CUBISM

• Began in Paris in 1907 by Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso
• A big influence on the two founders of Cubism was the Post-Impressionist artist, Paul Cezanne, who rejected traditional artists ideas on perspective
• The single viewpoint in nature was abandoned and scenes were depicted as geometric shapes
• Volume, space and time created multiple viewpoints
• African and Micronesian cultures were two of the most prominent influences on the development of cubism during 1907-1909
• Cubism can be divided into two different stages – Analytical and Synthetic
• Analytical Cubism –highly abstract, scenes, objects and figures. Broken down and reconstructed. The colour palette was often monochromatic.
• Synthetic Cubism – as the movement continued to develop, the artists started to incorporate real objects into their work. The subject in the images was starting to become more central rather than having other planes depicting its importance.
• Collages employing the subjects were constructed with addition of stronger colours
• It was a major influence on the Dada movement which in turn influenced Pop art

How to represent time in a photo

• Multiple exposures
• Long exposures
• Collages made of images taken at different times
• Images produced by cameras that expose over time with movement

 Merced River, Yosemite Valley, Sept. 1982, David Hockney

'Shrooms' by Marisa Schwartz

 Cate Laskovics









'Cubism' by Josh Naylor

SURREALISM ATTEMPT

My own interpretation of a Surrealist photograph.

Surrealist's like to use the subconscious mind as part of their works so I've incorporated the idea of split persona's and ghosts/spirits.

MODERNISM ATTEMPT

My own interpretation of a Modernist Photograph.

Inspired by Diane Arbus' photographs of people regarded as "freaks", I wanted to create my own scene with siblings acting almost incestuous and a little creepy.

PICTORIALISM ATTEMPT

My own interpretation of a Pictorialist photograph.

SURREALISM

•  During the Modernist period a number of important historical events occurred one being World War I that influenced a Modernist art movement called Dada.
• Based in Zurich, Switzerland (neutral country) it was a direct reaction against the war, bourgeois and art.
• Visual artists used everyday items and technology to convey their message
• Collages and photomontages were assembled with techniques similar to the cubist.
• This art movement ultimately led to the development of Surrealism.
• After the war ended, artists experimented with a process called ‘Automism’ which is a process of creating without thinking
• They liked to create from their dreams
• Andre Breton coined surrealism: “Pure psychic automatism, by which one proposes to express, either verbally, in writing, or by any other manner, the real functioning of thought. Dictation of thought in the absence of all control exercised by reason, outside of all aesthetic and moral preoccupation.”
• Photography later on came into Surrealism in the works of Man Ray, Maurice Tabard.
• The use of such procedures such as double exposure, combination printing, montage, and solarisation dramatically evoked the union of dream and reality
•  Other photographers used techniques such as distortion and rotation to get a surrealist effect
• Hans Bellmer obsessively photographed the mechanical dolls he fabricated himself, creating strangely sexualised images

Romain Laurent's works convey a surreal sense of humour. He had worked for some of the world's largest ad agencies and fashion magazines, and Laurent's work has been commissioned by companies such as Microsoft, Nissan and the Discovery Channel.

MODERNISM

Modernism

• Definition: Modern character, tendencies, or values; adherence to or sympathy with what is modern.
• Background: Modern Art refers to art created roughly between 1867 and 1975. Major movements included Impressionism, Cubism, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, and Pop Art. 

In 1907, Pictorialism was challenged by a new way of photography called ‘Straight Photography’ which is photography that is sharp and clear, based upon only what the camera could do, un-manipulated in the darkroom.

·      Paul Strand: –

o   ‘Wall Street (1915)’

o   ‘Blind Woman (1916)’

o   ‘Fifth Avenue (New York 1915)’

o   ‘Portrait (Washington Square Park 1916)’

o   ‘Lathe No. 3 (New York 1923)

Paul Strand (October 16, 1890 – March 31, 1976) was an American photographer and filmmaker who, along with fellow modernist photographers like Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Weston, helped establish photography as an art form in the 20th century. His diverse body of work, spanning six decades, covers numerous genres and subjects throughout the Americas, Europe and Africa.

