Modern Art in the 20th Century - Essay Example

Modern Art in the 20th Century Not surprisingly, concepts of art changed significantly throughoutthe 20th century. Artists going into the century were focused on allowing nature to express itself to them in the form of impressionism. They felt art should be a true representation of how a given natural setting made them feel. As they moved into the 20th century, this concept became increasingly centered upon the artist as it was realized that the same scene could evoke different emotions in different people. As artists experimented with different ways to remove the external cues of images to get at the basic emotions of the experience, they created new movements that had an influence on artistic expression moving into the 21st century. Use of primitivism in various art movements The concept of primitivism works on the concept that the closest expression of emotional experience is captured in the primitive drawings of children and those who havent taken part in formal artistic study. When successfully coupled with these theories, “art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes [the real] visible,” according to artist Paul Klee.1 His painting Diana in the Autumn Wind (1934) does a good job of illustrating this concept. At first glance, the painting might seem to be a child’s drawing that has accidentally found itself hanging in a museum. It looks like a crayon drawing. Depending on how you look at it, the group of overlapping flat shapes in the center of the frame can create the image of a woman caught in strong winds. At the same time, they can also appear to be the leaves of autumn flying around the canvas. The woman really starts to emerge when you notice the tiny stick-style legs near the bottom of the image and the small white face that peeks out from the top. According to Pioch, “leaves flying in a moist breeze are, at the same time, the Virgin goddess on the hunt, and yet also a fashionably dressed woman from Klees social circle.”2 Klee gives the impression that the painting is done with crayon by allowing some of the white surface of the canvas to show through thatched lines the way that a crayon usually draws over rough paper. Color is used to give the impression of autumn as Klee fills the background with orange and green with the womans clothing being blue and red (complementary colors to the background). MacEvoy points out, “the large areas of gray within the figure result from the complementary antagonism of red and green, or orange and blue, symbolic in this context of the transition between summer and winter, growth and harvest, maturation and decline.”3 Klee was not trying to copy an image most people could see for themselves. He was trying to show something deeper, a sublime meaning that exists within the hidden patterns of life. Pablo Picasso also used primitive colors and shapes to try to convey deeper emotional content in his paintings such as Figures on a Beach (1931). Picasso was a Cubist, breaking his shapes into their basic geometric forms filled with solid blocks of color. His purpose was to express the concept that color and form would forever be reinterpreted by the individual viewers of the piece. In this painting, Picasso expresses movement through his placement of recognizable human features such as eyes and nostrils in unusual places from each other, making it look like the faces are moving all around the picture. The womans breasts are also placed in unusual places relative to her body, making them more accessible to the viewer. The other body parts are all confused making it clear that the two people are entangled in a very passionate, active encounter. Picassos use of warm, soft colors for the figures and the beach in the background give a sense that this affair is a mature love rather than the heated passion of new lovers. This sense is reinforced by his use of soft curves and an avoidance of harsh angles. The heat of the scene is cooled by the blues of the ocean and sky. Although the primitivist approach is used to depict the scene in basic geometric shapes, there is a great deal of complexity involved in the images emotional content. Max Weber also conveys deep emotional content in his painting Suspense (1920). Also painting in the cubist style, but an earlier time period than Picasso or Klee, Weber includes greater shading within his shapes. Unlike Picasso, he encourages a sense of disunity in the image. The woman in the foreground is presumably pregnant, but this is not certain. However, it does explain the female attendant standing behind her, waiting, and perhaps also the man in the background, who might be a doctor holding a syringe. Weber uses a more traditional approach to show the concern on the face of the female attendant and unconcern on the part of the man. The heavy use of red in the center background creates a sense of concern in the viewer to match that of the woman attendant, but the painting is difficult to decipher because of the uncertain nature of the woman in the foreground. Is she pregnant or is she dying. All we know is she appears to be nude and she appears to have her feet drawn up in either a squatting or fetal position. What gives the sense that she is pregnant is the yellow-cream color that appears only on her rounded stomach, her breasts and a phallic shape just over the shoulder of the female attendant and thus associated with the male. These subtle uses of color and shape thus convey the meaning of the painting in true primitive style. Exploration of Freud’s psychoanalytic theories In keeping with Modern arts focus on exploring the emotions, much of this art also focused on the psychoanalytic theories of Dr. Sigmund Freud. Picasso is often quoted as saying “art is the lie that tells the truth.” He captures this idea in his painting Girl Before a Mirror (1932). The