Later Europe and Americas unit

99. Portrait of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

Date: 1750 CE, 18th century CE Materials: Oil on canvas (POSJIDLC) Location: Mexico (POSJIDLC) Artist: Miguel Cabrera Purpose: Miguel Cabrera's posthumous portrait of sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648-1695) is a famous depiction of the esteemed Mexican nun and writer. Considered the first feminist of the Americas, sor Juana lived as a nun of the Jeronymite order in 17th century Mexico. Rather than marry, she chose to become a nun so she could pursue her intellectual interests. She corresponded with scientists, theologists and other literary intellectuals in Mexico and abroad. She wrote poetry and plays that became internationally famous and even engaged in theological debates Themes: Honor, religion, gender roles, symbolism Sor Juana's journey to intellectual success: Born to a creole family in 1648, sor Juana was a child prodigy. At the age of 15, she amazed people at court by excelling at an oral exam that tested her knowledge of physics, philosophy, theology and mathematics. She came to live as a lady in waiting in the house of the viceroy. Shortly afterwards, she chose to become a nun instead of marry. She entered the Carmelite convent in 1667 but left a year later to join the Jeronymite order in 1669, and in the process gained intellectual freedom. The Jeronymite order allowed her to host intellectual gatherings and live a comfortable life Sor Juana's end: In 1690, she became involved in an ecclesiastical dispute between the bishops of Mexico City and Puebla. She responded to the criticism she received as a female writer, which culminated in one of her most famous works, The Answer (1691). This work defended her right as a woman to write and to be a scholar. She claimed, "I do not study in order to write, nor far less in order to teach (which would be boundless arrogance in me), but simply to see whether by studying I may become less ignorant. This is my answer, and these are my feelings..." Despite her eloquent defense, the Church forced her to relinquish her literary pursuits and even her library. When she sold her library and musical and scientific instruments, she wrote a document that renowned her learning, which ended with, "I, sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, the worst in the world," signed in her own blood. After giving up her intellectual pursuits, she cared for the infirm during an epidemic but she fell sick and passed away Influence for the portrait: Cabrera positions sor Juana in such a way that the portrait insists on her status as an intellectual. He never actually saw sor Juana, so he likely based his image of her on earlier portraits of her, possibly even some self-portraits. Cabrera likely modeled this painting on images of male scholars seated at their desks. Most importantly, he possibly found inspiration in depictions of St. Jerome, the patron saint sor Juana's religious order. Images often portray St. Jerome seated at a desk within a study, surrounded by books and instruments of learning How it compares to nun portraits: In many ways, this is a typical nun portrait of 18th century Mexico. Sor Juana wears the habit of her religious order, the Jeronymites. She also wears an escudo de monja, or nun's badge, on her chest underneath her chin. Escudo de monja usually displayed the Virgin Mary. Sor Juana's escudo shows the Annunciation. Her left hand toys with a rosary, while she turns a page of an open book with her right hand. The book is a text by St. Jerome How it contrasts from nun portraits: Cabrera's portrait differs from other nun portraits in several ways. She looks toward us, her gaze direct and assertive, as she sits at a desk, surrounded by her library and instruments of learning. The library here includes books on philosophy, natural science, theology, mythology and history, the types of works in sor Juana's own library. Writing implements rest on the table, a clear allusion to sor Juana's written works and intellectual pursuits, along with the books, desk, quills and inkwell aid. The rosary is a sign of her religious life. The red curtain, common in elite portraiture of this period confers upon her a high status

100. A Philosopher Giving a Lecture on the Orrery

Date: 1763-1765 CE, 18th century CE, Enlightenment period Materials: Oil on canvas (APGALOTO) Location: Derby, England Artist: Joseph Wright of Derby Purpose: A painting of specific subjects crowding around a philosopher explaining how the orrery works. Everyone around the machine and the philosopher reaches scientific enlightenment Themes: Religion, innovation, story-telling, cosmos Enlightenment period: 1715-1789. The Enlightenment was an intellectual movement emphasizing reason, individualism, skepticism, and science. Enlightenment thinking helped give rise to deism, which is the belief that God exists, but does not interact supernaturally with the universe The history of Joseph Wright of Derby: Joseph Wright of Derby was born in town of Derby in central England, and except for short periods in Liverpool and London, lived in that city his entire life. Other than Thomas Gainsborough, Wright was the most prominent English painter of the 18th century to spend the majority of his career outside of London. Operating without the constraints of the mainstream London art world, Wright was free to explore a general interest in science with his friends, a group that included Erasmus Darwin (grandfather of Charles) and other members of the Lunar Society of Birmingham, an informal learned society that met to discuss scientific topics of the day. Wright was known for his contrasts between light and dark, chiaroscuro, and his honest portrayal of the true personalities of his subjects. This trait caused his downfall when he attempted to work as a portraitist--not everyone wanted a close up on their quirks and blemishes Joseph Wright of Derby's role in the Enlightenment: Wright's painting encapsulates in one moment the Enlightenment, a philosophical shift in the 18th century away from traditional religious models of the universe and toward a pragmatic, scientific approach. The age of Enlightenment is most closely associated with scientists and inventors, but writers and artists also played major roles. Joseph Wright of Derby became the unofficial artist of the Enlightenment, depicting scientists and philosophers in ways previously reserved for Biblical heroes and Greek gods Combination of genres: In the 1760s, Wright began to explore the traditional boundaries of various genres of painting. At the time, the highest genre was history painting, which depicted Biblical or Classical subjects to demonstrate a moral lesson. This high regard for history painting was adopted by the British. Wright took this method of portraying events and applied it to this piece, showing a contemporary subject. Rather than a moral of leadership or heroism, this painting's "moral" is the pursuit of scientific knowledge. With its collection of non-idealized subjects informally arranged in a small space around a central organizing point, Wright's painting mimics the compositional structure of a conversation piece, an informal group portrait, but with the dramatic lighting and scale expected from a major religious scene. As a result, the painting does depict a moment of religious epiphany. Much like St. Matthew in Caravaggio's Calling of Saint Matthew, the figures listening to the philosopher's lecture in Wright's painting are experiencing conversion to science Orrery: An orrery is a mechanical model of the solar system, a miniature clockwork planetarium. Each planet with its moons is a sphere attached to a swing arm which allows it to rotate around the sun when cranked by hand. When in motion, the orrery depicts the orbits of each planet, as well as their relative relationship to each other. The orrery depicted by Wright has large metal rings which can simulate eclipses and give the model a striking and exciting three-dimensionality The subjects: Although each of the figures in the painting are clearly modeled on a specific person, we don't know their identities for sure. Most likely the man standing and taking notes is Wright's friend, Peter Perez Burdett. The man seated at the far right may be Washington Shirley, the initial owner of the work. Several identities have been proposed for the philosopher delivering the lecture. The most tempting theory is that his face is modeled on that of Sir Isaac Newton, the great English scientist whose work helped bring in the Enlightenment. Another possibility is that it is a member of the Lunar Society of Birmingham Light symbolism: Wright mimics Baroque artists like Caravaggio, who inserted strong light sources in otherwise dark compositions to create dramatic effect. The gas lamp, which acts as the sun, illuminates the scene, allowing the viewer to clearly see the figures within, and it symbolizes the active enlightenment in which those figures are participating Cosmo symbolism: The faces in the painting reflect the phases of the moon, while the light shows different angles of each face

101. The Swing

Date: 1767 CE, 18th century CE, Rococo period Materials: Oil on canvas (TSw) Location: France (TSw) Artist: Jean-Honoré Purpose: Shows a promiscuous young girl with a hidden lover and a fleeting innocence Themes: Nature, sex, aristocracy, symbolism Rococo period: Rococo is an exceptionally ornamental and theatrical style art, which combines asymmetry, scrolling curves, gilding, white and pastel colors, sculpted molding, and trompe l'oeil frescoes to create surprise and the illusion of motion and drama. It was the period of art that helped motivate the French Revolution and all the new ideals that came with that initiation Imagery: The girl in the center wears a poofy pink dress with white lace. She is swinging on a swing on a velvet red and gold seat showing her wealth. She wears white silk stockings and she flips one pink slipper into the air, a sign of her loosing her innocence. She looks very mischievous. There's a man in the left corner that she's looking down at, who's clearly her lover, hidden in the bushes. She's connived the man in the opposite corner to push her swing, an older gentleman, who's oblivious to the fact that there's a young man in the bushes. There's a sculpture on the left that shows a little angelic figure, or a putti, who's got his fingertips to his lips because something secretive and scandalous is going on. There's a dog. Dogs usually symbolize fidelity, but it's barking and frustrated, so it symbolizes infidelity. The dog beneath the shh-ing sculpture shows a figure who may give away the secret. Behind, just under the woman, there's a sculpture of two little putti, or Cupid-like figures, being playful with each other, and on what looks like a beehive, perhaps indicating the "stings of love" Location: She's behind a villa or a palace. You can just make out some architecture in the distance. This is a garden that's been overgrown. It's lush, but it's out of control. It is nature at it's most fertile and abundant, speaking to the sexual, sensual being on the swing. The tree and its boughs are at times full of foliage, and at times are bare, and represents what is sometimes referred to as the blast and the bough, which is used as an expression of passion

