Themes in Early 20th Century Art - Essay Example

Themes in early 20th Century Art Primitivism “The Dance.” Artist: Henri Matisse. Year of Creation: 1909 and 1910. Style of work: oil on canvas painting. Assessment The figures in the portrait are believed to be a reflection, joy and pleasure that are an integral part of the art work. Matisse made sure that he drew the portraits so loosely that they barely have any interior definition. The bodies of the dancers seem not to be restrained in any way something that proves that Matisse had to do allot of work to make the portrait seem like effortless. He chooses to use childlike spontaneity so that he can be able to bring out the sense of joy play (Rubin and Matisse 123). Relation to theme The portrait shows some human beings who are involved in some sort of a nude dance. It is believed that the nude dance depicts some part of some ritual which is definitively non-western (Flam and Deutch 101). The portrait is believed to be a depiction of pagan bacchanalia. Bacchanalia is a festival in honor of wine god Dionysus among the Romans (Goldwater 87). None of the content of the portrait can be said to be of western nature. The kind of ritual that is being carried out in this case is not something that can be said to be a western type of ritual. The fact that the ritual involves nude dancing even further proves the fact that the culture that is being depicted in the portrait is not a western one. Freud’s psychoanalytic theories Name: Harlequins Carnival. Artist: Joan Miro. Year of creation: 1924 and 1925. Style of work: oil on canvas painting. Assesment In Harlequins Carnival Joan Miro chooses to use objects of different sizes and shapes. In creature in the portrait have a specific purpose. The arrangement can be said to be childlike with the objects having unusual sizes coloring and features. This results to an extravaganza of unified forms and colors. Despite the portrait showing some childlike traits it still has some peptic qualities that are undoubtedly (Mink 109). There is a very high possibility that the carnival is Mardi Gras, a celebration that usually takes place before lent. Relation to theme Due to the fact that artworks are always presented non-verbally the use of Freud’s psychoanalytic theories has given artwork the ability of presenting the unconscious idea to them. In visual arts psychoanalytic usually needs some interpretation. Psychoanalytic can be used in the analysis of mental processes, thus making it easier for artists to incorporate non-visual aspects of life in their work (Walsh 187). In this image it can be seen that the artist have presented some information leaving it to the viewers to deduce the meaning by themselves. The artist manages to do this by not giving an easily deduced message in the portraits. As a result the portrait has had numerous descriptions. Mass culture Name: Disabled War Veterans Playing Cards. Artist: Otto Dix. Year of creation: 1920. Style of work: oil on canvas painting. Assesment The picture shows a three crippled war veteran playing card. The portrait shows the veterans using many accessories that were used for supporting crippled people during those times. The accessories include a tube protruding from one of the veterans’ ears, which is a depiction of a device that was used as a hearing aid at this time in history. This portrait was part of an outburst of new style by German artists after the World War 2. This style of painting was a form of protest by artists in Germany after the conclusion of the World War 2 (McGreevy 221). Such artworks were aimed at bringing to light the negative sides of the involvement of the country in the World War 2. Relation to theme As a result of mass culture, people are always exposed to same ideas, experience and media. Therefore, mass culture leads to a rise in some uniformity in the type of work that artists come up with. On account of mass culture, creativity never plays an important role in arts like it used to with the previous artists (Stallabrass 207). Artists were so much absorbed by what was happening in their environment and what the society expects of them to an extent that they were not brave enough to use their creativity. Just like shown in the image the artist was intending to respond to the negative impacts of second war by letting the work to be influenced by the occurrences of the war. Much of the information that is presented in the portrait is aimed at making sure that the image of destruction brought about by the war is brought to light. A new form of realism Name: New Chicago Athletic Club. Artist: Antonio Berni. Date of creation: 1937. Style of work: oil on canvas painting (Goldman 99). Assesment The portrait entails realistic content with none of the content being fictional.The artist chooses to give the players in the picture realistic colors, something that would be expected from a real human being. The images that are present in the portrait are of a real athletic club. Everything in the portrait looks realistic. Relation to theme The attire that the players are wearing is also given realistic color with a color scheme that would easily pass for a photograph of a real athletic team (McDowall 167). Another thing that is real in the portraits is the shape everything that is included in the portrait is given a shape and size that they will actually have in real life. The ratio of the sizes of objects in the portrait also makes it more realistic. The environment and nature are also given color and spacing that would make it hard in distinguishing this photograph from a photograph taken by a real athletic team. The artists choose to use realistic atmosphere. He makes good use of natural colors to make sure that the portrait is able to bring out the real nature of objects. The arrangement of things and objects in the image is also realistic. Objects are positioned in exact way they would have been in a real life situation. The artist also chooses to give the ground a realistic color and texture. Conclusion Primitivity led to the rise of creativity, art as opposed to the previously much popular academic arts. In creativity the artists were able to come up with portraits with themes that were presumed to be from some non-western culture, though just their own imagination. As a result of the Psychoanalytic, many artists would use the imagery of the experiences. Psychoanalytic has also made art more interesting as it enables artists to make open artwork, leaving people to have their own interpretation and understanding of their work (Kuhns 111). An example of Psychoanalysis in modern art is sleeping by the lion carpet by Lucian Freud. The portrait is believed to have been developed between the year 1995 and 1996. Due to the extent to which mass culture had influenced art during this period, it was only those artists who were brave enough who could dare be creative, unique, and different in their work (Naremore and Brantlinger 165). An example of mass culture artworks in the recent past is after the play by Olga Lomaka done in the year 2002. The use of the new form of realism enables artists to come up with artworks with less censored themes and massages. As a result of this nature of realism artists have been able to come up with portraits that are easily understandable and those that a common individual can easily familiarize with (Traba 189). An example of use of realism in modern is Billy Wilder’s “Love in the Afternoon” Work cited Flam, Jack D, and Miriam Deutch. Primitivism and Twentieth-Century Art: A Documentary History. Berkeley, CA: Univ. of California Press, 2003. Print. Goldman, Shifra M. Dimensions of the Americas: Art and Social Change in Latin America and the United States. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1994. Print. Goldwater, Robert. Primitivism in Modern Art. Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press, 1986. Print. Kuhns, Richard. Psychoanalytic Theory of Art: A Philosophy of Art on Developmental Principies. New York: Columbia Univ. Pr, 1983. Print. McDowall, Arthur S. Realism: A Study in Art and Thought. London: Constable and company ltd, 1918. Print. McGreevy, Linda F. Bitter Witness: Otto Dix and the Great War. New York: P. Lang, 2001. Print. Mink, Janis. Joan Miró, 1893-1983. Los Angeles, Calif: Taschen GmbH, 2006. Print. Naremore, James, and Patrick Brantlinger. Modernity and Mass Culture. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991. Print. Rubin, Susan G, and Henri Matisse. Matisse Dance for Joy. San Francisco, Calif: Chronicle Books, 2008. Print. Stallabrass, Julian. Gargantua: Manufactured Mass Culture. London [u.a.: Verso, 1996. Print. Traba, Marta. Art of Latin America: 1900 - 1980. Washington: Inter-American Development Bank, 1994. Print. Walsh, Maria. Art and Psychoanalysis. London: I.B. Tauris, 2012. Print. Read More