Stephano Perrone
Tinca Veerman , “Faceminiature No.1” (2013)
Djuno Tomsni – HERE!, 2012
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Monthly Archives: September 2013
Nobody Beats the Drum
This reminded me of jean’s cardboard piece. The whole video is stop motion and all the lil pieces are individually made. I think it’s incredible. Enjoy! Also…
Russian Constructivism
Constructivism was an artistic and architectural philosophy that originated in Russia beginning in 1919, which was a rejection of the idea of autonomous art. the purpose of the movement was for social purposes.
Russian Constructivism was a movement that was active from 1913 to the 1940s. It was a movement created by the Russian avant-garde, but quickly spread to the rest of the continent. Constructivist art is committed to complete abstraction with a devotion to modernity, where themes are often geometric, experimental and rarely emotional. Objective forms carrying universal meaning were far more suitable to the movement than subjective or individualistic forms. Constructivist themes are also quite minimal, where the artwork is broken down to its most basic elements. New media was often used in the creation of works, which helped to create a style of art that was orderly. An art of order was desirable at the time because it was just after WWI that the movement arose, which suggested a need for understanding, unity and peace. Famous artists of the Constructivist movement include Vladimir Tatlin, Kasimir Malevich, Alexandra Exter, Robert Adams, and El Lissitzky.
Tatlin’s most famous piece remains his “Monument to the Third International” (1919-20, Moscow), a 22-ft-high (6.7-m) iron frame on which rested a revolving cylinder, cube, and cone, all made of glass which was originally designed for massive scale. After the 1917 Revolution, Tatlin (considered the father of Russian Constructivism) worked for the new Soviet Education Commissariate which used artists and art to educate the public. During this period, he developed an officially authorized art form which utilized ‘real materials in real space’. His project for a Monument of the Third International marked his first foray into architecture and became a symbol for Russian avant-garde architecture and International Modernism.
Other painters, sculptors, and photographers working during this time were usually involved with industrial materials such as glass, steel, and plastic in clearly defined arrangements. Because of their admiration for machines and technology, functionalism, and modern mediums, members were also called artist-engineers.
Surrealism
Surrealism: A 20th century movement in art and literature that sought to release the creative potential of the unconscious mind.
Surrealism originated in the late 1910s and early ’20s as a literary movement that experimented with a new mode of expression called automatic writing, which sought to release to the imagination of the subconscious.
It was officially consecrated in Paris in 1924 with the publication of the Manifesto of Surrealism by Poet Andre Breton.
Breton, a trained psychiatrist, along with many other French poets were influenced by the psychological theories and dream studies of Sigmund Freud.
Breton supported visual expression by reproducing the works of artists such as Picasso in the journal La Revolution Surrealiste and organizing exhibitions that prominently featured painting and drawing.
Surrealism in visual arts is most expressed by abstract expressionism.
David Hammons Visual Culture
Egyptian Art
Kasimir Malevich
Kazimir Malevich
Born February 23, 1879 died May 15, 1935
Kazimir Malevich was a Russian painter who pioneered the Suprematism movement, which was a style of avant garde art that focused around geometric shapes.
He was born in Kiev, which is now in present day Ukraine. His parents were of polish descent and they moved to Kiev after the January Uprising of 1863 which was where polish people living in the former Polish-Lithuanian Common-wealth rebelled against Russia’s enlisting of Polish men into their army. The Uprising lasted two years from 1863 until 1865.
Kazimir’s father, Seweryn Melawicz was the manager of a sugar factory. His parents had fourteen children and among them, Malevih was the oldest.
Growing up Malevich moved around the villages of Ukraine to and from sugar-beet plantations. He did not know of any professional artist because he never lived around the wealth in society but he made embroidery and decorated walls and stoves.
After the death of his father in 1904, Malevich moved to Moscow and studied at the school Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture. In Moscow he studied and exhibited his art developing his style in an Avant Garde manner with influences of Cubism and the Russian folk art called lubok. In 1912 he described his works as “Cubo-Futuristic”
In 1914 Malevich exhibited his works in the Salon des Independants in Paris.
