My Kid Could Paint That

In my very first Art History blog post, the young, naive Anirudh Vadlamani decided to write about Marcel Duchamp's Bride, an intricate piece (I referenced it as a curious debacle I would never truly understand), which captivated my curiosity. I appropriately called myself an Art History noob, only hoping that this class I took almost solely because my sister had such great success in it, would incite some small bit of culture in me. I was captivated, and I feel almost a year and a half later, I would write about the other Duchamp painting I referenced in my first blog post. This is the Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors. 

Did you remember to schedule that appointment? Did you find an excuse not to see your friend’s New-Agey play in some theatre above a flower shop downtown? What about those thank-you notes you’ve been putting off since your birthday six months ago? I know you didn’t write those.

George Grosz and John Heartfield’s Life and Activity in Universal City at 12:05 Midday captures the overwhelming inundation of images in the modern era. With inexpensive reproductions of art flooding the senses, inspiration and potential for artistic creation existed everywhere. Grosz and Heartfield’s photomontage resembles a mind cluttered with news headlines and advertisements after a day of taking in the information that fills their corner of Universal City. A person from 2016 can relate to this as easily as someone from 1920.

Photographic collages came into existence in the 1850s but were not respected as an art form until the 1920s, the decade of Life and Activity in Universal City at 12:05 Midday. In Modern Art 1851-1929, Brettell says that collage artists “used newspapers, advertisements, theatre tickets, handbills, labels, wallpaper, or other flat urban ephemera as other artists used paint and brushes.” This medium allowed Grosz and Heartfield to convey their work’s message in words (it doesn't get much clearer than writing the name of your art movement in bold). The inclusion of headlines and taglines intensifies the impact of Life and Activity in Universal City at 12:05 Midday as a representation of modern commotion.

Life and Activity in Universal City at 12:05 Midday makes me feel anxious about my ever-growing to-do list, and I find myself wishing for a moment without pop culture, advertisements, and the forms of entertainment designed to distract people from their lives. The appeal of this photomontage is that its elements exist as separate entities but are all together in our understanding of the world. It is satisfying to see parts of everyday life connected because it is truer to how people experience them—how everything seems to flow together into a singular memory of each day.

Maybe you did not finish the dishes or you forgot to pick up your dry-cleaning, but those imperfections—incomplete tasks, break-downs from stress, and prayers for moments of silence—are natural; they are art taken straight from reality. Life and Activity in Universal City at 12:05 Midday makes use of the freedoms of modern art to embody modern life, in all of its stress, loudness, and ultimate beauty.

Nationalism: spirit of aspirations common to the whole of a country. What is a greater symbol for a country,than the physical country itself? Tom Thomson used nature and isolated locations known to Canadians to promote nationalism in the country. His use of bright colors and patterns appeared similar to fauvist works, but Thomson used the bright colors and patterns to attract viewers. Rather than create a scene from a battle that took place hundreds of years ago, Thomson used relevant places in nature. Not only did he feel that the scenery was more attractive than a war painting, but it spreads a message of peace, rather than violence. Paintings of battles, while empowering, have themes of violence, sadness and death. On the contrary, In the Northland has bright colors and serenity. I think Thomson wants Canadians to see the beauty in the soil of the country rather than the people. Instead of fighting and creation toxic environments, he wants citizens to be "down to Earth"...literally. Thomson suggests the best way to connect with one's country is to appreciate the beauty of the country. In this case, the beauty is found at a lake in the northland of Canada, but Lawren Harris painted other Canadian scenery. While I believe Thomson wants viewers to unite and appreciate the country together, I also think he wants viewers to find their own scene of beauty in nature, so they can connect with their roots to the country as he did.

Thomson had a point. This past summer, I travelled to Israel. While Israel is not my birthplace, I still believe it is my home. Jerusalem, Haifa, Eilat and Tel Aviv. All of the cities were great and the people were kind and welcoming. The people make up the cities, but it is when you escape the city that you connect most with the country. One of my most vivid memories from my trip is the night we slept in the desert. We went to the Negev, cooked our own meal, made a campfire, and stargazed. While I saw beautiful stars throughout my six summers at sleep away camp in northern Wisconsin, I had never seen as many stars as I did that night. I remember waking up at four in the morning, and when I opened my eyes, I was greeted but the stars. It was on that night that I discovered my true love for the country of Israel, not just the people that inhabit it. The true spirit of a country is in the geography.

