Trends and Movements (Th)

1)Expressionism -

Expressionism is an artistic movement that emerged in the early 20th century, primarily in Germany. It is characterized by its focus on representing subjective emotions and responses to the world, rather than depicting objective reality. Artists in this movement sought to express their individual perceptions and feelings through intense color, exaggerated forms, and dynamic compositions.

The movement encompasses a variety of art forms, including painting, literature, theatre, and film. Expressionist artists often employed distortion and exaggeration to convey emotional experiences, sometimes to the point of creating unsettling or jarring effects. This style was a reaction against the more realistic and representational approaches of the time, aiming to evoke a deeper emotional response from the viewer.

Key figures in Expressionism include Edvard Munch, whose painting “The Scream” is iconic of the movement’s style, and Vincent van Gogh, known for his vivid and emotionally charged works like “The Starry Night.” Expressionism has had a lasting influence on various later art movements, including Abstract Expressionism and Neo-Expressionism.

2. Surrealism: -

Surrealism is an artistic and literary movement that began in the early 20th century, primarily in Europe. It sought to release the creative potential of the unconscious mind by the irrational juxtaposition of images. Influenced by Sigmund Freud’s theories on dreams and the unconscious, Surrealists believed that the rational mind repressed the power of the imagination, weighting it down with taboos.

The movement was founded by André Breton in Paris in 1924 with the publication of the “Surrealist Manifesto.” Surrealism was marked by its focus on the strange, bizarre, and the incongruous, often employing dream-like scenes and symbolic imagery. Artists like Salvador Dalí, René Magritte, and Max Ernst are well-known Surrealists whose works often feature illogical scenes with precise, photorealistic techniques, creating strange creatures from everyday objects and developing painting techniques that allowed the unconscious to express itself.

Surrealism’s legacy continues to influence contemporary art and culture, encouraging a free flow of imagination and the exploration of the human psyche. 

POEM:

In the Garden of Surreal Dreams

Beneath the moon's silver gleam,

In the garden where time streams,

Flowers bloom with eyes that see,

And the trees whisper secrets to the bees.

The stars dance in curious delight,

As the nightingale sings to the plight,

Of a world turned upside down,

Where smiles are kings and frowns the crown.

A clock ticks with a rhythm so strange,

Its hands move forward, then rearrange,

To tell the time in a land of dreams,

Where nothing is ever as it seems.

Here, the sun rises in the west,

And the birds fly backwards to their nest,

The fish walk on land with graceful steps,

While the cats swim deep, with no regrets.

In this realm where the bizarre takes flight,

Reality bends, bathed in surreal light,

Each moment a canvas, vivid and vast,

Painted with dreams from the unconscious cast.

3. DADA MOVEMENT:

The Dada Movement was an avant-garde art movement of the early 20th century, which originated in Zurich, Switzerland, around 1916 as a reaction to World War I. It was characterized by a strong anti-war and anti-establishment sentiment, and its proponents used absurdity and irrationality as artistic weapons against the conventions of the art world and the society that supported the war.

Dada artists embraced a variety of mediums, including performance, poetry, collage, and sculpture, often incorporating found objects and chance operations to create their works. They rejected traditional aesthetic criteria and the concept of the artist as a creator of meaningful objects, instead promoting art as an act of anarchic rebellion and questioning the purpose and value of art itself.

Key figures in the Dada Movement included Hugo Ball, Tristan Tzara, Marcel Duchamp, and Jean Arp. The movement spread to other cities such as Berlin, Cologne, Hanover, Paris, and New York, each developing its own distinct flavor of Dadaism. Although the movement was short-lived, dissolving by the mid-1920s with the rise of Surrealism, its influence on later art movements, particularly Conceptual Art, was profound.

Chaos in Verse

An elephant flies on delicate wings,

A fish sings opera, a telephone rings.

In the world of Dada, where nonsense is king,

The mundane is sacred, a trivial thing.

Words dance in disarray, lacking a theme,

A jumbled-up mess, a nonsensical dream.

A symphony of silence plays in the night,

As colors take flight in black and white.

A hat tips its brim to the man in the moon,

A spoon races a fork to the tune of a spoon.

In Dada's embrace, the world's upside down,

A smile is a frown in a sea of clown.

So let's raise a glass to the Dadaist way,

Where meaning is lost and found in a day.

For in this mad dance of sound and of sight,

We find art's delight in the absence of right.

THANK YOU!!