Photo Realism – moving away from pictorialism

Modernist Painter: Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, Charles Scheeler, Charles Demuth, John Marin, Georgia O'Keeffe, Abraham Walkowitz, Gerald Murphy, Edward Hooper

Modernist Photographers: Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand

Charles Scheeler : 

• American painter who is best known for his precise renderings of industrial forms in which abstract, formal qualities were emphasized.
• Sheeler studied at the School of Industrial Art in Philadelphiaand then at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. He contributed six paintings, mainly still lifes, to the New York Armory Show of 1913.
• To make a living, Sheeler turned to photography about 1912. Initially he worked on assignments from Philadelphia architects. He moved to New York City in 1919 and the next year collaborated with the photographer Paul Strand on a film, Mannahatta, a study of the buildings of the city. During the early 1920s he received recognition for both his paintings and his photography. In 1927 he made an outstanding series of photographs of the Ford Motor Company's plant at River Rouge, Mich. This assignment was followed in 1929 by a series on the Chartres cathedral, France.

Man Ray (born Emmanuel Radnitzky, August 27, 1890 – November 18, 1976) was an American modernist artist who spent most of his career in Paris, France. He was a significant contributor to the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal. He produced major works in a variety of media but considered himself a painter above all. He was best known in the art world for his avant-garde photography, and he was a renowned fashion and portrait photographer. Ray is also noted for his work with photograms, which he called "rayographs" in reference to himself.

Avant-garde refers to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics.

Avant-garde Photography was the type of photography that interested me the most out of the Modernist movement. My favourite of the avant-garde photographer’s was Diane Arbus.  

Diane Arbus 

(March 14, 1923 – July 26, 1971) was an American photographer and writer noted for black-and-white square photographs of "deviant and marginal people (dwarfs, giants, transgender people, nudists, circus performers) or of people whose normality seems ugly or surreal". Arbus believed that a camera could be "a little bit cold, a little bit harsh" but its scrutiny revealed the truth; the difference between what people wanted others to see and what they really did see – the flaws. A friend said that Arbus said that she was "afraid ... that she would be known simply as 'the photographer of freaks'", and that phrase has been used repeatedly to describe her. In 1972, a year after she killed herself, Arbus became the first American photographer to have photographs displayed at the Venice Biennale. Millions viewed traveling exhibitions of her work in 1972–1979. Between 2003 and 2006, Arbus and her work were the subjects of another major traveling exhibition, Diane Arbus Revelations. In 2006, the motion picture Fur, starring Nicole Kidman as Arbus, presented a fictional version of her life story

A young man in curlers at home on West 20th Street, N.Y.C. 1966

Child with a toy hand grenade in Central Park, N.Y.C. 1962

Child with a toy hand grenade in Central Park, N.Y.C. 1962

Identical twins, Roselle, New Jersey 1967

Boy with a straw hat waiting to march in a pro-war parade, N.Y.C. 1967

Xmas tree in a living room in Levittown, Long Island 1963

 "Freaks was a thing I photographed a lot. It was one of the first things I photographed and it had a terrific kind of excitement for me. I just used to adore them. I still do adore some of them. I don't quite mean they're my best friends but they made me feel a mixture of shame and awe. There's a quality of legend about freaks. Like a person in a fairy tale who stops you and demands that you answer a riddle. Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats." - Diane Arbus

PICTORIALISM

Pictorialism is a style of photography that was popular during the late 19th and early 20th century.

The movement aspired to make photographs look like popular paintings in picturesque subject matter and a painterly look.

Photographs often had titles that suggested there was a story involved.

Photographers used atmospheric conditions (like fog, clouds and smoke) to evoke painters depictions of light and subjugate the cameras mechanical transcription of a scene

Negatives were often manipulated to add texture or soften an image

"The Lonely Cottage"

John Kauffmann's photograph of a cottage at Baker's Flat, near Kapunda, South Australia. 

The original was a 15 x 12 carbon print exhibited at the London R.P.S. 1907 Exhibition.  A copy negative was made from a half-tone reproduction of the original in a magazine, a B & W print made, then scanned at 75 dpi, and sepia colour added electronically to simulate the appearance of the original.


John Kauffman, an Australian Pictorialist Photographer, was one of Australia's most famous Pictorialists. He was constantly having photo's accepted into the Royal Photographic Society in London.

Henry Peach Robinson was an English Pictorialist Photographer best known for his pioneering 'combination photography' - the technique of using negatives of two or more photos in conjunction with one another to create a single image.

Even though he was one of the most prominent Pictorialist's of his time, he is now considered to be conventional and even academic. 

His most famous composition 'Fading Away' (1858) was both fashionable and morbid. He was a follower of the pre-Raphaelites and was influenced by the aesthetic views of John Ruskin. In his Pre-Raphaelite phase he attempted to realise moments of timeless significance in a "mediaval" setting, anticipating the world of Julia Margaret Cameron, Burne-Jones and the Symbolists. According to his letters, he was influenced by the paintings of J.M.W. Turner.