The assembly of colors, forms, and ideas may contribute to the aesthetic principles present in a work of visual art. For example, light, pastel colors may transmit feelings associated with easiness, fleeting moments, and bright outdoor scenes. Dark palettes may communicate severity, intensity, struggle, or industry, depending on the author's intent and the audience's interpretation. As another example, realistic forms may depict respect for the subject, clarity, or sureness, while abstract forms may be an attempt at communicating disrespect, alienation, or confusion.
These ideas, values, and interpretations may change over time. This visual language morphs throughout decades and centuries as both artist and observer engage in a dialog through the aesthetics of artwork. Any visual characteristic of art may become a part of this language.
Aesthetic principles can be defined as the various features present in a work of art that define how beautiful or pleasant an observer might consider the work or that can be used to categorize the work as belonging to a specific art movement.
Aesthetic Art Examples
There are a wide variety of paintings within the Aestheticism movement. Here are a few examples from some of its corresponding periods.
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"Joel's Cafe" by Max Weber displays a Cubist aesthetic, with a flattened perspective, angular figures, and unrealistic proportions.
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"Vetheuil in the Fog" by Claude Monet shows the Impressionist aesthetic, with its rough and loose brushwork and incredibly light palette focusing on blues, greens, and white.
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"Study for a Composition" by Piet Mondrian is an excellent example of Abstract Expressionism. Mondrian had developed a highly abstract aesthetic style long before Abstract Expressionism became a familiar aesthetic and had a long career ranging from the era of Cubism and on into the mid-1940s. This piece displays a rough outline of penciled lines and flat patches of color, an abstract representation meant to convey mood and emotion, with no clear subject beyond the colors' presentation.
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The Aesthetic Movement in the art world began in 1870s Britain and was first described by art critic Walter Hamilton in 1882. This artistic movement focused on beauty for beauty's sake instead of art as a religious or cultural representative. The changing opinion of artists and observers led to a variety of subsequent artistic movements which played with color, form, and symbolism, abandoning the Romanticism of the previous century and its focus on lifelike representation and religious and nationalist sentiment. This movement would come to be known as Aestheticism.
Important figures within early Aestheticism were:
- James Whistler, who drew inspiration from Ukiyo-e painter Katsushika Hokusai and brought some of the aesthetics of Japanese art to the European art world.
- Dante Gabriel Rossetti, whose art began to transition from a pre-Aestheticism form to one focused more on sensual representation through style.
- Albert Moore, whose work borrowed from earlier styles only when necessary to invoke an emotional response to his artistic style based on tonal harmony between elements he adapted for his use.
Beyond its earliest days, Aestheticism produced multiple artistic movements that have been intensely studied since their development. The Aesthetic Movement's focus on the observer's interpretation of art allowed a looser adherence to realism and transformed the world's expectations of what art could be.
Impressionism
Impressionism was an artistic movement that originated in mid to late 1800s France, continuing to the very end of the century, and is most recognized in the works of artists such as Claude Monet. It was associated with an attempt to portray the temporary nature of scenes, such as the vanishing light of a landscape or the movement of people or objects within a location. The Industrial Revolution brought about increased automation and alienation, and artists started to focus on the natural world and lived experiences outside of the industries for their subjects.
This movement's artistic style is characterized by loose or rough brush strokes, strange or unusual angles that may flatten or sharpen perspective, and lighter colors than many previous forms of painting.
Cubism
Cubism took a noticeably abstract turn from prior forms of visual art at the start of the 20th century and then continued beyond the end of the First World War, spearheaded by influential artists such as Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. It is often described as an artistic response to a fractured world, one in which the death and destruction of a large-scale war were at the forefront of everyone's mind. Rapidly advancing technology created irreversible change in society, both in how wars were waged and how humanity interfaced with life itself. This art style was an attempt at reconciliation.
Muted palettes characterize the Cubist aesthetic with monochrome or earth tones. It lacks a traditional perspective, favoring flattened and tight compositions with broken or distorted figures. Occasionally, collages of consumer media such as newspapers, magazines, and packaging materials were used to create Cubist works.
Abstract Expressionism
The mid-1940s to the mid-1950s were a period of development and prevalence for Abstract Expressionism, best represented in the works of artists such as Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. During this period characterized by the chaos and devastation of war, abstraction became paramount in the artistic world. Conventional concepts such as form were done away with, and this period was also one of a wide variety of styles and techniques.
Abstract Expressionism was primarily concerned with complete artistic freedom and experimentation, paint splatters and drippings, incredibly high levels of abstraction and reductionism, and solid fields of color. Color is often considered one of the primary features of this aesthetic, with a focus by artists on using color itself to communicate emotion and intent. This movement was one of the most abstract aesthetic movements in history.
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Aesthetic art styles are the generalized styles of larger artistic movements within cultures. Aesthetic principles refer to the assembly of colors, forms, and ideas that may be present in a work of visual art and are used to communicate emotion, intention, values, or meaning, and define how beautiful or pleasant it is, or whether it belongs to a particular artistic movement. Aesthetic meaning stands for the general qualities in a work of art that characterize an artistic movement and how those qualities communicate value from the artist to the viewer.
The Aesthetic Movement, which would become known as Aestheticism, focused on beauty for beauty's sake, instead of art as a religious or cultural representative. Impressionism was an artistic movement characterized by loose brushwork, attempts at capturing fleeting moments of outdoor scenes and personal life, and light color palettes. Cubism is often seen as a response to an increasingly alienated and war-like world, characterized by increasing levels of abstraction, muted or grayscale color palettes, collages, broken or incomplete forms, and strange or modified perspectives. Abstract Expressionism was another aesthetic movement influenced by war and was characterized by extreme levels of abstraction, color as a tool for emotional conveyance, flat fields of color, paint splatters and drops, and artistic freedom.
