LES NABIS

In the 1890s a group of artists called Nabis, it had originated from  'prophet', gathered together in Paris againist impressionism. The Nabis thought the impressionists wanted only to capture fleeting moments on canvas. The Nabis wanted to create something they felt was more meaningful: they wanted to cause spiritual reactions in the viewers of their work. The group was comprised of Post-Impressionist artists who became interested in graphic art. Their emphasis on design was shared by the parallel Art Nouveau movement. Both groups also had close ties to the Symbolist painters. They became very influential in the field of graphic art. In addition to fine arts, members of the group also worked in printmaking, poster design, illustration, textiles, furniture, and set design.
the Nabis maintained an egalitarian attitude toward materials and collaborated with patrons, designers, publishers, and dealers on decorative projects ranging from set designs to wallpaper, textiles, ceramics, and stained glass. Several of the artists created posters, illustrations, playbills, and other prints using the relatively new method of color lithography, which reproduced their characteristic flowing draftsmanship for mass audiences.
Many of these artists designed large-scale decorative schemes for specific interiors. Puvis de Chavannes, whose classicizing murals decorated some of the most important public buildings of the day, provided an important precedent. Sérusier and Denis were particularly influenced by Puvis' friezelike compositions set against flattened landscapes painted in muted tones. Works like Denis' Springtime  also adopt Puvis' distinctive approach to history painting, which conveys abstract ideas, rather than actions or events, through idealized groups of static figures. Vuillard's Album series of 1895 adapts large-scale painting to the needs of a domestic interior. Matching the eclecticism of patrons Thadée and Misia Natanson, publishers of the avant-garde journal La Revue Blanche, these five paintings vary in size, motif, and color, and are linked only by their common theme of women and flowers. Unlike Puvis' murals, Vuillard's domestic series were not painted directly onto walls. Yet they were sometimes displayed unframed, pinned directly against patterned wallpaper, which emphasized continuity with their surroundings.

THE PIONEERS OF THE MOVEMENT

PIERRE BONNARD:

Pierre Bonnard started his painting career in Paris in the 1890s and, like the other Nabis members, was concerned with using colour to evoke a mood or a feeling. He produced paintings, more often than not, of Paris and produced lithographs and posters. He also designed furniture and stained glass. In addition to this, he is renowned for his nude portraits of his wife Marthe, who was his one time model and mistress. Like the rest of Nabis, his work was particularly important in the emergence of the Art Nouveau movement of the 1890s.

Bonnard, Dining Room In the Countrary, 1913

Bonnard, Self-Portrait,1889

JEAN-EDOUARD VUILLARD:

Jean-Édouard Vuillard studied with Bonnard in the Julian Academy in Paris. Like Bonnard, he admired Gauguin and Sérusier. Neither of them, however, agreed with Gauguin’s advocacy of pure colours for a broader palette. Vuillard’s early work consisted of small-scale prints, which were primarily colour lithographs of Parisian life. Later on, he often painted interior scenes and was said to be interested in the private world of the person, or their ‘interior’ life rather than a simple portrait of them. He often used textiles as a decorative aspect of the painting. Like the rest of Nabis, Vuillard believed that there should not be a distinction between fine art and decorative art. The pieces of art that he created were extremely diverse and ranged from large decorative panels, illustrations for theatre programmes and designs of theatre sets. He designed the set in Paris for two great plays by Ibsen, ‘The Master Builder’ and ‘Enemy of the People’. The Public Gardens is one of Vuillard’s most famous decorative projects. It was influenced by the tapestries from the Musée de Cluny. He became extremely interested in photography, and by the 1900s, he became more naturalistic and concerned with the aspects of light and space in his pictures.

                                            Edouard Vuillard, Self-Portrait, Aged 21, 1889

MAURICE DENIS:

Maurice Denis was also a member of Les Nabis. In 1890, he published his famous article in the review ‘Art et Critique’, stating the ethos of the group. He was also associated with the Symbolist writers and illustrated books by André Gide and Paul-Marie Verlaine. Like the other members of Nabis, his artistic output was diverse. Apart from painting, he also designed carpets and decorated ceramics. In the 1890s, he undertook some large-scale decorative works and painted a ceiling for the composer,Amédée-Ernest Chausson,in 1894 and designed a series of panels for the collector, Cochin, in 1897. In addition to a wonderful painter and artist, he was also a prominent art theoretician during his time.