In 1915 Malevich presented his manifesto for Suprematism to the world, entitled From Cubism to Suprematism. This included the works of Black Square and White on White.
After his success in the modernist art movement, Malevich became a member of the Collegium on the Arts, and the Commission for the Protection of Monuments and the Museums Commission until 1919. He also taught at the Leningrad Academy of the Arts, the Vitebsk Practical Art School, The Kiev State Art Institute, and the House of the Arts in Leningrad.
In 1923 he became the director of Petrogard State Institution of Artistic Culture until 1926 when it was force to close after comments of it being counter revolutionary by a local newspaper. By then Social Realism was the style Communists had adopted and even though all of its rules contradicted Malevich’s own beliefs about art, he put up with it anyway in order to not gain attention from the communist party.
Eventually he left Russia and traveled to Warsaw where he was welcomed by the pioneers of the Unism movement, Wladyslaw Strzeminski and Katarzyna Kobro. This was a movement that was highly influenced by Suprematism. After Warsaw he went to Berlin and Munich where he was first greeted by the recognition he deserved. He left his paintings behind in Germany when he left to returned to the Soviet Union and the change because the nearing of Lenin’s death and Trotsky’s fall from power foreshadowed a change in the social attitude towards Modernist art. This came true and authorities and critics banned Malevich from making his art. He responded by saying “Art does not need us, it never did”.
In 1927 he wrote the book, The World as Non-Objectivity.
On May 15th, of 1935 Kazimir Malevich died of Cancer.
http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/kazimir-malevich/the-knifegrinder-1912#close
Wassily Kandinsky
Kandinsky is considered the first painter to have created works of total abstraction. His commitment to expressing inner beauty, fervor of spirit, and spiritual desire came after a long journey of intense thought and self reflection.
During his early twenties, before he had ever created artwork on his own, Kandinsky likened painting to the process of composing music. He had always been fascinated by music, considering it the highest and purest form of art. He understood musical composition as a language of its own; abstract by nature and nonrepresentational of the exterior world, expressing the immediate feelings and reactions of the soul. Comparing art making to musical composition, he said that “color is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand which plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul”.
He developed a deep interest in synesthesia, and aimed to steep his work in the phenomenon of a simultaneous sensory experience (ex: hearing a note when seeing a color). Drawing from the abstract language of music, Kandinsky began using a rhythm and medley of shapes and colors to create a visual language.
Kandinsky went on to create bodies of work based on this idea of invoking a multi sensory experience with form, color, and their interaction.
Movement I, Composition IX
He also created bodies of work filled with biomorphic forms, for he was fascinated with the biological sciences. He created abstract representations of amoebas, embryos, cells and all types of microscopic forms. What’s interesting is his representation of some of these forms as circles, which he considered the shape most closely related to the cosmos and universal meaning.
Various Parts
Various Actions
In all of his abstract works, the most prominent colors and forms create an initial understanding for the viewer. But to truly understand, the viewer must spend time with the painting, noticing the interactions of shapes both small and large, and comprehending their harmony.
Futurism
Futurism is an avant-garde movement originated from Italy. Futurism was officially introduced by the Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, who published Manifesto of Futurism on the Paris newspaper Le Figaro. Futurists glorified the modern technology, machines, noises, cities, energy, violence, and dynamism. This manifesto was signed by group of artists. These were Balla, Carra, Boccioni, and Russolo. Interesting point of this movement is that it started with the name and idea, and ways of expressing that idea came afterwards by the artists. The movement virtually died out during WWI.
The artists were concerned with the idea of conveying a sense of movement, and this is one of the essential features of Futurist painting. Sometimes movement was conveyed by blurring forms or overlapping images in the manner of high-speed multiple-exposure photography. The fragmented forms of cubism and the bright, broken colours of neo-Impressionism were major influences.
