Art History Exam 3 Study Guide

Georges Seurat, A Sunday on La Grande Jatte - 1884 [Post-Impressionism]

-Ambition was to bring science to the methods of impressionism—a science that has been overturned and we are left with poetry. He wanted to make the paintings seem more luminous and brighter, this is incredibly complex in color and light. He imposes the science of color and light—divides color into its components. Instead of trying to find the perfect purple by mixing red and blue (often muddy), he takes the red and blue and puts them next to each other so your eye sees them as purple. This is a change from mixing the colors, the impressionists sought to create outdoor and light and he did this with a strong sense of sunlight -The artist used neo-impressionism to describe his art, and yet it is so far from impressionism. It has the leisure, the outside of impressionism, but it was not done plain air, it was not done immediately, he goes back to the studio and makes this very composed painting, he wants to bring a sense of timelessness and classicism, thoughtfulness and composing, not spontaneous. The figures are remarkably structured and organized within this landscape. We have a receding diagonal line that creates an illusion of space and has alternating of light and dark of the classical tradition that steps back into space. Because of its technique, it draws our eyes to the surface of the canvas, but also away to see the illusion. -The man smoking a pipe, his body is defined by blue, red, yellow strokes, within that there are points of pink and blue that he added later. He creates volume, the brushstrokes layered on top creates clear contour that we don't see in impressionism, he is modelling and seems 3 dimensional. -Art historians disagree about his meaning of classes, the city now had a way of mixing classes which was a modern idea. He is confounding the expectations of a typical viewer, we would expect to see a narrative or pretty story and emotion, he gives us figures that don't talk and has no narrative. It was a challenge for the viewers to understand, it was so different from anything people were doing. He created something really serious, monumental, classical and thoughtful.

Vincent van Gogh, The Starry Night 1889 [Post-Impressionism]

-The curving, swirling lines of hills, mountains, and sky, the brilliantly contrasting blues and yellows, the large, flame-like cypress trees, and the thickly layered brushstrokes of Vincent van Gogh's The Starry Night are ingrained in the minds of many as an expression of the artist's turbulent state-of-mind. · Van Gogh had had the subject of a blue night sky dotted with yellow stars in mind for many months, it presented a few technical challenges he wished to confront—namely the use of contrasting color and the complications of painting en plein air (outdoors) at night. · "These are exaggerations from the point of view of arrangement, their lines are contorted like those of ancient woodcuts". · His canvas demonstrates the wide variety of colors he perceived on clear nights. Arguably, it is this rich mixture of invention, remembrance, and observation combined with Van Gogh's use of simplified forms, thick impasto, and boldly contrasting colors that has made the work so compelling to subsequent generations of viewers as well as to other artists.

Georges Braque, Violin and Palette 1909 [Cubism]

Analytic Cubism · When Georges Braque abandoned a bright Fauve palette and traditional perspective in 1908, it was the inspiration of Paul Cézanne's geometrized compositions that led him to simplified faceted forms, flattened spatial planes, and muted colors. · the "breaking down" or "analysis" of form and space. Objects are still recognizable in the paintings, but are fractured into multiple facets, as is the surrounding space with which they merge. The compositions are set into motion as the eye moves from one faceted plane to the next, seeking to differentiate forms and to accommodate shifting sources of light and orientation. · In Violin and Palette, the segmented parts of the violin, the sheets of music, and the artist's palette are vertically arranged, heightening their correspondence to the two-dimensional surface. · Ironically, Braque depicted the nail at the top of the canvas in an illusionistic manner to emphasizing the contrast between traditional and Cubist modes of representation. The same applies to the naturalistic candle in Piano and Mandola, which serves as a beacon of stability in an otherwise energized composition of exploding crystalline forms: the black-and-white piano keys all but disembodied; the sheets of music virtually disintegrated; the mandola essentially decomposed. · Fragmented objects were "a way for me to get as close as possible to the object as painting allowed."1 If the appeal of still life was its implied tactile qualities, as Braque noted, then musical instruments held even more significance in that they are animated by one's touch. Like the rhythms and harmonies that are the life of musical instruments, dynamic spatial movement is the essence of Braque's lyrical Cubist paintings.

Robert Rauschenberg, Canyon, 1959 [Abstract Expressionism]

Canyon belongs to a group of artworks called "Combines," a term unique to this artist who attached extraneous materials and objects to canvases in the years between 1954 and 1965. What makes Rauschenberg so significant for this period—the postwar years—is how he challenged conventional ways of thinking about advanced modern art;Its upper half is a mass of materials that include bits of a shirt, printed paper, a squashed tube of paint, and photographs all seemingly held in place by broad slashes of house paint, while its lower half consists of a stuffed bald eagle with outstretched wings about to lift off from an opened box Rauschenberg combined disparate elements in a random fashion perhaps responding to his urban environment (New York City) and a world of ephemera: the flotsam and jetsam of mass culture in the years after the Second World War. Look, for example, at the top right: here is a slab of cardboard with commercial lettering, probably the discarded packaging for a shipment of goods found on the street in his lower Manhattan neighborhood. Rauschenberg's self-conscious handling of paint intertwined with often-outrageous objects can be construed as parody. In this way, Canyon can be seen as a counter to the overblown rhetoric of abstract expressionism with its stress on heroic individualism and the formal purity of abstract art.

Marcel Duchamp, Fountain 1917 [Dada]

Dada · Duchamp went to a plumbing supply shop and bought it, he didn't make it but he made it as a work of art through the alchemy of the artist to transform it, he turned it on its side and signed/dated it. · The new group wanted to accept every work submitted because the jury only accepted traditional work, but they rejected his—he submitted it as sculpture (normally it would be very heroic and monumental). · It is transformed (readymade/alchemy: everyday object selected and designated as art) art is supposed to transformation of ordinary materials that transports us and makes us see things in a new way. He asks us to see the urinal a new way and ask about what art is. · He separates craftsmanship to the aesthetic enjoyment and profundity of a work of art—does art have to be made by the hand of the artist? And he does this in the most observe way by using a urinal. Can art be pure philosophy and theory?

Marcel Duchamp, Bicycle Wheel 1913 [Dada]

Duchamp was known for "creating" pieces of art from everyday objects selected and designated as art--also known as what he called readymade. As seen by Fountain, he asks his viewers to look at these common objects and look at them in a new way and have a different perspective of what art is. The purpose of art is to transform ordinary materials and make us see them in a new way which is exactly what Duchamp attempts to do with the urinal, and here with Bicycle Wheel. He also challenges the question of does art have to be made by the hand of an artist? He wanted art to be involved with philosophy and theory. This was a time for new and creative art and he wanted to take it a step farther--to show the public that art had a misconception of what it could be. I am sure that Duchamp looked at this wheel on a stool and saw so much more than just their ordinary function and he wanted its viewers to take a different take on it as well.

