Expressionism

1) Out of all the videos, I chose “The Mystical North: Spanish Art from the 19th Century to the Present” and “Expressionism”. The reason I chose the first video is because I felt intrigued to learn about how the 19th century affected the way Spanish artist did their work. Due to my great knowledge in history, I also wanted to watch this video to see if any of the wars that were going on at this time affected what artists painted or created. In the second video titled “Expressionism” I remember reading about the term in the text and I wanted to understand it more and have a better visual of what the text was talking about. 2) “The Mystical North: Spanish Art from the 19th Century to the Present” carried very relevant and important information. One piece of information I found significant was the story behind Goya. His artwork in the beginning was happy and carefree but when he suffered an illness that left him deaf his paintings took a drastic turn. Goya began to express himself through darkness. His paintings became eerie and almost unpleasant. He seemed to forevermore have a negative view on life. One piece that I believe describes his dark side was when he painted women and children either being raped of murdered. This was during the time of the Spanish and French war, so he was able to show the true devastation of this time. As I watched “Expressionism”, Edvard Munch’s painting titled “After the Fall” greatly caught my attention. I found this piece to be interesting because it had to deal with the sexuality between men and women. This painting created great controversy when it was in an art gallery in Norway. The painting depicted the facial expressions of a woman after expressing her feelings to a man. However, this lead to her feeling lonely and empty (like her innocence was taken from her). Munch represents her pain through the colors white, black and red. 3) I believe both of the videos related very well to the chapter in the book. I feel this way because the book also went into detail on Spanish art and artists (how their works were affected by their time period), and also the meaning of “Expressionism” and what art or movements fell under this term. I feel the videos went into more detail and also made it easier to understand. I feel the videos were easier to understand because they gave a great amount of visuals to express the meanings talked about in the book. 4) As previously mentioned, I believe the videos were more helpful. The videos went into more detail than the book did. The videos talked about specific artists and went into detail about their life and struggles they encountered.