Modernist art semiotically

2) Refer to 4 different artists and their works from 4 different movements and investigate how these artists choice of certain symbols and materials and expressive forms communicated their particular world.

3) Select one artist from the above 4 and research in depth a range of works exploring their visual language of abstraction and how this communicated their particular interests, practices subject matter and point of view of the world.

In the artistic realm, the artists thought process is morphologically transformed through the art materials and forms into signs, symbols and imagery. Signs and symbols play a dominant role in 20th Century art; the artist used this medium as a language to portray intentions of varying differences. Signs and symbols can function on many different levels of fluctuating depth; they may operate via objects or images and may have their origins in visual reality and non-reality visuals.

Abstraction may present itself in many different forms. It may be approached in the form of philosophical abstraction which uses the ideas and knowledge drawn by a philosopher or philosophers as well as the artists own understa

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Cubism rejected the traditional techniques of perspective, foreshortening, modelling, chiaroscuro and refuting time-honoured theories of art as the imitation of nature. Colour assumes a strong role in the work; shapes, while remaining fragmented and flat, are larger and more decorative. They are pasted on the canvas in combination with painted areas. The line for its extension to the infinite shaping the objects we see around us, the right angle for its application in the creation of the circle and the infinite and loop, the parallel lines that among other cosmic applications, create the growth-measure of the archetypal egg, which, according to Goethe’s philosophy shapes the plant kingdom and finally the colour field, and its finely balanced equation of emotion.

Cubist painters were not bound to copying form, texture, colour, and space; instead, they presented a new reality in paintings that depicted radically fragmented objects, whose several sides were seen simultaneously. In a passage in which he is primarily concerned with the issues of composition I and where Composition II is reproduced as a reference, he divides compositions into two groups:

"1. Kandinsky used symbolic colours and shapes to represent the spiritual and physical:

Red, can be seen as a grounding colour, earthly; Green can be seen as; Blue can bee seen as holistic, meditative and serene, an etheric colour; Yellow can be seen as loud, motive, transient and an active. This complex type of composition I call symphonic. Newspaper and tobacco wrappers were often used as the main subjective motifs. The materiality of the sign became prominent in the consciousness of abstract expressionists.

Tatlin explored the way in which materials might possibly generate new artistic forms. Thus Tatlin developed a very mechanistic sence for art, he wnted to show symbolically how russia was becoming a modern country. These works by constructivists were usually unique and abstract, yet symmetrical and had bold lines and curves. Balance and universal harmony is achieved though what can only be described as Mondrian’s symbolic archetype.

Common topics in this essay:
, Piet Mondrean, Counter Reliefs, Feeling Willing, Red Tree, Art Life, Composition II, Jungian Freudian, Blaue Reiter's, Constructivism Russia, signs symbols, abstract expressionism, view world, communicated particular, type composition, formative forces, represent spiritual, principal form, constructivists tried, line tone,

Approximate Word count = 2267
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page double spaced)

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