Yves Klein and the Nouveau Réalisme

Niki de Saint Phalle, “Shooting Painting”, 1961

Yves Klein (Nice, 1928 – Paris,1962) was a French artist and is considered an important figure in post-war European art. Although he co-funded the Nouveau Réalisme, critics of Klein's time classify him as neo-Dada, but others have since classified Klein as an early, though "enigmatic," Post-Modernist.

Many of his early paintings were monochrome and in a variety of colours. By the late 1950s, Klein's monochrome works were almost exclusively in a deep blue hue which he eventually patented as International Klein Blue.

As well as conventionally made paintings, in a number of works Yves Klein had naked female models covered in blue paint dragged across or laid upon canvases to make the image, using the models as "living brushes". He called this type of work Anthropometry.
Nouveau Réalisme (New Realism) refers to an artistic movement founded in 1960 by the art critic Pierre Restany and the painter Yves Klein during the first collective exposition in the Apollinaire gallery in Milan.

Pierre Restany wrote the original manifesto for the group, titled the "Constitutive Declaration of New Realism," in April 1960, proclaiming, "Nouveau Réalisme - new ways of perceiving the real.” This joint declaration was signed on October 27, 1960, in Yves Klein's workshop, by nine people: Yves Klein, Arman, Francois Dufrêne, Raymond Hains, Martial Raysse, Pierre Restany, Daniel Spoerri, Jean Tinguely and Jacques de la Villeglé; in 1961 these were joined by César, Mimmo Rotella, then Niki de Saint Phalle and Gérard Deschamps. The artist Christo joined the group in 1963. The group was dissolved in 1970.

In 1961 Niki de Saint Phalle, (Paris, 1930 – San Diego, 2002) became known around the world for her Shooting paintings. A shooting painting consisted of a wooden base board on which containers of paint were laid, then covered with plaster. The painting was then raised and de Saint Phalle would shoot at it with a .22 caliber rifle. The bullets penetrated paint containers which spilled their contents over the painting. This "painting style" was completely new, and she travelled around the world performing shooting sessions. Saint Phalle had stopped making these shooting pictures in 1963 as in her own words, ‘I had become addicted to shooting, like one becomes addicted to a drug'.

Décollage, in art, is the opposite of collage; instead of an image being built up of all or parts of existing images, it is created by cutting, tearing away or otherwise removing, pieces of an original image. A similar technique is the lacerated poster, a poster in which one has been placed over another or others, and the top poster or posters have been ripped, revealing to a greater or lesser degree the poster or posters underneath. The lacerated poster was an artistic intervention that sought to critique the newly emerged advertising technique of large-scale colour advertisements. In effect, the decollage destroys the advertisement, but leaves its remnants on view for the public to contemplate.

BAUHAUS

Walter Gropius, Bauhaus, Dessau, 1925-1926

Bauhaus (house of construction) was the most important Art and Design school in the 20th century. Founded by Walter Gropius in 1919 was closed by the Nazis in 1933.

The school existed in three German cities (Weimar from 1919 to 1925, Dessau from 1925 to 1932 and Berlin from 1932 to 1933), under three different architect-directors: Gropius from 1919 to 1927, Hannes Meyer from 1927 to 1930 and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe from 1930 to 1933.

Underlying the Bauhaus aesthetic was a fervent utopianism, based upon ideals of simplified forms and unadorned functionalism, and a belief that the machine economy could deliver elegantly designed items for the masses, using techniques and materials employed especially in industrial fabrication and manufacture — steel, concrete, chrome, glass, etc. All students took a preliminary course before moving on to specialist workshops, including carpentry, weaving, pottery, stagecraft, graphic arts, and graphic design.

Many influential teachers were among others Vassily Kandinsky, Johannes Itten, Herbert Bayer, Marcel Breuer, Oskar Schlemmer and Paul Klee.

Even though their styles were often quite varied, the artists of the Bauhaus had such a strong effect on art and art education that this school is often considered an art movement in itself.

Bauhaus model of education forms the basis of modern art education, foundation courses and national diplomas.

Mies van der Rohe designed modern furniture pieces using new industrial technologies that have become popular classics, such as the Barcelona bed. His furniture is known for fine craftsmanship, a mix of traditional luxurious fabrics like leather combined with modern chrome frames, and a distinct separation of the supporting structure and the supported surfaces, often employing cantilevers to enhance the feeling of lightness created by delicate structural frames.

Marianne Brandt (1893 – 1983) was an important figure in the Design history. Many of her designs including lamps, ashtrays and other household objects remain in production today.

The African Chair (1921) was an early design in Marcel Breuer's career, the chair was a collaboration with weaver Gunta Stölzl (German, 1897 – 1983), a fellow faculty member at Bauhaus. It is made from painted wood and a colourful textile weave.

