APAH #10

AFRICA

SEE APAH #9

The Oxbow (View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm)

c. 1836 CE, Thomas Cole Oil on canvas Cole was leader of the group of landscape painters called the Hudson River School. Funny how person who best paints American beauty was a born Brit. At first glance painting just seems like famous bend in CT river but it actually speaks of westward expansion. The viewer can clearly see that Cole used a diagonal line from lower right to upper left to divide into 2 unequal halves. Left side is sublime view that elicits danger and fear enhanced by the storm clouds. This part is also the nature created by God and untouched by man making it wild and untamed. On the right this peacefulness has changed and it has been taken over by agriculture and animals. Smoke from chimneys and boats on river. Thunderstorm threatens left side and on right it's sunny. Cole visually shows the benefits of this process. It's a change that's destined to happen and Cole shows it to positively alter the land. Cole painted himself in the lower part of the painting wearing a coat and hat and stands in front of a canvas.

Still Life in Studio

c. 1837 CE, Louis-Jacques-Mande Daguerre Daguerrotype Strong bold lines, looks like Dutch still life. Silver and alloy metal surface that was treated chemically to copy and keep images.

Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, Typhoon Coming On)

c. 1840, Joseph Mallord William Turner Oil on canvas From afar just notice the oranges and reds, but in the closest part to us you can see a foot with chains, carnage is right in front of us. Based on a poem, with a storm coming, threw the slaves overboard in order to claim insurance. Only see parts of their bodies with swirls of waves and colors. Sense of divine retribution. First owner of painting was to an abolitionist. People taking advantage of one another for money. Colors on the left are different than other: blues, whites, greens. Reflects the poems description.

Palace of Westminster (Houses of Parliament)

c. 1840-1870 CE, London, England, Charles Barry and Augustus W.N. Pugin (architects) Limestone masonry and glass Great fire burned down old one. Design had to be the historical style of either Gothic or Elizabethan which is why it looks much older than it is bc it's very English. Pugin loved Gothic: pure, true and Englishness. Modern era was ugly: industrialism. Uses the modern technology but appears older: Gothic revival, Victorian fantasy. Perpendicular Gothic which parallels Westminster Abbey: large windows, tracery and lace work that divides the glass up. Architect is maximizing the window space. Barry's interest in the classical with rhythm and balance.

The Stone Breakers

c. 1849 CE, Gustave Courbet (destroyed in 1945) oil on canvas Realist style, artist's concern for the plight of the poor is evident. Courbet depicts figures in ripped and tattered clothing. A patch of blue sky appears to isolate the workers and to symbolize that they are physically and economically trapped.

Nadar Raising Photography to the Height of Art

c. 1862 CE, Honore Daumier Lithograph Mocks the commodity of photography, a parody of photography. Preoccupation with Nadar, the photographer who wanted to make it a legit art form.

Olympia

c. 1863 CE, Edouard Manet Oil on canvas Realism: Depicts middle class. She was a prostitute, part of an unspoken part of society. Copy of Titian's Venus of Urbino but stripping away academic technique, challenges the established ideas. Unlike the other venus female nudes, she doesn't have idealized features. She looks directly at us, confrontational, reality of nude woman versus a picture of the idealized woman.

The Saint-Lazare Station

c. 1877 CE, Claude Monet Oil on canvas. Impressionism. Captures the energy of Paris's modern transportation. Agitated painting contributes to a sense of energy and atmosphere of urban life. Smoke rumbles into train station. Haze of tall buildings becoming a major component in Parisian landscape.

Horse in Motion

c. 1878 CE, Eadweard Muybridge Albumen print He was hired to determine the answer whether all four feet of a horse were off the ground at the same time. He was able to settle the question with one single frame.

The Valley of Mexico from the Hillside of Santa Isabel (El Valle de Mexico desde el Cerro de Santa Isabel)

c. 1882 CE, Jose Maria Velasco Oil on canvas "Pure landscape." This imagery offered an opportunity to highlight symbols of patriotism valuable to a newly independent society. "Pastoral idylls" where a sense of poetic harmony and daily life were united. Like Casper David Friedrich. Velasco explored the romantic relationship between human figures and scenery they inhabit. Two indigenous people are shown in between city and country, reflecting a romantic, yet difficult socio-economic relationship between people and their ancestral land.

The Burghers of Calais

c. 1884-1895 CE, Auguste Rodin Bronze The 6 men covered in layers of tattered sackcloth, bodies malnourished, are drawn together not through physical or verbal contact, but by their slumped shoulders, bare feet and expressions of utter anguish. Each man is a city councilmen (burgher) of Calais. These men thought they were going to sacrifice their lives to save the other people during the 100 years war. Rodin has the composition in a circle causing no one man to be the focal point, allowing the sculpture to be viewed from multiple perspectives with no clear leader.

