Comparing Moderist Artists

Comparing Anni Albers to Wassily Kandinsky

These are two artists I previously looked at when I originally looked at modernism. I have chosen these two to compare first because when looking at their work you can instantly see such a striking difference and contrast between them.

The two photographs above are of one from each artist that I am going to compare. Instantly you can see see what a contrast, the photograph above is of a painting by Wassily, which is incredibly colourful and free, the photograph on the bottom, the brown tinted very organised one is by Anni Albers. The colour is the first striking difference I noticed. The one on top has used bright pinks, yellows blues and splashes of other primary colours which contrast from each other and make one another pop to stand out from the page, while the painting underneath by Ani has a very sepia feel about it, the colours are very dull and dark ranging from blacks to light browns. The second great difference between each of the paintings is the composition, Wassily's painting, among with many of his others is very free and un-restricted. It looks as though Wassily painted this with his eyes closed, possibly feeling his way around the canvas, creating such an interesting result. Anni's approach is totally different, her perfectly defined lines between each tone of colour create the impression of a tiled floor, very sophisticated and an educated looking approach.

Wassily kandinsky (the pink bright, abstract type painting on top), is a male painter, and was considered one of the first abstract painters in his approach, but he classed his work as modernism. He is credited and remembered as the first person to create a purely abstract piece of work, ever. Wassily was a very well educated man, he studied Law and didn't even begin painting until he was in his thirties. He didn't believe in the restrictive terms of art at that time, hence why he classed himself as a modernist painter, it allowed him the freedom to justify such strange paintings which, at the time, hadn't been done before. He taught art in Germany until the school was closed by Nazis, which was when he moved to France to create his most prominent pieces of work before his death,

The inspiration behind Wassily's work was his desire for freedom in his work. He paints in such a free an abstract way without a plan, he just does simply what his body tells him to do; something he apparently called "spiritual art", he wrote a book called "on the spiritual in Art" which was released in  1910. in his book he explained that the uses his art to connect with himself on a spiritual level, he allows his spiritual self to come forward and command his actions when he paints, claiming this is the cause for him reaching a level of spirituality.

Anni takes a very mathematical and logical approach to her work, the complete opposite to Wassily. She studied art, but was disappointed when she was refused and banned form several of the classes she wanted to take, which included architecture, she instead had to settle with learning weaving, and other things which were 'more suitable' for women. Anni ended up loving weaving and it's difficult textile contractions. You can see from her work (the image on the bottom above) how the weaving practices have come forward in her work. The piece above was weaved, concentrating on her wrinkle-free work. She had been experimenting with textiles to find techniques and processes which minimalised wrinkling and warping in her work. She was commissioned to produce several wall hangings and began working with other great artists around that time, such as Paul Klee (who is also a modernist artist).

So you can see the difference in the origins of ideas behind each persons pieces. The free and expressionate paintings by Wassily came from the soul, there was no plan and no need for him to feel as though he needed to conform at all. This contrasts Anni because Anni creates her pieces with a weaving technique, which is obviously a very specific technique, she flattens out all of her pieces and creates them in such a way so that there is no bumps or anything, which is obviously very thoroughly thought out and planned. This also explains the colour co-ordination in the piece, the reasons the colours are so specifically placed like that.

Comparing Joseph Albers to Paul Klee

The two photographs above are photographs of work by the artists Paul Klee (the photograph on top) and Josef Albers (the photograph on the bottom). Paul's work is inspired greatly by expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. He explored color theory and the way colours work together. Paul's work is described as abstract painting. He was already accomplished as a designer, photographer, typographer, printmaker and a poet. His most famous works were all a load of differently coloured squares which together created the collection "Homage to the square". These two artists obviously therefore contrast in the same way the previous two modernist artists contrasted, one is very mathematical and theoretical on their approach, the other is creative and free, using other influences and theories to compliment his abstract type approach, but still keeping it unique. 

