Art history is the study of art works in their historical as well as stylistic contents which include; genre, design, format, process of making the work and the final outcome.
During the study of art history the focus is on the discussion of aesthetics and about the artist’s style of work. Aesthetics is the branch of philosophy related with the nature of beauty, art, creation an appreciation of the beauty.
Most of the questions explored while observing an art work are related to the key features of the final outcome, the meaning it conveys as well as the symbols involved.
Moreover, the exploration and observation of the visual function of the image is such that it aids in determining, whether the artist achieved the goal through the work. Artist’s goal could be as abstract as the time in which the artist lived and the movement supported by the artist. For example, artists who represented Dadaism believed in subversion. Thus, their works were such that they would break the rules set by the bourgeoisie and capitalistic society, which believed in tradition and conventions.
Cover of the first edition of the publication Dada by Tristan Tzara, Zurich, 1917.
Marcel Duchamp’s, Fountain (1917) Photograph by Alfred Stieglitz
Marcel Duchamp has used an inverted toilet basin to represent a figure of the fountain.
Dada artists believed that 'reason' and 'logic' of bourgeois capitalist society were a chief cause for World War 1. They expressed their rejection of that ideology through artistic expression such that the work almost rejected logic and embraced chaos and irrationality. Hence after observing the Dada Artists work, we determine, whether the goal of applying the philosophy of subversion has been rendered by the artist in his work.
It was generally believed that art history was a study pertaining to major arts which included architecture, painting and sculptures, or minor arts which include ceramics and furniture. Over the period of many years the categorization of art, has been stretched across boundaries and today art works of installation, theatre performances, music, and writing and wall painting, sketches are as much a part of the art history as the major arts. Infact the creative synergy of so many artists has led to a multi-layered and interdisciplinary outcome, of art works such that more than one or two, or more mediums have been combined to produce magnificent works of art.
For an instance, the American Artist, Robert Rauschenberg, came into prominence in 1950’s, during the phase which was gradually shifting from Abstract Expressionism to Pop Art, by his work called Combines. He explored several mediums like photography, printmaking, performance and papermaking, painting and sculpture.
Monogram, 1955-59. Freestanding combine
Charlene, 1954. Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam © Robert Rauschenberg / Adagp, Paris, 2006
Canyon 1959, oil, house paint, pencil, paper, fabric, metal, buttons, nails, cardboard, printed paper, photographs, wood, paint tubes, mirror string, pillow & bald eagle on canvas National Gallery of Art (Washington.
Now is the time, when art is not strictly classified in terms of being a work which has been done through one medium.
The method in which any image or object of art is observed is based on:
1) time
2) form
3) and iconography.
Time and form
The time in which the art work is created in a chief signifier of the work as it gives an idea about the social structure, culture, history, economical background, political structure and the environment in which the artist lived.
By and large, it has a lot of influence on the artist’s life and the work reflects the same sometimes directly, or indirectly.
The observation of the form of work provides an idea of the strokes, the lines, shape, color and composition. The form can be seen with reference to both time and iconography.
For example, Cubism was a movement led by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, which revolutionized European painting and sculpture. The invention of Cubism was a joint effort between Picasso and Braque, then residents of Montmartre, Paris.
Georges Braque, 'Woman with a Guitar,' 191
Some believe that the roots of cubism are to be found in the two distinct tendencies of Paul Cézanne's later work: firstly to break the painted surface into small multifaceted areas of paint, thereby emphasizing the multi-layered viewpoint given by the vision, and secondly his tendency to simplify natural forms into cylinders, spheres, and cones.
The cubists explored this concept further beyond Cézanne; they represented all the surfaces of depicted objects in a single picture plane, as if the objects had had all their faces visible at the same time. This new kind of depiction revolutionized the way in which objects could be visualized in painting and art.
Form and Iconography
Iconography is related to the identification, description and interpretation of the images.
Pablo Picasso, Le guitariste, 1910
Marcel Duchamp, Nude (1912). Oil on canvas. 57 7/8" x 35 1/8". Philadelphia, Museum of Art.
Thus, now having a look at Marcel Duchamp’s Nude descending the staircase, ichnographically, we will be able to observe that it is identical with the style and form of Woman with the guitar by Braque as well as with Picasso’s Le Guitarisste.
