SURREALISM

ART IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE
TWENTIETH CENTURY:
EXPRESSIONISMNEO-PLASTICISM (De Stijl)SURREALISM
Week 9
Expressionism
In Germany, a group known as Expressionists insisted art should express the artists feelings rather than
images of the real world. The belief that the artist could directly convey some kind of inner feeling- emotional or spiritual- - through art was a fashionable idea in German artistic and intellectual circles at
the beginning of the twentieth century. Artists had been encouraged to ‗break free‘ from civilized
constraints and Academic conventions and somehow express themselves more freely; these ideas are
fundamental to what we call German ‗Expressionist‘ art.
From 1905 to 1930, Expressionism the use of distorted, exaggerated forms and colors for emotional
impact dominated German art.
This subjective trend, which is the foundation of much twentieth century art, began with Van Gogh,
Gauguin and Munch in the late nineteenth century, and continued with Belgian painter James Ensor
(1860-1849), and Austrian painters Gustav Klimt (1862-1918), Egon Schiele (1890- 1918), and Oscar
Kokoschka (1886-1980).
But it was in Germany, with two separate groups Die Brücke and Der Blaue Reiter, the Expressionism
reached maturity.
Die Brücke: Founded in 1905 by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880- 1938)
Der Blaue Reiter: Founded in Munich around 1911 by Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944).
DIE BRÜCKE (BRIDGE): BRIDGING THE GAP
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Die Brücke founded by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880- 1938)
in 1905.
The aim was to sieze avantgarde spirit.
Members believed their work would be a ―bridge‖ to the
future.
Its credo is: ―to attract all revolutionary and fermenting
elements is the purpose implied in the name Brücke.‖
Dissolved in 1913
Artists lived and worked communally, first in Dresden then in
Berlin, producing intense anguished pictures with harshly
distorted forms and clashing colors.
Their major contribution was a revival to the graphic arts,
especially woodcut.
Their major subject was the sickness of the soul.
The means to express this sickness were dramatic
arrangement of black and white contrasts, crude forms, and
jagged lines in woodcuts.
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Members include Ernst Ludwig
Kirchner (1880–1938), Erich
Heckel (1883–1970), and Emil
Nolde (1867–1956).
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Unlike the French avant-garde,
Expressionists privilege the
artist's inner emotional state,
focusing on the anxieties of
modern life and taboo subjects
such as sexuality, expressed in
bright, unnatural colors and
distorted forms.
Die Brücke artists attempt to challenge or rework the constrictions of the culture in which they lived:
 Influence of Friedrich Nietzsche: Existentialist philosopher who challenged bourgeois norms of aesthetics,
religion, etc., urged the creative power of the individual in forms of expression and meaning (writings span c.
1870 and 1880s). For Nietzsche ‗modernity‘ (the modern world) was decadent and needed to be overcome
by the creative individual.
 Notion of the ‗Obermensch‘ (‗Superman‘) who has overcome the powers of decadence.
Note: Nietzsche addresses his remarks solely to men, whom he sees as agents of cultural change.
 Die Brücke probably took their name from Nietzsche‘s Also Sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spoke Zarathustra)
in which he writes of man‘s spirit as the bridge to freedom.
 The Brücke associated rebellion against bourgeois commercial values with the ‗primitive‘.
‗Expressionist‘ meant:
 crude unfinished brushwork,
 distorted colors and forms,
 sense of the artist‘s genuine physical and emotional involvement with both the
subject and the medium ,
 rejection of sophistication in favor of achieving a ‗direct‘ expression.
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
Street, Berlin (1913), one of a series on this
theme, depicting prostitutes
In 1905, Kirchner, along with Bleyl and two other architecture students,
Karl Schmidt-Rottluff and Erich Heckel, founded the artists group Die
Brücke ("The Bridge"). From then on, he committed himself to art. The
group aimed to eschew the prevalent traditional academic style and find
a new mode of artistic expression, which would form a bridge (hence the
name) between the past and the present. They responded both to past
artists, as well as contemporary international avant-garde movements.
As part of the affirmation of their national heritage, they revived older
media, particularly woodcut prints.
Their group was one of the seminal
ones, which in due course had a
major impact on the evolution of
modern art in the 20th century and
created the style of Expressionism.
The group met initially in Kirchner's
first studio. Bleyl described it as:
―that of a real bohemian, full of paintings lying
all over the place, drawings, books and
artist‘s materials — much more like an artist‘s
romantic lodgings than the home of a wellorganised architecture student.‖
Marzella (1909–10)
Commentary on contemporary urban life
and its institutions as decadent, Berlin
street scenes with their dandies and
prostitutes, images of the modern city as
the source of the consumption of human
souls and fermentation of anxiety
The group composed a manifesto (mostly Kirchner's
work) in 1906, which was carved on wood and asserted
a new generation, "who want freedom in our work and
in our lives, independence from older, established
forces.‖ They continued:
‗With faith in progress and in a new generation of
creators and spectators we call together all
youth. As youth, we carry the future, and want
to create for ourselves freedom of life and of
movement against the long-established older
forces. We claim as our own everyone who
reproduces that which drives him to creation with
directness and authenticity.‘
Self-Portrait as a Soldier (1915)
Kirchner. Self-Portrait with Model. 1910
The ‗modernity‘ of Kirchner‘s paintings also defined by
their overt sexuality, which was seen as part of free selfexpression. Bourgeois culture viewed the open sexuality
of prostitutes, dancers, etc. as deviant and decadent. This
was compounded by Kirchner‘s (and others) association of
‗natural‘ sexuality with African culture ie. Kirchner used
African models in his studio.
The affinity between ideas of :
nature/female versus culture/male
Kirchner. Nude. c. 1910
THE ‗PRIMITIVE‘:
• the idea of the ‗barbarian‘ or the ‗primitive‘
• an idea which would have a lasting presence in
modernist discourse
• connotations of untamed, direct expression, as
opposed to a ‗civilized‘ Westernism.
CRITICISM OF MODERN LIFE,
RETURN BACK TO ‗PRIMITIVE‘
Kirchner. Self-Portrait as Soldier. 1915
•general disillusionment with the war common
amongst avant-garde groups as a direct result of
the decadence of bourgeois society
Kirchner. Bathers at Moritzburg. 1909
Erich Heckel
Erich Heckel was one of the charter
members of Die Brücke. Their
meetings took place in a former
butcher shop and Heckel served as
Treasurer and Secretary
responsible for its organization. He
was a close friend of Karl SchmidtRottluff who he met in high school in
1901. Both studied architecture at
the Technical Academy in Dresden
but left their studies after founding
Die Brucke. In 1909, he took a long
sojourn to Italy. In the Fall of 1911,
Die Brucke moved to Berlin where
they met most of the painters of the
avant-garde but in 1913, the group
disbanded.
Girl with High Hat (Mädchen mit hohem Hut)
Erich Heckel (German, 1883-1970)
1913. Drypoint, plate: (25 x 20.2 cm);
sheet: (38.9 x 32.4 cm).
After seeing the Futurist exhibition in April 1912,
Heckel's style became Prismatic, organized in a
series of triangular planes.
His specialty was interior scenes that express
melancholy and loneliness.
His subjects are usually outsiders like circus
performers and madmen in anxious or fearful
situations.
•The idea that the true Expressionist artist was spontaneous
(unhampered by the weight of tradition and propriety); then
he could access his true inner feelings and responses.
•German Expressionism often associated with the idea of the
‗primitive‘, in the sense that the ‗primitive‘ was considered to
be closer to unmediated expression and more ‗authentic‘
than the civilized.
•Also the idea of ‗nature/culture‘, with ‗nature‘ being direct,
unfettered, instinctual, non-intellectual, anti-civilized, and
‗culture‘ being civilization, rationality, repression.
•The primitive was particularly worked out in representations
of the ‗other‘ ie. Africans, Polynesians etc. and in ‗Woman‘.
Portrait of a Man (Männerbildnis) (1919).
Erich Heckel (German, 1883-1970)
Woodcut, composition: (46.2 x 32.4 cm);
sheet (irreg.): (61.6 x 50.8 cm).
