Giacomo Balla "Automobile Speed + Light + Noise" - 1913

“The obsession to penetrate, to conquer by all means the sense of the real, to identify with life in all fibers of our body, is at the base of our search and at the base of the esthetics of all times.” – Gino Severini ‘remarks on evolution’, Le Mercure de France, 1917

Giacomo Balla (1871-1958) - Velocità d’automobile + luce + rumore, 1913
Distemper on canvas, 87 x 130 cm - Kunsthaus Zürich Collection

Theodoros Stamos "Ancestral Worship" - 1947

“Such work was the only valid response to the ‘neurosis which is our reality’.  As such, it was not abstraction at all, but ‘the realism of our time’.”  – Adolph Gottlieb (1903-1974) / The individual and the social, Introduction to the American Avant Garde

Theodoros Stamos (1922-97), Ancestral Worship, 1947. Collection: Estate of Theodoros Stamos

‘The American Abstract Expressionists ‘ by Nina Leen for Time/Life, 1951

 

Pictured from left rear: Willem De Kooning, Adolph Gottlieb, Ad Reinhardt, Hedda Sterne; next row: Richard Pousette-Dart, William Baziotes, Jimmy Ernst, Jackson Pollock, James Brooks, Clyfford Still, Robert Motherwell, Bradley Walker Tomlin; foreground: Theodoros Stamos, Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko. Missing from photo: Weldon Kees, Fritz Bultman and Hans Hofmann.

 

James Brooks (1906-1992) – “ISEN”, 1966 (Acrylic on canvas, 48 x 72 inches)

"The social condition of the modern world, which gives every experience its form, is the spiritual breakdown which followed the collapse of religion. This condition has led to the isolation of the artist from the rest from society. The modern artist's social history is that of a spiritual being in a property-loving world."- Robert Motherwell 'The Modern Painter's world', NY 1944.

Paul Cézanne "The Mont Sainte-Victiore" -1887

“There is a colour logic… The painter must obey it and nothing else.” - quote Paul Cézanne

Cézanne, Paul (1839-1906) Collection: The Samuel Courtauld Trust, The Courtauld Gallery, London

Käthe Kollwitz "Woman with Dead Child" - 1903

 

“Ideas and emotions will in the end be prisoners in the artwork. Whatever they do, they can’t escape from the picture.”

– Picasso ‘conversation at Boisgeloup’, 1935

Käthe (Schmidt) Kollwitz (German, 1867-1945), “Woman with Dead Child” - 1903 etching

Kandinsky 'first abstract watercolor' 1910

“The tendency toward abstraction is the consequence of man’s deep turmoil in confronting the world,” writes Wilhelm Worringer. “Ruined by the presumption to know, modern men finds himself as helpless as primitive man before the image of the world.”

Wassily Kandinsky Untitled (First abstract watercolor painted at age 44 !) 1910; Munich / Monaco, Germany

Media: watercolor, paper - Dimensions: 196 x 188 cm / Collection: Georges Pompidou Center, Paris, France

Picasso 'Glass of Absinthe' - 1914

“How can you expect an onlooker to live an artwork of mine as I lived it?”

– Picasso ‘conversation at Boisgeloup’, 1935

Jackson Pollock 'Convergence' - 1952

“To understand art depends upon the ability of the individual to perceive essentials, to perceive that which is called universally significant, and to evaluate the unity and relationship that is contained in any work.” – American Abstract Artist, Editorial Statement, 1938

Jackson Pollock, American, 1912-1956, Convergence, 1952, Oil on canvas, 93-1/2 x 155", Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, N.Y., Gift of Seymour H. Knox Jr., 1956, © 2008 The Pollock-Krasner Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

"Abstract art has found the unexpected confirmation in atomic physics. All the material is dissolved in forces." - Dr. K. Farner, 1964 'Uprising in abstract art'

Pablo Picasso 'Violin' - 1915

“Life without creative effort is unthinkable, and the whole course of human culture is one continuous effort of creative will of Man.” – quote Naum Gabo in ‘The constructive Idea’, London 1937

Photo: Pablo picasso’s  ‘Violin’ Paris 1915 – expo ‘Picasso Sculptures’ in Palais des Beaux-Art 2016, Brussels

Technique: cut, folded and painted metal and iron wire - Collection: Musée national Picasso-Paris

Barbara Hepworth "Spring" - 1966

" Just like an oyster, the artist needs a hard core around which the pearl can form itself."

