Art Appreciation Final

The Bodhisattva Padmapani (the Beautiful Bodhisattva) detail of a fresco from cave 1, Ajanta. C. 462-500 CE.

A bodhisattva is a saintly being who helps others attain enlightenment. Really worn out painting of a guy with a fancy crown holding a flower bud on his finger.

Michelangelo. David. 1501-04. Marble

A colossal image of the biblical hero and young Hebrew shepherd who killed the giant Goliath with a single stone from his slingshot. Michelangelo studied anatomy and dissected corpses to know the inside and outside of the body. This figure seems to be made of muscle and flesh and bone, though it's all in marble. A naked statue of a guy holding a strap on his shoulder.

Colosseum, Rome. 72-80 CE. Architecture.

A large oval covering 6 acres, this was planned under the emperor Vespasian and dedicated in 80 CE as an amphitheater for gladiatorial games and public entertainment including wild animals in bloody and gruesome contests. Romans are best known for their architecture and engineering.

Nkondi figure. Lower Congo. Before 1878.

A nkondi starts a as a plain carved figure. The ritual specialist adds packets of materials linked to the dead and to the dire punishments the nkondi will inflict. Nails and other materials accumulate show the nkondi's prowess. Much of the African artwork is lost because it was made of perishable material such as wood. The creepiest voodoo doll ever.

Laocoon Group. Roman copy, late 1st century BCE. Marble.

A second Greek Hellenistic style overthrew Classical values in favor of dynamic poses and extreme emotions. The sculpture depicts Laocoon and his kids entwined by the deadly snakes, projecting complicated and intense movement. Man and two kids at his sides with one arm each flexing and stretching while being attacked by snakes.

Sandro Botticelli. The Birth of Venus. C. 1480. Tempera on canvas.

An example of Southern/Italian Renaissance. Renaissance artists used stories of Greek and Roman gods and goddesses for subject matter. First life-sized nude painting. Woman with really long blonde hair standing in a seashell with a woman draping her to shield the eyes of children and a guy spitting on her it seems.

Robert Rauschenberg. Winter Pool. 1959. Combine painting: oil, paper, wood, metal, sandpaper, tape, printer paper, printed reproductions, handheld bellows, and found painting, on two canvases, with ladder.

Assemblage: Creating a sculpture by grouping together distinct elements, as opposed to casting, modeling, or carving. It looks like someone was in the middle of some interior decoration by placing two boards of random shit with a ladder in the middle on the wall.

Roy Lichtenstein. Blam. 1962. Oil on canvas.

Cartoony drawing of a plane under attack by explosive stuff.

Marina Abramovic and Ulay. Imponderabilia. 1977. Performance of the Galleria Comunale d'Arte Moderna, Bologna, Italy.

Body Art and Performance: Event or action carried out by an artist and offered as art. Used since the 70's, performance art embraces earlier practices such as happenings and events staged by Dada artists. Performances range from improvisatory to highly scripted, and from actions of daily life to elaborately staged spectacles. Two tall people sandwiching an older, smaller guy.

Ahmad al-Suhrawardi, calligrapher. Page from a copy of the Qur'an. Baghda, 1307. Ink, colors and gold on paper.

Book Arts a. Page from the Qur'an b. Interlacing plant forms ornament c. Contains Arabic (Kufic) script d. The process of writing on this page is considered an act of prayer. Islamic doctrine forbids images of animate beings in religious context a. Geometric patterns b. Stylized plant forms c. Decorative script. Three lines of Islamic text, really big text.

Katsushika Hokusai. The Great Wave of Kanagawa. From the Thirty-Six views of Mount Fuji. 1830-32. Woodblock print. Ink and color on paper.

Brilliant contrast appears with the angry wave rearing up with claws of foam, with the second wave in the foreground echoing the shape of Mt. Fuji, which appears calm and serene, its sloping sides leading up to a majestic snow capped peak. This has become an icon of Japanese art.

Carvaggio. Entombment of Christ. 1604. Oil on canvas.

Caravaggio: Dramatic way with light and dark. Set on a diagonal, the slab seems to project forward from the picture plane and into our space, involving us in the action. Figures are frozen in anguish. Two guys lowering Christ into his tomb and women in the back mourning him.

Mark Rothko. Orange and Yellow. 1956. Oil on canvas.

Color Field Painting: Nonrepresentational painting with broad fields or areas of color. Shared Abstract Expressionists' fondness for large scale as well as its desire to transcend the visible world in favor of universal truths viewed as unconscious or spiritual. Yellow on top, orange on the bottom, at least the title makes sense.

