Constructivism Dada Surrealism

Constructivism Dada Surrealism1913 - 1940

HANNAH HOCH

Russian ConstructivismSurrealism. Dada

Not Photography movements, but movements happening in the Art World

that heavily relied on the camera.

Other Art Movements that Influenced Constructivism, Surrealism, and Dada

Cubism

Expressionism

Futurism

• Cubism was one of the most influential visual art styles of the early twentieth century.

• Created by Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881–1973) and Georges Braque (French, 1882–1963) in Paris between 1907 and 1914.

• Art critic described the work of this time as being made up of "cubes."

Cubism (France) 1907 – 1914Pi

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• Avant-garde Movement - new and experimental ideas and methods in art, music, or literature

• The key concept underlying Cubism is that the essence of an object can only be captured by showing it from multiple points of view simultaneously

The Cubist painters rejected the concept that art should copy nature, or that they should adopt the traditional techniques of perspective, modelling, and foreshortening.

Wassily Kandinsky, 1923• An artistic style

• Depict subjective emotions and responses that objects and events arouse in him

• Personal, spontaneous self-expression

• Use of distortion and exaggeration for emotional effect

• Exaggeration, primitivism (basic/simple), and fantasy

• Use of intense colour, agitated brushstrokes, and disjointed space

• Seen in dance, cinema, literature and the theatre

Expressionism 1905 – 1930 Germany

Edvard Munch, 1893August Macke, 1913

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, 1912 Erich Heckel, 1919

• The artists vision of the object or scene• Not representing the real world, but rather an impression• They wanted instead to emphasize the two-dimensionality of the canvas. • They reduced and fractured objects into geometric forms

• The Futurists rejected anything old and looked towards a new Italy.

• Past culture in Italy was felt as particularly oppressive.

• It emphasized and glorified themes of the future, speed, technology, youth and violence, and objects such as the car, the aeroplane and the industrial city.

• Futurists proposed instead was an art that celebrated the modern world of industry and technology

Futurism 1909 – 1916, Italy

Umberto Boccioni

painting, sculpture, ceramics, graphic design, industrial

design, interior design, urban design, theatre, film,

fashion, textiles, literature, music,

architecture

• The Futurists practiced in every medium of art, including:

Umberto Boccioni 1882 - 1916

Giacomo Balla

• Dada was born out of a pool of avant-garde painters, poets and filmmakers who flocked to neutral Switzerland before and during WWI.

• Dada sounded the same in every language, and it didn’t make any sense

• Dadaists were always opposed to authoritarianism, and to any form of group leadership or guiding ideology.

• Rebelled against what they saw as cultural snobbery, bourgeois convention, and political support for the war.

• Held events, spontaneous readings, performances, and exhibitions.

Dada 1916 – 1924Ge

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Hugo Ball Max Ernst

• Influenced by ideas and innovations from Cubism, Futurism, Constructivism, and Expressionism

John Heartfield

• Medium/methods was wildly diverse

Kurt Schwitters Francis Picabia

• Ranging from performance art to poetry, photography, sculpture, painting and collage

• Dada's aesthetic, marked by its mockery of materialistic and nationalistic attitudes, proved a powerful influence on artists in many cities, including Berlin, Hanover, Paris, New York and Cologne, all of which generated their own groups.

• After the war, many of the artists who had participated in the Dada movement began to practice in a Surrealist mode.

• Similar to Dada, Surrealism was characterized by a profound disillusionment with and condemnation of the Western emphasis on logic and reason.

“We had lost confidence in our culture. Everything had to be demolished. At the Cabaret Voltaire we began by shocking common sense, public opinion, education, institutions, museums, good taste, in short, the prevailing order.”

- Marcel Janco

René MagritteAndré Masson

Joan Miró László Moholy-Nagy Meret Oppenheim

Francis Picabia Man Ray

Hans Richter Kurt Schwitters

Yves Tanguy Tristan Tzara

Hans Arp Hugo Ball

André BretonSalvador Dalí

Giorgio De ChiricoMarcel Duchamp

Max Ernst Sigmund Freud George Grosz

Raoul Hausmann John HeartfieldHannah Höch

Well known Dadaists/Surrealists:

• Most of these artists were very young and had “opted out” of the war, seeking refuge in New York, Zurich and Barcelona

• Word was spread by publications/manifestos rather than organized exhibitions

• Used all forms of expression – cabaret performances, meetings, visual art, writing and riots

• Avant-garde, rebels

• More focused on political and social concerns

• Migrated also to New York, where it was more theoretical, less political

Collage: Pasting cut pieces of objects together such as train tickets, maps, rubbish – found objects

Photomontage: similar to collage, but using actual photographs from the media

Readymades: manufactured objects as “art” – turning into sculpture

Assemblage: 3D versions of collage

A movement where we saw artists using photography and the camera in their work.

They were not trained photographers, they had no allegiance to photography.

They didn’t care if photography was art or not.

They recognized the camera as a symbol of progress and industrialization.

Why is this important to photography?DADAISTS HEAVILY USED THE CAMERA: WE SEE THE FIRST INSTANCE OF COLLAGE!

Outspoken DadaistLiked to stir up controversyQuestion, what is art?

Break down barriers of high art!Redefining art

“To all appearances, the artist acts like a mediumistic being who, from the labyrinth beyond time and space, seeks his way out to a clearing.”

Marcel Duchamp

Created a personal brand of Cubism combining earthy colours, mechanical and visceral forms, and a depiction of movement which owes as much to Futurism as to Cubism.

Duchamp did very little painting after 1912, creating the first of his 'readymades' in 1913.

These were ordinary objects of everyday use, sometimes slightly altered, and designated works of art by the artist.

