ARTH FINAL (Ch. 24-33)

Plank Masks

Bwa, Arts of Africa Burkina Faso. Bwa. 1984. Wood, pigments, and raffia fiber. Plank masks height 7' (2.13 m); serpent mask height over 14' (4.3 m). The Bwa people in Burkina Faso are another cultural group that has elected to maintain much of their historic religion and traditions despite French colonialism and the presence of both Islam and Christianity in the region. The Bwa continue to initiate young men and women into adulthood following the onset of puberty. Initiation provides young people with instruction on the social, familial, and religious obligations they need to follow as adults. At the end of their initiation period, the initiates display their new knowledge in a public masquerade ceremony. Each young man performs one of the masks, while the young women sing the accompanying songs. At the end of the ceremony all the initiates rejoin their families as adults, ready to marry, start farms, and begin families of their own. The masks seen in this 1984 masquerade are made of painted wood and represent animal messengers of the important spiritual figure, Do, who mediates between the Bwa people and their creator god. Do's realm is wild, untamed nature and the life force that it generates. Along with initiations, masquerades honoring Do are performed at funerals, as well as at planting and harvest ceremonies. Dancing a masquerade for a funderal, for example, assists the deceased family member in making the journey from the world of the living to the world of the spirits and ancestors. The masks are commissioned and maintained by family groups who compete with each other to make and dance the most spectacular masks. The imagery consists of human and animal forms combined with painted abstract symbols using only three colors: red, black, and white. The dance costume, traditionally made of leaves, is now frequently made with fibers dyed a brilliant red or balck to match the bold colors of the masks. Bwa masks draw from the natural world to depict people, animals, and insects in a highly abstract manner. The red beaks seen on three of these masks imitate those of the hornbill, a water bird, while the horned figure (second from left) represents a buffalo, and the incredibly long, slender mask at center represents a serpent. The mask at the far right features three small figures on top of the central plank. This type of mask stresses the commissioning family's own connection ot the spirit world. While the theatrical masquerade performance can only be appreciated by participating in the event, the masks and costumes are often all that is viewed by outsiders, as the Bwa have traded or sold these objects in the past and still produce them on commission for sale to collectors. Collecting and displaying Bwa masks for others to view, however, poses significant problems for museums. Few institutions can exhibit such large objects, and museums often only have the wooden headpieces. The feather, leaf, and fiber costumes have typically either been lost or removed due to damage or deterioration. In museum cases, it is difficult for viewers to imagine how a Do mask would have looked when worn and performed. Only by participating in an actual masquerade do the size and grandeur of the masks, and the incredible talent of the dancers, become fully evident.

The Persistence of Memory

Dali, Surrealism, Spain VIDEO NOTES: Oil on canvas; 1931; haunting meditation on time; mystery on time; erie landscape; dream world thats empty; hard to define where we are; melted watches; a watch is instrument of time; covered in ants; face in center; dali in profile; watch over profile; including himself is his repressed dreamworld; tapping into subconscious; overall statement on time and memory; can't comprehend time; man has constructed; dali had a lot of fears and phobias; anxiety over sexual impotence; limp quality of sexual worries

Which artist conceptualized the readymade?

Duchamp

Fountain

Duchamp, Dada, France 1917. Porcelain plumbing fixture and enamel paint. Photograph by Alfred Stieglitz. Philadelphia Museum of Art. Fountain remains one of the most controversial works of art of the 20th century. It incites laughter, anger, embarrassment, and disgust by openly referring to private bathroom activities and to human carnality and vulnerability. But more significantly, in it Duchamp questions the essence of what constitutes a work of art. How much can be stripped away before an object's status as art disappears? Since Whistler's famous court case, most avant-garde artists had agreed that a work of art did not have to be descriptive or well crafted, but before 1917, none would have argued as Duchamp does in this piece, that art was primarily conceptual. For centuries, perhaps millennia, artists had regularly employed studio assistants to make parts, if not all, of the art objects that they designed. On one level, Duchamp updates that practice into modern terms by arguing that art objects can actually be mass-produced for the artist by industry. Duchamp creates a commentary simultaneously about consumption and about the irrationality of the modern age by claiming that the "readymade" simply bypasses the craft tradition, qualifying as a work of art because of its human conceptualization rather than its human making. When Foundant was rejected, as Duchamp anticipated it would be, the artist resigned from the Society of Independent Artists in mock horror. An unsigned editorial in a Dada journal (which could have been written by the artist himself) detailed what it described as the scandal of the R. Mutt case. It claimed, "the only works of art America has given are her plumbing and bridges," and added, "Whether Mr. Mutt with his own hands made the fountain or not has no importance. He CHOSE it. He took an ordinary article of life, placed it so that its useful significance disappeared under the new title and point of view - created a new thought for that object." VIDEO NOTES: Porcelain urinal and enamel paint; signed R Mutt; entered into artist show; punning; giving credit to company that made urinal; thinking more important that actual creating; cynical statement of ordinary useful objects becoming useless; dada art = anti-art; much controversy

What structure that was erected for the 1889 Universal Exposition was intended to be temporary?

Eiffel Tower

esquisse

French for "sketch." A quickly executed drawing or painting conveying the overall idea for a finished painting

The Raft of the Medusa

Gericault, Romanticism, France 1818-1819. Oil on canvas, 16'1" x 23'6" (4.9 x 7.16 m). Musee du Louvre, Paris. He chose for his subject the scandalous and sensational shipwreck of the medusa. In 1816, this French ship bound for Senegal rna aground close to its destination. Its captain, an incompetent aristocrat commissioned by the newly restored monarchy of Louis XVIII, resered all six lifeboats for himself, his officers, and several government representatives. The remaining 152 passengers were set adrift on a makeshift raft. When those on the raft were rescued 13 days later, just 15 had survived, some only by eating human flesh. Since the captain had been a political appointee, the press used the horrific story to indict the monarchy for this and other atrocities in French-ruled Senegal. The moment in the story that Gericault chose to depict is one fraught with emotions, as the survivors on the raft experience both the fear that the distant ship might pass them by and the hope that they will be rescued. Gericault's monumental The Raft of the Medusa fits the definition of a history painting in that it is a large (16 feet by 23 feet), multi figure composition that represents an event in history. It may not qualify, however, on the basis of its function - to expose incompetence and willful disregard for human life rather than to ennoble, educate, or remind viewers of their civic responsibility. The hero of this painting is also an unusual choice for a history painting; he is not an emperor or a king, nor even an intellectual, but Jean Charles, a black man from French Senegal who showed endurance and emotional fortitude in the face of extreme danger. Gericault's painting is arranged in a pyramid of bodies. The diagonal axis that begins in the lower left extends upward to the waving figure of Jean Charles; a complementary diagonal beginning with the dead man in the lower right extends through the mast and billowing sail, directing our attention to a huge wave. The figures are emotionally suspended between hope of salvation and fear of imminent death. SIgnificantly, the "hopeful" diagonal in Gericault's painting terminates in the vigorous figure of Jean Charles. By placing him at the top of the pyramid of survivors and giving him the power to save his comrades by signaling to the rescue ship, Gericault suggests metaphorically that freedom is often dependent on the most oppressed members of society. VIDEO NOTES: Oil on canvas; 1818-1819; modern subject matter; French ship called Medusa sunk off coast of Africa; incompetence of French Navy not enough life boats; make shift raft that was towed along then cut off; drifted for 12 days without food or water and only 15 survived; survivors told story of what happened; depict anguish of survivors; indictment of monarchy and navy; corruption; subtle political attack on french government at time; the moment they see the ship that will rescue them on the horizon; the right side has seen the ship by waving fabric; romantic elements with strong diagonal to add drama and tension; two triangles one of hope and one of the dead and dying and anguish and dispair; man holding dead son; dead hanging off; turbulent backdrop of ocean; survivors had resorted to cannibalism; did not depict the cannibalism; celebrates and innobles them that survived; moment of hope and surge upwards; the slave at the top is the hero of the composition; realistic pictures with no sunburnt; showing forms in classical way; rebuilt raft in his studio and kept cadavers there; live models for this composition; put him in the mood of death; immersing himself into that environment; in the Louvre; lifesize figures; dark and light; man powerless against forces of nature; romantic idea of violence; life vs. death

The best-known artist to emerge from the Harlem Community Art Center was

Lawrence

Which artist explicitly addressed feminist concerns in her work?

