Art Guide
1.1 First Half of 20th century "Historical Vanguards"
Fauvism (1910-1920): From french fauve, "fierce", term that denominates the pictorial style of expressionist characteristics like using intense colors, mainly green. It stands out because of its anti-natural chromaticism.
Artists: Matisse, Derain, de Vlaminck.
Expressionism (1911-1919): It's an artistic movement arisen in Germany in the beginning of 20th Century, expressionism is understood as a accentuation or deformation of reality in order to achieve expressing correctly the values that it's tried to put in evidence, it appears as a partial reaction to impressionism.
Artists: Der Blaue Reiter (Blue Rider, 1912) Kandisnky, Marc, Klee, Die Brucke (The Bridge, 1910) Kirchner, Nolde, Ensor.
Futurism (1909-1914): Initial movement of artistic currents of vanguard, founded in Italy by Fillippo Tommaso Marinetti, rejected the traditional esthetic and tried to highlight the contemporary life based en two subjects: The machine and the movement.
Artists: Balla, Boccioni, Carra, Russolo, Severini.
Cubism (1907-1914): Cubism is considered the first vanguard because it breaks with the renaissance statute effective during the beginning of 20th century, the perspective. In the cubists paints the traditional perspective disappears. The resulting work it's of difficult comprehension due to the lack of immediate naturalist references, that explains the fact that it was the first artistic movement that needed a exegesis from the critics side. Stages: Analytic cubism (1909-1912), Synthetic cubism (1912-1914).
Artists: Picasso, Braque, Gris, Gleizes, Leger.
Dadaism (1907-1914): It was a strong opposition to the violent past of World War I, founded by Tristan Tzarra. The poem Dadaist usually is a succession of words and sounds which makes difficult to find logic on it. It distinguished because of: Tendency to the doubtful and nihilism, it looks to renovate the expression through the use of unusual materials or by managing planes of non-mixable thoughts and it has a general tonic of revolt and destruction.
Artists: Arp, Duchamp, Richter, Breton, Ray
Surrealism (1917): "Surrealist manifesto" from Andre Breton, who estimated that the historical post-war situation demands a new art that were looking into the deepest of the human being in order to understand the man in his totality. He thought in the possibility offered by psychoanalysis as a artistic creation method. For surrealists the work born from a pure automatism. They try to show by using abstract shapes or symbolic figures the images of the deepest reality of the human being, the subconscious and the world of dreams.
Artists: Masson, Dali, Miro, Ernst, Tanguy, Magritte.
Constructivism (1914): Realistic Manifesto from Naum gabo in 1920. Is based on cubism and it's esthetically related with engineering and architecture. The soviet revolution look new ways of expression related with the aspiration to supplant the capitalism for more democratic schemes of production and distribution of goods.
Artists: Tatlin, Malevich, Rodchenko, Wassily gabo and El Lissitzky.
Neoplasticism (1917): Artistic current announced by Piet Mondriann in 1917 that proposed to remove art from every element that could be consider as an accessory in an attempting to reach the essence through a plastic objective language and in consequence universal.
Artists: Van Doesburg, Mondrian.
Suprematism (1915): Consists into an artistic tendency, derived from cubism where the formal elements are reduced to triangle, square, cross and circle; the chromatic elements are limited to red, black, blue, white and green expressed through geometric shapes, removing completely the appearance of objects.
Artists: Malevich
1.2 Second half of 20th Century "Art's dematerialization"
Second Vanguards (1945 - 1968)
Abstract Expressionism (1940): It's a pictorial contemporary movement within abstraction, basically, the informal tendencies that appears after World War II. They had preference for big formats. Artists: Pollock, Kline, De Kooning.
Art Brut: Created by French artist Jean Dubuffet to describe the art created out of the official culture's limits. Dubuffet's interest was specially directed specially to artistic manifestations made by patients from mental institutions. Art created by people that is not into the artistic world and without a academic background.
Artists: Dubuffet.
Minimal (1965): Used on the first time by philosopher Richard Wolheim in 1965 to refers Ad Reinhardt's paints and other objects with a high-intellectual but low formal content. The different shapes are reduced to minimum states of order and complexity from a morphologic stand point. Minimal works personify states of maximum order with minimum complexity in the elements.
Artists: Reinhardt, Andre, Flavin, Morris, Lewitt y Judd.
Pop Art (1950): Its known for using themes and techniques based on drawings coming from "popular culture", like ads, comics and worldly cultural objects. The Pop Art its commonly considered as a reaction to the dominant ideals of Abstract Expressionism of that time.
Artists: Warhol, Haring, Johns, Lichtenstein.
Art Povera (1967): Created by critic and commissioner of Italian art, Germano Celant. It's a tendency where the creators use materials considered as 'poors', easy to obtain like wood, leaves, rocks, vegetables, cooper or waste, that's why it has no value at all. In an attempting for escaping from artistic object's commercialization, they occupies space and demands the public's intromission.
Artists: Merz, de Maria, Long.
New Realism (1960): Founded in 1960 by art critic Pierre Restany and painter yves Klein. They saw the world as an image which they'll use to take parts and incorporate their work. Artists recover the objects from society to made them relics, powerful symbols of consume. "Actions-Spectacles" are what later will be called Performances where the art work is built (or destroyed) in front of the audience.
Artists: Klein, Restany.
