ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM

   Jackson Pollock's elegant abstract paintings, which were created by spattering paint on huge canvases placed on the floor, brought abstract expressionism. Abstract expressionism presented a broad range of stylistic diversity within its largely, though not exclusively, nonrepresentational framework. For example, the expressive violence and activity in paintings by de Kooning or Pollock marked the opposite end of the pole from the simple, quiescent images of Mark Rothko. Basic to most abstract expressionist painting were the attention paid to surface qualities, i.e., qualities of brushstroke and texture; the use of huge canvases; the adoption of an approach to space in which all parts of the canvas played an equally vital role in the total work; the harnessing of accidents that occurred during the process of painting; the glorification of the act of painting itself as a means of visual communication; and the attempt to transfer pure emotion directly onto the canvas. The movement had an inestimable influence on the many varieties of work that followed it, especially in the way its proponents used color and materials. Its essential energy transmitted an enduring excitement to the American art scene.

SURREALISM

   Surrealism, movement in visual art and literature, flourishing in Europe between World Wars I and II. Surrealism grew principally out of the earlier dada movement, which before World War I produced works of anti-art that deliberately defied reason; but Surrealism's emphasis was not on negation but on positive expression. The movement represented a reaction against what its members saw as the destruction wrought by the "rationalism" that had guided European culture and politics in the past and that had culminated in the horrors of World War I. According to the major spokesman of the movement, the poet and critic André Breton, who published "The Surrealist Manifesto" in 1924, Surrealism was a means of reuniting conscious and unconscious realms of experience so completely that the world of dream and fantasy would be joined to the everyday rational world in "an absolute reality, a surreality." Drawing heavily on theories adapted from Sigmund Freud, Breton saw the unconscious as the wellspring of the imagination. He defined genius in terms of accessibility to this normally untapped realm, which, he believed, could be attained by poets and painters alike.
     The major Surrealist painters were Jean Arp, Max Ernst, André Masson, René Magritte, Yves Tanguy, Salvador Dalí, Pierre Roy, Paul Delvaux, and Joan Miró. With its emphasis on content and free form, Surrealism provided a major alternative to the contemporary, highly formalistic Cubist movement and was largely responsible for perpetuating in modern painting the traditional emphasis on content.


                                          

PITTURA METAFISIKA

   Pittura Metafisica is a style whose main feature's, in its literal sense, is the depiction of the object's "super-natural" features (Greek "metá" = beyond; "phýsis" = nature), the object's content beyond its visible features.The painters of the Pittura Metafisica created coulisse-like and perspectively exaggerated views that seemed like dreams filled with over-sharply modeled figures and objects, which have been taken from their original contexts and rearranged in new and strange relations. Man is also treated as an object - as "manichino", a faceless jointed doll, or as a construct of stereometric basic forms. Isolation, alienation, inexplicability and mysteriousness coin the atmosphere of the calm, motionless Pittura Metafisica that wanted to be less a way of painting than a means of observing. In their concept of materiality, but also in terms of style, the artists of the Pittura Metafisica referred to the solemn and strict austerity of the Early Renaissance (Giotto, Masaccio, Piero della Francesca, Paolo Uccello). The simultaneosuly upcoming dynamic Futurism can be perceived as a counter movement to the Pittura Metafisica - Carlo Carrà, up until 1915 one of the leading artists of Futurism, explained his turn to the Pittura Metafisica with the rediscovery of the "principio italiano", which was prevailing in Renaissance. 
                                          
                         
                                                                   




           
                                                          
                       
                                                         
                                                               
           

                                                        
       