Hannah Hoch

Luncheon on the Grass

Manet, Realism, France 1863. Oil on canvas, 7' x 8'8" (2.13 x 2.64 m). Musee d'Orsay, Paris. A well-born Parisian who had studied in the early 1850s with the independent artist Thomas Couture (1815-1879), Manet had by the early 1860s developed a strong commitment to Realism and modernity, largely as a result of his friendship with Baudelaire. Luncheon on the Grass scandalized contemporary viewers all the way up to Napoleon III himself, provoking a critical avalanche that mixed shock with bewilderment. Ironically, the resulting succes de scandale ("success from scandal") helped establish Manet's career as a radical, avant-garde, modern artist. The most scandalous aspect of the painting was the "immorality" of Manet's theme: a suburban picnic featuring two fully dressed bourgeois gentlemen seated alongside a completely naked woman with another scantily dressed woman in the background. Manet's audience assumed that these women were prostitutes, and the men their customers. Equally shocking were the painting's references to important works of art of the past, which Academie des Beaux-Arts artists were expected to make combined with its crude, unvarnished modernity. In contrast, one of the paintings that gathered most renown at the official Salon in that year was Alexandre Cabanel's Birth of Venus, which, because it presented nudity in a conventionally acceptable, Classical environment and mythological context, was favorably reviewed and quickly entered the collection of Napoleon III. Manet apparently conceived of Luncheon on the Grass as a modern version of a Venetian REnaissance painting in the Louvre, The Pastoral Concert, then believed to be by Giorgione but now attributed to both Titian and Giorgione or to Titian exclusively. Manet's composition also refers to a Marcantonio Raimondi engraving of Raphael's The Judgment of Paris, itself based on Classical reliefs of river gods and Nymphs. Presenting the seamier side of the city life in the gise of Classical art was intentionally provocative. And the stark lighting and sharp outlining of his nude, the cool colors, and the flat quality of his figures, who seem as if they are silhouetted cut-outs set against a painted backdrop, were unsettling to viewers accustomed to traditional,controlled gradations of shadows modeling smoothly rounded forms in perspectivally mapped spaces. VIDEO NOTES: Oil on canvas; rejected from salon of 1863; shocking to judges and viewers; subject matter and technique; nude woman with two dressed gentlemen; something illicit about to happen; no indication that she is mythological figure; modern and recognizable woman staring boldly at viewer; prostitution legal in France; two men also identifiable (the artist brother and sculpter (future brother in law); myth had no place in reality

In the mid-nineteenth century, Japan's policy of isolation ended. Western influences entered the country, and the emperor was restored to power, an event known as the

Meiji Restoration

David's Death of Marat echoes the pose of Christ in a sculpture by

Michelangelo

Waterlilies

Monet, Impressionism, France VIDEO NOTES: Fascinated with moving water and color effects; had a japanese foot bridge on property

What style did American-born sculptor Edmonia Lewis employ to address modern issues such as slavery?

Neoclassical

View from the Window at Le Gras

Niepce, Realism, France VIDEO NOTES: 1st surviving permanent photograph - created in 1826; fixing the image; no silver process for this; through action of light; outside his studio on second floor; used camera obscura; opened lens and exposed plate for 8 hours outside his window; not great quality

The Forbidden City was built for the most part by rulers from which dynasty?

Ming

Forbidden City

Ming Dynasty, Arts of China Now the Palace Museum, Beijing. Mostly Ming Dynasty. View from the southwest. The most important remaining example of traditional architecture, the imperial palace compound in Beijing, whose principle buildings were constructed during the Ming Dynasty. The basic plan of Beijing was the work of the Mongols, who laid out their capital city according to traditional Chinese principles. City planning had begun early in China - in the 17th century, in the case of Chang'an (present-day Xi'an), the capital of the Sui and Tang emperors. The walled city of Chang'an was organized on a rectangular grid with evenly spaced streets that ran north-south and east-west. At the northern end stood a walled imperial complex. Beijing, too, was developed as a walled, rectangular city with streets laid out in a grid. The palace enclosure occupied the center of the northern part of the city, which was reserved for the Mongols. Chinese lived in the southern third of the city. Later, Ming and Qing emperors preserved this division, with officials living in the northern or Inner City and commoners living in the southern or Outer City. The third Ming emperor, Yongle (ruled 1403-1424), rebuilt the Forbidden City as we see it today. The approach was impressive. Visitors entered through the Meridian Gate, a monumental complex with perpendicular side wings. Next they encountered a broad courtyard crossed by a bow-shaped waterway spanned by five arched marble bridges. At the opposite end of this courtyard is the Gate of Supreme Harmony, opening onto an even larger courtyard that houses three ceremonial halls raised on a broad platform. First is the Hall of Supreme Harmony, where on the most important state occasions the emperor sat on his throne, facing south. Beyond is the smaller Hall of Central Harmony, then the Hall of Protecting Harmony. Behind these vast ceremonial spaces, still on the central axis, is the inner court, again with a progression of three buildings, this time more intimate in scale. In its balance and symmetry the plan of the Forbidden City reflects ancient Chinese beliefs about the harmony of the universe, and it emphasizes the emperor's role as the Son of Heaven, maintaining the cosmic order from his throne in the middle of the world. VIDEO NOTES: Symmetrical, balanced, grid pattern; "city in squares" - Marco Polo; walled in; established by Mongols; north was considered to be a place of evil spirits; separate northern forces; demon barriers; openings to the south because it was seen as a source of positive forces like light, heat, etc; city within a city within a city; Mongols in north and chinese in south; north with imperial family and south is commoners (outer city); imperial city originally surrounded by a wall; within Imperial city is forbidden city; home of emperor and where he sat in court; called forbidden city by westerners; isolation established to keep foreigners out; ancient roots; mediator between heaven and earth (emperor); harmony in universe with protection of people; regime change when emperor failed to do so; protects emperors role as the center of the universe; near perfect square; surrounded by man-made moat; limited access with only 4 main access points; the most important aspects are in the center of the square; 3 main halls where the emperor ruled from; emperor in exact center of square; power and control through architecture design; wood structures with columns; curved rooflines, double; clay tiles; red is dominant because its the imperial color; 3 halls; up on raised marble platform to show importance; the use of numbers; 3 and 5 important numbers

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon

Picasso, Cubism, Spain 1907. Oil on canvas, 8' x 7'8" (2.43 x 2.33 m). Museum of Modern Art, New York. His contact with African art had a huge impact on Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (The Young Ladies of Avignon), one of the most radical and complex paintings of the 20th century. "Demoiselle" was a common euphemism for prostitute at this time, and Avignon was the name of street in the red-light district in Barcelona. The work's boldness, however, resides not only in its subject matter, but also in its size: nearly 8 feet square. Picasso may have undertaken such a large painting in 1907 to compete with both Matisse - who had exhibited The Joy of Life in the Salon des Independants of 1906 - and Cezanne - whose large Bathers was shown the same year. Like Matisse and Cezanne, Picasso revived and changed the ideas of large-scale academic history painting, using the traditional subject of nude women shown in an interior space. There are other echoes of the Western tradition in the handling of the figures. The two women in the center display themselves to the viewer like Venus rising from the sea, while the one to the left takes a rigid pose with a striding stance, recalling a Greek kouros, and the one seated on the right might suggest the pose of Manet's Luncheon on the Grass. But not all visual references point to the Western tradition. Iberian sources stand behind the faces of the three leftmost figures, with their flattened features and wide, almond-shaped eyes. The mask like faces of the two figures at right imitate African art. Picasso has created an unsettling picture from these sources. The women are shielded by masks, flattened and fractured into sharp, angular shapes. The space they inhabit is incoherent and convulsive. The central pair raise their arms in a conventional gesture of accessibility but contradict it with their hard, piercing gazes and tight mouths that create what art historian Leo Steinberg called "a tidal wave of female aggression." Even the fruit displayed in the foreground, symbols of female sexuality, seems brittle and dangerous. These women, Picasso suggests, are not the gentle and passive creatures that men would like them to be. This viewpoint contradicts an enduring tradition, prevalent at least since the Renaissance, of portraying sexual availability in the female nude, just as strongly as Picasso's treatment of space shatters the reliance on orderly perspective, also standard since the Renaissance. VIDEO NOTES: 1907; oil on canvas; extract human body; influence of african masks; prostitutes; native spain; 5 women; abstracted bodies; 2 in center are closest to realistic; far left looks like sculpture out of stone; two on right look like they have masks; 3D form to fit onto 2D plane; space; multiple perspectives

