GUGGENHEIM
MUSEUM VENICE - 2018
PRIMITIVE ART AND MODERN ART
At the beginning of the 20th Century,
artists thought that the European
culture was corrupt, artificial and
superficial. Some of them visited Ethnographic
Museums and discovered cultures and arts made of power and magic, even if
they were considered primitive.
They found them essential, abstract and irrational,
but capable of freedom, full of emotions. They loved the cultures of Africa, the Orient, the Americas and Oceania, they
wanted to celebrate cultural diversity, universal art.
For them, Primitivism
represented the simplification of form, it showed the truth of life. A lot of
artists were influenced by Primitivism: Picasso, Braque, Gauguin, Derain,
Giacometti, Brancusi and many more, but we will focus on three artists: Jackson
Pollock, Max Ernst and Henry Moore.
Head of a Woman, Georges
Braque, 1909
The Couple, Alberto Giacometti, 1927
MAX ERNST
Max Ernst was born in Germany in 1891.
He began painting when he was 20. During the First
World War, Ernst had to serve in the army. War was a trauma for him. He started
to consider the world as irrational. He hated Nazism.
During the Second World War, Ernst was sent twice to a concentration camp. The first time he was freed, the second time he had to escape.
During the Second World War, Ernst was sent twice to a concentration camp. The first time he was freed, the second time he had to escape.
Peggy Guggenheim helped him to reach the USA. He and Peggy got
married but their relationship didn’t last long.
He moved to Arizona and was fascinated by the Zumi and Hopi Indian art and culture. He studied them also in the New York Museum of American Indians and had a collection of Hopi and Zumi Kachina Dolls. He liked the tenacity of the Native American tribes who struggled for their individuality.
He moved to Arizona and was fascinated by the Zumi and Hopi Indian art and culture. He studied them also in the New York Museum of American Indians and had a collection of Hopi and Zumi Kachina Dolls. He liked the tenacity of the Native American tribes who struggled for their individuality.
In New York, Ernst helped to bring about Abstract Expressionism. This movement
had an emotional intensity and was against figurative painting. It was art
about the process of making art.
The Forest (La Forêt), 1927–28
The Entire City (La Ville entière), 1936–37
Painters experimented with new techniques like
dripping, spraying, staining, pouring and working on the floor.
Ernst died in France in 1976.
Zoomorphic Couple (Couple zoomorphe),
1933 - Oil on canvas
Under the influence of Surrealism, Ernst
developed his “frottage” or rubbing
technique. In his first frottages,
he dropped pieces of paper at random on floor boards and rubbed them with
pencil or chalk, transferring the design of the wood to the paper. He next
adapted this technique to oil painting,
scraping paint from prepared canvases laid over materials such as wire mesh,
leaves, buttons, or twine.
In this painting, he put a string of rope full
of paint on a canvas and then sprayed paint on it. He combined layers of pastel
colour under blown, spattered and dripped paint. You can see the image of a bird and a humanoid form in the
painting. A zoomorphic figure is the image of a deity having the form of an
animal. Both the figures here have much of animals. This painting was composed
under the Nazi Socialism, before Ernst’s arrival into the US, but it shows his
interest in the mysterious and powerful elements
of nature.
JACKSON POLLOCK
Jackson Pollock was born in
1912 in Wyoming, USA. He began to study painting in Los
Angeles, then he moved to New York and studied art there. He never had enough
money, so Peggy Guggenheim paid him for
four years and he could spend all his time painting.
The Moon Woman, 1942
When he was
25, he started painting in an abstract
way. He laid
his canvas on the floor and dripped and splattered paint across it.
He didn’t want to paint a landscape or a portrait: Pollock wanted to paint action. When you look at one of his drip paintings, your eyes wander across the entire canvas in constant motion. In this way, Pollock achieved his goal; the creation of the painting is active and so is the viewing of the painting.
He didn’t want to paint a landscape or a portrait: Pollock wanted to paint action. When you look at one of his drip paintings, your eyes wander across the entire canvas in constant motion. In this way, Pollock achieved his goal; the creation of the painting is active and so is the viewing of the painting.
Alchemy, 1947
To do his drip paintings, Pollock used big cans of paint to cover the canvas. He used sticks, trowels, or knives to drip and splatter paint, or poured paint directly from the can. He put into action the notions of the subconscious and automatic painting. Pollock’s drips were called “action paintings,” and contributed to the development of Abstract Expressionism.
