Modern Art Movements and Experimental Cinema
Dadaism
Emerging in 1916 during World War I, Dada artists were angry at society, politics, and traditional culture because they believed a “reasonable” society had led to war. Their work is strange, random, shocking, or anti-art, utilizing nonsense, chance, collage, readymades, and humor.
Post-Impressionism
Developing in the 1800s after Impressionism, artists continued to use bright colors and visible brushstrokes but incorporated more emotion, structure, symbolism, and personal meaning.
Futurism
An early 20th-century Italian art movement that celebrated speed, technology, youth, and violence, while advocating for a dramatic break from traditional, historical art.
Cubism
This movement breaks objects into geometric shapes and multiple viewpoints at the same time, challenging traditional realistic perspective.
Dadaist Works and Techniques
- Hugo Ball, Karawane (1917): A sound poem exploring absurdism.
- Collage (Jean Arp, 1916–17): Removes full control from the artist; randomness helps create. It challenges the idea that art must always be controlled or “beautiful.”
- Das Undbild (Kurt Schwitters, 1919): Uses scraps and fragments, broken and modern, reflecting the mood after World War I.
Surrealism and Dream Imagery
Postman Cheval: This text is Surrealist because it uses strange dream imagery instead of logical storytelling. It connects to Ferdinand Cheval, a postman admired by Surrealists for building a fantasy palace from his imagination. The poem makes ordinary things transform, showing the Surrealist interest in dreams, the unconscious, and irrational beauty.
The Treachery of Images (René Magritte): A Surrealist work exploring how words and images shape reality; images and language represent reality.
Perpetual Motion (René Magritte, 1935): Makes something normal feel confusing. Magritte often used simple, realistic objects to create a mystery.
Lobster Telephone (Salvador Dalí, 1936/1938): Evokes sexual and psychological feelings, fitting Surrealism’s interest in the unconscious mind—irrational but emotionally powerful.
Swans Reflecting Elephants (Salvador Dalí, 1937): Questions whether we are seeing what is really there, or what our mind creates.
Early Experimental Photography
Used scientific processes to capture permanent images through invention, light, chemistry, long exposure, and blurry images.
- Daguerreotype (1837): Invented by Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre. The first practical process, creating a detailed image on a metal plate—sharp, formal, and unique.
- Documentary Photography: Used to record real people, places, events, and history (evidence, truth, social history).
- Stereoscopic Photography: Two images create a 3D illusion (depth, entertainment, technology).
Impressionism and Modernism
- Manet, Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe: Realism/early Modernism; modernizes the nude and challenges academic conventions.
- Monet, Rouen Cathedral: Explores how vision is temporary and subjective.
- Neo-Impressionism: Makes Impressionism more systematic and scientific (e.g., Seurat, La Grande Jatte).
Experimental Cinema
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
The visual style shows madness by making the outside world look as twisted and unstable as the characters’ minds. Dr. Caligari is a mysterious showman who controls Cesare, a sleepwalker. Cesare predicts that Alan will die before dawn; later, Alan is murdered. Francis, the narrator, may actually be a patient in a mental asylum.
Rashomon
Tajōmaru is the bandit accused of attacking the samurai and his wife in the forest. He gives his own version of the story where he makes himself seem brave, powerful, and honorable. The baby symbolizes hope and human goodness. Even after all the lies and selfishness, the woodcutter chooses to care for the baby, showing that people can still do good.