Maurice Denis - Annunciation, 1912.

GEORGES LACOMBE:

                                           Georges Lacombe, Marine bleue, Effet de vagues, 1893

                                            Georges Lacombe, Portrait of Paul Sérusier, 1894

PAUL RANSON:

                                                    Paul Ranson, Nabis Landscape, 1890

NEOIMPRESSIONISM

The term of "Neoimpressionism" is an art movement which emerged in 19th century in France and spread to the Europe. It was coined by French art critic Félix Fénéon in 1886 to describe an art movement founded by Georges Seurat. Seurat’s greatest masterpiece, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, marked the beginning of this movement when it first made its appearance at an exhibition of the Société des Artistes Indépendants in Paris. Around this time, the peak of France’s modern era emerged and many painters were in search of new methods and French painter's like Seurat, Sİgnac , did their work by inspiring science of phisics. In 1878 Helmotz and in 1881 Rood discovered that the beam changes the perception of the eye. According to their research, if transverse colors is used at the same time, they both seems more bright and strengthened each others' visual effect. For example, when red and blue come together, the toile was seen both red-blue and purple, and thus brightness level of the purple increase. Stemming from these facts, the terms of pointiism, chromoluminarism and divisionism which are the technics of neo-impressionist painting emerged.

 POINTILISM: Pointillism  based on the scientific juxtaposition of touches or dots of pure color . The brain blends the colors automatically in the involuntary process of optical mixing . Pointillism comes under this heading and relates to a group of artists who where experimenting with primary colour applied in dots or small strokes in order to express form without using what they saw as the traditional limitation of drawing. In fact the complex and time-consuming process had its own limitations.

CHROMOLUMINARISM: was a term preferred by Georges Seurat. It emphasized the studies of color and light which were central to his artistic style. This term is rarely used today.

DIVISIONISM: which is more commonly used, is often used interchangeably with the official term, “neo-impressionism.” It refers to the method of applying individual strokes of primary colors.

CHARACTERISTICS OF NEO-IMPRESSIONISM

 -Tiny dots of local color.
 -Clean, clear contours around the forms.
 -Luminescent surfaces.
 -A stylized deliberateness that emphasizes a decorative design.
 -An artificial lifelessness in the figures and landscapes.
 -Painted in the studio, instead of outdoors like the Impressionists.
 -Carefully ordered and not spontaneous in its technique and intention.
 -Subjects about contemporary life and landscapes.

Best Known Artists And Their Best Works:
 Georges Seurat :

1884 – 1886

 Paul Signac :

Le Palais des Papes, Avignon, 1900

 Camille Pissarro :

1889

Henri Matisse:

1904

 

 

EXPRESSIONISM

EXPRESSIONISM

    Expressionism is an movement of art in 20th century which the artist reflect his inner world to his art instead of  representing the nature as it is. The movement emerged in germany as a reaction to the attitude of naturalists who copy the nature and impressionists which depend on the external world. Expressionism was seen in the painting art; then it spread to the literature.
    The aim of the expressionist art is that the artist express his emotions and inner world by the use of colour, line, plane and mass. To reflect this emotions better, the artist uses the method of distorting shape of reality by breaking the tradition and this is based on the artist's personal emotions.

EXPRESSIONIST PAINTING

    Expressionist painting aims at showing the artist's emotional world with the help of distorted lines, shapes and exaggerated colours.

    Edward Munsch's painting called 'scream' is a significant example for this.
    When interpreting a n expressionist work of art, it should be paid attention to the use of lines and colours. Sharp lines and shades of red represent the anger while curves and shades of blue lay stress on sense of calm.
    Edward Munsch, Kirchner, James Ensor and Oscar Kokoschka are important representatives in expressionist painting.

              Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Potsdamer Platz Painting courtesy Museum of Modern Art, NY

James Ensor(1860-1949) Belgian Expressionist Painter

Oskar Kokoschka

EXPRESSIONIST MUSIC

    Expressionist music is one of  the most important musical movement in twentieth century as a music genre and it is stated that it is too hard to define this movement exactly.

