Project 3 – Abstract

Pre-history on abstract art.

In the beginning of the 20th century a new wave of art, the avant-garde, was formed. It was a wide-spread cultural phenomenon that involved many different movements and styles.

• Avant-garde: “advance guard” or “vanguard”, literally “fore-guard.” 

In the 1910s Kazimir Malevich, drawing from different movements, came up with a new one, which he called Suprematism. In later years this movement gave rise to Constructivism.

 Like many other movements, Constructivism didn’t happen on its own. It was a product of other ideas, concepts and art movements that were taking place in the early 20^th century and even late 19^th century.

There are several movements that influenced Constructivism: Cubism, Futurism and Supremacism.

Cubism: An artistic movement that began in France in the early 20^th century (1907-1914). Two of the key figures in the movement are Georges Braque and Pablo Picaso. Many art historians believe that  Paul Cézanne laid the groundwork for cubism.

Key ideas/concepts:

• Abandon perspective and realistic modeling and rendering of figures in favor of flattened, geometric representations of objects and people.
• Geometric, fractured forms, muted, depthless colors and unspecified edges. 
• Allowing space to flow through open form with piercing figures and objects was something Cubists explored.
• Showing objects from various angles in the same image.
• It is argued by some historians that these innovations came about as a response to the changing experience of movement, space and time in the modern world. This marked the first phase of the movement and 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.

 Futurism: It is considered to be the most important Italian art movement of the 20^th century. It was launched by Italian poet Filipo Marinetti in 1909 in his Manifesto of Futurism. Futurism, like other art movements of its time, is part of the avant-garde movement. It wished to destroy the old forms of culture and demonstrate the beauty of modern life. In its early stages Futurism was not identified by a distinct style. Rather, it was eclectic, borrowing from other styles and movements largely from Impressionism, Pointillism and Surrealism. The actual style emerged in 1911 and was a product of Cubism.

Key ideas/concepts

• The artists were captivated and fascinated by the problems of representing human experiences in a modern world. Futurists attempted to have their paintings evoke sensations not only visual, but bring to mind noise, heat and even the smell of the metropolis.
• New technology fascinated Futurists. Chrono-photography allowed the movement of an object to be shown across a sequence of frames. This is a predecessor of animation and cinema. This influenced the painting. Futurists tried to convey this in painting with rhythmic, pulsating qualities.

Suprematism:

Suprematism was the invention of a Russian artist Kazimir Malevich. It was one of the earliest and most radical developments in abstract art. The first indications of it emerged in costume and background sketches that Malevich designed in 1913 for Victory Over the Sun, a Futurist opera performed in St. Petersburg. 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.

“From Cubism to Futurism to Suprematism: new reality of painting.”

Malevich wanted to go further and create a new type of object-less art; an art that would allow him to abandon any annotation to nature and focus solely on color and creativity in its purest form.

Key ideas/concepts

• Search for ‘zero degree’ of painting. This would be a point beyond which the medium could not go without ceasing to be art. The idea itself pushed/forced simple motifs: the square, circle and cross became the group’s favorite motifs.
• Texture of paint became an 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 ‘
• 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).

Constructivism: It was the last and most influential modern art movement to flourish in Russia in the 20th century. Vladimir Tatlin, Malechiche’s contemporary, is often hailed as the father of Constructivism. He had collaborated on the preceding Cubo-Futurist movement. During his visit to Paris in 1913 and seeing Picasso’s wooden reliefs, his interests shifted.

Tatlin appreciated that the reliefs were not carved or modeled in a traditional manner but composed in an entirely different way (indeed they could be said to be ‘constructed’), put together from pre-formed elements. On his return to Russia, Tatlin began to experiment with the possibilities of three-dimensional relief, and to use new types of material with a view to exploring their potential.

• Constructivists proposed to replace art’s traditional concern of composition with a focus on construction.
• Organization of abstract geometric elements that would allow, when combined, to create a dynamic and visually stable forms
• Photography and photomontage – part of canvas, all aspects of transmitting an artist’s idea.
• Combination of different fonts to delineate their symbolic or literal meaning.
• Simple, flat, symbolic colors. Conveying an image without volume and, or perspective.
• Large white space as part of the design.

Goal of Constructivism

The main goal of Constructivism was to depict the experience of modern-day life, its dynamic and new, disorienting qualities of space and time through posters and canvases.

KEY ARTISTS

 
Influence on contemporary works.

BAUHAUS

Literally “construction house.”

After WW1, Henry van de Velde, the master of the Grand Ducal Saxon School of Arts and Crafts had to resign due to being Belgian (1915). He recommended Walter Gropius to succeed him. In 1919 Gropius became the master of the school. It was this art school that Gropius transformed into the world-famous Bauhaus. The school emerged out of late-19th-century desires to reunite the applied arts and manufacturing, and to reform education.

Gropius called for the school to show a new respect for craft and technique in all artistic media, and suggested a return to attitudes to art and craft once characteristic of the medieval age, before art and manufacturing had drifted far apart. Gropius envisioned the Bauhaus encompassing the totality of all artistic media, including fine art, industrial design, graphic design, typography, interior design, and architecture.

Characteristics of Bauhaus design

• Geometric, functional and modern
• Order, asymmetry
• Rectangular grid structure
• Circles, squares, rectangles, triangles, bars, and rules to unify or separate elements versus being used for decoration
• Horizontals and verticals were dominant
• Extreme contrast in type size and weight to achieve various degrees of emphasis
• Type and pictures sized to the same column width
• Typography without capitals – San Serif
• Introduction of flush left – rag right typography
• Copy rotated 90 degrees
• Only structurally essential components used
• Elementary forms and the use of black plus one bright hue
• Color tints emphasize key words
• Open composition on an implied grid system of sizes for type, rules, and pictorial images brought unity to the designs

KEY ARTISTS

 

Wassily Kandinsky

One of the pioneers of abstract modern art, Wassily Kandinsky exploited the evocative interrelation between color and form to create an aesthetic experience that engaged the sight, sound, and emotions of the public. He believed that total abstraction offered the possibility for profound, transcendental expression and that copying from nature only interfered with this process. 

“Colour is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand which plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul”. 

Key ideas/concepts

• Kandinsky viewed non-objective, abstract art as the ideal visual mode to express the “inner necessity” of the artist and to convey universal human emotions and ideas. He viewed himself as a prophet, whose mission was to share this ideal with the world for the betterment of society.
• Kandinsky viewed music as the most transcendent form of non-objective art – musicians could evoke images in listeners’ minds merely with sound. He strove to produce similarly object-free, spiritually rich paintings that alluded to sounds and emotions through a unity of sensation.
• Kandinsky viewed music as the most transcendent form of non-objective art – musicians could evoke images in listeners’ minds merely with sounds. He strove to produce similarly object-free, spiritually rich paintings that alluded to sounds and emotions through a unity of sensation.

In 1921, when architect Walter Gropius invited Kandinsky to Germany to teach at the Weimar Bauhaus, he accepted and moved to Berlin with his wife, gaining German citizenship in 1928. As a member of the innovative school, Kandinsky’s artistic philosophy turned toward the significance of geometric elements – specifically circles, half-circles, straight lines, angles, squares, checkerboards, and triangles. 

Other examples for the project

 Student work