The Influence WW1
WW1 was a brutal war that affected the lives of people all over the world. After the horrors of the "first modern war," many people were looking to rebuild not only the societies that were affected by the war, but also the perceptions of art and traditions. This led to many artists building on the Avant-garde art style, by both mocking and rejecting what would be deemed traditional.
Composition A was painted by Piet Mondrian in 1920 in Paris. The strait lines and block colors are meant to to be an aesthetic for the modern era. It is moving past the war and into the modern age evolving using mathematical theories to design the painting.
I don't know exactly how to feel about this piece. I appreciate the way that lines are used. It is rigid and structured. I am also a fan of the colors. The primary red, yellow, and blue, mixed with the greys and blacks simplify the work. I find that part to be very appealing. However, I find the painting to be lacking in the emotional sense. I don't get any feelings by looking at this art. I feel like it would look good as tiling, but I wouldn't necessarily frame it and put it on the wall.
Spirit of Our Time is a Berlin Dada sculpture by Raoul Hausmann in 1920. It is a metaphor mocking Hausmann's fellow German man after the war. Hausmann is saying that his fellow man is an emotionless person, unsophisticated, and built to be nothing but a tool. This is a very negative look at the German people in the years following the war.
I find this piece to be very unappealing, however I think that is kind of the point. He is not romanticizing the human form like in years prior, but rather look at them in a narcissistic view. This is what appreciate. However the dull, bland colors and near random placement of the tools makes this a very ugly sculpture. I would definitely not want this in my house at all, but I do think this a thought provoking sculpture, and makes me hesitant to say this is an outright boring work.
The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dali, created in Paris in 1931, is a surrealist painting depicting clocks "melting" over object. This art style, and in return this painting, is the effect of the ripple the Great War created. WW1 inspired the Dada movement, and surrealism is the continuation and evolution of that style. This painting specifically explores the way that dreams tend to distort our perception of time.
I am a little bias in my opinions of this painting, as surrealism is one of my favorite styles not only in art, but also film and literature. I am a big fan of the way that lines are curved and done in a way to make objects seem to droop and melt. The colors of the painting have this dreary feeling to them. Its not necessarily sad, but just feels off-putting. I will say that I am not a fna of the shading in this work. I feel that the "sunlight" shining on the mountain in the background distract from the main focus of the work.
I also used Spirit of Our Time as a work of study. I must've missed Hausmann's sentiment about his fellow German nationals, or simply didn't do enough research behind the readymade. The various objects do seem haphazard, causing the viewer to feel a notion of unease and making them rethink about each items re-purpose.
ReplyDeleteGreat article and interesting choice of art pieces for your overall theme. They all are not my absolute favorites; however, I really like that, and it is highly informative since I personally never really would have investigated the meaning behind those.
ReplyDelete"Spirit of our time" is weird but for some reason fascinating and I know that was exactly the purpose of creating this piece.
Dadaism was simply different and seemed to cry our loud change and individualism. Dada means "here here" in German, but there is no proof that this is also what this name supposed to mean. They wanted it to sound confusing and should not make any sense.
The first painting, "Composition" reminds me a little of a motel room-divider from the 70s, which was never renovated, just like they show in the show Supernatural. If I must choose my favorite, it would be the last art piece, "The Persistence of Memory", which is pretty and interesting.
Salvador Dali's painting is my favorite of these. I had to look closely to notice the ants and the fly, I wonder what he is really trying to say. Sometimes the notion of time and what it really is can make the universe seem wacky, or even pointless.
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