Западноевропейское искусство от Хогарта до Сальвадора Дали

6. This painting heralds the beginning of Cubism.

7. The individual forms – the characteristic swelling and distortion of the neck muscles or the reduction of the eyes to trapezoids -are not derived from nature.

8. The figure of extraordinary sculptural simplicity and beauty is enveloped in self-pity and helplessness.

a. Guernica

b. Three Musicians

c. Three Women at the Spring

d. Les Demoiselles d'Avignon

e. The Bottle ofSuze

f. Seated Woman

g. Absinthe Drinker

h. Salimbanques

V. Translate the text into English.

Эволюция искусства XX века наиболее ярко выражена в творчестве Пабло Пикассо.

Родившись в 1881 г. в маленьком испанском городке Малага, Пикассо уже в 1901 г. в Париже открывает свою первую персональную выставку, чтобы стать на последующие семьдесят лет центральной фигурой в западноевропейском искусстве. Период с 1901 по 1907 г. принято называть в его творчестве соответственно «голубым» (1901-1904) и «розовым» (1905 -1906). Картины, посвященные нищим, странствующим актерам, бродягам, выражают настроение усталости и обреченности. Они написаны в сине-зеленой гамме. С 1905 г., хотя темы остаются прежними, пространство заполняется розовато-голубоватой или золотистой дымкой.

Полотном «Авиньонские девушки» (1907) Пикассо ознаменовал рождение кубизма. В картине «Три женщины у источника» художник обращается к реалистическим формам. Пикассо отдал дань и сюрреализму, создав ряд произведений, чудовищно деформировав реальный образ человека.

Панно под названием «Герника» стало настоящим событием мировой художественной жизни. Эта композиция связала искусство Пикассо с жизнью всех народов, борющихся с насилием. До конца жизни Пикассо стремился раскрыть новые возможности искусства.

VI. Summarize the text.

VII. Topics for discussion.

1. Picasso's Blue and Rose periods.

2. Picasso's period of Cubism.

3. Picasso's paintings of social protest.

4. Picasso as the greatest artist of the XX-th century.

Unit XIX Salvador Dali (1904-1989)

Salvador Dali typifies in his art the Surrealist movement at its height in the 1930s. After his visit to Paris in 1928 Dali experimented briefly with semi-abstract forms, as he was then under the influence of Picasso. Soon Dali set out on his individual path, based on his study of Freud, which seemed to clarify to him his personal fantasies and obsessions. Dali began producing what he called «hand-coloured photographs of the subconscious.» His desire to «materialise images of concrete irrationality with the utmost imperialist fury of precision» resulted in pictures of a quality and brilliance that cannot be ignored, done in bright colour, with an exactitude of statement that at times recalls less his idols Vermeer and Velazquez than the technique of the Netherlandish masters of the fifteenth century. Dali's terrifying images are always brought home with tremendous force by the magical virtuosity of his draughtsmanship and colour.

The Persistence of Memory, of 1931, is one of Dali's most striking and best-known early Surrealist paintings. Dali said the idea for the work occurred to him while he was eating ripe Cam-embert cheese. The «wet watches», as they were termed by the astonished, horrified and fascinated New York public when the picture was first exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, are disturbing in their destruction of the very idea of time. Three watches lie or hang limply, and the fourth is devoured by ants while a severed chinless head – its tongue hanging from its nose, its enormous eyelashes extended on its cheeks – lies equally limp on a barren plain. In the background, rendered with hallucinatory clarity, are the rocky cliffs of a Catalan bay.

A contrast to this small picture is the larger and overpowering Soft Construction with Boiled Beans: Premonition of Civil War, painted in 1936. Monstrous fragments of humans – arms, a breast being squeezed by a clawlike hand, a convulsed and screaming head – tower against a desolate sky partly covered with filmy clouds. The rocky terrain in the foreground pullulates with beans, while above one clenched fist a tiny bearded man gazes disconsolately at the scene. One of the most frightful images in the entire history of art, this picture is nonetheless, endowed by Dali's astonishing skill with an unexpected and terrible beauty.

After considerable activity in the fields of stage design, jewellery design, and even shop window decoration, Dali moved to Christian art. His technique is brilliant and his fantasy is magical.

Make sure you know how to pronounce thefollowing words:

Surrealist; Camembert; Catalan; monstrous; Vermeer; Freud

Notes

The Persistence of Memory – «Постоянство памяти»

Soft Construction with Boiled Beans: Premonition of Civil War – «Мягкая конструкция с вареными бобами: предчувствие гражданской войны»