104. George Washington

Date: 1788-1792 CE, 18th century CE, Neoclassical period Materials: Carrara marble Location: Paris, France/Richmond, Virginia Artist: Jean-Antoine Houdon Purpose: After the successful conclusion of the American Revolutionary War, many state governments turned to public art to commemorate the occasion. Given his critical role both in Virginia and the colonial cause, the Virginia General Assembly desired a statue of George Washington to display in a public space Themes: Honor, political power, military power, cultural exchange, symbolism How come Jean-Antoine Houdon: In 1784, the governor of Virginia, Benjamin Harrison V, asked Thomas Jefferson, then in Paris as the American minister to France, to select an appropriate artist to sculpt Washington. Seeking a European sculptor was a logical decision given the lack of artistic talent then available in the United States. Jefferson knew Jean-Antoine Houdon would be the right choice. He was the most famous and accomplished Neoclassical sculptor at work in France Original plan: Given Houdon's skill and ambition, the sculptor hoped to cast a larger than life-sized bronze statue of General Washington on horseback. The final product, however, delivered more than a decade later, was a comparatively simple standing marble Process and final result: Evidence suggests that Houdon was to remain in Paris and sculpt Washington from a likeness Charles Willson Peale had drawn. Dissatisfied and uncomfortable with carving in three dimensions what Peale had rendered in two, Houdon made plans to visit Washington in person. There, he took detailed measurements of Washington's body and sculpted a life mask of his face. While in Virginia, Houdon created a slightly idealized and classicized bust portrait of Washington. However, Washington disliked this classicized aesthetic and insisted on being shown wearing contemporary attire rather than the garments of a hero from ancient Greece or Rome. Houdon returned to Paris and set to work on a standing full-length statue. Houdon not only perfectly captured Washington's likeness--John Marshal, the second Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, later wrote, "Nothing in bronze or stone could be a more perfect image than this statue of the living Washington"--Houdon also captured the essential duality of Washington: the private citizen and the public soldier Imagery: Washington stands and looks slightly to his left. His facial expression could best be described as fatherly. He wears his military uniform. His stance mimics that of the contraposto seen in Polykleitos's Doryphoros. Washington's left leg is slightly bent and half a stride forward, while his right leg is weight bearing. His right arm hangs by his side and rests atop a gentleman's walking stick. His left arm rests atop a fasces, a bundle of 13 rods, symbolizing not only the power of a ruler but also the strength found through unity. Rather than hold his officer's sword, a symbol of military might and authority, it instead benignly hangs on the outside of the fasces, just beyond Washington's immediate grasp. This surrendering of military power is further reinforced by the presence of the plow behind Washington. This refers to the story of Cincinnatus, a Roman dictator who resigned his absolute power when his leadership was no longer needed so that he could return to his farm. Washington resigned his power and returned to his farm to live a peaceful, civilian life

105. Self-Portrait

Date: 1790 CE, 18th century CE, Rococo period Materials: Oil on canvas (SP) Location: Rome, Italy, one of the first cities in which Vigée-LeBrun stayed during her decade-long exile from France Artist: Élisabeth Louise Vigée-LeBrun. She was a celebrated artist known especially for her lavish portraits of Marie Antoinette and other European monarchs and nobles, as well as for her many self portraits Purpose: A self portrait of a carefree working woman during the beginning of a revolution Themes: Political power, history Élisabeth Louise Vigée-LeBrun background: She became famous and wealthy as Queen Marie Antoinette's official court painter. She was born in a bustling section of Paris. In her autobiography, Souvenirs, she wrote that her father, a minor portraitist, doted on her, wishing her fame and good fortune, and he cherished her early efforts of drawing. She also wrote that her mother thought her awkward and ugly Rococo style: Self-Portrait is a late example of the Rococo style. Rococo epitomized a popular ideal, wherein perpetual youth was lustful and pleasure-loving, its sexual gratification taken without guilt or consequence. Despite this, Vigée-LeBrun was extremely conservative in her politics. The Rococo style is present here because of the nonchalance of a young working woman during a heated political environment Imagery: Vigée-LeBrun sits in a relaxed pose at her easel. She wears a white turban and a dark dress in the free-flowing style that Marie Antoinette had made popular at the French court. The dress has a soft, white and ruffled collar of the same material as her headdress. Her belt is a wide red ribbon. Vigée-LeBrun holds a brush to a partially finished work. The subject is probably Marie Antoinette, perhaps intended as a tribute to her favorite sitter. Slightly used brushes are at the ready along with a palette cradled in her arm close to the viewer, letting us know who she is What's underneath the paint: This painting expresses an alert intelligence, vibrancy, and freedom from care. As she painted this portrait, Marie Antoinette was being driven from power by revolutionaries who hated the extravagant lifestyle of the nobility and would later execute both Marie Antoinette and her husband, King Louis XVI. Given these circumstances, Vigée-LeBrun, a working painter, wife and mother, displays a sanguine persona

106. Y no hai remedio (And There is Nothing to be Done) from Los Desastres de la Guerra (The Disasters of War), plate 15

Date: 1810-1823 CE, published 1863 CE, 19th century CE, Romantic period Materials: Etching, drypoint, burin and burnisher Location: Spain Artist: Francisco de Goya Purpose: The 82 images of The Disasters of War add up to a visual indictment of and protest against the French occupation of Spain by Napoleon Bonaparte. The French emperor had seized control of the country in 1807 after he tricked the king of Spain, Charles IV, into allowing Napoleon's troops to pass the border, under the pretext of helping Charles invade Portugal. Instead, Napoleon usurped the throne and installed his brother, Joseph Bonaparte, as ruler of Spain. A bloody uprising occurred in which countless Spaniards were slaughtered all throughout Spain. Although Spain eventually expelled the French in 1814 after the Peninsular War (1807-1814), the military conflict was a long and gruesome ordeal for both nations. Throughout all of this, Goya worked as a court artist for Joseph Bonaparte, though he would later deny any involvement with the French "intruder king" Themes: Death, history Romanticism: The Romantic style is characterized by a heightened interest in nature, emphasis on the individual's expression of emotion and imagination, departure from the attitudes and forms of Classicism, and rebellion against established social rules and conventions. Romantic is a fitting word to connect to the imagery, idealized, dramatic Imagery: A man, blind-folded, head downcast, stands bound to a wooden pole. His white clothes, despite tears and rips, seem to emit light. Although the man's off-kilter posture signifies defeat, he is still heroic, he is an Alter Christus--another Christ. On the ground in front of him is a corpse, contorted, the spine twisted, arms and legs sprawled in opposite directions. His grotesque face looks out at us through empty eyes as blood and brain matter ooze out of his skull and pool around his head. Further off, behind the main subject, are other men, doubled over and on their knees, similarly secured to wooden stakes. There is a neat line of soldiers that aim rifles at these men. Suddenly, and in such an obvious position that we wonder how we did not see them before, the barrel of three rifles appear from the right edge of the picture, aimed at the main subject. As the caption of the picture tells us, "Y no hay remedio" (And There is Nothing to be Done) First step of creating: The first step is to etch the plate. This is done by covering a copper plate with wax and then scratching lines into the wax with a stylus, thus exposing the metal. The plate is then placed in an acid bath. The acid bites into the metal where it is exposed by the stylus. Next, the acid is washed from the plate and the plate is heated so the wax softens and can be wiped away. The plate then has soft, even, recessed lines etched by the acid where Goya would have drawn into the wax Second step of creating: The next step, drypoint, creates lines by a different method than step one. Here, Goya would have scratched directly into the surface of the plate with a stylus. This results in a less even line since each scratch leaves a small ragged ridge on either side of the line. These minute ridges catch the ink and create a soft, distinctive line when printed. Because these ridges are delicate and are crushed by repeatedly being run through a press, the earliest prints in a series are generally more highly valued Third step of creating: Finally, the artist would have inked the plate and wiped away any excess so that ink remained only in the areas where the acid bit into the metal plate or where the stylus had scratched the surface. The plate and moist paper are then placed atop on one another and run through a press. The paper, now a print, draws the ink from the metal and becomes a mirror of the plate The series as a whole: The first group of prints to which "Y no hay remedio" belongs shows the sobering consequences of conflict between French troops and Spanish civilians. The second group documents the effects of a famine that hit Spain in 1811-1812 at the end of French rule. The final set of prints depicts the disappointment and demoralization of the Spanish rebels, who, after finally defeating the French, found that their reinstated monarchy would not accept any political reforms. Although they had expelled Bonaparte, the throne of Spain was still occupied by a tyrant. And this time, they had fought to put him there Another print: Although "And There is Nothing to be Done" may have crystallized the theme of The Disasters of War, it is not the most gruesome. This honor may belong to plate 37 "etro es peor" (This is Worse), which captures the real-life massacre of Spanish civilians by the French army in 1808. In the graphic image, Goya copied a famous Hellenistic Greek fragment, the Belvedere Torso, to create the body of the dead victim. Like the ancient fragment, he is armless, but this is because the French have mutilated his body, which is impaled on a tree through his anus and shoulder. As in "There is Nothing to be Done," the corpse's face stares out at the viewer, who must confront his own culpability in allowing the massacre to take place. The consumer, who examines the dismembered corpses in the series, is complicit in the violence of the murder

