Observational Art - Social
Relations in Everyday Activities/ Depiction of Emotion in
Art
2D Art that
reflects social situations and causes/expresses/creates emotions, feelings,
atmosphere, mood
Influential Factors: Topic/ Subject Matter, Personality,
Gender, Age, Time, Social Background, History/Background (Story)
Triangle between: Artist – Medium – Viewers/Audience
Empathy, Believability,
Credibility, Exaggeration, Association (Audience capable to draw connections/relations),
Art piece tells a story
Technical Aspects:
·
Art style, scale, colour (themes/temperature), tone,
value, composition, lighting,
staging, distribution of shapes, form and function, work process, mood boards, floor plans
2D Artefacts as:
·
Portrait,
character interaction with -> Other
character(s)
-> Environment
·
Environment
(creates social space/connection/association through environment design)
2. Art History
Traditional Art & Digital Art
Impressionism -> Expressionism
-> New Objectivity/Americanism
In
reaction and opposition to French Impressionism, which emphasized the rendering
of the visual appearance of objects, Expressionist artists sought to portray
emotions and subjective interpretations. It was not important to reproduce an
aesthetically pleasing impression of the artistic subject matter, they felt,
but rather to represent vivid emotional reactions by powerful colours and
dynamic compositions. Kandinsky, the main artist
of Der Blaue Reiter group, believed that with simple
colours and shapes the spectator could perceive the moods and feelings in the
paintings, a theory that encouraged him towards increased abstraction.
New
objectivity then evolved from expressionism and opposed its introverted
emotionalism.
Old Masters:
·
Rembrandt
(Dutch Golden Age) -> first portraits to represent character
Impressionism:
Impressionist painting characteristics
include relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes,open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing
qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage of time), common,
ordinary subject matter, inclusion of movementas
a crucial element of human perception and experience, and unusual visual
angles. (Wikipedia)
·
Monet,
Claude
·
Pino,
Daeni (Romantic illustrations with loose, but defined, brushwork)
Expressionism:Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in
poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th
century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective
perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke
moods or ideas.[1][2 Expressionist
artists sought to express meaning[3] or emotional
experience rather than physical reality. (Wikipedia)
Wenn ich nun als gesunder Mensch so unbescheiden bin, die Dinge so zu sehen,
wie sie sind, und nicht, wie sie sein sollen oder können, so möge man mir dies
verzeihen, aber ich kann nicht anders."
New Objectivity:
·
Otto
Dix (New Objectivity (in German: Neue Sachlichkeit))
In one of his few
statements, published in 1927, Dix declared, "The object is primary and
the form is shaped by the object."[4]
·
Jackson
Pollock
New
objectivism – subdivided into 3 parts: verists (political), classicists (idyll)
and magic realism (surrealistic)
Digital Art
·
Campion,
Pascal. (Paintings represent/express strong emotions in everyday activities)
(Loish)
Photography
New Objectivity:
·
August
Sander
(New Objectivity (in German: Neue Sachlichkeit)) -> rejection of romantic idealism of the expressionists
(impressionists?!)
"...die Photographie hat
uns neue Möglichkeiten und andere Aufgaben als die Malerei gegeben. Sie kann
die Dinge in grandioser Schönheit, aber auch in grauenhafter Wahrheit
wiedergeben, kann aber auch unerhört betrügen.....
Diese Worte stellte August
Sander 1927 in einem Bekenntnis zur Fotografie seinem großen Vorhaben
"Menschen des 20. Jahrhunderts" voran.
Man fragt mich oft, wie ich auf den Gedanken gekommen sei,
dieses Werk zu schaffen:
Sehen, Beobachten
und Denken
und die Frage ist
beantwortet.
Nichts schien mir
geeigneter zu sein, als durch die Photographie in absoluter Naturtreue ein
Zeitbild unserer Zeit zu geben.
Praising Sander's "vision...his knowledge, and his
immense photographic talent, " the writer Alfred Doblin said: "Those
who know how to look will learn from his clear and powerful photographs, and
will discover more about themselves and more about others."
documenting his
contemporary society
He gives people props and
photographs them in their own environment. With set up/extra lighting etc. but
don’t want to focus on the technical procedure of photography.