Pollock
valued Native American art. He grew
up in Arizona and knew the culture od the Navajo
tribe. When he was in New York, he saw Indian
sand painting demonstrations at the Museum of Modern Art, and he was
inspired by them for the development of his technique. He learnt that Indian
medicine men sprinkled coloured sands on surface in a trance dance. That’s where
he had the idea of the dripping method. He poured paint moving around the
canvas with dance-like movements. The dance
was never complete until the painting had revealed itself, then the artist
stopped. Pollock was interested in the unconscious, and shamanism is deeply related to it.
Jackson
Pollock died in a car accident when he was 42 years old.
Enchanted Forest is an example of Jackson Pollock’s abstract compositions
created by the pouring, dripping, and splattering of paint on large canvases.
In this painting, Pollock leaves large areas of white in the network of
moving, expanding lines. He also decides to use only gold, black, red, and
white. He creates a delicate balance of form and colour through rhythms of lines that move into
continuous, lyrical motion. One’s eye follows
the lines of colour without being arrested by any dominant focus. Rather
than describing a form, Pollock’s line becomes continuous form. In Pollock’s
drip paintings, his lines show the freedom from contours and shapes.
HENRY
MOORE
During the Second World War, he became famous for
his drawings of people when they
were in the London Underground used as bomb shelters. These drawings show all the feeling of fear and anxiety
of these people.
Tube Shelter Perspective, 1941
Three Fates, 1941
Today, he is more is famous
for his sculptures of people with
bumpy forms and hollow spaces in their bodies. His first sculptures showed one
person at a time, but then he focused on groups
of people. He studied their movements, their interactions, he found out
abstract, pure forms which transformed bodies into totems, more alien than
human.
Family Group, 1949
Three standing figures, 1947
Moore had a deep admiration
for Mexican sculpture. His interest
in primitive art made him consider
new forms in sculpture. From the end of the 19th Century,
Anthropology and Ethnography began to study primitive ethnic groups. After a
visit at the Ethnographic Room at the British Museum of London, Moore started
to look to Aztec and Maya sculpture for inspiration. He saw much
more energy in this art than in any other, even if he loved African primitive art as well.
Henry Moore died in 1986 in
England.
Three Standing Figures, 1953
This sculpture is related to the
African influence on Henry Moore and
to the “shelter” drawings. There is
a variety of gestures, and Moore adds forms of bones and rocks to the
human figures. The perforations suggest a process of erosion by water and wind. The bodies are abstract and some anatomical parts are exaggerated. They may give
the idea of disorder, even if they are ordered in a row. They are fixed on a
pedestal and they don’t touch or watch each other.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-Vx6Q3zZSA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6O4R90nA8sc
Questionnaire
1. What did artists think at
the beginning of the 20th Century?
2. How did they discover primitive art?
3. How did they consider it?
4. What cultures did they like?
5. What was Primitivism for
them?
6. Who were interested in
Primitivism?
7. When and where was Max Ernst born?
8. What did he do during World
War I?
9. What was his opinion about
Nazism?
10. What happened to him during
World War II?
11. What was Abstract
Expressionism?
12. Where did he go after the
war?
13. What did he discover when he
was in Arizona?
14. Where did he study Native Americans?
15. What did he like about them?
16. What is abstract
Expressionism?
17. What were the new techniques
experimented?
18. How did he do his
“frottages”?
19. How did he compose the
painting Zoomorphic couple?
20. What can you see in the
painting?
21. What is a zoomorphic figure?
22. When was the painting
composed?
23. When and where was Jackson Pollock born?
24. Where did he study art?
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25. How did Peggy Guggenheim
help him?
26. How did his style change when
he was 25?
27. How did he paint?
28. What did he want to paint?
29. What is “action painting”?
30. Why did he know the Navajo
culture?
31. What did he see at the
Museum of Modern Art?
32. What did he learn about
medicine men?
33. How did he move when he
painted?
34. What can you see in the
painting Enchanted Forest?
35. What does the eye do while
watching it?
36. What are Pollocks’s painting
free from?
37. Where and when was Henry Moore born?
38. What was he inspired by?
39. Why was he famous in the
Second World War?
40. What is he famous today for?
41. How are his sculptures?
42. How did he study groups of
people for his sculptures?
43. What kind of primitive art
did he like?
44. Why did he like it?
45. How did he discover it?
46. How is the sculpture Three Standing Figures made?
47. How are the bodies
represented?
48. Do you like them? Why?
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