Pablo Picasso. Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. 1907. Oil on canvas.

Cubism: Early 20th century movement that abstracted the forms of the visible world into fragments or facets drawn from multiple points of view, then constructed an image from them which had its own internal logic. A severely restricted palette (black, white, brown) and a painting technique of short, distinct "touches" allowed shards of figure and ground to interpenetrate in a shallow, shifting space. Five women modeling simultaneously but having their features distorted severely by a guy who decided to give them medical disorders in his painting, or he was wearing glasses not prescribed for him. Part of the internal logic here is having a horse-face.

Marcel Duchamp. Fountain. 1917/1964 Edition Schwartz, Milan. Ceramic compound.

DADA: Emerged during WWI (1914-18). Believing that society had gone mad, Dada refused to make sense or to provide any sort of aesthetic refuge or comfort. It created "anti-art" that emphasized absurdity, irrationality, chance, whimsy, irony, and childishness. Deliberately shocking or provocative works, actions, and events were aimed at disrupting public complacency. Duchamp created the new art form. Ready-mades: A work of art that the artist has not made but designated. Looks like a urinal or a toilet, which are kind of fountains if you think about it.

Inhabitants of the Island of Nuku, Hiva. 1813. Hand-colored copperplate engraving after original drawings by Wilhelm Gottlieb Tilesius von Tilenau.

Different stages of tattooing. Tattooing was considered sacred by the Marquesans, performed ritually by a specialist, tukuka, who invoked the protective presence of specific deities. Black Panther talking to White Panther (Nukanda Forever!)

Kouros. C. 580 BCE. Marble

Egyptian influence seen. The name of this artwork is Greek for youths or boys. Created during the archaic period of Greek art, so called because what would later be leading characteristics can be seen in their early form. Skinny light brown dude standing with arms at his side.

Bayeux Tapestry. C. 1073-88. Wool embroidery on linen.

Embroidery: Colored yarns are sewn to a woven background. Really long. Tells the story of the conquest of England by William of Normandy in 1066. This scene shows Anglo Saxons on foot making a stand on a hill against a Norman cavalry assault. Horses rolling and tumbling while people thrown skinny ass spears at each other.

Wassily Kandinsky. Black Lines No.. 189, 1913. Oil on canvas.

Expressionism: Art movement of the early 20th century, especially prevalent in Germany, which claimed the right to distort visual appearances to express psychological or emotional states, especially the artist's own personal feelings. Describes any art style where the artist's subjective feelings take precedence over objective observation. Blots of color with black lines going through them, the emotional state must have been elated, psychopathic, confused, rainbow loving, or excited to wipe out half the universe (cause they look like the rainbow rocks from Avengers).

Matisse. The Joy of Life. 1905-06. Oil on canvas.

Fauves: "Wild beasts". A short-lived but influential art movement in France in the 20th century that emphasized bold, arbitrary, expressive color. Naked people hanging out, making out, bathing, playing ring around the rosy, and having weirdly shaped bodies, wild beasts indeed.

Judy Chicago. The Dinner Party. 1979. Mixed media.

Feminist Art. Collaborative work with the help of hundreds of women and several men. Arranged around a triangular table are thirty-nine place settings, each one created in honor of an influential woman, such as Egyptian ruler Hatshepsut and the novelist Virginia Woolf. The names of an additional 999 important women are written on the floor. By using craft techniques such as ceramics, weaving, needlepoint, and embroidery, the artist demanded artistic equality for media that had long been associated with "women's work". This artwork honors the women who were confined to the domestic sphere. The thirteen places on each side of the triangle intentionally evoke the seating arrangement of Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper. Triangle honoring important women, a mix between women power and Illuminati.

Umberto Boccioni. Unique Forms of Continuity in Space. 1913. Bronze.

Futurism: Founded in Italy in 1909 and lasting only a few years. Concentrated on the dynamic quality of modern technological life, emphasizing speed and movement. Two melted Oscar awards merged into one.

Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun. Marie Antoinette and Her Children. 1787. Oil on canvas.

In an attempt to repair the queen's frivolous and flirtatious reputation, the painter was asked to paint a different sort of portrait portraying a devoted and beloved mother. Woman in poofy clothing surrounded by her kids, looks more like a babysitter (hah, take that!)

Allan Kaprow. Courtyard. 1962. Happening at the Mills Hotel, New York.

Happenings: eliminating the art object and staging events. Black and white photo of some guys setting up some tower thing.

