Jennifer Nicholls: Subject Matter & Content 2 Expressionism/New Objectivity & Surrealism

Subject matter = What is the painting of
Content = About the painting itself

George Braque = Cubist

Mattese = Fauxism

Derain, The Bridge at Charing Cross, 1906

Braque, Violin and Jug, 1910

Painting now became more about the artist own perception of the world around them, what they saw and how they perceived it as opposed to how things really looked.

George Grosz, Grey Day, 1921

Grosz, Café, 1928

Grosz saw the massive divide between the lower, working and upper classes and felt strongly enough about it that he made a series of paintings and drawings about it, to highlight what was happening.

Grosz, At Five in the Morning, 1921

Grosz, John, The Sex Murderer, 1919

Grosz, The Burial, 1919

Grosz, The City, 1916/17

Grosz, Berlin Street Scene, c.1922

Dix has a similar subject matter, no respect and dark humour, veterans, humour of war, lack of compassion, social hypocrisy, not taking care of values, enjoying things to much, moral decadence, rising nationalism happening at the time.

Subject matter is upper most.

Dix, Cardplaying War Invalids, 1920

Aundre Dix, Wounded Soldier, 1924

Dix, The Match Seller, 1921

Colour jarring
Fragmentation
Cubist
Distortion = Expression
Exaggeration
Figurative
Expressive

Yet primary is subject matter, making a point. Not secondary, raising awareness.

(Used to be expressionism became New objectivity).

What was the role of the artist? To tell the story of the people, educating people.

What style of art is he arguing for? Modernism = above life, a better place.
Modernism = real life moving away from lavish decoration, it's simple and direct.

John Heartfield, Adolf the Superman

Swallows Gold and Spouts Junk, 1932

Critical of the ruling classes yet very popular
Intellectual - recognised the problem
Degenerative art classed by hitler.

Surrealism = Subject matter
The obvious in strange circumstances, a dream like quality.
Style = realistic/photographic.
Sur = Above and beyond

An Andalusian dog

Dream like quality put across in the medium of film

"An Andalusian Dog is a 1929 silent surrealist short film by the Spanish director Luis Buñuel and artist Salvador Dalí. The idea for the film began when Buñuel was working as an assistant director for Jean Epstein in France. Buñuel told Dalí at a restaurant one day about a dream in which a cloud sliced the moon in half "like a razor blade slicing through an eye". Dalí responded that he'd dreamed about a hand crawling with ants. They were fascinated by what the psyche could create, and decided to write a script based on the concept of suppressed human emotions."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHsj1WKF6b8

Salvador Dali, The Persistence of Memory,

1932

Dali, Soft Construction with Boiled Beans:

Premonition of Civil War, 1936

Rene Magritte, The Human Condition, 1933

Magritte, The Red Model, 1931

Paul Delvaux, Phases of the Moon, 1939

Giorgio de Chirico, Love Song, 1914

Juxtaposition, sexual, unsettling themes

Veristic - truthful, life like

Giorgio = Metaphysical

p447 - 448 - L.17-14

Surrealist's renounce logic, imagination, repressed - move away from the search for truth.
Return to figuration and realism

Modernism is not easy and direct, group values/beliefs, questioning what art is for?