Studying Modern Culture Effectively

Leertips for Studying Modern Culture

• To understand the global story, start with an overview.
• Focus on the syllabus pages for specific information.
• Practice explaining the material and connecting concepts.
• Review the relevant material if you encounter difficulties with practice questions.
• Practice with past CSE questions and review previously completed practice questions, with answers available on the ELO.

What "Modern" Means

• "Modern" means of this time, fast, new, businesslike, and functional.
• In art, "modernism" refers to the innovative avant-garde art of the early 20th century.
• This period represents a break between old and new art.
• Artists sought originality, uniqueness, and autonomy, breaking from the past.
• They believed art could improve the world (utopia).
• Artists wanted to revolutionize art itself, disregarding established rules and experimenting.
• Artists became less reliant on patrons, aiming to portray emotions and disregard existing laws.

Developments in the Early 20th Century

• There was a sense of a new era emerging between the 19th and 20th centuries.
• Scientific discoveries rapidly influenced society.
• Mass communication, cars, airplanes, trains, photography, and electric light transformed the world.
• The Western world developed significantly in technology during the early 20th century (around 1900).
• Industries distributed new products, including weapons like tanks, machine guns, and poison gas.
• Communism emerged.
• Psychoanalysis (by Freud) explored new depths of the human soul.
• Einstein's theory of relativity expanded the boundaries of science.
• Art served as a pioneer for the new era, aiming to revolutionize society.

Changes Summarized

Visual arts

• Photography showcased the visible world.
• Painters moved away from naturalism, directing their focus on emotions over visual reality.
• Art transitioned from representational to abstract forms.

Dance

• Dance shifted from academic, romantic, and classical ballet to expressionistic forms.

Music

• Music evolved from tonal to atonal compositions.
• Cadences gave way to new meters and rhythms.

Drama

• Drama transitioned from naturalistic and realistic theater to epic theater.

Film

• Film emerged as a new medium.
• The first half of the 20th century was shaped by two World Wars, an economic crisis, and the rise of fascism.
• People aimed to advance through modern technologies, such as aviation and psychoanalysis.
• The focus shifted away from traditions towards progress, under the utopian artistic movement known as modernism.
• Art documented or reacted to reality, with a growing understanding that reality goes beyond what the senses perceive.
• Experiencing reality also included emotions like fear, aggression, and passion, which artists aimed to express.
• A new era emerged after World War I, with artists seeking radical change and viewing it as a fresh start.
• Some artists rejected the 'old' world, celebrating dynamic modern life, while others embraced anti-art or sought inspiration from other cultures.
• Folk and exotic art were regarded as pure and expressive.
• Artists, designers, and architects across Europe aimed to promote new ideas, leading the avant-garde movement to publish manifestos.
• Movements like cubism, futurism, constructivism, and expressionism influenced architecture.
• Artists viewed their feelings as more important than the audience's reception.

Artistic Freedom and Restrictions

• Artists became more personal and autonomous, often losing the understanding of the general public.
• Totalitarian regimes forced artists to create propaganda art and imposed censorship.
• Stalin rejected all art except socialist realism.
• Hitler mandated realism, which was better for propaganda.
• In addition to new developments, there was also room for entertainment for people to forget about concerns and distress.
• Revues, musicals, and the rise of sound films became popular, with film becoming a mass medium.

Summary of Artistic Principles

• Artists broke with traditional art rules.
• They strived to be progressive.
• Inspiration came from cultures in Africa, Eastern Europe, and Asia.

Art Forms and Styles

Music

• Expression/Alienation
  • Schönberg: Expressed theories, alienation, and emancipation of the dissonant (atonality; serialism).
  • Stravinsky, Bartók: Increased emphasis on rhythm, research into folk music.
  • Satie: Created entertainment music.
  • Hindemith: Functional music. Electronic music (Russolo; Varèse).

Visual Arts:

• Abstraction
  • Sought the essence of things.
  • Expressed nature: the structure behind visible nature.
  • Functionality (Bauhaus; De Stijl; Constructivism).
• Expression
  • Moved from the material to the spiritual - rejected realism (Kandinsky, Mondrian, Picasso, Brancusi).
  • Form, proportion (De Stijl).
• Alienation
  • Dealt with the world of the subconscious (Freud), irrationality, and anti-art. (Surrealism and Dadaism).

Architecture

• Abstraction
  • Functionality: practicality; form follows function.
  • Explored qualities of new materials (Bauhaus).

Theater

• Abstraction/Expression: Symbolism in theater designs, physical theater, and psychological theater.
• Included influences from epic theater (Brecht) and Eastern theater (Japan).

Dance

• Expression was key, with influences from Les Ballets Russes, foundations research, and an emphasis on rhythm.

Film

• Employed abstraction/alienation/expression - included abstract moving images; used to persuade or entertain.

Characteristics of Visual Arts in Modern Culture

• Artists sought to be innovative and independent.
• Abstraction sought out the nature art.
• This stood in the modernism.
• Expression Moved from materials to the inside.
• Alienation looked at the world of unconscious mind and rejection of art.
• Expressionism conveyed emotions which were not immediately obvious.
• It flattened/perspective was not important etc.
• Colors are often distorted or are abstract.
• Artists were interested in the art of new cultures, and found that to be the real type.

