Can a work of art look like nothing?

Lesson 5 Art works can be different-into abstract art

I. teaching material analysis

(A) Teaching objectives

This lesson is the third of the three major art types-abstract art. As one of the three major art types of human beings, abstract art is also an important way for human beings to know and grasp the world, but it uses pure artistic language, which is the difference between it and figurative art and graphic art. Therefore, the teaching goal of this course is to make students understand the two basic forms of abstract art (cold abstraction and hot abstraction), the simple process of art moving towards abstraction, and the language and artistic beauty of abstract art.

(B) the content structure

This lesson mainly includes four parts.

The first part tells the story that the Russian artist Kandinsky, the founder of modern abstract art, "discovered" abstract art. This lesson aims to show that abstract art, as an independent art form, is produced through human "discovery". There are two points to note here: 1. The difference between abstract art and concrete art and image art is that it does not directly express anything visible in reality, but it cannot be said that it has nothing to do with reality. It can be said that the ultimate object of any art is reality. 2. The language used in abstract art is unrealistic, and it is a pure expression of artistic ontology language, including point, line, surface and color. All these need to be explained by the teacher in the lecture.

The second part is "two abstract artists and two abstract arts".

The third part, "Why does art move towards abstraction? What is its artistic beauty? " Briefly introduce the basic classification methods of art, and it is enough for students to have a general understanding.

The fourth part is "Can anyone create abstract art?" On the basis of the three functions of art, it shows that art appreciation is not only the study of knowledge, but more importantly, it is of great significance to cultivate students' ability to understand the world, aesthetic vision, healthy aesthetic taste and future life development.

(C) the focus and difficulty of teaching

The focus of this course is to "cultivate aesthetic vision", master the general methods of art appreciation, and understand the important value and significance of art appreciation for personal future life development.

The teaching difficulties of this course are mainly how to illustrate the main classification methods of art, the concept of art appreciation and the general process or method of art appreciation with examples.

Second, the teaching content information

(A) analysis of works

Improvisation 3 1 (oil painting, 193 1 year) Kandinsky (Russia)

Kandinsky was born in Moscow. His father is a tea merchant. When he was young, he lived with his parents in Rome and Florence, and then returned to Odessa. I have been painting, writing poems, playing the piano and cello since I was a teenager. Received a degree in social science and law from Moscow University. 1896, when Kandinsky was 30 years old, he decided to study painting. He studied painting at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts until 1900, and then began active artistic practice.

Kandinsky advocates improvisation to express the needs of artists. He believes that spiritual factors are the most important in art, and art is not an imitation or elaborate production of nature, but an internal need. Art, like nature, science and politics, is a self-sufficient field, governed by its own laws that suit its own needs. Finding this rule is the painter's lifelong goal. He particularly emphasized the combination of painting and music, which is the most abstract of all arts. Kandinsky expounded the profound relationship between music and painting in his book On the Spirit of Art. In Kandinsky's view, painting must create a new reality in harmony with natural objects. The colors in the painting are just like the notes in music, which can impress the audience by themselves. Painters use this abstract art to express their inner world, and arouse the artistic feelings produced by music that are difficult to express in words in the audience. Kandinsky pursued the musical sense of painting and finally developed emotional abstract painting.

Kandinsky's abstract works have strong personal feelings, so some people call his art "hot abstract" art, and most of his abstract works are completely divorced from objective objects. In order to avoid the leading association of the title to the audience, he often gives his paintings names such as "improvisation" and "work X" like the title of a musical work.

Jazz on Broadway (oil painting, 127cm× 127cm, 1942- 1943, new york Museum of Modern Art) mondriaan (Netherlands).

