Royal Academy of Arts

Royal Academy of Arts

America after the Fall (paintings in the 1930s)

Artists at this time were in search for a new visual language that could capture the spirit and struggles of the turbulent times (suffering from: Dust Bowl, Great Depression, Wall Street Crash). A strong contrast to the American Dream and the land of opportunity which followed by the New Deal.

The artists developed their own style, strongly inspired by Paris and its broad experimentation of the period.

Stuart Davis (1892-1964)

He regards his work as ‘an expression of ideas and emotions about the life of the time’ but presented in a modern European visual language. He has a very lyrical “style” and uses intense colour palettes.

He liked capturing the modernity of New York through rhythmical/jazz like paintings. He was strongly influenced by Cubism but created playful images that mixed American Subjects with European visual language.

Skyscraper 
I think this is an interesting collage of different shapes. I like that it uses blocks of colour and that everything isn't quite proportionally correct; it feels fun and quite a lot like an illustration.

Shaw

Communicated through geometric abstraction. He portrayed the sense of being an American through form and colour, representing confidence and progress.

Douglas

Was a key African American figure in the cultural movement ‘The Harlem Renaissance’.

This exhibition held the image Aspirations which is a painting which acknowledges the contributions that African Americans had to national life.

I like the use of different tones in this image in different contours, it really gives me a very spiritual vibe. The use of light is really important in the image and the fact that their bodies are facing away from the viewing, looking into the light with their arms out to create line of sight. It is also clever that in the lower third of the image the arms are up but its quite dark and fits well with the platform they are standing on, making it more interesting. The choice of the colour purple is also interesting because it is a colour that people seem to have reactions to, that it can create an uneasy and powerful atmosphere. This could also be because the use of hot and cold purple is used.

Charles Sheeler (1883-1965)

Sheeler engaged with various subjects but notably the changing face of the city and the new implementation of gleaming machinery in the workplace (but was also interested in the simplicity of early American domestic furniture). His compositions and distilled forms border between representation and abstraction.

In Suspended Power it is evident that this image celebrates the machinery age and harnesses natures energy.
This is an interesting image because I think that the composition is mechanical as well as the subject of the image. There is a line of content directly through the middle of the image and it is balanced out through the circles on the sides. Light is also expertly used on here to make the metal look shiny.

Cinemas became the most popular urban entertainment. In 1936 Marsh created the painting Twenty Cent Movie which captures the aura and the escapism that films offered.

In contrast, In 1939 Edward Hopper created New York Movie which reflects the solitariness of the city nicely summed up by the quote “the stranger is lonely in the midst of a million of his race” by Mark Twain

Edward Hopper (1882-1967)

He created hyper realistic images, going through phases of water colour, oil painting and etches. He was reluctant to participate depicting the “jazzy age” as he had been exposed to the work of realist painters and therefore his work wasn’t highly received. 
This image is like this others:hyper realistic but his urban scenes are embedded with metaphysical undertones which are emphasised through solitary figures. He also used light very dramatically.

Thomas Hart Brenton

He created the painting Cotton Pickers in 1945. I find this a very interesting image because it really communicates; heat, hard-work and suffering…particularly starvation through the use of colour and curves.

Grant Wood (1891-1942)

He grew up in the heart of Iowa on a farm and lived a very insular life at the beginning, before he became aware of the large industrial city 25 miles away and the modern American experience. A lot of these rural experiences really drove/informed the content of his work. He depicts his subjects with vivid realism however his idealistic images were accused of being illustrative in an art world dominated at the time by abstraction. However he stuck true to his visual communication and is renowned for the image American Gothic  which represented a traditional and “idealistic” household of “good”, “faithful” Americans although it was created ironically.

Joe Jones

In his 1933 image American Justice this really represents what I have learnt about the situation of racism, prejudice in America since the War of Independence over slavery. Visually portraying a noose, the Ku Klux Klan, a black lady injured on the floor and a burning house. It is painted in a way that almost makes everything seem unreal and stylised. I guess this is a clever way of showing that this is all inhumane and makes people appreciate how messed up it is by taking it out of the reality.

Phillip Guston created an interesting image compositionally Bombardment in 1937 which is created as a huge circle but the perspective comes from the centre and everything is stretched from the centre to fit the circle.

William Johnson in 1939 created an interesting jazzy and colourful painting Street Life Harlem which depicts positivity in rough times.
This is almost a characature of the people. It looks almost child-like in its loose nature and also unrealistic due to the enlargement and stretching of some features. Also the colours aren't very vivid which helps portray the message they want: of what life is like through hard times.

