Cool Art

A term that has been applied to various types of abstract art characterized by such qualities as calculation, detachment, and impersonality. 

Usually the art referred to is geometrical, and often it is made up of repetitive structures or units. The term was evidently first used in print by the critic Irving Sandler in 1965 (in an article in 'Art in America'), but the term 'Cool School' had been used a year earlier (in an article in 'Artforum' by P. Leider). 

The art historian Barbara Rose has referred to the term as a synonym for Minimal Art, which she describes as 'an art whose blank, neutral, mechanical impersonality contrasts so violently with the romantic, biographical Abstract Expressionist style which preceded it that spectators are chilled by its apparent lack of feeling or content'.

Polly Apfelbaum: Bubbles (2000)

Author: Ian Chilvers & John Glaves-Smith ('A dictionary of modern and contemporary art', copied by Clara Rodríguez Fernández)

Op Art

Op art, also known as optical art, is a style of visual art that makes use of optical illusions.

Optical art is a method of painting concerning the interaction between illusion and picture plane, between understanding and seeing. Op art works are abstract, with many pieces made in only black and white. 

When the viewer looks at them, the impression is given of movement, hidden images, flashing and vibration, patterns, or alternatively, of swelling or warping.

Some op art artists are: Josef Albers, Richard Allen, Getulio Alviani, Richard Anuszkiewicz, Tony DeLap, etc

Bridget Riley: 'Movement in squares' (1961)

Richard Anuszkiewicz: 'Intrinsic Harmony' (1965)

Author: Wikipedia (copied by Jaime Torner Amigo)

Expressionism

Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century.

  

Expressionism is art that is more associated with emotion or feeling than with literal interpretation of a subject.

Expressionistic art uses vivid colours, distortion two-dimensional subjects that lack perspective.

Edvard Munch: 'The scream' (1893), Munch Museum Oslo

George Grosz: 'Republican automatons' (1920), Museum of Modern Art New York City

Author: Alberto Sáez Menéndez (3º ESO)

Abstract Expressionism

Abstract Expressionism is a modern art movement that flowered in America after the Second World War and held sway until the dawn of Pop Art in the 1960's. With this movement New York replaced Paris as the center of the art world.

Abstract Expressionism has its roots in other earlier 20th century art movements such as Cubism and Surrealism that promoted abstraction rather than representation. The psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung provided the intellectual context in this quest for new subject matter.

The major players in Abstract Expression were Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Clyfford Still, Arshile Gorky, Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell, Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, Philip Guston, Lee Krasner, Ad Reinhardt and sculptor David Smith.

The Abstract Expressionists goal was a raw and impulsive art. What mattered were the qualities of the paint itself and the act of painting itself.

Jackson Pollock: 'Number 8' (1949), Neuberger Museum, State University of New York

Marc Rothko: 'Untitled' (violet, black, orange, yellow over white and red), Guggenheim Museum New York City

Author: www.biddingtons.com (copied by Silvia Martín Martínez)

Surrealism

Surrealism is an artistic movement, born in France after the First World War. André Breton defined it in his manifesto of 1924. It tends to represent, abandoning any stylistic concerns, the inner life of the subconscious, the work of instinct that develops outside the bounds of reason. The surreal art is immediate, unreflective and is stripped of any reference to reality.

Surrealism took from Dadaism some photography and cinematography techniques as the manufacture of objects. Extended the principle to assemblage collage of incongruous objects as visible in the poems of Max Ernst. The latter invented frottage (drawings composed of rough surfaces rubbing against the paper or canvas) and applied in large painted works such as Natural History in Paris in 1926.

Other new activities created by Surrealism was called Exquisite Corpse, in which artists drew the different parts of a figure without seeing what he had done before passing the folded paper. The resulting creature could inspire Miró.

Salvador Dalí: 'The persistence of memory' (1931), Museum of Modern Art New York CIty

(in Spanish: 'Los relojes blandos')

Max Ernst: 'Triumph of Surrealism' (1937), private collection

Author: María Amo Alonso (3º ESO)

Neoplasticism

Neoplasticism is the belief that art should not be the reproduction of real objects, but the expression of the absolutes of life. To the artists way of thinking, the only absolutes of life were vertical and horizontal lines and the primary colors. To this end neoplasticisists only used planar elements and the colours red, yellow and blue.  The neoplastic movement happened in the 1910's and the two main painters of this movement were Piet Mondrian and Theo van Doesburg.

Piet Mondrian: 'Composition II in Red, Blue and Yellow' (1930)

Theo Van Doesburt: 'Composition VII (The Three Graces)' (1917), Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Saint Louis (Missouri)

Author: www.abstractart.20m.com/Neoplasticism.html (copied by Miriam Moro Ruisánchez)

Fauvism

Fauvism is the style of les Fauves (French for 'the wild beasts'), a group of early twentieth-century Modern Artists whose works emphasized pictorial qualities and strong colour over the representational or realistic values retained by Impressionism. Fauvism can be seen as a mode of Expressionism. While Fauvism as a style began around 1900 and continued beyond 1910, the movement as such lasted only a few years and had three exhibitions. The leaders of the movement were Henri Matisse and André Derain. 

André Derain, Charing Cross Bridge, London, 1906, National Gallery of Art,Washington, DC.

Henri Matisse, Open Window, Collioure, 1905, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

Author: Wikipedia (copied by María Fernández Iglesias)