– ‘Eternal beauty’ from E.H. Gombrich, 1951- Utrecht

 

Collection: The Hayward Gallery in London and at Longside, Yorkshire Sculpture Park

Walter Gropius 'Bauhaus Building', Dessau - 1925

“The idea is rising of a universal unity in which all opposing forces exist in a state of absolute balance. This dawning recognition of the essential oneness of all things and their appearances endows creative effort with a fundamental inner meaning.” - Walter Gropius (1883-1969) ‘The Theory and Organization of the Bauhaus’

Bauhaus Building, Dessau, 1925/1926 - Workshop wing, view from southwest [architect- Walter Gropius], c. 1926 Gelatin silver print mounted to cream wove paper image 11.5 x 16.1 cm  – source: the charnel house / unidentified photographer

Postmodernism

"The only cure against Postmodernism is the incurable disease of Romanticism."

– quote ‘Pomo for beginners’ by R. Appignanesi and C. Garratt, 1995

"Postmodernism as thus conceived is not immediatlely a new form of the practice of art, but rather a critical redirection of tradition on the basis of a revised understanding of the immediate past." - Ideas of the Posmodern by C. Harrison & P. Wood, 1992 Cambridge, Massachusetts USA.

Maria Blanchard - 'Man with guitar' 1918

"Yet it does not matter who is exempted from this crisis, so long as cubism is not. For cubism is still the only vital style of our time, the one best able to convey contemporary feeling, and the only one capable of supporting a tradition which will survive into the future and form new artists." "The great art style of any period is that which relates itself to the true insights of its time." - Clement Greenberg 'The Decline of Cubism', Partisan Review NY 1948.

Maria Blanchard (Santander, Spain 1881 - Paris, France 1932) >
‘L’homme à la guitare’ 1918 - OOC, Kröller Müller colletion, Otterlo NL

“The painter will regard the untouched canvas as an area where she/he can post constructions of the mind.” - Introduction to contemporary painting (Cubism and Abstract Art) by H.Casteur & A .Smeets, 1959

Mario Bellusi - 'Modern Traffic in Acient Rome' - 1930

 “The dynamic form, for its changeable and evolving essence, is a sort of invisible nimbus between an object and an action, between relative motion and absolute motion, between the visible and the invisible, between the object and its own indivisible setting. It is a kind of analogical synthesis dwelling on the borders between the real object and its plastic-ideal power and can only be grased by flashes of intuition.” -  Pittura scultura futuriste by Boccioni 1912/1913

Mario Bellusi, Modern Traffic in Acient Rome’ (Traffico moderno nell’antica Roma), 1930. Photomontage, gelatine silver print, 15 x 20 cm. Collection: Rovereto, MART, Archivio del ’900, Fondo Mino Somenzi.

A Man Ray Version of Man Ray, 1960

“Accordingly the artist’s work is to be measured by the vitality, the invention, and the definiteness

 and conviction of purpose within its own medium.” – Man Ray, ‘Statement’, NY 1916

 

Photo ‘A Man Ray Version of Man Ray, 1960’ – Collection Imogen Cunningham Trust

 

Marcel Duchamp's 'Bicycle Wheel' - 1913

 

“The Dada movement is not the voluntary work of individuals, it is the fatal product

of a state of affairs.” – Alabert Gleizes ‘The Dada Case’, Paris 1920

Photo: ‘Bicycle Wheel’ (1951), metal wheel mounted on painted wood stool, is the first of Duchamp’s ‘readymades’ – size: 129.5 x 63.5 x 41.9 cm - The original version of 1913 and the version of 1916-17 in NY were lost.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_Wheel

Pablo Picasso's "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" - 1907

 “Every now and then one paints a picture that seems to have opened

a door and serves as a stepping stone to other things.” ― Pablo Picasso



Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (The Young Ladies of Avignon, and originally titled The Brothel of Avignon)

Oil on canvas,  size: 243.9 cm × 233.7 cm (96 in × 92 in) 

Location: Museum of Modern Art - Acquired through the Lillie P. Bliss Bequest, New York City

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Les Demoiselles d'Avignon” is one of the most famous works of Pablo Picasso (1881-1973). It is painted in a period of nine months during 1906 and 1907, when Picasso had retreated himself to a small village in the Pyrenees. When he showed the painting to his avant-garde friends, they fell silent. Only Matisse broke out laughing.

Picasso was during a visit to the Museum of Ethnography in Paris captivated by the magical fetishes, objects that were made for the expulsion of evil spirits. Against the writer André Malraux Picasso speaks of the work as "my first devils elimination painting".

In 1916 it was shown in a private room. The name of this salon was then temporarily changed from "Le bordel d'Avignon" to "Les Demoiselles". The canvas was only shown in public for the first time in 1937. In 1939 the Museum of Modern Art in New York City bought it. It still hangs there.

(source: Honour & Flemming, General art history, Meulenhoff, Amsterdam NL).