                                                           Alberto Savinio
                                            

DADA

    Dadaism or Dada is a movement in visual art as well as literature (mainly poetry), theatre and graphic design. The movement was, among other things, a protest against the barbarism of the War and what Dadaists believed was an oppressive intellectual rigidity in both art and everyday society; its works were characterized by a deliberate irrationality and the rejection of the prevailing standards of art. It influenced later movements including surrealism According to its proponents, Dada was not art; it was anti-art. For everything that art stood for, Dada was to represent the opposite. Where art was concerned with aesthetics, Dada  ignored them. If art is to have at least an implicit or latent message, Dada strives to have no meaning--interpretation of Dada is dependent entirely on the viewer. If art is to appeal to sensibilities, Dada offends. Perhaps it is then ironic that Dada is an influential movement in Modern art. Dada became a commentary on art and the world, thus becoming art itself.
    The artists of the Dada movement had become disillusioned by art, art history and history in general. Many of them were veterans of World War I and had grown cynical of humanity after seeing what men were capable of doing to each other on the battlefields of Europe. Thus they became attracted to a nihilistic view of the world (they thought that nothing mankind had achieved was worthwhile, not even art), and created art in which chance and randomness formed the basis of creation. The basis of Dada is nonsense. With the order of the world destroyed by World War I, Dada was a way to express the confusion that was felt by many people as their world was turned upside down.

SYNCHROMISM

    Synchronism was an art movement based no the idea that sound and color are phenomena that are similar in the way that the individual experiences and perceives them. Movement as well as organization of color into ‘color scales’ are the ways in which synchronism pieces correlate to musical art forms.A basic tenet of synchronism is that color can be arranged or orchestrated in much the same way that notes of a symphony are arranged by composers. This harmonious arrangement of colors and shapes produces experiential results similar to that of listening to well balanced orchestral compositions.
    This art movement artists believed that by painting in color scales could evoke sensations that were very musical in nature. Typically, synchronism pieces feature a strong rhythmic form or forms that then advance toward complexity in form and hue, moving in a particular direction.
In many cases, such explosion of color using color scales pours out in a radial pattern. It is most common for synchronism art works to have some sort of central vortex that bursts outward with color, into complex color harmonies.
    Synchronism has been compared and contrasted to Orphism. Orphism refers to paintings that relate to the Greek god Orpheus, the symbol of song, the arts and the lyre. Though Orphism is rooted in cubism, this movement moved toward a lyrical abstraction that was more pure, in the sense that this form of painting was about synthesizing a sensation of bright colors.
Though there is little doubt that Orphism was an influence to later Synchronism, Synchronists would argue that it is an entirely unique art form. As Stanton MacDonald-Wright said, “synchromism has nothing to do with orphism and anybody who has read the first catalogue of synchronism … would realize that we poked fun at orphism.”
     Several other American painters have been known to experiment with synchronism. Whether synchronism was a branch of orphism or its own unique art form, there is little doubt that the harmonious use of color and movement based composition inspired many artists and art forms. Among these artists were Andrew Dasburg, Thomas Hart Benton and Patrick Henry Bruce.Though the majority of Thomas Hart Benton’s works centered on regionalism and murals, there was also a strong flair of synchronism. Benton’s interest and incorporation of synchronism was due mainly from having studied with synchronism artists such as Stanton MacDonald-Wright and Diego Rivera.

                                           

SECTION D'OR

     Section d'Or was a group of French painters whose common stylistic feature was a debt to Cubism. The name of the group, which was also the title of a short-lived magazine it published, was suggested by Villon. It refers to a mathematical proportion known as the Golden Section in which a straight line or rectangle is divided into two parts in such a way that the ratio of the smaller to the greater part is the same as the greater to the whole. The proportion has been studied since Antiquity and has been said to possess inherent aesthetic value because of an alleged correspondence with the laws of nature or the universe. The choice of this name reflected the interest of the artists involved in questions of proportion and pictorial discipline. 












Marchel Duchamp''Nude Descending a Staircase''

DER BLAUE REITER

      In contradiction to the wild artists of Die Brücke, the members of Der Blaue Reiter were educated at an academic level. But, both groups rejected the academic traditions. They rejected the traditions, not the academic principals. Although these artists left the academic rules of art completely, their work was theoretical very well grounded. The artists of Der Blaue Reiter, August Macke, Franz Marc, believed that every person has an inner and an outer world. The art had to bring these worlds together. This difficult theory was created by Wassily Kandinsky, one of the most important artists of the group. Simply said the theory means that the outer world of color and form brings you to the inner world, the feeling. It is just like in music, where the individual tones form a harmonious whole, which causes an certain inner feeling. Music is the evidence that a feeling is not only related to recognizable and understandable scenes. By the use of this method, Kandinsky created the first completely abstract painting in history. The composition of color and forms are not related to the visible reality, but still causes a certain feeling.This step meant a major change for art with its unknown possibilities. 


