HA 261: Russian Suprematism (finish) and Dadaism

Russian Suprematism

• avant-garde: before-guard: Maverick form, very new, explore new territory

Malevich

Black Square, 1915

• Art could be self-sufficient, doesn’t need to refer to real world
• constructs elemental form: colour and shape
• Not contaminated by representation
• Empty void on painted surface
• Square could be considered as zero form: 0.10 exhibition
• Hung across a corner: Replacing religious icon
• Rough edge. Not pristine. Not hiding that it is painted.
• White showing through underneath

Supremastist Painting (Eight Red Rectangles), 1915

• Not exactly parallel
• Weighted. Slipping down.
• tension between figures and white background. Oscillate back and forth.
• Tension on right hand side: puncture edge
• simple rectangular forms.
• Pure form, pure colour, pure shape

Suprematist Composition: White on White, 1918

• Post dates Russian Revolution. Over through of the Tsar.
• Ideal form for revolution. Culture and art wanting to start over from zero.
• Square on square. Foreground: titled, different shade of white.
• No pure white. Texture.
• Freeing art from need of representing world

Dadaism (Zurich, NY, Germany)

• Begins in a restaurant.
• Neutral country. Artists collect there. (Also in NY)
• Ger: Reacting to atrocity of the war

Zurich

• Performance, collage
• Personal protest against what happened in the war
• Nihilism

Hugo Ball

Karawane, 1916

• Garments worn by religious figures
• Cardboard: blue shiny
• Seemingly non-sensicle
• Attempt to destroy language
• Cadence to piano playing. Sinister.
• Men robotic. Women fluid.

Hans Arp

Collage Arranged According to the Laws of Chance, 1916 – 1917

• Pieces dropped onto background
• Imbalance to the work. Unevenly spaced.

NY 

Marcel Duchamp

Bicycle Wheel, 1913

• Ready-mades. Common found object. Selects for use in art.
• Non-functional machine. Strips objects of utilitarian function.

Fountain, 1917

• Take away everyday value but giving new meaning
• Paid the entrance fee of $6 ($128 today due to inflation), under pseudonym R.Mutt. The exhibition would put anything on display. Duchamp was on the panel, when reject Duchamp resigns. Writes in “The Blind Man” in defence of R.Mutt.
• Mott – plumbing company. Buys urinal from them.
• More feminine. Softened. Curvilinear lines. Issues of gender.
• Ironic title

From Weimar to Nazism

Weimar Republic 1919 – 1933

Economics

• 1918: Germany lost WW1 and condition for surrender decided by the allies at the Treaty of Versailles
  • Surrender resource-rich colonies
  • Pay enormous monetary compensation to their enemies
• Weimar govt. printed more money to finance war debt = hyperinflation + massive unemployment, drop in living standards, deep national resentment against allies.
• 1929: Wall Street Crash hits Germany especially hard as it relied heavily on US loans
• 1931: Unemployment

Politics

• Pessimism lead upper class, artists and intellectuals to various forms of decadence. Lower classes often forced into liver of crime, theft, prostitution.
• Berlin symbolises these contradictions. One of the World’s “Sin Cities”
• Desperate economic circumstances divided political parties into extremes
• Lacking leadership, frequent violent conflicts
• Weimar era begins with the appointment of Hitler

Culture

• Dramatic rise in productivity
  • Expressionism, Dadaism
  • Cabaret culture
  • Robert Weiner
• Dadaism: Anti-war cultural movement began in Switzerland (1916 – 1920) protested barbarianism of war

Expressionism

• Leading art movement, roots before Weimar Republic
• Lines typically not straight. Denial of order
• Nosferatu 1922: Use of shadow distortion

Weimar Cinema

• UFA: Super studio
  • Didn’t have to leave for anything
  • Vested interest from govt.: Ideals and income
  • Privatised in 1921
  • 600 films a year
  • 1 mil customers everyday
  • Serious threat to Hollywood
    • Watching German films + thought the films were equal or superior
  • Vast, technically superior and inventive
  • Expensive super-productions (Metropolis) – Financial decline + receivership by 1927
  • New studio head Alfred Hugenberg. Sympathetic to Nazism. Produced propaganda films after 1933.
  • Gobels controlled film content through politics.

