BEST AMERICAN ART by Alexandra Jopp

By Alexandra Jopp Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840)  (CONT.) About the Artist The Independent: "Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) is the great painter of loss and longing. He painted Romantic landscapes – ruins, forests, mountains, oceans, nights. He said: "Close your bodily eye, so that you may see your picture first with your spiritual eye; then bring to the light of day that which you have seen in darkness, so that it may react on others from the outside inwards." He composes scenes in mystic symmetry. He obscures things in mist or distance. He puts a mute element bang in the middle – a back-turned figure, a rugged cross. And the imagination rushes in." Religion Friedrich’s introspection paralleled his religious convictions and inspired him to paint nature scene combined with mysticism. Friedrich was once quoted as “the spirit of the world which is God reveals itself visibly and completely in nature…” (Siegel 35). The spiritual elements often make con...

By Alexandra Jopp Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840), a major figure in the German Romantic movement, was born in Pomerania, studied in Copenhagen, and later settled in Dresden. Pomeranian landscapes are depicted in many of his works: the sandy beaches along the Baltic seashore, the meadows, the forests, and of course the sea. Friedrich was well known for his melancholy pictures, often times depicting solitude and contemplation. His striking imagery, radical sense of design and understanding the nature and its variety of moods have made his art far beyond our comprehension. It seems Friedrich wished to convey a sense of mystery and enigma. Friedrich was indeed enigmatic and seemed to delve into the human spirit and the sub-conscious of the human being. His desire was to couple man with nature and show the symbiotic relationship between the two. Rewald supports this notion by asserting that Friedrich was: One of the European artists who created a new awareness of nature and made lan...

CONCEPTUAL ART Extreme phase of Modern Art in which ideas are presented in diagram or in description, rather than in conventional execution as a painting or sculpture. Term embracing various forms of art in which the idea for a work is considered more important than the finished product, if any. Conceptual art became a major, international phenomenon in the 1960’s although its manifestations had been very diverse; Photos, Texts, Maps Diagrams, Sound Cassettes and Videos, etc. had been used as communication media. Most conceptual artists deliberately rendered their productions visually uninteresting in order to divert attention to the idea they express. Exponents and admirers of Conceptual art see it as posing questions about the nature of art and provocatively expanded its boundaries. To the general public, and to modern critics, it usually seems pretentious and hollow. Some names connected with this wave are: Joseph Kosuth, Daniel Buren, Ed Ruscha and Robert Barry, who...

ACTION PAINTING Sometimes used as an alternative term for Abstract Expressionism. In 1952, the critic Harold Rosenberg invented this term to emphasise the sheer physical activity involved in the creation of the large, spontaneously executed, abstract expressionist paintings like those of Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline among others. In this sort of work, the paint is dripped, splashed and poured over the canvas, which is often laid on the floor rather than placed upright.  Occasionally buckets of paint were literally hurled at the canvasses, letting a completely random result stand for fine art.  JACKSON POLLOCK   Convergence, 1952 FRANZ KLINE   New York, 1953 Free Form, 1946 Jackson Pollock  (American, 1912-1956) One: Number 31, 1950 Jackson Pollock  (American, 1912-1956) NAÏVE OR PRIMITIVE ART Originally used to describe the work of untrained artists who, nevertheless, had some innate ability. Some artist...

ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM Movement in Modern Art, especially painting, in which form and colour alone are the emotive forces, without recognisable reference to nature. Abstract Expressionism was the dominant school of painting in the 1950’s and early 1960’s, centred in New York, but practiced internationally. Rising out of the art of the 1940’s and even earlier in the work of Kandinsky, abstract pictures came into vogue with the work of Arshile Gorky and Jackson Pollock. It was soon extended to the work of the New York painters – Gottlieb, De Kooning, Mark Rothko and Franz Kline. The painters who embraced this style shared a similarity of outlook rather than of style, an outlook characterised by a spirit of revolt against tradition and a demand for spontaneous freedom of expressio n. John Piper 1903-1992 Abstract, 1935. Tate Gallery, London. Arshile Gorky. The Liver is the Cock's Comb (1944), oil on canvas, 73 1/4 x 98" (186 x 249 cm). Albright-Knox Art Gal...

ABSTRACT ART / ABSTRACTION  Generic, non-specific terms covering art that in various degrees departs drastically from the natural appearance of things. At its extreme, abstract art makes no reference whatsoever to nature, an aspect sometimes called ‘non-figurative’ or ‘non-objective’. An art form in which the essence of a subject is stated in a brief or simplified manner, with the emphasis on design and little or no attempt to represent form or subject-matter realistically. A term that, in its broadest sense, can be applied to any art that does not represent recognizable objects, (much decorative art, for example), but which is most commonly applied to those forms of 20th century art in which the traditional European conception of Art as the imitation of Nature, is abandoned. Kandinsky is usually credited with having made the first entirely non- representational picture around 1910, and since then modern Abstract art has developed into many different movements and ‘isms’....