The Starry Night

c. 1889 CE, Vincent Van Gogh Oil on canvas Post-Impressionism. It evidences Van Gogh's extended observation of the night sky. Expresses the artist's turbulent state of mind. The work has become iconic of individualized expression in modern landscape painting. Communicated his feelings about electrifying vastness of the universe.

The Coiffure

c. 1890-1891 CE, Mary Cassatt Drypoint and aquatint Impressionism. The title evokes a precise image, one of wealthy women in glamorous setting with elaborate hair yet the lady in this painting is doing it herself. Perhaps we are seeing a working woman getting ready to start her day. Heavily influenced by Japanese art. Unlike other female paintings, she is not sexualized.

The Scream

c. 1893 CE, Edvard Munch Tempera and pastels on cardboard Consists of 3 main areas, bridge, lake and sky. Foreground and background blend together. Alone in a crowed place feeling.

Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?

c. 1897-1898 CE, Paul Gauguin Oil on canvas Where are we going represents the artist's painted manifesto he created while living on Tahiti. Themes of life, death, poverty and symbolic meaning. He invites us to "read" the image. The painting is designed to recall frescoes and icon paintings. Sobering, pessimistic image of life's cycles inevitability with the use of native women and trapped colors.

Carson, Pirie, Scott and Company Building (Detail)

c. 1899-1903 CE, Louis Sullivan, Chicago, IL Iron, steel, glass and terra cotta Focuses on lower stories with cast iron for show rooms. Terra cotta on top. Floral and vegetal motifs with undulating lines: signals Art Nouvaeu movement- tension between stripped down modernism and decoration

Carson, Pirie, Scott and Company Building

c. 1899-1903 CE, Louis Sullivan, Chicago, IL Iron, steel, glass and terra cotta Stripped down architecture. Department store and offices. Horizontal focus on bottom. Round corner for decorative measure. Invents the 3 panel window named Chicago style after this building.

Carson, Pirie, Scott and Company Building (plan)

c. 1899-1903 CE, Louis Sullivan, Chicago, IL Iron, steel, glass and terra cotta every floor plan is the same. Very functional building.

Mont Sainte-Victoire

c. 1902-1904 CE, Paul Cezanne Oil on canvas Post-Impressionism. Pays attention to form but is mostly about color which makes the painting look 3D. Art begins to look back upon itself as it was considered impossible for art to get more realistic than it already was.

The Steerage

c. 1907 CE, Alfred Stieglitz Photogravure

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon

c. 1907 CE, Pablo Picasso Oil on canvas Proto-cubist, quest for the limits of art. Took Ancient Iberian culture and incorporated into the work. Simplified features/wide almond eyes seen in African masks which he also used. Very expressionist with strong and impactful emotion, incorporating the viewer by sheer size alone. Rejects the absolute that women are gentle and passive.

The Kiss

c. 1907-1908 CE, Constantin Brancusi Limestone One piece together which reflects the relationship of kissers

The Kiss

c. 1907-1908 CE, Gustav Klimt Oil and gold leaf on canvas Woman is kneeling yet still defiant, figures' bodies are indistinct and made of geometric shapes. Looks like Byzantine art with gold backgrounds and mosaics. Bodies almost clump into one.

The Portuguese

c. 1911 CE, Georges Braque Oil on canvas Also on its way to cubism like Picasso. Objects are broken into parts in order to be better analyzed by the artist. Different way of interpreting the world through the work. Depicts artist's memories of a Portuguese musician he saw. Confusion between 2D and 3D. Pyramidal or triangular composition, cluttered and chaotic, earthy tones.

Goldfish

c. 1912 CE, Henri Matisse Oil on canvas Fauvism. Symbolized idle time, contemplation to Matisse. Colors contrast, background is muted pinks and greens, fish are bright orange and blue and green make them pop. Shows Matisse's worldliness bc Morocco men used to watch goldfish.

Improvisation 28 (second version)

c. 1912 CE, Vassily Kandinsky Oil on canvas The title is something that a musician would use, not painting. Associate painting with music, painting can take us places and mean something without a true meaning. Synesthesia, interested in crossing of the senses. Reminds of war which makes sense bc Russia in early 1900s. Not completely abstract so we can recognize some human parts.

Self portrait as a Soldier

c. 1915 CE, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner Oil on canvas Masterpiece of psychological drama. Shows Kirchner in a uniform but instead of standing on a battlefield he's with a nude model with an amputated arm. Injury is a metaphor for a self-amputation, potential injury not to the body, but to his identity as an artist.

Memorial Sheet for Karl Liebknecht

c. 1919-1920 CE, Kathe Kollwitz Woodcut Print making was ideal for propaganda. She created this in response to the assassination of Communist leader Karl Liebknecht, though it memorializes the man, it does so without advocating for his ideology. In the style of a lamentation with people mourning over the body. Composition divided into 3 horizontal sections: top is dense with figures and faces are well modeled and have interesting depth in themselves, but sense of space is compressed, middle has fewer details and draws attention to the specific action of the bending mourner. Above the bending mourner a woman holds a baby showing Kollwitz's unique voice in a creative environment dominated by young men.

