Introduction
A lot of directions and currents of art culture occurred in the 20th century which for a long time will be perceived as the directions which have refused all art traditions. It is accepted to designate these new directions with terms “modernism”, “new art”, or “avant-garde”. This paper discusses four directions in art and their differences in terms of content and application. The directions that this paper considers are Fauvism, Cubism, Surrealism and Futurism.
Analysis
The new art of the 20th century is a variety of sections and directions. The creativity of separate representatives of the avant-garde does not fit at all in the frameworks of any art currents. Besides, many representatives of the avant-garde at various times created products which are related now to various avant-garde currents.
The first current of avant-garde is considered the fauvism. The most known representatives of a fauvism is AndrĂ© Derain, Maurice de Vlaminck, Albert Marquet, Georges Rouault, and the most famous of them – Henri Matisse.
The fauvism became the phenomenon which has designated basic and realized rupture with traditions of previous art – from Renaissance to the 19th century. The realism and aspiration to reflect the validity have been essentially rejected. As the basic distinctive features of a fauvism the following can be named:
- The use of bright colorful combinations, irrespectively of colors of real subjects;
- Sharp deformation of proportions and forms of real objects;
- Creation by the means of these artistic touches pictures which would not remind real objects, but create a special emotional spirit with their singularity, brightness, and beauty.
As an avant-garde current, fauvism was followed by cubism. The cubism denies the image of subjects in that manner as we represent them. It aspires to find a way of expression of their essence. The cubism reduces forms to the basic geometrical schemes, displays subjects on components and unites them in abstract whole of the flat decorative image. This geometry of separate elements of a picture was underlined in the word “cubism”.
The aspiration to transfer objects represented in pictures by means of combinations of various planes was the general feature cubist products. In the pictures of cubists as if the most schematic characteristic lines of objects were represented. Unlike the pictures of fauvists, products of cubists were not distinct by the decorative effect – the leading role was taken away by the combinations of forms and lines. The cubism was even a bigger challenge to the traditional relation to art, than the fauvism.
A special place in the art of the 20th century is occupied by futurism(as the word implies as well as from the Latin word futurum-“future”), a direction in the art which adherents aspired to create a new dynamical style destroying all traditions, canons and receptions of the old art. The futurism has arisen in Italy originally as a literary movement. A group of artists-futurists has acted in 1910 and declared as their purpose the destruction of the old culture and an embodiment in art the dynamics of an industrial epoch and the big cities born by it.
Trying to express the active relation of the artist to the world to transfer «internal dynamics» of the subject, a saturation of consciousness of the modern person an abundance of impressions restricting each other, futurists became on a way form creation: they decomposed the subject to line-forces, volumes-forces, set crossings and shifts of planes, flows of plans. The futurism existed up to the end of the thirties of the twentieth century.
The language of realistic art was taken on arms by a direction called “surrealism” (from fr. surre’alisme – super realism). This art direction has arisen in France after the First World War and leant on the doctrine about the nature of the subconscious. The basic stage of development of this direction could be considered the inter-military decades. Representatives of surrealism perceive the world as a complex of alogisms, paradoxes, and social madness. When this direction occurred it pretended for the role of world outlook political force.
The representation of this direction is mostly connected with creativity of Salvador Dali and René Magritte for which the evident-subject form of expression of the art concept of improbability, dark forces of the person and society in forms of an easel picture and graphic sheet are characteristic. Their products represent irrational combinations of especially subject fragments of the reality apprehended in a natural kind or the paradoxical image of the deformed.
Works Cited
Diehl, Gaston, et al. History of Modern Painting. Trans. Rosamund Frost. New York: Hyperion Press, 1951.
Matthews, J. H. The Imagery of Surrealism. 1st ed. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1977.
Leymarie, Jean. Fauvism: Biographical and Critical Study. Trans. James Emmons. New York: Skira, 1959.