Major Art Movements: Dadaism to Surrealism
Dadaism
Dadaism was an anti-art movement, anti-literary and unpoetic, questioning the very existence of art, literature, and poetry. It presented itself as a way of life and as an absolute rejection of any tradition or previous scheme. It was against eternal beauty, against the eternity of principles, against the laws of logic, against the immobility of thought, and against the universal. The Dadaists promoted change, individual freedom, spontaneity, immediacy, and contradiction. They defended chaos against order and imperfection versus perfection.
Dadaists proclaimed the art of anti-protest, shock, scandal, and provocation, with the help of ironic satire as a means of expression. They based their work on the absurd and worthless, introducing chaos into their scenes and breaking traditional art forms.
Cubism
Cubism is a mental art form, detached completely from interpretation or likeness to nature. The work of art has value in itself, as a means of expressing ideas. The disconnection with nature is achieved through the decomposition of the figure into its minimal parts, into planes which are studied in themselves, not the overview of volume. Objects can be seen from different points of view. Cubism breaks with some perspectives, and geometric figures abound. Pablo Picasso is a prominent figure in Cubism.
Expressionism
Expressionism is an artistic movement that seeks the expression of feelings and emotions of the author over the representation of objective reality. The aim is to enhance the viewer’s emotional impact by distorting and exaggerating the themes. Expressionists represent emotions without worrying about external reality, focusing instead on inner nature and the impressions aroused in the observer, with great psychological and expressive force. A famous example is the painting The Scream by Edvard Munch.
Bauhaus
Bauhaus can be understood as the direct result of the confluence of all the essential stylistic features of the early avant-garde, creating a style that, even within functional rationality, has its own record label. The primary goal was that the painter and architect worked, each on their own, but within a large artistic community that was formed by the school.
Op Art
Op Art is an art movement that creates works that seem to have movement. Kinetic art and optical art are artistic movements based on the aesthetics of movement. It is mainly represented in the field of sculpture, where one of the resources is the moving parts of the works. Pictorially, kinetic art can also be based on optical illusions, retinal vibration, and the impossibility of our eye to look simultaneously at two colored surfaces violently contrasted. Victor Vasarely is a key figure in Op Art.
Impressionism
Impressionism is a way to make a picture, for example, using a particular system. Since we do not have a complete picture of the painting nearby, if you move a little, homogenized colors and sharp shapes are revealed. A classic example is pointillism, although there are several more, and the limit is the imagination. In this case, dots of different colors and ranges are painted, sometimes one above the other, which gives the feeling of confusion at a short distance. Van Gogh was an artist who used impressionism in his paintings.
Muralism
Muralism is a painting technique that involves painting on walls. There are various techniques of mural painting, such as the fresco, in which pigments are applied on the cover of the wall while it is still fresh. The pigments of the fresco can be tuned or applied in other ways. The work is carried out in small spaces, called “tareas”. Another technique is encaustic, where pigments are mixed with wax, making them much more fragile.
At present, muralism works more with synthetic oils or paints that are applied directly to the wall, which is scratched, and that means more problems. In Mexico, muralism was the preeminent movement that served to heighten revolutionary values and gained importance worldwide. Artists like Rivera, Orozco, and Siqueiros painted inside and outside the country, with themes that recovered the national origin and revolutionary intervals.
Surrealism
Surrealism, as practiced by artists like Diego Rivera, tries to shape the world of dreams and subconscious phenomena. This sector of the recesses of the human being is considered suitable for the analysis of art. Surrealism not only affected the world of painting but also cinema, photography, theater, and poetry. The result is a world seemingly absurd and illogical, in which subconscious phenomena go beyond the realm of reason. It arises from Dadaism. Salvador Dali is a prominent figure in Surrealism.