Compositor Arnold Schoenberg and his students Anton Webern and Alban Berg composed musical works which they called as 'expressionist'. They tried to express the feel of subconscious and suffering with dissonant and atonalite. Schoenberg's Erwartung and Die Glückliche Hand, Alban Berg's Wozzeck (opera) are the best examples of expressionist music.

EXPRESSIONIST ARCHITECTURE

Expressionist architecture show its effect between the years 1910 and 1930 especially in Germany. Key features of expressionism in architecture are distorted shapes, fragmented lines, organic or biomorphic forms, massive sculpted shapes, extensive use of concrete and brick, lack of symmetry and many fanciful works rendered on paper but never built. In addition to these, while eliminating the right angle is considered as main technique, the aim of gathering the functionality and form together by the use of uncommon forms and new materials made up the original dynamics of expressionist architecture.

It can be said that the first expressionist architecture is P.Behrens. His structures which he built for AEG in Berlin in the years between 1908-1913 are considered the begining works of movement. Later, architectures like Hans Poelzig and Erich Mendelsohn chose this movement, too. Glass House, which Bruno Taut designed for the Werkbund exhibition in Köln in 1914 and Erich Mendelson's Einstein Tower in Potsdam, which completed in 1921 and interrior decoration of "Grosse Schauspielhaus" theatre, which Hans Poelzig prepared for the theatre's director in Berlin are significant and classical examples of expressionism. In 1920s, Expressionism spread into Holland and M. de Klerk is an important artist in this direction by applying expressionism on dwelling in Holland.

In 1933, when nazi's governance took the control 5 years later, the expressionism disappeared. After the World War II, it revived with a brutal view. The stress which arose because of most expressionist artists' participation to the war was a factor in recurrence of expressionism. In 1970s, post-modern architecture leaded to expressionism's leaking out.

The pioneers of the expressionist architecture are:

ERICH MENDELSOHN

Erich Mendelsohn (21 March 1887 – 15 September 1953) was a Jewish German architect, known for his expressionist architecture in the 1920s, as well as for developing a dynamic functionalism in his projects for department stores and cinemas.

The Einstein Institute of Astrophysics at Potsdam

"The supreme masterpiece of architectural expressionism, one of the most heretical and revolutionary works in history, the Einsteinstrum is a rigorously functional structure. It united a domed observatory with an underground laboratory for research on spectrographic phenomena connected to the theory of relativity. The western elevation (the picture above), the foundation area around the entrance and the facade show a volumetric ground plan which is completely anomalous compared to traditional codes."

RUDOLPH STEINER

His strong expressionist designs are for the second Goetheanum (house of speech) and surrounding buildings. Steiner designed 17 buildings, including the First and Second Goetheanums. These two buildings, built in Dornach, Switzerland, were intended to house significant theater spaces as well as a School for Spiritual Science. Three of Steiner's buildings have been listed amongst the most significant works of modern architecture.

His primary sculptural work is The Representative of Humanity (1922), a nine-meter high wood sculpture executed as a joint project with the sculptor Edith Maryon and now on permanent display at the Goetheanum.

Steiner's blackboard drawings were unique at the time and almost certainly not originally intended as art works. Josef Beuys' work, itself heavily influenced by Steiner, has led to the modern understanding of Steiner's drawings as artistic objects.

The First Goetheanum

HANS POELZİG

With his Weimar architect contemporaries like Bruno Taut and Ernst May, Poelzig's work developed through Expressionism and the New Objectivity in the mid-1920s before arriving at a more conventional, economical style. In 1927 he was one of the exhibitors in the first International Style project, the Weissenhof Estate in Stuttgart. In the 1920s he ran the "Studio Poelzig" in partnershp with his wife Marlene (Nee Moeschke) (1894–1985). Poelzig also designed the 1929 Broadcasting House in the Berlin suburb of Charlottenburg, a landmark of architecture, and Cold War and engineering history.