Revolution- Russian Art 1917-1932

Communist artists were encouraged to make art for every-day life that would reach a wide audience. Mass propaganda was a vital tool of spreading Bolshevik ideology as the population overwhelmingly lived in rural areas and were largely illiterate.

In 1932 Stalin said that Social Realism was the only acceptable style of artwork for the Soviet Union which ended an era of dazzling creativity in desperate times. Red revolutionary banners were commissioned by factories and paraded by workers.

Kliment Redko created the image Insurrection in 1925 which was denounced and hidden till the reform of the Soviet Union in the 1980s. I think this image has a very interesting almost design like layout and is communicating a narrative, story telling. 
This is very strange using geometric shape as a layout. Everything is very regimented and seems like the image is on fire, radiating power and heat due to the outward lines. From a distance the image just looks like shapes however they are actually built up by formations of people, almost like a choreography of a dance in birds-eye view.

George Publev’s Portrait of Stalin contrasts to many other portraits of Stalin as Publev was experimenting with  a primitive style of painting, in fact he didn’t intend to create such a subversive picture of the dictator. It was hidden away until Publev died.

I like this image. The contrast of red and white is harsh and interesting. I like the illustrative lines and that the marks made are light onto dark rather than the other way around. I also like that it is clear to see that there are things in the background that haven't been covered up very well. Also how the tone of the red differentiates the floor with the wall, without using a distinctive line. 

An important message that needed to be communicated was “shock workers” portraying the synthesis of women/men and the machine, promoting industries and the heroic worker.

Alexander Deineka’s 1972 Textile workers was interesting, portraying woman hard at work. He assembled his compositions from collages of drawings, graphic imagery and photos. His geometric structure portrays and avant-garde visual vocabulary with figurative imagery. 

This image makes me feel quite uncomfortable. The workers seem very unhealthy and and their body language and how they are out of proportion makes them scary. It is not an image that has tried to be beautiful, it is trying to show what is real without any rose tinted glasses. The unblended nature of the figures in the for-ground contrasts strongly with the exact buttons and work in the background. The size of the painting also made the workers a lot bigger than the people viewing which was quite intimidating.

Natan Altan created a collage of paper, enamel and charcoal which combined abstract shapes, graphic letters and texture to represent repressing hard work, dull life without colour diversity or excitement.

The avant-garde passionately embraced revolutionary opportunity to create a new culture.

They took on official cultural roles under NARKOMPROS which recognised their status and gave them secured state commissions which was important as there was an absence in the commercial market. However, talents were constrained by the increasingly repressive state. One of the greatest poets Alexander Blok died in 1921 heartbroken at what the revolution had become-many said that his death symbolised the death of the revolution.

Pavel Filonov  created some unusual abstract pieces  Formulae of Spring 1927

and Heads (Human in the world) 1925 and died of starvation.

Kalimir Malevich developed styles based on pure geometric form and colour and many new artists began trying to produce new brave art. He was a leading painter of Russian avant-garde, a pioneer of geometric abstraction. He invented Supremacism, a purely abstract style epitomised by his “Black Square” which he said represented the “zero” form. Supremacism 1930

In the late 1920s his paintings were denounced by the authorities as he failed to express social realities. His attempt to conform to the Soviet Union dogma that required representation he painted blank faces to hauntingly evoke lost identity on the collective farm. Sportsman 1930
I really like how the figures are made up of shapes/blocks of colour. It is very impacting that they are identifiable as people but they are faceless...there is nothing identifiable about them other than the colours attached, even their body language is the same. This is deliberate to show that there are personalities and talents ingrained in everyone but they were suppressed in this period of history.

Peasants 1930

3 Female Figures

Kuzuma Petror-Vodkin used a curved horizon to portray the past, present and the future in one image (elliptical space). Midday Summer 1917 looking down on his father’s funeral but portraying the circle of life and death. This is a really interesting concept, it is a painting with a narrative...

Fantasy is an image just after Lenin’s death with the rider looking back representing the disheartenment and the feelings that the revolution died with him but that the red horse is riding forwards (the colour of the revolution).

Vladimir Krinsky created a corridor At the Parade 1925  where you walk through the corridor with the walls covered in a crowd (repeated pattern) as part of the revolution as if you are part of it. This is a really clever piece of design using only black and white, blocks of colour, shape bases, simple. It is also used in a really intense way to create business and is very impacting and memorable to walk down.