My Science School

The early 20th Century witnessed a breakthrough in the art movement. Two iconic painters – Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque – no longer wanted to follow the traditional form of art. They didn’t believe that painters had to copy nature or everyday moments. Instead, they wanted to portray the two-dimensionality of the canvas. Hence, their paintings were flat and the forms were reduced to geometric shapes to give the illusion of a three-dimensional view, allowing the viewer to see different parts of the picture simultaneously, breaking away completely from traditional techniques. French painter Paul Cezanne and popular French art critic Louis Vauxcelleslooked at Georges Braque’s painting “Houses at L’Estaque” in 1908 and called it cubes. And, cubism was born.

In the beginning of this period, the subjects of the paintings were almost indiscernible. They were a collection of angles and planes that blended into the background and were almost in monochrome. The painters usually used musical instruments glasses, bottles, still-life and human face and forms as subjects.

The idea of Cubism was to abandon the idea and traditional notions of shape and form and present the world in an entirely new way. It used influences outside of western art, such as African art, and even science as its base to form different perspectives on a flat canvas.

The liberating concepts had far-reaching influences and were not contained to just art. It spilled over to architecture and sculpture as well.

Examples

 Man with a Guitar: This 1912 painting by Georges Braque is one of the most popular examples of analytical Cubism, a later evolution of the form. Here, the artist uses nails and ropes on a flat surface to depict a man playing a guitar.

The Weeping Woman: This iconic painting by Pablo Picasso tries to paint a universal picture of suffering. Here, Picasso directly targets the effects of the Spanish Civil War and some even say the picture had a personal story behind it. Picasso’s mother once called him saying all the smoke from the fighting (during the war) was making her eyes water.

Ma Jolie: Another of Picasso’s masterpieces, the representation of forms in the painting in subtle. The form of woman is visible in the centre, presumably his lover Marcelle Humbert. There’s also a treble clef drawn next to the name of the painting. Ma Jolie (My Pretty Girl) was a line in a popular song at a music hall in Paris that the artist visited frequently.

Wow facts

Even though many artists were moving towards abstractionism even as early as the 18th Century, Cubism was the first abstract art movement. It intentionally reduced all forms into geometric shapes and gave a flat but simultaneous view of different sides of the same object. It was a scientific art form.

Cubism wasn’t popular in the beginning. In fact, in the early 20th Century, not depicting nature in its purest form was considered scandalous and heretical. But over many years, the path-breaking form began to gain the importance and respect it deserved.

 

Picture Credit : Google

In the early 20th Century, there was a period of loss in spirituality and high anxiety, surrounding humans’ relationship with the world. At this time, artists began to shun objectiveness and turned within to unleash their emotions. The result was an expressive canvas with distorted shapes and exaggerated, vibrant colours that displayed emotions, rather than a picture. There, Expressionism was born.

The artists at the forefront of this movement were Vincent Van Gogh, Edvard Munch and James Ensor. Van Gogh, particularly, was the symbol of this movement since his paintings were mostly autobiographical and chronicled his emotions at different times of his life. Unlike Impressionism, Expressionist art did not aim to depict the world as it is but impose the artist’s sensibilities and feelings about the world. The paintings were harsh, bold and intense, and the artists encouraged distorted shapes in order to convey or exaggerate emotions.

The decline of Expressionism was also because of its intensely personal nature. The paintings were vague and unapproachable, and by the mid 1920s, the movement slowly came to an end.

Examples

• The Starry Night: Painted in 1889 by Vincent Van Gogh, this painting depicts the scene that Van Gogh saw from his window at his asylum room at saint-Remy-de-Provence in France. An icon of Expressionist art, its swirling skies and the sinister cypress tree overlooking this scene are all reproductions of Van Gogh’s emotions on canvas.


• The Scream: Edvard Munch’s most famous painting is everything that Expressionism is about. Throughout his career, Munch’s art described emotions such as anger, guilt, anxiety and fear while talking about humans’ relationship with the world around them. “The Scream” is no different, and often, just a look at this painting can create an emotional jolt due to its vibrant colours and exaggerated, distorted shapes.


• Sunflowers: This iconic painting by Van Gogh is one part of two series of paintings. The first series had the sunflowers wilted and on the ground, while the second had a bunch of sunflowers placed in vases. The sunflower was special to Van Gogh and signified ‘gratitude’ and he hung his first two paintings on the wall in his friend Paul Gaugin’s house. Gaugin called the paintings ‘completely Vincent.’

Wow facts

• Expressionists often had swirls and swaying components in their art, exaggerated and painted with bold brushstrokes to depict their own internal turmoil.


• On his painting “Scream”, Norwegian artists Edvard Munch said he was walking with friends when “suddenly, the sky turned as red as blood… Tongues of fire and blood stretched over the bluish black fjord. My friends went on walking, while I lagged behind, shivering with fear. Then I heard the enormous, infinite scream of nature”.

 

Picture Credit : Google