Level 3 Painting: Blog Post One

Since last year, I've decided to make cityscape the theme of my portfolio for level 3 painting this year. I want to go down this path because the subjects for my portfolio artworks over the past two years have mostly been people and this led to me having a very fixed idea of what I wanted the outcome of each piece to look like. I'd like to go down a different path in terms of art techniques and focus more on the abstract side of cityscape than realism throughout my portfolio. My painting portfolio for last year skimmed the surface of exploring other art techniques such as pointillism and impressionism, so this year I plan on diving deeper into various styles and techniques that have had an influence on art to this day. This is why I feel that post-impressionism will be the construct that links best to my intended kaupapa.

In particular, I'd like to explore abstract art styles such as cubism and play around with the composition and perspective of buildings to steer away from the realistic aspect of cityscape to show development throughout my three portfolio boards. Another big inspiration for the theme or composition of my portfolio is taken from the 'mirror dimension' as seen in the Dr Strange movies. The abstract buildings and insanely twisted perspectives really appealed to me which is why I want to incorporate that idea into my artwork this year as well as try different painting techniques. I put together a mood board of the different art techniques and references of buildings as a general start for my portfolio.

Post-Impressionism Summary:

Post-impressionism is an art movement that started in the early 1880s and lasted until 1914. This movement developed from the painting style ‘impressionist’ which Claude Monet is thought to have paved the way for as his artworks involved visible brush strokes that illustrated the natural lighting of surroundings. In the mid-1880s, the next generation of artists and critics claimed that these impressionist artists were becoming too fixated on the technique and application of natural lighting rather than making the subject matter the focal point. 

Georges Seurat was the earliest painter to have steered away from the direction of impressionism and developed the painting style of pointillism. The term ‘neo-impressionism’ was given to the movement of later artists who took influence from Seurat’s works and became his followers. This is significant to the end of the impressionism era as his approach to representing colour further interested the generation following impressionism artists. In Seurat’s artworks, he used solid coloured dots that blended with each other to mimic the vivid appearance of natural light. Seurat’s Sunday Afternoon contains impressionist elements, but his use of pointillism and the artistic reaction to the impressionist movement. Once Pointillism reached its peak in the 1890s and was widely adopted by artists, it paved the way for the rise of the Fauvist art style. Pointillism art revolutionised the use of painting with small dabs of paint that were made famous by the Impressionist movement. 

Paul Cézanne worked with Impressionist artists during the Impressionism art era but had a different vision for his art. His works focused on the underlying structures of still lifes, portraits, and landscapes and consisted of harsh lighting and shadows while being centred less on correct perspective rather on bringing out a creative composition. He suggested that the landscape was built up from the simplest geometric components. One of the characteristics of his art (that influenced the start of the Post-impressionism movement) was the constructive strokes that were arranged to work with one another to form geometric shapes that brought out highlights and shadows without the use of dark lines; partially merged foreground and background elements joint together to create surface and depth. Cézanne’s palettes in his artworks (especially evident in his later works) were renderings of saturated hues. He quotes “...when I discovered that sunlight could not be reproduced… It had to be represented by something else…by colour.” He is regarded as not only a key influence in the Post-impressionism movement, but also as a ‘precursor’ to the Cubism movement popularised and developed by Pablo Pissaco.

Vincent van Gogh utilized saturated colours and broad brushstrokes to capture the artist’s inner turmoils. He and Gauguin experimented with new approaches that rejected academic representation, fine finish, and the impressionists’ fixation on opticality. Van Gogh himself was inspired by Japanese Ukiyo-e prints and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s unique perspective in his works. Although both Van Gogh and Gauguin shared an interest in abstracted symbolic images that differ from their natural appearances, Gaugiun’s work developed in his theory of ‘synthetism’. This art method broke off from impressionism and focused on memory rather than painting what was directly in front of the artist; discarded shading, modelling, and single-point perspective and instead favoured the use of pure colour, strong lines and two-dimensionality. Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque were the artists that primarily developed Cubism in Paris between 1907 and 1914. Being another revolutionary art style emerging from the Post-impressionism movement, the Cubist aesthetic stressed the picture plane's flat, two-dimensional surface, rejecting conventional perspective, foreshortening, modelling, and chiaroscuro techniques as well as the conventional wisdom that art should mimic nature. The mimicking of form, texture, colour, and space was not a must for cubist painters. Instead, they showed dramatically shattered objects in paintings to present a new reality.

The art styles of Romanticism and Symbolism share some of the same characteristics, but Romanticism was popular around the time of Impressionism and Symbolism, on the other hand, was a big art movement that came from the Post-impressionism era. While sharing a fascination with mysticism and horrifying visions, Romantics were fascinated by nature and how we have come to feel cut off from it. That didn't pique the interest of the Symbolists. In contrast to the Symbolist ones, the violent, surreal situations of Romantic painting were very dramatic times of action. They also had a political statement and were rebellious. The Symbolist figures are immobile and statuesque, set against eerie backgrounds. Paul Gauguin is sometimes considered a Symbolist painter. Symbolism is also coined as a large influence of the Expressionism and Surrealism art movements that later followed.

An influence for Fauves, cubists, and surrealists were the works of the post-impressionist artist Henri Rousseau and his interest in primitivism. His artworks go beyond the seemingly conventional subject matter at first glance, but the simplified, abstract forms and surface patterns that merge together within the painting were derived purely from his imagination. Paintings of landscapes and jungle scenes by him were taken from the way his subconscious interpreted them rather than the surrounding world.

A group of artists known as Les Nabis (derived from the Hebrew word for ‘prophet’) --- founded by Paul Sérusier who refined this style --- didn’t rely on perspective to give the illusion of depth, but instead took inspiration from Japanese art print’s abstract colours, lines and bold character aspects. Painter and theorist Maurice Denis defined this art style as “... primarily a flat surface covered with colours arranged in a certain order.” Les Nabis exhibited together from 1892 to 1899 and worked with various media ranging from painting and prints to stage sets.

New artistic styles and theories emerged from the Post-impressionism movement rather quickly and spread internationally. Edvard Munch developed his own personal and highly expressive artistic style upon expanding on symbolism ideas, while James Ensor implemented non-realism aspects such as vibrant hues and flattened perspective to convey the angst of the spirit of the "fin de siecle." The term ‘Post-impressionsim’ is acknowledged by English artist and critic Roger Fry for being an umbrella term for the various artistic styles and artists this movement encompassed, as well as being able to trace the progression away from Impressionist artists. By 1910, movements sprouting initially from Post-impressionisms such as Fauvism, Expressionism, and Cubism had already dominated the European scene. The developments in these major movements were based upon the symbolistic and structure-advocated nature of the different Post-impressionist styles.