Emil Nolde
Die Brücke artists invited Nolde to join their group
in 1906. Although he remained an active member
for only one year, Nolde stayed in close touch with
Die Brücke.
These younger Expressionists encouraged
Nolde‘s preference for bright colors and free
brushwork, and his boldly carved woodcuts date
from his contact with the group.
However, Nolde‘s first series of intensely original
and technically experimental etchings, Fantasies
(1905, e.g. Joy of Living) exerted a strong counterinfluence on Die Brücke‘s graphic art.
In his paintings such urban subjects as bars and
theatre scenes alternate with brooding seascapes
and landscapes. In 1909–13 he completed a
series of religious paintings, including the Last
Supper (1909), Pentecost (1909) and a nine-part
polyptych entitled the Life of Christ (1912).
Head with Pipe (Self Portrait) (1907) Lithograph
In 1910 Nolde‘s Pentecost , which
depicts the mask-like faces of Christ
and the Apostles crowned by the
flame of the Holy Spirit, became the
centre of a row that split the Berlin
Secession—one of the most
advanced exhibiting societies in
Germany up until that time, which
Nolde had joined in 1908. Nolde‘s
primitivist treatment of this religious
subject, rendered in glowing colors
and bold, Expressionist brushwork,
found little favor among the older
members of the society, who had
grown up in the Impressionist
school. When Pentecost and the
works of most other younger artists
were rejected, Nolde attacked the
leadership and principles of the
Secession in an open letter to its
President, Max Liebermann,
whereupon he was expelled from
the association.
Pentecost, Emil Nolde, 1910.
At the same time he celebrated the spirit of
paganism in a pair of highly charged, Dionysian
dance scenes: Dance around the Golden Calf
(1910) and Candle Dancers (1912).
Until 1912 he exhibited alongside other rejected
artists in the Neue Sezession in Berlin. He also
produced woodcuts of religious subjects (e.g.
Prophet, 1912; Seebüll, Stift. Nolde).
PROPHET
Woodcut. 1912.
Signed in pencil lower right Emil Nolde. On firm wove
paper. One of the icons of German Expressionist
printmaking. A particularly well-balanced printed
impression.
Size : 320 x 225 mm (406 x 336 mm)
SCHIFFE
Woodcut. 1906.
Signed in pencil lower right and dated Emil Nolde 06.
Brilliant, deep black impression, on chamois laid paper.
Scarce.
Size: 297 x 202 mm (364 x 233 mm)
Portrait of a Young Woman and a Child
Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russia
Portrait of a Man, ca.1926
Portrait of a Young Girl, 1913-14
DER BLAUE REITER (BLUE RIDER): COLOR ALONE
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A breakthrough to pure abstraction.
Dissolved in 1914
Most outstanding artists of the group were:
– Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944), and Paul Klee (1879-1940).
Wassily Kandinsky
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The Russian-born artist Wassily Kandinsky moved to Munich to study painting in 1896.
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There, he became one of the founding members of Der Blaue Reiter ("The Blue Rider"), a loose association of
artists formed in 1911 to promote a new art, one that would reject the materialist world in favor of the world of
emotion and the spirit.
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In accordance with his belief in the primacy of the inner, spiritual world, Kandinsky's art was abstract, meant to
express our preconscious selves, before the intervention of reason.
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By dematerializing the external appearance of his subject, without eliminating all visual reference to it, he could
reveal the subject's essence.
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Kandinsky often used musical terminology to describe his work, and in the subtitle of this painting, the word
improvisation suggests "a largely unconscious, spontaneous expression of inner character, the nonmaterial
nature."
The Garden of Love (Improvisation Number 27), 1912
Wassily Kandinsky (French, born Russia, 1866–1944)
Oil on canvas 47 3/8 x 55 1/4 in. (120.3 x 140.3 cm)
The specific source for the
imagery in The Garden of
Love is most likely the biblical
story of Paradise and the
Garden of Eden, one of
several Old and New
Testament themes addressed
by the artist. The imaginary
landscape revolves around a
large yellow sun in the center
of the composition, which
pulses with rays of red. The
garden is occupied by three
abstract pairs of embracing
figures: a reclining couple
above the sun, another at the
lower right, and a third,
smaller pair seated at the left.
Surrounding them are several
animals—certainly a snake
and perhaps a grazing horse
and sleeping dog. Kandinsky,
who was a master
watercolorist, successfully
achieved a similar effect in
this oil painting.
 The composition of Small
Pleasures is centered round two
hills, each crowned by a citadel.
 On the right-hand side is a boat
with three oars which is riding a
storm under a forbidding black
cloud.
 A fiery sun flashes out wheels of
color.
 The actual interpretation of these
elements has been the subject of
much controversy.
 In an unpublished essay on the
painting written by Kandinsky in
June 1913, Kandinsky writes of
the 'joyfulness' of execution.
 It is legitimate to see the work as
a celebration of Kandinsky's style
during this period, as affirming
the spiritual and practical
pleasures he manifestly derived
from painting; he speaks of
'pouring a lot of small pleasures
on to the canvas'.
Small Pleasures , 1913;
Oil on canvas, 110 x 120.6 cm
 While giving the impression of
heavenly chaos, Small Pleasures
is obviously not the product of
pure spontaneity. The various
modes of paint application, and
the complexity of pigment
selection and mixing are
enormous. The way colors are
washed and blurred together, and
seldom contained by bounding
lines is typical of Kandinsky's
work at this time.
 The predominantly curvilinear
aspect of the work, however, is
undermined by the angular
geometry of the citadel, perhaps
presaging Kandinsky's Bauhaus
style.
 There are few monochrome
patches in the composition,
underlining the local scale of
execution, and part of
Kandinsky's pleasure in the work
was his reflection on a number of
minor technical achievements.
Small Pleasures , 1913;
Oil on canvas, 110 x 120.6 cm
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Kandinsky, himself an accomplished
musician, once said ―Color is the keyboard,
the eyes are the harmonies, the soul is the
piano with many strings. The artist is the
hand that plays, touching one key or
another, to cause vibrations in the soul.‖
The concept that color and musical
harmony are linked has a long history,
intriguing scientists such as Sir Isaac
Newton.
Kandinsky used color in a highly theoretical
way associating tone with timbre (the
sound's character), hue with pitch, and
saturation with the volume of sound.
He even claimed that when he saw color
he heard music.
Contrasting Sounds
1924; Oil on cardboard, 70x49.5cm; Centre Georges
Pompidou, Paris
Composition VIII , 1923; Oil on canvas, 140 x 201 cm; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944)
Transverse Line, 1923
141 x 202 cm
Oil on canvas
Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Dusseldorf
Franz Marc
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Franz Marc was a pioneer in the birth of
abstract art at the beginning of the
twentieth-century.
The Blaue Reiter group put forth a new
program for art based on exuberant color
and on profoundly felt emotional and
spiritual states.
It was Marc's particular contribution to
introduce paradisiacal imagery that had as
its dramatis personae a collection of
animals, most notably a group of heroic
horses.
Deer in the Woods II , 1912 ;
Oil on canvas, 110.5 x 80.5 cm;
Stadtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich
Fighting Forms , 1914
Oil on canvas, 91 x 131 cm; Staatsgalerie moderner Kunst, Munich
Paul Klee
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Swiss painter, draughtsman,
printmaker, teacher and writer.
Klee‘s work forms a major
contribution to the history of 20thcentury art.
He is associated most commonly
with the Bauhaus school in
Weimar and Dessau. He is
regarded as a major theoretician
among modern artists and as a
master of humor and mystery.
In much of his work, he aspired to
achieve a naive and untutored
quality, but his art is also among
the most cerebral of any of the
20th century. Klee‘s wide-ranging
intellectual curiosity is evident in
an art profoundly informed by
structures and themes drawn from
music, nature and poetry.
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Klee was born on December 18, 1879, in Switzerland, the second child of Hans Klee, a German music teacher,
and a Swiss mother. His training as a painter began in 1898 when he studied drawing and painting in Munich for
three years.
