Socialist Realism

Socialist Realism

 "To me propaganda is a holy word."

Ben Shahn

The Social Realist political movement and artistic explorations flourished primarily during the 1920s and 1930s, the time of global economic depression, heightened racial conflict, the rise of fascist regimes internationally, and great optimism after both the Mexican and Russian revolutions.

Social Realists created figurative and realistic images of the "masses" , the term that encompassed the lower and working classes, labor unionists, and the politically disenfranchised. American artists became dissatisfied with the French avant-garde and their own isolation from greater society, which led them to search for a new vocabulary and a new social importance; they found their purpose in the belief that art was a weapon that could fight the capitalist exploitation of workers and stem the advance of international fascism.  

Key Ideas

Social Realism , an international art  movement, refers to the work of painters, printmakers. photographers and filmmakers who draw attention to the everyday conditions of the working class and the poor; socialist realists are critical of the social structures which maintain these conditions. 

Theme 1 

Social Realists envisioned themselves to be workers and laborers, similar to those who toiled in the field and factories, often clad in overalls to symbolize unity with the working classes, the artists believed they were critical members of the whole of society, rather than elites living on the margins and working for the upper crust. 

Theme 2

While there was a variety of styles and subjects within Social Realism, the artists were united in their attack on the status quo and social power structure. Despite their stylistic variance, the artists were realists who focused on the human figure and human condition. Social Realists built on the legacies of Honore Daumier, Gustave Courbet and Francisco Goya in their politically changed and radical social critiques. 

Theme 3

While modernism is most often considered in terms of stylistic innovation. Social Realists believed that the political content of their work made it modern. Social Realists turned away from the painterly advancements of the School of Paris. 

William Gropper

Committed to Marxism and communism, William gropper drew vast numbers of illustrations for such radical publications as the New Masses and the Communist Party's Workers. Wanting to reach the greatest number of working people, Gropper and others created prints and graphics for radical magazines, which were easy to distribute. Here, Gropper engaged the revolutionary visual rhetoric of the monumental, triumphant worker who both ideologically and physically dominates the puny clerics and capitalists in the lower left corner. 

Cover image for the New Masses
1933.
William Gropper

Aaron Douglas

Song of the Towers
1934
Aaron Douglas

A member of the Communist Party, this is Douglas's fourth panel from a serie covering the transition between human slavery and modern industrial enslavement; the final, fifth panel was to show Karl Marx amongst African- American workers leading them to a better proletarian future. Yet his triumph is fleeting, as the industrial cog on which he stands will carry him back into the depths of the city and society; industrialism and mechanization are not friends of the American worker. 

Beyond the man's reach, in the far distance, stands the Statue of Liberty symbolizing the unfulfilled promises of universal freedom. Song of the Towers showcases Douglas's signature style of concentric, radiating circles that are punctured by bold silhouetted figures.

Isamu Noguchi

Death (Lynched figure)
1934
Isamu Noguchi

Isamu Noguchi's early sculptural works dedicated to social concerns, which align with the artistic Left, art often overlooked in deference to his abstract statuary and furniture design. As compared to other Social Realist, Noguchi employed a more modernist vocabulary instead of particularizing the figure and its facial features. Considered a major early piece by Noguchi, Death testified to the artist's progressive racial views and strong social commitment, which position the sculpture within the concerns of Social Realism. In terms of form, the sculpture is unusual since Noguchi suspended the figure above the ground on a metal armature. Noguchi created this sculpture for a 1935 exhibition organized by the NAACP to protest the national rise in lynching and also to pressure President Franklin D. Roosevelt to enact legislation prohibiting such vigilante violence; Roosevelt did not. Cuncurrently, the communist arts and cultural organization known as the John Reed Club held its own anti- lynching exhibition. While Noguchi's sculpture was well received, some critics reacted harsly to it, revealing their own racism by claiming the artist was not native born and, in one instance, referring to the "a little Japanese mistake. "


Hugo Gellert

The Working Day; Struggle for a Normal Day Repercussion of the English Factory Acts on Other Countries
1934
Hugo Gellert
Lithoghraph