Genre Motifs

• Group collectivism as a form of social activism/ critique
• Kameradschaft (1931)
• Emil + the Dectectives (1931)
• M (193!)
• Parallel social order
• Similar structures/ functions across social groups
• Desire for social order/ social responsibility
• Adherence to decisive leadership

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Nazi Cinema (1933 – 1945)

The Propaganda Machine

• Goebbels head of Nazi Germany’s Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda
• Aimed to win loyalty and cooperation of German people
• all aspects of social life subject to official censorship
• 15% contained overt Nazi propaganda but films accounted for 20% cinema admissions

Pro-Nazi Propaganda

• Hitlerjung Quex (Steinhoff, 1933)
  • Celebrates spirit of sacrifice among Hitler Youth
  • Young protagonist defies his communist father to server the Nazi cause

Anti-Semetic Propaganda

• Jud Suss (Harlan, 1940)
  • Historical costume melodrama
  • Perpetuates corrosive stereotypes in line with nazi ideology
  • internationally successful

Entertainment Cinema

• Comedies, musicals, fantasy produced
• Hollywood-esque musicals: Frau Luna
• Münchhausen
  • Budget of 6.5 mil Reichmarks
  • 3rd film in AGFA colour
  • Politically innocuous, lavish production values

Cubism (finish) + Italian Futurism + Russian Suprematism

Synthetic Cubism

collage (coller = to paste)

papier collé = pasted paper

jouer = to play

Filippo Marinetti

non-objective art; abstract art

0.10 exhibition (Dec 1915)

Bolsheviks

Analytic Cubism

• Geometric shapes replacing figures
• Multiple perspectives at same time compressed
• Neutral colour palette
• Multiple dimensions represented through varying light sources

Synthetic Cubism

• Taking flat surface and adding with visual information
• Multiple types of materials
• Technique of collage

Picasso

Still Life with Chair Caning, 1912

• Rope glued to edge of canvas
• Juxtaposes objects from real world and painting illusionistic world. Sketchily.
• Printed chair caning, outlined with rope, painting on top of

Glass and Bottle of Suze, 1912

• Text, wallpaper, blank construction paper, actual label of bottle
• Main surface used as a wall in a cafe, signs and posters pasted over
• Cup – 2 and 3D
• White centre paper represents bottle
• Black shapes representing hands. Proportion to the bottle.
• Newspaper relative to day and time when piece was created. Highly politicised. Cholera epidemic.
• Taking everyday life and putting it into the craft.
• “Displace reality” – Picasso

Italian Futurism

• Militant group of Italian artists
• Multiple media. Adopted Analytic cubist technique.
• Analysis of form. Breakdown of form.
• Analytic Cubism with a sense of energy.
• Function of manifesto: To be extreme and call attention to ideas
• Glorified war, anarchy, killing. Unconstrained liberty.
• Efficiency with machines. Abandoning traditions.

Umberto Boccioni

Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, 1913, bronze

• Not interested in anatomical accuracy
• Sense that sculpture has been freed from the block
• Bronze: traditional sculptures used, but Boccioni used it for mechanical, machine-like forms
• Alienation from human form from lack of arms
• Muscular but mechanical form

Dynamism of a Cyclist, 1913

• Movement in 2D
• Figure is central.
• Light areas: not figure
• Rounded forms = velocity of bike. Movement flattened.

Severini

Dynamic Hieroglyphic of Bal Tabarin, 1912

• French dance hall in Paris
• Feverish motion of chaos
• Kaleidoscopic. Break down of form.
• Female central figure. Gentleman right bottom foreground
• Hieroglyph: picture that represents a word, Individual parts: symbols.

Armored Train in Action, 1915

• Celebrating war. Opportunity for artistic creation.
• Faceless figures aiming guns off canvas, tank aiming the same way
• Streamline, aestheticised. Nature.
• Steam, smoke, wind
• Palette reduced to blues – yellows. Small amount of brown.
• Brightest part is section most affected by violence.