Marcel Duchamp’s, Nude descending the staircase represents fragmentation and synthesis of the object. Though it is static, it represents, a movement almost giving an illusion of a moving image. It also relates to the philosophy of cubism.
Though Duchamp has been associated widely with the Surrealist and Dada movement, he has used the influence of Cubism as the painting was made in 1912, a time when Cubism was highly prevalent.
During the study of art history apart from looking at historical and stylistic contexts, worthwhile determinants could be exploring the reason as how the artist came to create the work of art as well as whether it had other influences which included the teachers of the artist, his/her contemporaries, students, audience, artists personal life and the meaning the art work conveys.
It is said that Vincent Van Gogh had been under a strong influence of absinth. Having known the experience from the artist life, one would be able to connect to the work of art.
Self-portrait, 1889, private collection. Mirror-image self portrait with bandaged ear
The objective of art history is that of appreciating art and not necessarily criticize the same on set parameters, thus there ought to be more than one interpretation of the work of art by many observers, even as they look at the same work based on the same information available to them about the artist and his work.
A lot of exchange has taken place between the field of psychology, literature and art. For example, Jackson Pollock had extensively worked with the Jungian psychoanalyst named Dr. Joseph Henderson. The drawings that Pollock had made had a great value as his work had become a therapeutic tool.
Jackson Pollock in his studio
Jackson Pollock's Painting 1948
Carl Jung, a Swiss Psychiatrist, believed that the modern human beings relied a lot on the science and logic. He stressed that the human psyche, the forces which influence the human thoughts, behavior and personality is also an important aspect of one’s work. He proposed that the human psyche could be understood through the religion, culture, dreams, mythology as well as art. Jung also proposed that the collective unconscious could be identified from the work of art. Sigmund Freud, through his theory of psychoanalysis had studied Leonardo da Vinci’s work and had subsequently found out a lot about a his personality. He had learnt from his paintings that Leonardo was homosexual.
Art history is also associated with the museum curators, art curators, collectors and religious adherents. For, example one of the oldest galleries in the world are Sotheby’s and Christie’s and even if they contribute a little in terms of the creation of art, they become a part of the history of art because they promote, record and circulate the objects of art. Museums also act as facilitators of art curation.
Paintings from Ajanta
Cubism (1907-1921)
Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque lead the movement of Cubism which was initiated in Paris.
In cubist artworks, subjects to be drawn were broken up, analyzed, and re-assembled in an abstracted form—instead of drawing them from a single viewpoint. Often the surfaces intersect at seemingly random angles, removing a coherent sense of depth. The background and object planes interpenetrate one another to create the shallow visual. Cubism was a particularly varied art movement in its political affiliations, with some sections being broadly leftist or radical, and others strongly aligned with nationalist sentiment.
Juan Gris, Portrait of Picasso, 1912, oil on canvas
Dadaism (1916-1922)
Dada or Dadaism was a cultural movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. The movement primarily involved visual arts and poetry and literature as well as theatre arts. Dada activities included public gatherings, demonstrations, and publication of art/literary journals; passionate coverage of art, politics, and culture were topics often discussed in a variety of media.
Dada was an informal international movement, with participants in Europe and North America. The beginnings of Dada correspond to the outbreak of World War I. For many participants, the movement was a protest against the bourgeois nationalist and colonialist interests which many Dadaists believed were the root cause of the war, and against the cultural and intellectual conformity.
According to its proponents, Dada was not art; it was "anti-art." Dada represented the opposite of everything that art stood for. Where art was concerned with traditional aesthetics, Dada ignored aesthetics. Through their rejection of traditional culture and aesthetics the Dadaists hoped to go beyond the traditional culture and aesthetics.
As Dadaist Hugo Ball expressed it, "For us, art is not an end in itself ... but it is an opportunity for the true perception and criticism of the times we live in."
Fauvism
Les Fauves (French for The Wild Beasts) were a short-lived and loose grouping of early 20th century Modern artists whose works emphasized painterly qualities and strong colour over the representational or realistic values retained by Impressionism movement . While Fauvism as a style began around 1900 and continued beyond 1910, the movement as such lasted only three years, 1905–1907, and had three exhibitions. The leaders of the movement were Henri Matisse and André Derain.
Le Bonheur de vivre, 1905-6, Barnes Foundation, Merion, PA
Henry Matisse
Expressionism
Expressionism was a cultural movement originating in Germany at the start of the 20th-century as a reaction to positivism and other artistic movements such as Naturalism and Impressionism. It sought to express the meaning of "being alive “and emotional experience rather than physical reality. The style of an artist is that of wanting to distort reality for an emotional effect; it is a subjective art form.