By reproducing Marx in mass-distributed magazines, Hungarian-born Hugo Gellert sough to grain a wider audience among the working class and perhaps rattle the nerves of upper class society. Social Realists most often romanticized and idealized the figure of the male worker; Gellert's is a prime example of this trend. Here, Gellert renders a Caucasian laborer and an African-American laborer standing back to back. The men stand strong, fused together as if a unit, and are shown wearing workers' overalls, which reveal their muscular arms. Their taut bodies, their position of being pressed together, along with their rather phallic tools, a pick and a wrench, create a homoerotic quality to the image. Images of physically strong working men were prevalent throughout Social Realist works in order to present labor as invincible against Capital.

L. S. Lowry

Laurence Stephen "L. S." Lowry  was an English artist. Many of his drawings and paintings depict Pendlebury, Lancashire, where he lived and worked for more than 40 years, and also Salford and its surrounding areas.

Lowry is famous for painting scenes of life in the industrial districts of North West England in the mid-20th century. He developed a distinctive style of painting and is best known for his urban landscapes peopled with human figures often referred to as "matchstick men". He painted mysterious unpopulated landscapes, brooding portraits and the unpublished "marionette" works, which were only found after his death.

Due to his use of stylised figures and the lack of weather effects in many of his landscapes he is sometimes characterised as anaïve (art) "Sunday painter", although this is not the view of the galleries that have organised retrospectives of his works.

A large collection of Lowry's work is on permanent public display in The Lowry, a purpose-built art gallery on Salford Quays named in his honour. Lowry rejected five honours during his life, including a knighthood in 1968, and consequently holds the record for the most rejected British honours. On 26 June 2013 a major retrospective opened at the Tate Britain in London, his first at the Tate, and in 2014 his first solo exhibition outside the UK was held in Nanjing, China.

Equally you could say contemporary film directors such as Shane Meadows (he was born in England. He is a director and writer, known for This Is England (2006), Dead Man's Shoes (2004) and 24 7: Twenty Four Seven (1997)) and Ken Loach (he is an English film and television director. He is known for his naturalistic, social realist directing style and for his socialism, which are evident in his film treatment of social issues such as homelessness (Cathy Come Home) and labour rights (Riff-Raff and The Navigators)) document a social realism in modern day.

The Bauhaus

The Bauhaus

The Bauhaus, a german word meaning "house of building ",was a school founded in 1919 in Weimar, Germany by architect Walter Gropius. The school emerged out of late-19th-century desires to reunite the applied arts and manufacturing, and to reform education. These had given birth to several new schools of art and applied art throughout Germany, and it was out of two such schools that the new Bauhaus was born.

Gropius called for the school to show a new respect for craft and technique in all artistic media, and suggested a return to attitudes to art and craft once characteristic of the medieval age, before art and manufacturing had drifted far apart. Gropius envisioned the Bauhaus encompassing the totality of all artistic media, including fine art, industrial design, graphic design, typography, interior design and architecture. 

Lyonel Feininger
Cathedral
(woodcut, 1919.)

This woodcut by Lyonel Feininger was included by Walter Gropius in the Bauhaus's founding manifesto and programme in 1919. It shows a cathedral with a tower whose tip is surrounded by the three stars- standing for the three arts of painting, sculpture and architecture- with the craft and arts had already worked together on an equal basis even in the stonemasons' lodges of medieval cathedrals. 

The Bauhaus

The Bauhaus building in Dessau, Germany (1919-1925)
Artist: Walter Gropius

Gropius's complex for the Bauhaus at Dessau has come to be seen as a landmark in modern, functionalist design. Although the design seems strongly unified from above each element is clearly divided from the next, and on the ground it unfolds a wonderful succession of changing perspectives.

The Idea

The Bauhaus only existed for 14 years; from 1919 to 1933. Despite this, it became the 20th century's most important college of architecture, design and art. For political reasons, fresh starts had to be made repeatedly in Weimar, Dessau and Berlin, but under its three directors- Walter Gropius, Hannes Meyer and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe-  the college continued to develop further. The intention to rethink design from the buttom up and not to accept any traditional certainties not only opened the way to a fresh start in modern art, but also enabled the influence of the 'Bauhaus experiment' to continue right down to the present day.


