Art movements

"The influx of thousands of new amateurs at the close of the nineteenth century and the accompanying expansion of amateur clubs, societies and organizations, produced great unrest among amateur writers and spokesmen. Between 1890 and 1910, manifestos, critiques, rebuttals and arguments dominated society meetings and filled the pages of photography journals. What were the proper goals of photographic practice? What should its standards be? The democratization of photography presented a challenge to previous notions about practice, decorum, aesthetics and appropriate subject matter. A deepening tension grew between an amateur establishment intent on promoting photography as a serious art form and the waves of newcomers who seemed to threaten that legitimization."

"…the strongest part of a picture is the sensation and the feeling which it creates, this being done through the agency of certain familiar objects more or less accurately depicted and represented with more or less completeness. The MOTIVE, then, in all pictorial work is to convey some thought or idea or sensation by means of a chosen subject."

"Pictorialism is the thesis that mental images represent in the manner of pictures."

"Pictorialism is the Fine Art of making and appreciating mainly decorative spacial (static) pictures possessing aesthetic qualities."

"We are forced to the conclusion that pictorialism is the dominant urge of those photographers today who use the medium for their own and other people's pleasure."

"Here it's worth briefly noting, however, that pictorialism is only one of two major representationalist theories of vision and imagination (or mental imagery), the other being propositionalism."

"Viewed from the vantage of the end of the twentieth century, pictorialism is an early attempt to construct a picture theory that argues that the conventions of picture-making apply to all pictorial forms regardless of the medium."

"Atmosphere is the medium through which we see all things. In order, therefore, to see them in their true value on a photograph, as we do in Nature, atmosphere must be there. Atmosphere softens all lines; it graduates the transition from light to shade; it is essential to the reproduction of the sense of distance. That dimness of outline which is characteristic for distant objects is due to atmosphere. Now, what atmosphere is to Nature, tone is to a picture."

"The very popularity of the medium and the ease with which the new technologies made photography accessible contributed to the rise of a pictorialist movement to counter a perception of photography as a purely mechanical medium practiced without skill. It was the goal of this progressive, or New School, movement to demonstrate the artistic possibilities of photography. Influenced by a number of other movements within the traditional arts, such as Impressionism and Symbolism, photographers in Europe and the United States arrived at a pictorialist aesthetic often characterized by soft focus, a massing of highlights and shadows, and highly manipulated printing techniques meant to demonstrate control by the photographer over his or her work and at times to mimic the appearance of traditional artistic media of painting and print-making."

"Abstract art"

"Abstract expressionism"

"Art & Language"

"Art photography"

"Chinese abstract painting"

"Color Field"

"Conceptual art"

"Constructivism"

"Cybernetic art"

"De Stijl (also known as Neoplasticism)"

"Expressionism"

"Impressionism"

"Kinetic art"

"Minimalism"

"Romanticism"

"Suprematism"

"Surrealism"

"Symbolism (arts)"

"The Cobra group started new, and first of all we threw away all these things we had known and started afresh, like a child — fresh and new. Sometimes my works look very childish, or childlike, schizophrenic or stupid, you know. But that was the good thing for me. Because, for me, the material is the paint itself. The paint expresses itself. In the mass of paint, I find my imagination and go on to paint it."

"Our experiments [by the artists of 'Cobra'] the aim at letting thought express itself spontaneously without the control which reason represents. By means of this irrational spontaneity we get closer tot the vital source of life. Our goal is to liberate ourselves from the control of reason which has been and still is the thing which the bourgeoisie has idealized to seize control of life."

"Cobra focused explicitly on collaboration, experimenting with different arts and media. The artists valued aesthetic experience as opposed to the creation of objects.. .Cobra, according to Jorn attempted to exclude the term 'art' altogether and replace it with 'experimental action'."

"The expressionistic artworks from the Cobra artists gave rise to furious scenes and fierce critiques. Newspapers spoke of offensive art and provocation on the part of the artists, and one evening for experimental poetry at the Stedelijk was the occasion for a public brawl."

"In addition to the well-known Dutch Cobra artists including Karel Appel, Eugene Brands, Constant, Corneille, Anton Rooskens and Theo Wolvekamp, there are also many works [of] Cobra members, among them Pierre Alechinsky, Henry Heerup, Carl-Henning Pedersen and Asger Jorn.. .The artists, who expressly termed themselves 'experimentalists', published a journal under the title 'CoBrA' (a contraction for Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam). Later this name would increasingly be applied to the group itself."