Main artists of the Bauhaus:

Walter Gropius (German-American, 1883-1969)

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (German-American, 1886-1969)

Marcel Breuer (Hungarian, 1902–1981)

Wassily Kandinsky (Russian-German, 1866-1944)

Lyonel Feininger (American, 1871-1956)

Paul Klee (Swiss-German, 1879-1940)

Oskar Schlemmer (German, 1888-1943)

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian-German, 1895-1946)

Josef Albers (German-American, 1899-1976) and his wife Anni Fleischman Albers (German-American, 1899-1994)

Gunta Stölzl, (German, 1897 – 1983)

Piet Mondrian, Composition 10, 1939-1942, Private collection.

The Modernism

The Modern movement is characterised by:
- Opposition to ornamentation.
- Exploration of new materials and abstract forms.
- The use of formal and aesthetic vocabulary with a compatibility with the realities of mass production technology.

Inventions that shaped the modernity...

Technology:

Internal combustion engine.
Electricity and petrol as new sources of power.
The automobile, bus, tractor and aeroplane.
Telephone, typewriter and lifts used in modern offices.
Synthetic dyes, man-made fibres and plastics.
New Engineering Materials reinforced concrete, aluminium and steel.

Mass media & Entertainment:

• Advertising and mass circulation newspapers (1890)
• The Gramophone (1877) Thomas Edison
• Cinematography (1895) Lumiere brothers
• Wireless Telegraph (1895) Guglielmo Marconi
• First radio wave transmission (1901) Guglielmo Marconi
• First movie theatre, The Nickelodeon, Pittsburgh (1905)

Science:

• Freud’s psychoanalysis (1900)
• Discovery of Uranium and Radium radioactivity (1897- 1899)
• Max Planck’s quantum theory of energy (1900)
• Einstein’s theory of relativity (1905 and 1916)

“DE STIJL” MOVEMENT (‘the Style’) 1917 – 1928 (Also known as Neo-Plasticism)

• Formed by a group of Dutch artists, architects & designers: most notably Piet Mondrian and Theo van Doesburg.
• The Neutrality of the Netherlands during WWI helped avant- garde ideas to flourish there.
• The magazine ‘De Stijl’ first published in 1917 disseminated ideas which affected all the arts.
• De Stijl explores pure abstraction and simplicity — form reduced to the rectangle and other geometric shapes, and color to the primary colors, along with black and white.
•
Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) is the most important Dutch artist of the 20th Century.
• Through his evolution of a purely abstract style of painting he develops what he names Neo-Plasticism.
•
“This new plastic idea will ignore the particulars of appearance. Natural form and colour… it should find its expression in abstraction of form and colour . That is to say, in the straight line and the clearly defined primary colour…

(Mondrian 1919)”

Theo van Doesburg (1883 -1931), Dutch writer, painter and architect.

• Met Mondrian in 1915 and moves towards an abstract style of painting.
• Produces the first issue of ‘De Stijl’ 1917, continuing it till his death in 1931.
• Through his writing and lecture tours he makes contact with members of the Bauhaus, Suprematism & Russian Constuctivism.
• The above signals the ‘international phase’ of De Stijl and a change of membership. Mondrian withdraws from the group after Van Doesburg introduces the diagonal into his work.
•
• Main Protagonists of the De Stijl Movement:
•
• Theo van Doesburg (1883 – 1931) painter, designer and writer, published "De Stijl " 1917 – 1931
• Piet Mondrian (1872 – 1944) painter
• Jacobous Oud (1890 – 1963) architect
• Gerrit Rietveld (1888 – 1964) architect and designer
• Georges Vantongerloo (1886 – 1965)

Harvard Referencing

Harvard referencing is a format for writing and organizing citations of source materials. It is also known as the Harvard system, author-date system (Curtin University, 2007), and parenthetical referencing (Perelman, Barrett & Paradis, 2000).

How works are cited

The structure of a citation under the Harvard referencing system is the author's surname, year of publication, and page number or range, in parentheses, as illustrated in the Smith example near the top of this article.

The page number or page range is omitted if the entire work is cited. The author's surname is omitted if it appears in the text. Thus we may say: "Jones (2001) revolutionized the field of trauma surgery."

Two or three authors are cited using "and" or "&": (Deane, Smith, and Jones, 1991) or (Deane, Smith & Jones, 1991). Six or more authors are cited using et al. (Deane et al. 1992).

Example of a direct citation:

...and like Mihailov, Sierra deliberately maintains a distinctive, nihilistic tone in his work, denying any possible chance for positive social change:

I can’t change anything. There is no possibility that we can change anything with our artistic work. We do our work because we are making art, and because we believe art should be something, something that follows reality. But I don’t believe in the possibility of change.

