Your turn #8

Well, there's a lot to talk about, geometric abstraction as a sign of functionality, the thin line between fine and applied art, more importantly, DESIGN AS A DISCIPLINE! Go ahead.

De Stijl

Die Stijl, ("The Style") included a group of Dutch artists in Amsterdam in 1917 (such as painters Piet Mondrian, Theo van Doesburg, the architects Gerrit Rietveld, Pieter Oud, and the poet A. Kok). Its members, working in an abstract style, were seeking laws of equilibrium and harmony applicable both to art and to life. De Stijl's most outstanding painter was Mondrian, whose art was rooted in the mystical ideas of Theosophy. Although influenced by his contact with Analytical Cubism in Paris before 1914, Mondrian thought that it had fallen short of its goal by not having developed toward pure abstraction, or, as he put it, "the expression of pure plastics" (which he later called Neoplasticism). In his search for an art of clarity and order that would also express his religious and philosophical beliefs, Mondrian eliminated all representational components, reducing painting to its elements: straight lines, plane surfaces, rectangles, and the primary colours (red, yellow, and blue) combined with neutrals (black, gray, and white). Van Doesburg, who shared Mondrian's austere principles, launched the group's periodical, De Stijl (1917-32), which set forth the theories of its members.

Your turn #7

 

Besides Dada, my favorite, we reviewed a shower of Twentieth Century "isms," Expressionism, Surrealism, Constructivism, Suprematism, what are your thoughts? 

Grace Barnes rightfully calls my attention to my mixing up Hans Arp's gender. It's a HE. Es tut mir leid. It's not the first time I mix up Arp with this British sculptor  whose work I love.

Now, this is my contention: 20th century art until the 1960's was pretty much female-less art. Cubism, Futurism, Expressionism, Surrealism and Constructivism are phallocentric (though Surrealism is pretty "soft"). Even in America, are there women abstract expressionists? Bourgeois, and Nevelson were more like outsiders. 

During the 60's & 70's a bunch of female artists started exploring alternative materials. Schneeman and Ono, and later Mendieta and Abramovic explored the body. Bourgeois' soft forms were seen as a viable alternative. Then, Eva Hesse opened up a whole gamut of forms and materials. Plastics, fabrics, textiles, ceramics, and "soft" forms, were important explorations in female art. Have to go now... (to be continued).    

List of visuals for the Midterm exam

This is the list of images for the midterm exam. From this list, I'll pick a smaller selection of about 18 images.

1. Cristophe Plantin's Biblia Polyglotta, (1569-1572).
2. Hans Holbein's Imagines Morti, (The Dance of Death)
3. Aldus Manutius's Hypnerotomachia poliphili, (1499).
4. Erhardt Ratdolt's Euclid's Elements of Geometry, (1482).
5. The Nuremberg Chronicle (above) is one of the best documented early printed books (and, being printed in 1493, is an incunabulum).
6. Johannes Gutenberg's Bible, (1450's).
7. Vesalius' De 8. Humani Corporis, (1543).
9. Bodoni's Epithalamia Exoticis Linguis Reddita, (1775).
10. Henry Fox Talbot's The Pencil of Nature, (1844–1846).
11. Felix Nadar's photo of Sarah Bernhardt (the poster girl of the mid-1800's).
12. Walter Crane's Railroad Alphabet, (1865).
13. Owen Jones's The Grammar of Ornament, 1856).
14. Charles Dana Gibson's The First Quarrel, (1914).
15. Howard Pyle's No Haid Pawn, (1887).
16. Ford Madox Brown's Work, (1852-1865)
17. John Everett Millais' Christ in the House of His Parents, (1850).
18. Charles Rennie Mackintosh' s Glasgow school of Arts (1897-1909).
19. A. H. Mackmurdo's chair, (1882).
20. Jan van Krimpen's Deirdre and the Sons of Usnach, (1920).
21. William Morris' The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, (1896).
22. Jules Chéret's Le Pays des Fées, (1889).
23. August Endell's Atelier Elvira, (1898) façade and interior.  
24. Alphonse Mucha's Gismonda, for Sarah Bernhardt's play, (1895).
25. Henri Privat Livemont's Rajah Coffee poster, (1899).
26. Jan Toorop's Psyche (1898).
27. Marcello Dudovich's Poster for Campari, (1901).
28. William H. Bradley's poster for The Chap Book, (1895).
29. The Beggarstaff's Kassama, (1901).
30. Peter Behrens' The Kiss, (1898).

List of Terms for Midterm Exam

This is the list of terms for the midterm exam. Each has a link to Wikipedia. Go by the definition in the first paragraph.

For instance, under Incunabula we have: Incunable, or sometimes incunabulum, plural incunabula or incunables, is a book, or even a single sheet of text, that was printed — not handwritten — before the year 1501 in Europe.

Incunabula
Xylography
Moveable type
Imagines Morti (Danse Macabre)
Humanism
Chromolithography
Punch Magazine
Daguerrotype
Harper's Weekly
The Yellow Book
Arts and Craft
Jugend Magazine
Art Nouveau
Deutscher Wekbund
Futurismo
Plakatstil 
Aestheticism

Surrealism (3)

Though there are some similarities between Yves Tanguy and Salvador Dalí, the styles are perceptibly different. Dali used figuration in his landscapes while Tanguy preferred a quasi-abstract anthropomorphic renditions.

______________________

The painting immediately above is Tanguy's Indefinite Divisibility (1945), a Visual for the Final Exam.

Your turn #6