"The radical post-war Cobra group of artists and poets (1948-51).. ..who collaborated in a search for a universal artistic language. Inspired by the creative impulse which they found in the art of so-called primitives, of children and of the insane, the group made idealistic, Marxist-inspired plans for a future in which a new folk art would be created."

"Every definition of form restricts the material effect and with it the suggestion it projects. Suggestive art is materialistic art because only matter stimulates creative activity.. .Because we seek the activation of the urge to create as art's most important task.. ..the creative act is more important than that which it creates.."

"A living art makes no distinction between beautiful and ugly because it sets no aesthetic norms.. ..The child knows of no law other than its spontaneous sensation of life and feels no need to express anything else. The same is true of primitive cultures, which is why they are so attractive to today's human beings.. .A new freedom is coming into being which will enable human beings to express themselves in accordance with their instincts."

"The chalkings on pavements and walls clearly show that human beings were born to manifest themselves.. .A painting is not a composition of colour and line but an animal, a night, a scream, a human being, or all of these things together."

"However, painters after world War II see themselves confronted by a world of stage decors and false facades in which all lines of communication have been cut and all belief has vanished. The total lack of a future as a continuation of this world makes constructive thoughts impossible. Their only salvation is to turn their backs on the entire culture (including modern negativism, Surrealism and Existentialism)"

"The problematic phase in the evolution of modern art has come to an end and is being followed by an experimental period. In other words, from the experience gained in this state of unlimited freedom, the rules are being formulated which will govern the new form of creativity."

"Shortly afterwards [after 1948] artists from occupied capitals COpenhagen BRussels Amsterdam (cobra) wanted to demonstrate together their spontaneous vitality next fall in the stedelijk: [museum, in Amsterdam] the first cobra show!"

"when the exhibition was mounted i felt enchanted: red roaring beasts black monsters shouting from the museum walls frightening visitors who had come to enjoy fine arts.."

"..was the cobra movement the prefiguration of youth protest which took place some twenty years later?"

"... the first Cubist painting might be said to have attempted to evince some outlines as to what visual art is, whilst, obviously, being held out as a work of visual art. But the difference here is one of what shall be called 'the form of the work'. Initially what conceptual art seems to be doing is questioning the condition that seems to rigidly govern the form of visual art -that visual art remains visual."

"The question of 'recognition' is a crucial one here. There has been a constantly developping series of methods throughout the evolution of the art whereby the artist has attempted to construct various devices to ensure that his intention to count the object as an art object is recognised. This has not always been 'given' within the object itself."

"Cubist paintings were paintings by definition, that is, they are constructed by adhering paint to a surface (two-dimensional by definition) and as such fulfilled the requirements of entry to the category 'painting'. The controversy concerning Cubist paintings, was not primarily about wether or not they were (physically) paintings, but rather wether or not their form (in paint) was viable, Cubist collages were questioned on both levels."

"Atkinson and Baldwin through the development of a framework investigating the notion of declaring a temporal entity to be an art entity -'The Monday Show'. most of the conversation and writing concerning this idea soon reached a desultory level -it was unnecessary to attempt to provide an adequate analogy to a spatial entity, because it was quickly and clearly equivalent that there wasn't one. What has become clear to the artists since is that this work was a necessary form of development in pointing out the possibilities of a theoretical analysis as a method for (possibly) making art."

"1. Conceptual artists are mystics rather than rationalists. They leap to conclusions that logic cannot reach."

"32. Banal ideas cannot be rescued by beautiful execution."

"Sufficient conditions may be provably consistent without implying anything about the impossibility of vague cases or about tertium non datur. And it is no argument that vague concepts are not under constraint here. Formalizability is not an additional requirement over and above the coherence and extensibility of a set of beliefs."

"Fundamental to this idea of art (conceptual art) is the understanding of the linguistic nature of all art propositions, be they past or present, and regardless of the elements used in their construction. (note: Without this understanding a 'conceptual' form of presentation is little more than a manufactured stylehood, and such art we have with increasing abundance.)"

"Epistemologically, it is fallacious to insist that the artist doesn't know that 'a' is an art-object unless he can produce a criterion for art-objectness which will cater for odd, or controversial cases."

"There appears to be no real relation of artist to art-object: and this notwithstanding the prospect of a clear account of verification; demontsration would still be difficult, and a clear purporting to describe the way something comes about would not ameliorate the situation. There would still be priority problems."

"1. Artists are exploring language to create acces to ways of seeing."

"3. Participating in a dialogue gives the viewer a new significance; rather than listening, he becomes involved in reproducing and inventing part of that dialogue."

"The art-area appears to present propositions which are genealogically untraceable; any attempted systemization would be based on inference. (Inquiry into the sustaining framework of art really needs to be moved from the descriptive to the revisionary stage)."

