Cubist Movement
Cubist movement in art originated from Paris early in the 20th century. Pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, the cubist movement was the dominant and most influential art movement beginning in 1907 in Europe (Sayre, 2016). The invention brought destruction to the established beliefs on painting, transformed our view of the world and made way for its dominance that conquered the western art for the following fifty years.
Cubist changed the perception of the art when its college put forward pieces of mass-produced famous cultural designs into pictures. The major cubist artworks were Les Demoiselles d'Avignon by Pablo Picasso in 1907 and Houses at L'Estaque by Georges Braque in 1908. Other artists and arts included Tea Time by Jean Metzinger in 1911. Other artworks by Pablo Picasso is Guitar and Still Life with Chair Caning and many others.
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Perceptions
Andre Breton defined Surrealism as art that focused on exploring the hidden insights of the unconscious mind. The movement was based on a new type of reality, a better one, called 'surreality' found in the world of pictures exhibited in their dreams and imagining. It opposed the usual world belief and considered what was only relevant to our experiences. The art developed techniques that useful in the study of the human mind through art. Thus, Surrealism can be presenting a more real perception through the images. The use of dream-based imagery portrays a picture similar and more rational to what we drive through our senses.
The artists used creativity like delusional aspects of paranoia to draw their pictures that communicated how one finds evidence of an item and interprets it irrationally as something else. For example, Dali, one of the surrealism artists, uses mental disorder to mine the unconscious mind. He uses this paranoiac technique in most of his drawing artworks that have a convincing lifelike description to us that his unconscious world of dreams is a reality. Such paintings included ‘Metamorphosis of Narcissus which was based on a story of a young man known for his handsomeness by the name Narcissus (Sayre, 2016). Narcissus passed away before he married due to his act of rejecting girls and was punished for it. Dali uses images of when the young man, killed by the goddess of vengeance, was dying in the pool, and image a reflection of the first. The first instance was when Narcissus was bending to the pool after falling in love with his image in water due to the cast spell. The other one is when he had died, and his body had changed to an arm with an egg. The egg forms a crack where a narcissus develops and completes a metamorphosis.
Diego Rivera's cubist-influenced murals
Diego Rivera’s Man Controller of the Universe communicates on how the capitalist countries are using technologies like poison gases and machine guns to destroy their enemies in World War 1. Rivera also displays how the communist country's Russian Revolution has prospered during the same period. The portrait also shows how the workers are seating around the beheaded man's image. The image also includes a man who is handless, wearing a Christian cross. The man is the powerful Greek god Zeus (Sayre, 2016). All these are among the sufferings caused by the world war. Similar to Rivera’s, Picasso’s Guernica portrays how Spaniards suffered a bomb attack in Guernica, a city in Spain by the Germans. The only difference between the two was that Rivera was addressing a worldwide war while Picasso was bringing attention to the world of the Spain civil war.
The portraits were effective in addressing the importance of living in harmony and embracing one another. They were useful communications on the damages caused by wars in any part of the world and thus emphasizing on peaceful coexistence. The use of mural formats was to show why people should be united. For instance, when Rivera depicts people of different races working together in his art, his message is on the importance of oneness and to show the world that they are all equal despite their races.
Contemporary Arts
The principles and trends of modern art are artistic styles and expressions. The art is affected by changes in technology that have led to the development of sculptures and contemporary arts in photography, videos, and adverts. The art today has taken a shift of direction. Today, art has grown and become more diversified; thus cannot be easily described through artistic themes or cultural dynamics (Sayre, 2016). The two art movements of 1960s Pop Art and Minimalism explains the different paths art has taken. Pop Art concentrated on comic books and advertising, while Minimalism is about spare geometric forms that do not seem to have any meaning. In the 1970s and 1980s, new formats were innovated like photography and earthworks. In the 1980s, artists used arts in mass media adverts to look into matters of politics and the creation of artistic works that embraced interactions among the actors like in music.
Conclusion
The world is made up of all types of art. From the modern forms like in entertainment industry comprised of music, movies, and photography to the ancient inventions of painting art. Art is in architectural designs, weapons, and almost everything a human being uses in their daily lives. It has contributed to positive impacts as well as negative types; for example, music can be a source of entertainment while weapons can be used in the attack of one country by another.
Reference
Sayre, H. M. (2016). A World of Art: Eighth Edition. Pearson Education.
