Other art movements

There are quite a few more movements that this blog will cover over the next few months. This started out as a school project, which will end later this week. But it seems that I've developed a deeper interest into the subject and now I intend on continuing my research and writing snippets about art history, as long as my schedule will allow.

Among those I am keen to learn more about are:

Expressionism (1900 to 1920)

Cubism (1907 - 1914)

Bauhaus (1920 to 1940)

Harlem Renaissance (1920 to 1940)

Abstract Expressionism (1945 - 1960)

Op Art (1960s)

Pop Art (1960s)

I've also discovered that I enjoy looking at, discussing and simulating

Art Deco and Art Nouveau posters into my own works, and will probably

use this blog as an avenue of reinforcing what I will have learned over

the next few months.

Post-Impressionism: Vincent Van Gogh

Vincent Van Gogh is considered by many to be the greatest Dutch painter after Rembrandt and one of the greatest of Post-Impressionists, along with Cézanne and Gauguin. He was a strong influential force on the succeeding art movement, Expressionism. He was a prolific painter and although he painted only during a period of 10 years, he would oftentimes paint in a frenzy, which resulted in a large body of work. Approximately 2200 works: close to 900 paintings, over 1200 drawings and sketches, plus nearly 200 water colour works. In his last 70 days at the St Rémy asylum, he painted one canvas a day before dying from a self-inflicted bullet wound. Among his masterpieces are a series of self-portraits, sunflowers and the celebrated The Starry Night (1889).

He was poor and suffered recurrent depressive spells and nervous breakdowns, with his devoted brother Theo as his only means of support. In May 1889 he asked to have himself committed at an asylum in St Rémy, near Arles, and continued to paint in a frenzy, around 150 paintings, on top of numerous drawings. Starry Night was produced during this time.

He sold only one painting during his lifetime, the Red Vineyard at Arles, which is now at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, and would never receive the kind of recognition he would gain posthumously. But as mentioned earlier, his influence on Expressionism, as well as on Fauvism and early abstract art was powerful and one can see a bit of Van Gogh in 20th-century art.

Vincent Van Gogh, Self-portrait, 1887

Oil on cardboard

42 × 33.7 cm

Vincent Van Gogh, The Potato Eaters, 1885

Vincent Van Gogh, Starry Night, 1889

La chambre de Van Gogh à Arles, 1888

Oil on canvas

More information can be found on the Vincent Van Gogh Museum website.

Post Impressionism (1880 to 1900)

Post-Impressionism is a movement that started in France and flourished throughout the rest of Europe between 1880 to the early 1900s and represented both an extension of Impressionism and at the same time, it was also a rejection of its limitations. The term Post-Impressionism was coined by an art critic to describe the work of late 19th-century painters such as Paul Cézanne, Georges Seurat, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and other contemporaries who painted with this unique style.

All of these painters, with the exception of van Gogh, were French, and most of them started out as Impressionists (note that Cézanne was mentioned in an earlier blog post on Impressionism). These artists gradually broke away from Impressionistic techniques and each sought to create his own highly personal art and style. The Post-Impressionists often exhibited together, as did the Impressionists, but they painted mainly in isolation. Cézanne spent his time in Aix-en-Provence in southern France; Paul Gauguin left his family and moved to Tahiti in 1891; van Gogh painted in the countryside at Arles.

Impressionism, according to the Post-Impressionists was still an objective view and recording of nature, albeit through the experimental use of colour and light painting techniques. The Post-Impressionists aspired to a more ambitious expression, exploring the art of defining form with short brushstrokes of broken colour and lines. The work of these painters paved the way for several trends in early 20th-century modernism.

In summary, this art movement sought to break away from a naturalistic approach and moved towards the two major movements of early 20th-century art that followed: Expressionism, Cubism and Fauvism, all of which sought to evoke emotion through challenging techniques using colour and line.

Henri Rousseau, Le centenaire de l'indépendance, 1892

110 × 57 cm

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, The clown Cha-U-Kao at the Moulin Rouge, 1895

Paul Sérusier, The Talisman/ Le Talisman, 1888

Oil on wood, 27 x 21.5 cm

Paul Gauguin, Woman Holding a Fruit, 1893

Oil on canvas

92.5 × 73.5 cm

Claude Monet Documentary

More information on Claude Monet as one of Impressionism's most important painters (4:01 minutes).

Impressionism pt 2: techniques

Other important Impressionists:

Alfred Sisley

Edgar Dégas

Paul Cézanne

Édouard Manet (later years)

Impressionist paintings are characterised by short, thick strokes of paint, which are applied to capture the subject's essence, rather than focusing on minutiae. There is also a strong emphasis on experimentation and use of natural light, paying close attention to the reflection of colours from object to object. The paint is often applied impasto. This is a borrowed Italian word that means 'dough' or 'mixture'; the term almost usually refers to painting, and involves the very thick application of paint onto a canvas or artwork area, so much so that the brush or paint knife strokes are visible. Oil paint is most suitable for this technique, due to its thick texture and and slow drying time, but sometimes acrylic paint is used.

Other features of this painting style include the use of colours side-by-side with little blending, resulting in a vibrant effect, the process of the colour mixture completes upon viewing. Grays and other dark tones are produced by mixing complementary colours, as black paint is avoided whenever possible. Wet paint is also often placed into wet paint, to produce the effect of soft edges, as well a harmonious blend of colour.

Other painters who shaped Impressionism include Gustave Courbet and Théodore Rousseau.

Edouard Manet, Le Bar aux Folies-Bergère, 1882

Camille Pissarro, Boulevard Montmartre, 1897

Edgar Dégas, Deux danseuses, 1898,99

Charcoal and pastel on joined paper laid down on card

Alfred Sisley, Flood at Port-Marly, 1876

Paul Cézanne, Apples, Peaches, Pears, and Grapes, 1879-80

Oil on canvas, 38.5 x 46.5 cm

Renoir, Moulin de la Galette, 1878

Some interesting facts about Pierre-Auguste Renoir (4:57 minutes long)

Impressionism: 1870 to 1890

In rolls the 19th century. Impressionism started out in the 1870s and 1880s as an informal series of art sessions among Parisian painters who were independently prominent and the movement is primarily borne out of a shared set of related techniques and approaches to art and painting. The name Impressionism was taken from the celebrated painting titled Impression, Sunrise (Impression, soleil levant), by Claude Monet, an artwork which prompted a critic to coin the term as a satirical article.

The impressionist style of painting focuses on the artist's overall impression of a scene or object, combined with the use of small brush strokes and unmixed primary colors. The resulting effect is an interesting simulation of reflected light on varying surfaces. Impressionistic techniques will be discussed in greater detail in the next post.

Major Impressionist painters were Claude Monet, Pierre Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro and Alfred Sisley. These artists worked together, influenced each other, and exhibited together and independently. Other notable Impressionist artists were Edgar Degas and Paul Cézanne, who also painted in an Impressionist style in the early 1870s.

It is also interesting to note that Édouard Manet, a well-established painter whose work in the 1860s greatly influenced Monet and several others of this group, adopted the Impressionist approach sometime in the mid 1870s as well.

Claude Monet, Impression, Sunrise (Impression, soleil levant), 1872

Oil on canvas, 48 cm × 63 cm

Le bateau atelier (The Boat Studio), 1876

Oil on canvas, 72 x 59.8 cm

Camille Pissarro, Portrait of Félix Pissarro, 1881

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, The Theater Box, 1874