107. La Grande Odalisque

Date: 1814 CE, 19th century CE, Romantic period Materials: Oil on canvas (LGO) Location: France (LGO) Artist: Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres Purpose: A female nude in the French conception of a harem in Islamic Asia Themes: Political power, beauty standards, femininity, sex Imagery: This is a languid nude set in a lavish interior. Ingres has created an aloof eroticism accentuated by its exotic context. The peacock fan, the turban, the enormous pearls, the hookah, and of course, the title of the painting--they all refer to the French conception of the Orient Justification for the sexuality: In the mind of an early 19th century French male viewer, the sort of person for whom this image was made, the odalisque would have conjured up not just a harem slave--itself a misconception--but a set of fears and desires linked to the long history of aggression between Christian Europe and Islamic Asia. Ingres's clear and emphasized sexuality is made acceptable even to an increasingly conservative French culture because of the subject's geographic distance. Where, for instance, the Renaissance painter, Titian, had veiled his object of desire in myth, Ingres covered his eroticism in a distant exoticism Justification for the imperialism: France was a colonial power in that part of Islamic Asia, and in some way, these sorts of paintings were a justification for France being in that part of the world. This was France imagining itself as superior to that culture, and therefore having a moral right to "civilize" Anatomy: In this particular piece, Ingres has not prioritized the devotion to human anatomy. What's most important to Ingres is the sensuality. He's extended the back, he's placed her left leg in an impossible position. There is a relaxed and stretched out tone here that is able to achieve a sensuality that would be challenging to get to with anatomical accuracy Distance: There is a kind of tension between the desire and the distance that Ingres puts between the viewer and the nude woman. We see her naked back, but she turns back to face the viewer, and it is a cold, aloof and distant look. It's hardly inviting. There's that direct eye contact and there's also distance and a "stay over there"

109. View From Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, After a Thunderstorm--The Oxbow

Date: 1836 CE, 19th century CE, Romantic period Materials: Oil on canvas (VFMHNMAATTO) Location: Northampton, Massachusetts Artist: Thomas Cole Purpose: At first glance, this painting may seem to be nothing more than an interesting view of a recognizable bend in the Connecticut River. But when viewed through the lens of 19th century political ideology, this painting eloquently confronts the topic of Westward Expansion. Cole used a diagonal line from the lower right to the upper left to divide the composition into two unequal halves. The left side of the painting depicts a view of the land that elicits feelings of danger and even fear. This is evoked by the gloomy storm clouds that seem to pummel the middle ground with rain. This side of the painting depicts a virginal landscape, nature created by God and untouched by man. It is wild and untamed. American artists often visually represented the notion of the untamed wilderness through the "Blasted Tree," a motif Cole paints into the lower left corner. That such a formidable tree could be obliterated in such a way suggests the Herculean power of nature. The right side of the composition is a peaceful, pastoral landscape that humankind has subjugated to their will. The land, which was once as disorderly as that on the left side of the painting, has now been overtaken by the order and regulation of agriculture. Animals graze, crops grow, boats sail upon the river. What was once wild has been tamed. The thunderstorm, which threatens the left side of the painting, has left the land on the right refreshed Themes: Political power, innovation, perspective, nature, symbolism Thomas Cole: During the 19th century--an expanse of time that saw the elevation of landscape painting to a point of national pride--Thomas Cole reigned supreme as the undisputed leader of the Hudson River School of landscape painters (not an actual school, but a group of New York City based landscape painters). It is ironic, however, that the person who most embodies the beauty and grandeur of the American wilderness during the first half of the 19th century was not originally from the United States, but was instead born and lived the first 17 years of his life in Great Britain. Originally from Bolton-le-Moor in Lancashire (England), the Cole family immigrated to the United States in 1818, first settling in Philadelphia before eventually moving to Steubenville, Ohio, a locale then on the edge of the wilderness of the American west. Cole worked briefly in Ohio as an itinerant portraitist, but returned to Philadelphia in 1823 at the age of 22 to pursue art instruction that was then unavailable in Ohio. Two years later, Cole moved to New York City where he exchanged his aspirations of painting large-scale historical compositions for the more reasonable artistic goal of completing landscapes. Cole found quick success in New York City. In the year of his arrival, 1825, John Trumbull, the patriarch of American portraiture and history painting, and the president of the American Academy of Design, "discovered" Cole. Trumbull introduced Cole to many of the wealthy and prominent men who would become his most influential patrons in the decades to follow Innovation: During the 18th and 19th centuries, great artists aspired to complete large-scale historical compositions that often had an instructive moral message. Landscape paintings, in contrast, were often more imitative than inspiring. Cole was able to take the American landscape and imbue it with a moral message. The landscapes Cole began to paint in the 1830s were not entirely about the land. Cole used the land as a way to say something important about the United States Manifest Destiny: When viewed together, the right side of the painting, the view to the east, and that of the left, the west, clearly speak to the ideology of Manifest Destiny. The Louisiana Purchase of 1804 essentially doubled the size of the United States, and many believed that it was a divinely ordained obligation of Americans to settle this westward territory. In The Oxbow, the land to the east is ordered, productive and useful. In contrast, the land to the west remains wild. Further westward expansion, a change that is thought of as destined to happen, is shown to positively altar the land Self-portrait: A close look at The Oxbow reveals an easily overlooked self-portrait in the lower part of the painting. Cole wears a coat and hat and stands before a stretched canvas placed on an easel, paintbrush in hand. The artist pauses, as if in the middle of the brushstroke, to engage the viewer

110. Still Life in Studio

Date: 1837 CE, 19th century CE, Romantic period Materials: Daguerrotype Location: Paris, France (SLIS) Artist: Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre Purpose: By modern standards, 19th century photography can appear rather prehistoric. While the plain black and white landscapes and unsmiling people have their own harsh beauty, these images also challenge our notions of what defines a work of art. Photography is a controversial fine art medium, simply because it is difficult to classify--is it an art or a science? 19th century photographers struggled with this distinction while also trying to reconcile aesthetics with improvements in technology Themes: History, advanced technique, innovation, perspective, science (SLIS) Pre-Daguerrotype: Although the principle of the camera was known in antiquity, the actual chemistry needed to register an image was not available until the 19th century. Artists from the Renaissance onwards used a camera obscura, Latin for dark chamber, or a small hole of a darkened box that would pass light through the hole and project an upside down image of whatever was outside of the box. It was not until the invention of a light sensitive surface by Frenchman Joseph Nicéphore Niépce that the basic principle of photography was born. From this point, the development of photography largely related to technological improvements in three areas: speed, resolution and permanence. The first photographs, such as Niépce's famous View From the Window at Gras (1826), required a very slow speed, or long exposure period, in this case, about eight hours, obviously making many subjects difficult, if not impossible, to photograph. Taken by using a camera obscura to expose a copper plate coated in silver and pewter, Niépce's image looks out of an upstairs window, and part of the blurry quality is due to changing conditions during the long exposure time, causing the resolution, the clarity of the image, to be grainy. An additional challenge was the issue of permanence. Many of Niépce's early images simply turned black over time due to continued exposure to light. This problem was largely solved in 1839 by the invention of hypo, a chemical that reserved the light sensitivity of paper Daguerrotype: Louis Daguerre invented a new process he dubbed as daguerrotype in 1839, which significantly reduced exposure time and created a lasting result,

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

Date: 1840 CE, 19th century CE, Romantic period Materials: Oil on canvas (SSSTOTDADTCO) Artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner Purpose: This is an image of a slave ship in the distance. This is a ship carrying slaves and a typhoon has come on. This is based on poem, but this is something that actually happened, not just once, but many times. With the storm coming, the captain of this ship has decided to throw the slaves overboard; apparently, that was the only way you could collect the insurance. If the slaves died of illness or something else while on board, the captain of the ship wouldn't be able to collect the insurance Themes: Death, history, nature Nature: There is a mixture of the beauty of nature, the power of nature, and this horrific human act that is within the context of a much wider horrific human act of slavery. There's this sense of divine punishment, the storm coming for that slave ship that's been dealing in human lives, and the punishment wreaked by nature is justified on that ship. There is also a sense of the total indifference of nature because the violent waters are what's going to drown these enslaved people Patronage: The first owner of this painting was the great Victorian art critic, John Ruskin. Then the painting made its way to Boston to an abolitionist. At this point, the British outlawed slavery in 1833 in the colonies, the French outlawed it in their colonies 15 years later, but in America, slavery isn't outlawed until the Civil War. Slavery is still a really active political cause at this moment Color: At the left border of the painting, the blues, whites, grays and purples of the painting majorly contrasts with the warm colors of the sunset right next to it and in the center of the painting. Ruskin wrote, "Purple and blue, the lurid shadow of the hollow breakers are cast upon the mist of night, which gathers cold and low, advancing like the shadow of death upon the guilty ship as it labors amidst the lightning of the sea, its thin masts written upon the sky in lines of blood

