Russian Avant-Garde

During the early 1900's, Russia was having a revolution. This revolution changed the entire world and Russia especially. One such change was the paintings of Russia. This movement that originated as a french term was called the avant-garde, which literally means "vanguard." A vanguard is, in this case, a term used to describe people, in this case painters, who create styles and ideas ahead of their time; those who are the first to try out a new style. At the time of this movements awakening the Communist party took over Russia and began to spread its propaganda. The communist party wanted use art to help them achieve their goals of total control of their citizens. SO they encouranged pro-communist/Russian art while srictly banned paintings from anywhere else. They wanted people to be proud of their nation and culture. Here is one painting that is quite interesting:

The Dancing Soldiers

By: Mikhail Larionov

The Dancing Soldiers is a painting that has a russian, and slightly communist, feel to it. It's definatly not clear, unless one can read Russian, but there are three men and a dog. One man is dead drunk and is playing the accordionwhile the other two are cursing and playing cards. Although a realistic scene it's in an unrealistic setting. The 2-D plane makes it appear a bit as if the objects, including the people, are floating. Also the faces and figures of the people and objects are strange and distorted. And for some reason there is a horse in the background, which doesn't exactly make sense with the scene. The characteristics of this painting are completely Russian. There is a fauvistic color style here with only colors of Russian folk-art. Larionov actuall encouraged other Russian artists to stop copying western forms and styles. He wanted them to look towards traditional Russian styles and take bits and peices from there to create their works. However, maybe what Larionov really wanted to do was to show people the life of Russian soldiers. I mean come on, these guys aren't exactly living well. Yet he used purly Russian styles to appease, there's Mike's favorite word, the communist government so that he could get his art published.

Romantic Art

The Romantic Era started during the 1850's and ended in the mid-90's. The romactic era emphasized nature and the natural aspects of humans. Trancedentalists like Thoreau and Emerson complained about modern life. They believed that people should live according to nature and they wanted people to live simply. Trancedentalists thought that technology hindered mankind and deveated them from nature. They wanted people to live of the land and in solitude. I think that they just didn't like people. Since the romantic era was so long, there isn't really just one idea or even behind it. Well, there was one idea, but it was just the force behind the movement, not what started it. However, the time around which this period spawned trancedentalists was the industrial revolution, the early 1900's. During this time, machines, powered by steam and later electricity and gasoline/oil, became used. Machines like the car helped to replace horses, especially in the 20's where cars were sold on installment. Cars let people live further away from their jobs and allowed them to travel over long distances in private. Inventions like the vacuum cleaner, iron, and the lightbulb all became norms used to help with chores and increase leisure time. Now people had more time to do other things. And this time became a driving force in trancedentalism. People no longer had a simple wake up-go to work-come home routine. Now people had time to do many other things they wanted to do. Trancendentalists felt that this time was a bad thing to society and complicated peoples lives. Also they believed that this was all unnatural so we should all revert back and forget all these luxuries. Sadly much of the Romantic period is mostly based in literature so I can't really find a good american romantic painting. However, here is one just for the heck of it:

     Liberty Leading the People (1830)

Eugène Delacroix

Although the Romantic I was talking of was the American Romantic, this painting is part of the earlier European romantic.