Ma Jolie

Picasso, Cubism, Spain 1911-1912. Oil on canvas, 39 ⅜ x 25 ¾" (100 x 65.4 cm). Museum of Modern Art, New York. Pablo Picasso was a towering presence at the center of Parisian art world throughout much of the 20th century, continually transforming the style, forms, meanings, and conceptual frameworks of his art in relation to the many factors at play in the world around him. Early in the century in his great Cubist work Ma Jolie of 1911-1912, Picasso challenged his viewers to think about the very nature of communication through painting. Remnants of the subjects Picasso worked from are evident throughout, but any attempt to reconstruct the "subject" - a woman with a stringed instrument - poses difficulties for the viewer. Ma Jolie ("My pretty one," the nickname Picasso used for his lover of the time, Marcelle Humbert) is in some sense a portrait, though Picasso makes us work to see and to understand the figure. We can discover several things about Ma Jolie from the painting; we can see parts of her head, her shoulders, the curve of her body, and a hand. But in Paris in 1911, "Ma Jolie" was also the title of a popular song, so the inclusion of writing and a musical staff and treble clef in the painting suggests other meanings. Our first impulse might be to wonder what exactly is pictured. Picasso provided the sarcastic answer, "My Pretty One." On the other hand, it might be argued that the human subject provided only the raw material for a formal abstract arrangement. A subtle tension between order and disorder is maintained throughout this painting. For example, the shifting effect of the surface - a delicately patterned texture of grays and browns - is unified through the use of short, horizontal brushstrokes. Similarly, with the use of short, horizontals and verticals at first seem to dominate, but strong diagonals and occasional curves challenge the grid-like regularity. The combination of horizontal brushwork and right angles firmly establishes a gird that effectively counteracts the surface flux. Moreover, the repetition of certain diagonals and the relative lack of details in the upper left and upper right create a pyramidal shape reminiscent of Classical systems of compositional stability. Thus, what at first may seem a chaotic composition of lines and muted colors turns out to be a carefully organized design. For many, the aesthetic satisfaction of such a work depends on the way chaos seems to resolve itself into order. VIDEO NOTES: Oil on canvas; analytic cubism is phase 1; break down and rebuilt up again; famous french song that is popular at the time; music is theme of it; chaotic but also musical instruments are glimpsed; treble clef and strumming strings; human playing instrument; the painting doesn't have to be of a certain subject; no pure abstraction; liked tension between representation and pure abstraction; capture the way we see the world; fragmented place; splinters of life; see reality in bits and pieces

Autumn Rhythm

Pollock, Abstract Expressionism, United States 1950. Oil on canvas, 8'9" x 17'3" (2.66 x 5.25 m). Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. in 1950, while Pollock painted Autumn Rhythm (Number 30), Hans Namuth filmed him and Rudolph BUrkhardt photographed him. Pollock worked in a renovated barn, where he could reach into the laid canvas from all four sides. The German expatiate artist Hans Hofmann (1880-1966) had poured and dripped paint before Pollock, but Pollock's unrestrained gestures transformed the idea of painting itself by moving around and within the canvas, dripping and scoring commercial-grade enamel paint (rather than specialist artist's paint) onto it using sticks and trowels. Some have described Pollock's arcs and whorls of paint as chaotic, but he saw them as labyrinths that led viewers along complex paths and into an organic, calligraphic web of natural and biomorphic forms. Pollock's compositions lack hierarchical arrangement, contain multiple focal points, and deny perspectival space. Art historians have referred to such paintings as "all-over compositions," because of the uniform treatment of the canvas from edge to edge and how this invites viewers to explore across the surface rather than to focus on one particular area. These self-contained paintings burst with anxious energy, ready to explode at any moment. Autumn Rhythm is heroic in scale, almost 9 feet tall by over 17 feet wide. It engulfs the viewer's entire field of vision. According to Krasner, Pollock was a "jazz addict" who spent many hours listening to the explosively improvised bebop of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. His interests extended to Native American art, which he associated with his western roots and which enjoyed widespread coverage in popular and art magazines in the 1930s. Pollock was particularly intrigued by the images and processes of Navajo sand painters who demonstrated their work at the Natural History Museum in New York. He also drew on Jung's theories of collective unconscious. But Pollock was more than the sum of his influences. His paintings communicate on a grand, Modernist, primal level. In a radio interview, he said that he was creating for "the age of the airplane, the atom bomb, and the radio." VIDEO NOTES: Oil on canvas; 1950; purely abstract; sense of music and season fall; cream tones and black; taking feelings and projecting them to canvas; raw energetic, spontaneous image; energetic force; free association; reflect new visions of modern world

Which of the following was considered "women's art" until the twentieth century?

Pueblo pottery production

Which artist made a series of works, called combines, by assembling painting and sculpture?

Robert Rauschenberg

Swiss artist John Henry Fuseli specialized in depicting dramatic subjects drawn from literary sources, including

Shakespeare

With the fall of the north to invaders in 1126, which court set up a new capital in the south that became the cultural and economic center of the country?

Song

Which dry rock garden in a Zen temple is one of Japan's most renowned Zen sites?

Ryoanji

During the Ming dynasty, emphasis on painting's expressive nature brought it closer to what other Chinese art form?

calligraphy

In their temporary installations, artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude approach the topic of

capitalism

What did the Incas deem a fitting offering for the gods?

cloth

Which of the following is a term that comes from the French word meaning "to glue" and describes an important aspect of Synthetic Cubism?

collage

underglaze

color or decoration applied to a ceramic piece before glazing

site-specific

commissioned and/or designed for a particular location

The Maori tradition of building a large wooden meeting house evolved after

contact with Westerners

installation; installation art

contemporary art created for a specific site, especially a gallery or outdoor area, that creates a complete and controlled environment

wax-print fabric

cotton fabric printed to look like Indonesia batik cloth. Originally made in the Netherlands and exported to African coastal nations during the fifteenth through twenty-first centuries, it is now manufactured around the world, including in many African countries

The Calendar Stone shows that the Aztecs viewed time

cyclically

biomorphic

denoting the biologically or organically inspired shapes and forms that were routinely included in abstracted Modern art in the early twentieth century

karesansui

dried-up mountains and water

During the Edo period, intellectuals in Kyoto protested against the Tokugawa shoguns by

drinking sencha

pastel

dry pigment, chalk, and gum in stick or crayon form. Also: a work of art made with pastels

What was essential to the development of the modern skyscraper?

electric elevator

What does Fragonard's The Swing, which was commissioned by an unknown patron, suggest about the artist's aristocratic clientele?

erotic interests

Van Gogh's insistence on his emotional state over fidelity to nature contributed to the development of which subsequent movement in modern art?

expressionism

In contrast to some of the other Impressionist painters, Renoir focused on the

figure

ukiyo

floating world

What was the Chinese artist Zhao Mengfu reacting to or interpreting in the iconography of Sheep and Goat?

foreign rulers

memento mori

from Latin for "remember that you must die." An object, such as a skull or extinguished candle, typically found in a vanitas image, symbolizing the transience of life

Performed as part of __________ for men in the Kuba region, the Ngady mwaash masquerade reflects the culture's gender roles.

funeral rites

Jean-Michel Basquiat's Neo-Expressionist paintings of the early 1980s developed out of his work as a

graffiti artist

What is the term for artists' use of chance, actions, movements, and gestures of their own bodies?

happenings

Ana Mendieta's Untitled, from the "Tree of Life" Series celebrates the notion that women

have a deeper identification with nature than men do

What about Ingres's work in the early nineteenth century demonstrates the ongoing interest in Neoclassicism?

his academic line and formal structure

Artist Zhao Mengfu, a descendant of the imperial line of Song who chose to serve the Yuan government, was well known for his finely rendered paintings of which animal?

horses

hanging scroll

in Chinese and Japanese art, a vertical painting or text mounted within sections of silk; at the top is a semicircular rod; at the bottom is a round dowel; they are kept rolled and tied and except for special occasions, when they are hung for display, contemplation or commemoration

Benday dots

in modern printing and typesetting, the individual dots that, together with many others, make up lettering and images. Often machine- or computer-generated, the dots are very small and closely spaced to give the effect of density and richness of tone

According to the text, which of the following developments in contemporary art has resulted from the rise of globalism in the twenty-first century?

international exhibitions provide opportunities for diverse artistic exchange

What feature distinguishes Korean porcelains from those of the Ming dynasty in China?

irregular shapes

For the people of the Great Plains, what is the purpose of the hole in the top of a tipi?