112. Palace of Westminster (Houses of Parliament)

Date: 1840-1870 CE, 19th century CE, Early Victorian era Location: London, England Artist: Charles Barry, AWN Pugin Purpose: This building represents the Parliamentary system, where the House of Commons meets where the House of Lords meets Themes: Architecture, political power, history, cultural exchange, innovation, cultural advancement Victorian art: June 1837-January 1901. Victorian art's vibrant colors represented the high society of the picture of England which was shaped by the reign of Queen Victoria in the 19th century. Queen Victoria's reign saw a great expansion of the British Empire, which led to a high level of prosperity and social and fashion finery which was expressed in bright, emotional color. The many technological advances made during that time caused changes in the way scientists, artists and the public viewed art and aesthetics Competition: There was a great fire in 1834 and it burned down the old palace that had been here, so there was a competition that was held for designs for a new building. The new structure had to be designed in one of two historical styles: Gothic or Elizabethan, that is, from the time of Shakespeare. There were about 97 entries to the competition, and the vast majority were in the Gothic style, so that's why this looks like it was built hundreds of years before.The Gothic style dates from the Late Medieval period. The competition was won by an architect whose name was Charles Barry with the assistance of Augustus Pugin, who was responsible for the interior designs as well as the stained glass and some of the exterior decorative forms. Pugin was known for his belief in the Gothic as the right and true moral style of architecture and the style of architecture that was associated with Englishness. We think about the Gothic as French, but in England in the 19th century the Gothic was English Why Gothic: The reason had to do with industrialization in the modern world and the way that that unsettled people. The modern era seemed ugly, a period of factories and steam engines. When they looked at the past they saw the beautiful architecture of the Gothic period, they looked at the Classical paths, and they saw beauty. This was now a period when you could buy cheaply made goods for the first time, and the old systems of handicraft had been replaced. People had moved from the country, where people had learned, through apprenticeship, traditions of making things, but now things were being produced by factories, and it was an unsettling period. It's natural that people looked back to historical styles, especially a building like this, the seat of government Innovation: The building uses quite a number of modern innovations in its constructive techniques. It's an enormous building on a concrete bed, certainly not a Medieval tradition, concerned with ventilation; in fact, the central tower was added to the design in order to help support ventilation in the building, and so this building really is a product of the 19th century. Architectural historians call this the Gothic Revival, and the Gothic stood for a kind of Victorian fantasy of Medieval artisan craftsmanship and very specific values that the Victorians were trying to return to Contrasts: Pugin published a book called "Contrasts," which compared the modern world and the Medieval world, and the modern world did not come out well. It was a deeply moralizing book, for example, there was one famous plate that showed the modern city, where the skyline was dominated by factories and smokestacks, versus the Medieval city, where the landscape was dominated by church steeples, that is, a kind of moral center. This was a comparison between a world guided by faith and a world guided by a hunger for money. He's drawing very harsh contrasts, but the Victorians loved to do that Exterior layout: The building spans the edge of Thames River. It was very self consciously based on the Chapel of Henry VII in this late Gothic style that we know as the perpendicular. These large windows hold emphasis on the rectilinear, on the vertical, on tracery and lacework. Each window has, at its top, tracery work that divides the glass up. The architect is really maximizing the window space, and this is a feature of the High Gothic. You can also see Barry's interest in the Classical. Look at the regularity of this facade, the sense of balance, and it's really only the exterior decorative forms that refer to the Gothic style because the building as a whole is laid out with a symmetry that is really at odds with the conception of the Gothic from the 18th and 19th centuries, where the idea of the asymmetrical was so important

113. The Stonebreakers

Date: 1849 CE, 19th century CE, Realist period Materials: Oil on canvas (TSt) Location: France (Tst) Artist: Gustave Courbet Purpose: Painted one year after Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote their influential pamphlet, The Communist Manifesto, the artist's concern for the struggle of the poor was evident in his artwork. Here, two figures labor to break and remove stone from a road that is being built. He doesn't show the heroism and pride of laborers, as most subjects of the lower class were painted then, but he highlights the injustice and hopelessness of their situation Themes: Protest Realism: The Realist movement began as a reaction to Romanticism and History painting. In favor of depictions of "real" life, Realist painters used ordinary people in ordinary surroundings engaged in real activities as subjects for their works Imagery: Instead of depicting hardworking but idealized peasants, Courbet depicts figures who wear ripped and tattered clothing. The two stone breakers are set against a low hill in the rural French town of Ornans, a town where the artist had been raised and continued to spend much of his time. The hill fills all of the canvas except for the upper right corner, where a tiny patch of blue sky appears. The effect is to isolate these laborers, to suggest that they are physically and economically trapped Figures: He has depicted a man that seems too old and a boy that seems 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 Stylistic choices: Courbet's brushwork is rough. This suggests that the way he painted his canvas was in part of a conscious rejection of the highly polished and refined Neoclassical style that still dominated French art in 1848. This can then come into conversation with his refusal to focus on the parts of the image that would typically receive the most attention. He attempts to be evenhanded, attending to faces and rock equally, that rough brushwork absolutely dominating

115. Olympia

Date: 1863 CE, 19th century CE, Realist period Materials: Oil on canvas (O) Location: Paris, France (O) Artist: Edouard Manet Purpose: A reclining female nude that challenged established ideas of what fine art was when thinking about the female nude Themes: Tradition, innovation, femininity, sex Tradition: The reclining nude, or the female nude in general, has been a tradition in fine art since ancient Greece and Rome. All of these nudes have common components that connect them thematically. The immediate model for Olympia was Titian's Venus of Urbino, but he's stripping away the academic technique of the representation of space, the turn of the body and the veil of mythology Challenging academic art: By academic art, we're talking about the art that was approved by the official Academy that was associated with the government of France. These artists and their artworks had the stamp of the official state, so these were the leading artists of the time and it was established that their art was of quality and they had a ready market value. This was art that was formulaic, expected and traditional. There was a definition of what great art was and no one saw a point in looking for something new or different, at least not in a grand way. Great art was based on the Classical and the Renaissance. What Manet did with Olympia is that he challenged these very established ideas. This woman is not a Venus, her name is Olympia, and she looks like a real woman in a real apartment in Paris. her features are not idealized or perfected. Traditional art would always show Venus or other nudes in a coy way; this woman is looking directly at us, confronting us even as we look at her. There's no way to look at her and pretend that this is about beauty or perfection. The viewer is confronted by her sexuality Imagery: This woman is recognized as a courtesan, a kind of prostitute. The name Olympia was common for prostitutes at that time in Paris. Olympia's servant hands her flowers that, presumably, have just come from one of her patrons. When we think of a prostitute, we think of someone of a much lower class, but this is a woman who is clearly a higher class prostitute. This was controversial. We, as the viewer, must have walked into the room and startled the cat at the foot of the bed who stares directly at us, as well. This painting confronts 19th century Paris with its own corruption, its own sexual interest Commentary: The reaction of the press was pretty vicious. The press said that she looked like she was dead. Manet outlined her in black and hardly modeled her flesh. There were parody caricatures made of the piece that emphasize the shadow on her hands and feet, and some of the press spoke of her hands being filthy. It's interesting that those are the only areas with significant modeling. Where one would expect to see modeling on the female nude would be in the abdomen or around the breasts, but here, Manet's kept that really flat. The press interpreted her hands as drawing attention to her sexuality Personal style: Manet, in so much of his work, really does reject the clear articulation of represented space. He confronts the viewer with the complexity of painting on a two-dimensional surface. An area where you can really see that is the way the toes peek out from under the slipper she's wearing. This awkwardness purposely reminds the viewer that all of this is illusion and that there is just a two-dimensionality of a canvas. Manet refuses to pretend his painting isn't paint, he refuses to create the perfect illusion where you don't even see a brushstroke. His pieces have more meaning than that. He unmasks the illusion of painting and he unmasks the illusion of our own interests in looking at these images

118. The Valley of Mexico from the Santa Isabel Mountain Range

Date: 1875 CE, 19th century CE, Romantic period Materials: Oil on canvas (TVOMFTSIMR) Location: Mexico (TVOMFTSIMR) Artist: José María Velasco Purpose: A landscape painting that showed the connection between ancestry and the land on which it originated and the industrialization of ancient land Themes: History, cultural exchange, cultural advancement, nature Royal Academy of San Carlos: The first art school in the Americas was established in Mexico City in the late 18th century. Before this, Creole artists of European descent born in the Spanish Americas had failed to convince the Spanish king to create an artistic institution. By the end of the 18th century, however, the Royal Academy of San Carlos was established. It was modeled after the Art Academy of San Fernando in Madrid, and consequently, a new chapter of Mexican art history began. This important school fostered Romantic and Neoclassical aesthetics through previously unexplored genres of painting A new genre of painting: Beginning in the 19th century, students emerging from the new school at the Academy began to illustrate local vistas of the Valley of Mexico. The development of these images offered the perfect opportunity for artists to explore the Romantic qualities of "pure landscape," which in Mexico emerged as a popular genre in the Academy. As observed in Velasco's The Valley of Mexico from the Santa Isabel Mountain Range, the valley represented something much more than a mere opportunity to practice the newly established genre. This imagery offered an opportunity to highlight symbols of patriotism valuable to a newly independent society. After the 1821 war of independence from Spain, Mexico sought to establish its identity through artistic endeavors. The development of the practice of national landscape painting was part of the dictator López Santa Anna's efforts to reestablish the art academy after decades of neglect following the formation of Mexico as an independent nation Imagery: Velasco's composition united pre-Hispanic symbols and contemporary national sentiments. For example, the white peaks that predominate the vista are the Popocatepetl and Iztacchihuatl volcanoes. Prior to the arrival of the Spanish to the Valley of Mexico in 1519, these two volcanoes were the main characters of a legendary ill-fated love between an Aztec princess (Iztacchihuatl, or "white woman") and a courageous warrior (Popocatepetl, or "smoking mountain). Towards the composition's background are the receding waters of Lake Texcoco and the contours of Mexico City. The ancient Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan was founded in the middle of this lake in 1325. This lake had once surrounded Mexico City, or Tenochtitlan, but it is now being pushed off by increasing development. In the center and slightly to the right, there is Mexico City. It can barely be seen, but it's clear enough so that you can just make out the towers of the Cathedral of Mexico City. This was a familiar site for Velasco, given that the artist's home was located at the foot of the small hill shown in the middle of the canvas. This unassuming hill was also an important sacred colonial site where the Virgin of Guadalupe first appeared to the indigenous man, Juan Diego, in 1531. The artist is known to have painted in this location many times. This version of The Valley of Mexico from the Santa Isabel Mountain Range is perhaps the most celebrated of a dozen or so images with the same subject done by Velasco between 1875 and 1892. At one point, the brushstrokes that form the peaks of the snow-covered volcanoes, the rock formations and other details were done from memory, making it possible for Velasco to change and manipulate the details of the landscape as he saw fit. Velasco was known to take real care with botanical and meteorological phenomena, so he studied plants, geology and could formations, trying to get this right. Our eye first lands on a mother and two children who seem to be walking away from the city and back into nature. Then beyond that, there are two roads that are in part the ancient Aztec causeway that leads us to the heart of Mexico City, and there are some of the effects of industrialization present German cultural exchange: The Valley of Mexico from the Santa Isabel Mountain Range can be viewed as a re-interpretation of the common late 18th century German subject, "pastoral idyllis," where a sense of poetic harmony and daily life were united. In the tradition of artists such as Casper David Friedrich and Joseph Anton Koch, Velasco introduces his figures not as mere accessories enhancing the rest of the artwork, but as key components attached to the composition's harmony. Similar to his German predecessors, Velasco explored the Romantic relationship between human figures and the scenery they inhabit. Indigenous individuals are presented in transit from the city to the country, reflecting a Romantic, yet difficult socio-economic relationship between people and their ancestral land. The figures' indigenous garments naturally relate to the national iconography displayed throughout the painting. Velasco has produced an image where national pride, Romantic poetry and the daily life blend to transform the Valley of Mexico into a Romantic masterpiece