(Sierra, 2002, p.52)

This apparently cynical approach together with the involvement of people from disadvantaged backgrounds often makes Sierra’s work the subject of heated ethical and moral debates, in fact...

Example of bibliography:

Addison,N. (2003) Issues in Art and Design Teaching, London: RoutledgeFalmer

Herbert, M. (2004) Material witness: Martin Herbert on Santiago Sierra, ArtForum, No. 54, September 2004

Garner, R. (2008) Iraq: Teachers Told to Rewrite History: Mod Accused of Sending Propaganda to Schools, The Independent, Friday, 14 March 2008. From the URL: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/iraq-teachers-told-to-rewrite-history-795711.html [Accessed 3rd January, 2009]

Second Essay Brief

2nd ESSAY BRIEF: 2000 words. Deadline Monday, 9th March 2009

Essay brief given on Monday, 5th January 2009

A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF YOUR CHOSEN SUBJECT.

Choose a subject based on an area of your interest. It can be an artist, architect, designer, movement, film, exhibition or designed object. Then find two texts/articles written about that subject and, in 2000 words, discuss their arguments - adding your own ideas.
Rather than a direct history of the subject you should analyse the material you find. The texts can come from books (rather than a whole book, use a single chapter or an introduction/conclusion), magazine/newspaper articles, Internet, reviews of an exhibition, exhibition catalogues, interviews and so on. Try and vary your sources - find two different types of articles with differing arguments or points of view for you to add your own ideas.

(ONLY ONE INTERNET SOURCE IS ALLOWED).

Please note that he subject should be agreed with me in advance.

Your essay should:

• Introduce your subject.
• Introduce your articles/discussing your research.
• Comment on the availability of existing literature on your subject – was it easy to find? What was available? What sources did you explore? How the sources approach the subject?
• Place yourself in the authors arguments (have a clear opinion and bring evidences to defend it).
• Have a conclusion with your own considerations about the subject.

I will expect a full bibliography of all material you have consulted – and use of illustrations where appropriate.

Helpful questions:

What questions do the articles or texts ask about the subject?
Who is writing about your subject and how does it differ from another approach? Art/design historians, film historian, journalists, critics, artists etc.
What themes do they discuss and how?
When was it written? Is it relevant to the date of your subject?
What sources and methods did the writer use? What other articles/books do they refer to?
Did the articles contain information you expected? What are they not asking – and what would you propose/criticize? Bring your evidences!

Abstract Expressionism

Robert Motherwell Beside the Sea # 42, 1966

Abstract Expressionism

A term first used in connection with Kandinsky in 1919, but more commonly associated with post-war American art. Robert Coates, an American critic, coined it in 1946, referring to Gorky, Pollock and de Kooning. By the 1951 Museum of Modern Art exhibition 'Abstract Painting and Sculpture in America', the term was used to refer to all types of non-geometric abstraction. There are two distinct groups within the movement: Colour Field artists (Rothko, Newman, Still) worked with simple, unified blocks of colour; and gestural painters like Pollock, De Kooning and Hofmann who made use of Surrealist techniques of automatic art. Not all the artists associated with the term produced either purely abstract, or purely Expressionist work: Harold Rosenburg preferred the phrase Action Painting, whilst Greenberg used the less specific 'American Type Painting', and because of the concentration of artists in New York, they are also known as the New York School. The only real connection between Abstract Expressionists was in their artistic philosophy, and publications like Tiger's Eye, an avant-garde magazine that helped spread their ideas. All were influenced by Existentialist ideas, which emphasized the importance of the act of creating, not of the finished object. Most had a Surrealist background, inspired by the presence of Breton, Masson and Matta in New York in the 1940s and by retrospectives on Miró (1941) and Kandinsky (1945), and the Abstract Expressionists sought to express their subconscious through their art. They also shared an interest in Jung's ideas on myth, ritual and memory (inspired by exhibitions of African and American Indian art in 1935 and 1941 respectively) and conceived an almost Romantic view of the artist, seeing their painting as a way of life and themselves as disillusioned commentators on contemporary society after the Depression and the Second World War. Other American artists associated with the movement were Motherwell, Tobey, Kline and Philip Guston.

Surrealism and Design

Oscar Dominguez, "wheelbarrow", 1936

The Surrealists explored unique ways of interpreting the world, turning to dreams and the unconscious as inspiration for a new vision. Their innovative thinking challenged convention, changing perceptions of the world in which they lived and transforming the language of art and design. Surrealist imagery and ideas were absorbed into the worlds of fashion, commercial design, graphics and film and many Surrealist artists were actively engaged with these activities throughout their careers.

During the 1930s Surrealism escaped the bounds of a radical avant-garde art movement and transformed the wider worlds of theatre, design, fashion and advertising. For some, Surrealism's assimilation into the commercial world was to be celebrated and embraced, while for others it went against the political principles of the movement.