it served as a smoke hole for a central hearth

What motivated Picasso to create his large-scale painting Guernica for the Spanish Pavilion at the 1938 Paris Exposition?

it was a response to the German bombing of a small Basque town, sponsored by Spanish Nationalists

How did Picasso's treatment of space in Les Demoiselles d'Avignon dramatically change the practice of painting in the West?

it was an alternative to traditional systems of perspective

Which statement applies to the kente cloth produced by the Asante culture?

it was traditionally woven by males

Which of the following was prized in New Zealand and considered to have sacred powers?

jadeite

Ukiyo-e artists designed many prints of actors from the form of popular theater, known as

kabuki

Which Japanese art form relied on collaboration among individuals?

kosode robes

bilum

netted bags made mainly by women throughout the central highlands of New Guinea; the bags can be used for everyday purposes or even to carry the bones of the recently deceased as a sign of mourning

picturesque

of the taste for the familiar, the pleasant, and the agreeable, popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Europe. Originally used to describe the "picturelike" qualities of some landscape scenes. When contrasted with the sublime, the picturesque stood for the interesting but ordinary domestic landscape

The most extensively tattooed of all Polynesians lived

on the Marquesas Islands

What material, applied to wood or leather in thin coats, is ideal for storage containers or vessels for food and drink?

lacquer

Among New Guinea and its neighboring islands, there are more than 700

languages

Because her figures are all silhouettes, which does not identify race, artist Kara Walker forces the viewer to read the narrative by

looking for other visual markers

When compared to paintings by Diego Rivera, those of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo are considered

more personal

Kandinsky believed that looking at a painting should be comparable to experiencing

music

To emphasize the abstract nature of his paintings, James Abbott McNeill Whistler often chose titles that were more commonly used in

music

odalisque

Turkish word for "harem slave girl" or "concubine."

The Starry Night

Van Gogh, Post-Impressionism, Holland/France One of the most famous examples of Van Gogh's approach is The Starry Night, painted near the asylum of Saint-Remy. Above the quiet town, the sky pulsates with celestial rhythms and exploding stars. Contemplating life and death in a letter, Van Gogh wrote: "Just as we take the train to get to Tarascon or Rouen, we take death to reach a star." This idea is made visible here by the cypress tree, a traditional symbol of both death and eternal life, which rises to link the terrestrial and celestial realms. The brightest start in the sky is actually a planet, Venus, which is associated with love: it is possible that the picture's extraordinary energy also expresses Van Gogh's euphoric hope of gaining in death the love that had eluded him in life. The painting is a riot of brushstrokes of intense color that writhe across the surface. This is clearly more a record of what Van Gogh felt than what he saw. During the last year and a half of his life, before he made this painting, he had experienced repeated psychological crises that lasted for days or weeks. While they were raging, he wanted to hurt himself, heard loud noises in his head, and could not paint. The stress of these attacks led him to the asylum where he painted The Starry Night, and eventually to suicide in July 1890. VIDEO NOTES: Oil on canvas; in mental asylum; southern france; painted from window in hospital; town realistic at bottom but sky is imaginative; uses line to create energy and movement from left to right; don't know clinical diagnosis; suffered from anxiety; lived life of poverty; panic attacks; different theories of health status; lack of success; only sold one painting in entire lifetime; inability to have relationships with people; reliance on brother; curved lines with energy; strong vertical of cyprus tree; echoed by steeple of church; cyprus is symbol of death and eternal life; impending death

Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear

Van Gogh, Post-Impressionism, Holland/France VIDEO NOTES: Wrote hundreds of letters to brother; created over 40 self-portraits; interior and exterior; results of slicing off his ear; green jacket and smoking a pipe; smoke vibrates around; blood red background and orange on top; sharp contrast with red and green; sense of tension; manipulates reality with loose brushstrokes; green eyes

In Degas's The Rehearsal on Stage, the seemingly arbitrary cropping of figures suggests the influence of

photography

What media allowed African artists to reclaim their own image from the colonial gaze?

photography

Which English tradition of landscaping did Frederick Law Olmstead and Calvert Vaux rely on in designing New York's Central Park?

picturesque

capriccio

pl. capricci; a painting or print of a fantastic, imaginary landscape, usually with architecture

Grand Tour

popular during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, an extended tour of cultural sites in France and Italy intended to finish the education of a young upper-class person primarily from Britain or North America

African art was frequently regarded as the work of __________ cultures and was placed in natural history or ethnographic museums.

primitive

The Japanese Tea Bowl, called "Yugure" ("Twilight"), is attributed to Chojiro, thought to be the founder of what type of pottery?

raku

How did Benjamin Latrobe incorporate new symbolic forms in his design for the U.S. Capitol building?

representations of indigenous plants on columns

What is the name for intimate, fashionable, and intellectual gatherings hosted by accomplished, educated Frenchwomen of the upper class?

salons

What medium do Navajo painters use to create paintings that are not meant to be seen by the public and are destroyed by nightfall on the day on which they are made?

sand

What does a treasured Chinese scroll often bear that not only identifies its maker but also collectors and admirers of that scroll throughout the centuries?

seals

What did Joseph Beuys incorporate into performances to explain the inexplicable?

shamanistic personality

In Angelika Kauffman's Cornelia Pointing to Her Children as Her Treasures, how does the mother depict Classical virtues?

she stands gracefully in a tranquil setting

What was the function of the stick charts called wapepe or mattang that were created by the people of the Marshall Islands?

show navigational routes connecting islands

Which folding screen format from the Edo period was a triumph of scale and practicality and could be folded for storage and transportation?

six-panel

During the 1980s, who emerged as a leader in Chinese painting for his synthesis of Chinese and Western ideas and techniques?

Wu Guanzhong

ukiyo-e

a Japanese term for a type of popular art that was favored from the sixteenth century, particularly in the form of color woodblock prints; these prints often depicted the world of the common people in Japan, such as courtesans and actors, as well as landscapes and myths

ndop

a Kikuba (Kuba) term meaning "statue." It is sculpted of wood to commemorate a Kuba king (nyim) and the role he serves in Kuba society

quillwork

a Native American technique in which the quills of porcupines and bird feathers are dyed and attached to materials in patterns

Critic Lawrence Alloway may have named Pop Art

a Tootsie Pop

twining

a basketry technique in which short rods are sewn together vertically; the panels are then joined together to form a container or other object

album

a book consisting of a series of paintings or prints (album leaves) mounted into book form

blackware

a ceramic technique that produces pottery with a primarily black surface with matte and glossy patterns on the surface

korambo

a ceremonial or spirit house in Pacific cultures, reserved for men of a village and used as a meeting place as well as to hide religious artifacts from the unintiated

Although artists in different countries developed their own approach to Realism, what common interest united them?

a desire to present an unflinching look at the lives of the working poor

Orientalism

a fascination with Middle Eastern cultures that inspired eclectic nineteenth-century European fantasies of exotic life that often formed the subject of paintings

jasperware

a fine-grained, unglazed, white ceramic developed in the eighteenth century by Josiah Wedgwood, often with raised designs remaining white above a background surface colored by metallic oxides

encaustic

a painting medium using pigments mixed with hot wax

What characterizes works by the Kano school of artists?

a painting style that combined traditions of ink painting with brightly colored decorative subjects

photomontage

a photographic work created from many smaller photographs arranged (and often overlapping) in a composition that is then rephotographed

apartheid

a political system in South Africa that used race as grounds for the segregation, discrimination, and political disenfranchisement of nonwhite South Africans; it officially ended in 1994

What traditional practice in Yoruba culture is used to determine the source of a client's problem?

a session where opposing forces of order and disorder are mediated through a diviner

Japonisme

a style in French and American nineteenth-century art that was highly influenced by Japanese art, especially prints

literati painting

a style of painting that reflects the taste of the educated class of East Asian intellectuals and scholars; characteristics include an appreciation for the antique, small scale, and an intimate connection between maker and audience

fete galante

a subject in painting depicting well-dressed people at leisure in a park or country setting. It is most often associated with eighteenth-century French Rococo painting

coiling

a technique in basketry; in coiled baskets a spiraling coil, braid, or rope of material is held in place by stitching or interweaving to create a permanent shape

automatism

a technique in which artists abandon the usual intellectual control over their brushes or pencils to allow the subconscious to create the artwork without rational interference

silkscreen printing

a technique of printing in which paint or ink is pressed through a stencil and specially prepared cloth to reproduce a design in multiple copies

tapa

a type of cloth used for various purposes in Pacific cultures, made from tree bark stripped and beaten, and often bearing subtle designs from the mallets used to work the bark

hojo

abbot's quarters

What of the following was characteristic of Aztec manuscripts?