116. The Gare Saint-Lazare, the Auteuil Line

Date: 1877 CE, 19th century CE, Impressionist period Materials: Oil on canvas (TGSLTAL) Location: Paris, France(TGSLTAL) Artist: Claude Monet Purpose: The Gare Saint-Lazare, also known as Interior View of the Gare Saint-Lazare, the Auteuil Line, depicts one of the passenger platforms of the Gare Saint-Lazare, one of Paris's largest and busiest train terminals. The painting is not so much a single view of a train platform, it is rather a component in a larger project of a dozen canvases, all of which attempt to portray all facets of the Gare Saint-Lazare Themes: History, innovation, cultural advancement Impressionism: Impressionist art is a style in which the artist captures the image of an object as someone would see it if they just caught a glimpse of it. Lots of color and mostly outdoor scenes. When Impressionists started painting, they were creating a radically new style and approach to art, painting many different colors to create a unified "impression" of what they saw, especially to convey how light affected the image Light: Light is the dominant formal element in so many Impressionist paintings. Here, as in many of his most celebrated paintings, Monet shows a bright day and works to reproduce the closely observed effects of pure sunlight. The billowing clouds of steam add to the effect, creating layers of light that fill the canvas. The Gare Saint-Lazare, the Auteuil Line is an exception within the full group--it is one of the only two paintings of the train station shown on a bright sunny day. The other ten paintings show dark, hazy views of the Gare Saint-Lazare. This piece, however, shares a great deal in common with the other paintings at least in terms of subject and view Imagery: The Gare Saint-Lazare, the Auteuil Line has been singled out as one of the most impressive paintings of Impressionism. 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, which is a bridge that overlooked the station, and the many locomotives. All of these elements peek through and dematerialize into a thick, industrial haze. Against the bright background, Monet presents the station's vast iron roof in copper and tan tones that stand out against the swirling blue, gray and purple background. The trains, three locomotives and a large box car, are shown as the source of the steam Criticism: In 1877, a number of critics were worried the smoke would completely engulf them. Gorges Maillard, writing in the conservative journal, Le Pays, described the painting as , "the rails, lanterns, switchers, wagons, above all, always these flakes, these mists, clouds of white steam, are so thick they sometimes hide everything else." Perhaps the criticism is due to the fact that Monet shows the locomotives as the main subject, rather than as background elements. He shows them unapologetically, in their natural element. Four out of the twelve paintings in this group depict the trains that dominate the platforms. The other paintings show the exterior, the yards, workers, tunnels, switches, sheds and engines of the station. The Gare Saint-Lazare, the Auteuil Line and the other interiors of the train shed show workers, steam and industrial machines. What he does not show is the grand hotel, lavish entrance, or sculpture of the station's impressive facade. Even in the interiors, the paintings focus mainly on the business end of the station Is it a series: These common subjects--train, steam, industrial activity--raise the question of whether the works should be regarded as a series. Though scholars have frequently discussed the works, and particularly the four interiors, as part of a series, only two of the works show a repeated, or serial, view. When taken as a whole, the group does not seem to be the manifestation of an interest in serial painting, or an explanation of subtle changes only evident in repeated views. Rather, it seems an effort to capture the varied aspects of the station by rendering its many faces in paint Modernity: In late 19th century Paris, large train stations were new kinds of structures. They express modernity, not only through their function, but also through their architecture. Trains, at this point, were powered by burning coal and creating steam, and that required large open sheds which were held aloft by iron, all of which spoke of modernity; this was not the traditional Parisian architecture of wood or stone. During the second half of the 19th century, Paris was rebuilt. The old winding, maze-like, congested streets were torn down and wide boulevards were built with apartment buildings, housing cafes and department stores, catering to a new middle class, an upper-middle class. The idea of transportation itself, a place where people of different classes mixed, was also modern. For so long, French society had been rigidly ranked, but that unraveled in the modern era, and perhaps, nowhere more vividly expressed than in a public space like the train station Innovation of the Impressionists: The Impressionists were positioning themselves outside of the academic establishment. The Gare Saint-Lazare was exhibited at an Impressionist exhibition, which was independent of the official exhibitions in Paris called Salons that were sponsored by the Royal Academy. Monet is not giving us a view of the Gare Saint-Lazare with a factual accounting of what was in this station; he's giving us an optical experience of light and atmosphere, this very subjective experience. It is the feeling of the sight. Artists didn't need to paint Classical antiquity anymore, they didn't need to paint Biblical and history paintings. They were creating a new beauty that was true to the new modern world in which they lived

123. Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?

Date: 1897-1898 CE, 19th century, Symbolist period Materials: Oil on rough, heavy sackcloth Location: Tahiti, French Polynesia Artist: Paul Gauguin Purpose: An elaborate painting that addresses the three questions in the title in some way or the other. It is read from right to left Themes: Death, mortality, mystery, cultural exchange, story-telling, animals, symbolism Imagery: Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going? is a huge, brilliantly colored but mystifying work. It contains numerous human, animal and symbolic figures arranged across an island landscape. The sea and Tahiti's volcanic mountains are visible in the background. It is Paul Gauguin's largest painting and he understood it to be his finest work. Gauguin himself provided a telling description of the painting's obscure imagery in a letter to his friend friend, Daniel de Monfried, written in February 1898: "The two upper corners are chrome yellow with an inscription on the left and my name on the right, like a fresco whose corners are spoiled with age, and which is appliquéd upon a golden wall. To the right at the lower end, a sleeping child and three crouching women. Two figures dressed in purple confide their thoughts to one another. An enormous crouching figure, out of all proportion and intentionally so, raises its arms and stares in astonishment upon these two, who dare to think of their destiny. A figure in the center is picking fruit. Two cats near a child. A white goat. An idol, its arms mysteriously raised in a sort of rhythm, seems to indicate the Beyond. Then lastly, an old woman nearing death appears to accept everything, to resign herself to her thoughts. She completes the story! At her feet a strange white bird, holding a lizard in its claws, represents the futility of words...So I have finished a philosophical work on a theme comparable to that of the Gospel." The painting is to be read from right to left: from the sleeping infant--where we come from--to the standing figure in the middle--what we are--and ending at the left with the crouching old woman--where we are going Artist background: The painting represents the artist's painted manifesto, created while he was living on the island of Tahiti. The French artist transitioned from being a "Sunday painter," or someone who paints for their own enjoyment, to becoming a professional after his career as a stockbroker failed in the early 1880s. He visited the Pacific island, Tahiti, in French Polynesia, staying from 1891-1893. He then returned to Polynesia in 1895, painted the massive canvas there in 1897, and eventually died in 1903, on Hiva Oa in the Marquesas islands. Gauguin wrote to his friend, Daniel de Monfried, who managed Ganguin's career in Paris while the artist remained in the South Pacific, "I believe that this canvas not only surpasses all my preceding ones, but that I shall never do anything better, or even like it." Gauguin completed the piece at a feverish rate, allegedly within one month's time, and even claimed to de Monfried that he went into the mountains to attempt suicide after the work was finished. Gauguin, the master of self-promotion and highly conscious of his image of a vanguard artist, may or may not have actually poisoned himself with arsenic as he alleged, but this legend was quite pointedly in line with the painting's themes of life, death, poetry and symbolic meaning Stylization: Stylistically, the composition is designed and painted to recall frescoes or icons painted on a gold ground. The upper corners have been painted with a bright yellow to contribute to this effect, and the figures appear out of proportion to one another as if they were floating in space rather than resting firmly upon the Earth Mystery: As is common with other Symbolist works of this period, precise, complete interpretations of the work remain out of reach. The painting is a deliberate mixture of universal meaning--the questions asked in the title are fundamental ones that address the root of human existence--and obscure meaning. The piece is essentially a private work whose meaning was likely known only to Gauguin himself