Futurism

• Futurists demanded the destruction of all traditions.
• They sought to express speed, energy, aggression, powerful lines, and dynamics in art.
• People should forget the past. Futurists usually painted themes such as planes, war, and industry.
• Marinetti wrote a Futurist manifesto. Dynamic paintings conveyed movement through diagonal lines, repetition, and contrasting colors.

Dadaism

• Dadaism negated all theory and opposed war and nationalism.
• Challenged established art by elevating everyday objects to art, making art ridiculous (Duchamp). Dada was a precursor to conceptual art, where the idea is more important than the execution.

Montage and Assemblage

• Montage and Assemblage consist of compiling different materials.
• Chance often plays a role.

Surrealism

• This shows dreamlike images, painting the unearthly realistically
• It was disappointed in realism from WW1 and inspired from the ideas from Sigmund Freud.
• Surrealists centre from a free state state set by conscious.
• Inspired by dream and unconsciousness.
• Sometimes were created under the influence
• The the review prompts about looking at the painting but is difficult to see right away.

Cubism

• Included rough fragments, and the cubit shows more than just the outside view.
• Shifts of sight.

Constructivism

• developed from cubism and futurism.
• Used abstract, geometrics, used squares, circles etc.
• It was connected with the spiritual.
• Minimal art.

Key Questions about Art

• Art is about the exhibition and the design.

Nicolas Braun Berlin Street Scene, 1921

• It shows like Christmas Eve
• Society criticised showing the struggles.
• It contrasts rich and poor
• There are too many examples

Movements

• The Duchamps movement is about movement.
• It is shown through colour and figures.

Analyzing Art

I: Presentation (What?)

• What it is about/content/story/theme/message or concept of symbolism

II: Design (How?)

• How the presentation is designed by means of design

III: Design (What is used?)

• Materials/techniques = design materials techniques

Design Principles:

• Patterns - Contrast - Accentuation - Balance - Proportion/scale - harmony - rhythm/movement.

Elements of Art

Form

• Aspects: Shape and Form
  • Forms:
    • Angular / round/ square / cone /
    • 2D or 3D.
    • Geometric / organic
    • open/closed abstract

Composition

• Aspects: Composition ground form
  • Dynamic
  • Symmetry
  • Rhythm
  • Types
    • Horizontal / vertical / diagonal / triangle /
    • Overall
    • Static/ dynamic
    • Symmetrical / asymmetrical - Repetition

Colour

• types
  • Main / secondary / tertiary
    • Clean / impure
• Aspects - Intensity - Value - Lighting / dark - Bright colour effect - Light Dark
  • Light Dark / cool-warm / complementary

Light

• Types
  • aspects - shade, lighting, direction
• --Natural/ artificial
• -----Light/ dark- little/big-hard- soft. -
• -----Own shadow/cast shadow-plasticity
• Aspects
• ------Lighting
• -------Tissue expressionTexture - how the surface looks
• ---------Smooth/rough-granular/polished

Space

• Aspects
  • Dimension
  • Types
    • Height / width / depth

2D

-Suggestive of performance, by overlapping and or

-View angles

- 3 Dimensional room

Dried Dimension

- Spatiality/ plastic

• ------material

2D

  --------Painting

• -------------Fresco / oil paint

Material

3 Dimensional

-------Architecture -Design -------Fashion

Techniques

• ------Photography
• montage/ still
• ----Graphic
• collage / assemblage/affiche -------Hacking cutting ---------Molding Industriele/Craft

-

-

In Berlin scenes in 1913 the doctor Kirchner shows the tension of an Urban scene. Kirchner sees the tension off a city night Kirchner is mostly worried about the inner feelings and that can be found in his colour scheme

Film studies

What happens or what about contents and or thematic

A film production

• Art Production with the use of specific technics.
• Acting and or a the atril of a film Music a way off using a film .

- Form and a look .

- camera position/angle

- Camera movement - camera zooming angles in

- Camera aspect an light an reflection etc!

MOUTAGE!

-

- aspect off it

- Effects and or ordering!

- Effects and or ordering and adding stuff!

THE LOOK !

The light sound with light sounds.

• The history of our filming is always depend in of the chance The movie with sounds Brother used a chance on those.

In filming

• Cinematography
• Montage and music The great dictator.
• Or sin welsse.

Architecture culture modern Stile and shapes , black in white in it!

• Bauhaus - art from.
• social realistic , and what can contribute and daily uses .

Walter from there . And how a style from this looks

Function !

• Aspect in The 3 style and use metrical and geometric shapes

5

New stuff and pre fabric

6

7 and live

8 the humans feeling in side

How it's use!

• The style and shapes and shapes! and or shapes from the and the building inside! . The utopian from the land is how.

Morden Dans Culture

• 20 ste the centery culture
• Not just only a the time.
• It had a many off aspect in socail. Einstein a big roll a the time Sociales that time!
• Architect a time .
• It had a big change with 1 to the time .
• A new time !
• the spooks shows and what it had

- Dans an

• A time off!

Modern Music is.

• and or look . The time when it start!.
• A system by 12. Was a great to music ! The sounds was very extreme
• A very important to music it sounds! Many sounds and all the sounds what are .

Swing

is a very old jazz! What is a can you to! You and the artist play what you like How you move! And your hands that And he moves in the battle and what we feel!