By 1911, he had returned to that city, where he became involved with the German Expressionist group Der
Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider), founded by Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc in 1911.
Klee and Kandinsky became lifelong friends, and the support of the older painter provided much-needed
encouragement.
Until then, Klee had worked in relative isolation, experimenting with various styles and media, such as making
caricatures and Symbolist drawings, and later producing small works on paper mainly in black and white. His
work was also influenced by the Cubism of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, and the abstract translucent
color planes of Robert Delaunay.
Kleea was one of the many modernist artists who wanted to practice what he called "the pure cultivation of the
means" of painting—in other words, to use line,
shape, and color for their own sake rather than to
describe something visible. That priority freed him to
create images dealing less with perception than with
thought, so that the bird in this picture seems to fly not
in front of the cat's forehead but inside it–the bird is
literally on the cat's mind. Stressing this point by
making the cat all head, Klee concentrates on thought,
fantasy, appetite, the hungers of the brain. One of his
aims as an artist, he said, was to "make secret visions
visible."
In 1914, Klee visited Tunisia. The
experience was the turning point in
his life and career. The limpid light of
North Africa awakened his sense of
color. During his stay, Klee gradually
detached color from physical
description and used it independently,
which gave him the final needed push
toward abstraction.
The view of the mosque in
Hammamet with Its Mosque (1914)
demonstrates Klee's path toward
abstraction.
Hammamet with Its Mosque, 1914
Paul Klee (German, born Switzerland, 1879–1940)
Watercolor and pencil on paper
He was so overwhelmed by the
intense light in Tunisia that he
wrote:
"Color has taken
possession of me; no
longer do I have to chase
after it, I know that it has
hold of me forever. That is
the significance of this
blessed moment. Color
and I are one. I am a
painter."
After Tunisia , he built up
compositions of colored squares
that have the radiance of the
mosaics he saw on his Italian
sojourn. The watercolor Red and
White Domes (1914; Collection
of Clifford Odets, New York City)
is distinctive of this period.
Red and White Domes , 1914;
Watercolor and body color on Japanese, vellum
mounted on cardboard, 14.6 x 13.7 cm;
Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Dusseldorf
By 1915, he had turned his back to nature and never again painted after the model. With abstracted
forms and merry symbols, he expressed the most diverse subjects drawn from his imagination ,
poetry, music, literature , and his reaction to the world around him.
Miraculous Landing, or the "112!", 1920
Paul Klee (German, 1879–1940)
Watercolor, transferred printing ink, pen, and ink on paper
A boat of the type of Noah's Ark—the "112"—is moored to a boathouse. The
face of the girl in the left window is expressionless; her eyes are closed.
Perhaps this "miraculous landing" exists only in her imagination.
Tale à la Hoffmann, 1921
Watercolor, pencil, and transferred printing ink on paper, bordered with metallic foil
The abstraction of the Hoffman‘s story ―Golden Pot‖ written in 1814.
Abstract Trio, 1923, Paul Klee (German, 1879–1940) –the three forms might represent the abstract sound patterns of three voices or three instruments. An
accomplished violinist himself, music played a great role in Klee's life. His favorite composers were Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven. (Watercolor and transferred
printing ink on paper, bordered with gouache and ink)
His subjects reveal his impish humor and his
bent toward the fantastic and the meditative.
Always preoccupied with the ring of words, titles
played a major part in his work. Whether ironic,
poetic, irreverent, deadpan, flippant, or
melancholic, his titles set up the perspectives
from which he wanted the works to be seen.
Ghost Chamber with the Tall
Door (New Version), 1925
In the early 1920s, Klee painted
a series of ghost chambers with
eerie lines of perspective that
reduce everything to skeletal
transparency. As Klee rarely
used perspective, he applied it in
these works—always interiors—
solely to show its delusive
effects, a theory he relayed to his
students in his Bauhaus lectures
on the subject in November
1921. He demonstrates that
perspective can be playful in this
watercolor of an orange room
cluttered with black wire utensils
and with a tall violet door from
which seemingly radiate the
black perspectival lines.
Adam and Little Eve, 1921
In this watercolor, Klee somewhat expanded the story of the creation of man. His
Eve, after growing from Adam's rib, stays right there. She also remains a child.
Evchen ("Little Eve") looks like a schoolgirl with flaxen hair tied in a braid. Adam is
a broad-faced, grown man who sports earrings and a mustache. By placing the
figures against a shallow ground with a reddish curtain, Klee seems to set the
oddly matched pair on a puppet-theater stage.
In 1920, Walter Gropius invited Klee to join the
faculty of the Bauhaus. A school of
architecture and industrial design operating
first in Weimar (1919–25) and then Dessau
(1925–32), it also included the study of arts
and crafts. Nearly half of Klee's some 10,000
works (mainly small-scale watercolors and
drawings on paper) were produced during the
ten years he taught at the Bauhaus, and they
vary widely. Some relate to the subject of his
courses, to his preoccupation with the
relationship of colors, such as Static-Dynamic
Gradation, produced in 1923.
Static-Dynamic Gradation, 1923
Paul Klee (German, 1879–1940)
While teaching at the Bauhaus, first in Weimar (1919–25)
and then in Dessau (1925–32), Klee created many works
that related to the subject of his courses. This watercolor
reflects the artist's preoccupation with color relationships.
Here, outer dark colors surround pure luminous ones in the
center. In this work Klee devised a systematic movement,
progressing from dark-hued brownish squares, which he
dubbed "static," toward the clear-colored ones, which he
called "dynamic" by virtue of the contrasts they offer.
In the same year, Klee painted Ventriloquist
and Crier in the Moor, which, with its humor
and grotesque fantasy, may strike many
viewers as the quintessential "Klee."
Ventriloquist and Crier in the Moor, 1923
Paul Klee (German, 1879–1940)
Watercolor and transferred printing ink on paper,
bordered with ink 15 1/4 x 11 in. (38.7 x 27.9 cm)
Imaginary beasts float within a transparent
ventriloquist who appears to be all belly—except,
of course, for a pair of legs, tiny arms, and a sort of
head without a mouth. The little creatures inside
the ventriloquist might symbolize the odd noises
and voices that seem to emanate from him. The
moor is indicated by the background grid of warm
earth colors that turns dark toward the center and
against which the figure, as part of this grid, stands
out like a light-colored bubble in clear reds and
blues. As if attracted by the animal sounds above
him, a stray fish is about to enter a net dangling
from the lower part of the ventriloquist's anatomy—
perhaps to join the menagerie within.
Cat and Bird
Paul Klee (German, born Switzerland. 1879-1940)
1928. Oil and ink on gessoed canvas, mounted on wood, (38.1 x 53.2 cm).
The cat is watchful, frighteningly so, but it is also calm, and Klee's palette too is calm, in a narrow range from
tawny to rose with zones of bluish green. This and the suggestion of a child's drawing lighten the air. Believing
that children were close to the sources of creativity, Klee was fascinated by their art, and evokes it here
through simple lines and shapes: ovals for the cat's eyes and pupils (and, more loosely, for the bird's body),
triangles for its ears and nose. And the tip of that nose is a red heart, a sign of the cat's desire.
Highway and Byways , 1929;
Oil on canvas, 32 5/8 x 26 3/8 in;
Collection Christoph and Andreas Vowinckel
Clarification, 1932
Paul Klee
Oil on canvas (70.5 x 96.2 cm)
In October 1931, Klee
began teaching at the
Düsseldorf Academy. He
felt much at ease in that
city, his well-being
reflected in his adaptation
of a pointillistic, loose
mosaic style.
But Klee's merry
"Pointillism" was different
from the method of
Georges Seurat and his
followers, who broke
down the imagery of their
paintings into tiny dots of
pure color.
Klee's works, rather, seem "built up" with row upon row of blocklike units of color chosen without regard to optical laws.
In Clarification, due to the very small size of the dots of color, the foreground turns into a transparent screen through which
the background is visible.
Klee divided the ground into large areas of buff and grays, over which he drew the brown geometric design and the green
crescent.
