Rite of Spring, painting by Ronnie Landfield

Lyrical abstraction is, to me almost what is sounds like it would be Don't words those two words conjure images of swirling psychedelic hues and lines of rainbow color? The look of this art was flowing abstract pieces that were emotional and intuitive rather than cold and calculated. The artists behind this movement were opposed to the rigid art that came before it. The emphasis was less on creating a piece of art for the viewer and more about the experience of creating art, it was about a personal expression.

This movement was born in Europe after World War II but an American version happened in the 1960's. This movement has been speculated as a way for France to again find it's identity in art after the war. These french artists looked to Wassilly Kandinsky as a sort of grandfather to the lyrical abstraction style.

Surrealism: The word itself evokes dream-like, absurd yet serenely beautifully painted images. Back in the early 20's when surrealism was of the most radical and obscene of art who would have realized that this style and form of art would become classic. And yet today a piece of surrealist art work is sure to be admired by all lovers of art, traditional or contemporary.

While Dada was the anti-art, rejecting all that the art world held near and dear, Surrealism had a different view on art. These artists believed that paintings depicting ordinary scenes from life were important to art, but that the canvas needed to make room for imagination. They believed a painting could hold all things the artist could dream up, and that was where true and exciting art was formed.

The philosophy of the movement fit the aesthetic of the art quite literally. They thought that human beings needed to be freed from what they saw as a false rationality and all of the expectations and beliefs of social norms and customs. They were also interested in Freudian psychology, especially the unconscious and dreams.

The time was post World War I and art was changing. De Stijl was what they called the movement, meaning literally “The Style”, and what the style looked like was a plastic-y, controlled burst of primary colors. This was the beginning of pure abstraction and they were reducing art to the very bare bones of color and form. They went beyond the cubists, eschewing natural imagery from their canvases and embracing this new aesthetic purity.

Perhaps the most famous example of this are Mondrian's compositions, which were simplified to show only the lines and weight of what he painted. De Stijl artists were strong in their philosophy, the paintings were spiritual, they were about harmony and unity in nature. During the art movements time, many people mistakenly believed the art's philosophy, called neoplasticism, to be about materialism and functionalism. The ideas were actually almost mystical, surrounding the ideal geometric forms and duality in nature.

Portrait of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, painting by Pablo Picasso

Cubism is synonymous with Pablo Picasso, but it wasn't this legendary artist alone who began the movement of cubism. Cubism was also jointly pioneered by french artist, George Braque. This avant garde art era was seen as radical, but was also highly influential in it's day, and continues to be. The cubist artist breaks up the object he is painting, disassembling it into an abstraction of (cube-like) pieces splayed all over the canvas. This was done so the artist could display the object in a multitude of arrangements, angles and representations, viewable all at once. It was common cubist form that all faces of an object would be painted, this revolutionized the way objects could be depicted in painting. It was also said to be a cheeky response to ambiguity in painting, and an attempt to engage the viewer in seeing the painting as a man-made construction.

The first school of Cubism was Analytical Cubism. These are the famed Picasso's that appear to be masses of intricate gray, beige and black from far away, but up close are closely detailed and structured. These paintings were not about use of color and were usually of scenes of nature, the scenes were taken apart and analyzed, the artist putting them back together in a new way.

Enter, the reflection of the human emotional spectrum, the back-lashing antithesis to impressionism: expressionism (taking place mostly in Germany, 1880's-1925.) If you think you don't know expressionism, think again. Envision Edvard Munch's The Scream or or the jazzy colorful compositions of Kandinsky and there you have it. Expressionism took the ideas of impressionism, such as painting by feeling and ignited them into a dreamy fire. The goal of this movement was to capture life, to express the very sensation of being alive.

I truly think this capture of life-essence shines through in the work. The paint on the canvas is distorted to reflect the artist's emotions. One descriptive emotion that is often thrown around simultaneously with this movement is angst. Angst is an emotion that is still often taboo in our society, one that was not really focused on in art before. This movement was covering new ground, depicting life more accurately, bringing in the idea of self awareness.

Where impressionists focused on the visual of the objects they painted, expressionists focused solely on the feeling, tapping into raw emotions and their subconscious, then recording this human experience on the canvas. Expressionists thought that they only way to truly paint something correctly was to paint the way the artist experienced it. The result was often dynamic, vivacious palettes of colors bringing to life extremely bold compositions.