The Building

This conceptual diagram showing the structure of teaching at the Bauhaus was developed by Walter Gropius in 1922. The programme places 'building' (Bau) at the centre of all the activities but a regular course in architecture was only introduced at the Bauhaus in 1927. Only the most talented students were admitted to the architecture course.

At the start of their studies, they received a year of basic training in the so-called preliminary course, in which they were able to experiment with colour, shape and materials with no specific goals. Depending on their individual suitability, this was followed by practical work in the workshops and accompanying disciplines. The students entered the workshops as 'apprentices' and were to sit their 'apprenticeship' exams within a given time period.

The original conceptual diagram

Education:

Educational courses with this type of structure were unprecedented and had to be completely newly developed by Gropius initially. The choice of teachers was all the more decisive for the development of the Bauhaus's viewpoint. Gropius succeeded in gainly the support of renowned avant-garde artists for the purpose. In Weimar, they carried out teaching as 'form masters' together with the 'work masters'- trained craftsmen. 

Beyond the preliminary course, Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky , among others, supervised and supplemented the teaching work on form and colour theory, and Oscar Schlemmer taught the analysis and depiction of the human body. In addition, classes were taught in non-artistic disciplines such as mathematics and building materials.

Johannes Itten
Colour sphere in 7 light values and 12 tones.
1921. Lithograph on paper
Bauhaus- Archiv Berlin

Paul Klee

He is a giant of 20th-century art and one of the great creative innovators of the time. Witty, inventive, magical, his exquisite paintings resist easy classification. He is mentioned in the same breath as Matisse, Picasso and his Bauhaus contemporary Kandinsky. He cuts a radical figure in European modernism. His influence on abstraction can be seen in the works of Rothko, Miro and beyond. And yet,for an artist of such stature, there is still so much to discover about him.

Paul Klee
Cat and bird
1928.
Oil on canvas

Wassily Kandinsky

He was a Russian-born painter, wood-engraver, lithographer, teacher and theorist; pioneer of abstract art. He was born in Moscow. He studied law and economics at Moscow University; declined in 1896 at offer of a chair at the University of Dorpat and moved to Munich to study painting.

Kandinsky viewed music as the most transcendent form of non-objective art- musicians could evoke images in listeners' minds merely with sounds. He strove to produce similarly object-free, spiritually rich paintings that alluded to sounds and emotions through a unity of sensation.

"Kandinsky was trying to create the same effect on a viewer of his paintings as a beautiful piece of music has on a listener. When you listen to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, for example, you don’t see snow or swirling fall leaves, or a muddy spring garden after a rain storm. You feel the seasons happening but you don’t actually see them. This is what Kandinsky was trying to do in his paintings..."

Transverse Line
1923.

Composition VIII 
1923; Oil on canvas

Yellow, Red, Blue 
1925; Oil on canvas

Painting was, above all, deeply spiritual for Kandinsky. He sought to convey profound spirituality and the depth of human emotion through a universal visual language of abstract forms and colours that transcended cultural and physical boundaries.

Farbstudie Quadrate
1913.

Surrealism

Surrealism

Surrealism was a movement which began in the 1920`s of writers and artists (Salvator Daliand Rene Magritte) who experimented with ways of unleashing the subconscious imagination. 

Influenced by the writings of psychologist Sigmund Freud, the literary, intellectual and artistic movements called Surrealism sought a revolution against the constraints of the national mind, and by extension, the rules of a society they saw as oppressive. Freud and other psychoanalysts used a variety of techniques to bring to the surface the subconscious thoughts of their patients. The surrealists borrowed many of the same techniques to stimulate their writing and art, with the belief that the creativity that came from deep within a person`s subconscious could be more powerful and authentic than any product of conscious thought.