Gino Severini, Armored Train in Action 1915 [Futurism]

Futurism · this work reflects a Futurist declaration of the same year: "War is a motor for art.",He was obsessed by this first fully mechanized war. · Living in Paris, he witnessed the city's bombardment, and from his studio he had an aerial view of the Denfert-Rochereau station and trains transporting soldiers, supplies, and weapons. · Here, five faceless figures crouch in a militarized locomotive car, aiming their rifles in unison. Smoke from gun and cannon fire eclipse the natural landscape. · Severini celebrated war, which the Futurists believed could generate a new Italian identity—one of military and cultural power.

Gustave Caillebotte, Paris Street, Rainy Day 1877 [Realism]

In this masterpiece, Caillebotte imparts an unusual monumentality and compositional virtuosity to the sort of typical everyday scene favoured by Impressionists - in this case, the bold new boulevards introduced by Baron Haussmann (1809-91) that transformed the Paris landscape. The effect is both real and contrived, casual and choreographed. His curiously detached figures reflect the anonymity engendered by the boulevards, while the vista chosen accentuates the huge scale of the architectural development which dwarfs the human figures it surrounds. Many of these figures appear isolated and absorbed in their own thoughts, their expressions downcast, while they seem to be hurrying rather than strolling. The picture's cropped look and photo-realistic effect adds to its 'modern look'. Note also that although it is associated with the school of Impressionism, "Paris Street, Rainy Day" is characterized more by its realism and reliance on line, rather than the typically loose brushwork of the Impressionist idiom. For more background, please see: Characteristics of Impressionism (1870-1930) and Realism to Impressionism (1830-1900). The work depicts a number of pedestrians in the Place de Dublin seen from the eastern side of the Rue de Turin, looking north toward the intersection of the rue de Moscou (left), the rue Clapeyron (centre), and the rue de Saint-Petersbourg which crosses left to right. The layout of the roads and buildings allows Caillebotte to use two-point perspective. Judging by the light, the scene is set on a winter's afternoon. The main focus of the composition is a middle-class couple with an umbrella, each dressed in the latest Parisian fashion. She wears a fur lined coat, with hat and veil; while he wears a top hat, frock coat with upturned collar, bow tie and waistcoat. In the background a mixture of bourgeois and working class pedestrians are visible. In addition to the imposing architecture of the buildings, the other defining feature of the picture are the umbrellas carried by many of the people on the streets. According to some art critics, these umbrellas shield their owners not just from the rain, but, also from other passers by. Like his Impressionist colleague Degas, Caillebotte was strongly influenced by the new art of photography, as is evident from the way the picture is cropped, making it seem as if the artist had taken a snapshot of people going about their daily business. In fact, like Degas, Caillebotte spent a great deal of time meticulously positioning his figures throughout the picture. The latter itself is divided into two halves horizontally, by the lamp post; and vertically by the buildings above and the expanse of cobbled street below.

Edouard Manet, A Bar at the Foiles-Bergere 1881 [Realism/Impressionism]

On the one hand, it features a modern setting in The Folies-Bergere - the most famous and modern of Paris's cafe-concert halls, which was noted among other things for its new-fangled electric lights. In addition, its brushwork is Impressionistic and its framing has been influenced by the new art of photography. On the other hand, its meaning is totally obscure, even baffling, dealing as it does with a problem that occupied Manet throughout his working life: the relationship, in figurative painting, between reality and illusion. Probably modelled on Las Meninas (1656), the enigmatic Baroque masterpiece by Velazquez, the picture seems to be a straightforward frontal image of a barmaid serving behind her marble-topped counter, who looks out at us, the viewer/customer. Then we notice the huge mirror behind her and the confusing reflections it contains. The barmaid's reflection has been shunted to the right; while in the top-right corner we see a ghostly image of a man who appears to be directly in front of her, and whom she is leaning forward enthusiastically to serve. A huge amount of analysis has been devoted to this work by art critics and historians, in an attempt to decipher its meaning, and reconcile the apparent dislocation between the actual reality of the barmaid and her counter, and the surreal reflections in the mirror. There has been much discussion about "artificial space", the "spectral domain of the mirror", the "discontinuities between actual and reflective realms", and so on. Luckily, Dr. Malcolm Park, an art historian in Australia, appears to have unravelled at least part of the mystery, in his doctoral dissertation entitled, "Ambiguity, and the Engagement of Spatial Illusion Within the Surface of Manet's Paintings" (University of NSW, 2001). Using a photographic reconstruction, Park demonstrates that the painting conforms more truthfully than previously thought to a one-point perspective view. Manet actually constructed the scene not from a frontal head-on position, but from a viewpoint slightly to the right. Seen from this angle, the assumed 'conversation' between the barmaid and top-hatted gentleman is actually an optical trick - the man in fact is standing outside and to the left of the new viewpoint, and is looking away away from the barmaid - he is not standing directly in front of her, facing her. Likewise, the barmaid's frontality is also optically deceptive. Instead of standing parallel to the bar and looking straight ahead, she is facing slightly to the right of the picture as we see it, facing the new viewpoint.

Édouard Manet, Olympia 1863 [Realism/Impressionism]

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Claude Monet, Impression: Sunrise, 1872 [Impressionism]

This is much more industrial, has cranes and machines. This shows the impressionism art is not necessarily intended to be beautiful--there is a complexity that the subject is not what we see is depicted, the subject is the act of vision that the artist saw and what we see. He values how he interprets the scene -Value (how light or dark a color is) is often taught as being the most important element of a color. But this painting by Monet demonstrates just how powerful saturation contrast can be (just look at the contrast between the orange sun and the dull, surrounding colors). -If you want to draw attention to a particular area in your painting, then simplify the surrounding areas. In this painting, Monet draws your attention towards the vibrant oranges and dark greens, which stand out from the dull and simplified background. -Your initial impression of a subject is a powerful thing. Learn to capture it by painting with instinct. I always try to start my paintings with loose brushwork to capture my first impression of the subject. I then refine from there if necessary. The focus of this painting is almost entirely on color and light. The brushwork is loose, the detail is simple and the composition is fairly basic. But the use of color to depict light is enough to make this painting work. Most of the painting is made up of dull oranges, blues and greens, which form the backdrop for the dark green boats and the vivid orange sunrise. The brushwork is loose and fluent, as if Monet painted this without hesitation. There is a contrast between the thin paint used for the background and the thick, impasto paint used for bold accents (the boats, the sun and its reflection).