The basic characteristics of expressionism are bold colors, distorted forms-in-dissolution, two-dimensional, without perspective.
Intense emotions were expressed in all the works.
All artists express emotions, here the exception being in the fact that the work of art may be aesthetically unimpressive, but the sense of elevated emotions was very high.
The Scream by Edward Munch (1893) which inspired 20th century Expressionists
Abstract expressionism
It was an American post-World War II art movement. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve worldwide influence and put New York City at the center of the western art world, a role formerly filled by Paris.
Technically, an important predecessor is surrealism, with its emphasis on spontaneous, automatic or subconscious creation. Jackson Pollock's dripping paint onto a canvas laid on the floor is a technique that has its roots in Abstract Expressionism.
Additionally, it has an image of being rebellious, anarchic, and highly idiosyncratic and, some feel, nihilistic. In practice, the term is applied to any number of artists working (mostly) in New York who had quite different styles and even to work that is neither especially abstract nor expressionist.
Pollock's energetic "action paintings", with their "busy" feel, are different, both technically and aesthetically, from the violent and grotesque Women series of Willem de Kooning's figurative paintings) and the rectangles of color in Mark Rothko's Color Field paintings (which are not what would usually be called expressionist and which Rothko denied were abstract). Yet all three artists are classified as abstract expressionists.
Abstract expressionism has many stylistic similarities to the Russian artists of the early twentieth century such as Wassily Kandinsky.
Although it is true that spontaneity is characterized many of the abstract expressionist’s works, most of these paintings involved careful planning, especially since their large size demanded it. Abstract art clearly implied expression of ideas concerning the spiritual, the unconscious and the mind.
Abstract expressionism arose during World War II and began to be showcased during the early forties at galleries in New York like The Art of This Century Gallery. The era after World War II was a time of extreme artistic censorship in the United States.
(Magenta, Black, Green on Orange), oil on canvas painting by Mark Rothko, 1949, Museum of Modern Art.
William De Kooning's Women V
1952-53
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members. Surrealist works feature the element of surprise, unexpected juxtapositions however; many Surrealist artists and writers regard their work as an expression of the philosophical movement first and foremost, with the works being an artifact. Leader Breton was explicit in his assertion that Surrealism was above all a revolutionary movement. Surrealism developed out of the Dada activities of World War I and the most important center of the movement was Paris. As they developed their philosophy they felt that while Dada rejected categories and labels, Surrealism would advocate the idea that ordinary and depictive expressions are vital and important, but that the sense of their arrangement must be open to the full range of imagination. Freud’s work with free association, dream analysis and the hidden unconscious was of the utmost importance to the Surrealists in developing methods to liberate imagination. However, they embraced idiosyncrasy, while rejecting the idea of an underlying madness or darkness of the mind. Later the idiosyncratic Dali explained it as: "There is only one difference between a madman and me. I am not mad." The group aimed to revolutionize human experience, including its personal, cultural, social, and political aspects, by freeing people from what they saw as false rationality, and restrictive customs and structures. Breton proclaimed, the true aim of Surrealism is "long live the social revolution, and it alone!"
The Elephant Celebes (1921) by Max Ernst
Modernism
Modernism relates modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes both a set of cultural tendencies and an array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century’s. The term encompasses the activities and output of those who felt the "traditional" forms of art, architecture, literature, religious faith, social organization and daily life were becoming outdated in the new economic, social and political conditions of an emerging fully industrialized world.
Modernism rejected the certainty of thinking, and also that of the existence of a compassionate, all-powerful Creator. This is not to say that all modernists or modernist movements rejected either religion, rather that modernism can be viewed as a questioning of the axioms and beliefs of the previous age.
A salient characteristic of modernism is self-consciousness. This often led to experiments with form, and work that draws attention to the processes and materials used (and to the further tendency of abstraction). The poet Ezra Pound's paradigmatic injunction was to "Make it new!"
These oppositions are inherent to modernism.
Hans Hofmann, "The Gate", 1959–1960, collection: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Hofmann was renowned not only as an artist but also as a teacher of art, and a modernist theorist both in his native Germany and later in the U.S. During the 1930s in New York and California he introduced modernism and modernist theories to a new generation of American artists. Through his teaching and his lectures at his art schools in Greenwich and Provincetown, he widened the scope of modernism in America.
