Module #11 Video Review

#1.  I chose the videos Dada and Surrealism, and The Impact of Cubism because it is interesting to see the difference between art movements, how they started, what they focus on, and the leaders of these movements.

#2.  Key Concepts:

Dada and Surrealism

-The Dada movement was a reaction to World War l.

-Surrealism opened a new avenue for artistic creation by ignoring the reasoning process and tap directly into the unconscious mind.

- German artist Kurt Schwitters

- Realized the unlimited possibilities of collage, used rural objects in his art, and light dances off of his objects

-Hannah Hoch, Dadaist

- Used art to attack the society she detested

-“Cut With the Kitchen Knife”(1919) contained chaotic figures to make a monumental political statement

-George Grosz, “the saddest man in Europe”

-The Nazis burned his art

-“Pillars of Society”, a bitter attack on his enemies

-He despairs that WWI did not end the wicked ways of government

-Joan Miro, Spanish Surrealist

-“Dutch Interior II”, in his paintings one experiences two different ways of looking at the world

- Salvador Dali, surrealist painter, probes the darkest regions of the human subconscious, paints a world in which nothing makes sense

-Man Ray, “La Fortune”

The Impact of Cubism

-Unfamiliar, nonclassical ways to represent form and space

- Juan Gris, “The Breakfast Table”, used spiritual elements, imagination, abstraction and real objects.

- “The Violin”, used musical composition to layer elements of sound

-Duchamp’s, “Nude on a Staircase”, controlled motion is balanced in a fixed setting

- Spiral forms establish direction, focus attention and symbolize Electric lights

- Kazimir Malevich, Mysticism

-Mystical experiences represented in religious icons

-Umberto Boccioni, “Farewells”

#3. Both the readings and the text talk about how Dada, Surrealism, and Cubism effected how the viewer feels when looking at paintings from the movement, the elements the artists used during the movement, and the main artists and their works that best represented the movement.  

#4. I really liked The Impact of Cubism video and the artist Sonia Delaunay. She used the basic concepts of Cubism in her work as a fashion designer and interior decorator, and was a contributor to the Avant Garde trend in fashion which is still seen today. She encouraged the people she was designing for to follow their fantasy.