Roy Lichtenstein, Brushstroke, 1965 [Pop Art]

This is the hallmark of brushstroke, signature attribute of the artist as a creator and the work of art. It is the evidence of the thing being made. Brushstroke is associated with individuality, emphasized the man made. He took the brushstroke and made it in the image of machine made. Unlike Warhol, who actually used a machine, he only repeats the look of machine but he actually made it by hand. Here he makes the brushstroke looks as if it man made although it isn't. There is deeper levels of meaning than just creating what looks like a brushstroke.

Gino Severini, Musicians [Futurism]

This piece aligns with the futurism style from its fragmented pieces and movement. Futurism is a broad term describing a style of art that aimed to represent an object's sensations. Each artist did this differently as they took inspiration from different places such as cubism and the color/optical experiments of the late 19th century. Behind the style was a politically driven movement where they believed destruction would end the status quo. It was common to see symbols of war in the art, as seen in Gino Severini's Armored Train in Action. There can be seen smoke from a gun and cannon fire surrounding the landscape. Although this piece does not seem as politically charged, it continues the style of geometric shapes coming together to form a semi-abstract version of a real scene. Here, we see musicians dressed in colorful outfits sporadically broken apart and put back together. It captures the idea of modernity and sensations of movement that the futurists attempted to capture. They would commonly combine human and machine--the figures' poses were graceful and forceful. Here, the figures seem to be elegantly playing their instruments but also in a very mannequin like position. The different use of color in each broken piece resembles that of Armored Train in Action and the sporadic theme taking place.

Andy Warhol, Campbell's Soup Cans, 1962 [Pop Art]

This piece has clear resemblances to Andy Warhol's other piece Marilyn Diptych which was meant to point out to the public how they viewed her as a holy figure, just like how Mary was portrayed in religious art. The repetition of the soup can is like that of Marilyn's repetition although here, the cans seem rather similar in each section other than the type of soup and the lighting where Marilyn's face was drastically different from the purple made up side to the black and white ink covered side. The point of most pop art, specifically Andy Warhol, was to show how mass-marketed items and celebrities were viewed in the American culture and media. Art was becoming a new form of acknowledgment of culture and the affects that, at the time, WW11 had on the country. Mass production and consumption was changing the country and artists used well-known items as a way to express issues going on. For the Marilyn Diptych painting, Warhol was showing that the public had idealized this woman as a sex symbol but in reality, she was a real human with flaws and emotions. This soup can painting may have been created to show the way that mass production created items that were repetitive and machine made, rather than locally made products. Pop art often put an emphasis on items that were common household products, which was far from what art used to be. Marcel Duchamp said that anything could be art, as long as the artist intended it as such. This is one way that art was changing because it no longer needed to be just a painting of a portrait--art could consist of anything as long as it was with purpose. Art was becoming a way to use common objects and popular products to reflect on society and the way it was changing.

André Derain, Mountains at Collioure (1905) [Fauvism]

This piece is a work of fauvism as seen by its bright and happy landscape, pure vivid color and bold distinctive brushwork--all common characteristics of fauvism. Favism aims to create emotional reactions through it's visual aspects. Artists such as Matisse would paint by using small dabs and dashes of colors rather than subtle blending of colors, something that is clearly seen here as the grass, leaves, and sky all consist of dashes of bold colors. Fauvism often showed landscapes that are carefree and lighthearted to appeal to viewers senses. This painting shows off the beauty of nature from the flowing leaves and wind to the eccentric mountains and sky. This painting appears to similar in style to Henri Matisse's The Joy of Life from its swaying, bright colors that depict a forest, meadow, and sky. In both pieces, color is used to evoke an emotional response, instead of showing the accurate depiction of nature. Matisse would use the landscape as a stage and use specific stylistic choices to express the "carefree" ways of nature such as curvilinear lines on trees which is something we see here in the trees and the curvy lines of the mountains. Another common feature is skewed scales and shifting perspectives. In Matisse's piece, the figures are not proportionally sized to each other and here, the mountains seem oddly pushed up against the foreground. This painting aligns with impressionist and post-impressionist art as fauvism took from the spontaneous and active brushwork of impressionism. However, they used this painting technique to create an emotional power instead of trying to express a moment of light or atmospheric changes. It could be interpreted that this piece looks like an impressionist piece in the sense of a quick and fast sketch of landscape, using pure color next to one another which is common of impressionism. The features that show the artist is striving to be different are its use of bold colors rather than blending, showing its vibrant impact. There are no figures here that can interact with the nature or use the landscape as a stage--this piece purely shows off the warm and happy essence that this scenery contains.

Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel, Un chien andalou, 1928 [Surrealism]

Un Chien Andalou clearly takes after many of the stylistic elements of Surrealism including the dream realm imagery, chaotic subjects and figures, and combination of seemingly unrelated objects. The film was very eerie and disturbing from beginning to end showing what seemed like a nightmare with no real plot. The transitions were very abrupt and often did not make sense with the previous scene. When comparing it to the other Surrealist pieces of work studied, this film plays with reality and dreamscape, just like The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dali. Both pieces show ants swarming around objects that they would not normal be on—in one they are on a time piece and the other they are coming from the man's hand. Neither are locations we would expect to see ants and creates a confusing and strange feeling to the viewer. Surrealism is meant to make the viewer question what they are seeing, but does not need to be looked into for a deeper meaning—it often just shows an irrational subject. When compared to Object by Meret Oppenheim, both pieces stress the physicality of the subjects, where the viewer is forced to feel sensory responses. Oppenheim wanted the viewers to use their knowledge of how fur feels and the motion of picking up and drinking form a cup to imagine how it would feel to use a cup covered in fur. It is open to interpretation to the individual and how they interpret the meaning of the object. In Un Chien Andalou, the action of cutting the eyeball with the knife made me cringe and imagine how horrible that would feel. It created a lasting impact on me and was extremely disturbing. Other parts of the film were equally as disturbing such as the man assaulting the woman, the person calmly poking the amputated hand, and the ending scene of the bodies buried. The entire film was strange, just as much of Surrealism art and film is as it was often the product of dream stages and haunting images.