‘The Turkish Bath’ by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, 1862-63. Louvre, Paris

Andrew Graham-Dixion in 'The Art of France' about ‘The Turkish Bath’ : "It is the painting that marked the beginning of Modern Art. With this painting Art declared itself, forever, to be the creation of the individual, cut adrift from tradition."

 

 

Fernand Khnopff's "Incense" - 1898

 

“Art transports us from the world of man’s activity to a world of aestethic excalation.”

– Clive Bell ‘The Aesthetic Hypothesis’, London  1914

“Incense” - Fernand Khnopff (1858-1921), pastel on charcoal and paper, 1898, Collection: Vlaamse Gemeenschap, location: MSK Gent. (Khnopff’s sister Marguerite was model for this triptych of which only one part is made)

William Turner's "Goldau" - 1841

 

Many artists suffered from Turner's syndrome: They tried to get the sublime from the inside on the canvas - the main symptom of this syndrome. For Kazimir Malevich the sublime was a black square. He called the black square "the face of God." Wassily Kandinsky believed that art is created by God and artist together. Barnett Newman captured the sublime in "the pure idea”. Mark Rothko wanted his paintings to spread a transparent light from the wall. Sunlight, maybe. The symptoms may differ in nuances, the diagnosis is the same in each case.

Source: Article> Volkskrant> Visual Arts> By Joost Zwagerman January 6, 2015

Zwagerman look at Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851), the ‘Legitimate grandfather of 20th-century abstract expressionism’.
Discussion: Many artists suffered from Turner's syndrome, the British painter who wanted to capture the sunlight. And thus God.

Goldau - Joseph Mallord William Turner (1841) - Private Collection

Style: Romanticism - Genre: landscape

Media: watercolor, paper - Dimensions: 30.5 x 47 cm

 

22 august 2016 we celebrate our second year of “anartlovers.blogspot.be”

with more than 60% growth. Go forward artlovers!

 

Fernand Léger 'Soldiers playing cards' - 1917

“Physical nature is nothing but a memory, like a tale about something marvellous that has long since disappeared. The Factory-Town dominates everything. …

Robot-like we have become habituated to life – getting up, going to bed, eating and working to set times; and this sense of rhythm and mechanical harmony is reflected in our entire life, cannot but be reflected in our mode of thought, in our spiritual life, in art.” – A. Shevchenko /1912

Gustav Klimt 'Judith I '- 1901

 

“The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things,

but their inward significance.”- Aristotle (384-322 VC)

Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) Judith I (Judith and Holofernes-6e VC),

1901 Oil and gilding on canvas 84 x 42 cm

Location: Österreichische Galerie Belvedere Belvedere, Vienna.

 

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's "Two Women in the Street" - 1914

“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. Everyone who reproduces that which drives him to creation with directness and authenticity belong to us!” – Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880-1934) Programme of Die Brücke – 1905

Two Women in the Street - 1914, oil on canvas, size: 120.5 x 91 cm
Location: Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Dusseldorf

http://www.threadforthought.net/kirchner-berlin-street/

 

 

 

Egon Schiele "Mime Van Osen" 1910

“The value of a line, of a form consists for us in the value of the life that it holds for us. It holds its beauty only through our own vital feeling, which, in some mysterious manner, we project into it.” – Wilhelm Worringer (1881-1965) from ‘A contribution to the psychology of style’- 1906

Location: Courtesy of The Leopold Museum, Vienna

Technique: charcoal on watercolor, size: 37,8 x 29,7 cm

 

"Art is a kind of science of liberty." - Joseph Beuys ‘In conversation’ 1986

For Beuys, art became a 'medium for revolutionary change in the sense of completing the transformation from a sick world to a healthy one'.

'Leaving the factory' by Bart van der Leck - 1917

Bart van der Leck (NL,1876-1958) – Composition no.3 (Leaving the factory)

Oil on canvas, collection Kröller-Müller Museum, purchase 1917

Portret source:  J.D. Noske / Anefo; - Nationaal Archief, CC BY-SA 3.0 nl.

“Man has become a tool of his own work, and has no more sense, since he serves the machine. It has stolen him away from his soul. And now the soul demands his return. This is the vital point. All that we experience is but the strenuous battle between the soul and the machine fort he possession of man. We no longer live, we are lived; we have no freedom left, we may not decide for ourselves, we are finished, man is unsouled, nature unmanned.” – Hermann Bahr, Expressionismus, Munich 1914

'Little Owl' by Picasso 1951/53

 

“Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.” - quote Pablo Picasso

 

'Head of Fernande', bronze by Pablo Picasso - 1909

"Cubism is the art of creating new wholes with elements that are not based on the reality of what to see, but on the reality of what one represent." - quote Guillaume Apollinaire

Head of Fernande, bronze by Pablo Picasso 1909, 40.5 x 24 x 26 cm - Picasso Museum Paris