Idea Behind The Art Work example essay topic

A Comparison of Formal and Avant-Garde Artwork Modern art is a unique creation all its own, and since its beginnings there have been two very distinct groups present. They are the Formalists and the Avant-Garde. The Formalist group believes in the literal representation of the art work. They value the form used, whether it be how the colors are stressed or the techniques used, over the idea behind the art work.

The Avant-Garde artists on the other hand are more interested in the creation of art in order to challenge what exactly art is and can be. They have tried to break down the boundaries of what art is. I selected Piet Mondrian for as the artist I looked at regarding Formalism. His work seemed to change over a period of time. His Woods done in 1910 showed a typical painting of the forest. By typical I mean that the depiction of the forest was done to look like a forest on the canvas.

The next piece of Tree done in 1911 showed a more abstract form of trees while you could still detect on a lot of movement within the painting. The shapes and negative space between the lines is what became more important in his work. He then created Composition with Trees in 1914. This piece as his previous ones was even more abstract and was honing in on the form of the painting.

Later he created a piece known only as Composition, removing the trees and woods all together from the title. He was trying to create the essence of nature using rectangles and simplifying lines to their primary essence. He also used more primary colors versus his previous works done in black and white. This idea that Mondrian was using while creating his works of art was one of the ideas that Clement Greenberg was dealing with in his works. Greenberg said that the actual painting ove the form is what makes the art work abstract. 1 Greenberg believed that one could reduce art to its pure essence and form.

Greenberg also believed in the idea that the flatness of the work is what comes first and that what is inside that flatness comes second, telling of the importance of the intersections of lines and negative space. Through radical simplification of composition and color, Mondrian tried to expose the basic principles that underlie all artwork. 2 He said that art should not concern itself with reproducing images of real objects, but should express only the universal absolutes that underlie them. Mondrian then rejects all qualities of texture, surface, and color, thereby reducing his palate to primary colors. Greenberg idea of the flatness of the work is what comes first 3 comes through when Mondrians belief that a canvas should contain only planar elements and led to his abolition of all curved lines in favor of straight lines. The piece that I selected to discuss for the Avant-Garde is Marcel Duchamps Fountain.

The very way in which Duchamp entered this piece into the exhibit shows that he was trying to test the boundaries of art. He and American artist Joseph Stella submitted this urinal to a 1917 New York City exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists. Entitled Fountain the urinal was submitted and signed under a pseudonym R. Mutt. By presenting unaltered, everyday objects as sculpture, Duchamp radically changed the course of modern art. He wrote of it soon after and said, Whether Mr. Mutt with his own hands made the fountain or not has no importance. He CHOSE it", and thereby "created a new thought for that object".

4 Duchamps style of Avant-Garde was derived from Dada. He was trying to create a tension between reality and artwork. He was also trying to enact social change by getting people to look at things from a different perspective. Burger describe this process in several ways. First he used the word new to describe the change in the creation of art. He also says that it negates the tradition of what art is held to be.

Next Burger says that Avant-Garde uses chance, in that meaning the arbitrary way in which two unrelated events are somehow connected. Burger also says that the use of allegory, taking fragments of reality and putting them together to mean something, is important and is done by the use of montage. Montage is the technical device by which the artist puts these fragments together. It is a detailed account of allegory. 5 The reason I chose these two pieces of art is simple. They both go the extreme end of their own respected movements.

Mondrian changed his style from trees on a hillside to nothing more than the straight lines that represent the actual form of nature while Duchamp on the other hand selected an everyday item and decided to call it art. Of course it was not just an everyday item, it was something that no one who saw it would really consider it art. The thought process of these two authors was quite different in their workings of art. Mondrian worked so hard on ridding his paintings from any meanings within the artwork. He was trying to stress the importance of each line painted, and the aesthetic appeal of the bright primary colors next to the black intersecting lines.

Mondrian also focused heavily on his use of negative space within his artwork. He saw the importance of the negative space between his lines and as time progressed he used more and more space between his lines. 6 Duchamp on the other hand was trying to get the viewer to interpret his ready-made artwork. He did not want the viewer to just observe the piece of art and note that there was great use of form.

That the lines were painted evenly and the primary colors worked well next to each other. He wanted the viewer to ask themselves the question of, Is this art and, Why is this art 7 Duchamp was trying to change the viewers gaze. That being the, the object a in the field of the visible is the gaze, according to Jacques Lacan. 8 The idea of what influenced each persons own viewpoints was made accountable. As Duchamp was trying to create art in a new way, a way in which no one had ever thought of or even dreamed of, he ran into a couple of problems. By taking the urinal out of its original context and placing it into a museum the object had become, more real than the real.

9 Duchamp had almost undone what he wanted to do by putting the urinal in an art museum on display. He had placed this everyday item on to stage in an art gallery and made the ordinary urinal more than just a urinal. It was now a urinal portraying a urinal at an art gallery. His ready-made object had taken on a, hyper realistic role on the screen of the museum. 10 Although this was not Duchamps intentions he had asked viewers to look at his ready-made in a different context than he originally expected. Mondrian faced similar problems with his work.

As a formalist he was trying to get to the pure essence of the artwork. While he was trying to get down to this essence I feel that he opened up many interpretations to his work. He just trying to use the most simple lines and colors and created great formalist work, but I believe that when he did this he let people interpret for themselves what they were really looking at. At the beginning his work resembled real life objects but by the end of his Composition one could interpret the art in a number of ways. The simplicity of the artwork had created a complexity to it just because people could view his work either in the formalist approach or they might try to derive meaning from it and overlook the great form of his work. Both of these artists were similar in the fact that while they were trying to attain some idea from the viewer they left another view open.

Duchamps idea of placing the urinal on display brought about many thoughts that were not intended. He was trying to push the boundaries of what art is, but by doing this he created a stir of creating real objects that seemed more real than real to the viewers because of its public display. Mondrian had a similar problem in that by trying to create the most simple and formalist work he opened up his work for more abstract interpretation. Mondrian and Duchamp were two of the most influential artists of their times.

Mondrians theories of abstraction and simplification not only altered the course of painting but also exerted a profound influence on architecture, industrial design, and formalism itself. Duchamps insistence of pushing the boundaries of art changed the future of What is art and modern art forever. They shared many differences in how they created their artwork but they shared many of the same dilemmas when having their art interpreted by people.