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ARTISTS

Expressionism and Cubism

The world around the Post-Impressionists supplied them with the material which they translated into the organized patterns of color and line that were their paintings-patterns that constituted a world of painted reality existing in its own right. The most significant developments in the painting of the early 20th century appear in the efforts of painters to establish a world of pictorial reality That is often without any direct and immediate reference to that of nature. The example of the Post-Impressionists lent some authority to such conceptions; it was obvious that the relationships of color and line in a picture by Cezanne or Van Gogh were self-explanatory and inherently significant quite without any reference to the relationships of color and line in nature by which they may have been inspired, and it was not without some logic that painters inspired by their examples conceived of the possibility that such relationships might be significant even if they were developed entirely in the temperament of the artist instead of originating in some phenomenon of the physical world. In the first decade of the 20th century, this conception of painting is evident in two main trends: one derived from the emotional expressivism of Van Gogh and Gauguin, the other from the structural expressivism of Seurat and Cezanne. The first is exemplified in the work of a group of painters called Les Fauves and the second in the development of a style characterized by emphasis on geometrical organization and pattern known popularly as Cubism.

The term “Les Fauves” was used first in a derogatory reference to a group of painters exhibiting together at the Autumn Salon of 1905 in Paris and means literally "The Wild Beasts." It was applied by a newspaper critic much as the term "Impressionism" had been applied some 30 years earlier and for similar reasons-to indicate disapproval of unorthodox pictorial conceptions and procedures, but this time the methods under criticism involved a consciously antirealistic use of vivid color following the examples of Van Gogh and Gauguin. Among the group were Henri Matisse, Georges Rouault, Derain, and Maurice de Vlaminck. While the styles developed by the various members of the group were quite individualized, they had in common the characteristics noted above combined with a comparative disregard for traditional conceptions of subject matter as a major value in painting. This made them relatively unpopular in the general sense and established them among the radicals of their time. The simplification of form and distortion of appearance (from a naturalistic point of view) that are also characteristics of the Fauve style were features indicative of their study and assimilation of some qualities of the exotic arts of the East and of primitive peoples-for which they had great admiration as pre-eminently expressive forms. Following the early association of the members of the group, they proceeded along individual lines. Matisse developed a sophisticated decorative style of flowing line and brilliant color pattern that is by way of being one of the most acceptable of modern idioms in the popular sense, and has been of notable influence in various fields related to creative painting, such as advertising layout. Derain's earlier aggressiveness was tempered to a simplified eclecticism that reveals him as a somewhat overfacile but thoroughly craftsmanlike technician. But Rouault has established himself in a style of heavy line and somber tonality that he uses in exploring depths of tragic feeling unapproached by any of his contemporaries. The influence of this group outside France may be noted in such comparable associations in Germany as Die Brilcke (The Bridge), organized in 1904 and paralleling the French group in principle and motive, and Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) which evolved from it in 1911, both being essentially expressionistic in program.

The second of the major trends in painting in the early 20th century was based upon a system of geometrically organized abstract patterns, and has been dominated since its inception by the Spaniard, Pablo Picasso. His works of the period up to about 1905 are characterized by an emotive expressionism that is reminiscent of El Greco in method and effect. But under the influence of Cezanne, he began around that time an investigation of the architecture of nature. This he carried beyond the point reached by the 19th century master. In 1910 and 1911 he developed a pure pictorial abstraction in a system of line and plane almost entirely devoid of color. The idea underlying this Cubism, as it is popularly called, assumes that such concepts as form and texture and depth are capable of solely pictorial definition, quite without any reference to the form and texture and depth in nature. The rigid restrictions of this intellectualized conception of painting have been somewhat relaxed since its climactic statement by Picasso at the beginning of the second decade of the 20th century. Color has been restored and emphasized. The practice of collage was developed, whereby non-pictorial materials like bits of paper, leather, imitations of chair-caning and the like are introduced in the painted forms. Picasso's own style has been varied in the extreme, even to the inclusion of one phase of relative naturalism -around 1920, but his periodic reversion to an abstract idiom indicates his feeling of its expressive adequacy. Perhaps his most convincing statement of this belief is the mural painting Guernica (1937) commemorating the attack of the German Luftwaffe upon the defenseless Spanish town of that name, an incident in the Spanish Civil War. Completely devoid of color, its abstract, un-naturalistic forms painted in black, white, and a gamut of grays transcend their original value as an idiom of personal expression and constitute a deeply stirring indictment of the sickening horror of modern warfare.