Chapter 3: Themes of Art

Thomas Cole. The Oxbrow

- American painters used the American landscape as a subject

Yayoi Kusama. Love is Calling

- An installation - One of Kusama's hallucinations turned into art - Infinity mirror room; Kusama records herself reciting a love poem

1. The Sacred Realm

- Art theme revolves around spiritual beliefs - These sorts of arts cannot be seen visually with the human eye - Religious images help give concrete form to abstract ideas

Sahibdan and Workshop. Ramas

- Artists used space cells to tell a story - *Space Cells*: an area within a work of art referred to as "painting within a painting" used for visual narration of a story

4. Looking Outward: The Here and Now

- Artwork dealing with everyday life, here and now - The artist's visual concerns are often close to their personal world

Robert Rauschenburg. Windward

- Collage of paint and sculpture - Theme of raising up

Robert Smithson. Spiral Jetty

- Earthwork, in the Great Salt Lake, Utah - Created with rocks and earth - Salt crystal formation - Different tints of red and pink

Hieronymas Bosch. The Garden of Earthly Delight

- Fantasy theme work inspired by folklore, literature, and astrology - *Triptych*: painting split into 3 panels - When closed it's creation of the world - When opened Paradise of Eden (left) and Hell (right) - Garden of Earthly Delights (center) ~ Paradise lost; mankind turned to sin

Cimabue. Madonna Enthroned

- Mary with her son - Surrounded by angels and spiritual messengers - Sits on her her - Christ child - Sign of benediction (Jesus' right hand in form of prayer) - Tempera on wood

Rathnasambhava. The Transcendent Buddha of the South. Tibet

- One of the transcendent Buddhas - Surrounded by bodhisattvas - Sitting on a lotus throne - Created by opaque water color on cloth

The Great Pyramids. Giza, Egypt

- Pharaoh was a link between the divine and Earth - Tombs that were equipped with everything they would need in the afterlife - Welfare of the country and the universe depended on the goodwill of the gods

Pablo Picasso. Guernica

- Picasso, a Spaniard, was commissioned by the French gov't to provide a painting of the Paris World Fair - This is his reaction to the brutality of war - His protest against the bombing of a civilian population - Shades of black and white like a newspaper photograph

Meta Warrick Faller. Talking Skull

- Reaching beyond - Depiction of boy's wish to communicate with the dead - Fuller was an African-American artist who made art to reconnect with her heritage

Similarities

- Sacred theme - Same composition - Central figure is larger - symbolic hand gestures - Created in same century - Ex. of iconography - halos

8. Art and Art

- This theme explores the use studying other works of art and creating art with other work's similar styles and movement - Learning, making, and viewing it

Frida Kahlo. Self Portrait with monkeys

- Well-known for her self-portraits - Her experience as a woman, as an artist, as a Mexican

John Baldessari. Six Colorful Inside Jobs

- Windowless room painted a different color each day for 6 days - Recorded for camera - Used primary and secondary colors of the color wheel - Seems like a flat image - 6 days: the creation - It's about art itself

5. Looking Inward: The Human Experience

Addresses what it's like to be human and questions that many humans ask like "Who am I?"

6. Invention and Fantasy

Art that is the product of imagination, dreams, fantasy, and daydreaming

3. Stories and Histories

Artists sometimes use stories as subject matter to express cultural history or shared experience

2. Politics and Social Order

Political art and social statements often intertwine and reflect nature of society

7. Natural World

Theme deals with our relationship to nature and the artist's use of subject matter

Themes of art

Themes and purposes may differ within a work of art A work of art may reflect more than one