Contemporary art can be defined variously as art produced at this present point in time or art produced since World War II. The definition of the word contemporary would support the first view, but museums of contemporary art commonly define their collections as consisting of art produced since World War II.
From the 1990s onwards, Indian artists began to increase the forms they used in their work. Painting and sculpture remained important, though in the work of leading artists such as Subodh Gupta, Vivan Sundaram, Jitish Kallat, Jagannath Panda, Atul and Anju Dodiya, Shakunthala Kulkarni, Vagaram Choudhary, Surekha, Bhupat Dudi, T.V.Santosh, Bharti Kher and Thukral and Tagra, they often found radical new directions.
Crucially, however, in a complex time when the number of currents affecting Indian society seemed to multiply, many artists sought out new, immersive forms of expression.
Ranbir Kaleka, Raqs Media Collective has produced compelling contemporary works using such assortments of media forms including video and internet. This development coincided with the emergence of new galleries interested in promoting a wider range of art forms, such as Nature Morte in Delhi and many more.
Khoj, an artist led alternative space, was established in 1997 in Delhi and has provided a forum for artists trying new modes of presenting work.
Contemporary Indian art takes influence from all over the world. With many Indian artists immigrating to the west, art for some artists has been a form of expression merging their past with their current in western culture.
Also, the increase in the discourse about Indian art, in English as well as vernacular Indian languages, appropriated the way art was perceived in the art schools. Critical approach became rigorous, critics like Geeta Kapoor, R. Siva Kumar, Gayathri Sinha, Nancy Adajania, Ranjit Hoskote, Roobina Karode, Suresh Jayaram, and H.A.Anil Kumar amongst others, contributed to the tradition of catalogue writing in the Indian context. Art magazines like Art India (from Bombay), Art & Deal (New Delhi, edited and published by Siddharth Tagore), 'Art Etc' (from Emami Chisel, edited by Amit Mukhopadhyay) complemented the appreciative catalogues produced by the respective galleries.
Bharti Kher, The Skin Speaks a Language Not Its Own 2006
Subodh Gupta’s, Very Hungry God, 2006
During the study of art history the focus is on the discussion of aesthetics and about the artist’s style of work. Aesthetics is the branch of philosophy related with the nature of beauty, art, creation an appreciation of the beauty.
Most of the questions explored while observing an art work are related to the key features of the final outcome, the meaning it conveys as well as the symbols involved.
Moreover, the exploration and observation of the visual function of the image is such that it aids in determining, whether the artist achieved the goal through the work. Artist’s goal could be as abstract as the time in which the artist lived and the movement supported by the artist. For example, artists who represented Dadaism believed in subversion. Thus, their works were such that they would break the rules set by the bourgeoisie and capitalistic society, which believed in tradition and conventions.
Cover of the first edition of the publication Dada by Tristan Tzara, Zurich, 1917.
Marcel Duchamp’s, Fountain (1917) Photograph by Alfred Stieglitz
Marcel Duchamp has used an inverted toilet basin to represent a figure of the fountain.
Dada artists believed that 'reason' and 'logic' of bourgeois capitalist society were a chief cause for World War 1. They expressed their rejection of that ideology through artistic expression such that the work almost rejected logic and embraced chaos and irrationality. Hence after observing the Dada Artists work, we determine, whether the goal of applying the philosophy of subversion has been rendered by the artist in his work.
It was generally believed that art history was a study pertaining to major arts which included architecture, painting and sculptures, or minor arts which include ceramics and furniture. Over the period of many years the categorization of art, has been stretched across boundaries and today art works of installation, theatre performances, music, and writing and wall painting, sketches are as much a part of the art history as the major arts. Infact the creative synergy of so many artists has led to a multi-layered and interdisciplinary outcome, of art works such that more than one or two, or more mediums have been combined to produce magnificent works of art.
For an instance, the American Artist, Robert Rauschenberg, came into prominence in 1950’s, during the phase which was gradually shifting from Abstract Expressionism to Pop Art, by his work called Combines. He explored several mediums like photography, printmaking, performance and papermaking, painting and sculpture.