Josephh Kosuth, Box, Cube, Empty, Clear, Glass -- A Description, 1965 [Conceptual Art]

When comparing this piece to the other pieces studied for class, it has the simplistic aspect that at first may be confusing to those new to contemporary art. Conceptrual art focuses on putting emphasis on a concept, in this case the physical being of these boxes, and deemphasizing the actual physcial manifestation. It often could include any material as long as there was a concept in mind that was centered around a process or principle instead of the outcome. This piece's signficance may be easier to understand when comparing it to the signficance of other contemporary art. In Don Judd' untitled piece, his sculpture is not really a sculpture at all, it is pieces of box was factory made and placed with clear windows on top and hung on the wall. Without further analaysis, it seems simplified and meaningless but there is actually color and light within the piece. It is meant to be a realistic piece that gives off machine made and industrial look, perhaps to emphasize how identical and man-made everything began to look in those days. In this piece by Joseph Kosuth, there are clear boxes with words on them that describe their being and possibly attempt to point out the obvious that commonly goes unnoticed. Most people would not take the time to stop and consider the make up of a clear box but here, this pieces forces the viewer to do so. It is not trying to be something it isn't--there is no illusion or metaphor. Just like in Joseph Kosuth's other piece One and Three Chairs, both pieces depict the objects are they are and can change from venue to venue. In his piece on the chairs, we was concerned with presenting concepts to the viewers. He attempted to bring together the idea of what makes up a chair and how it used. It is meant to emphasize the relation between language, photo, and object. Just as that piece does, this piece shows the connection between the box and its adjectives by clearly writing them out. When this new style of art began, it was hard for critics and viewers to accept it as it often took no artistic skill or craftsmanship to create the displays--artists commonly just brought in an object or put together a few pieces of already made items. To them, it seemed to lack meaning but Sol LeWitt explained that it was "the use of seriality and systemic structure" in his pieces. There was something more to these artists pieces that they wanted their viewers to understand and see past the simplistic looks.

Hans Hofmann, Morning Mist, 1958 [Abstract Expressionism]

When looking at Hofmann's piece, the viewer can imagine the artist scraping thick layers of paint on top of more coats and possibly using a spatula to create the rigid and neat lines. Hofmann does not seem to hide the fact that his canvas is flat—in fact his piece is full of squares and rectangles that follow the pattern of the shape of the canvas and the two-dimensionality. The shapes end where the canvas end and do not attempt to alter themselves to fit within the piece, they simply exist on top of the canvas.Hoffman's work feels more traditional in the aspect that it has a concrete layout and seems to stick to one style. Hoffman puts an emphasis on his medium as Greenberg described and uses it to his advantage. In the past, artists would use primers and thin brushstrokes to hide any evidence that the scene was handmade and not photographic. Since Hoffman is not attempting to portray an object, he sees no need to hide the elements of his paint but rather embraces it. You can see the thick buildup of paint where it lifts off the canvas which makes for a visual storyline of how he created the piece. Each color block takes place on a different layer of the painting and it is clear where it came into play. The thick edges, creases and blending that takes place on some of the spaces emphasize the technique that was used to create this piece of art

Guy C. Wiggens, Winter Street, NYC

this painting shows landscape and architecture, something that was very important to impressionism. The impressionists often tried to pinpoint specific atmospheric conditions such as rainfall, moving clouds, or reflective light on water. Here, the artist seems to be capturing the snow fall in NYC and how it changes the way the streets look. Artists often used small commas of pure color, as seen here by the flecks of pure white that represents the blowing snow. An important aspect of impressionist art was the quick changing light on surfaces that show atmospheric conditions. Here, we see how light bounces off snow to create a very bright atmosphere and how it can change within an instant. When compared to other impressionist art such as The Gare Saint-Lazare by Claude Monet, this piece has similar elements. In Monet's piece, the buildings and roof seem to be dissolving within the smoke and steam that take over the piece. He was interested in the pure light and color of the scene rather than what the station exactly looked like. Here, the intense snow fall takes over the scene as most of the buildings and people seem to be covered in a haze and are quite fuzzy. This is most likely an accurate portrayal of how the artist saw the landscape--the snow caused their vision to become unfocused and blurry. Monet reduced figures to brush strokes so that we cannot make out faces and instead our eyes are focused on the landscape and the color of the scene. Here, the faces and bodies of the figures are mere colors and shapes rather than detailed depictions of people--same with the cars driving in the snow. Monet an other impressionist artists did not need atmospheric perspective, they used color buildup and weaved colors across the canvas, as seen in this piece. Impressionist art was meant to capture the rapid pace of contemporary life and the fleeting conditions of light. This scene shows the busy, modern streets of New York City where even in a strong snow storm, lines of cars are driving and crowds of people are walking. The tall towers and the fuzzy depictions of the American flag portray the life of an American city.

Andy Warhol, Marilyn Diptych 1962 [Pop Art]

· Andy Warhol's Marilyn Diptych is made of two silver canvases on which the artist silkscreened a photograph of Marilyn Monroe fifty times. At first glance, the work—which explicitly references a form of Christian painting in its title—invites us to worship the legendary icon, whose image Warhol plucked from popular culture and immortalized as art. · With sustained looking, Warhol's works reveal that he was influenced not only by pop culture, but also by art history—and especially by the art that was then popular in New York. For example, in this painting, we can identify the hallmarks of Abstract Expressionist painters like Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. · As in the work of these older artists, the monumental scale of Marilyn Diptych (more than six feet by nine feet) demands our attention and announces the importance of the subject matter. Furthermore, the seemingly careless handling of the paint and its "allover composition"—the even distribution of form and color across the entire canvas, such that the viewer's eyes wander without focusing on one spot—are each hallmarks of Abstract Expressionism. like Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, whose work he admired, he uses photographic imagery, the silkscreen process and repetition to make art that is not about his interior life, but rather about the culture in which he lived. · Warhol's use of the silkscreen technique further "flattens" the star's face. By screening broad planes of unmodulated color, the artist removes the gradual shading that creates a sense of three-dimensional volume, and suspends the actress in an abstract void. Through these choices, Warhol transforms the literal flatness of the paper-thin publicity photo into an emotional "flatness," and the actress into a kind of automaton. In this way, the painting suggests that "Marilyn Monroe," a manufactured star with a made-up name, is merely a one-dimensional (sex) symbol—perhaps not the most appropriate object of our almost religious devotion. · The silkscreen process allowed Warhol (or his assistants) to reproduce the same image over and over again, using multiple colors. Once the screens are manufactured and the colors are chosen, the artist simply spreads inks evenly over the screens using a wide squeegee. Though there are differences from one face to the next, these appear to be the accidental byproducts of a quasi-mechanical process, rather than the product of the artist's judgment. · the grid is like a program that the artist uses to "automate" the process of composing the work, instead of relying on subjective thoughts or feelings to make decisions. In other words, Warhol's "cool," detached composition is the opposite of the intimate, soulful encounter with the canvas associated with Abstract Expressionism. But whereas most works that use grids are abstract, here, the grid repeats a photo of a movie star, causing the painting to resemble a photographer's contact sheet, or a series of film strips placed side-by-side. These references to mechanical forms of reproduction further prove that for Warhol, painting is no longer an elevated medium distinct from popular culture. · Aside from radically changing our notion of painting, Warhol's choices create a symmetry between the artist and his subject, who each seem to be less than fully human: the artist becomes a machine, just as the actress becomes a mask or a shell. Another word we could use to describe the presence of both the artist and the actress might be ghostly, and in fact, Warhol started making his series of "Marilyn" paintings only after the star had died of an apparent suicide · Her death haunts this painting: on the left, her purple, garishly made-up face resembles an embalmed corpse, while the lighter tones of some of the faces on the right make it seem like she is disappearing before our eyes. · Warhol once noted that through repeated exposure to an image, we become de-sensitized to it. In that case, by repeating Monroe's mask-like face, he not only drains away her life, but also ours as well, by deadening our emotional response to her death. Then again, by making her face so strange and unfamiliar, he might also be trying to re-sensitize us to her image, so that we remember she isn't just a symbol, but a person whom we might pity

