1.) I chose to watch the videos "Dada and Surrealism" and "Expressionism". I personally really liked surrealism when I read about it in the book because of it's influences by Freud. I have a love and respect for all things psychology and Sigmund Freud's theories are the start of it all so I wanted to learn more about it. The fact that Dada is in it as well wasn't really what drew me into it, but I figured it would be interesting as well. I chose the Expressionism video because the first artist mentioned in the description is Edvard Munch, who is one of my favorite artists so I wanted to watch the video to see what they had to say on his works.
2.) Videos:
Dada and Surrealism
Key Points: Dada is the art of nonsense, absurdity, creativity, silliness, and spontaneity. It's anti-art, anti-society, anti-class structure, anti-everything. A state of mind.
: Kurt Schwitters, German artist, used collage. He took scraps from the wreckages of WWI and refused to be defined as Dada or any particular type of artist. He encouraged modernity.
: Hanna Höch was the only woman in the Dada Berlin group. She used art to attack society.
: George Grosz chose to paint the collective mechanical concept he felt that mankind had become. He painted a wide range of social structures. His works were burned by the Nazi's when he left Berlin in 1933.
: Joan Miro's paintings offer viewers different ways of looking at the world, and at the painting itself. Played an important role in Surrealist ideas.
: Salvador Dali tries to explore the darkest regions of the human subconscious.
: Man Ray paints a collection of familar objects in an unfamiliar way, and challenges our views on reality in juxtaposition with eachother.
Expressionism
Key Points: Edvard Munch's images tend to follow the theme of the problematic relationship between man and woman and sexuality. He uses colors to further create the emotion and expressions in the images.He painted extreme states of mind, and often pessimistic.
: Franz Marc used color to exaggerate emotion, not to simply describe a scene. He chose animals to paint because he hated the way man was depicted as the conqueror of all things and is above nature. Cubism is used as a way to heighten realism and sentiment.
: The other artists discussed alter their styles of art as the course of WWI takes place. Many are cryptic, and it's not easy to decipher what the meanings are behind each image. WWII stirrings also lead to dark images of impending war.
3.) The videos were useful in that they explored the artistic movements through specific art works and artists of the time.
4.) The Dada and Surrealism video wasn't bad, but the speaker's voice was very dull and unengaging. It wasn't what I thought it was going to be at all either, I had high expectations and was rather let down by what was actually discussed. The Expressionism video also had the same boring dull speaker, and followed the same general concept as the first video.
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