Poelzig's single best-known building is the enormous and legendary I.G. Farben Building, completed in 1931 as the administration building for IG Farben in Frankfurt am Main, now known as the Poelzig Building at Goethe University. In March 1945 the building was occupied by American Allied forces under Eisenhower, became his headquarters, and remained in American hands until 1995. Some of his designs that were never built included one for the Palace of the Soviets and one for the League of Nations headquarters at Geneva.

Poelzig died in Berlin in June 1936, shortly before his planned departure for Ankara.

1912 Department Store, Wrocław

South facade of the 1931 Poelzig Building at Goethe University, Frankfurt a. M.

REFERENCES

http://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dışavurumculuk

http://www.toplumdusmani.net/v2/resim/resim-akimlari/287-ekspresyonizm.html

http://architecture.about.com/od/20thcenturytrends/ig/Modern-Architecture/Neo-expressionism.htm

http://www.slideshare.net/parmanandsinha/expressionist-architecture

Erich mendelsohn the complete Works by Bruno Zevi

                                        

SYMBOLISM

     Symbolism's general meaning is the use of various symbols which have different meanings and symbolize different components.
     Symbolism in art was born as a reaction againist naturalism and parnassism in France and Belgium in the late 19th century. Later, the movement spread to Russia, especially with the help of Valéry Brioussov.
     "A symbolist work of art is characterized by an artist's desire to represent ideas and a manipulation of colour, form and composition that signals the artist's relative indifference to worldly appearences."

SYMBOLISM IN POETRY

     "In Paris, in 1857, Charles Baudelaire, a poet heavily influenced by the writings of Edgar Allen Poe, published a collection of work titled Les Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers of Evil). Because six of the poems were deemed to be obscene and unfit to be published in France, the book was censored by the authorities. The poet and his publisher were fined and prosecuted for "an affront to human decency" and the first printing sold out immediately.

      Baudelaire and several poets close to him were accused of “dandyism” by the press and labeled "decadent" due to their insistence on portraying subjects such as lesbianism, Satanism, death and drug addiction. Objecting to these charges, the poets began calling themselves "Symbolists".

      Despite the prominence of Baudelaire, it is difficult to fix a date for the origins of Symbolism. Gerard de Nerval, a poet included in most Symbolist anthologies, committed suicide in 1855 – two years before the publication of Les Fleurs. And the movement itself was not defined as such until 1886 when Jean Moreas published the Symbolist Manifesto in Le Figaro. By the time Arthur Symons produced The Symbolist Movement in Literature in England in 1899, introducing many of these poets to an English-speaking audience for the first time, the influence of the school was already widespread in Europe. In fact, it had already declined and other literary movements lay claim to many of the tenets and practices of the poets and writers who marched under the Symbolist banner.

      Many Symbolist poets – including Paul Valery and Stephan Mallarme – expressed their admiration for Parnassianism, the Romantic literary movement that preceded Symbolism, and for what Theophile Gautier called "art for arts sake". They published their early works in the Parnassian anthologies and, while rejecting the clarity and objectivity of that school, they kept its love of musicality and its ironic nature.

     It is important to note, however, that one poet – Arthur Rimbaud -- publicly mocked the Parnassians and wrote scatalogical parodies of their verse."

SYMBOLISM IN THEATRE

     "The characteristic emphasis on an internal life of dreams and fantasies have made symbolist theatre difficult to reconcile with more recent trends. Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam's drama Axël (rev. ed. 1890) is a definitive symbolist play. In it, two Rosicrucian aristocrats become enamored of each other while trying to kill each other, only to agree to commit suicide mutually because nothing in life could equal their fantasies. From this play, Edmund Wilson adopted the title Axel's Castle for his influential study of the symbolist literary aftermath.

Maurice Maeterlinck, also a symbolist playwright, wrote The Blind (1890), The Intruder (1890), Interior (1891), Pelléas and Mélisande (1892), and The Blue Bird (1908).

The later works of the Russian playwright Anton Chekhov have been identified[by whom?] as being much influenced by symbolist pessimism. Both Constantin Stanislavski and Vsevolod Meyerhold experimented with symbolist modes of staging in their theatrical endeavors.

Drama by symbolist authors formed an important part of the repertoire of the Théâtre de l'Œuvre and the Théâtre des Arts."