Monogram, 1955-59. Freestanding combine
Charlene, 1954. Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam © Robert Rauschenberg / Adagp, Paris, 2006
Canyon 1959, oil, house paint, pencil, paper, fabric, metal, buttons, nails, cardboard, printed paper, photographs, wood, paint tubes, mirror string, pillow & bald eagle on canvas National Gallery of Art (Washington.
Now is the time, when art is not strictly classified in terms of being a work which has been done through one medium.
The method in which any image or object of art is observed is based on:
1) time
2) form
3) and iconography.
Time and form
The time in which the art work is created in a chief signifier of the work as it gives an idea about the social structure, culture, history, economical background, political structure and the environment in which the artist lived.
By and large, it has a lot of influence on the artist’s life and the work reflects the same sometimes directly, or indirectly.
The observation of the form of work provides an idea of the strokes, the lines, shape, color and composition. The form can be seen with reference to both time and iconography.
For example, Cubism was a movement led by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, which revolutionized European painting and sculpture. The invention of Cubism was a joint effort between Picasso and Braque, then residents of Montmartre, Paris.
Georges Braque, 'Woman with a Guitar,' 191
Some believe that the roots of cubism are to be found in the two distinct tendencies of Paul Cézanne's later work: firstly to break the painted surface into small multifaceted areas of paint, thereby emphasizing the multi-layered viewpoint given by the vision, and secondly his tendency to simplify natural forms into cylinders, spheres, and cones.
The cubists explored this concept further beyond Cézanne; they represented all the surfaces of depicted objects in a single picture plane, as if the objects had had all their faces visible at the same time. This new kind of depiction revolutionized the way in which objects could be visualized in painting and art.
Form and Iconography
Iconography is related to the identification, description and interpretation of the images.
Pablo Picasso, Le guitariste, 1910
Marcel Duchamp, Nude (1912). Oil on canvas. 57 7/8" x 35 1/8". Philadelphia, Museum of Art.
Thus, now having a look at Marcel Duchamp’s Nude descending the staircase, ichnographically, we will be able to observe that it is identical with the style and form of Woman with the guitar by Braque as well as with Picasso’s Le Guitarisste.
Marcel Duchamp’s, Nude descending the staircase represents fragmentation and synthesis of the object. Though it is static, it represents, a movement almost giving an illusion of a moving image. It also relates to the philosophy of cubism.
Though Duchamp has been associated widely with the Surrealist and Dada movement, he has used the influence of Cubism as the painting was made in 1912, a time when Cubism was highly prevalent.
During the study of art history apart from looking at historical and stylistic contexts, worthwhile determinants could be exploring the reason as how the artist came to create the work of art as well as whether it had other influences which included the teachers of the artist, his/her contemporaries, students, audience, artists personal life and the meaning the art work conveys.
It is said that Vincent Van Gogh had been under a strong influence of absinth. Having known the experience from the artist life, one would be able to connect to the work of art.
Self-portrait, 1889, private collection. Mirror-image self portrait with bandaged ear
The objective of art history is that of appreciating art and not necessarily criticize the same on set parameters, thus there ought to be more than one interpretation of the work of art by many observers, even as they look at the same work based on the same information available to them about the artist and his work.
A lot of exchange has taken place between the field of psychology, literature and art. For example, Jackson Pollock had extensively worked with the Jungian psychoanalyst named Dr. Joseph Henderson. The drawings that Pollock had made had a great value as his work had become a therapeutic tool.
Jackson Pollock in his studio
Jackson Pollock's Painting 1948
Carl Jung, a Swiss Psychiatrist, believed that the modern human beings relied a lot on the science and logic. He stressed that the human psyche, the forces which influence the human thoughts, behavior and personality is also an important aspect of one’s work. He proposed that the human psyche could be understood through the religion, culture, dreams, mythology as well as art. Jung also proposed that the collective unconscious could be identified from the work of art. Sigmund Freud, through his theory of psychoanalysis had studied Leonardo da Vinci’s work and had subsequently found out a lot about a his personality. He had learnt from his paintings that Leonardo was homosexual.
Art history is also associated with the museum curators, art curators, collectors and religious adherents. For, example one of the oldest galleries in the world are Sotheby’s and Christie’s and even if they contribute a little in terms of the creation of art, they become a part of the history of art because they promote, record and circulate the objects of art. Museums also act as facilitators of art curation.
Paintings from Ajanta
Cubism (1907-1921)
Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque lead the movement of Cubism which was initiated in Paris.
