Manet | ![]() |
Whistler | ![]() |
and Van Gogh | ![]() |
were all strongly influenced by Japanese art. |
The sumptuous surface decoration typical of the Islamic art of the Near East captured the attention of many artists and designers in the late 19th and early 20th century.
Henri Matisse | ![]() |
and Gustav Klimt | ![]() |
both made use of opulent surface patterning in the oriental style. | ![]() |
Much of his career as an artist was spent in Tahiti, though he began his painting career in France. He was initially influenced by the ideas of impressionism, and his association with Van Gogh. He too was entranced with color and light, but also with the psychological implications, the symbolic language of color.He was associated with the ideas of the Symbolists, as well as the Expressionists. In tropical Tahiti he found color and light of a brilliance and intensity never seen in Europe. As a result he began to intensify his colors, using them to evoke the exotic environment in which he found himself, and also to introduce the emotional symbolism that color can carry. His work was very influential on the generation of artists that would follow him in the early years of the 20th century.
In the first years of this century,
African
art became the preoccupation of many young artists. African art
hung in the studios of Picasso, Matisse, and many other founders of the important
art movements of the years before World War I. It should be pointed out that
this interest in African art was not accompanied by any real understanding of
the people who made it, or their reasons for making it. Rather, there was an
interest in the strong, graphic stylization and abstraction of form that could
be seen in the objects, particularly in the sculpture. African aesthetics were
fundamental influences for many artists, who admired their simplicity, power,
and highly graphic formal qualities. African art was particularly important
to the development of
Fauvism and
Cubism.
In later years African art, and other "primitive" art also contributed to Abstract
Expressionism and other American styles.
The development of psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud at the turn of the century
extended the idea that the world of the individual went beyond the obvious,
the visible or the tangible. There was now a world of the subconscious to be
considered, a world of dreams, alternate reality, and irrationality. This world
became a fabulous mine for many artists.
It was Surrealism that most fully realized the possibilities
of the new psychological theories. This movement incorporated the literary as
well as visual arts, and involved film, photography, and even fashion. The writer
Andre
Breton was a leader in the development of Surrealist ideas.
The fully developed Surrealist approach as described by Breton sought to access the subconscious by using various "automatic" techniques to evoke images without recourse to the rational, or by bringing together unlikely combinations of images to create visual paradoxes. This approach could be detected as as early as the work of de Chirico and the subsequent DaDa movement. These led to the development of Surrealism, which could be seen in the work of such artists as Man Ray,
Max Ernst , | ![]() |
Dali, | ![]() |
and Miro. | ![]() |
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