Start Date
1-6-2022 10:00 AM
End Date
1-6-2022 10:15 AM
Description
From the late nineteenth century, the changing pace of “modern life”, with faster forms of transport and growing urbanisation, created a particular emphasis on motion, which some avant-garde artists sought to incorporate in painting. This project helped engender novel modes of representation such as Impressionism, Expressionism and Cubism, which became known collectively as “modernist”. This paper examines how modernist pictures of repasts and even “still lifes” were animated by a sense of the movement that was seen to be characteristic of modern life. It examines how a sense of movement in art could be generated by the interactions of figures, through formal means like the strategic use of brushstrokes, or how it might be influenced by perceptual tendencies. According to Gestalt psychology, perception involved a predisposition for orderly, balanced images. Gestalt theory could imply a need for imaginary adjustments to the image in order to regain balance, but this could also create a sense of movement. Food has long been a ubiquitous theme of art. In the modern period, when the experience of movement entered painting, food items previously represented as static became unstable. This paper shows how food demonstrates the innovatory character of modernist art in creating a sense of movement.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21427/nnya-y555
Food and Movement in Modernist Art
From the late nineteenth century, the changing pace of “modern life”, with faster forms of transport and growing urbanisation, created a particular emphasis on motion, which some avant-garde artists sought to incorporate in painting. This project helped engender novel modes of representation such as Impressionism, Expressionism and Cubism, which became known collectively as “modernist”. This paper examines how modernist pictures of repasts and even “still lifes” were animated by a sense of the movement that was seen to be characteristic of modern life. It examines how a sense of movement in art could be generated by the interactions of figures, through formal means like the strategic use of brushstrokes, or how it might be influenced by perceptual tendencies. According to Gestalt psychology, perception involved a predisposition for orderly, balanced images. Gestalt theory could imply a need for imaginary adjustments to the image in order to regain balance, but this could also create a sense of movement. Food has long been a ubiquitous theme of art. In the modern period, when the experience of movement entered painting, food items previously represented as static became unstable. This paper shows how food demonstrates the innovatory character of modernist art in creating a sense of movement.