Then he covered the entire surface with thousands of tiny color dots in even horizontal rows.
Ad Parnassum, 1932;
Oil on canvas, 100 x 126 cm
Klee believed that: nature
was characterized by the
permutation and movement
of fundamental units of
construction.
He wanted to achieve an
equivalent way of working in
painting. In addition to his
interest in the natural world,
interested also in the
theories of both color and
music, Klee worked on the
basis of units of construction
taken from nature.
Klee tried to create linear improvisations which he likened to the melody of the work. Klee evolved a system of color
organization in which all the colors of the spectrum were conceived of as moving around a central axis dominated by
the three pigmentary colors - red, yellow and blue.
From 1923 Klee created a series of imaginative color constructions which he called 'magic squares' in which he applied
his theories. This series came to a conclusion in 1932 with Ad Parnassum.
Klee‘s imaginative color constructions are
named as 'magic squares' by him. The end
of this series was 1932 Ad Parnassum:
 Klee likened each element in the
painting to a theme in a polyphonic
composition.
 He defined polyphony as 'the
simultaneity of several independent
themes'.
 In addition, each artistic element in Ad
Parnassum is itself a distillation of
several ideas and personal
experiences.
 For example, the graphic element
illustrates the gate to Mount Parnassus,
the home of Apollo and the Muses, and
also may refer to the Pyramids which
Klee saw in 1928, and to a mountain
near Klee's home.
Detail...
From 1931 to December 1933, Klee taught at the Academy of Fine Arts in Düsseldorf. When the
National Socialists declared his art "degenerate" in 1933, Klee returned to his native Bern. Personal
hardship and the increasing gravity of the political situation in Europe are reflected in the somber tone
of his late work. Lines turn into black bars, forms become broad and generalized, scale larger, and
colors simpler, as in Comedians' Handbill (1938) or Angel Applicant (1939).
Angel Applicant, 1939
It seems doubtful that this angel
applicant, resembling the offspring of
a bulldog and a Halloween mask,
will ever reach heaven.
Comedians' Handbill, 1938
In tune with the motto "the medium
is the message," Klee designed this
handbill on a sheet of newspaper
that he had covered with caramelcolored gouache. Correcting here
and there the figures' contours, he
filled the spaces between them with
bone-colored gouache. Touches of
white and pink gouache add
animation.
Here in these thick-stemmed, black pictographs, Klee makes his
abbreviated black figures from the previous year even thicker. Leaping
into our vision as boldly as an advertisement, these signs symbolize
syncopated movement, frolicking creatures, and stick figures.
Expressionist Architecture
• Expressionist architecture was an architectural movement that developed in Europe during the first decades of
the 20th century in parallel with the expressionist visual and performing arts.
• The term "Expressionist architecture" initially described the activities of the German, Dutch, Austrian, Czech and
Danish avant-garde from 1910 until 1924. Subsequent redefinitions extended the term backwards to 1905 and
also widened it to encompass the rest of Europe. Today the meaning has broadened even further to refer to
architecture of any date or location that exhibits some of the qualities of the original movement such as;
distortion, fragmentation or the communication of violent or overstressed emotion.
• The style was characterized by an early-modernist adoption of novel materials, formal innovation, and very
unusual massing, sometimes inspired by natural biomorphic forms, sometimes by the new technical possibilities
offered by the mass production of brick, steel and especially glass. Many expressionist architects fought in World
War I and their experiences, combined with the political turmoil and social upheaval that followed the German
Revolution of 1919, resulted in a utopian outlook and a romantic socialist agenda. Economic conditions severely
limited the number of built commissions between 1914 and the mid 1920s, resulting in many of the most important
expressionist works remaining as projects on paper, such as Bruno Taut's Alpine Architecture and Hermann
Finsterlin's Formspiels. Ephemeral exhibition buildings were numerous and highly significant during this period.
Scenography for theatre and films provided another outlet for the expressionist imagination, and provided
supplemental incomes for designers attempting to challenge conventions in a harsh economic climate.
CHARACTERISTICS:
Expressionist architecture was individualistic and in many ways eschewed aesthetic dogma, but it is still useful
to develop some criteria which defines it. Though containing a great variety and differentiation, many points can
be found as recurring in works of Expressionist architecture, and are evident in some degree in each of its
works:
•
Distortion of form for an emotional effect.
•
Subordination of realism to symbolic or stylistic expression of inner experience.
•
An underlying effort at achieving the new, original, and visionary.
•
Profusion of works on paper, and models, with discovery and representations of concepts more important
than pragmatic finished products.
•
Often hybrid solutions, irreducible to a single concept.
•
Themes of natural romantic phenomena, such as caves, mountains, lightning, crystal and rock formations.
As such it is more mineral and elemental than florid and organic which characterized its close contemporary
Art Nouveau.
•
Utilizes creative potential of artisan craftsmanship.
•
Tendency more towards the gothic than the classical. Expressionist architecture also tends more towards
the Romanesque and the rococo than the classical.
•
Though a movement in Europe, expressionism is as eastern as western. It draws as much from Moorish,
Islamic, Egyptian, and Indian art and architecture as from Roman or Greek.
•
Conception of architecture as a work of art.
The major permanent extant landmark of Expressionism is Erich Mendelsohn's Einstein Tower in Potsdam.
Einstein Tower in Potsdam-Berlin
by Erich Mendelsohn 1919-22
Erich Mendelsohn's small, but powerfully modeled
tower, built to symbolize the greatness of the
Einsteinian concepts, was also a quite functional
house. It was designed to hold Einstein's own
astronomical laboratory... Mendelsohn was after a
completely plastic kind of building, moulded rather
than built, without angles and with smooth, rounded
corners. He needed a malleable material like
reinforced concrete, which could be made to curve
and create its own surface plasticity, but due to postwar shortages, some parts had to be in brick and
others in concrete. So the total external effect was
obtained by rendering the surface material. Even so,
this 'sarcophagus of architectural Expressionism' is
one of the most brilliantly original buildings of the
twentieth century."
— Dennis Sharp. Twentieth Century Architecture: a Visual History. p65.
Photo of Section- Model
Basement floor plan
Interior view
Ground floor plan
Upper floor plans
Detail from Stairs
TWA Building in New York City
by Eero Saarinen1956-62
TWA Building in New York City
by Eero Saarinen1956-62
TWA Building in New York City
by Eero Saarinen1956-62
TWA Building in New York City
by Eero Saarinen1956-62
De Stijl (1817-1831)
•
While German Expressionists wallowed in angst, a Dutch group of Modernists led by painter Piet Mondrian
(1872-1944) tried to eliminate emotion from art.
•
Called De Stijl, which means ―The Style,‖ this movement of artists and architects advocated a severe art of
pure geometry.
•
Among those associated with De Stijl were:
– the architects: Rietveld, Oud, van t‘Hoff and van Eesteren
– the painters: Mondrian , Vander Leck, and Huzsar
– and the sculptor, Vantongerloo.
•
De Stijl was one of the formative factors in the developments of ‗twenties and ‗thirties in architecture,
product and graphic design, and in painting and sculpture.
•
De Stijl is an international and Dutch phenomenon related to Art Nouveau, Cubism, Futurism,
Constructivism and the Bauhaus.
Piet Mondrian: Harmony of Opposites
The goal: ―to create a precise, mechanical order , lacking in the natural world.‖
LINING UP: Mondrian based his style on lines and rectangles. Theorizing that straight lines do not exist in
nature, he decided to use straight lines exclusively to create an art of harmony and order — qualities
conspicuously missing from the world.
When De Stijl was transferred to architecture, it would supposedly bring all chaotic forces into line, achieving a
balance of opposites as in the Cross. For Mondrian,
- Vertical lines represent vitality
- Horizontal lines represent tranquility.
- The point where two lines crossed in right angle was
the point of ―dynamic equilibrium.‖
Piet Mondrian was the main creator and the most important proponent of geometric abstract language in
Holland. Along with other members of the De Stijl group, Mondrian's work was intended to convey "absolute
reality," construed as the world of pure geometric forms underlying all existence and related according to the
vertical-horizontal principle of straight lines and pure spectral colors.
