Art Test #3

Caspar David Friedrich, Monk by the Sea

1809, Germany, Romanticism - Oil on canvas - Sky takes up majority of canvas - Appears cold and clear at the top and becomes much darker toward the bottom of the painting (Baltic Ocean below is so cold, looks almost black) Can directly feel the power of nature and the ocean - Notion of the sublime is present and common within the end of the 18th and 19th centuries -Sublime: a beauty that is actually all inspiring through its power and its terror and shows God's presence in our world (vastness of nature and the shows how man is almost powerless and small) - Ironic because the 19th century typically denotes man's control over nature -- this painting does NOT show that. Nature is more powerful - Even during the industrial revolution, during technological advances, this painting humbles that idea

Francisco Goya, Third of May 1808

1814, Spain, Romanticism - Oil on canvas - Large painting - Extreme contrast of light and dark (divided canvas into zones) - Eyes are drawn to the figure in white (who is about to be shot) and our eye is left down to the gunman on the bottom of the hill - Depth is present with light and detail - Scale is present - buildings are smaller in distance compared to subjects in front - Romanticism : movement, fluid brush strokes, promotes emotion and makes you feel the presence of the artist - Have empathy for subjects in painting; promotes feeling - Historical background: soldiers killing a group of innocent Spanish people by Napoleon's army

Theodore Gericault, The Raft of the Medusa

1818-1819, France, Romanticism - Oil on canvas - Not biblical or drawn on Ancient history (which is neo-classisism) - Naturalism and realism is depicted, but some parts of it is not real. Bodies are based off of Ancient Greek and Roman sculptures and there is an organized pyramid of figures (was not actually like this in real-life when this event occurred) - IS Romanticism (concerned with human emotion & has fluid brushwork and an emphasis on movement) - 400 people were on board the Medusa, trying to reclaim Senegal from the British, as a French colony

John Constable, The Haywain

1821, England, Romanticism - Oil on canvas - Exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1824 - He is, in fact, largely responsible for reviving the importance of landscape painting in the 19th century. A key event, when it is remembered that landscape would become the primary subject of the Impressionists later in the century. - The Hay Wain does include an element of genre (the depiction of a common scene), that is the farm hand taking his horse and wagon (or wain) across the stream. But this action is minor and seems to offer the viewer the barest of pretenses for what is virtually a pure landscape. Unlike the later Impressionists, Constable's large polished canvases were painted in his studio.

Eugene Delaxcroix, Death of Sardanapalus

1827, France, Romanticism - Neoclassical: very rigorous construction of space where you can clearly see where everything is in relationship to everything else - oil on canvas - huge canvas - height of romantic painting - Destroys everything that he finds pleasure in - End of his possessions, painting about corruption, violence and luxury - we have a painting FULL of objects (all the king's luxurious possessions such as gold, jewels and horses) and the space isn't strategically constructed rather filled up - Neoclassical paintings are very rational - Uses "brilliant" color in this painting that gives a passionate and emotional look ; neoclassical paintings are more normal toned

J.M.W Turner, Rain, Steam, and Speed

1844, England, Romanticism - Oil on canvas - Time when the railway was a brand-new way of traveling & was changing society dramatically by connecting cities and people - most significant symbol of industrialisation - Captures this feeling due to the speed at which the train is approaching & the rain pounding - You, as the viewer, can almost FEEL the wetness of the day and hear the sound of the train -Highlights contrast between old, rural England this changing industrial society - Atmospheric effects, thick paint & very abstract (a little unreadable) - Mostly about industrialisation and this powerful new "thing" and the portrayal between the relationship between man and nature (reminds us of the abstraction of the 20th century in many ways)

Gustave Courbet, The Stone Breakers

1849, France, realism - Oil on canvas - Shows the artist's concern for the plight of the poor is evident. Here, two figures labor to break and remove stone from a road that is being built. In our age of powerful jackhammers and bulldozers, such work is reserved as punishment for chain-gangs. - Millet idealized peasants, but Courbet depicts figures in tattered clothes - only upper right corner shows blue sky, create isolation of laborers, physically and emotionally trapped -Courbet wants to show what is "real,": young boy and old man show accurate account of abuse for French rural life

