Chapters 14.3 Sculpture 14.4 Fantasy & Surreal Art 14.5 Photography
Constantin Brancusi ( ) Rumanian sculptor in Paris. He wanted to reveal the essential shape hidden in everything we see, simplifying and eliminating detail. His work affected most of the major sculpture trends which followed him in time.
Constantin Brancusi ( ) Rumanian sculptor The Kiss, 1912, Limestone, 23” tall
Constantin Brancusi ( ) Rumanian sculptor Bird in Space Bronze cast 54” tall, 1927
Constantin Brancusi ( ) Rumanian sculptor
Aristide Maillol ( ) French sculptor Summer, 1910, bronze, 65” tall
Ernst Barlach ( ) German sculptor Frenzy, 1910, bronze, 21 x 27”
Alberto Giacometti ( ) Swiss sculptor His emaciated and elongated forms were first created in plaster over a wire armature. The stick-thin figures have come to be recognized as a powerful symbol of the loneliness and alienation of humanity in the 20th century. The visual look could be considered Expressionist. Man Pointing, 1947, bronze, 71”
Alberto Giacometti ( ) Swiss sculptor
Alberto Giacometti ( ) Swiss sculptor
Alberto Giacometti ( ) Swiss sculptor
14.4 Surrealism A style of 20th century art in which artists combine normally unrelated objects and situations. Their painted scenes are often dreamlike, or set in unnatural surroundings. These artists were influenced by Sigmund Freud’s analysis of the human subconscious and examination of dream psychology.
Salvador Dali ( ) Spanish, Oil on canvas
Marc Chagall ( ) Russian/ Jewish Born in Belarus (then Russian Empire), naturalized French in Chagall's Surreal, haunting, exuberant, and poetic images have enjoyed wide popular appeal. I and the Village Oil on canvas 1911, 76 x 60”
Marc Chagall ( ), Russian Jewish
Giorgio de Chirico ( ), Italian “The Delights of a Poet,” Oil on canvas, 28” x 34” 1913
Giorgio de Chirico ( ), Italian Oil on canvas
Paul Klee ( ) The Twittering Machine Watercolor, pen and ink x 19” Swiss-born, lived in Germany His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included Expressionism, Cubism, and Surrealism. Klee experimented with and mastered color theory, and wrote extensively about it. His works reflect his dry humor and his sometimes child-like perspective. He and his friend, the Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky, both taught at the German Bauhaus school of art and architecture.
Paul Klee ( ), Swiss in Germany
Rene Magritte ( ), Belgian. Time Transfixed, 1938, oil on canvas, 58 x 38 “ Magritte’s work often displays a mingling of ordinary objects in unusual contexts, giving new meaning to familiar things. The representational use of objects as other than what they seem is typified in his painting. In Magritte’s painting of an apple, he painted the fruit realistically and then used an internal caption to deny that the item was an apple. Magritte points out that no matter how closely, through realism-art, we come to depicting an item accurately, we never do catch the item itself.
Rene Magritte ( ), Belgian
Joan Miró ( ) Spanish His work is considered Surrealist, filled with childlike imagery referring to the subconscious mind. Miró expressed contempt for conventional painting methods which he viewed as supporting bourgeoise society, and famously declared an "assassination of painting" in favor of upsetting the visual elements of established painting.
Joan Miro ( ), Spanish
Meret Oppenheim (b.1913), Object, 1936, Fur-covered sculpture, 3” height
Dada Formed by a group of intellectual artists who escaped to Zurich, Switzerland in 1915, during World War I. They attacked the meaninglessness of war and all forms of cultural standard and artistic activity, and gave themselves this nonsense name. The movement spread to New York, Berlin, Paris...and its impact is still strongly felt today.
DADA ART Jean Hans Arp ( ), French/German Sculptor and collagist Collage Arranged According to the Laws of Chance 19 x 14” 1916 Torn and pasted papers Arp created collages by cutting bits of paper and floating them to the floor; he made the resulting accidental arrangement permanent by gluing the pieces to a sheet of paper.
Jean Arp ( ) French/German Birds in an Aquarium, 1920 Painted wood relief, 10 x 8”
Jean Hans Arp ( ) French/German Sculptor and collagist Arp began cutting random bits of wood with a band saw, gluing them together and adding paint to create relief sculpture.
Max Ernst ( ) German “L’Ange du Foyer” Oil on canvas, 1937 Ernst developed a fascination with birds that was prevalent in his work. His alter ego in paintings, which he called Loplop, was a bird. He suggested this alter-ego was an extension of himself stemming from an early confusion of birds and humans.
Max Ernst ( ) German Oil on canvas
Kurt Schwitters ( ) German Construction for Noble Ladies, 1919, Mixed-media assemblage of wood, metal and paint 40 x 33” Dada was a protest against traditional art forms. Schwitters gathered found objects, glued them down, added paint, and called these partially 3-dimensional objects “assemblages.” Such use of found materials was a challenge to the artistic tradition in the early 20th century. This format is no longer considered avant-garde, and has become part of our ongoing pictorial tradition. Schwitters’ influence is very apparent in the contemporary work of Robert Rauschenberg
Kurt Schwitters ( ) German Assemblage collage with paint and found materials