Intention: to convey ―absolute reality‖→ the world of pure →
geometric forms
the vertical-horizontal
principle of straight lines
and pure spectral colors.
Mondrian termed his geometric style, as "Neoplasticism.‖ He further developed this style between 1915 and
1920. In 1920, he published his manifesto "Le Néoplasticisme" and for the next two-and-a-half decades, he
continued to work in his characteristic geometric style. His style:
 eliminated all references to the real world, and
 posited on the geometric division of the canvas through black vertical and horizontal lines of varied
thickness, complemented by blocks of primary colors, particularly blue, red, and yellow.
Similar compositional principles underlie the work
of the De Stijl artists, who applied them with slight
formal modifications to achieve their independent,
personal expression.
Mondrian‘s most famous works are his
paintings made up of pure red, yellow, and blue,
as well as black and white, but for a while he
used shades of gray as well, and even his lines
were dark gray instead of pure black.
Over time, though, his artwork became cleaner and
more simple.
Strong fields of color dominated his paintings,
separated by thick black lines and sections of pure
white.
Then white itself became the focus, along with a
judicious use of accent colors (still primaries,
however) and the same black lines to break up
the space.
Mondrian then began
experimenting with double and
triple lines, crisscrossing his
canvases with more black than
ever before. That experimentation
eventually led to a major
adjustment on his part—do you
see anything different in the next
painting?
Here, Mondrian painted
smaller squares of color in
between a few of his double
lines, without any black
bounding their edges.
And although it might not
jump off the screen to us,
unbounded color was a
serious departure for
Mondrian, indicating a big
change of direction for him.
Composition with Red, Yellow and
Blue, 1921, by Piet Mondrian
This is Mondrian's expression of
going back to basics: vertical and
horizontal lines and only the three
basic colors.
It actually culminated in Mondrian‘s last
and greatest works, which he made
near the end of his life after moving to
New York.
Trafalgar Square, by Piet Mondrian
vertical and horizontal lines and only
the three basic colors, but this time
there is also unbounded fields of
color.
Broadway Boogie Woogie
Piet Mondrian (Dutch, 1872-1944)
1942-43. Oil on canvas, 50 x 50" (127 x 127 cm). Given anonymously
As you can see, Mondrian completely
emptied his canvas of any black lines, using
instead squares of pure color to separate and
delineate the larger blocks of white in the
painting.
It would have been interesting to see
Mondrian‘s style continue to evolve,
especially since he‘d just made such a big
stylistic change—but unfortunately he died
shortly after completing Broadway Boogie
Woogie, in 1944.
Escaping to New York after the start of
World War II, Mondrian delighted in the
city's architecture, and, an adept
dancer, was fascinated by American
jazz, particularly boogie–woogie. He
saw the syncopated beat, irreverent
approach to melody, and
improvisational aesthetic of boogie–
woogie as akin to his own "destruction
of natural appearance; and construction
through continuous opposition of pure
means—dynamic rhythm."
Broadway Boogie Woogie
Piet Mondrian (Dutch, 1872-1944)
1942-43. Oil on canvas, 50 x 50" (127 x 127 cm). Given anonymously
Mondrian's aesthetic doctrine of Neo-Plasticism
restricted the painter's means to the most basic
kinds of line—that is, to straight horizontals and
verticals—and to a similarly limited color range,
the primary triad of red, yellow, and blue plus
white, black, and the grays between. But
Broadway Boogie Woogie omits black and
breaks Mondrian's once uniform bars of color
into multicolored segments. Bouncing against
each other, these tiny, blinking blocks of color
create a vital and pulsing rhythm, an optical
vibration that jumps from intersection to
intersection like the streets of New York. At the
same time, the picture is carefully calibrated, its
colors interspersed with gray and white blocks in
an extraordinary balancing act. Mondrian's love
of boogie-woogie must have come partly
because he saw its goals as analogous to his
own: "destruction of melody which is the
destruction of natural appearance; and
construction through the continuous opposition
of pure means—dynamic rhythm."Bands of
stuttering chromatic pulses, paths of red, yellow,
and blue interrupted by light gray suggest the
city's grid and the movement of traffic, while the
staccato vibration of colors evokes the
syncopation of jazz and the blinking electric
lights of Broadway.
Revision: De Stijl and Mondrian
De Stijl: “The Style”
Mondrian: Neoplasticism
• The major contribution of De Stijl to art was its
derive towards absolute abstraction, without
any reference whatsoever to objects in nature.
•
• The goal was to ―create a precise, mechanical
order lacking in the natural world.‖
• The elements of the Modern world was
abstracted to the intersecting mesh of vertical
and horizontal lines and planes, dyed in
primary colors.
•
•
•
•
• This style was an advocation toward a severe
art of pure geometry.
• When De Stijl was transferred to architecture, it
brought all the two dimensional meshing
system into a three-dimensionality, forming a
chaotic togetherness of 2D Neoplasticism with
3D identically systematized mesh.
•
•
•
For Mondrian, ―Art systematically eliminates the
world of nature and man.‖
He wanted art as mathematical as possible, a
blueprint for an organized life.
He restricted himself to black lines forming
rectangles.
He used only the primary colors of red, yellow
and blue, and three noncolors: gray, black and
white.
By carefully calculating the placement of those
elements, Mondrian counterpointed competing
rhythms to achieve ―a balance of unequal but
equivalent oppositions.‖
He made grid paintings.
He was the artist who opposed the cult of
subjective feeling.
His style, Neoplasticism, became a symbol of
Modern art.
Surrealism
Surrealism originated in the late 1910s and early '20s as a literary movement that experimented with a new
mode of expression called automatic writing, or automatism, which sought to release the unbridled
imagination of the subconscious.
Officially consecrated in Paris in 1924 with the publication of the Manifesto of Surrealism by the poet and
critic André Breton (1896–1966), Surrealism became an international intellectual and political movement.
Breton, a trained psychiatrist, along with French poets Louis Aragon (1897–1982), Paul Éluard (1895–1952),
and Philippe Soupault (1897–1990), were influenced by the psychological theories and dream studies of
Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) and the political ideas of Karl Marx (1818–1883).
Using Freudian methods of free association, their poetry and prose drew upon the private world of the mind,
traditionally restricted by reason and societal limitations, to produce surprising, unexpected imagery. The
cerebral and irrational tenets of Surrealism find their ancestry in the clever and whimsical disregard for
tradition fostered by Dadaism a decade earlier.
Surrealist poets were at first reluctant to align themselves with visual artists because they believed that the
laborious processes of painting, drawing, and sculpting were at odds with the spontaneity of uninhibited
expression. However, Breton and his followers did not altogether ignore visual art. They held high regard for
artists such as Giorgio de Chirico (1888–1978), Pablo Picasso (1881–1973), Francis Picabia (1879–1953),
and Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) because of the analytic, provocative, and erotic qualities of their work. For
example, Duchamp's conceptually complex Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass)
(1915–23; Philadelphia Museum of Art) was admired by Surrealists and is considered a precursor to the
movement because of its bizarrely juxtaposed and erotically charged objects.
The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even
(The Large Glass), 1915–23
Marcel Duchamp (French, 1887–1968)
Oil, varnish, lead foil, lead wire, and dust on two glass panels; (277.5 x 175.9 cm)
Philadelphia Museum of Art
Duchamp's break with traditional methods of artistic
production is powerfully evident in The Bride Stripped
Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass) (1915–
23), an object that can be characterized as both painting
and sculpture.
BRIDE
BACHELORS
Oil, varnish, lead foil, lead wire, and dust are sandwiched
between two panes of glass with five glass strips and
aluminum foil layered on top.
The Bride occupies the top panel, while her Bachelors are
imprisoned on the lower glass pane. This lower region is a
registry of different mechanical devices, such as a coffee
grinder, that Duchamp imaginatively forged together. The
new mechanism thus produced was to be a literal
lovemaking machine, though one that would never
function satisfactorily.