Vassily Kandinsky, Improvisation 29 (Second Version) 1912 [Expressionism]

· He is trying to associate painting with music, to suggest that like music, paintings can signify and take us places without meaning anything concrete. He things you can hear color and see music (synesthesia), the idea that there could be a crossing of the senses. He may have wanted us to hear something. · This painting would sound like chaos, dangerous but brilliant moment. Brilliant color, hazy atmosphere where the color pops. Black diagonals lines that criss cross and feel like weapons moving through space. We are on the verge of abstract, we don't immediately recognize the things of the world. It is not completely abstract, it is abstracted—we can recognize some elements of the natural world. He was concerned that if we could recognize things too easily, our conscious minds would take over the interpretation and we would close off our emotional ability to respond to the pure color and form. · In the upper right is possible a mountain with a castle, a heavenly Jerusalem. It is rooted in ancient tradition of representing Christian stories. It is a representation of an apocalypse. There is a great flood in the lower left, like when god flooded the earth. Above, cannons are being fired, the atmospheric effect is like a battlefield. There are mains and necks of horses, symbolizing the four horseman of the apocalypse but also redemption, utopian that we could wash away the old world. Many artists believed the artists could play an important role in the new civilization that was about to immerge · Color is used radically new way, color for its own sake, not to mimic. Lines being used for its own sake to create a sense of rhythm and staccato, it is absolutely new.

Paul Cézanne, Mont Sainte-Victoire 1902 [Post-Impressionism]

· He painted this mountain over and over, over an amount of time, not immediate like normal impressionist art. It feels unfinished, we see the canvas at some places, the buildings and trees seem to be forming, same with the mountain. We can clearly see mountain, sky, buildings but when you look too closely they fall apart, it creates a sense of optical movement. Earlier, painters were concerned with creating space that was believable, but he does the opposite and makes the paint so visible, it announces its 2 dimensionality. There are no high finish strokes, the idea of depicting your own sensations has been a big part for him. · He is important for cubanism, they think of the forms as geometric shapes which we begin to see here, he investigates what it means to break contour. The color of the field enters into the buildings, where later Picasso breaks the colors completely. A denying of the illusionism that was such an important part of northern renaissance. The subtle ques of landscape from the past have been left out. We would expect to see atmospheric perspective, the sky and mountains fading and becoming less bright and clear, but in that way he treats every part of the canvas in the same way. He delineates distance by color, the three hemispheres, place with color. He brings color from one realm into the other, builds the grey in the ground into the sky. This is very different from the impressionist artists, it is not about capturing the transitory effects of light and atmosphere, it is about something more permanent. · In this work, Cézanne divides his composition into three roughly equal horizontal sections. Our viewpoint is elevated. Closest to us lies a band of foliage and houses; next, rough patches of yellow ochre, emerald, and viridian green suggest the patchwork of an expansive plain and extend the foreground's color scheme into the middleground; and above, in contrasting blues, violets and greys, we see the "craggy mountain" surrounded by sky. The blues seen in this section also accent the rest of the work while, conversely, touches of green enliven the sky and mountain. · Cézanne introduced subtle adjustments in order to avoid too simple a scheme. So the peak of the mountain is pushed just to the right of center, and the horizon line inclines gently upwards from left to right. In fact, a complicated counterpoint of diagonals can be found in each of the work's bands, in the roofs of the houses, in the lines of the mountain, and in the arrangement of the patches in the plain, which connect foreground to background and lead the eye back. · Cézanne evokes a deep, panoramic scene and the atmosphere that fills and unifies this space. But it is absolutely characteristic of his art that we also remain acutely aware of the painting as a fairly rough, if deftly, worked surface. Flatness coexists with depth and we find ourselves caught between these two poles—now more aware of one, now the other. The mountainous landscape is both within our reach, yet far away.

Salvador Dali, The Persistence of Memory 1931 [Surrealism]

· He plays with reality, a visual brainteaser, an attack on rational. It is mind trippy. Surrealism, he had just joined the group and was the first to do dreamscape. · It is a deep and lonely and quiet space, time does not carry a lot of weight, the water has no waves/activity. An unbearable sense of quiet and no movement, the absurd environment/naturalistic rendering, the dead tree grows out of a manmade geometric shape. Ants are being attracted to metal, a timepiece rather than food. The drooping block, time is so regimented and rules us, so associated with the industrial culture that we live in. Here it responds to the environment the same way we respond. · For all of the impossibility, some things that are recognized are the cliffs in the back from where he is from. The strange figure, a profile face an eye with long lashes, tongue and nose. Dali does the thing where one object can be several things at once, sometimes really convincingly—some think this is his face but very illusive and dream like. · Surrealism shows that the real world that we have so much faith in is not worthy of it, the irrational is something we tried to drive out of our life but if they could receive the world of the dream, it was the place where the irrational mind is unrestricted. · There are different forms of reality and we cant be judgmental of what is real. People try to link this to time dilation that it was not a restricted thing but it may have meant that time wasn't just something on a clock, there is a human time that is more subjective and expanded/contracted according to our experience. · This is the moment where all the safe ideas of objectivity are being blown out of the water and the art confronts that.

