Expressionism Expressionism Expressionist movement lasted from approximately 1905

Expressionism

Expressionism • Expressionist movement lasted from approximately 1905 to 1920 (mostly in Germany) • Distorting the world radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas • Expressionist artists often employed swirling, long flowing, swaying, and exaggeratedly executed brushstrokes in the depiction of their subjects. • These techniques were meant to convey the turgid emotional state of the artist reacting to the anxieties of the modern world

• Art was now meant to come forth from within the artist, rather than from a depiction of the external visual world. Artist's feelings.

The Scream Edvard Munch 1893

Chaim Soutine Mad Woman 1920

Large Blue Horses Franz Marc

Abstract Expressionism • Emerged in the early 1940 s, primarily in New York • These artists valued spontaneity and improvisation, and they accorded the highest importance to process. Their work resists stylistic categorization • The paintings were mostly nonobjective. In their subject matter (or seeming lack of one), scale (huge), and technique (no brush, no stretcher bars, no easel), the works were shocking to many viewers • Gesture and Color Field

Context • In reaction to World War II, young artists, troubled by man’s dark side and anxiously aware of human irrationality and vulnerability, wanted to express their concerns through art.

Jackson Pollock Action Painting

Jackson Pollock Blue Poles 1952

Mural 1943 8 feet wide by 9 feet 10 inches long.

Gotham News (1955)

Mark Rothko Color Field • The fact that a lot of people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures shows that I can communicate those basic human emotions… The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them. And if, as you say, are moved only by their color relationships, then you miss the point. – Mark Rothko

No 3 / No 13 Mark Rothko 1949

Assignment • You are going to make an abstract expressionist painting. • Express how you are feeling, enjoy the process of making the art. Loosen up • Please don’t make a mess