WHAT IS ART? WHAT SHOULD ART CONVEY?

ART IS: the presentation or expression of what is beautiful, appealing or of more than ordinary significance layered, complex, susceptible to many different interpretations the source of questions and ruminations, not tidy solutions

SURREALISM: is the imagination of the unconscious is a positive expression is an unification of the conscious / unconscious is where dreams and fantasy are joined to the rational, everyday world in an absolute reality = surreality

SURREALITY: is surprising, spontaneous, unexpected, irrational Andre Breton, Paris art critic, coined the name “Manifesto of Surrealism” in the 1920’s Breton admired Sigmund Freud Breton trained in medicine and psychiatry disdained traditional art forms

EXAMPLES OF SURREALISTS: Salvador Dali Maxwell Ernst Rene Magritte Joan Miró Picasso Jackson Pollock (an abstractionist who greatly admired the surrealists)

The Persistence of Memory Salvador Dali, 1931 6

The Tilled Field Joan Miró, 1923-24

SURREALISM AUTHORS: authors considered surrealist Jean Cocteau E.E. Cummings Garcia Lorca Henry Miller Anais Nin Dylan Thomas William Carlos Williams

REALISM: is an art movement from France in the 1850’s is an objective reality – true to life honesty / accuracy subjects in art appear as they do in everyday life no embellishment

REALISM: the realists rejected romanticism and neoclassicism from the late 1700’s / early 1800’s painters who painted from the world around them examples of realists: John Singleton Copley Gustave Courbet Honore Daumier Thomas Eakins Jean-François Millet William Sidney Mount

The Death of Major Pierson John Singleton Copley - 1784

The Gleaners Jean-François Millet, 1857 12

REALISM AUTHORS: authors considered realists William Defoe Henry Fielding Hamlin Garland William Dean Howells Henry James Sarah Orne Jewett Upton Sinclair Mark Twain Edith Wharton Walt Whitman

IMPRESSIONISM: began in the 1860’s after the Paris World’s Fair accurately, objectively recording of visual reality in terms of transient effects of color and light the term comes from Monet’s painting “Impression, Sunrise”

FEATURES OF IMPRESSIONISM: visible brush strokes unusual angles light and changing light considered radical in its time very open composition, movement unmixed color not smoothly blended how the eye views the subject / not a re-creation of the subject

examples of impressionists Mary Cassat Paul Cezanne Edgar Degas Edouard Manet Claude Monet Berthe Morisot Camille Pissarro Pierre Auguste Renoir John Singer Sargent Alfred Sisley

Impression, Sunrise Claude Monet, 1873

The Boating Party Mary Cassat, 1893-94

IMPRESSIONISM AUTHORS: the Romantic writers William Blake Emily Bronte Wilkie Collins Mary Shelley William Wordsworth and Joseph Conrad Arthur Rimbaud Virginia Woolf

ABSTRACTIONISM: no concrete objects – at least no recognizable ones morally loaded themes (rebellion, a disgust with society) emphasis is on individual, spontaneity, mood, feelings, & revolt (without being an actual representation) uses form / color / line to create composition existing independently of visual references to the world

WHY ABSTRACTIONISM? at the end of the 19th century, artists felt they needed a new kind of art to encompass changes in Science / Technology / Philosophy it reflects diversity / turmoil of Western society artists include: Theo van Doesburg Wassily Kandinsky Pieter Cornelius “Piet” Mondrian Jackson Pollock

Composition X Wassily Kandinsky, 1939

Composition with Yellow, Blue, and Red Piet Mondrian, 1937-42 23 23 Composition with Yellow, Blue, and Red Piet Mondrian, 1937-42 23

ASSIGNMENT form groups of FOUR students choose from ONE of the four genres: birthday party cafeteria sporting event wedding illustrate your choice in each of the FOUR genres: surrealism realism impressionism abstractionism your group will have FOUR total illustrations