Essays on Avant-Garde

“IDOL” 1979

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57x30x15 Collection of the artist Exhibited: Asia Society Hong Kong (May 15 – September 1, 2013). “Blooming in the Shadows” China Institute Gallery New York (September 15 – December 11, 2011). “Wang Keping, Works from 1979-2006” organized by He Xiangning Art Museum, Shenzhen, China (Oct 25th until Nov 23rd, 2008). National Art Gallery, Beijing (August, 1980) “The Stars Outdoor Art Exhibition” Beijing (27 September, 1979) Born in Beijing, China in 1949, Wang Keping became one among the most influential modern-day Chinese. He has been a provocative artist during the late 1970s and the 1980s, as he called for protests that ...

The literal definition of Avant-Garde is “at the forefront”, and is a term derived from military usage. The avant-garde movement arose mainly because of the Academy’s (mainstream, acceptable art) stranglehold on the art world. The avant-garde sought to subvert the standard fare of the Academy, such as portraits, or urban or rustic scenes, and depict images that reflected the conditions of other socioeconomic classes – rather than the upper class. Moreover, the avant-garde emphasized “innovative”, sometimes radical, techniques. Even a painter such as Monet who is commonly accepted by the Academy of today, was considered avant-garde because of his ...

Comparing the innovations of Gustave Courbet to those of Edouard Manet

French artist Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) was born in a small town in the east, but from the moment he came to Paris to study art he became a risk taker and revolutionary and, subsequently a pioneering figure in the history of modernism. He is famous now not only for his brilliant art pieces, but also for his lust for controversy, his radical vision that stayed with his till the end of his life (SithsonianMag). He became a real sensation at the Salon of 1850–51 when he showed to the public that daily, common life in his village ...

The article talks about one of the most provocative and refreshing movements of 20th century, the age of avant-garde art — Dada. It starts with the flashback to the beginning of it all in 1920, when the war was over and different versions of avant-gardism were still spreading in the world, in Russia and Germany, and, of course, the center of it all was Paris. Tristan Tzara, the head of the Dada movement, was drawn to Paris to seek for attention and his plan was to create «Dadaglobe», an anthology of avant-garde art with a great number of contributions from ...

The history of film, much like any other industry throughout time, has largely been male-dominated, with the vast majority of opportunities and accolades going to male filmmakers. However, it is important to note the influence of women in the film industry, and the sorely underappreciated role they have throughout the history of cinema. When tracking women directors through the 100+ years film has existed, their impacts and struggles has ebbed and flowed in surprising ways. From the silent film era’s breadth of opportunities to modern filmmaking’s slow but steady infiltration of women directors today, female filmmakers have ...

Romanticism. Introduction. As many got tired of regularity and rationality of Classicism, people of art started to try to find a way to express their emotions and attitudes through methods more free from canons. They found such possibility in Romanticism. Romanticism replaces the Age of Enlightenment, and coincided with the industrial revolution, that was marked by the advent of the steam engine, locomotive, ship, photos, and factory suburbs. While education was characterized by the cult of reason, and was based on its principles of civilization, romanticism advocated the cult of nature, senses and all the natural in man. It ...

Introduction

“Modernist Painting” by Clement Greenberg is his first essay on modernism, and it is notable for showing his mid-life perception and importance of the avant-garde. Although he does not mention the term “avant-garde,” instead, he uses the words “authentic art,” He identifies Modernism with the intensification and according to him the essence of Modernism lies in the characteristic methods. He considers Immanuel Kant to be the first Modernist. He describes how Modernist trend applies to the painting disciplines, how the transparency of medium and technique is used on the flat plane of the canvas. He compares the Modernist painting ...

The Holy Forest is a collection of abstract paintings created by the American artist Stephen Westfall inspired by Robin Blaser’s book Holy Forest. The artist’s adherence to minimalism is what makes the painting truly remarkable and its vivid colors make it noticeable even from a far distance. Westfall was born in 1953 in New York; as a beginning artist, he studied the works of Modernist masters specializing in abstract design. In addition, Westfall also served as an assistant at Rutgers School of Visual Arts. Throughout his career as a painter, he cites the influence of Henri Matisse ...

For centuries, artists continued to paint humanistic iconography based on the works of the Classical Greco-Roman artists; from the medieval perspective, the 15th and the 18th centuries focused on depicting images that were derived from various sources such as mythology and religious scenes. Some patrons occasionally commission artists to paint portraits that reflect their actual faces. However, by the late 19th century up to the early phase of the 20th century, the Modern period spearheaded the development of new avant-garde styles and the rejection of humanism in visual arts by reducing the subjects into something that is defined only ...

I was very excited to go to the Getty Museum on Sunday along with a group of friends. We reached the museums at about 11.a.m. Entry to the museum was free, but we paid $15 f or parking our car. We made to the Getty Center where we wanted to explore the exhibition on “The romance of Black in the 19th-Century French Drawings and Prints.” French artists were improving their skills and range of works, including their inspiration to explore the new subject of the darkened realms. The artwork that I have chosen to discuss in the paper is “ ...

