MODERNISM 1880 - 1945 AD (CE)
Dada 1916 - 1922 AD - Dadaism tried to make sense out of all the new ideas and principles coming out of the new era of modern art.
Dadaism was an art movement that followed Cubism, Expressionism, and Fauvism. The Dadaists were mainly a group of ill-organized artists experimenting with bizarre art and literature. The main Dada artists include Hugo Ball, Jean Arp, and Marcel Duchamp. The artists wanted to take modern art into a direction that would broaden the meaning of "what art was and could be".
Dada (French: "hobby-horse"), nihilistic movement in the arts that flourished primarily in Zürich, New York City, Berlin, Cologne, Paris, and Hannover, Ger. in the early 20th century. Several explanations have been given by various members of the movement as to how it received its name. According to the most widely accepted account, the name was adopted at Hugo Ball's Cabaret (Café) Voltaire, in Zürich, during one of the meetings held in 1916 by a group of young artists and war resisters that included Jean Arp, Richard Hülsenbeck, Tristan Tzara, Marcel Janco, and Emmy Hennings; when a paper knife inserted into a French-German dictionary pointed to the word dada, this word was seized upon by the group as appropriate for their anti-aesthetic creations and protest activities, which were engendered by disgust for bourgeois values and despair over World War I. A precursor of what was to be called the Dada movement, and ultimately its leading member, was Marcel Duchamp, who in 1913 created his first ready-made (now lost), the "Bicycle Wheel," consisting of a wheel mounted on the seat of a stool.
Bauhaus 1920s - 1940's AD -
" In 1919 Walter Gropius (1883-1969) was appointed to head a new institution called the Bauhaus in Weimar, the German capital. Germany had been crushed in the war and humiliated at Versailles. The economy was collapsing. Mobs of unemployed men roamed the streets waiting for a Soviet-style revolution to erupt. Against this background Gropius, chairman of the Working Council for Art, sought to bring all of the arts together under the wings of a great architecture. The Bauhaus style of architecture would proceed from certain assumptions: (1) The new architecture was to be created for the workers, (2) The new architecture was to reject all things bourgeois; and (3) The new architecture would return to the original Classical principles of Western architecture.
The word bauhaus means " house for building."
The Bauhaus, dedicated to utopian collectivism, chose Expressionism as its form of communism, not Marxism, and the idea of art as a quasi-religion was dominant. In addition to the Bauhaus, other architectural schools or compounds (Futurist, Wendingen, de Stijl, Constructivist , Elementarist) competed with one another for a the purest vision. Buildings soon became theories constructed in the form of concrete, steel, wood, stucco, and glass. A building must have a flat roof and a sheer façade, with neither cornices nor eaves. As color was considered bourgeois, buildings were white, gray, beige, or black. "
Quoted From Dr. John Jackson
jjackson@jccc.net
Barcelona Lounge Chair, 1929
Knoll Associates, manufacturer
Museum of Modern Art
New York
Mies van der Rohe
Harlem Renaissance 1920s - 1940's AD (SEE AFRICAN AMERICAN)
Surrealism 1924 1920s - 1940's AD Surrealism set out to display painting and writing in close connection to the mind. The Surrealists primarily emphasized the minds' power to create artistic meaning.
Surrealism was an art movement that most closely coincided with Dadaism. The Surrealists movement lasted for about two decades, and involved countless artists. At first, the movement seemed to be only a literary movement, and an extension of Dadaism. However, the Surrealist movement quickly entered the realm of painting. Surrealist artwork portrays mainly abstract ideas like something that would appear in a dream.
Surrealism was heavily involved in portraying these dream-like images or even nightmares. One of their main goals was to connect their painting with the dream stages of sleep. They wanted the public to realize their emphasis that the mind has its own power to create artistic meaning. The Surrealists focused on interpreting their art through emotions rather than intellect. Some of the major people involved included Andre Brenton, Max Ernst, Salvador Dali, and Renee Magritte. Today, many art lovers still admire their work.
Tanguy, Yves (1900-1955)
Indefinite Divisibility 1942
Oil on canvas, 101.6 x 88.9 cm
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY
De Stijl (1916-1931) - The De Stijl movement encompassed a new type of style in modern art and architecture. This movement used the artistic talent of the artists by designing homes, buildings, and furniture.
Constructivism (1917-1924) - Constructivism was an art movement that joined artists and their art with machine production and architecture.
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