Yinka Shonibare, MBE. Cake Man. 2013. Fiberglass mannequin, Dutch wax-printed cotton textile, plaster, polystyrene, pocket watch, globe, leather, and steel baseplate.

He is known for installations featuring headless mannequins dressed in 18th or 19th century clothing made of colorful "African" cloth. He explores issues of cultural influence and cross-influence. "[Artwork] is essentially about greed, the burden of carrying wealth and never having enough. Even though it weighs you down, you still want more." Guy with a bowling ball or Sputnik satellite for a head in a polka-dot outfit carrying cakes on his back.

Mosaic depicting Christ as Pantokrator. Santa Maria la Nuova, Monreale, Sicily. Before 1183.

Icon: a specific kind of image, either a portrait of a sacred person or a portrayal of a sacred event. This is an example of glittering Byzantine mosaic and emphasizes the divine, awe-inspiring, even terrifying majesty of Christ as opposed to his gentle human incarnation as Jesus. Jesus cast in shadow above everyone else going like "yeah, I'm the boss of ya'll."

Claude Monet. Autumn Effect at Argenteuil. 1873. Oil on canvas.

Impressionism: Originating in the 1860s in France. Opposed the academic art of the day. Followed Realism in portraying daily life, especially the leisure activities of the Middle Class. Landscape was also a favorite subject, encouraged by the new practice of painting outdoors. A lake with yellow trees on the left and a green tree on the right, a town in the back.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Le Moulinde la Galette. 1876.

Impressionists favored alla prima painting, which recorded fleeting effects of nature and the rapidly changing urban scene. Really big formal party.

Michelangelo. Sistine Chapel Ceiling. 1508-72. Fresco.

In the niches along the sides, portrayed the Old Testament prophets and ancient Greek sybils-women with prophecy. Along the central spine of the ceiling, frames a series of 9 pictorial spaces, depicting scenes from Genesis, from the creation of the world through Noah's story and the flood. Just a close up of the Sistine Chapel Ceiling.

Diego Velazquez, Las Meninas. 1656. Oil on canvas.

King Philip IV of Spain acquired the painter. This is an official portrait, the painter has given the scene a warm, "everyday" quality. The theatricality of Baroque is more subtle by the device of spotlighting. Very ambiguous painting, girls in front, painter at the side, guy in the back, and King and Queen in the back. You did a friggin presentation on this one.

Hirshfeld Workshop. Krater. C 750-735 BCE. Terra Cotta.

Krater: a vessel for wine. Human figures on Greek ceramics. The Krater depicts a funeral and is a grave marker, found in the Dipylon cemetery near the entrance to ancient Athens. A really big cup, whoever is drinking from this is in for a massive hangover.

Agnolo Bronzino. Allegory (Venus, Cupid, Folly, and Time) C. 1545. Oil on wood.

Mannerism: From maniera, meaning "style" or "stylishness", a trend in 16th century Italian art, manerists cultivated a variety of elegant, refined, virtuosic, and highly artificial styles, with elongated figures, sinuous contours, bizarre effects of scale and lighting, shallow pictorial space, & intense colors. Venus taking a selfie, a girl kissing her, a baby trying to photobomb Venus by wacking her on the back of the head with flowers like a baseball bat, another girl in the back like "what's up?", and some guy telling some woman to get away from him.

Interior, Sistine Chapel, Vatican, Rome. 1473-80.

Michelangelo was called to Rome by Pope Julius II. Named after an earlier pope called Sixtus, this place has a high vaulted ceiling 128 feet long and 44 feet wide. Painted in 4 years, Michelangelo invented an illusionistic architecture, painted to look like Stone. Paintings adorning the walls and ceiling, get the picture?

Donald Judd. Untitled (Stack). 1967. Lacquer on galvanized iron, twelve units.

Minimalism: 60's and 70's. Toward simple, primary forms. Favored industrial materials (sheet metal, bricks, plywood, fluorescent lights) and sculptures (called objects) tended to be set on the floor or attached to the wall rather than placed on a pedestal. A line of green prisms going upwards.

Andy Warhol. Gold Marilyn Monroe. 1962. Silkscreen ink on synthetic polymer paint on canvas.

Pop Art: Art style of the 60's, imagery from popular, mass-produced culture, mundane, focused on the over familiar objects of daily life to give them new meanings as visual emblems. Pink-faced Marilyn Monroe with yellow hair on a gold backdrop.

Jacques-Louis David. The Oath of the Horatii. 1784-85. Oil on canvas.

