become an interesting factor between the Contemporary arts making of Abstract arts, specifically paintings. When approaching Artworks from Contemporary Abstract painters, the subject matter dives deeper in meaning than the actual artwork before the viewer. From an outward appearance, some paintings from artist, such as, James Little, juxtaposed to works by Odili Donald Odita, have a lot of formal similarities within the uses of geometrical shapes and balancing colors. However, understanding the means to why each artist paints the way they do, will actually become rather different from first approaching and accessing the paintings.
Since the 7th grade, I have been a huge fan of the famous French-inspired realist and expressionist, Edvard Munch. His work is so full of passion and pain as well as shock and sadness. By gazing into the gloriously deep world of emotion he created, art lovers both young and old are amazed and drawn in.
In the following essay the painting Nighthawks by Edward Hopper will be analyzed to determine what messages the artist was trying to convey to the viewer, and the significance of the very detailed depiction of the figures occupying the diner. The realism style of the painting that contributes greatly to the intense effect on the viewer, chosen for this reason, will be explored as well. The somber and lonely mood of the painting will be analyzed as well as the aspects of the empty street and the sparsely populated diner. I will discuss how the painting accurately represents the Great Depression era it was painted to portray, why this specific medium was chosen and how it affects the painting itself.
Vincent van Gogh, one of the most inspiring artists to both the world and on a personal level. Being a fan of his artwork, it was an easy choice to decide to watch the film Lust for Life, which portrayed Mr. Gogh’s life through the good, and through the not so good. While watching the film, I learned more about Vincent than I could have imagined a movie could represent. The movie was a marvel and it really showed how Vincent was an amazing artist, even though he might not have been the best human in terms of health. For the entirety of the paper, the following content, unless otherwise stated, will come directly from the movie Lust for Life by Vincent Minnelli (1965).
Due to the subjective nature of the impressionistic art and literary style, both mediums possess an ambiguous quality. According to Bernard Dunstan, in Painting Methods of the Impressionists, impressionism “has come to have overtones and associations which can obscure its true meaning,” (11). This is also true for impressionistic literature. However, Metz argues that “ambiguity surrounds the process through which the impre...
This exhibit was put on in a studio in Paris that was owned by the famous photographer Nadar and featured around 30 different Impressionist artists (Lewis 149). In the beginning of the impressionist 's “career” as impressionists, they were mocked and not always credited as real artists, but they accepted the name of Impressionist 's, turning the derogatory term into one to identify themselves with. The entire Impressionist art movement was “an unthinking form of naturalism” and also “… the fruitful renovation of the French schools…” (Lewis 23, 155). This oppression can be seen as synonymous with that of the actual oppressed people of France of which Karl Marx was calling to change their future. Impressionists took control of their own art and didn 't back down when mocked, they found the passion inside themselves. They were mocked since Impressionism was a shift of creativity that was now “…identified with the individual, not within the social…” (Lewis 26). When one looks at an impressionism painting from that period of time, the passion and emotions of the scene come through the painting causing the viewer to feel how the artist felt when they experienced this scene while painting
German Expressionism is an artistic movement that rose from the smouldering ashes of World War |. This movement would change the film industry and it's approach to filmmaking. Expressionism was a response to a widespread anxiety about humanities increasing discordant relationship with the world. During this time the German nation had been virtually destroyed. The war introduced death in staggering numbers and highlighted the barbarism of humanity. The chaotic results of the war inspired an artistic revolution that would impact cinema for a century later. More than ninety years after it's development the movement known as German Expressionism is still influencing the minds and actions of filmmakers and artists. Born out of despair and tragedy this movement has grown so readily that many modern icons can find their roots in German durning the 1920's. The minds of Fritz Lang, F.W Marnau, Robert Weine, Er...
Abstract Expressionism gets its name from the combining of emotional intensity and self-expression of German Expressionists and the anti-figurative aesthetics of abstract schools where Futurism, Bauhaus and Synthetic Cubism came from. The term Abstract Expressionism was applied to any number of the artists in New York who each had quite different styles, such as Pollock’s “action paintings” which had a very busy feel to it, which was different both technically and aesthetically to Willem de Kooning’s grotesque “women’s series”, which was rather violent and not particularly abstract, and Mark Rothko’s block work which was not very expressionistic, but yet all three were classified as Abstract Expressionists.