Module 11 video discussion

1. Explain why you selected each of the TWO videos you choose from the selection listed above:

I selected the two videos because they interested me more than the others, and wanted to know more about them.

2. For each video list/discuss the key concepts you learned:

Expressionism:  Edward Munch created an image that radically broke the norms of content and style. It showed the relationship problem between man and woman and sexuality. The piece is called “Ashes”. His uncompromising portrayal of emotion caused deep offense to the bourgeois mentality. Marc's "Rain" shows debt to cubism and Cézanne. The cubist influence is even stronger in "The Tiger". The year after "The Tiger", the forest became a place of menace in "The Fate of Animals", it was said to be a premonition of war. In one of his last paintings, he tried to predict the apocalypse to come.  Ernst Ludwig Kirchner painted a series of works featuring "tarts" on the streets of a busy city. They appear to be hurried and seem to turn the viewer into a voyeur. In the Museum Ludwig there is a sketch of "Five Women in the Street". A quote from Kirchner expresses his opinion that when viewing a modern metropolis at night, any attempt to objectively construct a picture is useless. Anselm Kiefer was born at the end of World War II. His work alludes darkly to the war. "Operation Sea Lion" depicts a famous naval campaign taking place in a bath tub. 

Dada and Surrealism:  Kurt Schwitters realizes the unlimited possibilities of collage. Schwitters includes many objects in his art. The artist includes rural objects in his art. Light reflects off the objects in Schwitters’ art. Hannah Höch, a Dadaist, uses art to attack the society she detests. Her photomontage, “Cut With the Kitchen Knife” (1919), contains chaotic figures. It makes a monumental political statement, it attacks the political figures of the Weimar regime. George Grosz paints "Pillars of Society," an attack on his enemies. He paints a wide social range of Berlin's subjects. Dali is a surrealist painter, He probes the darkest regions of the human subconscious. His imagination creates a world where nothing makes sense. He includes arid, barren landscapes in his work. In "La Fortune," single components of the painting are true to life. But, other elements are separate from reality. Familiar objects appear to be in an unfamiliar arrangement.

3. How do the videos relate to the readings in the text?

The videos relate to the reading in the text because they both show how the time period the artist lived in, their surroundings, and the events that were taking place at the time effected their art, and the message they tried to convey through the piece.

4. What is your opinion of the films? How do they add depth to understanding of the readings and art concepts?

My opinion of the films would be that they were helpful in helping me learn something new about artists that I didn’t really know about. It added depth to my understanding because it talked about some of the “isms” for example an outgrowth of Fauvism. Also, how their everyday lives and the places where they lived significantly impacted their work.