accordion-pleated books that could be opened to show multiple pages

Enlightenment thinking is marked by the conviction that

all should have equal rights

Grand Manner

an elevated style of painting popular in the eighteenth century in which the artist looked to the ancients and to the Renaissance for inspiration; for portraits as well as history painting, the artist would adopt the poses, compositions, and attitudes of Renaissance and antique models

A common thread that connected Romantic artists was

an emphasis on expressiveness

What topic became controversial when Chris Ofili's painting The Holy Virgin Mary was displayed in the Brooklyn Museum?

arts funding

assemblage

artwork created by gathering and manipulating two- and/or three-dimensional found objects

What kind of perspective can be seen in Japanese screens from both the Kano School and the Edo period?

atmospheric

Surrealist painters' variety of techniques were known collectively as

automatism

As they migrated across the Pacific, Polynesians brought with them the knowledge of producing media, such as

bark cloth

Which colors are particularly noteworthy among Chinese Ming porcelain wares, such as the fifteenth-century flask with dragons?

blue and white

During the period known as Japonisme in nineteenth-century Europe, Western artists were greatly influenced by Japanese

woodblock prints

performance art

works of art that are performed live by the artist and sometimes involve audience participation

fusuma

sliding doors covered with paper, used in traditional Japanese construction; often highly decorated with paintings and colored backgrounds

kosode

small sleeves

moai

statues found in Polynesia, carved from tufa, a yellowish brown volcanic stone and depicting the human form; nearly 1,000 of these statues have been found on the island of Rapa Nui but their significance has been a matter of speculation

domino construction

system of building construction introduced by the architect Le Corbusier in which reinforced concrete floor slabs are floated on six free-standing posts placed as if at the positions of the six dots on a domino playing piece

What is a name for woven straw mats that are generally used in Japanese homes as floor coverings?

tatami

What common artistic interest appears in most Pacific cultures?

tattooing and performative arts

Happening

term coined by Allan Kaprow in the 1960s to describe artworks incorporating elements of performance, theater, and visual images. Organized without a specific narrative or intent and with audience participation, the event proceeded according to chance and individual improvisation

avant-garde

term derived from the French military word meaning "before the group," or "vanguard." Avant-garde denotes those artists or concepts of a strikingly new, experimental, or radical nature for their time

combine

term used by Robert Rauschenberg to describe his works that combined painting and nontraditional sculptural elements

What social issue motivated David Wojnarowicz's Untitled (Hands)?

the AIDS crisis

Which of the following was a significant factor in providing New York with the foundation to supersede Paris as the center of the world of Modern art?

the Federal Arts Project

The symmetrical layout of the Forbidden City intentionally emphasizes the Chinese emperor's role as

the Son of Heaven

primitivism

the borrowing of subjects or forms, usually from non-European or prehistoric sources, by Western artists in an attempt to infuse work with expressive qualities attributed to other cultures, especially colonized cultures

What innovation seen in Auguste Rodin's The Burghers of Calais signaled his departure from established traditions of sculpture?

the figure grouping is placed at eye level

In the eighteenth century, the Industrial Revolution replaced the land-based power of the aristocracy with

the financial power of capitalists

How does Poet on a Mountaintop represent the essence of Ming literati painting?

the harmonious blending of mind and nature

What was a disadvantage of a daguerreotype?

the image could not be reproduced easily

African artists aimed to make their objects convey

the intangible

Characteristically, Chinese furniture is constructed without the use of glue or nails, relying instead on the principle of

the mortise-and-tenon joint

How do the landscape paintings of John Constable evoke themes of Romanticism in art?

the nostalgic emphasis on nature as idyllic

Which Dadaist idea would have a radical influence on art of the later twentieth century?

the notion that art was not precious but could exist as conceptual ideas and actions

Barbara Kruger's signature style combines black-and-white photographic images with

the red used in advertising

Winslow Homer employed an unadorned realism in depicting the heroic struggles of

the working poor

Why is the display of African art in museums problematic?

their full meaning can only be understood in the context of ritual performance

What common denominator unifies the artists who are considered Post-Impressionists?

they experimented with form and expanded on Impressionism

Why did the U.S. government hire Dorothea Lange and other photographers during the Great Depression?

they hoped to build public support for federal assistance for rural America

How did the Spaniards influence the art of Navajo weaving?

they introduced sheep to the native culture

What was the purpose of much of the art that indigenous Australian peoples developed?

to relive and transmit stories about ancestors

commodification

treating goods, services, ideas, or art merely as things to be bought or sold

earthworks

usually very large-scale, outdoor artwork that is produced by altering the natural environment

recuperation

A French term for the West African method of using found objects to make fine art sculptures and installations

The Abstract Expressionist painters were greatly influenced by which of the following, who described a collective unconscious of universal archetypes shared by all humans?

Carl Jung

Why are major deities rarely depicted in African art?

Deities are too far removed from the everyday problems of people

The Oath of the Horatii

David, Neoclassicism, France 1784-1785. Oil on canvas, 10'8 ¼" x 14' (3.26 x 4.27 m). Musee du Louvre, Paris. A royal commission that David returned to Rome to paint, the work reflects the taste and values of Louis XVI, who, along with his minister of the arts, Count d'Angiviller, was sympathetic to the Enlightenment. Like Diderot, d'Angiviller and the king believed that art should improve public morals. Accordingly, one of d'Angiviller's first official acts was to ban indecent nudity from the Salon of 1775 and commission a series of didactic history paintings. The commission for David's Oath of the Horatii in 1784 was part of that general program. The subject of the painting was inspired by the dama Horace, written by the great French playwright Pierre Corneille (1606-1684), which had in turn been based on ancient Roman historical texts. The patriotic oath-taking incident David depicted, however, is not taken directly from these sources and was apparently the artist's own invention. The story is set in the 7th century BCE at a time when Rome and its rival, Alba, a neighboring city-state, agreed to settle a border dispute and avert a war by holding a battle to the death between the three sons of Horace (the Horatii), representing Rome, and the three Curatii, representing Alba. In David's painting, the Horatii stand with arms outstretched toward their father, who reaches toward them with swords on which they pledge to fight and die for Rome. The powerful gesture of the young men's outstretched hands almost pushes their father back. In contrast to the upright, tensed, muscular angularity of the men, the group of swooning women and frightened children are limp. They weep for the lives of both the Horatii and the Curatii. Sabina (in the center) is a sister of the Curatii and also married to one of the Horatii; Camilla (at the far right) is sister to the Horatii and engaged to one of the Curatii. David's composition, which separates the men from the women and children spatially by the use of framing background arches, dramatically contrasts the young men's stoic and willing self-sacrifice with the women's emotional collapse. The emotional intensity of this history painting pushed French academic rules on decorum to their limit. Originally a royal commission, it quickly and ironically became an emblem of the 1789 French Revolution, since its message of patriotism and sacrifice for the greater good effectively captured the mood of the leaders of the new French Republic established in 1792. As the revolutionaries abolished the monarchy and titles of nobility, took education out of the hands of the Church, and wrote a declaration of human rights, David joined the leftist Jacobin party. VIDEO NOTES: 1784-1785; figures lifesize; oil on canvas; story of conflict between love and patriotism; go into combat; swear an oath to die for their family and clan to their father; send 3 from each with a battle to the death; women seated and curved down; intermarriage between families; sorrow and pain as result; tall verticle figures of men representing masculinity and strength; background with curved arches; balanced composition with father in center; perspective with vanishing point of the hands of father; wearing Roman style costumes; background dark; loyalty of country vs. emotion; before French Revolution; people saw it as a slap in the face for royalty; rallying cry for the revolution; voice of revolution; minimalism adds to drama

