Art Smart

Art Nouveau was a style that rose to prominence in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. I would say the heyday for art nouveau was from around 1890 to 1910, but of course, there is not a specific start and end date for any art movement. People can’t even agree on when or where the term first appeared. Some say it was in an art magazine in Belgium in the 1880s, while others say the origin of the name came about in Paris when the collector Sigfried Bing named his gallery, La Maison de’l Art Nouveau which means, the house of the new art. Art Nouveau was a deliberate attempt to create a new art style. Illustrators, jewelers, architects and interior designers wanted something fresh that would stand apart from the historic pieces that had been dominant in the European art world for most of the previous century. I would say another big factor was the industrial revolution. As hard-edged steel and glass forms sprung up, the art nouveau movement gave people soft, organic flowing lines. It was a breath of fresh air, creating a new style by looking at the oldest inspiration of all nature as a counterbalancing force to modern industrial design.

Here are links to episodes of Who ARTed where you can learn more about a few of the artists referenced:

Alfonse Mucha

Louis Sullivan

Henri de Toulouse Lautrec

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In two-dimensional art, the ancient Egyptians practiced an approach referred to as frontalism. Each feature was shown from the ideal, most recognizable view. The head was shown in profile while the torso was facing forward. The feet would then be shown from the side as that was a more easily recognizable shape for a foot. The result was a mix of perspectives on the figure making it appear contorted but it was the ideal symbol rendering each part in ways that would be easily identified.

Another distortion we see in ancient Egyptian artifacts was hierarchical scale. Simply put, the more important a figure was, the bigger it would be in the composition. Conversely, a less important figure would be smaller. So gods and pharaohs would be shown as noticeably larger than the average Egyptian.

If you want to learn more about ancient Egypt, check out these episodes of Who ARTed:

The Pyramids at Giza

The Mummy's Curse

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The term Ukiyo-e means images from the floating world. The word Ukiyo initially referred to the Buddhist idea that life and the material world were ephemeral. It seems rather ironic that the term referring to the Buddhist philosophy of not becoming overly attached to the material world would then be used in this art that is very much about the material world. The Ukiyo-e images of the floating world were celebrations of the joys of life for these newly wealthy people.

Here are the artists and images I recommend looking at to better understand Ukiyo-e.

Hokusai - The Great Wave Off of Kanagawa

Toyoharu - Perspective Pictures of Places in Japan

Harunobu - Two Lovers Beneath an Umbrella in the Snow

Hiroshige - Bamboo Yards Kyobashi Bridge

Hokusai - Peonies and Canary

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The word Renaissance means re-birth. Around 1400 CE there was a tremendous shift in visual arts and other aspects of culture. One major influence in the Renaissance was an appreciation for Greek and Roman art and philosophy. While a lot of the works of Plato, Aristotle and others had been lost to Europeans in the middle ages, many of the ancient texts had been translated by Muslim scholars starting around the 8th century and through trade, the texts were re-introduced to Europe. The Italian peninsula was a center for trade bringing together people of various cultures to spread ideas, and resulting in wealthy city-states that could support a thriving arts community. Still, the Renaissance also took hold in Northern Europe although it did look a little different.

If you want to learn more about the Renaissance, check out these artists/works:

Michaelangelo | The Sistine Chapel

Leonardo | The Last Supper

Raphael | The School of Athens

Donatello | David

Jan van Eyck | The Arnolfini Portrait

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Time Magazine coined the term Op Art in 1964. The article was about a show called Optical Paintings by the artist, Julian Stanczak. Of course, the term Op Art is used to refer to abstract, non-objective art that creates optical illusions. Commonly the illusions might be a suggestion of movement, vibrant effects of contrasting colors, hidden images, after images or creating an appearance a surface bubbling out, going deeper into space or warping in some other manner.

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Andre Breton, was a poet, but he had also studied medicine and psychiatry. He was well versed in Freud’s theories and in 1924, Breton wrote the surrealist manifesto. The core idea behind the wide ranging movement was that reason and logic constrain a person’s mind and that if an artist were to break free of those constraints, they could tap into a more vast area of the unconscious mind.