Balla

Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash, 1912

• Much more obvious subject matter. Dog on a leash, hem of dress.
• Less violent.
• Motion of leash, feet. Forms not fragmented. Study of movement.
• Same objective recreated over and over in different places

Cubism

Musée d’Ethnographie du Trocadéro (now Musée de l’Homme)

Primitive, primitivism

Analytic Cubism

trompe l’oeil = fool the eye

Synthetic cubism

Collage (coller = to paste)

papier collé = pasted paper

jouer = to play

Picasso

Portrait of Gertrude Stein, 1905-06

• Stein: Ex-Patriot. Born in America, living + working in Paris during the WWs
• Female art patron. Innovative writer. Extremely experimental artist. Hyperaware of construction of painting.
• Private salon. Left bank of Paris. Collecting European art.
• Face rendered almost sculptural. Mask. Iberian sculpture from the Louvre. Ovular eyes. Monumental form fills canvas. Hands are not precise.

Les Demoiselle d’Avignon, 1907

• About halfway through visits Musée d’Ethnographie du Trocadéro
• Faces on the right appear like masks.
• 5 prostitues in a brothel in Barcelona. Confrontational. 5 instead of 1 looking at he viewer. Aggressive stances.
• Sex and commerce. Earlier sketches contain male figures. Female figures are more curvilinear than angular. Break down of form. Considered unfinished.
• Draped curtains are broken up in the background through exploration of space. Shards.
• Deliberately disorienting.
• Objects shown from multiple perspectives but flattened.
• Colonial perspectives on these cultures.
• Larger than life size.

Anne Chave’s “New Encounters with Les Demoiselles d’Avignon: Gender, Race, and the Origins of Cubism: 

Thesis:

• Different perspective of scholars. Historiography.
• A lot of art historians and critics were white males they had bias opinion on intention of artist
• Insertion of new view from Chave.

Significance of role as “a heterosexual, feminist, female viewer”?

• Overlapping of types of women.
• Proof of different opinion through experiences
• Helps the reader understand perspective and background knowledge
• Specificity of critical opinion
• Grounding opinion in her voice

Roles of gender, race, and class

• Gender: Women – Aggressive, not passive.
• Links between Olympia.
• Aggressiveness, ugliness of pose. Opinion of Africans.

Other points

• Piece wasn’t specifically made for her to see. Private life made public.
• Legal but not on view – Courbet. Irked people.

Picasso

Three Women, 1908

• Use of cubes and triangles as basis for forms.
• Cannot necessarily tell which parts belong to which figures.
• Lower right hand corner: passage
• Attention to rules of representation. Formally trained but rejected it consciously. Tenants of representation.
• Echoing of Les Demoiselles. Accumulation of geometric shapes.

Analytic Cubism

• Analysis of form: basic geometric parts.
• Monochromatic
• Appearance of shattering

George Braque

• Called into service for WWI

Houses at L’Estaque, 1908

• Muted green, brown, greyish colours
• Subject matter: landscape, house, trees.
• Use of line and tone to create forms. Basic shading.
• Not interested in creating illusionistic space.
• Trees cut off dramatically

Violin and Palette, 1909

• Nail: Illusionistic poke out into space
• Violin, sheet music (roof), curtain
• Purposefully tricking the eye but giving a lot of information
• Many different perspectives.
• Right hand side: Most fragmented. Shards of colour.
• Long narrow vertical painting, Radical.

The Portuguese, 1911

• French cafe, vague male figure and acoustic
• Smokiness of the cafe.
• Dissecting form.
• Not meant to be exact illusionistic representation of real world.
• Blended forms.
• Inclusion of text and numbers: Poster of musician. Layering.

Picasso

Ma Jolie, 1911 – 12

• Shapes float over monochromatic background.
• Use of black line and shading from dark to light.
• Appearance of feet or hand. Spotting the figure as the background is more impasto than geometric.