Conceptual Art (Middle 60's): It's an artistic movement where the ideas within a work are a more important element than the object or the reason of why the work was created. The work's idea is still over the formal aspects and in a lot of cases the idea is the work itself. It emerged in part as a reaction against formalism articulated by critic Clement Greenberg. However, since 1910-1920 the work of French artist Marcel Duchamp worked as reference with his work called ready-made.
Artist: Klein, Manzoni, Lewitt, Kosuth.
Op Art (1958): Optical art it's an abstract artistic current, based on the pictorial composition of purely optical phenomenon, sensations of movement in a bi-dimensional surface, cheating the human eye through optical illusions. Repetition structures with a clear order are used.
Artists: Vasarely, Stella, Poons, Noland.
Post-pictorial Abstraction (1964): Term created by art critic Clement Greenberg to refer about a series of paints made in the United States of the 70s and suppose a change to the pictorialism and the abstract expressionism warmth. However, the roots of this cold abstraction, like abstract expressionism comes from Europe and from the other art slope of the first vanguards.
Post-Modernism (1968 in advance)
Land Art (Ends of 60s): Tendency that uses the frame and materials from the nature (wood, ground, stones, sand, rocks, etc.) Generally, the works are found in the exterior, exposed to the elements and put under the natural erosion, so, some of them disappeared, leaving just the their photographic memory. Its goal is to produce plastic emotions into the spectator that faces a specific landscape.
Artists: Christo, Jeanne-Claude, De Maria, Heizer, Long, Morris, Oppenheim, Smith.
Feminist Art (1960): Overall, it includes the efforts and accomplishments of feminist movement to make more noticeable the art made by women through the history of art and the artistic practice. It has to be differentiated the "art made by women" that could be the same regarding themes and genres from the art made by men that is a "feminist art", that pretends to be different, taking care of another themes and altering the traditional values in the art. The movement started in the 70s, shined through this decade and its effects still continues until these times.
Artists: Antin, Chicago, Schapiro, Messeger, Piper.
Outsider Art (1972): Term created by art critic Roger Cardinal in 1972 translating the concept of Art Brut. Outsider artist is that one that develops his creative work without having any contact with the artistic institutions established in that time, answering to a strong intrinsic motivation and frequently using materials and techniques never seen before. A large part of outsider art reflex extreme mental states, particular idiosyncrasies or elaborated worlds of fantasy.
Artists: Cheval, Darger, Ramirez.
Body Art (1960): It's a style framed in the conceptual art with big relevancy in the 60s in Europe and specially the United States. The work is based on using the body as plastic material, it is painted, traced, covered... the body is the frame or artistic work area. Usually is done as an action way or performance, with photographic or video documentation.
Artists: Klein, Nauman, Acconci.
Street Art: In its wider and literal conception it describes all art developed in the streets, usually in a illegal way. It includes not only Graffiti but every different form of artistic intervention in the streets.
Artists: Banksy, Invader.
Fluxus (1960-1970): It's an artistic movement of visual arts but also of music and literature. Fluxus was developed in North America and Europe by the stimulus of John Cage. It doesn't contemplates the idea of vanguard as a linguistic renovation, but pretends to make a different use of art's official channels that separates from every specific language, pretending the interdisciplinary nature and adoption of ways and materials originated in different fields. The language its not the end but the way for getting a renovated notion of art known as "Total Art".
Artists: Beuys, Vostell, June Paik, Moorman, Maciunas.
Latest Tendencies
Video art (1963): It's one of the artistic tendencies emerged right next to the consolidation of massive media pretending to explore the alternative and artistic applications of it. Electronic media (analogical or digital) is used with artistic purposes. On it, audio and video information is used. It shouldn't been confused with television or experimental films. One of the differences between video art and films is that video art doesn't necessarily obeys with films conventions since it could not use actors or dialogs, lacking of a narrative or script or any other convention that usually define movies as entertainment.
Artists: June Paik, Vostell.
Happening (1950): Artistic manifestation, frequently multidisciplinary, created in the 50s, enhanced by the participation of spectators. Happening integrates a set of so-called performance art and maintains affinities with so-called participation theater. Original proposal of artistic happening has as tentative producing a work art that isn't focused en objects but in the event to organize and the participation of spectators so they stop being passive subjects and, with their activity, reach a liberation through the emotional expression and collective performance. Even though is common to confuse happening with so-called performance, the first one differs from second one because of its improvisation or due to the difficulty of a real improvisation.
Artists: Kaprow, Brossa, Ono.
Performance: Meaning of live art. Performance is linked to conceptual art, to happenings, artistic movement fluxus events and body art. Word Performance started to been used specially to define certain artistic manifestations of the end of 70s. It started early on 20th century with live actions of artists from vanguards movements.
Artists: Schneemann, Burden, Abramovic, Antin.
Installation (1970): Installations incorporate any way to create an visceral or conceptual experience at any given environment. Installation's artists generally use art gallery spaces directly. Lot of people finds the origins of this type of movement in artists such as Marcel Duchamp and the use of daily-use objects as artistic work.
Artistis: Flavin, Kapoor, Buckingham.
Post-Graffiti: Describing the work of an heterogeneous set of artists that have been developing artistic actions in the streets through the use of stencil and paint in spray, usually with a political message, getting special importance in Paris during the second half of 60s.
Artists: Faile, J.R., Sixeart.
Art and new technologies: Here converges several creative expressions: Multimedia installations, interactive art, net.art, virtual reality, media performances, expanded film, artificial intelligence and telepresence among others. Its evolution is directly linked to technological development.
Artists: Davis, Muntadas, Goldberg.