Sigmund Freud`s Theory


1.   Dreams : accessing the subconscious (unconscious), playful yet sometime the disturbing.

Freud used the analogy of an iceberg to describe the three levels of the mind.On the surface is consciousness, which consists of those thoughts that are the focus of our attention now, and this is seen as the tip of the iceberg. The preconscious consists of all which can be retrieved from memory. The third and most significant region is the unconscious. Here lie the processes that are the real cause of most behaviour. Like an iceberg, the most important part of the mind is the part you cannot see.

2.  Automatism:  in art automatism usually refers to the accessing of materials from the subconscious or unconscious mind as part of the creative process.  Automatism plays a role in Surrealists techniques such as spontaneous or automatic writing, painting, and drawing ; free association of images and words and collaborative creation though games like Exquisite Corpse. 

Salvador Dali

 He was a prominent Spanish surrealist painter. Dalí was a skilled draftsman, best known for the striking and bizarre images in his surrealist work. Dalí's expansive artistic repertoire included film, sculpture, and photography, in collaboration with a range of artists in a variety of media. Dalí was highly imaginative, and also enjoyed indulging in unusual and grandiose behavior. His eccentric manner and attention-grabbing public actions sometimes drew more attention than his artwork, to the dismay of those who held his work in high esteem, and to the irritation of his critics.

The Object

Andre Breton
Many surrealist artists, especially in the 1930s, began arranging objects in combinations that challenged reason and summoned subconscious and poetic associations. The most easily obtained materials were found objects, or items cheaply purchased at flea markets. The mundane, mostly mass- produced objects found new resonances when arranged in unprecedented and provocative configurations. Surrealist leader Andre Breton believed that this new form of sculpture, called assemblage, had the power the puncture the thin veneer of reality, and the tap into the subconscious mind. As Breton proclaimed,  " to aid the systematic derangement of all the senses... it is my opinion that we must not hesitate to bewilder sensation... "

Man Ray
Indestructible object

Joseph Cornell
Taglioni's Jewel Casket

Meret Oppenheim
Object

The Body

Many surrealists produced objects and images with an insistently erotic dimension. This was driven , in part, by their interest in  Freudian psychology and so called 'primitive' non-Western art, which they presumed to be untainted by modernist rationalism. Though these explorations of the human figure had a long tradition in the history of art, Surrealists went further, breaking, taboos and shocking viewers in their depiction of mutilated, dismembered or distorted bodies.
In the 1930s, such visions may have had particular resonance given the still-pervasive sight of World War 1 veterans- many left limbless or using prosthetics and the specter of the second World War on the horizon. 

Salvador Dali
Retrospective Bust of a Woman

Renee Magritte
The Lovers

Hans Bellmer
Plate from La Poupee

The Landscape
Landscapes- images of natural scenery- remained a popular subject at the height of the Surrealist movement in the 1920s. In the decades preceding Surrealism, the genre had undergone radical transformations as artists broke free from straight representational landscapes, using non-naturalistic colours and experimental paint applications. Despite these innovations, most painters continued to paint from the natural world. 

Surrealist landscape tapped into a different source for imagery: the subconscious mind. The landscapes shown here reflect the uncanny, sometimes elusive imagery of dreams, myth and fantasy. At time lacking recognizable geological elements such as mountains, hills or vistas, these works confound traditional expectations of the landscape genre, and propose that interior world of the of the psyche is as complex and ripe for exploration as the world beyond our bodies.

Salvador Dali
The persistence of  memory

Max Ernest
Two children are threatened by a nightingale

Joan Miro
The Hunter

Cubism

Cubism 

(early twentieth century)

Cubism was one of the first truly modern movements to emerge in art. It evolved during a period of heroic and rapid innovation between Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque.