The Death of Marat

David, Neoclassicism, France 1793. Oil on canvas, 5'5" x 4'2 ½" (1.65 x 1.28 m). Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels. In 1793, David painted the death of the Jacobin supporter, Jean-Paul Marat. A radical journalist, Marat lived simply among the packing cases that he used as furniture, writing pamphlets urging the abolition of aristocratic privilege. Because he suffered from a painful skin bath. Charlotte Corday, a supporter of an opposition party held Marat partly responsible for the 1792 riots in which hundreds of political prisoners judged sympathetic to the king were killed, and in retribution she stabbed Marat as he sat in his bath. David avoids the potential for sensationalism in the subject by portraying not the violent event but its tragic aftermath - the dead Marat slumped in his bathtub, his right hand still holding a quill pen, while his left hand grasps the letter that Corday used to gain access to his home. The simple wooden block beside the bath, which Marat used as a desk, bears a dedicatory inscription with the names of both Marat and the painter - "to Marat, David." It almost serves as the martyr's tombstone. David's painting is tightly composed and powerfully stark. The background is blank, adding to the quiet mood and timeless feeling of the picture, just as the very different background of the Oath of the Horatii added to is drama. The color of Marat's pale body coordinates with the bloodstained sheets on which he lies, creating a compact shape that is framed by the dark background and green blanket draped over the bathtub. David transforms a brutal event into an elegiac statement of somber eloquence. Marat's pose, which echoes Michelangelo's Vatican Pieta, implies that, like Christ, Marat was a martyr for the people. The French Revolution degenerated into mob rule in 1793-1794 as Jacobin leaders orchestrated the ruthless execution of thousands of their opponents in what became known as the Reign of Terror. David, as a Jacobin, was elected a deputy to the National Convention and served a two-week term as president, during which time he signed several arrest warrants. When the Jacobins lost power in 1794, he was twice imprisoned, albeit under lenient conditions that allowed him to continue to paint. He later emerged as a supporter of Napoleon and re-established his career at the height of Napoleon's ascendancy. VIDEO NOTES: Oil on canvas; 1793; very powerful; commissioned during reign of terror; jacobin movement; revolutionary extremist group; if you couldn't prove you were for the revolution you were executed; embroiled in politics; martyr scene; woman gained access into his home by saying she had a petition for him to sign and when she got in she stabbed him; in tub; suffered from skin disease which required him to soak in tub for hours; makeshift desk; dedicated to Marat; holds in hand the letter to show deceit; the blade on floor bloodied; contrast blade of violence with feather point pen; inflammatory speeches; poor and man of the people; against aristocracy and monarchy; good heart and sending money to widow of the revolution; draw at our heartstrings; arms out and wood echoing crucifixion of Christ; mostly black background to dramatize scene; no emphasis of blood and gore of death but idolized Marat; use of light and dark; smooth finish; no ordinary murder; gave life for his faith

Liberty Leading the People

Delacroix, Romanticism, France 1830. Oil on canvas, 8'6 ½" x 10'8"(2.6 x 3.25 m). Musee du Louvre, Paris. Eugene Delacroix (1798-1863), the most important Romantic painter in Paris after Gericault's death, depicted contemporary heroes and victims engaged in the violent struggles of the times. In 1830, he created what has become his masterpiece, Liberty Leading the People: July 28, 1830, a painting that encapsulated the history of France after the fall of Napoleon. When napoleon was defeated in 1815, the victorious neighboring nations reimposed the French monarchy under Louis XVIII (ruled 1815-1824), brother of Louis XVI. The king's power was limited by a constitution and a parliament, but the government became more conservative as years passed, undoing many revolutionary reforms. Louis's younger brother and successor, CHarles X (ruled 1824-1830), reinstated press censorship, returned education to the control of the Catholic CHurch, and limited voting rights. These actions triggered a large-scale uprising in the streets of Paris. OVer the course of three days in July 1830, the Bourbon monarchical line was overthrown and Louis-Philippe d'Orleans (ruled 1830-1848) replaced his cousin Charles X, promising to abide by a new constitution. This period in French history is now referred to as the "July Monarchy." In his large modern history painting, Delacroix memorialized the July 1830 revolution just a few months after it took place. Although it records aspects of the actual event, it also departs from the facts in ways that further the intended message. Delacroix's revolutionaries are a motley crew of students, artisans, day laborers, and even children and top-hatted intellectuals. They stumble forward through the smoke of battle, crossing a barricade of refuse and dead bodies. The towers of Notre-Dame loom through the smoke and haze of the background. This much of the work is plausibly accurate. Their leader, however, is an energetic, allegorical figure of LIberty, personified by a gigantic, muscular, half-naked woman charging across the barricade with the revolutionary flag in one hand a a bayoneted rifle in the other. Delacroix has placed a Classical allegorical figure within the battle itself, outfitted with a contemporary weapon and Phrygian cap - the ancient symbol for a freed slave that was worn by the insurgents. He presents the event as an emotionally charged moment just before the ultimate sacrifice, as the revolutionaries charge the barricades to near-certain death. This dramatic example of Romantic painting is full of passion, turmoil, and danger - part real and part dream. VIDEO NOTES: Modern subject matter; paris uprising; 3 glorious days; liberal republicans; violation of constitution of Charles X; 1830; oil on canvas; liberty (allegorical figure); carries french flag which demonstrates equality, fertility, liberty; notre dame burning; revolution of the people; barricades to fight french forces; mix of upper, middle, and lower classes by clothing; rallies on the people behind her; all ages; dead troops; inspired Les Mis; actuality and fiction; allegory - popular in french art and literature; allegory: a representation of an abstract or spiritual meaning through concrete or material forms

Which people formed a powerful confederation of five Native American nations and played a prominent role until after the American Revolution?

Iroquois

Before the nineteenth century, the most important external influence on African cultures was __________.

Islam

What about Goya's Third of May, 1808 epitomizes Romanticism in art?

It is an image of terror

Literati painting was an established academic style practiced at court during which period of Chinese history?

Qing

en plein air

French term (meaning "in the open air") describing the Impressionist practice of painting outdoors so artists could have direct access to the fleeting effects of light and atmosphere while working

Bamboo and Rocks

Li Kan, Yuan Dynasty, Arts of China VIDEO NOTES: Handscroll, ink on paper; bamboo as subject matter; natural subject; proud and independent artists far from mongol court; to them bamboo was a symbol of true gentleman; bamboo is pliant but strong; can bend but doesn't easily break; 1280-1368; rocks and bamboo and grasses and empty space; negative space to let the artwork breathe so its not overly crowded

Rouen Cathedral (Sunlight)

Monet, Impressionism, France 1894. OIl on canvas, 39 ⅜ x 25 ⅞" (100.1 x 65.8 cm). National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. He painted the cathedral not as an expression of personal religious conviction, but because of his fascination with the way light played across its undulating stone surface, changing its appearance constantly as the lighting changed throughout the day. He painted more than 30 canvases of the Rouen facade, begun from direct observation of the cathedral from a second-story window across the street and finished later in his studio at nearby Giverny. In these paintings, Monet continued his IMpressionist pursuit of capturing the fleeting effects of light and atmosphere, but his extensive reworking of the paintings in his studio produced pictures that were more carefully orchestrated and laboriously executed than his earlier, more spontaneous, plein air works. VIDEO NOTES: 1890s; over 30 canvases of same subject; rented studio across the street; capture facade of church at different times of day; variety of lighting and color effects; different shadows and details; not interested in details and sharp focus

Marilyn Diptych

Warhol, Pop Art, United States 1962. Oil, acrylic, and silkscreen on enamel on canvas; two panels, each 6'10" x 4'9" (2.05 x 1.44 m). In 1962, movie star Marilyn Monroe was found dead in an apparent suicide. Warhol's Marilyn Diptych is one of a series of silkscreens that he made immediately after the actress's death. Warhol memorializes the screen image of Monroe, using a famous publicity photograph transferred directly onto silkscreen, thus rendering it flat and bland so that Monroe's signature features - her bleach-blond hair, her ruby lips, and her sultry, blue-eye-shadowed eyes - stand out as a caricature of the actress. The face portrayed is not that of Norma Jeane (Monroe's real name) but of Marilyn, the celluloid sex symbol as made over by the movie indsutry. Warhol made multiple prints from this screen, aided - as he was in many of his works - by a host of assistants working with assembly-line efficiency. In 1965, Warhol ironically named his studio "The Factory," further highlighting the commercial aspect of his art. The Marilyn Diptych, however, has deeper undertones. The diptych format carries religious connotations, perhaps implying that Monroe was a martyred saint or goddess in the pantheon of departed movie stars. In another print, Warhol surrounded her head with the gold background used in Orthodox religious icons. Additionally, the flat and undifferentiated Monroes on the colored left side of the diptych contrast with those in black and white on the right side, which fade progressively as they are printed and reprinted without re-inking the screen until all that remains of the original portrait is the ghostly image of a disappearing person. Warhol was one of the first artists to exploit the realization that while the mass media - television in particular - seem to bring us closer to the world, they actually allow us to observe the world only as detached voyeurs, not real participants. We become desensitized to death and disaster by the constant repetition of images on television, which we are literally to switch off at any time. While Warhol's Marilyn Diptych is similarly repetitive, superficial, and bland, ti exploits these traits that, in the mass media, might desensitize us to the full impact of the actress's tragic life. Warhol, known for his quotable phrases, once said, "I am a deeply superficial person." But the apparent superficiality of his art seems shrewdly profound. VIDEO NOTES: Color screenprint; 1962; two different canvases; silkscreen printing; hand done but like an assembly line; bold colors; take already created images; painted them in bold; repeated; is a product; objectification made into a commodity; soon after her suicide; life and death; fading away; masklike look; sense that she was made or produced; because we don't really know her