Jean-Francois Millet, The Gleaners

1857, France, Realism - Oil on canvas - Oddly soft painting, colors are muted and the brush is not tight (no hard lines) - The three women are gleaners (going into the field after a harvest and picking up the remains -- rural beggers), not in rags, below horizon line - Can see army of harvesters in the background - Can see the hierarchy-- supervisor on horseback overseeing the operation - idolizing them, not as terrible as other artists

Honore Daumier, Third-Class Carriage

1862, France, realism - Oil on canvas - As a graphic artist and painter, Daumier chronicled the impact of industrialization on modern urban life in mid-nineteenth-century Paris. - Amplifies the subject of a lithograph, hardship of third-class railway travelers - Bathed in light, the nursing mother, elderly woman, and sleeping boy emanate a serenity not often associated with public transport. - Third-class railway carriages were cramped, dirty, open compartments with hard benches, filled with those who could not afford second or first-class tickets

Edouard Manet, Luncheon on the Grass

1863, France, realism - Oil on canvas - Woman in the distance getting water and there is fruit in the foreground - Painting was exhibited at the Salon de Refuses (in the collection of rejected artwork) - Painting caused a lot of controversy: based on what and how it was portrayed -The figures are modern Parisian figures -- and by placing a nude woman in the painting who was not seen in mythology creates discomfort for the viewer -These figures do not look idealized or timeless, but normal people and no one seems to really be interacting & the woman looks directly at the audience which promotes discomfort -Contains many spatial errors & the lighting wasn't as natural

Berthe Morisot, Villa at the Seaside

1874, France, Impressionism - Oil on canvas - As leisurely Europeans shifted their focus from spas to the sea in the 19th Century, the beach became a place of fashion, socializing and class distinction - Berthe Morisot, in her painting of a wealthy vacationer at the shore, emphasises the sitter's class not only through her expensive clothing, but via the expansive private terrace at the hotel from which she looks out to sea. (The beach, then as now, was a public thoroughfare.) - Morisot was depicting the new phenomenon of villégiature, or holidaying: the subject of the painting isn't the sea, but the woman who travels there.

Edgar Degas, La Place de la Concorde

1875, France, impressionism - oil on canvas - Man in painting walking w two daughters - casual scene of daily life in the Parisian square - More like popular illustration than impressionists, willingness to make the politics of form a visible, rather than suppressed

*Pierre- Auguste Renoir, Le Moulin de la Galette

1876, France, impressionism - oil on canvas - Scene of people dancing and socializing in a place that was frequented by different people of different backgrounds - Seems to be drawn to intimacy, lots of conversations and interactions occurring between groups - Perfect representation of Impressionism: catching fleeting visual moments (of leisure?) - Eye is not drawn to any one place in this painting - All figures are spread across and this is done by color and the way the artist painted (loose brushwork -- capturing a moment in society which is what impressionism meant) this violated more traditional work by academics where there were fine lines

Claude Monet, Saint-Lazare Train Station

1877, France, impressionism - Oil on canvas - Large train station in Paris - Carries people out to suburbs and vacation spots, people of different, backgrounds mix, both modern conepts - Smoke looks as it dissolves in the painting and light is pouring through the opening at the top of the shed - Figures themselves you can't make out faces and reducing the human figure itself (human was center of academic paintings -- Impressionists move away from that) - focus on urban landscape, optical experience of light and atmosphere

Georges Seurat, A Sunday on La Grande Jatte

1884-1886, France, Post-impressionism - Oil on canvas - Georges Seurat depicted people relaxing in a suburban park on an island in the Seine River called La Grande Jatte. - The artist worked on the painting in several campaigns, beginning in 1884 with a layer of small horizontal brushstrokes of complementary colors. He later added small dots, also in complementary colors, that appear as solid and luminous forms when seen from a distance. -Seurat's use of this highly systematic and "scientific" technique, subsequently called Pointillism, distinguished his art from the more intuitive approach to painting used by the Impressionists. - Rigorous order of brushwork