The Cubism has been described as having two stages:

1. Analytic Cubism: The term analytical cubism describes the early phase of cubism, generally considered to run from 1908–12. Analytic Cubism staged modern art`s most radical break with traditional models of representation. It is termed analytical cubism because of its structured dissection of the subject, viewpoint-by-viewpoint, resulting in a fragmentary image of multiple viewpoints and overlapping planes. Other distinguishing features of analytical cubism were a simplified palette of colours, so the viewer was not distracted from the structure of the form, and the density of the image at the centre of the canvas. Over time, Picasso and Braque also moved towards open form- they pieced the bodies of their figures, let the space flow through them, and blended background into foreground.  Georges Braque
   Glass on a Table, Pablo Picasso
   Seated Nude 

   

    Georges BraqueGlass on a Table (1909-10)Oil on Canvas

 Pablo Picasso
Seated Nude (1909-10)
Oil on canvas

     2.  Synthetic Cubism: is the later phase of cubism, generally considered to run from about 1912 to 1914, characterised by simpler shapes and brighter colours. Synthetic cubism began when the artists started adding textures and patterns to their paintings, experimenting with collage using newspaper print and patterned paper. Analytical cubism was about breaking down an object (like a bottle) viewpoint-by-viewpoint, into a fragmentary image; whereas synthetic cubism was about flattening out the image and sweeping away the last traces of allusion to three-dimensional space. 

Picasso’s papier collés are a good example of synthetic cubism. 

Pablo Picasso
Bottle of Vieux Marc, Glass, Guitar and Newspaper 1913
Collage and pen and ink on blue paper

Pablo Picasso
Bowl of Fruit, Violin and Bottle 1914
Oil on canvas

Juan Gris
The Sunblind 1914
Gouache, collage, chalk and charcoal on canvas

Cubism paved the way for geometric abstract art by putting an entirely new emphasis on the unity between the depicted scene in a picture ans the surface of the canvas. 

Pablo Picasso

Picasso  was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, stage designer, poet and playwright who spent most of his adult life in France. Picasso demonstrated extraordinary artistic talent in his early years, painting in a naturalistic manner through his childhood and adolescence. During the first decade of the 20th century, his style changed as he experimented with different theories, techniques, and ideas. His work is often categorized into periods. While the names of many of his later periods are debated, the most commonly accepted periods in his work are the Blue Period (1901–1904), the Rose Period (1904–1906), the African-influenced Period (1907–1909), Analytic Cubism (1909–1912), and Synthetic Cubism (1912–1919), also referred to as the Crystal period.

Exceptionally prolific throughout the course of his long life, Picasso achieved universal renown and immense fortune for his revolutionary artistic accomplishments, and became one of the best-known figures in 20th-century art. 

Between 1915 and 1917, Picasso began a series of paintings depicting highly geometric and minimalist Cubist objects, consisting of either a pipe, a guitar or a glass, with an occasional element of collage.

Pablo Picasso
The Mandolin Player (1911)

Pablo Picasso
Guernica (1937)

Guernica is a mural-sized oil painting on canvas. The painting, which uses a palette of gray, black, and white, is known as one of the most moving and powerful anti-war paintings in history. The large mural shows the suffering of people, animals, and buildings wrenched by violence and chaos. Upon completion, Guernica was displayed around the world in a brief tour, becoming famous and widely acclaimed, and believed to have helped bring worldwide attention to the Spanish Civil War.

Picasso
Head of a woman ( Fernande) (1909)

Juen Gris

He worked in close contact with Braque and Picasso since 1911. By 1914, he had developed collage techniques in which he pasted elements from newspapers and magazines into deconstructed, abstract scenes. Sometimes he would show actual collages and sometimes paintings oh his collages. Gris is known for his ability to create tension between horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines. In Fantomas, Gris rended in oil paint a tabletop full of periodicals, including the popular crime serial, Fantomas. He was the first Cubist to introduce light and colour into his works, inspiring Picasso and Braque`s later Synthetic Cubism.

Juen Gris
Fantomas (1915)

Fantomas (poster)
One of the most popular characters in the history of French crime fiction

Georges Braque

He was a major 20th-century French painter, collagist, draughtsman, printmaker and sculptor. His most important contributions to the history of art were in his alliance with Fauvism from 1906, and the role he played in the development of Cubism. Braque’s work between 1908 and 1912 is closely associated with that of his colleague Pablo Picasso. Their respective Cubist works were indistinguishable for many years, yet the quiet nature of Braque was partially eclipsed by the fame and notoriety of Picasso.