Mondriaan in the Netherlands always imagined that his paintings were composed of the simplest artistic language elements-straight lines and solid colors. He hopes that his art will reveal the eternal reality hidden behind the ever-changing subjective appearance. He himself said: "I ruled out curves step by step until the work was finally composed of straight lines and horizontal lines, forming a cross ... straight lines and horizontal lines are the manifestations of two opposing forces;" This balance of opposites is everywhere and controls everything. " He seeks the so-called "exterior-interior balance, individual-collective balance, nature-spirit balance, and material-consciousness balance" from the combination of large and small primary color blocks and rectangular right angles. He believes that this is an objective law that reflects the most essential nature of the universe. People call his abstract paintings "cold abstraction", also known as geometric de stijl.

Broadway Jazz is one of mondriaan's most famous works, and one of his few works that comes directly from his true feelings. In this work, mondriaan expressed his feelings and understanding of Broadway music in his own language and created a kind of visual music. Bright yellow lines like brass instruments show the rhythm of jazz under the flashing of red, blue and gray dots like neon lights. We can also feel the noise of the busiest Broadway night in new york. The cobweb-dense vertical and horizontal lines easily remind people that Broadway is a right-angled intersection.

Mangrove (oil painting, 1908) mondriaan (Netherlands)

Grey Tree (oil painting, 19 12) mondriaan (Netherlands)

Flowering apple trees (oil painting, 19 12) mondriaan (Netherlands)

Mondriaan (1872— 1944), a Dutch painter, was born in AmHeft, the Netherlands, and died in new york, USA. My father is a primary school principal and loves painting. Influenced by his father, he liked painting since he was a child, and learned painting from his father and uncle. 17 years old to get the primary school painting teacher qualification certificate, three years later to get the middle school painting teacher qualification certificate. 1892 came to Amsterdam, entered the National Academy of Fine Arts and began formal and strict realistic painting training, becoming a good student with solid basic skills, which was highly appreciated by teachers. Before 1908, he painted a large number of realistic landscape paintings, with definite brushwork, generalized images and high artistic level. 1908 and began to explore new expression techniques. 19 1 1 At the end of the year, he came to Paris and was immediately influenced by cubism and began to explore the abstract expression with the theme of "tree". After 19 14, he abandoned cubism and turned to geometric symbolic painting, and finally formed a unique pure geometric abstract style at the beginning of the 20th century. Finally, he used the intersection of straight lines and right angles of the basic elements of painting to form rhythmic geometric figures of different sizes, and then matched them with the simplest primary color blocks to become a unique "new modeling" art, which is famous all over the world. As soon as people saw the thick black horizontal and vertical lines forming squares and rectangles with different sizes of red, yellow, blue and gray, they knew it was mondriaan's work. He believes that only this abstract graphic form is the most essential of painting. He abandoned all the traditional techniques in the past and could not see any shadow of other painting schools in his paintings. With new forms of works, he opened up the artistic vision of human beings and led them to pursue the purest harmony.

The three "trees" published in the textbook are selected from mondriaan's works exploring different forms of expression with trees as the theme under the influence of cubism. Later, he made many more abstract geometric paintings with the shadow of trees, so that the composition of lines and colors in 19 13 and the composition of No.6 in 19 14 are purely abstract geometric works. If these works are sorted out, we can clearly feel the exploration process from concrete to abstract.

Mangrove, written in 1908, is mondriaan's first work that broke away from traditional realistic painting and began to explore expressive new art forms. Judging from its brushwork and color, it is obviously influenced by Van Gogh.

The Grey Tree was written in 19 12, which shows that mondriaan was influenced by cubism after he came to Paris. According to the analysis method of cubism, he abandoned three-dimensional space, pursued plane composition, paid attention to the balance of composition and explored more abstractness. He summarized the branch shape of the tree as an abstract composition of various arcs crossing, but still retained the image of the tree and the perfection of the tree. This painting is in a cool gray tone. This painting gives people a strong sense of art because of its strong lines and solid brushwork.

The Flowering Apple Tree was written in 19 12, which is the painter's simplified and abstract exploration of the tree after the ash tree, seeking the most essential composition in form. The tree on the screen has become an arc without the shape of branches, and it has become an almost abstract painting. This is just an abstract work in which the painter still has the shadow of a tree in his mind before entering the purely abstract painting creation. It can be said that this work is the fuse for mondriaan's creation to turn to abstract works composed of straight lines and right angles. From then on, he stepped into the pure abstract creation composed of straight lines, found his own style and created a new artistic world.