Richard Hamilton, Just what is it today that makes today's homes so different, so appealing?, 1955 [Pop Art]

· His section was designed so that entering it would feel like stepping into a funhouse. It contained several elements from popular culture, including a working jukebox playing hit records and a large inflatable model of a Guinness beer bottle. · Hamilton's collage, which was also reproduced in black and white in the catalogue, had a similarly sexy, effervescent atmosphere. To make it, he used material from illustrated magazines and other American ephemera · Hamilton designed the collage as a parody of American advertising in the exploding, post-war consumer culture of the '50s. · provided the main source for the setting of Hamilton's collage: a modern living room to die for, with swish designer furniture.Into this space Hamilton inserted various figures and objects, including a covetable large-screen television set. To the left, a woman (a maid?) wearing a red dress cleans a staircase using a vacuum cleaner with a surprisingly long hose - something which is drawn to our attention by a black arrow containing the words "ordinary cleaners reach only this far", as it did in the print ad that formed the basis for this part of the collage. · In the main area of the room, an attractive, semi-naked couple anticipates a pleasurable evening together. The most prominent figure is the man - nude apart from a pair of tight white trunks. In his right hand, in place of a dumbbell, he holds an enormous lollipop wrapped in red cellophane with the brand name picked out in yellow: "Tootsie POP". Because the lollipop, like a kind of magic wand, seems to bestow a name upon the entire movement, Hamilton's collage is often described as the first work of Pop Art, perhaps even its manifesto. · On the wall an old-fashioned Victorian portrait hangs next to a larger picture of the front cover of a comic book called Young Romance: a detail that anticipates by several years Roy Lichtenstein's earliest use of comic-book imagery in his Pop paintings. · In a surreal coup, what at first appears to be the room's ceiling turns out on closer inspection to be an upside-down photograph of the Earth's curving surface, swirling with clouds, seemingly shot from outer space - a nod to the Cold War Space Race between the Soviet Union and the United States, but also a reminder of just how vain and pointless the concerns of human specks on Planet Earth can seem when viewed from afar. · Inevitably, there is satire here: all this materialistic, transatlantic clutter bemused Hamilton, · But there is also a certain level of infatuation, since the collage articulates a wider cultural fascination with the fantasy of the perfect American lifestyle. In this sense, it represents the 'have-nots' (the Brits) gazing with a curious mixture of adoration as well as scepticism at the 'haves' (the Americans).

Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty 1969 [Earth Art]

· It existed as an intersection between the land and the odd water of the great salt lake—had no outlet so it collects and evaporates meaning it is dense with minerals and salt. Almost nothing can live here, algae made the water pink. · He created a spiral to make the land and the water meet itself. Now, we have sand filing the spiral instead of water. It was meant to change based on natural principles. His intervention in this natural landscape is an expression of how artists thought of landscape, the overwhelming power of nature and the vastness of the American landscape. · He had an anecdote that the great salt lake had a whirl pool that connected it to the ocean. It is also a sculpture rooted in the industrial revolution, it was the first earth day and the idea of the ruin man had on nature. There are mountains and basalt formed that shows the passing of time. By putting art outside in the world, it makes it apart of nature and it cant be preserved. Putting art in nature was a new concept, he wanted a compromise of art between galleries and the beauty of nature · Shows the difference between the preservation of art in museums that try to do the impossible by keeping it perfect but this is meant to change over time. Do they try to protect this or do they let nature happen? They regularly document the object. The tendency of all things is to move from order to disorder and chaos. He made geometric order to this vast space that is in the process of disassembling but here it is slowly coming apart. Shows us the brevity of our own life spans in the grand scheme of time

Jasper Johns, Flag, 1964-55 [Abstract Expressionism]

· It functions as something that raises meaning to the viewer—it is not so much a flag but a mirror as it is a potent symbol. · Is this a painting, or is it a flag? It stands off the wall and is heavily reworked, not traditional oil paint. It is encaustic which is translucent and lumpy, allowing you to see through it. There are strips of newspaper through the wax, a debris of news life. · Art can mean complex things, through a symbolic way rather than showing actual figures. The context, he was one of the first to take the canvas and paintbrush into something that isn't fixed. This is not entirely a flag but a representation of a flag.

Pablo Picasso, Guitar [cubism]

· Made out of sheet metal. It takes the idea of a guitar and plays with the geometry and inverts it. Sculptures had been classical and of the human body, about something that existed in nature. Picasso challenged people's notions of art, he made something that could already be made but he represents the essence of it without actually creating it. He had to be deliberate and making sure it was a sculpture. · His understanding of art was coming from when people were released from depicting because photographers existed. He know wanted to focus on the language of depiction as opposed to depiction itself · The contours of the body of the guitars, the things that make it most like a guitar, are not in scale. The right side is smaller, possible showing the guitar is at an angled view. We have the idea of a 3 dimensional object, then collapses it into two dimensions and then reconstructs it into 3d.

Claude Monet, Rouen Cathedral: The Portal (In Sun) 1894[Impressionism]

· Monet tries to define the ephemeral quality of light so as it moves, he needs change canvases as it moves, and shows different weather effects. Monet was interested in capturing the fleeting effects of something he saw, but here it is the exact subject of the painting. · The irony of the subject being light and the way it moves, he picked a potent thing to render it on, a cathedral that is solid, but he does not show it as solid—they lack a sense of heavy 3 dimensionality and soft lines. He may have chose this because of the complexity of light and shadow on the cathedral and also it is identified with the gothic style, taking the grand history and power of its symbolism and showing them through the lens of the late 19th century. · Different parts of the cathedral protrude in the light, it becomes an experience where the building is shaped and reshaped by the way the light hits it. It is the triumph of the optical over the physical, something very different from the gothic architects of the cathedral. He tells us that what we see if what there is, there is truth to our experiential.

Meret Oppenheim, Object (Luncheon in Fur)1936 [Surrealism]

· Object, an ordinary cup, spoon, and saucer wrapped evocatively in gazelle fur · Oppenheim's Object was created at a moment when sculpted objects and assemblages had become prominent features of Surrealist art practice. Salvador Dalí described some of them as "objects with symbolic function." In other words, how might an otherwise typical, functional object be modified so it represents something deeply personal and poetic? Such physical manifestations of our internal

Jackson Pollock, Autumn Rhythm (Number 30), 1950 [Abstract Expressionism]

· Pollock proclaimed in 1947: "I intend to paint large movable pictures which will function between the easel and the mural. . . . the tendency of modern feeling is towards the wall picture or mural." This work's title suggests not only the month in which he painted it (October), but also an alignment with nature's constant flux.· Drip painting: from afar they look like a mess but up close there is technicality. He liked the mess, and the internal self was being brought out. He was the first to do paintings like this, action painting where he took the canvas on the floor and walked around it, it was a performative act. Modern art was not about portraying something that wasn't there. He was technically sophisticated within the mess, he controlled it and it is not just paint that was flung, there are handprints and bring back paleographic art. · All of the art was an attempt to solve problems the artists had, this was an attempt to not give a narrative title to his painting, he wanted it to be open ended. · My painting is direct, I paint on the floor, a large canvas, having it on the floor makes him feel more apart of it and can be in the painting by walking around it. Sometimes he uses a brush, but usually a stick and uses a dripping fluid paint to pour. Also uses sand, broken glass, nails, string, and other methods. He wants to express his feelings rather than illustrate them. Technique is just a means at arriving at a statement. When he paints, he has a general notion of what it is about, he can control the flow of the paint, no accident, no beginning, no end. Sometimes he loses a painting but he has no fear of changes, destroying the image because it has a life of its own. · He just throws the paint and lets it go wherever he wants. He throws it, violently swinging. He builds the paint up, · He used glass as a medium, seems to be dribbling and throwing things sporadically, he lost the first glass painting and restarted. He began to use many different materials and then poured paint on top from a can.