In cubist artworks, subjects to be drawn were broken up, analyzed, and re-assembled in an abstracted form—instead of drawing them from a single viewpoint. Often the surfaces intersect at seemingly random angles, removing a coherent sense of depth. The background and object planes interpenetrate one another to create the shallow visual. Cubism was a particularly varied art movement in its political affiliations, with some sections being broadly leftist or radical, and others strongly aligned with nationalist sentiment.
Juan Gris, Portrait of Picasso, 1912, oil on canvas
Dadaism (1916-1922)
Dada or Dadaism was a cultural movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. The movement primarily involved visual arts and poetry and literature as well as theatre arts. Dada activities included public gatherings, demonstrations, and publication of art/literary journals; passionate coverage of art, politics, and culture were topics often discussed in a variety of media.
Dada was an informal international movement, with participants in Europe and North America. The beginnings of Dada correspond to the outbreak of World War I. For many participants, the movement was a protest against the bourgeois nationalist and colonialist interests which many Dadaists believed were the root cause of the war, and against the cultural and intellectual conformity.
According to its proponents, Dada was not art; it was "anti-art." Dada represented the opposite of everything that art stood for. Where art was concerned with traditional aesthetics, Dada ignored aesthetics. Through their rejection of traditional culture and aesthetics the Dadaists hoped to go beyond the traditional culture and aesthetics.
As Dadaist Hugo Ball expressed it, "For us, art is not an end in itself ... but it is an opportunity for the true perception and criticism of the times we live in."
Fauvism
Les Fauves (French for The Wild Beasts) were a short-lived and loose grouping of early 20th century Modern artists whose works emphasized painterly qualities and strong colour over the representational or realistic values retained by Impressionism movement . While Fauvism as a style began around 1900 and continued beyond 1910, the movement as such lasted only three years, 1905–1907, and had three exhibitions. The leaders of the movement were Henri Matisse and André Derain.
Le Bonheur de vivre, 1905-6, Barnes Foundation, Merion, PA
Henry Matisse
Expressionism
Expressionism was a cultural movement originating in Germany at the start of the 20th-century as a reaction to positivism and other artistic movements such as Naturalism and Impressionism. It sought to express the meaning of "being alive “and emotional experience rather than physical reality. The style of an artist is that of wanting to distort reality for an emotional effect; it is a subjective art form.
The basic characteristics of expressionism are bold colors, distorted forms-in-dissolution, two-dimensional, without perspective.
Intense emotions were expressed in all the works.
All artists express emotions, here the exception being in the fact that the work of art may be aesthetically unimpressive, but the sense of elevated emotions was very high.
The Scream by Edward Munch (1893) which inspired 20th century Expressionists
Abstract expressionism
It was an American post-World War II art movement. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve worldwide influence and put New York City at the center of the western art world, a role formerly filled by Paris.
Technically, an important predecessor is surrealism, with its emphasis on spontaneous, automatic or subconscious creation. Jackson Pollock's dripping paint onto a canvas laid on the floor is a technique that has its roots in Abstract Expressionism.
Additionally, it has an image of being rebellious, anarchic, and highly idiosyncratic and, some feel, nihilistic. In practice, the term is applied to any number of artists working (mostly) in New York who had quite different styles and even to work that is neither especially abstract nor expressionist.
Pollock's energetic "action paintings", with their "busy" feel, are different, both technically and aesthetically, from the violent and grotesque Women series of Willem de Kooning's figurative paintings) and the rectangles of color in Mark Rothko's Color Field paintings (which are not what would usually be called expressionist and which Rothko denied were abstract). Yet all three artists are classified as abstract expressionists.
Abstract expressionism has many stylistic similarities to the Russian artists of the early twentieth century such as Wassily Kandinsky.
Although it is true that spontaneity is characterized many of the abstract expressionist’s works, most of these paintings involved careful planning, especially since their large size demanded it. Abstract art clearly implied expression of ideas concerning the spiritual, the unconscious and the mind.
Abstract expressionism arose during World War II and began to be showcased during the early forties at galleries in New York like The Art of This Century Gallery. The era after World War II was a time of extreme artistic censorship in the United States.
(Magenta, Black, Green on Orange), oil on canvas painting by Mark Rothko, 1949, Museum of Modern Art.