The concept of the readymade became associated with an assault on the conventional understanding of the nature and status of art.

Hannah Hoch

Known for her political collage and photomontage works

Hannah Höch appropriated and rearranged images and text from the mass media to critique the failings of the German Government 1910 – 1920.

She rejected the German government, but often focused her criticism more narrowly on gender issues, and is recognized as a pioneering feminist artist.

Höch drew inspiration from the collage work of Pablo Picasso and fellow Dada exponent Kurt Schwitters, and her own compositions share with those artists a similarly dynamic and layered style.

Höch preferred metaphoric imagery to the more direct, text-based confrontational approach.

John Heartfield, German 1891 –1968

A pioneer of modern photomontage.

Worked in Germany and Czechoslovakia between WWI – WWII.

He developed a unique method of appropriating and reusing photographs to powerful political effect.

Heartfield's images forecasted and reflected the chaos Germany experienced in the 1920s and '30s as it slipped toward social and political catastrophe.

The impact of Heartfield's images was so great that they helped transform photomontage into a powerful form of mass communication.

Heartfield devised photo-based symbols for the Communist Party of Germany, allowing the organization to compete with the Nazis' swastika.

His images of clenched fists, open palms, and raised arms all implied bold action and determination.

He chose recognizable press photographs of politicians or events from the mainstream illustrated press. He then disassembled and rearranged these images to radically alter their meaning.

Raoul Hausmann 1886–1971

German Dada artist, poet, photographer and polemicist.

Influenced by the Cubists

Co-founder of the Berlin Dada movement 1917

Greatly interested in photography and made photograms, rayograms and pictograms.

Consistently blurring the boundaries between visual art, poetry, music, and dance.

• Branched out of Dadaism

• Started in Paris, 1924 by Andre Breton

• Surrealism became an international intellectual and political movement.

• Drew upon the private world of the mind, traditionally restricted by reason and societal limitations, to produce surprising, unexpected imagery.

• Influenced by dream studies of Freud and political ideas of Marx

Surrealism – Early 1920’s

Joan Miró Picasso

The surrealist movement originated in Paris in the 1920s, drawing its members from many countries in Europe and beyond.

… desire, the sole motivating principle of the world, the only master humans must recognise.

- André Breton

Although it began as a literary movement, it soon developed to encompass the visual arts, engaging with ideas from psychoanalysis, philosophy and politics as well.

The surrealists opposed what they saw as the stultifying and oppressive aspects of society, and celebrated a vision of the world in which men’s imaginations and desires were set free.

Surrealism: Pure psychic automation by which one intends to express verbally, in writing or by other method, the real functioning of the mind. Dictation by thought or in the absence of any other control exercised by reason, and beyond any aesthetic or moral preoccupation.

“Surrealism is based on the belief … in the omnipotence of dreams, in the undirect play of thoughts.”

Manifesto of Surrealism

Photography came to occupy a central role in Surrealist activity. In the works of Man Ray and Maurice Tabard. The use of such procedures as double exposure, combination printing, montage, and solarization dramatically evoked the union of dream and reality.

Photography and Surrealism

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Other photographers used techniques such as rotation or distortion to render their images uncanny.

Hans Bellmer obsessively photographed the mechanical dolls he fabricated himself, creating strangely sexualized images

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André KertészHans Bellmer

Man Ray 1922

Rayograph – said he invented it.

Surrealism – had a range. Some was realistic, some was pure fantasy

Photograms

Solarization

The photograph was taken with a two-hour-long exposure that beautifully captures the complex texture and diversity of materials that lay atop the glass surface.

Solarization: image is reversed (negative) when exposed to white light in darkroom

Distortion: used mirrors and lenses to distort the human form

Photograms: camera-less images

Assemblage: 3D versions of collage

DaliSurrealist, worked with photography and painting

Other surrealist artists to consider:

MagritteMiro

Most likely Visually Influenced by Cubism

Made Art for social purposes

Emerged as Bolsheviks came to power in 1917

“Constructivism” was a term to described Alexander Rodchenko’s work

Wanted viewer to be active viewer

Inspired radical graphic design, cinema, and architecture

Russian Constructivism 1920-1934

Constructivist:

Also used photomontage: less destructive than Dadaists

Technical analysis of modern materials. Not to express beauty, one’s own personal outlook or to represent the world

Focus on construction. “Truth to materials”

Photographs: strong, unique angles, abstract use of light. Paralleled Moholy-Nagy images

RodchenkoWork in sculpture, and collage, made political statementsMade amazing photos with really unique perspectivesStrong compositionsDesigner by training

“One has to take several different shots of a subject, different points of view and in different situations, as if one examined it in the round rather than looked through the same key-hole again and again.”

“Our duty is to experiment”

“In order to educate man to a new longing, everyday familiar objects must be shown to him with totally unexpected perspectives and in unexpected situations. New objects should be depicted from different sides in order to provide a complete impression of the object.

Other Russian Constructivists to consider:

The use of photographs incorporated into collage.

KlutsisLissitzky – graphic design and sculpture

Visual Characteristics of Constructivists

Geometric Shapes

Fragmentation

Text

Layers

Completely different from Realism

Recent Artists Influenced by Constructivist movement:

FemkeAdam Fuss

Maggie TaylorUelsman

Schneider

HockneyKruger

International Avant-garde art movements had a lasting impact on contemporary art and many artists in Postmodernism

Artists heavily relied on the camera for visual experimentation, reference to mass media culture, and for political content

Most of these artists were not formally trained in photography or cared about its history. No allegiance to the medium itself or its place in art.

They did however alter ideas of perspective and composition with the camera and hugely influenced experimentation within the medium