"Although ' was the most unnerving painting Picasso had done, Three Women... was more directly challenging to Matisse. ...The early version... that Matisse saw... encroached on territory Matisse had thought was his. The subject and style... owed much to Cézanne... The underlying subject... was also one that Matisse had been working with... in which process—the coming into being of things—was emphasized over stability. ...[I]ts outward-spiraling composition of three figures that seem to emerge from the bowels of the earth ...was a more resonant evocation of primal beginnings than had been Matisse's... Le Bonheur de vivre or Le Luxe... Three Women... contained a bold imbrication of the figures within their background—a motif Matisse had employed in his Fauve paintings, such as Woman in a Japanese Robe Beside the Sea... But whereas Matisse's merging... was based on... optical sensations, Picasso was developing a... symbolic language. ...also something Matisse had been involved with... especially in his... treatment of mythological themes. Picasso's Three Women seemed to combine references to a standard mythological theme... the Three Graces [previously classically painted by Botticelli, Raphael and Rubens], with a more generalized "birth of the world" imagery that went to the heart of the that had haunted both... along with... Derain, Vlaminck, and Braque... In response to Three Women, Matisse painted '..."

"In "Ma Jolie,"... the most concrete information about the woman comes largely through the two words "MA JOLIE," which refer to the refrain from a popular song. ...It is commonly said that a picture is worth a thousand words. But in this picture two words are reveal more than the entire image. ...In its hesitation at the limits of abstraction, the painting casts doubt on the whole enterprise of visual representation."

"Picasso was deeply impressed by Matisse's Goldfish and Pallete, and its emotional force and resonant use of black seem to have influenced his 1915 Harlequin... Harlequin is one of Picasso's first clear images of a divided personality. ...This evocation of multiple identities is given an added dimension by the rendering of... an unfinished canvas. ...Because this rectangle is rendered in a painterly way, it also suggests... the process of painting... a reminder of the impossibility of completeness, either in painting or in life. ...[W]hen Matisse saw Harlequin... he told the dealer that his goldfish had led to it, for in this painting Picasso had picked up precisely those aspects that Matisse had taken from him, such as the conflation of the figure with its surroundings, the suggestion of different psychological viewpoints, the fractured planarity, and... the situating of the picture in a space... somewhere between the thought and the seen, the internal and the external. In Harlequin, Picasso responds with his own version of multiple realities... the strong sense of process and... use of black... to evoke both light and darkness... as lessons from Matisse's painting."

"Artists of the previous generation, such as Cézanne and van Gogh, had employed systematic "distortions" in their works, but... as part of a... direct way of communicating the "truth" of his own personal vision. Picasso's contemporaries, including Matisse, followed in that tradition. Matisse's varied styles between 1905 and 1918 had grown out of his direct visual responses... and were not calculated to be artificial or arbitrary. Picasso, by contrast, insisted that there were many possible ways of arriving at the truth, and that all of them were equally artificial. ...the artist could choose among many different visual languages ...Each of these modes or styles ...being inherently expressive of attitudes that were implicitly contained within the style itself."

"Marie-Thérèse was... a natural or "primitive" version of the uninhibited and all-accepting woman the Surrealists were trying so hard to construct. ...Their relationship was rooted in a complex game of hiding and revealing, which soon spilled over into his art. Picasso's earliest representations of her were not paintings but geometric line drawings of musical instruments, done in pencil, in which he encodes cryptograms that use her initials: M-T. There is something charmingly adolescent about the gesture... The linear style of these works [line and charcoal drawings, plus The Dress Designer's Workshop and The Painter and His Model] is directly related to the notational systems Picasso was using in the studies for his illustrations for Balzac's Unknown Masterpiece—a story in which a seventeenth-century painter named Frenhof spends years working on what is supposed to be his masterpiece, and overworks it to such a degree that he finally produces an incomprehensible muddle."

"Picasso signed on for his own retrospective exhibition at the same gallery [Galerie Georges Petit], to open... 1932, exactly one year after the Matisse show... Picasso had been referring to Matisse's works for the past several years, playfully and often with more than a hint of mockery, but now he raised the stakes and produced several paintings that are usually characterized as his most "Matissian," with bright colors, sweeping arabesques, intense decorative patterning, and an extravagantly lyrical sensuality. These... are in a sense more "Matissian" than anything Matisse himself had previously done; in a curious way, they anticipate Matisse's late style several years before Matisse had formulated it."