I chose these two artists to compare to each other because I know that they have both looked at, and written about colour theories. One released a book (paul), and the other teaches colour theories, yet their work is both so different. Josef's work is very sharp and crisp, his pieces are a similar minimalistic style to this one, and they have all been thoroughly planned with certain compositions and colour pairs for each piece. you can see that Paul has used colour theories in his work; he has used orange and blues in the painting above, which contrast and compliment each other on the colour spectrum, but because the composition of the piece isn't as sophisticated you don't assume that there is any theories behind it.

Again both artists have looked at cubism, and used cubism in these pieces of work. You can see it coming through it both pieces, the way the image is fragmented and sectioned almost into different shapes is very clear, but instantly the second image by Josef is related to cubism far more than  the one by Paul because of it's blatantly obvious that there is cubes present in his piece, while Paul's could pass as a collaged mass of colours. 

I love the way that Paul adds little textural details on to his cubed areas, you can see mottled shading and tones of different colours in his work which you can't see in any of Josef's, Josef's work is all very monotone in his approach.  Paul also changes the size and angles as they get further up the canvas creating a sense of depth and distance, where as Josef's images all just look plain 2D on the page. 

Comparing Symbolists, Dadaists and surrealists

Comparing Dadaism and Surrealism

Although Surrealism supposedly grew out from Dadaism in Paris the two movements came from very different time periods and cultural settings. Dadaism was a wartime movement, founded in the midst of an international slaughter of young men, and the world must have felt like it was being run by a bunch of crazy elitists; where as surrealism emerged from a time of peace and prosperity. Dadists called their work "anti-art" but when you really look at the reasonings behind this you can see  that they were just trying to move away from the basic idea of art and find ways to make art in different ways that hadn't been done before.  I get the feeling they felt restricted on how they could express themselves, they would have used art as a medium to express their feelings but the art had too many rules and regulations, hence why they used the term anti-art.

Another way that Dadism and surrealism differ from each other is in the way that Dadism could not, by definition, have leaders. The group had a spokesman but nobody took a position of guidance. This is thought to be one of the reasons that Dada dissolved only a few years into the movement, they didn't have the guidance of one spokesperson making it very difficult to coordinate or control anything. Surrealism did have a leader, they called him a "Pope" and his name was Andre Breton. It was possible for the surrealists to be led simply because the group was a self-contained lot in Paris, where as the Dadists were scattered all over Europe. The Surrealists leader was said to be quite harsh, and he willingly kicked people out of the group without a second thought if they displeased him.  This being said, he still managed to keep the surrealist group together for 20 years.

The Dadaism art is strongly linked to the damage that was caused by wars, they used their art in a way to send messages and replicate the 'random' killings which they saw happening. They claimed their impersonal view on art replicated the impersonal and random killings of men. This is, I suppose, the greatest difference between the two art movements, Dadaism was born into an era of war and deaths, while Surrealism was born into a peaceful place.  The wounds of the way were either ignored, or celebrated. Surrealism came after the war, when everybody just wanted to forget. Surrealism was a way of people reading fantasy poems, looking at happy fantasy pictures of art and using them as a way to never look back and remember what happened.  The art and poems during the surrealist movement were all describes as being 'healing' and 're-constructive'; replacing a time which was full of unhappiness and violence with the dreams on the subconscious, happy places. Dadaism was on the other hand fact based, and incredibly political, attempting to send a message and spark reactions and thought rather than being happy and calming. 

You can see a very distinct difference in the two types of art when you research the paintings and creations made in these eras. The Dadaism pieces are all very thoughtful, they represent things which a much deeper meaning than first meets the eye. The Dadaist painting look like a colossal mess, like they're putting all of their head jammed with thoughts down onto canvas, and as a result they're creating very in depth, meaningful but confusing work; much like if you look at work by mental patients, it's  a great mess with lots of hidden meaning. The surrealists work is a total contrast. The pieces area all very fantasy-like. They're happy and free, it looks like the painters and creators are so happy they don't have a care in the world, they just want to paint without meaning. 

Dadaists are trying to use their work to express a pre-meditated meaning and message while surrealists use randomness and craziness in their work to create a totally different meaning that is subjective to the viewer. 