Don Judd Untitled 1967 [Minimalism]

· Sculpture that isn't really a sculpture, it is not free standing and isolated units all the same. Each box was not made by him but in a factory, has a machine made aesthetic. He is specific on giving instruction on how to hand it. They are 6 inches apart and usually supposed to be evenly spaced from the ceiling. · It has high sheen and reflection, the outside is brass and there are plexi windows that are the top, some are intensely colored. We look back at bronze sculptures but this tries to be of its time, modern art where you chose materials and he chose it brass but made it look like sheet metal so it looks like the factory, industrial culture. He does not make illusionistic art, he shows it how it is. · The sheer replication of the same form over and over suggests machine production and everything in the grocery store being the same—product like quality. The clean shiny qualities make it seem over simplified but there is a lot of color and light at play.

Edouard Manet, The Luncheon on the Grass, 1863 [Realism/Impressionism]

· This figures are modern Parisian figures, not set away in ancient Greek. They are wearing modern fashionable clothing, except the nude woman, she is a recognizable figure and the two men are also recognizable. term-0There is an immediacy, they are not idealized or timeless they look like real figures. Nobody seems to be truly interacting, the nude figures looks directly at us with a direct contact which breaks tradition, normally they would look with a coy look. · The figure on the right gestures at the other but he glares absence. The odd figure in the back is too large for her spacing. There are many spacing issues which are on purpose, and the models are rendered flatly, not with the light to dark movement typical of nude females. She seems to have studio lighting rather than outdoor lighting. · She is outlined in dark colors, the handling of paint is loosely brushed, no sense of finish. To be accepted, the paintings needed to seem to have no brushstrokes. She seems to be naked as there are clothing next to us, she seems like a modern woman who took off her clothes rather than a nude figure like in Greek art. · This painting is based on Pastoral Concert by Titian and The Judgment of Paris by Rafael. The reactions were understandable as he wanted their confusion, the refusal to tell a story and what the academy wanted. He teases his viewers with the indication of a narrative but not including one. The subject is the act of creating the art rather than the art itself.

Pablo Picasso, The Young Ladies of Avignon 1907 [Cubism]

· This is a brothel, rending a woman who is available to the male viewer. This is the foundation that cubism is built. Radical break that points to the future, break from the conventions of representations of how you make a body in space, how you create a space. Gone is linear perspective, modulation of light that creates the illusion. Here, he shatters it, he finds the formal means to convey the ideas behind sexuality, female nude, sexually transmitted diseases, it is confrontational. · The women turn their gaze outward to engage the viewers directly. The faces of the women on the right are often seen as representation of African masks, which he often studied. The figure on the left is an archaic figure going back to ancient Spain. We look at art and expect stylistic coherence, but here there is a agglomeration of styles. The figures are really close to us, space has become a palpable, 3 dimensional, fractured planes. The curtain that seems to thread in between them are pressed right up on them, there is no space behind, there is some sense of allusion, some highlighting and shadow, but he creates an allusion that goes back a few inches. · Cubism is this deconstruction of 3 dimensional form, shattering it, then placing it back on a 2 dimensional surface has led some to look at the central figure as something we are looking across as and also looking down at as she lies on a bed. · There is rawness, ugliness here. He was interested in formal qualities and inventions from outside the western tradition. Tendency of expressing the flatness of the picture plane, not denying it be creating a false illusion.

Gustave Courbet, A Burial at Ornans 1849 [Realism]

· This is a genre painting of everyday life and had no business being this large (according to the rules that they are of history and importance). He submitted it as a history painting, of our world now. It was no longer a repetition of religious subjects and Greek figures · He paints individual portraits, of his family at the funeral of his great uncle. He is making a statement, bringing the experience of rural life into the elite environment of art and heroicizing the ordinary and common humanity. He puts the grace and the grace digger in the center, giving him a dignity of simple worker. · We see artists turning to figures of laborers and workers in a heroic and noble matter. · He pushes them up to the foreground as the grace enters into our space. There is a horizontal frieze in contract ot the vertically oriented canvas in the Renaissance where we see the divine in the sky, here divine is shown by the crucifix and is physical. · It is divided into three groups, the clergy in the left, the center is town officials and to the right are women mourning. They are all treated equally, democracy in art. Their faces and poses have not been idealized. · The hunting dog, one would not usually let a dog in, but here it is an emblem of the authenticity of the experience that is would wander in. There is a lack of focal point, no one place to look that gives it a sense of normal distraction of life. The child shows this, they seem involved in their own thoughts showing interior experience that is essential to this. · The lack of interaction, in academic paintings that follow the rules, they interact an tell a story. Here, each figure is alone with their thoughts and there is no story from the figures. We are firmly planted in the modern world · "painting is essentially a concrete art and can only consist of the representation of real and existing things. It is a completely physical language, the words of which consist of all visible objects. An object which is abstract, not physical, non-existent, is not within the realm of painting." -Courbet

Claude Monet, The Gare Saint-Lazare 1877 [Impressionism]

· This is one of the large train station, we think of them as normal parts of urban life but back then, they were new structures expressed through function and architecture, they created steam that needed large open sheds. This was not the traditional architecture, it was completely modern. There are also modern apartment buildings behind it after Paris was rebuilt, catering to a new upper middle class that had money to enjoy themselves. The idea of transportation where classes could mix is modern as they used to be separated · Impressionist art is known for leisure. This is drenched with steam and light and smoke that it seems to dissolve before our ideas. It is difficult to make out the iron framework from all of the steam, light pours out of the shed that plays with the steam and smoke, each a play on the subject. The structure and the form of the trains themselves dissolve into the atmosphere. He is interested in pure light and color before him, rather than the empirical knowledge of an engine. · Monet renders the steam with a range of blues, pinks, violets, tans, grays, whites, blacks, and yellows. He depicts not just the steam and light—which fill the canvas—but also their effect on the site—the large distant apartments, the Pont de l'Europe (a bridge that overlooked the train station), and the many locomotives—all of which peak through, and dematerialize into a thick industrial haze. · They place themselves outside of the normal art exhibits. He is not giving us something that is a view of the station and factual visuals, he gives us an optical experience. Many other artists had painted this scene but Monet has reduced the figures to quick brush strokes, we cant make out faces and he reduces them—they used to be the center of academic art but here they are equal to the train and architecture and subservient to the main subject, light and color · Money is focused on landscape, critics called for artists to paint the beauty of modern life which he does here. They didn't need to paint history or religious art, he can focus on modern structures and landscapes. · Monet seems to be weaving color across the surface, the colors are built up. There is no atmospheric perspective, and makes it impossible to forget we are looking at paint on a canvas. The impressionist artists show us a new modern way of painting for a new modern world.