Link to: Manifesto of Futurism by Marinetti
“Funeral of the Anarchist Galli” by Carlo Carra, 1910-1911
“The Revolt” by Luigi Russolo, 1911
“Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash” by Giacomo Balla, 1912
“Unique Forms of Continuity in Space” by Umberto Boccioni, 1913
Marcel Duchamp. Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 1912
Eadweard Muybridge: Woman Walking Downstairs – 1887
KITSCH & CAMP
kitsch
kiCH/
- art, objects, or design considered to be in poor taste because of excessive garishness or sentimentality, but sometimes appreciated in an ironic or knowing way.
- the reduction of aesthetic objects or ideas into easily marketable forms.
camp
kamp/
- aesthetic sensibility that regards something as appealing or humorous because of its ridiculousness to the viewer.
- a sensibility that revels in artifice, stylization, theatricalization, irony, playfulness, and exaggeration rather than content.
In his essay from 1939, critic Clement Greenberg insists that kitsch is the antithesis of high art which he defined as abstraction and avant-garde. His essay is now more or less considered out dated in the post-modern art community, but there are a few key points that will help us pin point what exactly “kitsch” is.
- Kitsch is “vicarious experience & faked sensation”
- It changes superficially, according to “style” rather than profound reasons
- It is “the epitome of all that is spurious in the life of our times” – meaning that a kitsch piece has an expiration stamp, it is caught up in the time it was created. For this reason he describes it as a “virulence” (a disease or poison extremely severe or harmful in its effects) with “irresistable attractiveness” because “there is no disconnectivity between art & life.”
- He says kitsch “spares” the audience effort to engage with a work, an effort he believes is not only necessary but vital to successful modern art.
“The Widow”, Frederick Dielman, 1861-1897, lithograph
The words “camp” and “kitsch” are often used interchangeably; both may relate to art, literature, music, or any object that carries an aesthetic value. However, “kitsch” refers specifically to the work itself, whereas “camp” is a mode of staging or presenting.
In her essay “Notes on Camp” from 1964, Susan Sontag explores what it means to be a sensibility. This passage I found online nicely sums up her stance.
- “Camp is unnatural because of its affinity for exaggeration. Camp is taking something serious or natural and exaggerating it until it becomes frivolous. It is an aesthetic but an unusual aesthetic because Camp ignores beauty in favor of artifice and stylization (54). Camp is known for exaggeration of sexuality. In Camp, Sexual characteristics become larger then life, extravagant, and even reversed. Sontag points out that androgyny or ‘going against the grain of one’s sex’ is pure Camp. In Camp what is attractive about a man is something that is feminine and what is sexy about a woman is a masculine trait (56). It is an excessive exaggeration of sexual roles. Camp avoids a depth of character in favor of unnatural exaggeration. Sontag calls this seeing everything in quotation marks (i.e.: Greta Garbo is not playing the part of a woman but of a ‘woman’) (56). It is a form of ‘instant character'(61) or ‘Being-as-Playing-a-Role’ (56). In Camp a highly developed character simply would not work. A highly developed character strives for something intense or serious which is forbidden by Camp’s love for the artificial and frivolous.”
Public mural in Washington D.C.
In the postmodern era, because of evolved cultural attitudes and re-conceived critical perspectives in the art world, the usually “lowbrow” aesthetics of Kitsch and Camp are no longer denounced; but rather praised as a potent and practical source of artistic inspiration. The Department of British Literature and Culture, University of Łódź acknowledge Kitsch or Camp as a critical address in the following areas
- As a challenge to received dichotomies or demarcations of High and Low Culture.
- As engaging social discourses or debates on the politics, ethics, aesthetics and thematics of taste (high and lowbrow).
- As a bad taste to be discussed mostly in aesthetic terms or sociologically as a kind of ideological diversion
- As an instance of trash culture
- As cultivation of bad taste of yesterday and a form of superior refinement.
- As “victory of style over content, aesthetics over morality, of irony over tragedy” (Sontag)
- As exaggerated and theatrical experience
- As culture in “quotation marks” (Sontag)
Reigning master of today’s kitsch-and-camp art:
rusculpture 