Braque’s interest in collecting musical instruments is reflected in this painting of a small lute called a mandora. Its fragmented style suggests a sense of rhythm and acoustic reverberation that matches the musical subject. Braque explained that he liked to include instruments in his cubist works, ‘in the first place because I was surrounded by them, and secondly because their plasticity, their volumes, related to my particular concept of still life’.

Georges Braque
Mandora (1909-10)
Oil on canvas

Impressionism

Impressionism

-modern life

- applying science

-painting quickly 

- exhibitions

Impressionism is a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s. 
Impressionist painting characteristics include relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities, ordinary subject matter, inclusion of movement as a crucial element of human perception and experience, and unusual visual angles.  
The Impressionists faced harsh opposition from the conventional art community in France. The name of the style derives from the title of a Claude Monet work, Impression.

 Historical subjects, religious themes, and portraits were valued; landscape and still life were not like previously.

The term 'Impressionist' was first used as an insult in response to an exhibition of new  paintings in Paris in 1874. A diverse group of painters, rejected by the art establishment, defiantly set up their own exhibition . They included Monet, Renoir, Pissarro and Degas. 

Landscapes, and scenes from modern urban and suburban life painted in bright, pure colours are typical. Impressionist often began (and sometimes completed) their paintings outdoors rather in a studio. Their rapidly applied brushstrokes are often visible.

Characteristics of the Impressionist painter were:

- visible brushstrokes

- artists often used oils

- open competition

-emphasis of light and its changing

- ordinary subject matter

- movement of subject

Paul Cezanne

He was a French artist. 

Cezanne is the bridge artist from the Impressionist to the Cubists. 

In the 'House of Hanged man' and  'Portrait of Victor Choque, he painted directly from the subject and employed, short, loaded brushstrokes- characteristic of the Impressionist style as well as the works of Monet, Renoir and Pissarro. 

Cezanne's paintings from the last three decades of his life established new paradigms for the development of modern art. Working slowly and patiently, the painter transformed the restless power of his earlier years into the structuring of a pictorial language that would go on to impact nearly every radical phase of 20th century art.

Basket of Apples

Claude Monet

Monet was a French artist.
He was a founder of French Impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting. 
Monet's ambition of documenting the French countryside led him to adopt a method of painting the same scene many times in order to capture changing of light and the passing of the seasons. 
He used a really interesting thing one of his painting, he put sand in an oil painting- The beach of Tronville. 

Water Lilies

Pierre Auguste Renoir

He started out as an apprentice to a porcelain painter and studied drawing in his free time. 
He and some of his friends, including Pissarro, Monet, Cézanne and Edgar Degas, decided to show their works on their own in Paris in 1874, which became known as the first Impressionist exhibition.
Renoir, like other Impressionists, embraced a brighter palette for his paintings, which gave them a warmer and sunnier feel. He also used different types of brushstrokes to capture his artistic vision on the canvas.
 His 1878 painting, "Madame Charpentier and her Children," was featured in the official Salon of the following year and brought him much critical admiration.
Besides leaving behind over two hundred works of art, Renoir served as an inspiration to so many other artists—Pierre Bonnard, Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso are just a few who benefitted from Renoir's artistic style and methods.

Edgar Degas

Painter and sculptor Edgar Degas was a highly celebrated 19th century French Impressionist whose work helped shape the fine art landscape for years to come.
He was a French artist famous for his paintings, sculptures, prints, and drawings. He is especially identified with the subject of dance; more than half of his works depict dancers. He is regarded as one of the founders of Impressionism, although he rejected the term, preferring to be called a realist.
 His portraits are notable for their psychological complexity and for their portrayal of human isolation.
Recognized as an important artist in his lifetime, Degas is now considered "one of the founders of Impressionism. Though his work crossed many stylistic boundaries, his involvement with the other major figures of Impressionism and their exhibitions, his dynamic paintings and sketches of everyday life and activities, and his bold color experiments, served to finally tie him to the Impressionist movement as one of its greatest artists.
Degas's paintings, pastels, drawings, and sculptures are on prominent display in many museums, and have been the subject of many museum exhibitions and retrospectives.