(Information above derived and collected mainly from the book "art history unstuffed" by Dr. Jeanne SM)

Comparing Surrealist and Symbolism

I have already established that surrealism is an art movement created from fantasy, randomness and the subconscious mind which makes dreams and combines things which are so un-realistic it takes people away from reality and gives them an escape from their world. Symbolism is totally different, it states that the work should only be created to resemble the absolute truths. All of their writings came from facts, and were written about things that were happening at the time (much like the Dadaist movement I talked about earlier). The symbolism movement had three leaders, which were all poets. The intention of their work was to express the actual in a way that was totally and utterly different from the surrealists, who used no facts at all.

The symbolism and Dadaism movements therefore sound very similar in the way that they are both created to represent a truth, the work is derived from facts. Dadaism is created to send a message, it was created in a  time of great doom and the work all has a pretty morbid feel about it, creating work that looks random, but actually has underlying messages which tell stories about great sadnesses and losses. This differs from the symbolists because the symbolists work was not random at all, they have a message they want to send and they create work with a very clear message. Symbolism often incorporated the spiritual aspects of life, as well as imagination and dreams. 

The symbolists work was mainly revolved around religious meanings, which were not hidden in the paintings, but were not obvious unless you are very familiar with the messages it was sending, where as the Dadaists work revolved around war and devastation, and the surrealists work was an attempt to cover up sadness and reality (like the other two movements) with happiness and creative fantasy like paintings/creations. The medias which are used differ between each movement too, the Dadaists mainly used collage, photography and painting, the surrealists were painting based, as were the symbolists.

Surrealism

Surrealism was the next art movement, it mainly grew out of a group of Dada artists in Paris. The aim of Surrealism was to “Resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality”. The artists would paint un-realistic un-nerving strange scenes in such a photo-realistic way that it produced a very strange image. The artists developed ideas and techniques which allowed them to explore their conscious.

         The main inspiration behind the strange scenes which were painted and wrote about was influenced by the research Freud did about unconscious mind and dreams. Automatic writing was a large part of surrealism, it began with drawing, people would put pencil to paper and let their subconscious mind draw whatever it pleased without being censored by the conscious mind, which may feel it needs to change what comes naturally. The automatic writing is a very similar principle, except rather than drawing, writing. The surrealists thought that performing these activities helped people to connect with their unconscious mind, allowing them to see parts of themselves which they never may have explored before.

         Children generally haven’t developed there need to censor the things which they say or do, and so child art is a great influence to the surrealist artists. Also ‘insane’ people; people which are clinically insane generally tell the truth, come up with whatever is on their mind and don’t tend to sensor what they’re saying. Insane people can range from all ages and say and feel all sorts of different things which they may be trying to put into words or art, hence why they were also influenced by these kinds of art pieces.

De Chirico

The art work by De Chirico was said to have been pre-war, and his pieces greatly influenced the surrealist artists. After creating pieces of work like the piece below he became interested in more traditional ways of painting, which was where he focused his future work, however he still re-visited the mythical themes present in his earlier work.

         Most of De Chirico’s work was old city type views based on a place called Turin, Italy. Although the cityscape’s look quite realistic In the way that he has painted the buildings and the surroundings as something which may have been together, they are infact quite often made up. The steam trains, statues and buildings are based on the scenes around Turin, but in actual fact a made up composition. The way that he uses the great dominating shadows to overcast the painting creates a feeling in the piece and helps to tell a story.

         Chircico’s work is often described as ‘Metaphysical’ art. This was a style of art which flourished mainly between 1911 and 1920. the works would usually have hints of yellow, threatening colours. The paintings would usually have very dominant subjects which were all very bold and could be seen as quite intrusive.

The shadows in this painting could be seen as quite aggressive. There’s quite a large tonal quality between the shadowed area and the areas around it, this to me gives off the sense of a bright un-natural light which is flooding the scene. The work is a quite un-realistic style, it’s more realistic than some styles, such as abstract or cubist art, but it’s very tonal, the tonal quality is great but for it to be more realitic there is usually a more gradual subtle difference.