Paul Gauguin, Vision after the Sermon, or Jacob Wrestling with the Angel

1888, France, post-impressionism - Oil on canvas - non-naturalistic landscape (newly developed idea), distortion of shape, blocks of color, influence of Japanese prints - Vividly colored and allows color to work in an abstract way - Wrestling match → red is powerful -Repressed use of shadows -Painting was "abstract" ~ as it could have been during this time -Peasants in the foreground -- not a religious painting but it's ABOUT people having a religious experience -Spectator religious painting -- tree in painting separates the human from the spiritual

Vincent Van Gogh, Le Berceuse

1889, France, post impressionism - Oil on canvas - Portrait of women - La Berceuse," meaning "lullaby, or woman who rocks the cradle," indicated by the rope held in the sitter's hand, which is attached to the unseen cradle. - moving towards the viewer, creating a sense of completeness and inclusion - The rope Roulin holds, to rock a baby's cradle, reaches towards the viewer, making you the loved and guarded infant - La Berceuse uses colour musically to create the pacifying effect of a lullaby with a calming use of complementary colours, according to the colour theories held by Van Gogh. - g green skirt that pours generously out of the painting is balanced by the bright red floor; the gold and bronze of Roulin's face and rounded hair seem designed as part of the decorative scheme of the wallpaper, with its red and green pattern and starbursts of white flowers.

Vincent van Gogh, Wheat Field with Reaper and Sun

1889, France, post-impressionism - Oil on canvas - Van Gogh painted this walled field from his hospital room. For the first few months that he was there, he was not allowed to leave the grounds. - The reaper labours in the heat of the sun. The wheat, painted with thick gobs of yellow, undulates around him. For Van Gogh, wheat was a symbol of the eternal cycle of nature and the transience of life. He saw the reaper as 'the image of death . . . in this sense that humanity would be the wheat being reaped.' - He added, however, that this death was 'almost smiling. It's all yellow except for a line of violet hills - a pale, blond yellow. I myself find that funny, that I saw it like that through the iron bars of a cell.'

Paul Gauguin, Day of the God

1894, France, Post-impressionism - Oil on canvas - Gauguin's Post-Impressionist style, defined by a decreasing tendency to depict real objects and the expressive use of flat, curving shapes of vibrant color, influenced many abstract painters of the early 20th century. - the composition is divided into three horizontal bands - he top, islanders perform a ritual near a towering sculpture. Like many figures in Gauguin's Tahitian images, the monumental sculpture was derived not from local religion but from photographs of carved reliefs adorning the Buddhist temple complex at Borobudur - in the middle band, three symmetrically arranged figures are placed against a field of pink earth in poses that may signify birth, life, and death.

Paul Cezanne, Mount Saint- Victoire

1902, France, post-impressionism - Oil on canvas - Mountain in the south of France -Impressionism is normally seen as on sight and rather rapidly, but this was not. -Painting feels a little unfinished - trees and mountains seem to be unformed -Paint is present throughout the canvas that all of it rises to the surface -Not about capturing a transatory effect of life and atmosphere (like the Impressionists), rather capturing an image over a long period of time

Henri Matisse, Woman with the Hat

1905, France, expressionism - Oil on canvas - rst exhibited at the 1905 Salon d'Automne in Paris, Women with a Hat (Femme au chapeau) was at the center of the controversy that led to the christening of the first modern art movement of the twentieth century - Fauvism. The term fauve ("wild beast"), coined by an art critic, became forever associated with the artists who exhibited their brightly colored canvases in the central gallery (dubbed the cage centrale) of the Grand Palais. -stylistic change from the regulated brushstrokes of Matisse's earlier work to a more expressive individual style -His use of non-naturalistic colors and loose brushwork, which contributed to a sketchy or "unfinished" quality, seemed shocking to the viewers of the day. - The artist's wife, Amélie, posed for this half-length portrait. She is depicted in an elaborate outfit with classic attributes of the French bourgeoisie: a gloved arm holding a fan and an elaborate hat perched atop her head.

