Impressionism was a period which emerged in the Nineteenth century and was prominent during the 1870s and

1880s.
Impressionistic literature characteristically detailed the author's impression (idea, opinion, or feeling about something) regarding a
scene. Impressionism is sometimes related to symbolism given that impressionists characteristically offer a description of life using
emotions and sensations.

Expressionism was a period which emerged during the late Nineteenth century and moved into the early Twentieth. This movement
was most prominent from 1910 to 1925. Expressionistic literature characteristically detailed

distorted objective features of the sensory world using symbolism and dream-like elements in their works illustrating the alienating
and often emotionally overwhelmed sensibilities.

While both movements relied upon the senses, Expressionists focused upon the overwhelming aspects of emotions while
Impressionists used emotions to describe life in general.

Basically, Expressionists are using their emotions to define their words and Impressionists are using their words to define their
emotions.

General Overview

The Expressionist movement started in Germany. These artists wanted to paint about emotion. It could be anger, anxiety, fear, or
peacefulness. This wasn't a completely new idea in art. Other artists like Vincent van Gogh had been doing the same thing. However,
this was the first time this type of art had been given a name.

When was the Expressionism movement?

The Expressionist movement occurred during the early part of the 1900s.

What are the characteristics of Expressionism?

Expressionist art tried to convey emotion and meaning rather than reality. Each artist had their own unique way of "expressing"
their emotions in their art. In order to express emotion, the subjects are often distorted or exaggerated. At the same time colors are
often vivid and shocking.

Examples of Expressionist Art

The Scream (Edvard Munch)

This painting shows a man standing on a bridge. His hands are on his face and he is screaming. The sky behind him is red and
swirling. The picture expresses the emotion of a person alone in their anguish and anxiety. Munch made four versions of this picture.
One of them sold for over $119 million in 2012.

The Scream
(Click image to see larger version)
 The Large Red Horses (Franz Marc)

The Large Red Horses uses color and movement to express the energy and power of nature. Franz Marc often used colors to
represent certain emotions; blue meant spirituality, yellow femininity, and red power and violence. He also painted a lot of pictures
of horses and other animals.

The Large Red Horses

(Click image to see larger version)

Lady in a Green Jacket (August Macke)

In this painting a lady is standing in the foreground wearing a dark green jacket. She is looking sort of down and to the side. There
are two couples in the background walking away from her. You get the feeling that maybe she is lonely or has lost someone recently.
One of the ladies in the background has turned to look back at her, perhaps feeling sorry for her.

Lady in a Green Jacket

(Click image to see larger version)

Famous Expressionist Artists

Max Beckman - Beckman was a German painter who was against the Expressionist movement. However, many of his paintings are
described as Expressionist.
James Ensor - A Dutch painter who had great influence on the Expressionist movement in Germany.
Oskar Kokoschka - An Austrian artist whose artwork was displayed in the German magazine The Storm when Expressionism became
a true art movement.
August Macke - A leading member of the Expressionist group The Blue Rider in Germany, he also painted some Abstract Art.
Franz Marc - A founding member of The Blue Rider group, Franz Marc was one of the leaders in the Expressionist movement.
Edvard Munch - A Symbolist and Expressionist, Munch is best known for his famous painting The Scream.
 Egon Schiele - An early adopter of Expressionism, Egon died at the young age of 28.

Interesting Facts about Expressionism

Another movement was taking place in France at the same time called Fauvism. It was lead by artist Henri Matisse.
Groups of Expressionist artists formed in Germany. One was called The Bridge and the other The Blue Rider.
Many Expressionist artists also overlap into other movements such as Fauvism, Symbolism, Abstract Art, and Surrealism.
There was also Expressionist literature, dance, sculpture, music, and theatre.
Many of the German Expressionists artists had to flee Germany during World War II.

Louis H. Sullivan (1856-1924) was one of the most influential architects to come out of the Chicago School of architecture in the late
1800s. He is often called the father of the skyscraper, the prophet of modern architecture and conceived the most famous
phrase ever to come out of his profession, form follows function (or, more accurately, form ever follows function). Among his
most outstanding surviving works are the Auditorium Theater, the Carson, Pirie Scott department store, and the Charnley House in
Chicago, the Wainwright Building and Union Trust Building in St. Louis, the Guaranty Building in Buffalo, New York, and eight small
Jewel Box banks that are among the most treasured pieces of historic architecture in the United States.