Mark Rothko, No. 210/No. 211 (Orange), 1960 [Abstract Expressionism]

· This painting is a flat plane of orange and lavender. The horizontals make it seem like it moves and recedes and pushes out. There are many brushstrokes and keeps an illusionistic space even though it is so flat and plain. · This was a transcendent painting. The edges of the orange feather and the idea that pure color can be profound and spiritual was important, it could create human emotion from color. He was concerned with the larger idea of something bigger than us. This was the aftermath of WW2 and the Holocaust, he tries to touch the spiritual with the modern age. This was right as the civil rights movement was catching fire and may have been related to this.

Umberto Boccioni, Unique Forms of Continuity in Space 1913 [Futurism]

· Unique Forms of Continuity in Space shows a figure striding into the future. Its undulating surfaces seem to transform before our eyes. Boccioni sculpted a future-man: muscular, dynamic and driven. · The face of the sculpture is abstracted into a cross, suggesting a helmet, an appropriate reference for the war-hungry Futurists. · The figure doesn't appear to have arms, though wing-like forms seem to emerge the rippling back. However, these protrusions are not necessarily even a part of the figure itself, since Boccioni sculpted both the figure and its immediate environment. The air displaced by the figure's movement is rendered in forms no different than those of the actual body. See, for example, the flame-like shapes that begin at the calves and show the air swirling away from the body in motion. · Rosso made impressionistic plaster or bronze busts, covered in wax, of people in Paris, in which the figures merge into the space around them · Up until 1912, Boccioni had been a painter, but after visiting Paris and the seeing sculptural innovations like Braque's three-dimensional Cubist experiments in paper, Boccioni became obsessed with sculpture. His striding sculptures continued the theme of human movement · Movement was a key element for Boccioni and the other Futurists, as the technology of transportation (cars, bicycles, and advanced trains) allowed people to experience ever greater speeds. The Futurist artists often depicted motorized vehicles and the perceptions they made possible—the blurry, fleeting, fragmentary sight created by this new velocity. · Boccioni synthesized different positions into one dynamic figure. Boccioni and the other Futurist artists had banned the painting of nudes for being hopelessly mired in tradition—and Unique Forms is a nude male, albeit one abstracted through exaggerated muscles and possibly shielding its head with a helmet. · Boccioni also breaks rules from his "Technical Manifesto of Futurist Sculpture" where he declared that Futurist sculpture should be made of strong, straight lines, "The straight line is the only way to achieve the primitive purity of a new architectonic structure of masses or sculptural zones." Clearly, he had not yet recognized the potential for the dynamic curves so powerfully expressed here. His manifesto also states that sculpture should not be made from a single material or from traditional materials such as marble or bronze. · many Futurists claimed to want their works of art destroyed by more innovative artist successors, rather than preserved in a museum. · the movement itself was dynamic and did not always follow its own declarations. The Futurists sought to clear away the legacy of art's history so that the future could come more quickly,

Roy Lichtenstein, Oh Jeff...I Love You, Too...But 1964 [Pop Art]

· a 1964 oil and magna on canvas painting by Roy Lichtenstein. Like many of Lichtenstein's works its title comes from the speech balloon in the painting. · Borchert notes that this painting captures "the magic" of its "anguished and beautiful blue eyed, blond hair, full lips" female subject while presenting "sad eyes that seem to give in to what seems to be a doomed love affair". · among the most famous of his early romance comic derivative works from the period when he was adapting cartoons and advertisements into his style via Ben-Day dots. The work is said to depict the classic romance-comic story line of temporary adversity. Lichtenstein's sketch for this was done in graphite and colored pencils on paper · Using only a single frame from its source, Oh, Jeff...I Love You, Too...But...'s graphics are quite indicative of frustration, but the text in the speech balloon augment the romantic context and the emotional discord. After 1963, Lichtenstein's comics-based women "...look hard, crisp, brittle, and uniformly modish in appearance, as if they all came out of the same pot of makeup." This particular example is one of several that is cropped so closely that the hair flows beyond the edges of the canvas. This was painted at the apex of Lichtenstein's use of enlarged dots, cropping and magnification of the original source.] The tragic situations of his subjects makes his works a popular draw at museum

Gustave Courbet, The Stonebreakers 1849 [Realism]

· the artist's concern for the plight of the poor is evident. Here, two figures labor to break and remove stone from a road that is being built. In our age of powerful jackhammers and bulldozers, such work is reserved as punishment for chain-gangs. · Unlike Millet, who, in paintings like The Gleaners, was known for depicting hard-working, but idealized peasants, Courbet depicts figures who wear ripped and tattered clothing. And unlike the aerial perspective Millet used in The Gleaners to bring our eye deep into the French countryside during the harvest, the two stone breakers in Courbet's painting are set against a low hill of the sort common in the rural French town · The hill reaches to the top of the canvas everywhere but the upper right corner, where a tiny patch of bright blue sky appears. The effect is to isolate these laborers, and to suggest that they are physically and economically trapped. Courbet's figures seem disjointed · Courbet wants to show what is "real," and so he has depicted a man that seems too old and a boy that seems still too young for such back-breaking labor. This is not meant to be heroic: it is meant to be an accurate account of the abuse and deprivation that was a common feature of mid-century French rural life. And as with so many great works of art, there is a close affiliation between the narrative and the formal choices made by the painter, meaning elements such as brushwork, composition, line, and color. · Like the stones themselves, Courbet's brushwork is rough—more so than might be expected during the mid-nineteenth century. This suggests that the way the artist painted his canvas was in part a conscious rejection of the highly polished, refined Neoclassicist style that still dominated French art · The Stonebreakers seems to lack the basics of art (things like a composition that selects and organizes, aerial perspective and finish) and as a result, it feels more "real."

Joseph Kosuth, One and Three Chairs [Conceptual]

· the piece consists of a chair, a photograph of the chair, and an enlarged dictionary definition of the word "chair". The photograph depicts the chair as it is actually installed in the room, and thus the work changes each time it is installed in a new venue. · Kosuth's concern with the difference between a concept and its mode of presentation. These artists also tackled the problem of presenting "concepts" to an art audience. One and Three Chairs is, perhaps, a step towards a resolution of this problem. Rather than present the viewer with the bare written instructions for the work, or make a live event of the realization of the concept (in the manner of the Fluxus artists), Kosuth instead unifies concept and realization. One and Three Chairs demonstrates how an artwork can embody an idea that remains constant despite changes to its elements. The work One and Three Chairs can be seen to highlight the relation between language, picture and referent. It problematizes relations between object, visual and verbal references (denotations) plus semantic fields of the term chosen for the verbal reference