Nijinsky (oil painting, 1 16.9 cm× 89.5 cm, 1950, American private collection) Crane (USA)

Franz? Crane (1910-1962) was originally a painter who specialized in painting people and urban landscapes, with the flavor of social realism. Until 1950, he was still immersed in the traditional paintings of Rembrandt and Goya. From 65438 to 0949, he began to apply black-and-white sketch to large-scale abstract composition and created an abstract painting with strong personality characteristics. Later, it quickly went to extremes. The painting method is basically the same as Pollock's, that is, he paints subconsciously, but there are some radical or radical strokes of Chinese characters similar to China's calligraphy on the painting, and then he enlarges them, clearly showing these calligraphy-like characters with thick strokes in black and white.

When making this abstract painting, Crane used Indian ink, then switched to advertising color or pigment and painted it with a big brush. 1949, Crane drew a sketch portrait of Nijinsky. The following year, he quickly drew an abstract painting made of black based on this Nijinsky, and black was "painted with pen and ink" to give a specious image, with excellent effect, which greatly pleased him. After that, he tried to enlarge the picture as much as possible, making the abstract black brush strokes fly extremely majestic.

White characters on a white background (oil painting, 19 18) Malevik (Russia)

Russian painter casimir? Malevich (1878-1935) was one of the founders of the Russian "supremacist" movement on the eve of the October Revolution. 19 13 or so, he drew a black square on a white background with a pencil, which ruled out the Russian cubism-futurism style he pioneered in his early years. According to his own words, "we should liberate art from the weight of objects." In his book Non-objective World, he said: "The visual phenomenon of the objective world itself is meaningless, and the meaningful thing is feeling, so it is completely isolated from the environment, so it should be aroused." Malevich called this view "supremacism".

Op. 36 (Oil Painting, 1953) Pollock (USA)

Jackson? Pollock (1912-1956) is a representative figure of American abstract expressionism and the first American artist with international influence after World War II. He completely broke the traditional concept of easel painting, made new breakthroughs in materials, techniques and concepts, and created a new situation of modern painting.

Pollock was born in Wyoming, the youngest of five children, and grew up in Southern California. He was interested in sculpture at first, but soon turned his attention to painting. /kloc-started to follow Thomas in the art student union at the age of 0/7. Benton studies. In the mid-1940s, he began to create some abstract works and still painted with traditional brushes. His works at this time are powerful, colorful and suggestive. Then he created the famous dripping painting. Pollock first laid a large canvas directly on the ground or nailed it to the wall, and used various tools to drop pigments and pigments on the canvas. The process of dripping mainly depends on the artist's gesture, the random action of paint or the body's action. Finally, according to the needs of the picture, add sand, pigment or other materials.

Pollock's creation opened up a new situation for art. He broke through the traditional concepts of brush and canvas and replaced the pen with any other tool. The picture does not have the layout and composition of traditional painting, and the pigment fills the whole picture, causing visual impact to the audience and creating a new visual language. Secondly, he chose new materials, used pigments, sand or any other materials to create, and new textures appeared on the surface of his works, which produced unique effects. Traditional easels, picture frames, brushes, oil paints and other tools and materials have been abandoned by him, and artistic creation has more freedom. Therefore, after Pollock, American modern art has developed by leaps and bounds.

3X (comprehensive materials, 1986) Stella (USA)

Frank. Frank Stella (1936-) was born in Maiden, Massachusetts. He studied at Phillips College and Princeton University in Amdo, Massachusetts, and 1958 moved to new york. In 1960s, he became one of the important figures who opposed abstract expressionism, and held exhibitions in Europe and America. At first, Stella abandoned the three-dimensional image and emphasized the flatness of painting in various ways. Later, he began to paint with canvases of various shapes. In the canvases, the image became the intersection and intersection of colored stripes, with the aim of creating an "irrelevant" painting, which was very close to the "primary structure" and "minimalism" artists at that time. Later, on this basis, he extended the materials to metals and industrial paints, metallic paints and so on. His works are generally huge. The looming 3X here is one of the representatives.

