Research on art movement

During lecture, various kinds of art movements were being introduced to us. Every kind of them is so beautiful and breath-taking. However, there are two kinds of art movements that specially captured my eyes, which are the symbolism and cubism.

Symbolism is a late nineteenth century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian, which is originated from poetry and other arts. Symbolism was generally a reaction against naturalism and realism. It possesses an anti-idealistic style which attempts to represent reality in its gritty particularity and to elevate the humble and the ordinary over the ideal. Symbolists strongly believed that art should represent absolute truths that could only be described indirectly. Therefore, symbolists always create their pantings in a very metaphorical and suggestive manner, endowing some particular images or objects with symbolic meaning.
   

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Ferdinand Hodler's The Night (1890) is one of his greatest masterpiece. The theme of this painting is about sleep and the fear of death, but also on the relationship between men and women. All figures in this painting are shadowless, naked and are draped in black sheets. Both the central figure and the man top right are Hodler himself while the female figure seen from the back on lower right is his wife at that time. The terrified man in the middle of this painting with the figure of death placed squarely between his legs clearly showed us the theme of sleep and the fear of death.

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Gustave Moreau's Oedipus and the Sphinx (1864) was actually painting the confrontation between the Oedipus and the Sphinx, which follows the Greek story quite literally. Homage is paid to the Sphinx by showing her thrown of victory and trophies of her dead victims around her. The exaltation of the glory of man is also shown by the Oedipus, who is standing firmly on the ground in the face of fear and danger. However, this painting was actually meant to symbol the struggle between soul and matter. Moreau remarked that the sphinx's head and wings seemed to promise the ideal but her body, being material and female was vile and a trap.  

Cubism is an avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and scrulpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture that was originated in early twentieth century. In cubists' artwork, objects are analyzed, broken up and resembled in an abstracted form. In other words, instead of depicting objects from one viewpoint, the artist depicts the subject from a multitude of viewpoints to represent the subject in a greater context. 

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Pablo Picasso's The Weeping Women (1937) was created when Picasso saw a woman weeping as she holds her dead son in her arms. He wasn't painting this woman to show the Spanish was but in fact, he drawed it to show a picture of the lady suffering from different views to show her heart felt pain. However, the main point of this depressing picture was to show the consequences of wars. 

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Stephanie Clair's Lovers at sunset is a painting which is more modern compared to the other paintings above. Being influenced by Picasso, Matisse, Chagall, Modigliani and Kandinsky, Clair's painting tend to be in bright colours, dreamy people and are from cubist perspectives. This painting captured the special moments in our lives, which we spend with our partner. This painting fully portrays the feeling of love, romance and intimacy.