kente

a cloth made by the Asante peoples of Ghana. It is woven in long, narrow strips featuring complex, irregular, geometric patterns. The strips are then sewn together to make a large rectangular fabric, which is worn by wrapping it around the body under the arms with one end draped up over one shoulder

collage

a composition made of cut and pasted scraps of materials, sometimes with lines or forms added by the artist

atrial cross

a cross placed in the atrium of a church. In colonial america, used to mark a gathering and teaching place

frottage

a design produced by laying a piece of paper over a textured surface and rubbing with charcoal or other soft medium

lacquer

a type of hard, glossy surface varnish, originally developed for use on objects in East Asian cultures, made from the sap of the Asian sumac or from shellac, a resinous secretion from the lac insect; can be layered and manipulated or combined with pigments and other materials for various decorative effects

siapo

a type of tapa cloth found in Samoa and still used as an important gift for ceremonial occasions

curtain walls

a wall in a building that does not support any of the weight of the structure

Formulist

an approach to the understanding, appreciation, and valuation of art based almost solely on considerations of form. The Formalist's approach tends to regard an artwork as independent of its time and place of making

daguerreotype

an early photographic process that makes a positive print on a light-sensitized copperplate; invented and marketed in 1839 by Louis-Jacques-Mande Daguerre

academies

an institution established for the training of artists. Academies date from the Renaissance and after; they were particularly powerful, state-run institutions in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In general, academies replaced guilds as the venues where students learned the craft of art and were educated in art theory. Academies helped the recognition of artists as trained specialists, rather than craftspeople, and promoted their social status. An academician is an academy-trained artist

readymade

an object from popular or material culture presented without further manipulation as an artwork by the artist

daimyo

feudal lord

upeti

in Pacific cultures, a carved wooden design tablet, used to create patterns in cloth by dragging the fabric across it

sublime

of a concept, thing, or state of greatness or vastness with high spiritual, moral, intellectual, or emotional value; or something awe-inspiring. The sublime was a goal to which many nineteenth-century artists aspired in their artworks

history paintings

paintings based on historical, mythological, or biblical narratives. Once considered the noblest form of art, history paintings generally convey a high moral or intellectual idea and are often painted in a grand pictorial style

veduta

pl. vedute; Italian for "vista" or "view." Paintings, drawings, or prints, often of expansive city scenes or of harbors

lithography

process of making a print (lithograph) from a design drawn on a flat stone block with greasy crayon. Ink is applied to the wet stone and adheres only to the greasy areas of the design

calotype

the first photographic process utilizing negatives and paper positives; invented by William Henry Fox Talbot in the late 1830s

complementary color

the primary and secondary colors across from each other on the color wheel (red and green, blue and orange, yellow and purple). When juxtaposed, the intensity of both colors increases. When mixed together, they negate each other to make a neutral gray-brown

historicism

the strong consciousness of and attention to the institutions, themes, styles, and forms of the past, made accessible by historical research, textual study, and archaeology

atelier

the studio or workshop of a master artist or craftsperson, often including junior associates and apprentices

action painting

using broad gestures to drip or pour paint onto a pictorial surface. Associated with mid-twentieth-century American Abstract Expressionists, such as Jackson Pollock

The Goddess Coatlicue

Aztec, Arts of the Americas Mexico. Aztec, c. 1500. Basalt, height 8'6" (2.65 m). Museo Nacional de Antropologia, Mexico City. Aztec sculpture was monumental, powerful, and often unsettling. A particularly striking example is an imposing statue of Coatlicue, mother of the MExica god Huitzilopochtli. Coatlicue means "she of the serpent skirt," and this broad-shouldered figure with clawed feet has a skirt of twisted snakes. The sculpture may allude to the moment of Huitzilopochtli's birth: when Coatlicue conceived Huitzilopochtli from a ball of down, her other children - the stars and the moon - jealously conspired to kill her. As they attacked, Huitzilopochtli emerged from his mother's body fully grown and armed, drove off his half-brothers, and destroyed his half-sister, the moon goddess Coyolxauhqui. Coatlicue, however, did not survive the encounter. In this sculpture, she has been decapitated and a pair of serpents, symbols of gushing blood, rise from her neck to form her head. Their eyes are her eyes; their fangs, her teeth. Around her stump of a neck hangs a necklace of human hands, hearts, and a dangling skull. Despite the surface intricacy, the statue's massive form creates an impression of solidity, and the entire sculpture leans forward, looming over the viewer. The colors with which it was originally painted - red, white, ocher, black, and blue - would have heightened its dramatic impact. VIDEO NOTES: C. 1500; Aztec goddess; mother of the patron god, Huitzilopochtli who is god of war and associated with sun; under what is now Mexico City; Sacred precinct; access point of universe; ruled large portion of what today is central Mexico; leaning forward; more dangerous and monumental; two feet with claws and eyes and zoomorphized; see fur and feathers above feet; the skirt with intertwined snakes with heads and rattles; bound together by belt of human skull in front and back; necklace made of alternating heads and hands; given birth to children; decapitated; two snakes winding out of neck that come face to face; form frontal facing head; underbelly of snakes seen; about to pounce; snakes rising from wrists; carved in the round; monster joints; shallow relief carving below it; earth lord touching surface of earth on bottom; countered everything Europeans believed; discovered with Sun Stone; it was reburied because it was so terrifying

Rue Transnonain, 15 April 1835

Daumier, Realism, France 1834. Lithograph, 11 x 17 ⅜" (28 x 44 cm). Yale University Art Gallery. In the wake of the 1830 revolution in Paris, Daumier began supplying pictures to La Caricature, an anti-monarchist, pro-republican magazine, and the equally partisan Le Charivari, the first daily newspaper illustrated with lithographs. His 1834 lithograph calling attention to the atrocities on Rue Transnonain was part of a series of large prints sold by subscription to raise money for Le Charivari's legal defense fund and thus further freedom of the press. A government guard had been shot and killed on the rue Transnonain - only a few blocks from Daumier's home - during a demonstration by workers, and in response, the riot squad killed everyone in the building where they believed the marksman was hiding. Daumier shows the bloody aftermath of the event: an innocent family disturbed from their sleep and then murdered. The wife lies in the shadows to the left, her husband in the center of the room, and an elderly man to the right. It takes a few minutes for viewers to realize that under the central figure's back there are also the bloody head and arms of a murdered child. Daumier was known for his biting caricatures and social commentary, but this image is one of his most powerful. VIDEO NOTES: Lithograph; 11 x 17"; realism in printmaking; responding to political and historical event; protests in streets of Paris about restring unions; king sent militia out; sniper in apartment building; militia killed everyone inside; mostly innocent victims; drew it and then made a print of it; widely seen; condemning image of the aftermath; 3 generations of a family murdered in their sleep; collapsed on dead child; sharp realistic view; no sentimentality of it

The Death of Sardanapalus

Delacroix, Romanticism, France VIDEO NOTES: Epitomizes romanticism; 1827; in ancient history; lounging on bed; destroyed his stuff by himself rather than his stuff being destroyed by others; slaves and mistresses killed in front of his eyes; all the jewels and gold destroyed; even horses; eye of storm watching what is going around him; blood and lust; bondage, exoiticism, nudity