Andre Derain, The Dance

1906, France, expressionism - Oil on canvas - A founding member of Fauvism, Andre Derain is known for his innovative landscape and cityscape paintings in which he transforms the subject with bold and largely unrealistic colors - The dance represents Arcadian landscape with dancing figures, rooted in classical primitive tradition. - It evokes an amalgamation of traditions including Folk, African, and Romanesque art. Derain began work on this painting after seeing a Gauguin retrospective. The influence of Gauguin's primitive oeuvre is seen plainly in the use of bold, flat colors, stylized elements (like the snake and the leaves), the choice to focus on an exotic landscape and the specific inclusion of a seated figure in the background almost identical to the one painted by Gauguin.

Pablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon

1907, France, cubism - oil on canvas - five nude female prostitutes, brothel - Each figure is depicted in a disconcerting confrontational manner and none is conventionally feminine. The women appear as slightly menacing and rendered with angular and disjointed body shapes. - perspective in favor of a flat, two-dimensional picture plane, Picasso makes a radical departure from traditional European painting

Georges Braque, Houses at L'estaque

1908, France, Cubism - Oil on canvas -French painter, collagist and sculptor Georges Braque is, along with Pablo Picasso, renowned as the co-founder of Cubism, which revolutionized 20th-century painting. In his work, objects are fragmented and reconstructed into geometric forms, fracturing the picture plane in order to explore a variety of viewpoints - structure and composition is more important than transcribing a feeling of reality - scattered shapes and the limited use of color - essentially green and ocher

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, The Street

1908, Germany, expressionism - Oil on canvas - Kirchner heightened the colors of this city scene, depicting the figures with masklike faces and vacant eyes in order to capture the excitement and psychological alienation wrought by modernization." - The crowded city street—here, Dresden's fashionable and wealthy Königstrasse (King Street)—was a frequent subject for artists in the German Expressionist collective Die Brücke (The Bridge), which Kirchner helped found in 1905.

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Girl Under a Japanese Umbrella

1909, Germany, expressionism - Oil on canvas - Nude woman promotes unsettling effects of psychological tension and eroticism - Kirchner's use of color for visual impact may be seen in Girl under Japanese Umbrella (1906) and Artist and His Model (1907), works that show a superficial affinity with the paintings of Henri Matisse and the Fauves in France. But the jagged outlines of Kirchner's forms and the wary expressions of the faces create a threatening mood that is absent in Fauvist works.

Pablo Picasso, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler

1910, France, Cubism - German-born art dealer portrayed, he opened art gallery in paris, purchased majority of cubism, wrote book about cubism - Kahnweiler represents a further incursion into the break-up of form to the point at which the sitter seems barely discernible, Kahnweiler's face can just about be picked out in the upper-right of the image, identifiable mainly by the inclusion of a wave of hair and a simple line to suggest a moustache - wo similar lines in the lower centre of the image register his watch chain, whilst his clasped hands can be seen at bottom-centre

Henri Matisse, The Dance

1910, France, expressionism - Oil on canvas - The figures express the light pleasure and joy that was so much a part of the earlier Fauve masterpiece. The figures are drawn loosely, with almost no interior definition. They have been likened to bean bag dolls because of their formless and unrestricted movements. The bodies certainly don't seem to be restrained by way

George Braque, The Portuguese

1911, France, Cubism - oil on canvas - neither naturalistic nor conventional, fractured forms, clear edged surfaces, on the picture plane—not, recessed in space, nearly monochrome, not a portrait of a portuguese musician, but rather an exploration of shapes -only realistic elements are stenciled letters and numbers - analytical cubism, first phase of cubism, worked w picasso to develop

