Characteristics of Expressionism - Term Paper Example

Expressionism Art started in the late 19th and early 20th in Germany. Expressionism Art is the distortion of real objects and individuals to show extreme emotion. Four famous painters that used the Expressionism style are Van Gogh, El Greco, Edvard Munch, and Picasso. Expressionism was right before World War I. This was the era of disillusionment. The disillusionment was combined with a new emotional awareness. Expressionism Art depicted the extreme emotions of the time. Vivid colors, rough textures, and exaggerated lines literally expressed the artist’s emotion. From Munch’s The Scream to Picasso’s Guernica, Expressionism Art conveys a strong message, not only for the artist, but the audience as well. The four paintings that evoke strong emotions and are representative of Expressionism have been chosen from Van Gogh, El Greco, Edvard Munch, and Picasso. Starry Night is one of Vincent Van Gogh’s famous paintings. Although much ado has been made about the stars and moon in this painting, the ominous black tree figure can also hold meaning. El Greco’s View of Toledo has been compared to Starry Night. While there are similarities, the ominous storm approaching the city in El Greco’s painting evokes a fear not found in Van Gogh’s painting. Pablo Picasso’s Guernica is a painting about the German bombing of the Basque town of Guernica. This collision of objects shows the chaos of war. Finally Edvard Munch’s The Scream shows a man with his hands on his cheeks and mouth wide open. This painting stirs up feelings of a primal loss of control ending in a wrenching scream. All of these paintings use different techniques to elicit emotions from the audience. Expressionism is a broad term. The Expressionism movement that produced Expressionism Art was founded in Germany and Austria in the early 20th century (Bassie 2008:7). Expressionism Art is any type of art that uses distorted means to express a feeling. While the movement started in the early 20th century, many other artists from the late 19th century were included due to their painting style. Vincent Van Gogh was one of these artists, despite having died before the 20th century. El Greco created View of Toledo in the late 16th century, but is included in this paper due to the emotions of foreboding the painting creates. Pablo Picasso was considered an Expressionist due to his art, but he created his art long after the beginning of the 20th century. Most of these artists were influenced by war, especially World War I. The awesomeness of the devastation created strong emotions. Whatever the reason, the artist had to convey strong emotions to create an Expressionist piece of art. In order to evoke emotions from an audience, the artist must use different techniques than the ones used in the past. Bold color was one way to create an emotional picture. Martha Schwendener (2007) explains: Nationality, however, often had less to do with van Gogh’s reception than the shocking rawness of his work. “Permit me to be scared stiff,” Paul Klee said after seeing van Gogh’s paintings in Munich in 1908. Similarly, the German Expressionist Emil Nolde initially considered van Gogh’s work “a bit crazy,” although van Gogh’s approach eventually taught him that “each color has a soul of its own.” Van Gogh used colors differently than other artists. The use of the bold, muted, or dark colors evoked emotion from the viewer. Many of Van Gogh’s paintings made people feel dread, darkness, or even the craziness of the painting. Another example is Picasso’s Guernica. Picasso: suppressed color because he felt color would distract from the impact of the painting. "There was certainly a long tradition that equated line with intellect and color with emotion," adds Failing. "And so, to not bring in the whole element of color and its associations with emotion and the sensual, in a way makes it a tour-de-force on another level." (Guernica n.d.) Although this painting only uses blue, black, and white, the colors give the surreal feeling or unfeeling of war. The color in an Expressionism painting evokes different feelings for different individuals. A texture can also impact a viewer in an Expressionism piece of art. In Guernica “He added color, pattern and texture with scraps of wallpaper” (Guernica n.d.). The texture is important in paintings, because flat prints might not create as much emotion. Sharp slashes in a painting evoke dark emotions. Small swirls might suggest care taken by the artists. Edvard Munch liked to use different textures. He compared smooth textures as feeling like they were machine made (Prideaux 2007:53). Expressionism artists like Picasso and Munch liked to have rough texture in order to expresses their emotions on the medium used. Sharp lines are also another way an artist shows emotions. A sharp line can contorted and twist like in Guernica and The Scream. Sharp lines in Expressionism Art do not conform to what is known, but what is unknown. Sharp dark lines from Starry Night are not always perpendicular, vertical, or horizontal. The slight curve of a line here and there is present in El Greco’s View of Toledo. The important part of sharp lines is the feelings they created in the painting. The subject of an Expressionism piece of art is also emotional. Guernica is an emotional piece about the real bombing of the town Guernica (Berger 1993: 169). Munch’s The Scream is about a man screaming with despair. Starry Night is about a dark night with stars. While some individuals might feel comfortable under the stars, many are afraid of the darkness. El Greco made normal subjects emotional. El Greco’s: ecstatic religious work was simply beyond the bounds of reason and good taste. Only the advent of modernism convinced the world of the value of the artist’s emotional intensity and radical distortions of space, form, and color. (Stevens 2003) Although some subjects can be extreme, many Expressionism