After Class, Chapter 13: The Influence of Modern Art

This specific chapter had a lot of useful information in it. The modern era proved to be a time of ferment and change. New inventions were being innovated such as the motorcar, radio, the motion picture, and the airplane. Technology was advancing and these inventions helped better human communication. Five important movements occured that helped artists design more freely and throw out traditional art. These five movements were cubism, futurism, dada, surrealism, and expressionism.

-Cubism: This movement became a new tradition independent of nature. It provided a new way that challenged pictorial art and the typical norm of the human figure was broken. Analytical cubism was a time during this whole movement that was based upon work by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque during 1910-1912. Their paintings had geometric planes with different fragments that were put together to make a whole. Paper collage also came into play during analytical cubism. As this evolved, we then come to Synthetic cubism that began in 1913. Juan Gris became the major painter during this time and was influential of geometric art.

-Futurism: This movement came about when Italian poet Filippo Marinetti published his newspaper Le Figaro in 1909. This became a revolutionary movement that questioned ideas and forms to the new reality, such as war, modern life, and the machine age. Marinetti wanted a typographic revolution that rejected traditional type. The public was outraged by this. Marinetti and his followers wanted to revolt and rebel against traditional art and type. All in all, this movement became very influential and the violent revolution of art made graphic designers rethink the nature of typographic wording.

-Dada: This movement claimed to be anti-art. Artists during this movement rebelled and rejected all tradition because they wanted complete freedom. Hugo Ball began this movement and Marcel Duchamp beamce the prominent figure. The public began blaming people of this movement that they weren't creating art but the artists were mocking it. All in all, this movement pushed negative activities to the limit and the movement died off in 1922. The rejection of art and tradition enriched the visual vocabulary and wiped out traditional art.

-Surrealism: This movement came about in 1924. Artists sought a world of intuition and dreaming. Andre Breton founded this movement and it became a way of thinking and knowing, a way of feeling, and a way of life. Surrealism promoted a poetic faith and showed freedom in intuition and feeling to find an inhibited truth. Giorgio de Chirico was an influential painter during this time. All in all, this movement pioneered a visual vocabulary and most of the work made looks very trippy!

-Expressionism: This movement emerged before WWI. Color, drawing, and proportion was distorted by artists during this movement. Thick paint, bold contour drawing, woodcuts, and lithographs were important media. Many artists rejected the authority of the military, education, and government. Many artists liked to show the negative aspects of the human condition and environment in their work.

One thing I found interesting about this chapter was how solarization was invented for photography thanks to Man Ray. Solarization, I think, looks really cool in photographic images.

I really don't have any questions because I presented on this chapter and read it very carefully.