Symbolism

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Symbolism
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Symbolism GUSTAVE MOREAU
Jupiter and Semele ca. 1875 Oil on
canvas
approx. 7' x 3' 4"
The Death-Inducing Vision of Splendor Gustave
Moreau's Jupiter and Semele is sumptuously
painted in rich, exotic colors. The royal hall of
Olympus is shown as shimmering in iridescent
color.
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Symbolism HENRI ROUSSEA
U The Sleeping Gypsy 1897 Oil on canvas 4' 3"
x 6' 7"
A Powerful World of Personal Fantasy In The
Sleeping Gypsy, Henri Rousseau produced an image
of dream and fantasy in a naive style.
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Symbolism EDVARD MUNCH T
he Cry 1893 Oil, pastel, and casein on cardboard

2' 11 3/4" x 2' 5"
Describing the "Modern Psychic Life" Edvard
Munch believed that humans were powerless before
the natural forces of death and love and the
emotions of jealousy, loneliness, fear, desire,
and despair. His goal was to describe the
conditions of "modern psychic life," for which he
developed a style that distorted color, line, and
figural forms for expressive ends.
Anguish and Despair Edvard Munch's The Cry depa
rts significantly from visual reality and evokes
instead a visceral, emotional response from
viewers through his dramatic presentation of the
scene.
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Sculpture in the Late 19th Century
JEAN-BAPTISTE CARPEAUX Ugolino and His Chil
dren
18651867 Marble 6' 5" high
A Sculptural Vision of Hell The powerful,
twisted, intertwined, and densely concentrated
forms of Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux's sculpture
Ugolino and His Children conveys the
self-devouring torment, frustration, and despair
of Count Ugolino, who has been shut up in a tower
with his four sons to starve to death.
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Sculpture in the Late 19th Century
AUGUSTE RODIN Walking Man 1905 Bronze
6' 11 3/4" high
Of Surface and Substance In his cast bronze
Walking Man, Auguste Rodin captured the sense of
a body in motion.
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Sculpture in the Late 19th Century
AUGUSTE RODIN Burghers of Calais 1886 Bro
nze
6' 10 1/2" high 7' 11" long 6' 6" deep
A Study of Despair and Defiance In the life-size
group Burghers of Calais, commissioned to
commemorate a heroic episode in the Hundred
Years' War, Rodin shows each of the figures in a
state of despair, resignation, or quiet defiance.
He achieved these psychic effects through the
placement of the figures, the roughly textured
surfaces, and the eye-level view.
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Art Nouveau AUBREY BEAR
DSLEY The Peacock Skirt 1894 Pen-and-ink illust
ration for Oscar Wilde's Salomé
The Peacock's Sweeping Curves For Salomé, an
illustration for a book by Oscar Wilde, Aubrey
Beardsley drew The Peacock Skirt. The decorative
composition uses lines and patterns of black and
white to create sweeping curvilinear shapes that
lie flat on the surface.
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Art Nouveau AUBREY BEAR
DSLEY The Peacock Skirt 1894 Pen-and-ink illust
ration for Oscar Wilde's Salomé
The Peacock's Sweeping Curves For Salomé, an
illustration for a book by Oscar Wilde, Aubrey
Beardsley drew The Peacock Skirt. The decorative
composition uses lines and patterns of black and
white to create sweeping curvilinear shapes that
lie flat on the surface.
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Fauvism
Fauvism The Fauves movement, which appeared in
1905, pursued an art that was direct and
anti-theoretical and also used intense,
emotionally charged color juxtapositions. The
Fauves wished to liberate color from its
descriptive function and to use it for both
expressive and structural ends.
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Fauvism HENRI MATISSE Woman with the
Hat 19071908 Oil on canvas
7 3/4" x 1' 11 1/2
The Primacy of Color In his Woman With the Hat,
Henri Matisse uses seemingly arbitrary colors
juxtaposed in ways that sometimes produce jarring
contrasts.
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Fauvism HENRI MATISSE Harmony in Red
19081909 Oil on canvas
5' 11" x 8' 1"
From Green, to Blue, to Harmony in Red The
simplified and schematized objects and flattened
out forms in Matisse's Red Room (Harmony in Red)
are painted with rich and intense colors that are
selected and juxtaposed to generate a feeling of
warmth and comfort.
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Fauvism ANDRÉ DERAIN Londo
n Bridge 1906 Oil on canvas approx. 2' 2" x 3'
3"

Expressing Content with Color In André Derain's
London Bridge, light and shadow are indicated by
contrasts of hue. Color both delineates space and
expresses the picture's content.
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Fauvism GEORGES ROUAULT
The Old King 19161936 Oil on canvas 2' 61/4"
x 1' 91/4"