The architecture of the early 20th century relied heavily on the introduction of new materials which led to the existence of new styles that rejected the notion of social hierarchy and religious affiliation. During this period, the buildings created within the early phase of modernization became so diverse and eccentric yet it was due to this nature that allowed architects to apply all the scientific knowledge in creating functional structures rather than buildings based on the designer's viewpoint. What separates the style of the 20th century from its predecessors was their openness in terms of exploring new materials especially ...

The Château de Versailles has been on UNESCO’s World Heritage List for more than 30 years and is an example of classical 18th-century French art. French kings who lived there have only added glory to the site, expanding and transforming it over the years. Today, the château has acquired a new role, and many of the château’s rooms are used as Museum of the History of France. The Palace of Versailles has been a public institution since 1995. It works under the direction of the ministry of culture and communication and has independent administrative ...

Introduction

While the political avant-garde of modernist movement had a celebration of dissidence and proceeded to advocate a revolution of art and contemporary life, postmodern art delightfully exist in a world that shows the pluralism of atheistic manner and way of play. Art hardly ever functions on a critical level: the political prospect becomes separate from contemporary art functions. Postmodern art turns to represent not only the consumer society that we live but also a privileged commodity. In the 1960s, "committed" art had turned to be the pillar if artistic postmodernism. Gender issues, class, and race become central particularly following ...

Bauhaus and Vkhutemas: The Two Schools of Radical Design

The Modern period began in in the late 1900s with the spur of rapid industrialization that continued to swept West from its traditional labor force to a giant super power economy fueled by capitalist merchants who popularized the use of machines in order to produce more goods for the public. The term modernization has been coined throughout history to mark the beginning of the society's grand transition into highly globalized economy providing equal opportunities for the people. In this age, the Modern artists tried to create new architectural styles that abandoned the traditional notion of hierarchy especially the favor ...

This review is devoted to the French film “Ménilmontant”. It is truly a pearl of avant-garde culture, which will definitely touch your heart with its sensible characters’ stories. Directed by Dmitri Kirsnoff (Russian by his origin) in 1926, this is a beautiful example of the combination of pure French romanticism and sensitiveness with Russian rapidness and assertiveness. One can find “Ménilmontant” just another story about a broken-hearted girl, but if one looks deeper into her story, tries to see the situation with her eyes, it appears, that her character has some kind of evolution. This evolution ends ...

It has been a well-known fact that prostitution has been one of the oldest professions in the history for women. This profession does not only apply to specific women from another culture but rather this covers the lives of the women throughout the world. From the medieval times up to the late 19th century, prostitution became the booming industry reserved for women with no formal education, no family, and worst no dowry to gain a potential husband. Throughout their lives, women who worked as prostitutes had hard lives and often in poverty. Only very few of these women had ...

The major theme that runs through Frantz Fanon’s paper, Black Skin, White Masks, is the racial profiling and stereotyping of black people. Fanon exposes societal definition of black people not only in relation to their complexion but also as opposed to white men. The author laments that such stereotyping has entrenched inferiority complex among the blacks. To this end, black people are not viewed as distinct individuals but as descendants of formerly enslaved ancestors. As a result, they are haunted by a heritage of slavery. Gabor S. Boritt and Scott Hancock portray the identity conflict within the self ...

Modernist movement was the catalyst that opened new ways of interpreting art as a tool for political and social discourse reflecting the rise of ideas and improvisation of imagery/performance through the use of contemporary materials available at that time. The term ‘modernist’ ubiquitously dominated the art critiques from the past decades in an attempt to explain the society’s rejection of the traditional iconography of the previous movements. With the advent of rapid industrialization spurred the growth of ideas that defined the social and political landscape of the 20th century. This changes brought by the modernist ideals revolutionized the ...

Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin instills the pangs of revolution in the hearts of the audience who bask in inspiration after watching the Odessa steps sequence in the film. A film, wherever it is made, has the reflection of the society and history of the community. Habermas has argued in his essay, Modernity: An Incomplete Project, that with the transition to modernism, art has made an endeavor to dissociate it from the social constrictions and become liberated, in the sense that it would be art for art’s sake. The avant garde artist would like to immerse the soul ...

Part I: Using the questions in the Munro article, go through the two pieces of criticism by Greenberg and Rosenberg and write answers for each question posed by Munro.

In Greenberg’s “Towards a Newer Laocoon,” the work being criticized seemed to be art in general, and the struggle between all different types of art to become the dominant art form relative to its period. For the most part, Greenberg discusses avant-garde painting, and how it had and continue to has a purity that elevates itself above most art forms. He claims that there are no greater justifications for depicting nature ...

“Pure philosophical writing is the anti-image.” - Agamben

In exploration of frameworks of both covert and overt manifestations of indeterminacy, these concerns are revealed, as representations, in philosophies of aesthetic iconoclasm and art, artifacts as symbolic, and modern issues related to Being and subjectivity, both of which are analogous to Nietzsche’s model of the relationship. For example, tragedy, comprised of Dionysian and Apollonian forces which combine in a chiasmic unity of oppositions, according to Professor Fred Ulfers, are characterized by Nietzsche as beautiful, singular and factual on the one hand (Apollonian), and sublime, multiple, and fictional on the other ( ...