artists use everyday subjects. The artist’s feelings about the subject are what make a piece of art Expressionism. Expressionism can also be interpreted through symbolism. Van Gogh’s Starry Night can be interpreted as an ominous painting with the nighttime theme and dark figure in the foreground. Dormant (2009) thought: All – stars, air currents, hills and mist – become part of the pictures irresistible movement from left to right, ineffectually checked only by the tip of the church steeple just breaching the line of blue hills, and by the mass of deep green cypresses in the foreground that writhe upward like tongues of fire or hands clasped in prayer. All nature is in turmoil, but still the village sleeps unawares below. The symbolism of Expressionism Art is in the eye of the beholder. Another example is in Guernica. According to art historian, Patricia Failing, "Picasso was very properly trained in the grand tradition of painting, allegorical painting about universal themes: the horrors of war, the massacres of the innocents. Characters that typically appear in these paintings reappear in Picassos paintings as well. Theres usually quite clearly a suffering woman, someone whos screaming, a woman with a child whos been injured, or may even be dead. And to see that Picasso was able to take that traditional academic motif and actually rework it and make it relevant again to this particular time and this particular circumstance, I think is really one of his great achievements in this painting." (Guernica n.d.) Another individual might interpret the painting a different way. Citizens of Guernica might be more horrified than an American. The emotions evoked by the symbolism are unique to the viewer. The four artists will now be examined in the terms above, color, textures, sharp lines, subject, and symbolism. The first artist is Van Gogh and his painting, Starry Night. This painting is one of Van Gogh’s most famous. Dormant (2009) explains: Van Gogh painted in the last years of his life, every millimetre of the canvas is given equal visual weight in terms of the intensity of the colour, dynamic movement, and paint texture. The things of the earth (fields, trees, water and buildings) interpenetrate those of the sky (clouds, sun, moon and stars). This statement is concerning the dramatic dark colors that are contrasted by the light colors. The texture is swirling with a chaotic frenzy. The symbolic nature of this painting varies depending on the viewer. A personal interpretation is a sleeping peaceful night for a village due to the lack of knowledge of the evil lurking in the darkness outside. Van Gogh’s Starry Night evokes emotions of dread and fear. El Greco’s View of Toledo is foreboding. The scene in this painting is a view of the city Toledo. Clouds are racing across the sky. Dark and light colors clash on the canvas. A storm is bearing down on the town. The rough texture makes the town stand out more. Symbolically View of Toledo evokes the feeling of being overrun, or about to be defeated. The black clouds behind the city are like a swarm of locusts bearing down on the city. This painting creates dread or a sick feeling in one’s stomach. El Greco gives the viewer a strong emotion through this painting. Edvard Munch shows his Expressionism side through the painting The Scream. This painting is of a person standing on a bridge screaming. The dark colors show the sun setting. Texture shows the passion used to create this painting. The elongated or exaggerated features of the individual can cause the viewer to feel uneasy. The hands placed on either side of the face can symbolize an individual trying to hold on to their head in frustration. The open mouth that is screaming reminds one of a primal scream. The scream is being done in order to make the individual sane. Most individuals recognized the need to scream with frustration at one time or another. The Scream evokes the feeling of frustration. Picasso’s Guernica is a painting about the bombing of Guernica by the Germans. This painting was in black and white. Picasso felt that color would have taken away from this painting. The texture was rough. The subject matter was war. Symbolically Picasso put many themes into the painting. However: As Guernica neared completion, Picasso added a single image of twentieth century technology. According to Llorens: "In Spanish, an electric bulb is called bombia, and bombia is like the diminutive of bomb. So, bomba-bombia is a verbal poetic metaphor for the terrifying power of technology to destroy us." (Guernica n.d.)ooHhHH The thought of technology destroying Europe was Picasso’s fear. This painting evoked that fear. Picasso could not have known at the time the true horror Nazi Germany would bring on Europe. The technology allowed Germans to kill over 11 million people. The death and concentration camps took the lives of around 6 million Jews. Picasso’s painting was prophetic. Expressionism Art is any art that evokes strong emotions. Most of the artists created their work in the early 20th century. However the root of Expressionism comes from artists like El Greco and Van Gogh. Picasso and Munch created emotions with their work. The best part of Expressionism art is the emotion and interpretation each view can reach. The emotions these artist evoke are unique to the viewer. Bibliography Bassie, A. (2008). Expressionism. New York: Parkstone Press. Print. Berger, J. (1993). The Success and Failure of Picasso. New York: Vintage. Print. Dormant, R. (2009). Van Gogh and the colours of the night, review. 9 Feb.2009. Telegraph.co.uk. Online. Guernica. (n.d.) Picasso’s artistic process. PBS. Online. Prideaux, S. (2007). Edvard Munch: Behind the Scream. New York: Yale University Press. Print. Schwendener, M. (2007). Modern Dutch master, but citizen of the world. 23 Mar. 2007. The New York Times. 6 May 2010. Online. Stevens, M. (2003). Greek Revival. 2003. New York Art. Online. Read More