Fauve Color to Reveal Social Truths Georges
Rouault's expressive The Old King is painted in
rich tones with the colors divided into areas and
outlined in black lines.
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German Expressionism
The German Expressionists sought expressiveness
through distortions of form, ragged outline, and
agitated brushstrokes. Under the leadership of
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, the German Expressionists
thought of themselves as paving the way for a
more perfect age by bridging the old age to the
new. From this concept, they derived their name
Die Brücke (The Bridge).
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German Expressionism ERNST
LUDWIG KIRCHNER Street, Dresden 1908 (dated 1907
)
Oil on canvas 4'111/4" x 6' 6 7/8"
Urban Life in Prewar Dresden Kirchner's
expressive Street, Dresden shows the frenzied
urban activity of a bustling German city before
the First World War. The scene is jarring and
dissonant and the harshly rendered figures,
painted in garish, clashing colors, appear
somewhat menacing and confrontational.
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German Expressionism EMIL NOL
DE Saint Mary of Egypt among Sinners 1912 Left
panel of a triptych oil on canvas approx. 2'10"
x 3'3"
Biblical Lust and Lechery Emil Nolde's visceral
and forceful interpretation of Saint Mary of
Egypt among Sinners uses distortions of form,
jarringly juxtaposed color, and raw brushstrokes
to amplify the harshness and brutal ugliness of
the leering faces.
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German Expressionism WASSILY KANDI
NSKY Improvisation 28 (second version) 1912 Oil
on canvas
approx. 3' 8" x 5' 3 3/4"
Blueprints for Enlightened Society Kandinsky was
one of the first artists to explore complete
abstraction. In Improvisation 28 he eliminated
representational elements. Guided by his interest
in theosophy and the spiritual, Kandinsky
believed that artists can use color, form, line,
and space to express the spirit and their
innermost feelings.
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German Expressionism FRANZ
MARC Animals' Fate 1913 Oil on canvas 6' 4 3/
4" x 8' 9 1/2"

Expressing an "Inner Truth" Franz Marc painted
animals using a system of colors expressing
specific feelings or ideas. Animals' Fate is
painted with severe and brutal colors.
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Cubism (Analytical) PABLO PICASSO
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon 1907 Oil on canvas 8'
x 7' 8 Museum of Modern Art, New York (acquired
through the Lillie P. Bliss Bequest)
"I Paint Forms as I Think Them" Picasso's Les
Demoiselles d'Avignon shows the influence of
African, Iberian, and European art. The painting
points the way to a radically new method of
representing form in space. Shapes are fractured
and interwoven with the equally jagged planes
that represent drapery and empty space. The heads
of three of the figures were derived from ancient
Iberian sculptures, while the two other heads
were derived from African sculpture. The
painting's revolutionary ideas provided the point
of departure for the formulation of Cubism by
Braque and Picasso around 1908.
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Cubism (Analytical) GEORGES B
RAQUE The Portuguese 1911 Oil on canvas 3'101/
8" x 2' 8
Kunstmuseum, Basel
A Shifting Portrait of a Musician
In The Portuguese, an example of Analytic Cubism,
Georges Braque dissected the form of the image
and placed it in dynamic interaction with the
space around it.
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Cubism (Synthetic) PABLO PICASS
O Still Life with Chair-Caning 19111912 Oil
and oilcloth on canvas 105/8" x 1' 13/4". Musée P
icasso, Paris.
Illusion or Reality? The second phase of Cubism
is called Synthetic Cubism, in which artists
constructed paintings and drawings from objects
and shapes cut from paper or other materials to
represent parts of a subject. Picasso's Still
Life with Chair-Caning includes a piece of
oilcloth pasted on the canvas after it was
imprinted with the photolithographed pattern of a
cane chair seat. The picture is framed with a
piece of rope.
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Cubism (Synthetic) GEORGES BRAQUE,
Fruit Dish and Cards 1913 Oil, pencil, paper col
lage, and charcoal on canvas 2' 7 7/8" x 1' 11 5/
8". Musée Nationale d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges
Pompidou, Paris
Paper Glued on Canvas Georges Braque's Fruit
Dish and Cards is a variant of collage called
papier collé (stuck paper) that involved gluing
assorted paper shapes to a drawing or painting.
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Cubism (Synthetic) PABLO PICASSO
Three Musicians 1921 Oil on canvas 6' 7" x 7'
3 3/4 Museum of Modern Art, New York (gift of
Mrs. Simon Guggenheim)
A Whimsical Musical Trio Picasso's Three
Musicians is a colorful variant of Synthetic
Cubism with figures constructed from simple flat
shapes that interlock and interpenetrate.
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Dissolving Three-Dimensional Form
In Jacques Lipchitz's Cubist sculpture Bather,
form is broken into cubic volumes and planes and
made to interlock and intersect to produce
irregular and spatially ambiguous facets and
curves.
Cubism (Sculpture) JACQUES LIPCHI
TZ Bather 1917 Bronze 2' 10 3/4" x 1'1 1/4"
x 1'1
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City
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The Interplay of Mass and Space In his
quasi-representational statuette Woman Combing
Her Hair, Aleksandr Archipenko shows a complex
interpenetration of space and mass.
Cubism (Sculpture) ALEKSANDR ARCH
IPENKO Woman Combing Her Hair 1915 Bronze appr
ox. 1'13/4" high
Museum of Modern Art, New York