Architectural and Artistic Movements: A Timeline
Architectural and Artistic Movements
Item 16
Functionalism in architecture is a current where building size, mass, space allocation, and other features should be based on the building’s usefulness. Example: Le Corbusier’s Villa Roche, 1921.
Agency – Buildings are like organisms whose shape conforms to the materials used and integrated into the natural environment. Example: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater, 1935.
Mannerism – An artistic style that spread in Europe in the 16th century (not the 21st), characterized by expressiveness and artificiality. Mannerists moved away from established canons and forms, used freely, even to distort reality.
High-Tech – An architectural movement based on high technology, using lightweight materials and industrial components such as steel and glass. Cost control and quality are managed as if it were an industrial process. It is used for large office buildings and equipment.
Fauvism – Characterized by freedom of expression through subjective use of color, drawing, and exaggeration of forced perspective. Example: Andre Derain’s Westminster Bridge, 1906.
Cubism – Characterized by objects represented by bright and transparent planes made of small cubes, breaking the objects into cubist shapes and showing the third dimension (volume). Example: Georges Braque’s Violin and Clarinet, 1912.
Futurism – Characterized by an attempt to capture the feeling of movement. Its most important representative was Umberto Boccioni. Example: Boccioni’s Dynamism of a Cyclist, 1913.
Expressionism – Characterized by reflecting the problems of its time and the anguish of man through the expressive power of color, texture, and line. Example: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s Bildnis Gerda, 1914.
Dadaism – Characterized by the absence of rational meaning in its manifestos and works, which are real provocations and mockeries of social convention. Example: Francis Picabia’s Love Parade, 1917.
Surrealism – Characterized by its search into the irrational and unconscious through the world of dreams, showing illogical elements whose meaning reflects the most hidden impulses of human beings. Example: Salvador Dali’s The Persistence of Memory, 1931.
Lyrical and Geometric Abstraction – Gives a spiritual character. This painting style seeks harmony to elicit emotions from colors and lines. It reduces paint to chips that contain horizontal and vertical planes of pure color.
Op Art and Informalism – Intended to produce visual effects and highlight depth and movement through lines, colors, and static shots. It’s a non-figurative abstraction trend, different from that which also arises from the rejection of conventional art. It defends that painting is not limited to using color but must use all kinds of materials.
Pop Art – Inspired by images and themes from the world of mass communication but with a critical and ironic treatment. Example: Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe.
Hyperrealism – A stream originating in the United States, which seeks the manual reproduction of color photographs. The artists work on absolutely banal and everyday life issues.
Happenings, Performances, and Body Art – Consist of improvised performances from a small script and by one or more characters. The artist creates theatrical situations in which various objects blend with the expression of his own body. The artist’s body is used as the main medium, presented painted or in bizarre situations. Some artists have experimented with their own pain to reflect on human suffering.