26-4-94 (oil painting, 1994) Zhao Wuji

Zhao Wuji (1920—), a native of Nantong, Jiangsu Province, was admitted to Hangzhou National Art College on 1935, where he studied under Lin Fengmian and the famous oil painter Wu Dayu. Stay in school to teach after graduation. Zhao Wuji studied in France from 65438 to 0948 and has been engaged in artistic research and creation in Paris. Zhao Wuji's artistic vision is broad. He is good at absorbing nutrition from all aspects and constantly surpassing himself.

The 1950s was a period when western abstract art was in the ascendant, and it was also a turning point of Zhao Wuji art. Facing the torrent of western abstract art at that time, Zhao Wuji began to consider his own artistic development path. He finally found a reasonable combination of western abstract art and China ink painting, and formed his lyrical, poetic and mysterious abstract art, which was unique in the western art world at that time and was quickly accepted by the mainstream western art world. Zhao Wuji became the first China artist to enter the mainstream western art world. Zhao Wuji's artistic achievements are undoubtedly closely related to the teaching of his teachers Lin Fengmian and Wu Dayu. However, Zhao Wuji's creativity, improvisation, originality and uniqueness are inseparable from his broad vision. Zhao Wuji's works are magnificent and profound, full of cadence and rhythm. But this painting was made in his later years. From his excitement, change and conflict, it became calm, gentle and thoughtful, which truly reflected his current state of mind. Zhao Wuji returned to China for lectures and inspection many times, and was invited to his alma mater on 1985. At that time, Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts held a painting workshop, which trained many outstanding talents for contemporary art in China.

The Red Window (oil painting, 1964) Vasarelli (Hungary)

Vasarelli (Victor Vasarelli, 1908-? ) He graduated from the Muxili Art Institute in Budapest, Hungary in his early years, moved to Paris in the 1930s, participated in the "Abstract-Creative Painting Meeting", and began to engage in visual theory research and creation in the 1940s. His "light effect art" or "opal art" attracted many artists and had a great influence in the 1960s. He usually arranges all kinds of regular geometric figures on the plane, and after careful color processing and ingenious arrangement, he creates the picture effect after electronic instruments or mechanical actions, showing exquisite skills and technical beauty, which has the characteristics of modern industrial civilization.

(2) Definition of nouns

compose

Simply put, composition is to put things together to form an organized and structured relationship, but it is often associated with "constructivism". Constructivism is one of the important art schools in the 20th century, which has two aspects: broad sense and narrow sense. Broadly speaking, it is a sculpture aesthetic concept put forward by British aesthetician Reid. The French sculptor Rodin (1840- 19 17) once thought that the world can be divided into two parts: the knowable world and the unknowable world, and every work of art should contain the latter component. Reid inherited Rodin's artistic theory and divided modern sculpture into two basic types, one is "constructivism" and the other is "organicism". Constructivism mainly relies on raw materials used in industry, such as metal, plastic, glass, etc. Form various geometric forms to express the formal beauty of sculpture. However, Reid also believes that in fact, in art appreciation, we can't tell whether a work of art belongs to "composition" or "organic", so we can only resort to the "collective unconscious" theory of psychoanalysis to analyze it. This method of describing a certain art type with the concept of "constructivism" was later widely used to express other arts. In a narrow sense, it refers to Russia in the early 20th century, including Vladimir Tatlin (1885- 1953), gabor (Naum Gabo, 1890- 1977) and pevsner (Antoine Pevsner, 65438).