SYMBOLISM IN MUSIC

     "Symbolism had some influence on music as well. Many symbolist writers and critics were early enthusiasts of the music of Richard Wagner, a fellow student of Schopenhauer.
     The symbolist aesthetic affected the works of Claude Debussy. His choices of libretti, texts, and themes come almost exclusively from the symbolist canon. Compositions such as his settings of Cinq poèmes de Baudelaire, various art songs on poems by Verlaine, the opera Pelléas et Mélisande with a libretto by Maurice Maeterlinck, and his unfinished sketches that illustrate two Poe stories, The Devil in the Belfry and The Fall of the House of Usher, all indicate that Debussy was profoundly influenced by symbolist themes and tastes. His best known work, the Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune, was inspired by Mallarmé's poem, L'après-midi d'un faune.

     The symbolist aesthetic also influenced Aleksandr Scriabin's compositions. Arnold Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire takes its text from German translations of the symbolist poems by Albert Giraud, showing an association between German expressionism and symbolism. Richard Strauss's 1905 opera Salomé, based on the play by Oscar Wilde, uses a subject frequently depicted by symbolist artists."

SYMBOLISM IN VISUAL ARTS 

     "Symbolism in literature is distinct from symbolism in art although the two were similar in many respects. In painting, symbolism was a continuation of some mystical tendencies in the Romantic tradition, which included such artists as Caspar David Friedrich, Fernand Khnopff and John Henry Fuseli and it was even more similar to the self-consciously morbid and private decadent movement.


     There were several rather dissimilar groups of Symbolist painters and visual artists, which included Gustave Moreau, Gustav Klimt, Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis, Odilon Redon, Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, Henri Fantin-Latour, Gaston Bussière (painter), Edvard Munch, Félicien Rops, and Jan Toorop. Symbolism in painting was even more widespread geographically than symbolism in poetry, affecting Mikhail Vrubel, Nicholas Roerich, Victor Borisov-Musatov, Martiros Saryan, Mikhail Nesterov, Leon Bakst, Elena Gorokhova in Russia, as well as Frida Kahlo in Mexico, Elihu Vedder, Remedios Varo, Morris Graves and David Chetlahe Paladin in the United States. Auguste Rodin is sometimes considered a symbolist sculptor.

     The symbolist painters used mythological and dream imagery. The symbols used by symbolism are not the familiar emblems of mainstream iconography but intensely personal, private, obscure and ambiguous references. More a philosophy than an actual style of art, symbolism in painting influenced the contemporary Art Nouveau style and Les Nabis."

SYMBOLISM IN ARCHITECTURE

    " Symbolic architecture is an architectures that utilizes symbol manipulations in a fixed manner to represent its processing.The advantages of symbolic architectures are:
    -much of human knowledge is symbolic, so encoding it in a computer is more straight-forward
    -how the architecture reasons may be analogous to how humans do, making it easier for humans to understand
    -they maybe made computationally complete (e.g. Turing Machines)"

  EXAMPLES:

                    
                                                           Bahai Temple in India
     Here is one of the most beautiful examples in symbolist architecture. The temple was built in the shape of lotus which symbolizes  the best human ideals and concepts: purity, enlightenment, the human heart, the sun, creation, divine birth or rebirth, knowledge and cosmic harmony in many countries.

                                          
                       Cybertecture Egg in India, Designed by  James Law Cybertecture International
     An egg is the symbol of birth, life and imminent development, and it has been used here as the basis to create a revolutionary Indian office environment. Located in the burgeoning and rapidly changing Mumbai, this egg achieves much with an intelligent water filtration system, a renewable power system of photovoltaic’s and wind turbines, and a health system in the bathrooms to track user’s blood pressure and weight. Designed by James Law Cybertecture International, they claim that the shape is even sustainable as it reduces building surface area, therefore reducing temperature loss-gain. We will see a lot more of this in India.

                          
                                                  Torre Bicentenario in Mexico City
     Dutch uber-firm OMA, headed by Rem Koolhaas, has created this concept in Mexico City to symbolize the coming two hundred years of Mexico’s independence. There are many layers of symbolism in this building, from Mayan pyramids to which part of the building controls the park and which part controls the city, to the fact that the bulge of the building is below the centre height, and that it all happens on a relatively small footprint. Most of all, in this building there is a barely contained energy that seems near to release and it may be that this is what Torre Bicentenario represents.
                      