Neoclassicism: "new classicism". Seriousness was now in vogue. Patrons and artists across Europe were newly fascinated by the Classical past, and their interest was encouraged by rulers and social thinkers hoping to foster civic virtues such as patriotism, stoicism, self-sacrifice and frugality-virtues they associated with the Roman Republic. Neoclassicism is characterized by clear contours, clean colors, and precise draftsmanship. Three guys Heiling Hitler to a guy holding three swords while the women are like "Oh great, there go the boys....again."

Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres. Jupiter and Thetis. 1811. Oil on canvas.

Neoclassicism: Great art from great subject matter like history-which included classical mythology and biblical scenes. Emphasized order, clarity and restraint. Guy with scepter acting all tough while his wife tries to get him to talk or at least smile by moving his lips with her hand.

Paul Gauguin. Te Aa No Areois (The Seed of Areoi). 1892. Oil on burlap.

Post-Impressionism: Applied to the work of several artists-French or living in France-from about 1885-1905. Although all painted in highly personal styles, the post-Impressionists were united in rejecting absence of form, characteristic of Impressionism. Woman sitting in a field surrounded by yellow flowers and holding a bird in her hand.

Gustave Courbet. A Burial at Ornans. 1849-50. Oil on canvas.

Realism: Portrays forms in the natural world in a highly faithful manner. Art style of the mid-19th century which arose as a reaction against both Neoclassicism and Romanticism. Realist artists sought to depict the everyday and the ordinary rather than the historic, the heroic, or the exotic. This painting is considered the first masterpiece of Realism.

Masaccio. Trinity (with the Virgin, St. John the Evangelist, and Donors) 1425. Fresco.

Renaissance means rebirth. The Renaissance changed artists from Europe from skilled craft workers to intellectuals. Use of linear perspective. Guy on the cross with Ultimate Jesus in the back.

Eugene Delacroix. The Women of Algiers. 1834. Oil on canvas.

Romanticism: A movement in Western art of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, generally assumed to be in opposition to Neoclassism. Marked by intense colors, turbulent emotions, complex composition, soft outlines, and sometimes heroic or exotic subject matter. Romanticism rebelled against the Age of Reason and urged emotion, intuition, individual experience, and imagination. Women at a get-together probably gossiping about their useless husbands.

Leonardo da Vinci. Madonna and Child with Saint Anne. C. 1503-06. Oil on wood.

Seen in the Renaissance style Mona Lisa, we see the technique of sfumato (Italian for "smoke") which is using multiple layers of glazes producing a hazy atmosphere, softened contours, and velvet shadows. Pyramid grouping is the classical compositional shape for Renaissance painting as seen in this painting. Woman sits in other woman's lap while holding a baby that is strangling a goat, that bigger woman's thighs must hurt.

Queen Nefertiti. C. 1345. Painted Limestone

She looks contemporary/modern. She presents a standard of elegance that is timeless. Her hair is like Marge Simpson's hair, it goes upwards, or maybe that is a crown, an unusual crown.

Edouard Manet. Luncheon on the Grass. 1863.

Shown in the "Salon des Refuse" ("showing off those who have been refused"), Manet mocked other artists, one critic thought he was becoming famous by shocking the public. The public scandal, the flatness, the artificiality, the ambiguity, and self-conscious relation to art history have made the painting a touchstone of modern art. No use of modeling, she seems like a sharp cutout. Modeling is the use of light and dark to convey 3-D images. Woman in the back is too large for her distance from the group. Defies the illusion at depth. Most controversial artist of his time. Guy pointing a finger gun at his friend who is sitting with his naked girl. Really large woman in the back scooping up water.

Great Stupa, Sanchi India. Sunga and early Andhra Periods, 3rd century BCE-1st century.

Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha ("awakened") strove to extinguish desire by cultivating nonattachment, and proposed the eightfold path of moral and ethical behavior. His cremated remains were distributed among eight memorial mounds called stupas (a solid earthen mound faced with stone). Pilgrims come to be near the Buddha's remains' energy and visit the stupa by walking around it. Big ass dome for religious purposes.

Salvador Dali. The Persistence of Memory. 1931. Oil on canvas.

Surrealism: A movement of the early 20th century that emphasized imagery from dreams and fantasies. Bent clocks, ants on a clock, a dead animal or maybe not.

Giotto. The Lamentation. 1305-06. Fresco.

The artist was a late Middle Ages artist whose innovations in creating figures and setting with naturalism greatly influenced future Renaissance painting styles. Everyone has their heads in yellow bubbles, people and angels surrounding Jesus as he is treated to a nice body massage by five women.