With his trademark wit, Duchamp paralleled the sexual
frustration aroused within the work to the frustration his
audience would experience when first confronted with this
truly original work of art. The nature of The Large Glass is
that of a machine organism, suggesting anatomical
diagrams of the respiratory, circulatory, digestive, or
reproductive systems of higher mammals.
The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large
Glass), 1915–23
Marcel Duchamp (French, 1887–1968)
Oil, varnish, lead foil, lead wire, and dust on two glass panels; (277.5 x 175.9 cm)
Philadelphia Museum of Art
 Characteristic of Duchamp's "mechanomorphic" style,
this work reflects his distinctive technique of grafting
machine forms onto human activity.
BRIDE
BACHELORS
 Thus, while he portrays traditional symbols of
inviolable purity, such as the marriage indicated by
the title, he destroys any sense of convention by
presenting them as elaborate systems of anatomical
plumbing.
 While the Bride is the stimulant that enables an
illuminating gas to give form to the Bachelors,
according to the artist's notes, the construction on the
surface does not function as a mechanistic device.
 Duchamp is working with an imaginative contraption
that relies on systematic relations between the
different components, and yet they are fundamentally
unable to actually produce anything.
 Ultimately, the viewer's frustration with the
impossibility of contact between the Bride and her
Bachelors becomes a metaphor for the thwarted
dynamic between the males and female he has
created.
The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Green Box), September 1934
Marcel Duchamp (French, 1887–1968)
Box containing collotype reproductions on various papers, Overall: 33 x 28.3 x 2.5 cm
Containing one color plate, ninetythree notes, and photographs and
facsimiles by Duchamp, the greenflocked cardboard box—produced in
an edition of 320—provides valuable
insight into how Duchamp developed
and arrived at his legendary
mechanomorphic style.
Though each Green Box is organized
in no particular order, there is an
obsessive and disciplined quality to
this project, due to Duchamp's
insistence that he himself reproduce
each edition by hand.
Duchamp viewed the contents of The
Green Box as more than a mere
guide to understanding The Large
Glass. Put differently, The Green Box
was not a key to unlocking the
secrets of The Large Glass but,
rather, a verbal version of the graphic
masterpiece. For Duchamp, The
Large Glass represented a
compilation of his ideas rendered
visually; The Green Box was thus the
verbal complement.
Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2), 1912
Marcel Duchamp (French, 1887–1968)
Oil on canvas; 58 x 35 in.
The Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection (1950-134-59)
Philadelphia Museum of Art
© Succession Marcel Duchamp, 2001, ARS, NY
With this representation of the female nude in successive forms of
movement, Duchamp drastically limited his palette to gold and
beige tones. The fracturing of the body, the density of mechanistic
forms, and the visualization of movement on the canvas reveal
the extent to which he was influenced by the Futurists, as well as
the photography of Eadweard Muybridge (1830–1904) and the
emerging art of the cinema. Negatively received by the Parisian
avant-garde, Duchamp was forced to withdraw Nude from the
Salon des Indépendants. The Salon jury objected not only to the
work's subject but also its title, which Duchamp refused to
change. Challenging a sacred motif of traditional painting, the
Nude's mechanistic approach to the female body was perceived
as a crude transgression, perversely transporting an icon of art
history into the modern-day reality of a culture dependent on
mechanized systems of production. The Nude marks a transition
point in Duchamp's career, as he moved to Munich in the wake of
its rejection and never again produced another painting in this
conventional format. His departure can be seen as the launch of a
nomadic lifestyle that would characterize his entire life.
The Fountain by R. Mutt by Marcel Duchamp
Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864–1946)
Published in Blind Man, no. 2 (May 1917)
Gelatin silver print; (11 x 17.9 cm)
Philadelphia Museum of Art
A landmark exhibition of
contemporary art is made at New
York City's Grand Central Palace in
1917. Any artist could submit to this
open exhibition, the only requirement
was to pay a $6 entry fee.
Entering under a false name,
Duchamp submitted a urinal signed
"R. Mutt (1917)" and labeled it
Fountain. Not only was the
pseudonym a clever remark on both
"Mott Works," the company that
manufactured this industrial product,
and the popular cartoon strip "Mutt
and Jeff," but also, the strategic
placement of the signature
necessitated that the urinal be
presented on its back in order to
allow the artist's name to be viewed.
The shock of seeing Fountain on a platform cannot be overestimated. The intrusion of this industrial object into the sacred space of the
gallery was certainly controversial, but due to the fact that the object itself presented such rude and distasteful connotations that was
inappropriate for the exhibition, Fountain was rejected by the organizers. Although Duchamp himself was on the organizing committee,
this rejection had effectively demonstrated the limits of the American avant-garde, and forced a reconsideration of their self-styled
boldness and radicalism.
With his provocative gesture, Duchamp had decontextualized the urinal from its practical function, though his manipulation of its
position seemed to draw even more attention to its traditional usage, and consequently provided a discomforting experience for the
viewer. As the legacy of Fountain, contemporary art is grounded in the notion that artists may utilize the resources of everyday life to
produce their works, and are no longer bound by the perimeters of the easel, the canvas, or other traditional modes of production.
The Potato, 1928
Joan Miró (Spanish, 1893–1983)
Oil on canvas (101 x 81.6 cm)
Born in the Spanish province of Catalonia in 1893, Joan Miró
was deeply influenced by his country's native landscape and
artistic heritage. During the early part of his career, he lived
in Paris, where he was associated with the French
Surrealists and its practitioners, but he returned to settle in
Spain after World War II. This deliberate remove from the
center of the art world is symptomatic of Miró's
independence, a temperament that would mark his art as
well as his life. Mining the possibilities of free invention
encouraged by Surrealism, Miró developed a style that drew
from highly personalized and psychological references. Often
beginning with a recognizable starting point, Miró
transformed his subjects through whimsical color and free
play with form.
The Potato is emblematic of Miró's poetic riffs on reality. It takes as its
subject a gigantic female figure who stretches her arms wide, against a
blue sky and above a patch of earth—perhaps a potato field. The billowing
white shape of the figure is attached to a red post in the center of the
composition like a scarecrow on a pole. Miró surrounded his merry
"potato-earth-woman" with fanciful decorative objects, some of which are
"earthy" and some not. The figure has one brown-and-black breast that
"squirts" a long, black, winding thread, as elfin creatures flutter in the sky
around her. At the left, a red and yellow "butterfly-woman" takes flight from
her brown banana-like nose as other creatures climb a ladder—one of
Miró's favorite motifs. Beyond the earthiness of the subject, the painting's
title appears to be derived from the representation of an actual,
recognizable potato—the small, brown, oval object with three tendrils
growing out of its upper edge, which is lodged in the woman's forehead.
The Potato of 1928 by Miró uses organic forms and
twisted lines to create an imaginative world of
fantastic figures.
Photo: This Is the Color of
My Dreams, 1925
Joan Miró (Spanish, 1893–1983)
Oil on canvas (96.5 x 129.5 cm)
Between 1924 and 1927, Miró created a group of paintings that are radically different from his earlier work. Known as peinturepoésie, these canvases, with broad and loosely brushed fields of color, are animated by just a few enigmatic signs. They are linked
to his association, in the early 1920s, with the poets who later joined the Surrealist movement. The poets were the friends of his
neighbor, the painter André Breton.
The present work, with its simple composition, is the most evocative of these works. Only three elements float on the white empty
canvas: the word "Photo," the patch of blue, and the sentence "ceci est la couleur de mes rêves" (this is the color of my dreams).
The black letters sit on faint, barely visible pencil lines that serve as guides for their sizes, as in a child's writing primer. When
asked by the writer Georges Raillard about the meaning of the word "Photo," Miró said, "I started with the idea of a photo—I don't
remember at all what photo it was. I neither did a collage nor a reproduction of it. I simply painted the word 'photo.'"
