Research Art paper essay
The 19th and the 20th century were really bright and versatile in relation to various artistic movements. The abstract arts, which were so developed in the 19th century, were actually based upon three major movements – Romanticism, Impressionism and Expressionism. Actually this was the period, when most artists received much more possibilities to realize their inside world, because the strong impact of the church, which was integral part of the artistic movements before, started to fade. Expressionist painters used this chance to develop drawing distortions and exaggerations along with rather intense colors (Gayford 15). The main driving force of their paintings was related to emotions, reactions to the actual experiences. Matisse with his work The Yellow Curtain was getting maximum close to pure abstraction, using a deep yellow color as the key element of his painting. Some artists of this time were under strong influence of new mysticism religions and philosophies, the result of which were the first examples of geometric abstract styles, which continued their development and transformation in the 20th century. Post Impressionism, appearing in the 20th century was associated with the names of Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh. These talented artists are till the moment said to be the ones, contributed to the development of modern art. Henri Matisse as well as some other pre-cubist artists introduced revolutionary ideas into artistic works of France, bringing wild and multi- colored images, making their landscapes and portraits extremely expressive and free. The works by Matisse, van Gough, Gauguin are the brightest examples of how the artists of the 19th and the 20th centuries applied the non-naturalistic colors as the major means for revealing their artistic ideas and expressions.
The name of Vincent Willem van Gogh is associated with Post- Impressionist movement, his works are said to be “notable for its rough beauty, emotional honesty, and bold color” (Gayford 16). His personality was outstanding throughout his short lifetime, and his death remained a mystery, because he was said to be self-shot, however no gun was ever found. He produced a lot of landscapes, portraits, self portraits, most of the well-known ones, belonging to his final years of life. His art works are versatile enough due to the fact, that he has the chance to travel to London, Paris, where he discovered the movement of the French Impressionists. The southern part of the country had a deep impact upon him, because he could not imagine seeing so much sunlight in reality. This immediately found the reflection in the colors, he used in his paintings. This also helped him to develop his own unique style, which soon became recognizable. The Starry Night is considered to be one of the most mature of his works. Researchers state that thus picture he painted not from his memory, but from the view from one of his bedroom windows. This view was depicted by the artist during different times of the day and under different weather conditions. “The Starry Night is the only nocturne painting in the series of views from his bedroom window. In early June Vincent wrote to Theo, “This morning I saw the countryside from my window a long time before sunrise with nothing but the morning star, which looked very big” (Gayford 72). The play of blue and yellow colors, their contrast and at the same time their combination do have a strong impact upon the audience. It seems impossible to reflect the brightness of a star, but looking at this picture, the warm light of the faraway star is making your feelings sharper and more intense. Only decade after the death of the artist, his Neo-Impressionist paintings were presented in Paris and then in Berlin. As a result artists of both countries started to pay attention to his way of using brushstrokes and color. Some of the critics of that time compared the introduction of Van Gogh’s works with a stroke of lightning (Wattenmaker 13). His non-naturalistic representation of colors and wild use of color evoke a real wave of emotions among other artists. In the year 1905 there appeared already two Expressionist groups – the Fauves, a group of French artists, one of them being Matisse and another one in Germany, under the name Die Bruecke, one of representatives being Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Both groups started to create bright and full of color and expression pieces of art.
Henri- Emile-Benoit Matisse was one of these artists, who was highly appreciated for his use of color and his originality in painting. He was a printmaker and a sculptor as well, however most of his time he devoted to painting. “Matisse is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso and Marcel Duchamp, as one of the three artists who helped to define the revolutionary developments in the plastic arts in the opening decades of the twentieth century, responsible for significant developments in painting and sculpture” (Cowart and Fourcade, 7) . His famous work – Le bonheur de vivre (The Joy of Life) is considered to be a serious step towards modernism. The distortions Matisse used in space presentation along with warm colors, able to hypnotize and penetrate into the atmosphere of real life joys, into another world of fantasies and sexual desires, evoke a lot of protests as soon as the painting was exhibited for the first time in 1906. “Yet this painting was Matisse’s own response to the hostility his work had met with in the Salon d’Automne of 1905, a response that entrenched his art even more deeply in the esthetic principles that had governed his Fauvist paintings which had caused a furor and which did so on a far grander scale, too” (Wattenmaker 20). The same like in the picture of Van Gough – the leading color is yellow, but it covers only the central part. The play of colors is continued on the background, however mostly warm colors are used, which contributes to creating a peaceful atmosphere of love, of the deepest emotions, which are actual at this very moment and might have no further meaning some time later. The change of the colors was so unique in this painting, that the scientists studied the formation of them with the help of special chemical reactions of cadmium sulfide and the presence of chloride as catalyst.
Eugene Henri Paul Gauguin also belonged to the movement of Post-Impressionist artist, but was highly appreciated only after his death, only then his experimental approach to color use and unique style of synthetics and combinations, which went far away from generally accepted norms of Impressionism, gained popularity. The works of Henri Matisse were considered to be under his strong impact. His style formed the basis for the Synthetist style, “while his expression of the inherent meaning of the subjects in his paintings, under the influence of the cloisonnist style, paved the way to Primitivism and the return to the pastoral” (Wattenmaker 25). Gauguin was seeking for his unique style, he studied the artworks of other countries and cultures, like for example Africa or Egypt, trying to find his own niche, but constantly felt no satisfaction. Only at the moment of absolute disillusionment, travelling as a sailor to Tahiti and the Marquesas Island, staying to live there, brought a period of enlightenment to his artistic work. It is difficult to imagine, but exactly the primitive cultures on those islands revealed the different world and reality to the painter, which he tried to pass to his audience via non-naturalistic colors and a kind of primitive ways of depicting the objects. This probably was the moment, when he found the answers to the three questions from one of his most famous works – Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? This painting should be read from right side to the left. The women with the child seem to symbolize the beginning of human life, the middle group stands for usual everyday life of most people, and finally the left part is the reflection of death. There is again the central yellow color, which seems to be standing for life “processes”, however on the contrary to the previous artists discussed, there is a lot of cold colors in use, probably in order to show the contrast between life an death, between existence and non-existence.
Overall, the works by Matisse, van Gough, and Gauguin are different and exploring various themes; the real feature, which does unite these artists – is their fresh and unique styles, absolutely unusual use of colors and manner of transmitting of their key messages with the help of non-naturalistic color use.
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