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Modern Canvas Art
The term modern
art refers to those artistic movements, their concepts and the art works
produced during a one hundred year period which began around 1860. Of all those
art movements and artists who created notable art works during this time George
Braque (1882 – 1963) and Cubism are among the most well known and revered:
Along with of course, Braque’s Cubist cofounder Pablo Picasso.
The era of
modern art saw those latent traditions which had somewhat stagnated the arts
moved aside in favor of bold experimentation and expression. Much of today’s
contemporary art reflects those new ideas which include abstraction, truth to
materials and the function or role of
art. All these concepts and new techniques born from them began with innovative
artists such as Matisse, Vincent Van Gogh, Cezanne and Gauguin.
“How do
you see these trees? They are yellow. So, put in yellow; this shadow, rather blue,
paint it with pure ultramarine; these red leaves? Put in vermillion.” – Paul
Gauguin
George
Braque was among those young artists who encouraged the avant-garde of Paris with
the expressive style of their figurative oil paintings and landscapes. Les
Fauves (The Wild Beasts) began developing their theories at the beginning of
the twentieth century. They were a short lived although potent and influential group
of artists led by Henri Matisse and André Derain.
The Fauve style favored vivid and expressive qualities of color over realism:
Brush strokes were fervent; forms were simplified and erring toward abstraction
- Reflecting the Post-Impressionist works of Vincent Van Gogh and the
Pointillist techniques of George Seurat. Theirs was a
wild colorful world that both shocked and revolutionized the art world.
Pablo
Picasso and George Braque were undoubtedly influenced by the work of Gauguin
and Cézanne. The large naked women that
appeared in Picasso’s work from around 1906 reflected his work and so directly
influenced one of his most ground breaking and well known oil paintings - Les
Demoiselles d'Avignoncreated in
1907. It is believed that Picasso was introduced to his work as early as 1902
by mutual friend Paco Durio: Who gave him a copy of the artist’s book - Noa Noa: The Tahiti Journal of
Paul Gauguin. In addition they
Gauguin and Picasso were both represented by notable gallery owner Ambroise
Vollard.
Picasso and Braque’s first Cubist
paintings were derived from the oeuvre of Cezanne’s work. That was to reduce
the natural world to its most basic forms – The cube, cone and sphere. Braque
and Picasso would continue their experimentation and investigations until
around 1912. This was when Analytic Cubism signified a sure manifestation of their
studies. The idea continued to evolve which gave rise to Synthetic Cubism – A
concept that broadened that investigation by merging collage and textured
surfaces with more traditional mediums: A style that remains popular today. Synthetic Cubism was the oeuvre of several
notable artists, such as Duchamp and Gris as well as Braque and Picasso, until
around 1920.
They say beauty is in the eye
of the beholder. When it comes to modern art for the home or a private office
the choice is most certainly a personal one: Even so, today all styles of
modern art remain popular: Cubist and impressionist canvas art works definitely
– And there is little modern of contemporary art that does not hail in some way
to the concept of abstraction. George Braque believed that for an artist beauty
was experienced in terms of “volume of line,
of mass, of weight; and through that beauty they interpret their subjective
impression”: And for Braque that subject always became an "object
shattered into fragments”: Because in this way he could be closer and so study
that object more intimately.
“Fragmentation helped me to establish space and movement in space” –
George Braque
Braque began his artistic life creating landscape oil paintings: Around
1910 his attention to Still Life: “In the still-life you have a tactile; I
might almost say a manual space… This answered to the hankering I have always
had to touch things and not merely see them…In tactile space you measure the
distance separating you from the object, whereas in visual space you measure
the distance separating things from each other”. The oil paintings produced by
Braque early on in his Cubist career were largely neutral and often
monochromatic: So as not to deviant the attention of the viewer from the beauty
of the pure forms – Therefore the object.
George Braque continued to develop his own style throughout his artistic
life. The monochromatic colors of his early works were replaced by a far more
varied and intense palette. His work remained committed to the concepts and
techniques of Cubism although his oil on canvas art works became took on a more
relaxed ambience as did the forms. George Braque died in 1963 regarded then as
a pioneer of Modern Art: And that legacy continues today.
Modernism
Classical Modernism evolved within the atmosphere of tension
generated by the dichotomy between figurative art, realistic portrayal and
abstraction. Changing perceptions of society
brought in their wake new perceptions of form, space, light, time and movement.
In France Matisse created images of peerless harmony born of
his enthusiasm for colour, while Braque and Picasso broke the mould of
conventional concepts of form. Delaunay
combined form and colour in a way that influenced the painters of the Blauer
Reiter groups; whereas such new movements as Fauvism, Cubism and Futurism still
retained certain figurative elements. Kandinsky was the first to take the
radical step to pure abstraction. For Klee, on the other hand abstract forms were
a source of inspiration for his highly imaginative creative approach.
Painting as a new vehicle of personal expression was taken
to new heights by Chagall, Modigliani, Kirchner and Beckmann. The surrealists
Dali, Magritte, Max Ernst and Miro plumbed the depths of the subconscious in
their works. In Russia and the Netherlands, Malevich and Mondrian sought to ban
all that was personal from the new visual world they created, using strictly geometric
forms of abstraction.
The painting of the 20th century, from the
earliest works of Classical Modernism onwards, simply cannot be understood as
long as we expect artistic freedom to remain with certain bounds or demand that
a painting should have some recognisable subject matter. Not only the abstract
canvas art painters but also those who retained some signs of a Mimetic
relationship between art and visible reality took art to extremes in the
context of their day and age, permanently rolling back the boundaries of the
traditional way of seeing.