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Aesthetic Principles
Have you ever wondered where Pablo Picasso got his inspiration, or why Jackson Pollack's splatter painting has received such a prominent place in history? The aesthetic principles, that people value in art, change dramatically from decade to decade.
Aesthetic principles that characterize art movements comprise a range of artistic elements such as shape, color, texture, line, and use of space, to convey values, capture emotion, create unity within an art piece, and communicate meaning. Current events in politics, global relations, and cultural values change the way that people see art, and what they value aesthetically. There are many different art movements through out history that each manifest different aesthetic principles. You may have heard of such movements as British Pop Art, Cubism, Constructivism, Dadaism, Abstract Expressionism, Surrealism, or Impressionism, to name a few.
In this lesson, we will take a look at three periods in history that gave way to distinct aesthetic movements in art, and identify the aesthetic principles that define them.
Impressionism (1872-1892)
Impressionism is often considered the first movement of modernity, in a historical period marked by increased urbanity and technological innovation.
In art, Impressionism represents an early influential movement away from the fine finish, and detail, of neoclassical and realistic art. Impressionism seeks to capture the momentary, sensory effect, or impression, of a scene.
As scientific thought came to recognize that what the eye sees is different from what the brain understands, Impressionists began exploring the fleeting optical effects of light, the passage of time, and other atmospheric shifts that the brain might interpret.
With the increased mechanization of industry and the accompanying feeling of dehumanization, artists turned away from poised portraits and historical subjects. Instead, they focused on scenes from everyday life and outdoor scenes.
The aesthetic principles that convey these values and capture these emotions include:
- Loosened brushwork, relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, rather than the finely finished details of Realism.
- Lightened palettes rather than the darker colors of Romanticism.
- Capturing of fleeting effects of individual moments and changing qualities of light by avoiding the clarity of form.
- Using open compositions and unusual visual angles (avoiding depictions of idealized forms and perfect symmetry) to represent the imperfections and constant changes in the world'
- Focusing on subjects from everyday life, such as scenes in cafés, boudoirs, and out in the street, as opposed to, portraits, historical events, and religious themes
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Cubism (1907-1922)
Cubism might be considered the first movement toward abstract and non-representational art. Cubism looks at an object from multiple perspectives and attempts to capture the object in fragments, and from a myriad of angles, in a single painting.
Cubism reached the height of its influence during World War I, a time of great devastation that changed the way people experienced space, movement, and time in the modern world. The invention of the steamship at the end of the 19th-century also made trans-continental travel much more available.
Cubism captures the fractured sentiment prevalent in a rapidly changing world, and drew much inspiration from Islamic art, on the Iberian peninsula, and African arts, both of which utilized abstract, or simplified, representations of the human body.
The aesthetic principles of Cubism that capture these cultural values include:
- Shifting the color palette to earth tones and muted grays, often monochromatic, which reduces the clarity between the fragmented shapes of figures, and objects.
- Abandoning linear perspective and achieving a flatter, less vast sense of space.
- Exploring open form so that figures and objects pierce one another, letting the space flow through them, and blending background into the foreground.
- Breaking apart objects and bodies into geometric, often disproportionate, forms and showing objects from various angles.
- The use of collage, pasting pieces of newspaper, wallpaper, tickets, cigarette packages, or other materials to the canvas.
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Abstract Expressionism (1943-1965)
As World War II came to a close, the world was once again in upheaval. The post-war mood of anxiety and trauma inspired a new style of completely non-representational, and abstract art.
Abstract Expressionism captures the struggle between self-expression and the chaos of the subconscious. The abstract aesthetic is considered anarchic and rebellious, it is monumental in scale, dramatic, and romantic in mood, and expresses a rugged freedom.
With a need to express the chaotic inner turmoil that seemed to be universal, Abstract Expressionism became a movement where the process was as important as the product. The canvas began to function as an arena in which to act, rather than space on which to reproduce or analyze real, or imagined, objects. This style of art was viewed as an event, rather than as a static picture.
The aesthetic principles that define Abstract Expressionism include:
- Increasingly reductive style that removed representational objects, and limited composition to the bare elements such as line, color, and texture.
- Extreme freedom and spontaneity in technique and execution;
- The use of color as an expressive, emotional object in its own right, often comprised of abstract fields of color.
- Brush strokes that might be replaced by paint that is dripped, splattered, or flung at the canvas, that captured emotional turmoil.
- Abandoning the conventional idea of composition, replacing distinguishable objects with a single unified, undifferentiated field, network, or other images that exist in an unstructured space.
- Embracing chaos, yet balanced by an impulse toward control.
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Lesson Summary
Aesthetic principles that distinguish one art movement from the next, change continuously, to reflect the cultural values and current events that surround the making of art. The way that the elements of a composition are manipulated by artists, to reflect or challenge those values and ideas, define the aesthetic principles of an art movement.
Impressionism, Cubism, and Abstract Expressionism are three distinct movements with very clear, and divergent, aesthetic principles.
Impressionism is characterized by loose brushwork, lightened color palettes capturing the ephemeral moments of changes in light, open compositions, and subjects that come from everyday life.
Cubism is characterized by muted and monochromatic color palettes, abandonment of linear perspective, obscuring the line between foreground and background, representing objects in fragmented and geometric shapes, and the use of collages.
Abstract Expressionism is characterized by extreme abstraction, and non-representational use of the elements of art, freedom, and spontaneity in technique, color as expressive of emotion, loose brushstrokes or paint that is dripped or flung, and an undifferentiated field of color and texture as the composition balances chaos and control.
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