Tuesday, November 15, 2005

What is the direction for the next movement?

Interdisciplinary involvement CREATED an art movement in the 20th century called Expressionism -

"There were a number of Expressionist groups in painting, including the Blaue Reiter and Die Brücke. Later in the 20th century, the movement influenced a large number of other artists, including the so-called abstract expressionists.

Expressionism is also found in other art forms - the novels of Franz Kafka are often described as expressionist, for example, and there was a concentrated Expressionist movement in early 20th century German theatre centred around Georg Kaiser and Ernst Toller.

In music, Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern and Alban Berg, the members of the Second Viennese School, wrote pieces described as expressionist (Schoenberg also made expressionist paintings). Other composers who followed them, such as Ernst Krenek, are often considered as a part of the expressionist movement in music. What distinguished these composers from their contemporaries such as Maurice Ravel, George Gershwin and Igor Stravinsky is that expressionist composers self-consciously used atonality to free their artform from the traditional tonality. They also sought to express the subconscious, the 'inner necessity' and suffering through their highly dissonant musical language. Erwartung and Die Glückliche Hand, by Schoenberg, and Wozzeck, an opera by Alban Berg (based on a play by Georg Büchner), are example of expressionist works.

In architecture, the work of Eric Mendelsohn comes under this category. An important building by him under this style is the Einstein Tower in Potsdam, Germany. There is an organic quality to buildings using this approach. Some sculptors also used this style, as for example Ernst Barlach. There was also an expressionist movement in film, often referred to as German Expressionism.

There was never a group of artists that called themselves Expressionists."

- from Wikipedia

The Pre-Raphaelites on the otherhand were completely deliberate in their STRUCTURE:

"The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was founded in John Millais' parents' house on Gower Street, London in 1848. At the initial meeting John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Holman Hunt were present. Hunt and Millais were students at the Royal Academy of Arts. They had previously met in another loose association, a sketching society called the Cyclographic club. . . They kept the existence of the Brotherhood secret from members of the Royal Academy.

The Brotherhood's early doctrines were expressed in four declarations:

  1. To have genuine ideas to express;
  2. To study Nature attentively, so as to know how to express them;
  3. To sympathise with what is direct and serious and heartfelt in previous art, to the exclusion of what is conventional and self-parading and learned by rote;
  4. And, most indispensable of all, to produce thoroughly good pictures and statues.

These principles are deliberately undogmatic, since the Brotherhood wished to emphasise the personal responsibility of individual artists to determine their own ideas and method of depiction."

- from Wikipedia

What is the direction for the next movement? Online, anyone can find examples of singular projects to create art movements. Unfortunately, most seem uninspired and loosely developed. "Stuckism", "Crap Art" (No, I'm not kidding), "NeoSyncretic". Though I have found one example with potential - "NeoPopArt", but it seems rather regional. While there are many historical examples of regional art movements becoming successful, they often are also relegated to the minor art movement bin of history (e.x. The Ashcan School, Tonalism, ).

Is that the key, overcoming regionalism? Crossing disciplines (music, theatre, painting or film)? Is the structure needed first, or does it come later?

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