subject of the image is an adolescent girl in a brightly colored room standing in front of a mirror and looking at her own naked body. The actual room is shown in bright reds and yellows in an intricate, energetic pattern. Within this room, it seems the girl is both young and happy. However, as she looks in the mirror, the room is reflected in dark colors - deep reds, blues and purples which indicate her perspective is darkened from reality. Her image, too, is reflected differently, emphasizing the rounded area of her stomach and de-emphasizing the size and placement of her breasts. The stable, horizontal lines of the real room are reflected as unstable, downward moving diagonal lines in the mirror. Picassos purpose was to reflect the poor self-image many young girls and even older women experience when they look in the mirror. The way he painted her, Picasso obviously didnt intend to capture a true likeness, thus the painting is a lie. But he also provides enough details to give his audience a sense of her reality and the discord between what she sees and who she is, thus the painting conveys the truth of adolescent psychology just when the concept of psychology was gaining notoriety. Salvador Dali paid particularly close attention to what Freud said about the id and the ego. The id is described as the primitive and instinctual portion of our minds which is free of social constraints. The ego refers to our conscious mind which is focused on more considered, rational behavior. Freud considered “dreams, myths, odd patterns of behavior, slips of the tongue, accidents and art”4 to be the vehicles through which the id makes itself known to the ego. This made it very important to the surrealist artists who were interested in exploring this connection. In Metamorphosis of Narcissus (1937), Dali employs nearly all of these vehicles in his image of an ancient Greek legend. He ensures his audience is aware that this image is in the dream state by using strange pairings of images that could only occur in that state. Myth is the subject of the painting as he tells the story of a beautiful Greek youth named Narcissus who fell in love with his own reflection in a pond and wasted away to nothing. The background demonstrates odd behavior. Slips of the tongue and coincidence, normally audible elements, are indicated in the painting through the use of near-reflections throughout the image. Narcissus is reflected in the water, but also duplicated in the stone formation next to him and perhaps, in larger form, in the rock behind him. The two figures in the foreground, Narcissus and the rock formation, are similar in shape only. The Tate Museum points out that Narcissus is humanoid, sitting in a pool with one knee bent to support his forehead as he stares at his reflection.5 His arm and other knee hang limp and inactive. The other figure contrasts sharply with the background and thus draws the attention. Upon closer inspection, it appears to be a long-fingered, bony hand balancing a small egg between its thumb and forefinger. A narcissus plant is growing from a crack near the top of the egg. While Narcissus is inert and dead-seeming, this skeletal hand is full of life as ants crawl around on it. In this way, Dali creates an image of the cycle of life and death, showing how they are intertwined and overlapping in numerous ways and makes a connection between this and the life of the mind as it struggles back and forth between conscious and subconscious desires. These ideas are reinforced through the complicated imagery of the background. Frida Kahlo from Mexico is one of the most recognized female Surrealist artists of the Modern era. She struggled throughout her life to find a sense of balance between her inner self and social expectations, between her past and her present and between her subconscious and conscious selves. This is particularly clear in her painting The Two Fridas (1939). The image contains two figures, both self-portraits, as Kahlo saw herself at the time of her divorce from Diego Rivera, also a surrealist artist. One figure is seen in traditional European clothing to reflect the part of her inherited from her father and thus something she treasured but also something that her husband could not accept.6 The other figure is dressed in traditional Mexican clothing reflecting her mothers side and her cultural heritage as a Mexican painter. The European Frida has a torn bodice and a visibly broken heart while her hand holds a clamp to try to stop the bleeding. She is connected to the Mexican Frida who is comfortable, strong because of her whole heart and she holds a picture of her husband showing that the connection to both her ex-husband and her European side will never be fully severed. Conclusion As these various paintings reveal, a growing interest among artists to explore human emotion led to the use of increasingly abstract forms in order to get away from simple pictorial representation. These artworks were often based on the new ideas of Sigmund Freud and his concept of the divisions of the mind and their connections or disconnections. This growing fascination with concepts of the mind and a shared sense that these concepts could only be explored by avoiding recognizable subjects led to increasingly abstract art forms that today tend to confuse a general audience. Works Cited Cernuschi, Claude. “Surrealism.” Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia Online. (2007). August 15, 2011. Web. MacEvoy, Bruce. “Paul Klee.” Watercolor Artists. (2002). August 15, 2011. Web. Pioch, Nicholas. “Paul Klee.” Web Museum Paris. (2002). August 15, 2011. Web. Stechler, Amy. “The Two Fridas.” The Life and Times of Frida Kahlo. New York: Public Broadcasting Station, 2005. Recording. Tate Museum. “Metamorphosis of Narcissus.” [display caption]. (December 2005). August 15, 2011. Web. Read More