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.com ...the link between you, the visual artist, and the manufacturer of art materials. Established 1990 |
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Starting with World War I and its aftermath, avant-garde artists became extremely interested in modern tools and technology as they applied to the development of their artwork. It was only natural that the airbrush would be one of these tools and airbrush technique one of the technologies. This interest was developed simultaneously in the U.S. and in Europe, and two movements that particularly embraced the airbrush were Dada-- exemplified by the artist Man Ray--and the Bauhaus School in Germany--with Wassily Kandinsky.
In the U.S., Man Ray, the only American Dadaist, started to utilize the airbrush to develop paintings, both entirely and partially, in 1917. Between then and 1919, he produced a series of "aerographs." These were developed using found objects, such as tools, paper clips, or paper cutouts that were simply used as stencils and sprayed around or into with the airbrush to create repeated images--both opaque and transparent--that would lend themselves to the look of Cubism. (There is a fine collection of these works at the Art Institute of Chicago.) It has been said that Man Ray was primarily interested in producing paintings and painted sculpture with a high-gloss, machine-like finish. Because the paint is sprayed onto the surface of the artwork, there are no brush strokes, and this lends it an industrial appearance. Man Ray learned to use the airbrush while working for an advertising agency in New York City.
In 1915 Man Ray met Marcel Duchamp, who had moved to the U.S. to live out the war. His great painting, "Nude Descending the Staircase," had been exhibited in 1913 at the famed Armory Show. The impact of this work on Man Ray was tremendous, and he became a disciple of Duchamp's and was affiliated, along with many contemporary artists living in New York at the time, with the Gallery 291, which was run by photographer Alfred Stieglitz. In 1921 he collaborated with Duchamp to publish an almanac entitled New York Dada. That same year, they moved to Paris where Duchamp introduced Man Ray to the French Dadaists and Surrealists.
In Germany in early 1919, architect Walter Gropius was appointed head of a new school that resulted from the merger of two older institutions--the School of Applied Art and the Weimer Academy of Art. The school was called Das Bauhaus, referring to the medieval builder's association in which artists and artisans worked together under a master builder. Classes were transformed into workshops under the guidance of both craftspeople and artists, giving the Bauhaus a direct tie to the arts and crafts movement, which preceded it.
Students at the Bauhaus were trained in every aspect of art and technology, from chemistry to building scaffolds in order to create murals. They were taught traditional techniques such as fresco on one hand, and they explored spray-painting techniques on the other. One of their workshops, overseen by Wassily Kandinsky, was the Bauhaus wall painting workshop, in which students learned how to apply images on large surfaces using stencils in conjunction with spray gun and airbrush techniques. During that time, Kandinsky's own work was developed with airbrush techniques. Some of his works were entirely airbrushed, while others combined airbrush with various painting techniques.
In 1933, the Nazis closed down the Bauhaus, as it was deemed a breeding ground for communists. With all the uncertainty in Europe, most of the participants in the leading art movements of the time resettled in the U.S., where in 1937 the New Bauhaus was founded in Chicago--ironically the home of the American airbrush industry.
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Copyright ARTtalk Vol. 11 No. 6 -- April 2001