Guanyin. Song Dynasty. C 1100. Painted wood.

This bodhisattva became the object of special affection in China, who was believed to reside high on a mountain and offer special protection to all who traveled the sea. Carved from wood, he sits in a position known as the pose of royal ease. Guy sitting in a sexy pose, he's even squinting like it's a photo shoot. I guess royal means sexy.

Gianlorenzo Bernini. St. Teresa in Ecstasy, from the Cornaro Chapel. 1645-52. Marble and gilt bronze.

The Baroque era. Baroque art is full of emotion, energy and movement, favoring ornamentation, as rich and complex as possible. Colors are more vivid than in the Renaissance, with greater contrast between colors and between light and dark. Woman doing Ecstasy and really enjoying it and an angel about to either stab her through the heart or about to inject her with more Ecstasy if that's how it goes.

Piet Mondrian. Trafalgar Square. 1939-43. Oil on canvas.

The Bauhaus and De Stijl sought to create harmony between individual lives and modern industry and technology. The artist distilled his art to what he considered to be the most universal signs of human order: vertical and horizontal lines, and the primary colors of red, yellow, and blue. He thought of his canvases as places to stabilize ourselves. Rectangles, mostly white but a couple are yellow, red, and blue.

Jackson Pollock. Number 1, 1949. 1949. Enamel and metallic paint on canvas.

The New York School: Painters of the 1st Postwar art movement, the Abstract Expressionists. Action Painting: Applying paint to a support in bold, spontaneous gestures supplies the expressive content. This looks like a close up of fungal growth.

Female Figure from Willendorf. C. 23,000 BCE. Limestone

The Oldest Art. The Paleolithic Period went from 9000 BCE to the next 4000 years. Gave way to the Neolithic Period. Obese female figure with no face, the weirdest doll you have ever seen.

Jean-Michel Basquiat. Hollywood Africans. 1983. Acrylic and oil stick on canvas.

The Painterly Image. Childish grafitti of the artist and his friends criticizing Hollywood confining black actors to stereotypical roles

"Warrior A", discovered in the sea near Riace, Italy. C. 450 BCE. Bronze, with bone and glass eyes, silver teeth, and copper lips and nipples.

The Riace warriors were created during the classical period of Greek art, from 480-323 BCE. The art produced during these decades was considered to be the finest of the finest. Silver naked guy with a clenched fist.

Excavated figures from the "terra-cotta army" guarding the tomb of the First Emperor of Qin (d. 210 BCE). Xian, China.

The first Qin emperor, Shihuangdi, ordered the crafting of a huge terra-cotta army. Discovered in 1974, row upon row the life-sized figures stand in their thousand-soldiers, archers, cavalrymen, and charioteers-facing east, the direction from which danger was expected to come. Terra cotta is clay. Clay dudes with hair tied into knots on their heads.

Buddha Preaching the First Sermon, from Sarnath. C. 465-85 CE. Sandstone.

The hand gestures of the Buddha, called mudras, indicate preaching. Buddha sitting on a chair with very little room to sit showing people how to flip the bird at people, particularly the designers of the seat.

Aphrodite of Melos. C. 150 BCE. Marble

The last phase of Greek art is Hellenistic. Sculptors of the late Classical period sculpted female nudes only as goddesses or mythological characters. She once had a shield propped upon her raised knee. She would have been admiring her own reflection in a mirror as she contemplated her beauty. Statue of a woman without arms looking at someone like "what?"

Detail of east gate with yakshi. Great Stupa, Sanchi, India. Sunga and early Andhra periods, 3rd century BCE-1st century.

Yakshi: embodies fertility and abundance. Women were able to cause trees to blossom or bear fruit. The Yakshi enlaces her arms in a mango tree, which has blossomed from her laughter. Together with her companions she showers blessings of abundance on the site and all who enter it.

Sesshu Toyo. Landscape (in the haboku technique). 1495. Hanging scroll, ink on paper.

Zen priest painters used a painting technique called haboku, "splashed ink" as a metaphor for sudden enlightenment. Japanese culture can absorb and transform new ideas while keeping older traditions vital. Lotsa Japanese letters and splashed ink.

Nanna Ziggurat, Ur. C. 2100-2050 BCE.

Ziggurats are temples or shrines raised on a monumental stepped base. This temple was for the moon God Nanna, who protected the Sumerian city of Ur. The temple was elevated to a mountaintop that resembled a meeting place for Heaven and Earth, where priests and priestesses communicated with the gods. Looks like a fortress, with stairs going up from the front and the sides.