The Birth of the World, 1925
Joan Miró (Spanish, 1893-1983)
Oil on canvas, (250.8 x 200 cm). MoMA
Here Miró applied paint to an unevenly
primed canvas in an unorthodox
manner—pouring, brushing, and
flinging—so that the paint soaked into
the canvas in some places while
resting on the surface in others. On
top of this relatively uncontrolled
application of paint, he added
schematic lines and shapes planned
in preparatory studies. The bird or kite,
shooting star, balloon, and figure with
white head may all seem somehow
familiar, yet their association is
illogical. Miró once said that The Birth
of the World describes "a sort of
genesis," an amorphous beginning out
of which life may take form.
Untitled, 1973
Joan Miró (Spanish, 1893-1983)
Lithograph, Sheet and Comp. (89.8 x 61.0 cm). MoMA
The Escape Ladder, 1940
Joan Miró (Spanish, 1893-1983)
Gouache, watercolor and ink on paper, (40.0 x 47.6 cm). MoMA
Nude Standing by the Sea, 1929
Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881–1973)
Oil on canvas (129.9 x 96.8 cm)
Although never an official member of the Surrealists,
despite Breton's efforts to coopt him, Picasso
nevertheless participated in many of their exhibitions
and activities in Paris. His work between 1926 and 1939
has been called surrealist because of its fanciful imagery
and sexually charged motifs, but despite many shared
features, Picasso's desire to interpret the real world was
at odds with Surrealism's imaginary inner-generated
visions. Here, he was inspired by bathers on a beach
that he had previously sketched, painted, and sculpted
in Cannes (1927) and Dinard (1928). In these earlier
works, as in this 1929 painting, Picasso ultimately
transforms the human figure into a strange mutated
being, part geometric masonry, part inflated balloon. The
features of the female physique metamorphose into one
another—the rounded buttocks also suggesting breasts,
the pointed breasts suggesting sharp teeth, and the
horizontal slit, a reference to both navel and genitals.
The overall effect is conflicted, showing both
monumentality and vulnerability, sensuality and cold
detachment, as if two different sensibilities inhabit this
figure. Such imagery may have been a reflection of the
artist's own anguished love life at the time. Married to
Olga Khokhlova since 1918, he had been having an
affair with a beautiful young teenager, Marie-Thérèse
Walter, since the summer of 1927, which would last
through the 1930s.
In 1927, the Belgian artist René Magritte (1898–1967) moved from Brussels to Paris and
became a leading figure in the visual Surrealist movement. Influenced by de Chirico's
paintings between 1910 and 1920, Magritte painted erotically explicit objects juxtaposed in
dreamlike surroundings. His work defined a split between the visual automatism fostered by
Masson and Miró (and originally with words by Breton) and a new form of illusionistic
Surrealism practiced by the Spaniard Salvador Dalí (1904–1989), the Belgian Paul Delvaux
(1897–1994), and the French-American Yves Tanguy (1900–1955).
In The Eternally Obvious, Magritte's artistic display of a dismembered female nude is
emotionally shocking.
The Eternally Obvious, 1948
René Magritte (Belgian, 1898–1967)
Oil on canvas laid on board (182.9 x 40.6 cm)
Magritte painted the body of a naked blonde model, cut from the canvas the body's five choicest bits,
surrounded them in gold frames, and reassembled the figure with blank spaces in between on a sheet
of glass. This work is a variant of the artist's famous, same-titled prototype from 1930 for which his
wife Georgette posed. In that earlier work, Georgette's face is seen in three-quarter view, she stands
in a contrapposto stance, and her body is not as rigidly aligned frontally as in this later work, for which
the artist chose a younger model with firmer breasts. Magritte plays tricks with our perception in these
"picture-objects," whose fame—that of the earlier version—coincided with its role in the cult of the
Surrealist object in the 1930s. Although the body is truncated, we automatically fill in the missing
areas and see a "complete" nude woman, never mind that her arms and hands are missing.
Edward James was an eccentric poet, collector,
and patron of both Dalí and Magritte. In 1937,
when Magritte visited James in London, he
painted a vertical version of his 1929 canvas,
On the Threshold of Liberty to install in the
stairwell; he also photographed his host and
patron in front of the painting. The photographic
description is so close to the painter's realistic
style, and James is so close to the painting, that
he seems to stand on the threshold—evidently
unaware that the potential liberty before him is
threatened by the heavy artillery at his side.
Edward James in Front of On the Threshold of Liberty, 1937
Réné Magritte (Belgian, 1898–1967)
Gelatin silver print (10.8 x 16.7 cm)
Ceci n’est pas une pipe (This is not a pipe), Rene Magritte (Paris, 1928–29) Oil on canvas, 25 in × 37 in, Los Angeles County Museum of Art
The Accommodations of Desire, 1929, by Salvador Dalí (Spanish, 1904–89)
Oil and cut-and-pasted printed paper on cardboard (22.2 x 34.9 cm)
The Spanish-born artist
Salvador Dalí was officially
allied with Surrealism from
1929 to 1941, and even
after that his work
continued to reflect the
influence of Surrealist
thought and methodology.
His flamboyance, flair for
drama and self-promotion,
and hyperactive
imagination reinvigorated
the group and its public
popularity. Dalí, who was
given to hallucinations and
paranoiac visions,
cultivated these
outrageous subjects for
his paintings, rendering
them so meticulously that
they were unsettling in
their clinical matter-offactness.
Such pictures exemplified the Surrealist preoccupation with dreams and the unconscious. Painted in the summer of 1929, The Accommodations of Desire is a
small gem that deals with the twenty-five-year-old Dalí's sexual anxieties over a love affair with an older, married woman. The woman, Gala, then the wife of
Surrealist poet Paul Éluard, became Dalí's lifelong muse and mate. In this picture, which Dalí painted after taking a walk alone with Gala, he included seven
enlarged pebbles on which he envisioned what lay ahead for him: "terrorizing" lions' heads (not so "accommodating" to his "desire" as the title of the painting
facetiously suggests), as well as a toupee, various vessels (one in the shape of a woman's head), three figures embracing on a platform, and a colony of ants
(a symbol of decay). Dalí did not paint the lions' heads but, rather, cut them out from what must have been an illustrated children's book, slyly matching the
latter's detailed style with his own. These collaged elements are virtually indistinguishable from the super-saturated color and painstaking realism of the rest of
the composition, startling the viewer into questioning the existence of the phenomena recorded and of the representation as a whole.
In 1929, Dalí moved from Spain to Paris and made his first Surrealist paintings. He expanded on Magritte's dream
imagery with his own erotically charged, hallucinatory visions. In The Accommodations of Desire of 1929, Dalí
employs Freudian symbols, such as ants, to symbolize his overwhelming sexual desire. In 1930, Breton praised
Dalí's representations of the unconscious in the Second Manifesto of Surrealism. They became the main
collaborators on the review Minotaure (1933–39), a primarily Surrealist-oriented publication founded in Paris.
Time is the theme here,
from the melting watches to
the decay implied by the
swarming ants. The
monstrous fleshy creature
draped across the paintings
center is an approximation
of Dalís own face in profile.
Mastering what he called
"the usual paralyzing tricks
of eye-fooling," Dalí painted
this work with "the most
imperialist fury of
precision," but only, he said,
"to systematize confusion
and thus to help discredit
completely the world of
reality." There is, however,
a nod to the real: The
distant golden cliffs are
those on the coast of
Catalonia, Dalís home.
Dalí: Painting and Film
June 29–September 15, 2008
The Persistence of Memory, 1931.
Salvador Dalí (Spanish, 1904-1989)
Oil on canvas, (24.1 x 33 cm).
Madonna, 1958
Salvador Dalí (Spanish, 1904–1989)
Oil on canvas (225.7 x 191.1 cm)
Dalí's paintings feature intellectual puzzles and
visual ambiguities, and his style is marked by
superrealistic illusionism that is used to
describe completely unrealistic, fanciful
subjects. Madonna is one of several works
Dalí made after 1941 that uses classical
imagery as the basis for Surrealist invention.