The Mexican Film Industry (1940 – 1950)

Number of films created

• 1940: 27
• 1940: 124

Mexican society

• increased political stability
  • Camacho (40 – 46)
  • Valdés (46 – 52)
• Rapid industrialisation & modernisation
• Strong economic growth (the “Mexican Miracle”)
• Shift of demographics from rural to urban areas

Mexican/US Relations

• Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, est. 1940
  • Mexico receives film stock, filmmaking equipment, and production support from US govt.
• WWII provides numerous opportunities for the growth of Mexican (film) industry

With onset of WW2 , Mexican industry has:

• decreased composition
• increased US support for film industry
• economic opportunity
• a growing audience at home and abroad
• unprecedented political stability and state support

To close “gloss gap” Mexico’s film industry adapted the Hollywood filmmaking model including:

• a studio system featuring marketable stars
• powerful producers
• recognisable genres
• well developed exhibition and distribution networks
• conventions of editing and storytelling

Mexican cinema and the state (40 – 45)

• Government enforced mandatory exhibition of Mexican films in all Mexican theatres.
• 41: implemented first censorship regulations in 20 years
  • all foreign films must be dubbed or subtitled in spanish
  • images deemed ‘offensive’ to Mexico were banned
• 42: Banco Cinematografico, a public/private partnership to fund film production
• 43: World’s leading Spanish-language cinema
  • Mexican films, starts, and genres popular across Latin America, Spain, and in the USA
  • Mexican studio films commonly idealised the Mexican nation, its people, and its customs. I.E. “Indianist” cinema

Dir. Emilio “El Indio” Fernandez

• Indian heritage, worked as an actor in Hollywood
• Often collaborated with Figueroa
• Known for films that idealised the Mexican countryside and indigenous people

Genres

• Melodrama prevalent
• ‘Cantinflas’ nonsense language poked fun at Mexican society and institutions.
• Mario Moreno: the Charlie Chaplin of Mexico

Mexican cinema and the state (45 – 50)

• After WWII, faces several challenges
  • Decreased demand, and assistance
  • Increased competition
• Govt. responds with subsidies and strengthened protectionism
  • 46: Cinema exempt from income tax
  • 47: State begins buying theatres and studios from US investors

Postwar Genres

• Darker side of Mexico’s modernisation
  • Nightclubs, brothels, city streets
  • Female protagonist ensnared by urban life
  • Mix of Noir, melodrama, and musical

45<, state subsidies/ protectionism contributed to a growing crisis in national film industry

• FPWU “closed door policy” prevented new talent from entering industry
• BNC policies encourages production of cheap, formulaic films

Prewar Mexican Cinema (1931 – 1940)

The Mexican Revolution

• Pres. Porfirio Díaz (1877 – 11)
  • Prior to rev. and leading up to is the long dictatorship of Díaz, difference between rich and poor classes developed. Main interest – making Mexico attractive to foreign investment. Tax free foreign investment. Kept wages low. Made unions illegal.
• Pres. Francisco Madero (1911 – 13)
  • After rev. Madero got unions and strike to be allowed. Not enough progress was made in the short period of time.
• Victoriano Huerta (1913 – 14)
  • Huerto nicknamed the jackal and the usurper. Worked with US military to overthrow Madero. Assumed Pres. as military dictatorship.

Plan of Gudalupe (1913)

• Delegitimized Huerta’s presidency
• Constitutional Army to restore constitutional government

Inconsistent production until presidency of Lázaro Cárdenas (1934 – 1940)

• provided subsidies for studies
• CLASA studios

Santa (Antonio Moreno, 1931)

• First sound film
• Melodrama of young rural woman forced into prostitution in the big city after taking a solider as a lover and being abandoned by him.
• Sound film but long sections without.

Production by year

• 32: 6
• 33 – 36: 20+ each year
• 37: 38
• 38: 57 – anomaly
• 39: 37

Cárdenas support labour and formation of unions.