Villa Savoye (staircase)

c. 1929 CE, Le Corbusier (architect), Poissy-sur-Seine, France Steel and reinforced concrete

Villa Savoye

c. 1929 CE, Le Corbusier (architect), Poissy-sur-Seine, France Steel and reinforced concrete "the house should be a machine for living in" is seen within the forms, layout, materials and siting of the house. Slender vertical supports versus walls hold the building up because there is glass on the bottom. It's highly functional and readable from the outside. Its essential geometric volumes embody his concept of the type form, and its careful consideration of procession and proportion connect the building to Classical ideals.

Composition with Red, Blue and Yellow

c. 1930 CE, Piet Mondrian Oil on Canvas Combinations of thick and thin planar lines are used to form boundaries between the color blocks. Lines are flat and simplistic; they are not detailed and show little brush detail. The lines don't create distinctive borders, but instead the planes fully extend onto the edges of the canvas. Red is about 9 times size of blue, blue is 9 times yellow. From the Stijl movement.

Illustration from The Results of the First Five Year Plan

c. 1932 CE, Varvara Stepanova Photomontage She focused her art on serving the ideals of the Soviet Union. This photomontage is a piece of propaganda and is an ode to the success of the first 5 year plan by Stalin. The image is supposed to help establish, through its visual evidence, the great success of the plan. She alternates black and white with sepia photos and integrates geometric planes of red to structure the composition. Her photomontages are an important reminder of how an artist can blur the line between aesthetic passion and ideology.

Object (Le Dejeuner en fourrure)

c. 1936 CE, Meret Oppenheim Fur-covered cup, saucer and spoon Surrealism: how might an otherwise typical, functional object be modified so it represents something deeply personal and poetic? The piece makes us think what it would be like drinking from this cup

Fallingwater (plan)

c. 1936-1939 CE, Frank Lloyd Wright (architect), Pennsylvania, U.S. Reinforced concrete, sandstone, steel and glass

Fallingwater

c. 1936-1939 CE, Frank Lloyd Wright (architect), Pennsylvania, U.S. Reinforced concrete, sandstone, steel and glass Perfect example of Wright's famous concept of "Organic Architecture" which stems from his Transcendentalist background, the belief that human life is part of nature. Liberal use of glass, house has no walls facing the falls, only a central stone core for the fireplaces and stone columns. Here he appears to be more concerned with responding to European Modernist design. Wright decided to include the waterfall in the house as well as stone so they house truly fits in nature. He chose ferroconcrete for his cantilevers, this use of reinforced concrete for the long suspended balconies was revolutionary.

Fallingwater (interior)

c. 1936-1939 CE, Frank Lloyd Wright (architect), Pennsylvania, U.S. Reinforced concrete, sandstone, steel and glass Wright designed all of the furniture in the house.

Horn Players

c. 1983 CE, Jean-Michel Basquiat Acrylic and oil paintstick on 3 canvas panels In addition to the half length portraits, the artist has included several drawings and words. Main subjects are Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, who the artist has depicted in both linguistic and visual portraits. Left is Charlie. The words are meaningful in Basquiat's life and seem meaningless without knowing his life.

Dancing at the Louvre, from the series The French Collection, Part 1; #1

c. 1991 CE, Faith Ringgold Acrylic on canvas, tie-dyed, pieced fabric border This piece is all about breaking the rules. She combines representational painting and African American quilting techniques with the written word. Series tells the fictional story of a young black woman who moves to Paris in the early 1900s and her meeting celebrities like Matisse, Picasso, Josephine Baker. Drawing on her own struggle for recognition in an art world dominated by European traditions and male artists, Ringgold uses this narrative format to literally rewrite the past by weaving together histories of modern art, African American culture and personal biography, reflections the shift toward postmodernism in 1980-90s art.

Darkytown Rebellion

c. 2001 CE, Kara Walker Cut paper and projection on wall Figures from slavery people. Darkytown refers to where black non-slaves would live. Plantation owners but slaves rising up in rebellion. Creates history, universalizes a tiny fact: do we really know and understand black history?

Old Man's Cloth

c. 2003 CE, El Anatsui Aluminum and copper wire aluminum bottles. different from all angles. combines old and new africa.

Stadia II

c. 2004 CE, Julie Mehretu Ink and acrylic on canvas Olympics seen in the flags: national and internationalism has level playing field there. Stadium shape. Lines, shapes and colors: sense of depth that comes from surface not from made up backgroud.

Preying Mantra

c. 2006 CE, Wangechi Mutu (Africa) Mixed media on Mylar Collage from western magazines. Praying mantis, sound word play but Mantra is a chant. Female mantis' sometimes eats male.