124. Carson, Pirie, Scott and Company Building

Date: 1899, 1903-1904 CE, 20th century CE, Art Nouveau period Materials: Steel frame, terracotta exterior, cast-iron entranceway Location: Chicago, IL Artist: Louis Sullivan Purpose: A department store, an example of how pivotal architecture is to commerce and business Themes: Architecture, innovation, community Art Nouveau period: An ornamental style of art that flourished between about 1890 and 1910 throughout Europe and the United States. You can identify the style by its use of whiplash curves, long, twisting lines that bend and turn back on themselves. Art Nouveau structures tend to be asymmetrical, meaning they aren't the same on both sides. Buildings are often made of modern materials like cast concrete, metal, and glass Description: At the intersection of State and Madison Streets, one building with large glass windows and a rounded corner entryway covered with lavish decoration stands out. In contrast to its relatively plain neighbors, the pedestrian's eye is immediately attracted to the structure's bronze-colored ground floor and broad white facade stretching twelve stories above it. This is Louis Sullivan's Carson, Pirie Scott and Company Building, a department store constructed in two stages in 1899 and 1903-1904 Sullivan's ideas about architecture and commerce: Sullivan's building is an important example of early Chicago skyscraper architecture, and can also be seen as a fascinating indicator of the relationship between architecture and commerce. The firm of Adler & Sullivan first became known in Chicago in the early 1880s for the design of the Auditorium Building and other landmarks utilizing new methods of steel frame construction and a uniquely American blend of Art Nouveau decoration with a simplified monumentality. By the mid-1890s, Sullivan struck out on his own and wrote his treatise on skyscraper architecture, "The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered," in 1896. In it, Sullivan analyzed the problem of high-rise commercial architecture, arguing with his famous phrase "form must ever follow function," that a building's design must reflect the social purpose of a particular space "Form must ever follow function": Sullivan illustrates this philosophy of "form must ever follow function" by describing an ideal tripartite skyscraper. First, there should be a base level with a ground floor for businesses that require easy public access, light and open space, and a second story also publicly accessible by stairways. These floors should then be followed by an infinite number of stories for offices, designed to all look the same because they serve the same function. Finally, the building should be topped with an attic story and a distinct cornice line to mark its endpoint and set it apart from other buildings within the cityscape. For Sullivan, the characteristic feature of a skyscraper was that it was tall, and so the building's design should serve that goal by emphasizing its upward momentum How this building differs from that typical illustration of "form must ever follow function": In contrast to Sullivan's earlier office buildings, Carson, Pirie, Scott and Company Building in downtown Chicago was intended to meet its patrons' needs in a much different way. Instead of emphasizing the beehive of identical windows meant to reflect the identical work taking place in each individual office, in the Carson, Pirie, Scott building, Sullivan instead highlighted the lower street-level section and entranceway to draw shoppers into the store. The windows on the ground floor, displaying the store's products, are much larger than those above. The three doors of the main entrance were placed within a rounded bay on the corner o the site, so that they are visible from all directions approaching the building The lower parts: The corner entryway and the entire base section are differentiated from the spare upper stories by a unified system of extremely ornate decoration. The cast-iron ornament contains the same highly complicated, delicate, organic and floral motifs that had become hallmarks of Sullivan's design aesthetic. For Sullivan, the decorative program served as a functional project to distinguish the building from those surrounding it, and to make the store attractive to potential customers The upper parts: The upper parts of the Carson, Pirie, Scott and Company Building also reflect Sullivan's adaptation of his skyscraper theory to a department store. Each successive story of the white terracotta facade contains identical windows, in this case, the three-sectioned "Chicago" window common to late 19th century skyscrapers in the city. There is an overhanging cornice at the very top that signifies the end of the building's ascent, and makes the slightly set-back attic level distinct form the broad mid-section and the dark cast-iron decoration of the base level. Unlike Sullivan's office buildings, however, the building's primary thrust is horizontal rather than vertical. Sullivan's design emphasizes the long, uninterrupted lines running under each window from each side of the building towards the entry bay, while the decorative base at the bottom and the cornice line at the top flow seamlessly around the corner. The wide rectangular window frames and relatively squat twelve-story frame were intended to meet the specific requirements of a department store, whose mission called for expansive open spaces to display products to customers, not endless individual offices Criticism: Some later critics viewed the lower, ornamental section of Sullivan's Carson, Pirie, Scott and Company Building as an uncomfortable disruption to the otherwise stripped-down planar style they favored. Nevertheless, the building's continuous operation well into the 21st century speaks, not only to the prestige of Sullivan's name, but also to the sustained value of architecture as a corporate symbol

126. Les Demoiselles d'Avignon

Date: 1907 CE, 20th century CE, Cubist period Materials: Oil on canvas (LDD) Location: Parisian hill of Montmartre Artist: Pablo Picasso Purpose: The title translates to "The Young Ladies of Avignon," which refers to a street that's not in France, but in Barcelona and associated with prostitution. We're looking at a brothel and the women depicted confront the viewer for their sexual desires and habits Themes: Innovation, cultural exchange, perspective, space-play, sex Cubism: Cubism is a style of art which aims to show all of the possible viewpoints of a person or an object all at once. It is called Cubism because the items represented in the artworks look like they are made out of cubes and other geometrical shapes. The Cubists challenged conventional forms of representation, such as perspective, which had been the rule since the Italian Renaissance. Their aim was to develop a new way of seeing which reflected the modern age Innovation: For many art historians, this painting is seen as a break from the 500 years of European painting that begins with the Renaissance. Many art historians see this as the foundation on which Cubism is built. It's a radical break from these conventions of representation that had for so long been accepted in the west about how you make a body in space, how you create a space. Linear perspective is not here. Chiaroscuro is not here, the relationship of light and shadow creating the illusion that Picasso, by the way, was obsessed with, that magic of illusion, but, here, he's shattering it. He found other ways to convey the ideas that were behind Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, ideas about sexuality, about the female nude, about sexually transmitted diseases Original sketches with more concrete meanings: This is a confrontational painting. In the original sketches, the women were focusing on a male that was included, a sailor. There was also a medical student to the left of the canvas, which some women turn their attention to, as well. But Picasso takes those men out, and the women then turn their gaze outward to engage the viewer directly. Those two male figures give us a clue to some of the ideas behind the painting. There was a sailor, someone who's in the brothel as a customer, seated at a table originally. And then the medical student takes on a more analytical view, who looks at the women from a more scientific perspective, maybe from a more artistic perspective. That medical student carried, at least in some sketches, a skull. The skull is a reminder of death. There seems to be some tension between the activities that the sailor is indulging in and a moralizing reminder that the pleasures of life are short coming from the medical student Cultural exchange: The figure on the left is an Archaic figure, referring back to ancient Spain, to Iberian art before the Classical period. The faces of the women on the right are often seen as representations of African masks that Picasso was looking at at the time. The fact that he's looking at African masks in order to represent danger is an expression of France's colonialism. Those masks were coming to France because France had large colonial possessions in Africa, and Picasso at this time knew very little about the cultures that these came from. He was interested in them for their formal qualities, for their formal inventiveness, and also because they represented otherness Space-play: There is a physical confrontation, there is danger here. The figures are really close to us. The curtains that seem to thread in between the figures are pressed right up against those figures; there is no space behind or between. There is still some sense of illusion, there's still some shadow, there's still some highlight, but Picasso has only created an illusion that goes back into space a few inches Perspective: Knowing that Cubism is this deconstruction of three-dimensional for, shattering that form and then placing those fragments back onto a two-dimensional surface, it has led some art historians to look at the central figure as one we're both looking across at, but also looking down at as if we're standing over her while she lies on a bed

The Kiss

Date: 1907-1908 CE, 20th century CE, Art Nouveau period Materials: Oil and gold leaf on canvas Location: Vienna, Austria Artist: Gustav Klimt Purpose: Depicts the otherworldly and spiritual characteristics of that sensual, intense kiss Themes: Spirituality, cultural exchange, gender roles, cosmos, sex, timelessness A modern revival of what: There's so much gold here and it's hard not to think of a religious icon, and, in some ways, Klimt was trying to create a modern icon, something that suggested a sense of transcendence. The gold here makes you think of the Byzantine tradition. There is a way that the patterning, especially around the faces, becomes a kind of halo, as well. Those gold circles, they actually rise off the surface of the canvas and catch the light, much like the way that the gold was tooled in Medieval paintings Differences between the man and woman: The patterns covering the male figure are very linear and squared, while the patterns covering the female figure are curvilinear and circular. They merge into a different pattern of lines and circles in the middle of the man and woman The background: The darker gold ground of the background seems as if the figures are somehow being dissipated into the cosmos, that they are so lost in the intensity, the eternity, of that kiss Relating to the audience: The powerful kiss removes them from the everyday world. This is a time of incredible modernization in Vienna. The city of Vienna had been transformed in the previous 30 years into a modern city. Here, Klimt is abstracting a universal experience from the trauma, the difficulties, the anxieties of everyday life Other visual details: The bodies really aren't present here and are cloaked in these decorative form. Klimt, although he was exploring sensuality, was also disguising sensuality, covering it with a decorative patterning, with the exception of the faces. At the faces, the entire painting shifts. The female's face is completely full frontal, but horizontal, so there's this beautiful sense of her passivity while receiving this kiss, but also a deep interior feeling as her eyes are closed. Her fingers delicately touch his as he holds her head. His neck reaches out and around, and you get a sense of his physical power through the strength of that neck, but also the intensity of his desire. They're both crowned as on his head you can see a wreath of leaves, on hers what looks like the stars of the Heavens. Klimt seems to be reaching out to a truth that is for all time, that is so aestheticized it feels as if it has a degree of absolute permanence

