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The constructivist period.

Constructivism had its beginnings in Russia in 1913 by Vladimir Tatlin as an artistic and architectural ideology. The movement endorsed art as a social practice, emphasizing building and science rather than artistic expression. Constructivism art focused on industrial production. Constructivist art used stripped down, abstract forms and respectful materials to express their visual language. This consisted of structures that they could draw with practical instruments like compasses and rulers.

Képarchitektúra – Lajos Kassak

Lajos Kassak’s famous constructivist artwork ‘Képarchitektúra’ which is translated from Hungarian to ‘architecture picture’, helps provide the understanding of how sparse generic forms were used by constructivists to help generate paintings.

Kassask’s artwork consists of a minimal color palette with the use of tone as a visibly distinctive feature. This is represented with contrasting colours as the opposing shades of yellow, orange and grey sit within the deep reds and blacks, forming depth and tension within the artwork. This is shown to be standard to alternative artworks that were produced during the Constructivism period. Evidently, when appropriate, Kassak utilized bold colours to influence the attention of the audience, thus creating vectors.

 Kassask’s use of geometric forms in his artwork ‘Képarchitektúra’ reiterate his idea of visual language through shapes and structures. Kassak’s constructivism piece involves form relationships in the manner of clustering his shapes to establish a sense of connection as though they belong together. Thus, also initiating a purpose of negative space as it creates a sense of disconnection and oppression around the focal point of the piece. The ‘Képarchitektúra’ artwork also incorporates the relationship of overlapping and layering, constructing an illusion of a foreground and background whilst enhancing the sense of a three-dimensional shape.  Furthermore, highlighting the purpose of constructivist art as an artform that should reflect the industrial world.

The Pop art movement.

Pop Art is a movement in art which arose in the 1950s and prospered in America and Britain in the 1960s, drawing influence from sources in mainstream and commercial culture. Pop art began as a protest against the dominant and traditional approaches to fine art by allowing artists to produce a form of abstract expressionism and comic styles. This is ultimately a result from the exposure to western popular culture, that is derived from advertisements, mass production, road signs, comic strips and iconography.

Still Life#35 – Tom Wesselmann

Tom Wesselmann is regarded as a major artist of New York Pop Art, whose sophistication and originality place him at the centre of the pop art movement that came to characterise contemporary art. In an attempt to resist abstract expressionism, Wesselmann created collages and accumulations that coupled common objects and media ephemera. While Wesselmann opposed the Pop art label, his piece ‘Still Life #35’ is a symbolic work of the 1960s that fits well into the movement.

The predominant colour pallet used by Tom Wesselmann throughout ‘Still Life #35’ include primary pigments of yellow, red and blue creating reference to popular culture and ultimately composed vivid imagery. Wesselmann composed his work, painting the flat, saturated colors with fine precision and carefully balancing the objects, colors and textures. The composition of form through the use of overlapping generates a sensation of connectivity and hierarchy to create an appearance of depth on a flat surface. Tom Wesselmann’s use of clustering within the central part of the piece establishes a point of focus, achieving vector lines guiding the audiences view. Nearly all the items in view are affordable, standardised, manufactured and packaged with distinct and well-known branding and logos that reflected consumerism and leisure and commercialization of popular culture.