The journey from art movement to commercial phenomenon was not merely a matter of artists and designers outside the movement borrowing Surrealist imagery and techniques. It was also precipitated from within.

Surrealism's thematic preoccupations and visual strategies often lent themselves to commercial appropriation, while Surrealist artists themselves frequently worked as designers.

Protest: The Ballet

The patronage of the Ballets Russes provided an opportunity for many avant-garde artists to engage with the world of design. It presented exciting new possibilities for the realisation of an illusory world and, unsurprisingly, attracted some of the leading artists of the early phase of Surrealism - Max Ernst, Jean Miró and André Masson.

The ballet was also one of the first spheres to reveal the wider influence of Surrealism. In 1926 Serge Diaghilev, the artistic director of the Ballets Russes, commissioned Ernst and Miró to design sets for 'Romeo and Juliet'.

The event crystallised debates on the morality of artistic engagement with the commercial world. The Paris premiére was disrupted by a gang blowing whistles, shouting and distributing leaflets. Orchestrated by André Breton and Louis Aragon, who were perhaps goaded into action by Pablo Picasso's suggestion that these artists had sold out, the leaflet or 'Protestation' stated, 'It is inadmissable that ideas should be at the behest of money.'
Surrealism and the Object

Surrealist practise during the 1920s was largely focused on the exploration of automatic processes in writing, drawing, collage and painting. The early 1930s saw the emergence of new debates and a new type of practice - the Surrealist object.

The shift away from text and image towards the constructed object was driven by the need to engage directly with the material world - the world of objects and commerce. The Surrealist object could, it was felt, represent the complexities and contradictions of modern life.

At the instigation of Salvador Dali, several artists began to create Surrealist objects. A basic opposition lay in the creation of integrated sculptural works versus new objects constructed out of pre-existing and often outmoded commodities. These constructions forced new meanings through bizarre juxtapositions that alluded to subjective dreams or desires.

Though intended as a critique of consumer culture, the advent of the Surrealist object allowed for the wider assimilation of Surrealist ideas. The use of commodities pointed to the commercial possibilities of using a Surrealist language for applied and decorative arts, while the juxtaposition of diverse elements opened up new formal solutions in design.

The Illusory Interior

The domestic interior became a staple theme of Surrealism. In Freudian dream analysis, the home no longer signified domesticity and security, but carried a range of disturbing and sexualised meanings that preoccupied the Surrealists. It provided a series of interconnected structures - from cellar and stair to door and attic - symbolic of both psychic and physical scenarios.

For instance, in dream analysis climbing the stair was interpreted as copulation. Refuting rationalist and technologically driven visions of the home, the Surrealists explored a variety of subjective approaches. They celebrated its capacity to convey the historical trace of previous events, contents and inhabitants, and invested old objects with new meanings. By combining the antique, the new and the bizarre, they created a multi-referential environment that offered a stark contrast to the prevailing views in modern design.

Displaying the Body

The representation of the body, and particularly the female body, provides a common thread through the public displays, exhibitions and commercial activities of the Surrealists.

The body became the subject of intense scrutiny - dismembered, fragmented, desecrated, eroticised and eulogised in the pursuit of a range of psychological, sociological and sexual concerns.

The body was a universal. It united the spheres of the physical and psychological, and allowed for an exploration of sexuality as an aspect of modernity. Importantly, the body also proved the primary agent in the commercialisation of Surrealism.

Nature Made Strange

Nature, as one of the key themes of Surrealism, offered a rich store of forms and motifs that were quickly adapted for use in design.

The Surrealists borrowed from disparate sources, including 19th-century natural science, Art Nouveau and new technologies such as microphotography and film. They invested nature with a range of psychological and subjective associations. In particular, nature represented the Surrealist concept of the 'Marvellous' and became a metaphor for the unconscious.

This new symbolism, coupled with the development of biomorphism as an aesthetic strand within Surrealism, led to the adoption of an organic form language by many artists and designers in the 1930s.

In America, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, biomorphism appeared in all fields of design and garnered a whole range of new meanings. 'Free-form', as it became known, clearly carried associations of the subjective, but also came to symbolise reassurance and nurture in the nuclear age.

Dream

In 1940 Dali summed up his desire to make objects: 'I try to create fantastic things, magical things, things like in a dream. The world needs more fantasy. Our civilisation is too mechanical. We can make the fantastic real, and then it is more real than that which actually exists.'

In rejecting the rational, mechanical world and celebrating dream and the fantastic, Dali reiterated a fundamental objective of Surrealism. But in making the 'fantastic real', Dali also acknowledged the necessity of a direct engagement with the material world and the world of materialism-the world of Surreal things.