Here, he paints two different simultaneous
subjects with a profusion of gray and pink
dots: a Madonna and Child based on
Raphael's Sistine Madonna (Gemäldegalerie,
Dresden, after 1513), and a large ear, whose
ridged interior surface is defined by the
presence of these two figures. Each motif is
designed to come into focus at a different
distance. At close range, the painting looks
completely abstract; from about six feet away,
it reveals the Madonna and Child; and from
fifty feet, it is what the artist called "the ear of
an angel." To the left of the main images is a
trompe-l'oeil detail of a red cherry suspended
on a string from a torn and folded piece of
paper; its shadow is cast onto another piece of
paper bearing the signature of the artist.
The Doll, 1934–35
Hans Bellmer
(French, born Silesia, 1902-75)
Gelatin silver print (29.5 x 19.4 cm); MET
Bellmer's obsession with dolls—his endless
fabrication, reconstitution, and photographic
presentation of them—was an effort to
construct objects that would articulate his
tortured desires in material form. The bizarre,
robotic temptress in this negative print has an
eerie electric aura. To love her, one would
have to have, as the Surrealist poet Pierre
Reverdy wrote, a "short circuit in the heartsystem."
The Barbarians, 1937
Max Ernst (French, born Germany, 1891–1976)
Oil on cardboard (24 x 33 cm); MET
About 1937, Ernst, a former Dadaist, began
to experiment with two unpredictable
processes called decalcomania and grattage.
Decalcomania is the technique of pressing a
sheet of paper onto a painted surface and
peeling it off again, while grattage is the
process of scraping pigment across a canvas
that is laid on top of a textured surface. He
used a combination of these techniques in
The Barbarians of 1937. This composition of
sparring anthropomorphic figures in a
deserted postapocalyptic landscape
exemplifies the recurrent themes of violence
and annihilation found in Surrealist art.
He first coupled birds and windblown,
animals in a series of small works entitled The
Horde (1927), and he resumed the theme in 1935
in a series of even smaller paintings called The
Barbarians, to which the present one belongs. In his biography of the artist, John Russell identified these creatures as expressions
of Ernst's fearful anticipation of the impending devastation in Europe during World War II.
In this small painting, a gigantic, malevolent-looking bird couple marches forward with seemingly mile-long strides. The dark female
leads the way as her male companion turns to look at the strange animal—perhaps their offspring—clinging to his left arm. In the far
distance, a tiny woman holds onto some undefined winged being. The strange patterns on the bodies of the main figures, which
evoke fossils or geological formations, are the result of grattage (scraping). In this technique, the artist coated the canvas, or in this
case, a piece of cardboard, with layers of paint and while it was still wet pressed it against objects that left imprints on the surface.
Afterward, he used a brush to touch up the forms thus created, or scraped away layers of pigment.
Between 1919 and
1920, Max Ernst was
one of the most
enthusiastic leaders of
the Dada movement in
Cologne. Before long,
he attracted the
attention of André
Breton, who in 1921
organized an exhibition
in Paris of Ernst's
collages. By 1922,
Ernst had moved to the
French capital, and
never again worked in
his native country. In
1924, in Paris, the
thirty-three-year-old
artist became one of
the founding members
of the Surrealist group.
Ernst's Surrealist paintings are steeped in Freudian metaphor, private mythology, and childhood memories.
One of his major themes centered on the image of the bird, which often incorporated human elements.
Although some of these birds look benign, their mere presence appears to be ominous.
In The Satin Tuning Fork, Tanguy fills an illusionistic space
with unidentifiable, yet sexually suggestive, objects rendered
with great precision. The painting's mysterious lighting, long
shadows, deep receding space, and sense of loneliness also
recall the ominous settings of de Chirico. Paris in 1925,
Tanguy had met André Breton and joined the Surrealist group.
His ensuing friendship with the older poet proved decisive for
Tanguy. Breton served as both mentor and advocate. Until
Tanguy's departure for the United States in 1939, he remained
deeply devoted to Breton; Breton in turn regarded Tanguy as
one of the purest painters among the Surrealists.
The Satin Tuning Fork, 1940
Yves Tanguy (American, born France, 1900–
1955)
Oil on canvas (99 x 81.3 cm); MET
By 1927, the self-taught Tanguy had found his
own personal style and acquired amazing
technical skill. From then until his death in
1955, he focused on the same dreamlike
subject—an imaginary landscape, deserted
except for various fantastical rocklike
objects, rendered with precise illusionism.
Usually filled with an overcast sky, the plain
below stretches toward infinity without an
exact horizon line.
Uncanny vistas , biomorphic objects
Tanguy's style varied little throughout the
years. Even his move to the United States had
little effect on his work, although it would bring
about important changes in his personal life. In
New York, he joined the American Surrealist
painter Kay Sage (1898–1963), and they
married in 1940, the year of this painting. The
long phallic form in the center of the
composition may in fact reference this new
relationship.
In Paris, the Chilean-born painter Matta worked for the modernist architect Le Corbusier (1935–37), and in 1936
became officially associated with André Breton's Surrealist group, including Salvador Dalí, Gordon Onslow-Ford, and
Yves Tanguy. Relocating to the United States between 1939 and 1948, he, along with many older European artists
who sought refuge there on the eve of World War II, also brought their avant-garde ideas, which greatly influenced
younger American artists. The nascent Abstract Expressionist group, in particular, was curious to experiment with
Surrealist techniques and imagery. Matta, who was the same age as these artists, befriended several (including
Robert Motherwell and Arshile Gorky), and ironically, although he was extremely influential, his own work never
achieved the same level of recognition afforded his American contemporaries. Within a few years, he returned to
Europe, via Chile, where he continued to make phantasmagorical compositions for the rest of his life.
Being With (Être Avec), 1946 Matta (Roberto Matta Echaurren) (Chilean, 1911–2002) Oil on canvas (221 x 457.2 cm); MET
Matta's enormous mural-size canvas Being With (Être Avec) was painted in 1946 while he was living in New York. The composition is
a complex labyrinth of architectural structures seen from various perspectives and primitive humanoid figures contorted unnaturally
and exploding with sexual exhibitionism. Such imagery certainly drew from his earlier familiarity with architectural design and
Surrealist irrationality.
His paintings and drawings of the mid- to late 1940s, such as Being With (Être Avec), which he called "social morphologies,"
attempted to address the broader societal crisis that the artist felt he was part of (or "being with"). This shift in outlook, and the
introduction of figurative and narrative elements into his paintings (no matter how fantastic they appear), eventually led to Matta's
alienation from the Surrealist group.
The organized Surrealist movement in Europe dissolved with the onset of World War II. Breton,
Dalí, Ernst, Masson, and others, including the Chilean artist Matta (1911–2002), who first joined
the Surrealists in 1937, left Europe for New York. The movement found renewal in the United
States at Peggy Guggenheim's (1898–1979) gallery, Art of This Century, and the Julien Levy
Gallery. In 1940, Breton organized the fourth International Surrealist Exhibition in Mexico City,
which included the Mexicans Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) and Diego Rivera (1886–1957) (although
neither artist officially joined the movement).
Surrealism's surprising imagery, deep symbolism, refined painting techniques, and disdain for
convention influenced later generations of artists, including Joseph Cornell (1903–1972) and
Arshile Gorky (1904–1948), the latter whose work formed a continuum between Surrealism and
Abstract Expressionism.
Revision: Surrealism
The Power of Unconscious
•
•
•
•
•
It began as a literary movement, fostered
by its godfather André Breton.
It grew out of Freudian free-association
and dream analysis.
Poets, and later painters, experimented
with automatism: a form of creating
without conscious control— to tap
unconscious imaginary.
Surrealism implies going beyond realism.
It deliberately courted the bizarre and the
irrational to express buried truths
unreachable by logic.
Surrealism took two forms:
– Joan Miró and Max Ernst practiced
improvised art, distancing
themselves as much as possible
from conscious control.
– Salvador Dalí and René Magritte
used thoroughly realistic techniques
to present hallucinatory scenes that
defy common sense.
IMPROVISATIONAL DEPICTIONS OF
UNCONSCIOUSNESS, DREAM
WORLD...