But after the 20th century, the concepts of "sculpture", "plastic" or "addition" and "subtraction" could not meet the requirements of art, or people began to look at these concepts from a new angle, which is the formation of the concept of "composition". Under this concept, sculpture has become a combination or "composition" relationship of various materials such as wood, metal, glass or plastic components, which has opened up an infinite space for contemporary sculpture and even contemporary art. From the perspective of the use of materials, the experiment of cubism in painting indicates such an inevitable result. 19 12, Picasso designed a three-dimensional composition with paper and rope, and in the same year he drew a sketch for another composition. The guitar in his 19 12 and the musical instruments in 19 14 are all made of metal or wood, with cubism in image but constructivism in structure. Despite the rough handling, the artist stated a basic problem of constructivism sculpture-sculpture is spatial rather than volume.

Constructivism, as a school, is an experiment under the leadership of Tatlin. Tatlin first exhibited his so-called "painting relief" with Malevik, but Tatlin laughed at Malevik's unprofessional works, although they were consistent in many directions, because Tatlin put forward a more exciting belief that artists should be directly consistent with the communication methods of machine products, construction engineering, printing and photography, so as to emphasize the practical and ideological needs of the whole society. To this end, Tatlin named his artistic pursuit "productism", which showed his desire to combine art with social needs. This desire is consistent with people's ambition to create an art that is different from decadent capitalism and represents the advanced proletariat, but what they pursue is not political art, but the socialization of art. Under this clear concept, some artists like Garbo, pevsner, popova (Lyuboc Popova, 1889- 1924) and Lisicki (. 1890- 194 1) all stood in. It was not until about 1922 that Soviet art turned to socialist realism that they moved to Europe one after another, which had a decisive influence on modern European art, especially through Bauhaus.

Garbo, a constructivist artist, insists that "the concept of constructivism" is not to unify art and science, not to explore the mystery of the material world, but to feel its truth. This makes constructivism neither want to be an abstract artistic style, nor even an art or something like that. Alexei, one of the theorists of the constitutional movement? Gan once wrote: Constructivism "does not want to make abstract plans, but takes concrete problems as the starting point." In other words, they tried to replace the static activities of artists in the past and create new dynamic art based on science and technology, which became the first principle of constructivism. Because the constitutionalists believe that the basic conditions of machinery and human consciousness will naturally create aesthetics that reflect their times. This makes them like to use two convincing words to explain the dialectical process of creation: constructiveness and existence, and the result of their integration is the authenticity of constructivism. For them, "structural", that is, the whole concept is based on the basic concept of social application and convenience-the combination of content and form; "Existence", that is, the natural tendency of matter itself, the realization of special conditions in the process of its composition and change. This concept is reflected in de Stijl or Neo-Plasticism, Bauhaus, international style, and all the arts that pursue "abstraction" to a certain extent.

abstractionism

"Abstract art" also has broad sense and narrow sense. Conceptually, "abstraction" itself is a difficult word to determine. When people use the word "abstract", it is also vague. It usually has two meanings. On the one hand, it refers to unnatural expressions, such as describing a thing with exaggeration, deformation or reduction; On the other hand, it refers to an art form that completely abandons any visible natural image. In fact, "abstract art" in a strict sense should refer to the latter, but people are not so strict when using this word. Cubism and barbarism, for example, are sometimes called "abstract" inappropriately, and they can only be "semi-abstract" at most. The word "abstract art" is not suitable for accurately describing the art form that does not show the visible image of concrete reality because of its fuzziness. Therefore, many artists in the 20th century were named according to their own understanding. Doesburg called it "figurative art", while mondriaan described it as "new modeling" and "non-objective", as well as "non-reappearance", "non-figurative" and "non-traditional".