Vasily Kandinsky, Composition V

1911, Germany, Abstraction - Oil on canvas - diversity of problems, lack of space in traditional sense, no volume or interstices, no foreground or background, no light or atmosphere - another dramatic expression of his preoccupation with death and resurrection - dominating black line and its iconographical meaning

Vasily Kandinsky, final study for cover of Der Blaue Reiter Almanach

1911, Germany, expressionsim - The name Der Blaue Reiter is widely considered to derive from a 1903 Symbolist canvas by Kandinsky. However, when Kandinsky painted that early canvas, perhaps indebted more to Gustav Klimt or Les Nabis, he had not yet developed the theory of color symbolism he would publish in Concerning the Spiritual in Art. His woodcut cover for Der Blaue Reiter's almanac (published in 1912) is thus more in keeping with the movement's aesthetic and ideals. First, the choice of the bold, flat, "primitive" woodcut format reveals Der Blaue Reiter's focus on direct representation and interest in Primitivism. The choice of the semi-abstract "blue rider," with the color blue symbolizing intense spirituality and the rider symbolizing transcendent mobility, makes Kandinsky's print into a visual manifesto of his key concepts.

Pablo Picasso, Still Life with Chair-Caning

1912, France, Cubism - Oval painting -Chain caning = woven material that seats are made out of , but it's not REAL chair caning. Instead, it is a collage. -Parisian table top -Letters "JOU" is present -- Picasso is playing with space -Still life elements located throughout the piece of art Shadow and reflection is present

Franz Marc, The Fate of the Animals

1913, Germany, expressionism - Oil on canvas - Vision of annihilation seen through the eyes of the animals -sharp angles, jagged shapes= relationship between man and nature - Fantasy is used, dark and foreboding - animals are panicked, terror expressed in bodies and faces - ultimately an apocalyptic vision of the looming war, Marc manages to create balance and order -Marc borrowed from the Futurists in his painting style suggests that he had a positive view of the destruction he depicted. Since destruction was a necessary step before society could be rebuilt, this powerful image could be read as not only tragedy and decimation, but as progress.

Piet Mondrian, Composition No. 10 in black and white

1915, Netherlands, Abstraction - oil on canvas - series of drawings inspired by the sea and the breakwaters - the painting is the first in which Mondriaan uses exclusively black and white. - abstract, elliptical composition of short, horizontal and vertical black lines. The rolling waves can be seen in the long, straight horizontals in the middle of the painting, while the abstraction of a breakwater is recognizable in the vertical lines at the bottom of the painting. - reduces the rhythm of the waves and their breaking to a pure and simple pattern of lines, each precisely determinate in length and interval, like notes in a musical score.

Kazimir Malevich, Black Square

1915, Russia, Abstraction - First time someone made a painting that wasn't of something -first displayed the surface of the square was pristine and pure; now the black paint has cracked revealing the white ground like mortar in crazy paving -Black Square is radically non-representational -The slab of black paint that dominates the canvas works as grand refusal, repudiating nature in favour of abstraction. -The experience of viewing the painting thus involves a feeling of pain brought about by the breakdown of representation followed by a powerful sense of relief, even elation, at the thought that the formless or massive can nevertheless be grasped as a mode of reason.

Hans Arp, Collage Arranged According the Laws of Chance

1916, Zurich, Dada - Torn and pasted paper - Famous collage - work consists of fragments of colored paper arranged in a random configuration or indeterminacy - By using his hands to rip the paper instead of a more precise tool, the artist surrendered an increased level of control, embracing the jagged contours of the squares. - Completely abstract work - not arranged in any artistic intention - Not self-expression or skill , Created according to the laws of chance

Photograph of Hugo Ball in costume, reciting a poem at the Cabaret Voltaire

1916, Zurich, Dada - oddness in action -Hugo Ball, Hans Arp, Tristan Tzara und Marcel Janco were the founders of the famous Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich (Switzerland) which is known to be "the cradle of dadaism". Dadaism was a cultural movement that involved visual arts, literature, poetry, theatre and graphic design. - basis of Dada is nonsense,after World War I, Dadaism was a way to express the confusion that was felt by many people as their world was turned upside down