If you want to learn more about the artists mentioned in this episode, check out Who ARTed on your favorite podcast app, or click the following links to hear the relevant episodes.

Meret Oppenheim | Object

Salvador Dali | The Persistence of Memory

Frida Kahlo | The Two Fridas

Rene Magritte | The False Mirror

Marcel Duchamp | Fountain

Art Smart is an Airwave Media Podcast.

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This episode gives a quick overview of the Pop Art movement. Learn the ideas behind it and a few great examples of Pop Art. If you are interested in learning more, check out the episodes of Who ARTed linked in the show notes or on the website www.ArtSmartPodcast.com

My Pop Art collection includes:

Roy Lichtenstein | Look, Mickey

Andy Warhol | Grevy's Zebra

Keith Haring | Best Buddies

KAWS | The KAWS Album

Burton Morris | Nightstand Portrait of Andy Warhol

Art Smart is an Airwave Media Podcast.

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This episode covers Impressionism and Post Impressionism. Learn a little bit about how technology led to the development of the style which revolutionized how Europeans conceived of art.

If you want to learn more about the artists referenced in this episode, check out images of the works and listen to episodes of Who ARTed at www.ArtSmartPodcast.com

This episode's 5 artists:

Claude Monet - Water Lilies

Mary Cassat - Little Girl in a Blue Armchair

Georges Seurat (the very first episode of Who ARTed) - Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte

Vincent van Gogh - Starry Night

Henri de Toulouse Lautrec - At the Moulin Rouge

Art Smart is an Airwave Media Podcast.

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Postmodernism is much more idiosyncratic (The Simpsons famously defined post modern as "weird for the sake of weird"). Postmodernism is rooted in sketpticism of the broad modernist narratives. Post modern philosophy is much more subjective and doubtful of certainty and stability of meaning. To be clear, there are objective and verifiable facts, but post modern philosophy tells us that people’s responses and interpretations of those facts are affected by tons of different factors from society and individual experiences.

For my Post Mosern Collection, here are my five picks:

If you want to learn more, you can find images of those works along with podcasts to learn more about any works that catch your eye at www.artsmartpodcast.com

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Most art historians tend to say the shift to modernism started in the mid to late nineteenth century. This was an era of rethinking the old rules, breaking free from the established traditions and experimenting with new ways of working. There is not one specific artwork that ushered in the modern era. It was not birthed on one specific day. It was an evolution, but if I were to look for a dividing line I would say that the modern era started around the time that Daguerre gave us his photographic method. Photography becoming more accessible changed the way artists worked. Painters were liberated in a way because they no longer needed to focus on capturing an accurate likeness. Those who wanted realistic pictures could simply take a photograph. Of course, the new technology could also threaten their livelihood as patrons could now choose between a painting and a photograph for their portraits. Regardless of whether artists considered the new technology as an opportunity or a threat, the end result was artists experimenting and becoming more abstract. They focused on things the camera could not capture. At first, the Impressionists looked at color, then Post-Impressionists moved on to the expressive qualities. As I said the work became increasingly abstract until artists like Jackson Pollock were simply dripping paint onto the canvas. So what is the connection between Impressionists focusing on what they saw and Jackson Pollock’s action painting? Why do all of these movements fall under the modern umbrella? I would say the through line with modernism is a philosophy rooted in the idea that artists could capture some objective truth that would make the work timeless and universal. The impressionists were focused on optics and how the human eye perceives color. The abstract expressionists ran with the modernist quest to distill art down to a fundamental essence and took it to its logical conclusion. They broke art down to the basic elements like line, color, and texture to create a sense of movement and an expressive composition that was free of specific subject matters which would have tied it to a time and culture.

Go to the Art Smart website (https://www.artsmartpodcast.com/art-erasmovements/modern-art) to see images of the artworks I mentioned as well as podcasts about those artists.

If you are looking for a little extra credit and want to learn more about the artists listed in this episode, check out the following episodes of Who ARTed:

Claude Monet | Water Lilies

Rodin | Burghers of Calais

Vincent van Gogh | The Starry Night

Pablo Picasso | Guernica

Jackson Pollock

Janet Sobel

Wassily Kandinsky | Yellow Red Blue

Art Smart is an Airwave Media Podcast.

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