The Scream

Date: 1910 CE, 20th century CE, Symbolist period Materials: Tempera on board Location: The location of the setting of The Scream is unknown and debated, but it was painted in Norway Artist: Edvard Munch Purpose: A painting of the expression of "a vast infinite scream through nature" that overwhelmed Munch at one time and overwhelms a lot of people when encountered by it. It is a physical representation of how Munch individually felt at one point when watching the sun set on a walk with two friends Themes: Nature, state of mind Symbolism: Symbolism was a movement where artists communicated ideas through symbols instead of bluntly depicting reality. It was created as a reaction to art movements that depicted the natural world realistically, such as Impressionism, Realism, and Naturalism Imagery: There is this androgynous, skull-shaped head, elongated hands, wide eyes, flaring nostrils and an open, egg-shaped mouth staring at us looking extremely panicked. There's a swirling blue landscape and a fiery orange and yellow sky behind him. The artist utilized a minimum of forms to achieve maximum expressiveness. It consists of three main areas: the bridge, a landscape of shoreline, lake or fjord, and hills, and the sky which is activated with curving lines of orange, yellow, red and blue-green. Foreground and background blend into one another, and the lyrical lines of the hills ripple through the sky. The human figures are starkly separated from this landscape at the bridge. The bridge's strict linearity provides a contrast with the shapes of the landscape and the sky. The two faceless upright figures in the background belong to the geometric precision of the bridge, while the lines of the main figure's body, hands and head belong to the same curving shapes that dominate the background landscape The cycle it is apart of: Conceived as part of Munch's semi-autobiographical cycle, "The Frieze of Life," The Scream's composition exists in four forms: the first painting, done in oil, tempera and pastel on cardboard, two pastel examples, and a final tempera painting. Munch also created a lithographic version in 1895. The work's subject matter fits with Munch's interest at the time in themes of relationships, life, death and dread Inspiration: A passage in Munch's diary dated January 22, 1892 contains the probable inspiration for this scene as the artist remembered it: "I was walking along the road with two friends--the sun went down--I felt a gust of melancholy--suddenly the sky turned a bloody red. I stopped, leaned against the railing, tired to death--as the flaming skies hung like blood and sword over the blue-black fjord and the city--My friends went on--I stood there trembling with anxiety--and I felt a vast infinite scream through nature" Synesthesia and symbolism: Munch's approach to the experience of synesthesia, or the union of senses, results in the visual depiction of sound and emotion. The Scream represents a key work for the Symbolist movement as well as an important inspiration for the Expressionist movement of the early 20th century. As Munch himself put it in a notebook entry on subjective vision written in 1889: "It is not the chair which is to be painted but what the human being felt in relation to it." Munch sought to express internal emotions through external forms and thereby provide a visual image for a universal human experience

130. The Portuguese

Date: 1911 CE, 20th century CE, Cubist period Materials: Oil on canvas (TP) Location: France (TP) Artist: Georges Braque Purpose: An exploration of shape based on the image of a Portuguese musician Themes: Perspective, space-play Cubism in the painting: In this canvas, everything is fractured. The guitar player and the dock is merely many pieces of broken form, almost like broken glass. By breaking these objects into smaller elements, the artist is able to overcome the unified singularity of an object and instead transform it into an object of vision. If someone wants to show you both the back and front, the inside and outside, simultaneously, they can fragment the object like so. Basically, this is the strategy of the Cubists

132. Improvisation 28 (second version)

Date: 1912 CE, 20th century CE, Expressionist period Materials: Oil on canvas (ISV) Location: Germany (ISV) Artist: Vasily Kandinsky Purpose: Depicts an apocalyptic utopia related to God and his ability to wash away the sins of man from the world. This was made in response to the Russian revolution and World War I. Themes: Religion, history, mystery, cultural exchange, synesthesia Expressionism: Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas Synesthesia: "Improvisation" is the name of a kind of musical composition. He's composing with form, but this is also rooted in the stories of the Bible and of his particular historical moment. He's clearly trying to associate painting with music, to suggest that, like music, painting can mean things, it can take us places without representing anything concrete. In Concerning the Spiritual in Art, written in 1911, Kandinsky says, "...sight must be related not only to taste, but also to all the other senses...Color is the keyboard. The eye is the hammer. The soul is the piano with its many strings." This idea, which is called "synesthesia," is something that Kandinsky was very interested in, the idea that there could be a crossing of the senses. So looking at this, he may have wanted us to actually hear something Imagery: There's brilliant color and a hazy atmosphere through which that color pops. There are black diagonal lines that criss-cross against each other. One might not call this painting an abstract painting, but an abstracted painting. Therefore, we should still be able to recognize some elements of the natural world. Kandinsky was concerned that if we could recognize things too clearly that 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 there seems to be a mountain with some buildings on it, maybe with chimney stacks, or perhaps a church on a hill, an ideal city, a kind of Heavenly Jerusalem. Kandinsky was deeply influenced by Biblical imagery, and so even though this is a tremendously modern painting, it is still rooted in ancient tradition. So it makes sense that we have a battlefield, forces at war. Art historians have looked at this painting as a representation of an apocalypse, of a moment when the sins of the world are going to be washed away. In the lower left, you have a great flood, this idea of the way in which God in the Old Testament had wiped man from the earth except for Noah and his family. Just above that wave, canons are being fired. The atmospheric effect almost reads like the smoke on a battlefield. Down at the bottom art historians sometimes recognize the manes and arcs of the necks of horses, and we know that Kandinsky was really interested throughout his career in the idea of the horse and rider, here referencing the four horsemen of the apocalypse, but also the idea of redemption. This is also a utopia, the idea that we can wash away the old world that was about to be destroyed, not only by the Russian revolution, but also by World War I. Kandinsky was convinced that he could help lead that, at least in the visual realm

131. Goldfish

Date: 1912 CE, 20th century CE, Fauvist period Materials: Oil on canvas (G) Location: Issy-les-Moulineaux, France Artist: Henri Matisse Purpose: A painting of the goldfish in Matisse's garden that signifies a lost paradise and idyllic relaxation found in nature Themes: Cultural exchange, perspective, nature Fauvism: A style of painting with vivid expressionistic and non-naturalistic use of color that flourished in Paris from 1905. A couple characteristics of Fauvism include a radical use of unnatural colors that separated color from its usual representational and realistic role giving new, emotional meaning to the colors, and creating a strong, unified work that appears flat on the canvas Matisse and goldfish: Goldfish were introduced to Europe from East Asia in the 17th century. From around 1912, goldfish became a recurring subject in the work of Henri Matisse. They appear in no less than nine of his paintings, as well as in his drawings and prints. Goldfish belongs to a series that Matisse produced between spring and early summer of 1912. Unlike the others, the focus here centers around the fish themselves Colors: The goldfish immediately attract our attention due to their color. The bright orange strongly contrasts with the more subtle pinks and greens that surround the fishbowl and the blue-green background. Blue and orange, as well as green and red, are complementary and, when placed next to one another, appear even brighter Why goldfish: One clue may be from his visit to Tangier, Morocco, where he stayed from the end of January until April in 1912. He noted how the local population would daydream for hours, gazing into goldfish bowls. Matisse would subsequently depict exactly this in The Arab Café, a painting he completed during his second trip to Morocco a few months later. Matisse admired the Moroccans' lifestyle, which appeared to be relaxed and contemplative. For Matisse, the goldfish came to symbolize a tranquil state of mind and, at the same time, became evocative of a paradise lost, a subject frequently represented in art. The name "goldfish" alone defines these creatures as ideal inhabitants of an idyllic golden age, which Matisse was seeking when he travelled to North Africa. It is also likely that Matisse, who by 1912 was already familiar with the art of Islamic creatures, was interested in the meaning of gardens, water and vegetation in Islamic art as well as symbolizing the beauty of divine creation and evocations of paradise Where he painted it: However, Goldfish was not painted in Morocco. Henri Matisse painted it at home, in Issy-les-Moulineaux, near Paris. Matisse had moved to Issy in September, 1909, to escape the pressures of Parisian life. So what you see here are Matisse's own plants, his own garden furniture, and his own fish tank. The artist was drawn to the tank's tall cylindrical shape, as this enabled him to create a succession of rounded contours with the top and bottom of the tank, the surface of the water and the table. Matisse also found the goldfish themselves visually appealing. Matisse painted Goldfish in his garden conservatory, where, like the goldfish, he was surrounded by glass Matisse's intent: Goldfish invites the viewer indulge in the pleasure of watching the graceful movement and bright colors of the fish. Matisse once wrote that he dreamt of "an art of balance, of purity and serenity, devoid of troubling and depressing subject matter, an art that could be...a soothing, calming influence of the mind, something like a good armchair that provides relaxation from fatigue." This is precisely what Matisse wanted Goldfish to provide for the viewer Perspective: The fish are seen simultaneously from two different angles. From the front, the goldfish are portrayed in such a way that the details of their fins, eyes and mouths are immediately recognizable to the viewer. Seen from above, however, the goldfish are merely suggested by colorful brushstrokes. The tabletop is tilted upwards, flattening it and making it difficult for us to imagine how the goldfish and flowerpots actually manage to remain on the table. It is clear here that, although Matisse was attentive to nature, he did not imitate it, but used his image of it to reassemble his own pictorial reality