Sophie Taueber Arp, Elementary Forms

1917, Zurich, Dada - Needlepoint -hang on the wall - Embroidery like a painting was an innovation - changed what material could be viewed as art - Taeuber-Arp takes radical notions of non-representational art and applies their tenets of color and form to traditional woman's work - Designs such as this allowed her to demonstrate her complex understanding of color and shape

Otto Dix, Prague Street

1920, Germany, Dada - oil on canvas -Biting commentary of the wait and its effects

Hannah Hoch, Cut with the Kitchen Knife through the last Weimar Beer Belly Cultural Epoch of Germany

1920, Germany, Dada - photomontage - Displayed in the First International Dada Fair Political chaos was occurring → hoch captured this within her work - People end up getting arrested and killed, and this is captured within this photomontage influenced by political corruption and chaos - Focusing on fragmentation of defining culture and most of these photos came from newspapers and magazines - There is a sense of movement and a mechanical feel and connecting that with the government

Piet Mondrian, Composition with Yellow, Red, Black, Blue and Gray

1920, Netherlands, Abstraction - Oil on canvas - limited palette with primary color, thick black horizontal and vertical lines - simplification of the pictorial elements was essential for Mondrian's creation of a new abstract art, distinct from Cubism and Futurism - asymmetrical, as in all of his mature paintings, with one large dominant block of color, here red, balanced by distribution of the smaller blocks of yellow, blue gray, and white around it

Thomas Hart Benton, Midwest, one of the ten panels from the mural America Today

1930, New York, Regionalism - Egg tempera with oil glazing over Permalba on a gesso ground on linen mounted to wood panels -Offering a panorama of American life throughout the 1920s - a boardroom on the third floor of the New School for Social Research, a center of progressive thought and education in Greenwich Village

Diego Rivera, The Making of a Fresco Showing the Building of a City

1931, San Francisco, Muralism - Fresco - Divided into six sections, narrative purpose - technical aspects of painting such as monumental work - Included a portrait of himself, real focus is a gigantic worker, an iconic representation of international working class

Joan Miro, Painting

1933, France, Surrealism - Oil on canvas -Using cutouts as the basis for a painting composition -Indefinite field of color

Meret Oppenheim, Object (Breakfast in Fur)

1936, France, Surrealism - fur covered cup, saucer, and spoon - The twenty-two year old Basel-born artist, Meret Oppenheim, had been in Paris for four years when, one day, she was at a café with Pablo Picasso and Dora Maar. Oppenheim was wearing a brass bracelet covered in fur when Picasso and Maar, who were admiring it, proclaimed, "Almost anything can be covered in fur!" As Oppenheim's tea grew cold, she jokingly asked the waiter for "more fur."

Jason Pollock, Autumn Rhythm: Number 30

1950, US, abstract expressionism - exemplifies the extraordinary balance between accident and control that Pollock maintained over his technique. - poured and dripped - artist's movements (flicking, splattering, and dribbling) or the lyrical, often spiritual, compositions they produced. - contrary visual rhythms and sensations: light and dark, thick and thin, heavy and buoyant, straight and curved, horizontal and vertical

Barnett Newman, Vir Heroicus Sublimis

1950-51, US - Oil on canvas - Man, heroic and sublime - refers to his essay: The sublime is now - Overwhelm the senses - Wanted viewers to see at a short distance - Newman believed deeply in the spiritual potential of abstract art

Max Ernst, Two Children are Threatened by a Nightingale

France, 1924, Surrealism - oil on canvas - blue sky dominates, red gate, female figure w small knife, man atop the roof - name brought on by fevered dream - Ernst retrospectively characterized this work as "a kind of farewell to a technique," referencing his Dada collages - Reminiscent of early Renaissance panel painting, particularly in its pronounced perspective, it includes some distinctly non-traditional additions: orange-red house