   
                                                  Canadian Museum of Civilization
     The public wing, fronted by the huge glazed Grand Hall, is emblematic of the great wall of the melting glacier itself. The copper roof vaults will eventually turn green, and represent the eskers and drumlins of gravel and glacial till as vegetation recolonized the land. Finally, the parkland between, and before, the two halves of the building depicts the plains over which mankind migrated millennia ago. All this seems an immensely appropriate symbolic starting-point for the story of the Canadian peoples since their coming to the "New World", told inside the museum.

REFERENCES:

http://www.world-class-poetry.com/symbolism-poetry-movement.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolism_(arts)#Prose_fiction

http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/cogarch2/prop/symbolism.html

http://idiosyntocracy.blogspot.com/2009/11/lessons-of-lotus.html

http://www.lostateminor.com/author/laura-eiersted-snell/

http://www.civilization.ca/cmc/exhibitions/cmc/architecture/tour15e.shtml

 




   

 

IMPRESSIONISM

        Imressionism is an art movement which emerged in 19th century in France and it affected almost every branch of art.

        According to the impressionists, the art should be based on emotions and thoughts which arouse a feeling in the artist facing with a view, instead of transporting the view directly. Also the artist should give the interpretation a prominence by throwing reality out of focus. Therefore the artwork reflects the personality of  the artist.

        ITS BEGINING 

        

        Claude Monet starts the movement by exhibiting his painting in France. The paintings usher an era because all painters moves what they saw on the toile and it is the first revolutionary movement againist traditional painting however it did not gain admission in the begining. Even the word of 'impressionism' was  

in use to despise the movement.

                                    This painting is the first impressionist artwork which Monet 

                                 exhibited in the France in 1874. It is the impression of sunrise 

                                 in Le Havre (France)

                                                             --------

        

        The pioneers of the impressionism are Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley. Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, Camiile Pisarro and Paul Cezanne are the painters placing in this movement, either.

        Some example paintings;

           

                                         Paul Cezanne-House of the Hanged Man in Auvers 1873

                                  

                                         Monet-Poppies 1873

                                         Cezanne-A New Olimpia 1873-74

                                             Pisarro-The Boilevard Montmartre at Night 1897

  THE IMPRESSİONİSM ON OTHER LANDSCAPE

     There is no work of art about architecture as an impressionist point of view, but it can be mentioned about impressionist paintings of architectural structures at that time.

     The urban landscapes produced by the impressionists are perhaps the most perfect expressions of the interdependence of leisure and productivity because city views were hardly new in art, but in impressionism urban landscape emerged as a significant genre.

     In impressionism, suburban roads and city streets are themselves places of meaningful activity and they usually signified modernity to the 19th century viewer. In this paintings, like trains, roads suggest the freedom to travel and expand one's range. In focusing on manmade elements in landscape, impressionist paintings imply the extension of human control over nature through the creation of an infrastructure for transportation and commerce over and through it. 

                                         Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, Route de Sevres, 1864

     In city views the specificity of the modern landscape was far more visible and recognizable to the public than in suburban or country scenes, so the former were even better vehicles for redefining landscape painting.

Auguste Renoir, The Grands Boulevards, 1875

Edouard Manet, Rue Mosnier with Pavers, 1878

Gustave Caillebotte, Paris Street: Rainy Day, 1877

Gustave Caillebotte, Rue Halevy seen from the sixth floor,1878

Gustave Caillebotte, Rooftops Snow Effect,1878

In number of impressionist paintings factories are the focal point. Pisarro was probably the first impressionist to represent a factory directly, as in his La Petite Fabrique and Landscape with factory. But Armand Guillaumin deserves a credit as the first to center attention on them in context of economic power and development, as in his relatively well-known Setting Sun at Ivry.

Pisarro, La Petite Fabrique, 1865

Guillaumin, Setting Sun at Ivry, 1869

REFERENCES;

Rubin,J.H.(2008). at London England: University of California Press