          

FUTURISM

   Futurism can be explained by Boccioni's Dynamism of a Soccer Player which  approaches abstraction in its depiction of motion. Like the Cubists, Boccioni’s pictorial language is based on shallow spaces and shifting planes. However, more than any other artists in the modern period, Boccioni and the futurists focus on depicting optical and temporal space, which reflects the dynamic speed and noise of the modern age. Thus, instead of representing a fixed moment, the work depicts a dynamic sensation. Boccioni, in Technical Manifesto of Futurist Sculpture (1913), discusses futurist art as a representation of dynamic forms that propel themselves to the surrounding atmosphere. According to Boccioni, “The figure must be broken open and enclosed in environment”. Therefore, Dynamism of a Soccer Player is not only a painting of a soccer player, but also a representation of the player’s energy, spreading around his surrounding atmosphere. In doing so, the work breaks down the distinction between the body and the body in motion
     .Like Boccioni’s painting, Balla’s Girl Running on a Balcony (1912, above) is a kinesthetic study of a figure in motion. Borrowing from the pointillist technique, Balla has not mixed his non-primary colors in advance, but creates those by painting contrasting dots in close proximity to one another. Without emphasizing any element in the work, this technique is repeated throughout the picture surface. Therefore, the work does not have a central point of focus. In contrast, it appears to be continuing outside the canvas to the spectator’s space, emphasizing the continuous and instable character of the girl’s motion. Although Boccioni’s Dynamism of a Soccer Player is more abstract than Balla’sGirl Running on a Balcony, we can make sense of both works as they recall our peripheral vision. They appear, lively and dynamic, as if they represent a             passing moment in time, captured by our peripheral vision.
   

DIE BRUCKE

   Die Brücke was the first of two Expressionist movements whose name indicates its faith in the art of the future, towards which its works would serve as a bridge. In practice the artists of this movement were not a cohesive group, and their art became an angst-ridden type of Expressionism. The achievement that had the most lasting value was their revival of graphic arts, in particular, the woodcut using bold and simplified forms.The artists of Die Brücke drew inspiration from van Gogh, Gauguin and primitive art. Munch was also a strong influence, having exhibited his art in Berlin from 1892. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880-1938), the leading spirit of Die Brücke, wanted German art to be a bridge to the future. He insisted that the group, which included Erich Heckel (1883-1970) and Karl Schmidt-Rottluf (1884-1976), ``express inner convictions... with sincerity and spontaneity''.Even at their wildest, the Fauves had retained a sense of harmony and design, but Die Brücke abandoned such restraint. They used images of the modern city to convey a hostile, alienating world, with distorted figures and colors. Kirchner does just this in Berlin Street Scene, where the shrill colors and jagged hysteria of his own vision flash forth uneasily. There is a powerful sense of violence, contained with difficulty, in much of their art. Emil Nolde (1867-1956), briefly associated with Die Brücke, was a more profound Expressionist who worked in isolation for much of his career. His interest in primitive art and sensual color led him to paint some remarkable pictures with dynamic energy, simple rhythms, and visual tension. He could even illuminate the marshes of his native Germany with dramatic clashes of stunning color. Yet Early Evening (1916) is not mere drama: light glimmers over the distance with an exhilarating sense of space.Die Brücke collapsed as the inner convictions of each artist began to differ, but arguably the greatest German artist of the time was Max Beckmann (1884-1950). Working independently, he constructed his own bridge, to link the objective truthfulness of great artists of the past with his own subjective emotions. Like some other Expressionists, he served in World War I and suffered unbearable depression and hallucinations as a result. His work reflects his stress through its sheer intensity: cruel, brutal images are held still by solid colors and flat, heavy shapes to give an almost timeless quality. Such an unshakeable certainty of vision meant that he was hated by the Nazis, and he ended his days in the United States, a lonely force for good. He is perhaps just discernible as a descendant of Dürer in his love of self-portraits and blend of the clumsy and suave with which he imagines himself: in Self-Portrait (1944), he looks out, not at himself, but at us, with a prophetic urgency.