Louis Sullivan was committed to establishing an authentic, American style of architecture, free of historic imitations like the Beaux
Arts style that fellow Chicagoan Daniel Burnham of the firm Burnham and Root helped make wildly popular as a result of the Worlds
Columbian Exposition of 1893. Sullivans most profound influence can be found in the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, who spent more
than six years as Sullivans chief draftsman before going on his own to advance Sullivans idea of American architecture into his
Prairie Houses and, more generally, the Prairie School of the early 1900s.

Louis Sullivans architecture is a mixture of plain geometry and undisguised massing punctuated with elaborate pockets of
ornamentation in stone, wood and terra cotta. Fragments of his ornamentation hang in some of the most prestigious museums in
the world, including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Museum of Modern Art in New York. He died
in 1924, penniless and forgotten to the public, and was buried in Chicagos Graceland Cemetery.

Functionalism
The notion of functional art, most actively promoted by German writers and termed by them Zweckkunst, is most appropriately
related to architectural theory under three headings, namely (1) the idea that no building is beautiful unless it properly fulfills its
function, (2) the idea that if a building fulfills its function it is ipso facto beautiful, and (3) the idea that, since form relates to
function, all artifacts, including buildings, are a species of industrial, or applied, art (known in German as Kunstgewerbe).

"Nature contains the elements, in colour and form, of all pictures, as the keyboard contains the notes of all music. But the artist is
born to pick, and choose, and group with science, these elements, that the result may be beautiful - as the musician gathers his notes,
and forms his chords, until he bring forth harmony."

James McNeill Whistler

Key Characteristics of Formalist Art Theory

A painting's form is composed of its basic elements: color, line, composition, and texture. These elements constitute the
fundamental language used by formalist art critics to examine and analyze works of art.

Whether an artwork is a pure abstraction or representational, a formalist looks for the same basic elements and judges a painting's
value based on the artist's ability to achieve a cohesive balance in the composition.

If a painting is deemed deficient in value, it was because the artist had failed to create a visual balance of the formal painterly
elements.
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Plato's Theory of Forms

Philosopher Plato developed a "Theory of Forms" based on the idea of eidos, roughly translated to mean "stature" or "appearance."
Plato applied the term broadly in his various dialogs to suggest a rudimentary universal language. Every earthly object, he posited,
whether tangible (like a chair) or abstract (like human virtue), shared one aspect: they all had a form.
Plato's theory of Forms can be best understood through his "Allegory of the Cave." He envisioned a cave which held prisoners who
had been held captive their entire lives; all they could see were the shadows of workers cast along the cave's walls, and all they
could hear were the echoes of their voices resonating throughout the cave. Since this was all they knew, the prisoners perceived
these shadows and echoes as the actual form of real objects and were therefore completely unaware that those forms were just
mimicries of the real things. Plato ultimately stated that the prisoners' perception of things was not false; by their understanding of
the world, the shadows and echoes were the actual forms, just as a painting of a woman is as real, if not more real, than the actual
woman who is depicted on the canvas.
In the early twentieth century, modern artists experimenting with styles of Fauvism,Expressionism, and Surrealism were influenced
by many of the problems raised in Plato's "Theory of Forms." The most profound of these problems was humankind's attempt to
reconcile permanence and change, which invited the following questions: how can the world appear to be both permanent and
changing? If the world we perceive through the senses seems to be always changing and the world that we perceive through the
mind seems to be permanent and unchanging, then which of these perceptions is more real, and how can we explain the existence
of both?

Pieter Cornelis "Piet" Mondriaan, after 1906 Mondrian (Dutch pronunciation: [pit mndrijan], later [mndrijn]; March 7, 1872
February 1, 1944) was a Dutch painter.

He was an important contributor to the De Stijl art movement and group, which was founded by Theo van Doesburg. He evolved
a non-representational form which he termed neoplasticism. This consisted of white ground, upon which was painted a grid of
vertical and horizontal black lines and the three primary colors. [1]

Between his 1905 painting, The River Amstel, and his 1907 Amaryllis, Mondrian changed the spelling of his signature from
Mondriaan to Mondrian.[2]