avant-garde
Ahead of the times, especially in the arts
fauvism
1905,Paris. Fauvism was a short-lived movement concerned with the liberation of color and the formal structure of a work of art. Fauve is a title which means "wild beast." This group first exhibited paintings in 1905 in Paris. The leader of this group was
german expressionism
A major art movement in Weimar Germany. The style of art intended to highlight the expressions the viewer was meant to feel. It focused on emotional experience rather than physical reality. Expressionist artists sought to express the meaning of "being ali
die brucke
German Expressionist movement that focused on distortions of form, ragged outlines, and agitated brush strokes to provoke powerfully emotional works; started by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
cubism
an artistic movement in France beginning in 1907 that featured surfaces of geometrical planes
the armory show
1913; first large-scale modernist exhibition in U.S.; New; extremely influential; highly controversial
neue sachlichkeit
(New Objectivity) An art movement that grew directly out of the World War I experiences of a group of German artists who sought to show the horrors of the war and its effects.
surrealism
a 20th century movement of artists and writers (developing out of Dadaism) who used fantastic images and incongruous juxtapositions in order to represent unconscious thoughts and dreams
suprematism
the supreme reality in the world is pure feeling, which attaches to no object. This called for non-objective forms in art. Malevich believed that people could easily understand his art because of the universality of the symbols
constructivism
an abstractionist artistic movement in Russia after World War I
de stijl
Dutch, "the style"; an artistic movement associated with a group of early 20th-century Dutch painters who used rectangular forms and primary colors in their works and who believed that art should have spiritual values and a social purpose.
bauhaus
A Weimar (German) architectural school created by Walter Gropius which combined the fine arts and functionalism
modernism
art specific to our own historical period, began in France in later 19th century, gradual shift away from representational elements in art towards formal qualities- abstract qualities of shape, line, color. not dependent on imitation of nature
late modernism
art and critical thinking in America directly after WWII, grew directly out of pre-war, tended to avoid the kind of social and political issues engaged in by Social Realism in the 1930s, concentrated on purely formal problems as vehicles of artistic expre
postmodernism
period (more or less beginning in mid 1970s) characterized by the social and political events that followed the Vietnam protests in America and the May 1968 student protests in Paris. dissatisfaction with modernism, attack upon what was seen as too narrow
post-painterly expressionism
developed out of abstract expressionism, coined by Clement Greenberg, cool, detached rationality, emphasized tighter pictorial control ex: Frankenthaler
post war expressionism
(1950-1980)
Many artists were deeply impacted by WWII. These artists choose subjects that are associated with the idea of existentialism, the idea that people struggle in isolation to make a moral decision in the world. It's mostly oil on canvas.
Examples
existentialism
The idea that human beings simply exist, have no higher purpose, and must exist and choose their actions for themselves.
art brut
term used by Jean Dubuffet to describe art that is untaught, brutish, "genuine
minimalism
an art movement in sculpture and painting that began in the 1950s and emphasized extreme simplification of form and color
objecthood
natural 'essence' of an object but not the object itself (think german expressionism)
pop art
an American school of the 1950s that imitated the techniques of commercial art (as the soup cans of Andy Warhol) and the styles of popular culture and the mass media
lawrence alloway
an English art critic and curator who worked in the United States from the 1960s. In the 1950s he was a leading member of the Independent Group in the UK and in the 1960s was an influential writer and curator in the US. He first used the term "mass popula
superrealism
was a school of painting and sculpture that emphasized producing fidelity to optical fact. The painters were also called photorealists because they used photos as sources for their work.
abstract expressionism
1940-1955. A style of painting originating in the U.S. during the 1940's and 1950's. It is characterized by spontaneity, emotion, bold colors, and/or strong value contrast on very large canvases. These are usually non-objective like the work of Jackson Po
gestural abstraction
Also known as action painting. A kind of abstract painting in which the gesture, or act of painting, is seen as the subject of art. Its most renowned proponent was Jackson Pollock. See also Abstract Expressionism.
chromatic abstraction
A kind of Abstract Expressionism that focused on the emotional resonance of color, as exemplified by the work of Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko.
post-painterly abstraction
An American art movement that emerged in the 1960s and was characterized by a cool, detached rationality emphasizing tighter pictorial control. See also color field painting and hard-edge painting.
color-field painting
A technique in abstract painting developed in the 1950s. It focuses on the lyrical effects of large areas of color, often poured or stained onto the canvas. Newman, Rothko, and Frankenthaler painted in this manner.
hard-edge painting
variant of Post-Painterly Abstraction using smooth, knife-edged geometric forms rather than reference to gesture as statement that meaning of painting should be form and nothing else, especially Ellsworth Kelly
still life
a painting of inanimate objects such as fruit or flowers
new image painting
an art style of the second half of the 20th century that sought to reconcile abstraction and representation through the use of simplified images to convey the grandeur of abstract shapes without dominating visual elements such as color and texture
chicago "monster school
a group of Chicago artists, several of whom served in World War II and were able to go to art school thanks to the G.I. Bill. They were given their name in 1959 by critic Franz Schulze, based on their existential, sometimes gruesome, semi-mystical figurat
futurism
1910.A movement in modern art that grew out of cubism. Artists used implied motion by shifting planes and having multiple viewpoints of the subject. They strived to show mechanical as well as natural motion and speed. The beginning of the machine age is w
dadaists
Group of artists who used random images to reflect what they considered the insanity of war