William De Kooning's Women V
1952-53
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members. Surrealist works feature the element of surprise, unexpected juxtapositions however; many Surrealist artists and writers regard their work as an expression of the philosophical movement first and foremost, with the works being an artifact. Leader Breton was explicit in his assertion that Surrealism was above all a revolutionary movement. Surrealism developed out of the Dada activities of World War I and the most important center of the movement was Paris. As they developed their philosophy they felt that while Dada rejected categories and labels, Surrealism would advocate the idea that ordinary and depictive expressions are vital and important, but that the sense of their arrangement must be open to the full range of imagination. Freud’s work with free association, dream analysis and the hidden unconscious was of the utmost importance to the Surrealists in developing methods to liberate imagination. However, they embraced idiosyncrasy, while rejecting the idea of an underlying madness or darkness of the mind. Later the idiosyncratic Dali explained it as: "There is only one difference between a madman and me. I am not mad." The group aimed to revolutionize human experience, including its personal, cultural, social, and political aspects, by freeing people from what they saw as false rationality, and restrictive customs and structures. Breton proclaimed, the true aim of Surrealism is "long live the social revolution, and it alone!"
The Elephant Celebes (1921) by Max Ernst
Modernism
Modernism relates modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes both a set of cultural tendencies and an array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century’s. The term encompasses the activities and output of those who felt the "traditional" forms of art, architecture, literature, religious faith, social organization and daily life were becoming outdated in the new economic, social and political conditions of an emerging fully industrialized world.
Modernism rejected the certainty of thinking, and also that of the existence of a compassionate, all-powerful Creator. This is not to say that all modernists or modernist movements rejected either religion, rather that modernism can be viewed as a questioning of the axioms and beliefs of the previous age.
A salient characteristic of modernism is self-consciousness. This often led to experiments with form, and work that draws attention to the processes and materials used (and to the further tendency of abstraction). The poet Ezra Pound's paradigmatic injunction was to "Make it new!"
These oppositions are inherent to modernism.
Hans Hofmann, "The Gate", 1959–1960, collection: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Hofmann was renowned not only as an artist but also as a teacher of art, and a modernist theorist both in his native Germany and later in the U.S. During the 1930s in New York and California he introduced modernism and modernist theories to a new generation of American artists. Through his teaching and his lectures at his art schools in Greenwich and Provincetown, he widened the scope of modernism in America.
Contemporary art can be defined variously as art produced at this present point in time or art produced since World War II. The definition of the word contemporary would support the first view, but museums of contemporary art commonly define their collections as consisting of art produced since World War II.
From the 1990s onwards, Indian artists began to increase the forms they used in their work. Painting and sculpture remained important, though in the work of leading artists such as Subodh Gupta, Vivan Sundaram, Jitish Kallat, Jagannath Panda, Atul and Anju Dodiya, Shakunthala Kulkarni, Vagaram Choudhary, Surekha, Bhupat Dudi, T.V.Santosh, Bharti Kher and Thukral and Tagra, they often found radical new directions.
Crucially, however, in a complex time when the number of currents affecting Indian society seemed to multiply, many artists sought out new, immersive forms of expression.
Ranbir Kaleka, Raqs Media Collective has produced compelling contemporary works using such assortments of media forms including video and internet. This development coincided with the emergence of new galleries interested in promoting a wider range of art forms, such as Nature Morte in Delhi and many more.
Khoj, an artist led alternative space, was established in 1997 in Delhi and has provided a forum for artists trying new modes of presenting work.
Contemporary Indian art takes influence from all over the world. With many Indian artists immigrating to the west, art for some artists has been a form of expression merging their past with their current in western culture.
Also, the increase in the discourse about Indian art, in English as well as vernacular Indian languages, appropriated the way art was perceived in the art schools. Critical approach became rigorous, critics like Geeta Kapoor, R. Siva Kumar, Gayathri Sinha, Nancy Adajania, Ranjit Hoskote, Roobina Karode, Suresh Jayaram, and H.A.Anil Kumar amongst others, contributed to the tradition of catalogue writing in the Indian context. Art magazines like Art India (from Bombay), Art & Deal (New Delhi, edited and published by Siddharth Tagore), 'Art Etc' (from Emami Chisel, edited by Amit Mukhopadhyay) complemented the appreciative catalogues produced by the respective galleries.
Bharti Kher, The Skin Speaks a Language Not Its Own 2006
Subodh Gupta’s, Very Hungry God, 2006
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