• UTECM
• CTM

Redes (The Wave, 1934)

• Dir. Fred Zinnermann, Emilio Gómez Muriel
• Strike to improve wages. Fishermen.
• Low budget, funded by government
• Wears its politics on its sleeve
• Only 1 hour long
• Pro-union

Production dominated by commercially oriented films

• One-off productions for quick profit.
• E.g. Comedias Rancheras genre

Comedias Rancheras Genre

• Rural settings
• Plot and style based on early 1900s musical theatre
• Folkloric themes, popular music
• Romance and happy endings
• Conservative genre that challenged Cárdenas’ more liberal agenda
• Recalled a pro-Revolutionary time of peace
• Ignores the Revolution, 1930s land reform
• 38 films in1937: more than half are folkloric or nationalistic in theme
• Signals growing “detachment from reality” in Mexican cinema. Golden Age.
• Nationalism rooted in a rural, indigenous “mexicanidad”

Allá en el ranche grande (Out on the big ranch) 1936

• dir. Fernando de Fuentes
• charro – singing cowboy stock character
• José, the charro, protects his fiancee, Eulalia, from attention of Felipe, the ranch owner
• All returns to normal by end – status quo maintained
• Internation success (esp. in Latin America)
• Tito Guízar became an international star
• 28 imitations followed over the next couple of years.

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Gabriel Figueroa

Cinematographer

• Dual artistic/ technical role
• Responsible for look of the film
• Collaborates closely with the director throughout filming
• Head of the camera and lighting departments

Biography

• 1907, Mexico City
• Teen: studied painting and worked in a portrait studio
• 1930s: left MC and went to Hollywood to train in cinematography. Government-funded.

Strongly influenced by Mexican Muralism

• Government -supported artistic movement
• Founded on belief that art has a social and idealogical function
• Sought to create ‘authentic’ Mexican art.

Big Three: Diego Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueiros.

• Figueroa is the fourth
• All committed to portraying indigenous and Spanish heritage and celebrating the Mexican people

Style

• Dramatic contrasts of light and dark
• Deep focus photography
• Low horizons
• Billowing clouds (infrared filters)
• Facial photography emphasising the heroism of peasant and the beauty of Mexican stars.

Let’s Go with Pancho Villa! (1936)

• Dr. Fernando de Fuentes
• Not “detached from reality”; openly critical of Revolution
• Produced during an “experimental” period in Mexican cineman prior to heightened commercialism
• Political “message” film
• First film made at CLASA studios
• Support from Cárdenas govt. (money and material)
• 1mil pasos, went bankrupt, govt. saved it by giving them the pass.

HA 261 – Revision Notes

Tomorrow is our first exam. This is my first ever History of Art exam and the first exam I have taken in 2 years so I can safely say this is a fairly nerve-wracking experience. To help with this our tutor has given us a clear layout of the exam and we have gone through practice questions as a class which helped immensely. The greatest struggle I have had would be a cross between the French language and remembering dates. In the exam we are allowed the dates of the pieces to be within 10 years of the correct date so I have managed to group the pieces almost perfectly by their movement. From the revision I have done for this exam I have learnt that I am without a doubt a visual learner.

This exam will cover the late 18th – early 20th century art:

• Neoclassicism: 1780/ 1810 (France)
• Romanticism: 1810 (Spain), 1830 (England)
• Realism: 1830 (France), 1860 (America)
• Second Empire Paris: 1860 (France)
• Impressionism: 1870 (France)
• Post-Impressionism: 1880 (France)
• Arts and Crafts: 1880 (England)
• Art Nouveau: 1910 (America)
• Fauvism: 1910 (France)
• German Expressionism: 1910 (Germany)
  • Der Blaue Reiter
  • Die Brücke
• Prairie Style: 1910 (America)
• Photo-Seccession: 1910 (America)

 

TD 313 – Dress Making Process Part 1

The wool is dyed and then left out to dry overnight.

Once the wool is dry it is then brushed together.

The same method of wet felting is followed.

Once the wet felting is complete, the same technique of shrinking the hat is applied to the dress: hot water and force.

The dress is then left to dry before trying it on and stretching the fibres to fit.

SCUL 349 – Styrofoam Aluminium Piece Being Removed

TD 313 – Hat Making Process Part 3

Following the standard procedures of creating felt I made the pattern shape of the hat and then used hot water and force to shrink it to the correct size.

To create the space for the folds at the back I began to shape the brim and cut the appropriate sections away.

So for the meantime I have the basic shape created and the next part is for the decorations to be added.