Plane engines scream across the sky. Bombs roar as they tear through bricks and steel, fire swallows buildings and people whole. Nazis and Spanish fascists soak their cold hands in innocent blood.

On April 27, 1937, the sleepy town of Guernica in the Basque country of Spain, was mercilessly bombed. Seventy percent of the town was destroyed and one third of the civilians were murdered. Guernica held no strategic value, it was simply picked as a stage for genocide. 100,000 pounds of incendiary bombs were washed over the city for three hours, while other planes picked off civilians trying to escape the fire and rubble. Fires raged across the city for three days.

When the news struck Paris just days after the attack, and Picasso was horrified. He began making hundreds of sketches, and completed the painting for the Paris World's Fair. Not only did millions of people see this work of art at the Fair, after the event the Spanish Republicans sent Guernica on a world tour, and brought the Spanish Civil War to the globe's attention. The painting traveled for 19 years, and eventually returned home to Spain in 1981. Picasso stated that he wanted the painting to return only after Spain had public liberties and Democratic institutions.

The piece itself rattles with chaos. Black, White, and Grey, fight for balance in the jagged shapes. People and animals scream with shattered tongues. A man lies dead with a severed arm and a broken sword. A woman howls with grief for her dead child. A horse cries, impaled by shrapnel. People flail while being eaten alive by burning buildings. Guernica is the pinnacle of Picasso's extraordinary ability. This timeless piece represents the new era of modern warfare, and there is no escaping for anyone.

Unlike artists in some other schools, the Post-Impressionists did not identify as a cohesive group. Art historians categorized them together because they painted at the same time in Paris. Although they did not work together, paintings by Post-Impressionists have some stylistic aspects in common. They focused primarily on form, so their figures are more defined than those of the Impressionists, even though the individual strokes have the same style. In addition to form, the Post-Impressionists utilized color, believing that it most effectively delivered a painting’s emotion. They willingly sacrificed realism for the aesthetic value of less-than-realistic colors.

Paul Signac uses water in his Grand Canal (Venise) to capture movement in his paint strokes. His utilization of color is the most striking part of the painting, though. He incorporates a multitude of pastel hues and uses the same colors in the sky, water, and building. Signac, a master of pointillism, does not allow his colors to mix on the canvas. Instead, he leaves the blending to the mind of his audience. More so than other paintings, Signac’s Grand Canal (Venise) changes with each viewer, because the color combinations belong to the individual imagination. Even with the painting’s undeniable harmony, the figures are clear and distinct. With the serenity and optimism of Grand Canal (Venise), Signac succeeds in the Post-Impressionistic goal of delivering power through color. Signac’s unifying colors present a coexistence of nature and man-made structures and make viewers feel, if only for a moment, as though the entire world is connected.

Les Nabis was a decorative period of art which focused on vibrant colors and extravagant landscapes. Well, that's the problem, was. Nabi in arabic stands for "prophet." A period that started out with good intentions quickly became a massive bloodbath between faction-like groups of artists. It was a full on bloodbath, painter vs painter, spearheaded by the prophet and founder of the movement, Paul Ranson. Ranson was so inspired by the works of Paul Gauguin that he claimed the painting spoke to him, and they asked him to create the movement we now know as Les Nabis.

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The two figures on the left side of the piece hide in the shadow of the sail, obscured from the moonlight. The moon reflects the light of the sun, the force that gives life to every living thing on Earth. Ryssellberghe painted the sky and the ocean as the only natural objects in the piece, compared to the synthetic boats and town lights. This demonstrates how they will endure the longest. Civilizations have come and gone but Earth and raw nature remains. It has seen millions of years shoot by, the majority of those years commanded by the dinosaurs.  Humans have only seen a small portion of that time.  Will a pestilence or natural disaster wipe us out as the dinosaurs before us?

The lights from the town shine but not nearly as bright as the light from the moon. It is almost as if the man-made lights wish to imitate the intensity of the moon but lack the ability to do so. Mankind yearns to produce energy to rival that of the sun.

Rysellberghe used a plethora of shades of paint: reds, blues, and yellows. He employs the techniques Georges Seurat invented, those of pointillism. While painting individual dots of red, blue, and yellow, the combined paints create an interesting dark hue of blue and green.

Édouard Manet, Dead Christ and His Angels, 1864

By LILI TUCKER