Tag Archives: Expressionism

Kinder Surrealism

21 May 2025 By in Art, Art Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

“I feel the need of attaining the maximum of intensity with the minimum of means. It is this which has led me to give my painting a character of even greater bareness.” Joan Miro.

Joan Miró (zhwahn mee-ROH, 1893–1983), a Catalan artist, began his career exploring Expressionism and Cubism before rejecting the rational world, which he found suffocating possibly depressing. He turned inward, merging an abstract dreamworld with Surrealism, ultimately evolving into a minimalist, conveying deep meaning through sparse, naïve brushstrokes and colors.

Symbolism became his hallmark; for Miró, the image was secondary to the message which was always open to interpretation. Initially inspired by Van Gogh and Cézanne, he later grew enamored with Picasso and Dalí, but it was Sigmund Freud who awakened his subconscious, plunging him into the mysteries of dreams and hallucinations. In pursuit of these visions, Miró intentionally induced states of hunger and exhaustion, risking madness to capture the fleeting essence of his dreamscapes. His dreams produced a primitive, childlike, whimsical innocence, with no explicit instructions for interpretation.

Miró’s early masterpiece, The Farm (1921–22), serves as a biographical snapshot of his life at 29, capturing the essence of his Spanish countryside upbringing and young adult life. This highly detailed precursor to his later Cubist and abstract works was purchased by Ernest Hemingway for 5,000 francs as gift to his wife.

By 2024, Miró’s works continue to command prices that place him among the top 25 most valuable artists worldwide. His Peinture (Étoile Bleue), or Painting (Blue Star), one of his best-known dreamscapes, sold for £23.6 million at a London Sotheby’s auction in 2012, equivalent to $37 million at the time, or approximately $31.5 million in today’s dollars.

Source: Miró by Gaston Diehl, 1979.  Graphic: The Farm (1921–1922), National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. (Public Domain)

Paris in the Evening

31 March 2025 By in Art, Art Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, born in 1864, was a unique figure among French nobility and artists. Despite his diminutive stature and aristocratic lineage tracing back to Charlemagne, Lautrec defied conventional expectations with his eccentric, mischievous character, and individualistic style. While influenced by the Impressionists, exemplified by masters like Monet and Degas, he later embraced the Post-Impressionist movement alongside Gauguin and Cézanne, leaving a distinctive mark on the art world. Post-Impressionists diverged from their predecessors by infusing their work with deeper emotion, personal experiences, and greater individualism. Their bold brushwork, exaggerated colors, and unconventional techniques laid the groundwork for the future, anticipating Expressionism.

Parisian nightlife was a cornerstone of Lautrec’s art, and At the Moulin Rouge: The Dance stands as his most famous painting, portraying fashionable society and featuring many of his friends and family in a composition of overlapping planes with a perspective that subtly defies reality and logic. The artwork is divided into three distinct planes. The static background features figures such as Lautrec’s father, the poet Yeats, and Jane Avril, a renowned can-can dancer nicknamed “Crazy Jane,” who was both a close friend of Lautrec and a frequent model. In the center, the action unfolds as Valentin le Désossé, a gentleman in a top hat, instructs a cabaret dancer in new steps. The foreground is a detailed study of a contrasting passivity from the central swirl. The viewer’s eye swings between the galloping dancer in earthy tones accented by orange stockings and the quiet, introspective woman in pink.

Lautrec intentionally distorted the painting’s perspective, evident in the mismatched linear lines of the floorboards and fluid, swaying shadows that resemble a confused liquid more than lighting effects. These artistic choices enhance the surreal atmosphere of the scene, amplifying the contrast between the hyper-dynamic dancer and the passive, tranquil surroundings. Through At the Moulin Rouge: The Dance, Lautrec masterfully evokes the opposing vibrant activity and a ‘to be seen’ spirits of Parisian nightlife, providing a vivid outline while inviting viewers to interpret the finer details themselves.

Source: Toulouse-Lautrec by Doughlas Cooper, 1982. Graphic: At the Moulin Rouge: The Dance, Toulouse-Lautrec, 1890. Philadelphia Museum of Art. Public Domain.

Chagall and Expressionism

24 March 2025 By in Art, Art, Biography Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

Art critic Raimond Cogniat described Marc Chagall as an artist of opposites, a painter who thrived in the interplay of form and color, color and meaning. Chagall infused his paintings with love and happiness, crafting worlds that felt both fantastical and deeply alive. He shaped reality from his feelings, “making it conform to his inner spiritual logic,” even if, as he once confessed, he wasn’t entirely conscious of his process.

Born Moishe Shagal in 1887 in Vitebsk (now Belarus), Chagall grew up in a Jewish enclave within the Russian Empire. He later embraced France as his adoptive home, blending his Eastern European roots with French artistic flair. Though he briefly explored Cubism during its peak in the early 20th century, he thankfully abandoned that style to carve his own path as an expressionist. Vivid, otherworldly colors, and exaggerated forms defined his style, while his Jewish heritage, evident in depictions of shtetl life, fiddlers, and biblical scenes, remained his anchor. His 1912–1913 painting The Fiddler is said to have inspired the title of the musical Fiddler on the Roof.

In a 1963 speech to an American audience, Chagall reflected on his philosophy: “Any moral crisis is a crisis of color, texture, blood and the elements, of speech, vibration, etc.—the materials with which art, like life, is constructed. Even when mountains of color are piled on a canvas, if one can discern no single object even through great sound and vibration, this will not necessarily give authenticity.” To Chagall, authenticity was more than paint; it demanded the infusion of human experience, blood, and the essence of nature.

Source: Chagall by Raimond Cogniat, translated by Ann Ross, 1977. Graphic: The Fiddler, Chagall, 1912-1913. Public Domain