Max Ernest

Max Ernest is probably one of the most versatile Surrealist artists. He not only worked extensively with the mix of collage and paint (as I looked at previously) in the piece “Massacre of the innocents”, here he worked very loosely and un-realistic with the paint which made me thing originally that he didn’t work with tone or detail qualities. However the paintings he created afterwards when moving on to the surrealist movement were actually very realistic and complexly painted. 

The image above is a painting by Max called “Oedipus Rex” created in 1922. The combination of elements in this piece are extremely strange, there was no real reason for these components of the drawing, however Max put them together from his imagination, so it probably meant something to him personally. We know a few things about this piece though; we know that Max was fascinated with the work of Sigmund Freud and his research on dreams, imagination and the subconscious mind, however this doesn’t help us to guess any relevance to the components of the piece.

         The one thing about these strange non described pieces is that we, as viewers, tend to look at them and amylase them much more. If a piece has an obvious story you tend to accept that instantly, where as when looking at a strange, weird image like this, you find yourself questioning why it is the way it is, instead of accepting the title straight away.

Yves Tanguy

The piece above is by an artist called Yves Tanguy called “Great mutation” created in 1942. The interesting thing about this painting is the way that she has used realistic light and shadow to create objects which look 3D and sculptural, even though they are infact 2D. The components in the painting look very static, their sculptural form intertwined with other elements of the painting make it look very static, as though the components couldn’t move if they did decide to do so.

         The  interesting thing about this piece is that rather than being an observational painting of a sculpture or anything like that, it’s a complete imaginary 2D image, which could be made into a pretty interesting sculpture. The use of colour is very plain and simple, but very effective. She uses whites and greys for the sculpture, and the same colour in the background but with a hint of blue. This makes the sculpture part stand out very boldly from the background.

Joan Miro

The piece above is called “figures at night guided by the phosphorescent tracks of snails”. I found this title very funny for some strange reason, I think it’s perhaps because it’s such a straight forward descriptive title for such a non-straight forward strange piece of work.

         The marks on this piece area all either block colours, or very linear; the lines are very fluid, usually when you create marks with paint on a brush or ink on a pen it will run out leaving brush marks and some areas of imperfectancies, however this doesn’t happen here. The blue, which makes up the piece gives off a very twilight midnight feel, however the red gives off a sense of danger. I love the way that the almost ‘random’ looking lines in the piece are called ‘snail tracks’, it’s so imaginative rather than just calling them linear marks, it’s the type of thing I can imagine a child saying, like I mentioned earlier the art is not censored, so this was probably the first thing that came into his mind, which I find very strange.

         The piece is full of symbols, like the one in the very top right. Some of them are instantly recognisable others may be personal to the artist or made up on the spot. I love the way this piece looks like a jumble of thoughts have all been scribbled down on to paper, he includes everything and anything which pops into his head.

         The colours which have been used are very simple primary colours, much like the style of drawing which is equally as simple. The drawings resemble those that a child would create, the movement was highly influenced by the innocence and non-censored imagery children create, and this is shown in this piece when the artist turns quite simple drawings and plain symbols into a story.

         The messy un-organised un-realistic painting gives a feeling of excitement, danger, darkness and it’s full of movement and life. The bright colours draw your attention to different areas giving you so much to look at, every time you look at the piece you see something new and different.

Rene Magritte

Rene Magritte created this very strange painting above called ‘The lovers’ which shows two lovers locked in embrace kissing through a veil. The room behind the lovers is painted in such a way it almost looks insignificant. The lovers have the main focal point in the painting and the wall and ceiling behind are so generic and ordinary you don’t hardly notice it.

       The man seems like the more dominant out of the two in the painting, he is at a higher level than her meaning she has to tilt her head for the kiss. She is also leaning in towards him while he looks at ease and in a normal stance. The painting itself is actually rather un-interesting, if it was a normal couple painted kissing in the same style, composition and way as this it would be very easy to overlook, however the veil creates an air of mystery and tension. Frustrated desires seem to be a particular theme in the work of Rene, this is represented by enshrouded faces.

       The different colours on this painting resemble different meanings red-passion, love anger. Black- death, scariness. White- purity, virginity. So it is very difficult to decipher a meaning from using any of the colours as symbols.