"Matisse's response to Picasso's inventive reorganization of the human figure was concentrated in one of his most sublimely sensuous pictures of Lydia [Delectorskaya], the so-called Pink Nude... which was his variation on the pose of his 1907 Blue Nude. ...Returning to a practice he used with the Barnes murals, he photographed... while it was in progress... As with the murals, he also used pieces of cut paper to make quick modifications to the composition without having to wait for the paint to dry. ...[T]he painting began as a relatively naturalistic rendering... As the picture developed, Matisse radically altered not only the composition but its basic pictorial language... He also tried to augment the forcefulness of the figure by contorting it in a manner similar to Picasso's. ...But in the end, such an approach was not true to his vision, and he reverted..."

"[T]he trauma of the war forged a new solidarity between them. As the two most prominent artists in France, they came to stand for French culture, and even—in the face of barbarous fascism—for the values of civilization itself. (This was an ironic turnabout; before the war they were frequently accused of having introduced barbarism into modern art.) The probity of their personal comportment also stood in clear contrast to the shoddy behavior of a number of their colleagues, such as Vlaminck and Derain, who accepted invitations to go on propaganda trips to Nazi Germany."

"[A]fter Matisse's death... he became fixed on the idea of doing variations on the masters, and these became a subgenre within his work. His variations seem to be animated by a desire both to possess a work of the master and to measure himself against it. ...Picasso is again asking the same question about the greatness of his gifts that he had posed... when he and Matisse first met. ...as if he were again struggling against doubts about whether his election as a great artist was really strong enough to defeat death. (This was something Matisse never visibly questioned, at least in his work.) ...Picasso does seem to have been profoundly concerned about the possible death of his creative gift, and perhaps about its validity early on and the degree to which his work would survive him. For a Spanish artist, the pinnacle of comparison would be with Diego Velázquez ...His variations [see Las Meninas, 1957] on ' were an escape from the present, as well as an attempt to dominate the past and affirm his standing in the future."

"If Matisse's triumph was... to transcend death by bravely ignoring it, Picasso's triumph was to look death and decay straight in the face and not flinch. Though it was not possible to report back from that "undiscover'd country from whose bourn no traveler returns," at least he would send back images from the most distant frontiers that adjoined it."

"Matisse's works collectively give very little sense of a life long lived. ...Matisse's works give a vivid sense of a life lived as an artist, but not nearly the sense that Picasso gives of a life lived as a man. ...Matisse gives almost no sense of the political or economic history of the twentieth century, or of the demonic energies it unleashed... no sense that an artist might feel to take revenge upon the world. There is no equivalent of Picasso's Guernica... or to the death-haunted still lifes or harrowing political allegories, such as '. Nonetheless, Matisse's painting does provide a profound engagement with the spiritual uncertainties of the century, and a very personal response... in his inspired balance between observation, analysis, and the pure poetry of painting."

"Jack Flam explores the compelling, competitive, parallel lives of these two artists and their very different attitudes toward the idea of artistic greatness, toward the women they loved, and ultimately toward their confrontations with death."

"[T]heir tumultuous relationship is examined and brilliantly told."

"Timed to coincide roughly with the opening of the blockbuster Matisse-Picasso exhibition's third and final stop, at New York's MoMA... Flam is terrific. Flam locates... productive appropriations and reappropriations between the two painters over the years, so that anyone standing in line for the exhibition in Queens will profit..."

"Flam has given us a lucid and compelling study of these two geniuses, explaining what made them so good, and why part of the answer is: each other."

"Hellenism is the pot on the stove, the scoop for the embers, the jug of milk, it is the furnishings, the crockery, what surrounds the body; Hellenism is the warmth of the domestic hearth, perceived as sacred, it is everything belonging to man that puts him in contact with a part of the outside world [...]. Hellenism is purposely surrounding man with furnishings instead of just any objects, transforming the latter into furniture, humanizing the surrounding world, infusing it with a subtle teleological warmth. Hellenism is the stove by which a man sits and enjoys the warmth it emanates, so akin to the warmth he has inside. (Osip Emilyevich Mandelshtam)"

"The "Hellenes" astonished us because, although open to the spiritual disturbances of their age, they appealed to ancient methods to find a solution to the anxieties of the present. Their placid faith in a tradition stemming from Plato and constantly evolving was perhaps the most reassuring aspect of late antique civilization. In fact, many classical and enlightened societies had collapsed under the weight of their own traditionalism, leaving their immediate successors only with a memory of anxieties and nightmares. If this did not happen in the Roman Empire, it is largely due to the "Hellenic Renaissance" and the dialogue between its proponents and the new Christian aristocratic intellectuals. (Peter Brown)"

"Alexander the Great"

"Ancient Greece"