When El Lissitzky (1890-1941) and Hans Arp (1887-1966)
published Die Kunstismenin 1925 they
were able to list as many as fifteen different movements, with illustrations by
way of example, even thought their treatise was restricted to the ten years
between 1914 and 1924. “Cubism, Futurism, Expressionism, abstract art,
metaphysics, Suprematism, Simultanism, Dadaism, purism, neoplasticity, merz, Proun,
verism, constructvism, abstract film. The sheer diversity they presented seems
all the more confusing given the fact that, in the 20th century, so
many different visual approaches were explored in rapid succession and
sometimes even antithetical movements occurred simultaneously. Nevertheless, it
is possible to identify certain correlations and basic undercurrents which
permit us to link individual movements or understand how they influenced each
other.
In terms of form and content, the many and varied changes
that took place in the painting of classical Modernism can be pinned down to a
few fundamental transformations in visual concepts. These were, the liberation
of colour and form from the reproduction of the object, culminating in
abstraction; and emphasis on emotion and heightened personal expression on the
other hand and a depersonalisation of the image in favour of structure and a
new collective order on the other hand, the exploration of the subconscious in
dreamlike and fantastic images.
The use of pure, unbroken colours irrespective of the
natural colour of the objects portrayed is the single most obvious
characteristic of a group of artists that included Henri Matisse (1869-1954), Maurice
de Vlaminck (1876-1958), Andre Derain (1880-1954), Albert Marquet (1875-1947),
George Rouault (1871-1958), Raoul Duffy (1877-1953) and George Braque
(1882-1963). When they exhibited together at the Salon in Paris in 1905, their
strident colours prompted the critic Louis Vauxcelles to ridicule them as “fauves”,
meaning “wild beasts”. The exhilarating abandon with which they handled colour
liberated one of the most fundamental elements of painting.
The explosive tonality of the Fauves was not without
precursors. Other painters before them had sought to use colour in new ways,
either by making it the foremost structuring element in the composition, as
Seurat had done, or by using it to express emotions, as in the work of van
Gogh, whose memorial exhibition in Paris in 1901 was the single most important
event leading up to the formation of the Fauves. Apart from the influence of van Gogh, a keen
interest in divisionism had also been aroused by the 1904 exhibition of
paintings by Signac.
The Fauves rejected the gentle nuances of the Impressionist
palette and sought an expressive force in colour. They were not interested in a
realistic rendering of nature. Instead they created visions of green skies,
yellow trees, blue roads, and emerald green faces, by using the paints just as
they were straight from the tubes. A sense of space was created with neither
the perspectival depth nor shading, simply by superimposing, juxtaposing and
interweaving areas of colour. The
subject matter was no longer an independent entity, but merely a function of
colour, and it was only through the distribution of colour in varying
properties on the canvas art that the context and equilibrium of the picture
was created. As a vindication of their aims rather than an explanation of its
sources, The Fauves invoked an astonishing panoply of influences: the
primitives, Gothic Art, Rubens, El Greco, folk art and African sculpture.
Within five years, the shock of the Fauves had lost its
sting. Some of the original members of the group began to turn once again to
traditional artistic values. Others like Braque moved on to explore new
terrain. Matisse alone developed his life’s work continuously on the basis of
his enthusiasm for colour. Though he used garish and discordant tones, he was
capable of profoundly subtle gradations of hues and, by limiting his palette to
only a few colours and distributing them to create a delicately balanced
structure, he produced images of incomparable
harmony, as in his early masterpieces Le Luxe executed in 1907.
Classical Modernism evolved within the atmosphere of tension generated by the dichotomy between figurative and non figurative art, realistic, portrayal and abstraction. Changing perceptions of society brought in their wake new perceptions of form, space, light, time and movement.
In France, Matisse created images of peerless harmony born of his enthusiasm for colour, whilst Braque and Picasso broke the moulds of conventional concepts of form. Delaunay combined form and colour in a way that influenced the painters of the Blauer Rieter group. Whereas such new movements as Fauvism, Cubism and Futurism; still retained some figurative elements. Kandinsky was the first to take the radical step to pure abstraction. For Klee, on the other hand, abstract forms were a source of inspiration for his highly imaginative creative approach.
Painting as a vehicle of personal expression was taken to new heights by Chagall, Modigliani, Kitchner and Beckman. The Surrealists Dali, Magritte, Max Ernst and Miro plumbed the depths of the subconscious in their works. In Russia and the Netherlands, Malevich and Mondrian sought to ban all that was personal from the new visual world they created, using strictly geometric forms of abstraction.
The painting of the 21st century, from the earliest works of classical modernism onwards simply cannot be understood as long as we expect artistic freedom to remain within certain bounds or demand that a painting should have a recognised subject matter. Not only the abstract painters, but also those who still retained some signs of a mimetic relationship between art and visible reality, took art to extremes in the context of their day and age, permanently rolling back the boundaries of traditional ways of seeing.
When El Lissitzky and Hans Arp published Die Kunstismen in 1925, they were able to list as many as 25 different movements, with illustrations by way of example, even though their treatise was restricted to the ten years between 1914 and 1924. Cubism, Futurism, Expressionism, Dadaism, purism, neoplasticity, mertz, proun, verism, constructivism, abstract file, the sheer diversity they presented seems all the more confusing given the fact that in the 20th century, so many different visual approaches were explored in rapid succession and sometimes even antithetical movements occurred simultaneously. Nevertheless, it is possible to identify certain correlations and basic undercurrents which permit us to link individual movements or understand how they influenced each other.
In terms of content and form, the many and varied changes that took place in the painting of classical modernism can be pinned down to a few fundamental transformations in visual concepts. These were the liberation of colour and form from the reproduction of the object, culminating in abstraction; an emphasis on emotion and heightened personal expression on the one hand and a depersonalisation of the image in favour structure and a new collective order on the other hand; the exploration of the subconscious in dreamlike and fantastic images.
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