The Great Wave

Hokusai, Edo Period, Arts of Japan From Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji. Edo Period, c. 1831. Polychrome woodblock print on paper, 9 ⅞ x 14 ⅝" (25 x 37.1 cm). Honolulu Academy of Art. Is the most famous of the scenes from Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji. The great wave rears up like a dragon with claws of foam, ready to crash down on the figures huddled in the boats below. Exactly at the point of imminent disaster, but far in the distance, rises Japan's most sacred peak, Mount Fuji, whose slopes swing up like waves and whose snowy crown is like foam - comparisons the artist makes clear in the wave nearest us. In the late 19th century when Japonisme, a style of French and American 19th century art that was highly influenced by Japanese art, became the vogue in the West, Hokusai's art was greatly appreciated, even more so than it had been in Japan: the first book on the artist was published in France. VIDEO NOTES: Woodblock print, ink on paper, 10 ⅛ x 14 15/16", c. 1830-32; Mount Fuji in background; humans in composition; several boats and humans inside boats that are going to be engulfed by the wave; how man relates to nature; people in boats will be lucky to survive; yet no sense of panic; bowing to wave; no dominance over wave but harmony with it; respect and reverence; accepting nature; not just about nature; humans and relationship with nature; Mount Fuji in background to stabilize; crucial part of composition; water vs. land; permanence vs. impermanence; reflects yin/yang symbol; combo of duality; positive of wave curving over and negative of sky; dramatic portrayal of natures restless power

George Washington

Houdon, Neoclassicism, United States 1788-1792. Marble, height 6'2" (1.9 m). State Capitol, RIchmond, Virginia. The plow share behind Washington alludes to Cincinnatus, a Roman soldier of the fifth century who was appointed dictator and dispatched to defeat the Aequi, who had besieged a Roman army. After the victory, Cincinnatus resigned the dictatorship and returned to his farm. Washington's contemporaries compared him with Cincinnatus because, after leading the Americans to victory over the British, he resigned his commission and went back to farming rather than seeking political power. Just below Washington's waistcoat hands the badge of the Society of the Cincinnati, founded in 1783 by the officers of the disbanding COntinental Army who were returning to their peacetime occupations. Washington lived in retirement at his Mount Vernon, Virginia, plantation for five years before his 1789 election as the first president of the US. On the basis of his bust of Benjamin Franklin, Houdon was commissioned by the Virginia State Legislature to make a portrait of its native son George Washington to be installed in the Neoclassical Virginia state capitol building designed by Jefferson. In 1785, Houdon traveled to the United States to make a cast of Washington's features and create a bust in plaster, returning to Paris to execute the life-size marble figure. The sculpture represents Washington in the Classical manner but dressed in contemporary clothes, much as Benjamin West had represented General Wolfe. Houdon imbued the portrait with Classical ideals of dignity, honor, and civic responsibility. Washington wears the uniform of a general, the rank he held in the Revolutionary War, but he also rests his left hand on the Roman fasces, a bundle of 13 rods (representing the 13 colonies) and an axe face, that served as a Roman symbol of authority. Attached to the fasces are both a sword of war and a plowshare of peace. Significantly, Houdon's Washington does not touch the sword.

Machu Picchu

Inca, Arts of the Americas Peru, 1450-1530. Machu Picchu was originally a vibrant city and is now one of the most spectacular archaeological sites in the world. At almost 8,000 feet above sea level, it straddles a ridge between two high peaks in the eastern slopes of the Andes and looks down on the Urubamba River. Stone buildings, today lacking only their thatched roofs, occupy terraces around central plazas, and narrow agricultural terraces descend into the valley. The site, near the eastern limits of the empire, was the royal estate of the Inca ruler Pachacuti. The court might have retired to this warmer, lower-altitude palace when the Cusco winter became too harsh. Important diplomatic negotiations and ceremonial feasts may also have taken place at this country retreat. It provides an excellent example of Inca architectural planning: the entire complex is designed with great sensitivity to its surroundings. Walls and plazas frame stupendous vistas of the surrounding landscape, and carefully selected stones echo the shapes of the mountains beyond. VIDEO NOTES: Stone city; testament to the power and ingenuity of Incan people; at center of empire; built around mid-15th century; no wheels or tools made of steel or iron; didn't use mortar; cut so precisely; located on two fault lines; bounce during tremors but stay the same; mystery for the purpose; ceremonial site, military stronghold, or retreat for nobility; align with astronomical events; abandoned after 100 years; no written language in Inca; unknown to outside world; early 20th century was exposed to outsiders; still stands as an important archaeological sites; 1983 - designated as world heritage site

Monticello

Jefferson, Neoclassicism, United States Charlottesville, Virginia. 1769-1782, 1796-1809. Thomas Jefferson's graceful designs for the mountaintop home he called Monticello (Italian for "little mountain"), near Charlottesville, Virginia, employ Neoclassical architecture in a private setting. Jefferson began the first phase of construction (1769-1782) when Virginia was still a British colony, using the English Palladian style. By 1796, however, he had become disenchanted with both the English and their architecture and had come to admire French architecture while serving as the American minister in Paris. He then embarked upon a second building campaign at Monticello (1796-1809), enlarging the house and redesigning its brick and wood exterior so that its two stories appeared from the outside as one large story in the manner then fashionable in Paris. The modern worlds of England, France, and America, as well as the ancient worlds of Greece and Rome, come together in this residence. In the second half of the nineteenth century, cultural borrowings would take on an even broader global scope.

Untitled

Rothko, Abstract Expressionism, United States 1949. Oil on canvas, 6'9 ⅜" x 5'6 ⅜" (2.1 x 1.4 m). National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Mark Rothko (1903-1970) had very little formal art training, but by 1940 he was already producing paintings deeply influenced by the European Surrealists and by Jung's archetypal imagery. By the mid-1940s, he began to paint very large canvases with rectangular shapes arranged in a vertical format in which he allowed the colors to bleed into one another. Paintings such as Untitled (Rothko Number 5068.49) and No. 3/No. 13 (Magenta, Black, Green, on Orange) are not simply arrangements of flat, geometric shapes on a canvas, nor are they atmospheric, archetypal landscapes. Rothko thought of his shapes as fundamental ideas expressed in rectangular form uninterrupted by a recognizable subject, which sit in front of a painted field (hence the name "Color Field painting"). He preferred to show his paintings together in series of rows, lit indirectly to evoke moods of transcendental meditation.

A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte

Seurat, Post-Impressionism, France 1884-1886. Oil on canvas, 6'9 ½" x 10'1 ¼" (207 x 308 cm). The Art Institute of Chicago. Seurat's monumental painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte was first exhibited at the eighth and final IMpressionist exhibition in 1886. The theme of weekend leisure is typically Impressionist, but the rigorous technique, the stiff formality of the figures, and the highly calculated geometry of the composition produce a solemn effect quite at odds with the casual naturalism of Impressionism. Seurat painted the entire canvas using only 11 colors in three values. When viewed from a distance of about 9 feet, the painting reads as figures in a park rendered in many colors and tones; but when viewed from a distance of 3 feet, the individual marks of color become more apparent, while the forms dissolve into abstraction. From its first appearance, the painting has been the subject of a number of conflicting interpretations. Contemporary accounts of the island indicate that on Sundays (the newly designated official day off for French working families) it was noisy, littered, and chaotic. Seurat may have intended to represent an ideal image of harmonious, blended working-class and middle-class life and leisure. But some art historians see Seurat satirizing the sterile habits, rigid attitudes, and domineering presence of the growing Parisian middle class - or simply engaging in an intellectual exercise on the nature of form and color.

Five Shades of Ink

Utamaro, Edo Period, Arts of Japan VIDEO NOTES: Edo - home of the shogun (renamed Tokyo in 1868); woodblock print, ink on paper; 1615-1868; large-headed pictures focusing on head and upper body of female; background blank; viewer focusing on figure itself; bold yellow; did prints in series; five different types of female entertainers from lowest to highest; captured physical appearance and also a sense of what shes good at like conversation; charm her clients; happy and animated; amuses customer with dialogue; patterning; design in hair; white make up and painted lips and eyebrows; hours and hours for the robes, hair, and makeup; artist interested in design and composition; creating a type rather than individual; asymmetry with patterning; graphic design; carved into wood is caligraphy the artist name and seal on left and on right is name of artwork

Le Noble Sauvage

Wangechi Mutu, Arts of Africa 2006. Ink and collage on Mylar, 7'7 ¾" x 4'6" (233 x 137.2 cm). Mutu spins off of the colonial-period stereotype of non-European women as being societies negatively view the bodies of women of color as dangerous, uncivilized, and animalistic. Ironically, this is the exact opposite of how women's bodies appear in the fashion magazines where Mutu gets her images. Her work points out that beauty is always contrived and that women around the world are held to unnatural standards in regard to their looks, behavior, and cultural backgrounds.

salon

a large room for entertaining guests or a periodic social or intellectual gathering, often of prominent people, held in such a room. Also: a hall or gallery for exhibiting works of art

ink painting

a monochromatic style of painting developed in China, using black ink with gray washes

grattage

a pattern created by scraping off layers of paint from a canvas laid over a textured surface.