This document is a summary of the whole visual art syllabus for ieb. I consistently received an average of over 90% for my art theory. This document summaries all of the artists and movements that I studied through out the year. They are the minimum artists and movements that students are required ...
1. DADA
CONTEXT: came about in WW2 in Zurich (centre of the war)- makes people question beliefs
search for new subjects àhelps interpret enormous amounts of destruction.
satirical and non sensical = disgust, anxiety, despair
Mechanised warfare à made people question idea of celebrating ‘progress’. Attacked the
civilisation that started war
Name: nonsense (found by chance) à hoppy horse = childlike, fun and play + father
ABSURD + CHARMED THE ILLEOGICAL
MARCEL DUCHAMP
‘anti- art’ stance. Aim: reject idols/ideas of his society
Mocked: 1. Technology 2. Way art is valued
Believed beauty was a construct, without society’s opinions anything could be beautiful
meaning anything could be art/ nothing could be
àBicycle Wheel (wheel placed above a very ordinary, common stool)
Question the value of art
Making statement: technology has not moved human kind forward à upside down wheel
with nowhere to go
Practical and functional objects. Together they are useless. Wheel has nowhere to go, can’t
sit on stool. Items are both mass produced and easy to duplicate. His ideas and meaning is
what se the work apart and makes it art
àFountaine (a urinal placed on its flat side signed ‘R. Mutt’ 1917)
Practical joke
1917- Society for Independent Art Founded, had to pay to enter. Duchamp enters under
pseudonym ‘R. Mutt’ to comment on art world attributes and how value of art goes
according to name.
Urinals purpose: urinate. Taking the ‘piss’ out of art + contemplates idea of ‘pissing’ on
traditional art and values
BOTH: challenge the idea that artists must have skill and be unique. Displays the belief that
anything in the right context can be considered an artwork.
, Shira Woolf Visual Art Summary 2
2. SURREALISM
CONTEXT: positively built from Dada’s ruins
1924 literary movement that Andre Brenton founded à ‘period of dreams’
1924: Brenton published Surrealist Manifesto that was influenced by Sigmond Freund
‘interpretation of dreams’ à dreams = direct expression of mind. A way of blocking
repression of the war.
Explores the world of subconscious and unconscious mind, dreams, automatism (body
movement that is not conscious or controlled)
The artworks are a juxtaposition of different realities that activate unconscious mind through
images. There is the liberation of imagination.
ID PHASE: Freud’s theory. The untamed part of humans: violence and aggression. Usually
need to be taught what is socially acceptable. ID phase that is usually suppressed comes
forward in dreams.
SALVADOR DALI
Known for his oil paintings – super realistic: dream state is often perceived as heightened
reality
Used a juxtaposition of motifs by contrasting dreams and the subject
àSleep (polymorph structure on stilts with a boat and small city in the background)
Sense of foreground and background
Soft face = ID phase. Sleep grips people and is shown by crutches (break imagined). Face is
supported away from the ground and away from reality.
Cloth covered ears = distance from noise of outside world
Boat in background = destruction, no normal environment
Empty space = detachment from earth when sleeping (disembodiment of conscious state)
Sleep = gateway to the subconscious
3. ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM
CONTEXT: the art world moves from Europe to America.
Aim: prove their artwork was more advanced than Russia (cold war). Work was modern and
progressive
The act of painting itself took precedence over content/ subject matter. A flat canvas was
used so natural nature of paint can take place.
JACKSON POLLOCK
Salary was pay for by the American government.
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