Leading up to Abstraction

1. Leading up to Abstraction

2. 19th Century push for modernism • Avante-garde • Post-impressionists • Cézanne, Seurat, Van Gogh & Gauguin • Rejected the past and trangressed boundaries of conventional artistic practice. • Realism- painting of modern life • Impressionism & Haussmanization of Paris • Abstract Art • Expressive patterns of line, shape, and pure color

3. Gustave Courbet • Leading figure of Realism • Confusion about what “realism” is • Only things of one’s own time are “real” • Focus on experiences & sights of everyday life • Disapprove of traditional & fictional subjects because they were not of the present world • Realists were able to focus on the world around them. Subject matter that had been deemed unworthy of depiction until then

4. Courbet- realism • To be able to translate the customs, ideas, and appearances of my time as I see them – in a word, to create a living art – this has been my aim … The art of painting can consist only in the representation of objects visible and tangible to the painter…, who must apply his personal faculties to the ideas and the things of the period in which he lives …

5. Courbet - realism • I hold also that painting is an essentially concrete art, and can consist only of the representation of things both real and existing … An abstract object, invisible or nonexistent, does not belong to the domain of painting … Show me an angel, and I’ll paint one.

6. Realism Art – courbet & millet

7. Rue Transnonain - Daumier

8. The Third-Class Carriage - Daumier

9. Manet (1863) VSPicasso (1907)

10. Haussmanization • Transformation of medieval Paris into the present modern city (began in 1852) • New: • Street lights • Water & sewer systems • Residential & commercial buildings • Avenues • Paris

11. Impressionism • Modernity is the transitory, the fugitive, the contingent -- Charles Baudelaire • An attempt to capture a fleeting moment, through conveying the elusiveness and impermanence of images and conditions.

12. Impression: sunrise -- monet

13. Van gogh

14. Influential Artists of Abstraction • Gauguin • Turns traditional & Impressionable paintings into abstract • primitivism • Paul Cézanne • Geometric shapes • Kandinsky & Malevich • Abstract paintings

15. Paul Gauguin • Experiment to transform (use of color) • Search for provocative subjects • Moves to Tahiti • Fascination with primitive life and brilliant color

16. Gauguin

17. Paul Cézanne - Prophet of Abstraction • Precursor of Cubism • Rejected Impressionism • Thought its depiction of nature lacked substance and weight • Sought a new way to portray nature and reveal its underlying solidity & order • Concluded nature was composed of geometric shapes • Opened up a new way of painting

18. Cézanne – geometric shapes

19. Kandinsky vs Malevich • Kandinsky • Experimental artist-imprecise visual goals, trial & error, innovations appear gradually • Woe to the artist whose reason interferes with his “inner dictates” while he is working. • Malevich • Conceptual innovator-use art to express ideas & emotions, planned paintings, appear as sudden innovators • The new complexity in the modern development of art, the necessity for the conscious use of scientific geometric methods become clear in the creation of a system of movement for new classical structures.

20. Kandinsky vs Malevich • Kandinsky • Dreamed of abstract art that would originate in nature • “Woe betide him who relies on mathematics - on reason.” • Compared to Cézanne • Malevich • Dreamed of abstract art that rejected nature, instead through mathematics as a systematic approach • “Nowhere in the world of painting does anything grow without a system.” • Compared to Picasso • Founder of Suprematism

21. Kandinsky vs Malevich