It is generally believed that the real "abstract art" began with a watercolor painting created by Kandinsky in 19 10, but it is still difficult (or impossible) to determine who was the first abstract painter. Arthur g dove (1880—1946) from the United States and Frank from the Czech Republic? Kupka (Seck Kupka, Franti,1871-1957), Mikolas, Lithuania? Ma Zi Leonis and others are suitable candidates. But no matter who it is, "abstract art" can be said to be the inevitable development of art in the 20th century. Abstract art has developed in two aspects, both of which directly come from post-impressionism. On the one hand, "color abstraction", from Van Gogh and Gauguin to Kandinsky's final liberation, later influenced orpheus, Synchronization, Tahitis, informal art or other art, lyric abstraction, action painting or abstract expressionism. On the other hand, it is "the abstraction of form and structure", which started from classicism and passed through neoclassicism, Courbet, Cezanne and Seurat cubism, and later influenced futurism, constructivism, radiation, supremacism, stylism or neo-modeling, figurative art, roundness and square, abstract creation society, hard-line painting and minimalism. The former is commonly known as "hot abstraction" because it emphasizes the direct catharsis of feelings, the organic form and the painting of expression methods, while the latter is commonly known as "cold abstraction" because it pays attention to the rational structure analysis, geometric modeling and graphic painting methods of hard edges. Abstract and Empathy, published by German art theorist and philosopher Wollinger in 1908, played a key role in promoting the development of "abstract art". Kandinsky's book On Spirit in Art, published in 19 12, comprehensively and systematically expounded the principles and principles of "abstract art" for the first time, which had a great influence on the development of "abstract art".

The emergence of abstract art is interpreted by theorists as being created by human beings under the control of an innate "abstract impulse", that is, it is a strong internal requirement for artists to create art forms with eternal value through artistic impulse, which can be stimulated from the outside or directly generated by the artist's internal needs. This term was first put forward by the German art theorist Wollinger (1881-1965) at the beginning of this century. In his view, the ever-changing real world and colorful scenes have caused fierce turmoil in the human mind. If people can't understand and grasp the law and order of this world, they will have spiritual fear of this world. Therefore, people have an inherent requirement to sort out the chaotic reality and find a way beyond the occasional existence of individual things, which is a strong abstract impulse. Therefore, abstract impulse is the product of great anxiety caused by the external world. However, this abstract impulse can also be understood as the result that the transcendental psychological structure formed by cultural accumulation inherently acts on people's emotional activities and dominates people's spiritual production.

Suprematism

19 13 malevik also exhibited several typical "three-dimensional futurism" paintings in the famous "target" exhibition. In these works, the painting objects are expressed in the form of cylinders, forming a staggered and almost mechanical rhythm, which reminds people of Leger's works expressing industrial scenes and industrial themes. However, Malevik is still worried about the abnormal phenomenon that the theme stays in his works, so he showed a work with black squares on a white background in the exhibition to show his pursuit of pure art. In his own words, "I tried my best to liberate art from the burden of objects." This is a pencil sketch, which is the first example of this style and makes him the first painter who regards painting as an absolutely pure geometric abstract system. Malevik called this painting "supremacism". In a book he wrote called Supremacism: A Non-objective World, he explained his art like this: "By supremacism, I mean the supremacy of pure feeling in painting art." He wrote: "From the supremacist's point of view, the visual phenomenon of the objective world itself is meaningless, but what is meaningful is the feeling-in itself and in the completely independent relationship that has been aroused." Since then, Malevich has regarded academic impressionism, even Cezanne and Cubism as naturalism, which has nothing to do with art, because "object" is only a lie about the nature of the world, and real art should be an "objective" existence that has nothing to do with nature, while "supremacism" means that "right" has long since passed away because of the growth of "object" in the process of time.

Malevik is a devout Christian mystic. He believes that it can be proved that a painting can exist independently without any image or imitation of the outside world, which makes his art have a certain mysticism. Between 19 15 and 1923, he continued to experiment with three-dimensional sketches and models, in which he studied the form problem in three dimensions. The problems raised by these abstract three-dimensional models make "three-dimensional futurism" a transitional style, which is not only of great significance to the growth of Russian constructivism and abstract art based on constructivism in the future, but also spread to Germany and western Europe through Malevik's disciples, especially Lisicki, which has affected the design teaching of Bauhaus and the international stylization process of modern architecture.