Social documentary photography is the recording of humans in their natural condition with a
camera. Often it also refers to a socially critical genre of photography
dedicated to showing the life of underprivileged or disadvantaged people.
-> created a new style with
photographic documentation of social problems
Photojournalism:
o Timeliness — the images have meaning
in the context of a recently published record of events.
o Objectivity — the situation implied
by the images is a fair and accurate representation of the events they depict
in both content and tone.
o Narrative — the images combine with
other news elements to make facts relatable to the viewer or reader on a
cultural level.
·
Time
(Magazine) and Life (Magazine/now Photo Channel)
Animation & Cinematography
·
2D
animation (Disney)
·
3D
animation (Pixar)
·
Silent
Film (Chaplin, Charlie. Murnau, F W (Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans)...)
Black and White films (study value, tone,
composition, lighting... ) -> portray
emotions without speech
Contrast
between impressionism (common subjects -> snapshot, momentary action, capturing
movement), expressionism (the subjective perspective -> distorting, express
meaning or emotional experience) and new objectivity (=Americanism. plain truth,
hard facts, complete objectivity -> no idealism)
Expressionism, to Dadaists, expressed all
of the angst and anxieties of society, but was helpless to do anything about
it.
Counter
pieces
Physical
reality – emotional experience
Impressionism,
Expressionism,
New
Objectivity (Painting and Photography)
Social
documentary Photography, Photojournalism
With the
invention of photography the art world changed forever. The depiction of
realism was in the centre of interest up until this point and now it became
completely irrelevant due to photography. So artists had to search for what
makes their art different and many art movements originated. Does history
repeat itself with the transition of traditional to digital art?
Questions:
Is the topic too old? -> 1870-1933 plenty of methods evolved from these early stages ->
So how do I justify this time period
as a relevant subject matter?
The
objectivity of the art is in a way counterproductive to the proposed research
topic. New objectivity can be considered as a very cold and observational art movement.
It is a form of art returning to realism without the idealistic touch, yet
still quite intertwined and influenced by expressionism, a very emotional
expressive art movement. In summary “new objectivity” wants to show emotions
through the plain truth.
This German
art movement attempts to display real people of the time without deception. The
integration of truthful depiction could be a valuable aspect of the honours
project. The artwork is not uninfluenced by the artist though, as it is far
more like an illusion of reality being captured in its hard truth. The staging
and subject matter plays an important role of the artwork. August Sander e.g.
equips each subject with props and specific poses displaying their personality
and social background.
Therefore
new objectivity can be implemented to train observational skills, as well as to
learn from current society. The combination of detailed character observation,
veritable depiction and further enhancement of emotions through other art
theory could be a way to create powerful and meaningful imagery. Key will be
finding a good balance between truth and exaggeration.
The power of
capturing the moment -> Impressionism and photography
Expressing
emotion (not the self introverted type as in expressionism, but telling a
message to others) -> new objectivity, social documentary photography
Digital age
examples are e.g. Pascal Campion, Time Life.
A blog-post I found on photography and capturing the moment:
What separates a simple
snapshot from a masterpiece is the story the image portrays. The more emotional
the shot is, the more it appeals to our senses. But how does one go about
capturing emotions?
The same scene can evoke
different emotions in different people, hence emotions are subject to personal
bias. From my experience, my best pictures depicting emotion have ‘just
happened’. I don’t remember meticulously planning for them. Does that mean the
photographer has no role to play in this? Far from true. As far as I'm
concerned, the one most important rule of capturing emotion is to first feel
the emotion yourself. Then, you have to click at just the right moment.
1. Feel the emotion you’re trying to capture.
2. Be at the right place at the right time.
3. Don’t draw the attention of your subject.
Be as unobtrusive as possible.
And finally, some last questions that arose:
Is it too much art history and too broad? -> Must I explain terms such as impressionism/expressionism in the proposal in full detail, or is a broad overview enough (one sentence describing the key factors)?
Progress into technical aspects such as lighting, composition and colour theory or focus on the formation/development/evolution of the Weimar republic (socially, politically) and its art movements?
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