133. Self-Portrait as a Soldier

Date: 1915 CE, 20th century CE, Expressionist period Materials: Oil on canvas (SAAS) Location: Germany (SAAS) Artist: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner Purpose: Kirchner volunteered to serve as a driver in the military in order to avoid being drafted into a more dangerous role. However, he was soon declared unfit for service due to issues with his general health and was sent away to recover. Self-Portrait as a Soldier was painted during that recovery. Kirchner never fought, and this painting is instead an exploration of the artist's personal fears. This is a metaphoric self-amputation, a potential injury, not to the physical body, but to his identity as an artist Themes: Cultural exchange, war, state of mind, destruction, symbolism Philosophy of Die Brücke: In 1905, Kirchner, together with several other young artists from Dresden, founded the German Expressionist group, Die Brücke (The Bridge). Spurred on by their confidence and their belief that they lived in an age of great change, the Brücke artists set about creating an entirely new way of being artists. Kirchner was a great admirer of the German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche. Neitzsche's book, Thus Spoke Zarathrusta, uses the bridge as a metaphor for the connection between the barbarism of the past and the modernity of the future. The Brücke artists considered themselves the inheritors of this idea and created art that looked to the past and the future at the same time Patterns in art in Die Brücke: Another important influence on the Die Brücke artists was so-called "primitive" art, art and ritual objects from ancient cultures or nonwestern societies, particularly in Africa and Central Asia. This art was perceived to be more honest and direct, more natural work produced by artists from industrialized Western European nations. There was also interest in the so-called "folk art" of Europe, particularly the art and craft found among rural populations. It is important to note that Germany remained a major colonial power in Africa through World War I.There is, therefore, a complex hierarchy that frames this cultural appropriation. While uncomfortable from the perspective of the 21st century viewer, this "primitive" aesthetic had a strong impact on Expressionist art. The Brücke artists were inspired to adopt the "natural" state that they perceived in "primitivism" in their lives and their art. Paintings created outside in nature, together with the unidealized nudes, were hallmarks of the group's work. The roughly stretched long forms and tapered limbs of the nude model in Self-Portrait as a Soldier is representative of the style of nudes that was birthed by this group Comparison to another artwork of Kirchner's: Self-Portrait as a Soldier can perhaps be best understood by comparing it with an earlier painting by the artist with a similar subject matter, his Self-Portrait with Model (1907/1926). Here, a rounder, healthier looking Kirchner stands confidently in his studio in a jaunty striped robe. He holds a brush and palette and seems to be wearing less clothing than the model seated behind him, clearly suggesting a sexual relationship. Even the warm colors give the work a sensuous atmosphere. This is the artist at the height of youthful confidence. Compare that with the sallow, angular artist in Self-Portrait as a Soldier. The later painting features darker, colder colors, and the glassy-eyed model looks more like a carved statue than an actual person. Even the skinny, limp cigarette seems to stand in opposition to the robust pipe that the artist smokes in the earlier portrait. Kirchner the soldier stands powerlessly in his studio, surrounded with everything he would need to make art, were he able to do so Kirchner's personal life: During the war, Kirchner suffered from alcoholism and drug abuse, and for a time, his hands and feet were partially paralyzed. In a sense, his fears about the war were self-fulfilling Destruction: Adolf Hitler persecuted artists who painted in a style that he considered outside of the Aryan ideal soon after he became Chancellor of Germany in 1933. The Degenerate Art exhibition of 1937 was a grand spectacle that the Nazis organized to mock the modernist art they hated. This was a humiliating time for Kirchner. At least 32 of his works were exhibited in the Degenerate Art exhibition. In addition, more than 600 of his works were removed from public collections. He committed suicide in 1938

129. The Kisss

Date: 1916 CE, 20th century CE, Cubist period Materials: Limestone Location: Paris, France (TK) Artist: Constantin Brancusi Purpose: Shows intimacy between two abstracted human figures with respect to the material being used Themes: Innovation, sex Brancusi's aim: Paris was the center of the art world in the 19th century. At the end of the 19th century artists started to want to leave Paris to find other traditions. There's this interest in something that was thought of as more primitive or more true. Brancusi brings that notion of a primitive truth to Paris rather than having to leave to find it. He comes from Romania, where there was a long-standing peasant tradition of stone carving and wood carving. When Brancusi was more established, a younger artist, Isamu Noguchi, worked with Brancusi, and one of the things that Noguchi took from Brancusi was his regard for the nature of the material, finding its internal spirit, its structures Staying true to the material: This is so simple, it's so block-like, the forms are not carefully detailed in their depiction of the human body. What we have instead is an attempt to retain the materiality Imagery: The arms turn at the elbows, at right angles, and here those right angles are aligned with the corners of the block. Those arms continue around, those hands clasp each other and hold the other figure tight. These figures are each defined only by the single incised line that separates the two, without which they could almost be read as a single figure, except that the figure on the right is read as a woman because the line makes it an arch, so they're read as breasts. She is ever so slightly thinner than he is, her eye is slightly smaller, but the eyes also join together to create a single eye in the middle. And the mouths, which are lips reaching to each other, are made singular. Brancusi is making something that reveals the structure of the limestone, which is even seen in the simplified carving of the hair. There's also something in that idea of the union of these two figures coming together, something primitive, something truthful, something about the human condition Break in tradition: After 300-400 years of that Classical idea of the ideal body, studying human anatomy and making the human form academic in proportion and texture, Brancusi is going back to the period before the Classical: the Archaic, where the body is stiff and rigid due to the material being used, where the material is allowed to be rough and natural Base: It's important that it's not on a typical base that we think of for sculpture. In fact, the artist didn't even want it on the piece of wood that it stands on in the museum; he wanted it directly on the ground. He said it would be a kind of "amputation" if it was placed on a platform. This is important to the idea of taking sculpture out of the academic realm, where sculpture had always been according to a high status, put on a high pedestal. The avant-garde has rejected the sophistication of the urban experience, looking instead for truth in nature that is the very nature of the avant-garde, rejecting the authority and structure of the academy and finding an alternative that speaks more genuinely to the time that the artist lives in

134. Memorial Sheet of Karl Liebknecht

Date: 1919-1920 CE, 20th century CE, Expressionist period Materials: Woodcut heightened with white and black ink Location: Berlin, Germany Artist: Käthe Kollwitz Purpose: A memorial sheet for Karl Liebknecht who was executed for his Marxist beliefs. Kollwitz did not empathize with his beliefs, but she sympathized with his situation Themes: Death, honor Kollwitz's political messages: In the political turmoil after World War I, many artists turned to making prints instead of paintings. The ability to produce multiple copies of the same image made printmaking an ideal medium for spreading political statements. German artist, Käthe Kollwitz, worked almost exclusively in this medium and became known for her prints that celebrated the struggle of the working class. The artist rarely depicted real people, though she frequently used her talents in support of causes she believed in. This work was created in response to the assassination of Communist leader Karl Liebknecht during an uprising of 1919. This work is unique among her prints, and though it memorializes the man, it does so without advocating for his ideology Political background information: From the end of World War I in late 1918 to the founding of the Weimar Republic, the representative democracy that was the German government between the two World Wars, in August 1919, Germany went through a period of social and political upheaval. During this time, Germany was led by a coalition of left-wing forces with Marxist sympathies, the largest of which was the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SDP). Other, more radical groups, were grappling for control of Germany at the same time, including the newly founded German Communist Party (KPD). The Socialists and Communists both wanted to eliminate Capitalism and establish communal control over the means of production, but while the Socialists believed that the best way to achieve that goal was to work step by step from within the Capitalist structure, the Communists called for an immediate and total social revolution that would put governmental power in the hands of the workers. The KPD staged an uprising in Berlin in January 1919. Military units called in by the SPD suppressed the uprising and captured two of the leaders, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. Liebknecht and Luxemburg were murdered while in custody on January 15, 1919. Their deaths struck a chord across the left-wing landscape, and they were widely celebrated as martyrs to the Communist cause. Kollwitz was not a Communist, and even acknowledged that the SPD, generally more cautious and pacifist than the KPD, would have been better leaders. But she had heard Liebknecht speak and admired his charisma, so when the family asked her to create a work to memorialize him, she said yes Lamentation: Memorial Sheet of Karl Liebknecht is in the style of the Lamentation, a traditional motif in Christian art depicting the followers of Christ mourning over his dead body, casting Liebknecht as the Christ figure. This iconography would have been easily recognizable by the masses who were the artist's intended audience Organization of the composition: In contrast to those works, Kollwitz's Memorial Sheet of Karl Liebknecht focuses, not on the man himself, but on the workers who had put their faith in him. The composition divides the sheet into three horizontal sections. The top section is densely packed with figures. Their faces are well modeled and have interesting depth in themselves, but the sense of space is very compressed; the heads push to the foreground and are packed into every available corner of space. It gives the impression of multitudes coming to pay their respects without compromising the individuality of the subjects. The middle section contains comparatively fewer details, further emphasizing the crowding at the top of the printing plate. This section draws attention to the specific action of the bending mourner. His hand on Liebknecht's chest connects this section to the bottommost level of the composition, the body of the martyred revolutionary. Above the bending mourner, a woman holds her baby up to see over the heads of those in front of them. Women and children were a central concern of Kollwitz's work Why printing block: The German Expressionist artists used woodcuts as early as 1904 to capture the rough, vital energy that they perceived in the work of so-called "primitive" societies without a fine art tradition. Kollwitz's career overlapped with the German Expressionist, but she was not an Expressionist herself and was about a generation older than most of them. Her use of such a trendy technique was uncharacteristic and she only worked in woodblocks for a few years after World War I. Kollwitz created some of her most powerful and affecting works in this style. Kollwitz felt that her protest against the horrors of war was best communicated in the rough edges and stark black and white that woodblock prints offered

135. Villa Savoye

Date: 1929 CE, 20th century CE Materials: Reinforced concrete Location: Poissy, France Artist: Le Corbusier Purpose: The Villa Savoye represents Le Corbusier's re-conception of the very nature of architecture, his attempt to express a timeless Classicism through the language of architectural modernism Themes: Architecture, residence, cultural exchange, innovation, space-play, nature Le Corbusier's exploration: Throughout the 1920s, via his writings and designs, Le Corbusier considered the nature of modern life and architecture's role in the new machine age. His famous dictum that "The house should be a machine for living" is perfectly realized within the forms, layout, materials and siting of the Villa Savoye. Le Corbusier lavished praise on the totems of modernity--race cars, airplanes and factories--marveling at the beauty of their efficiency. However, he also argued that beauty lay, not only in the newest technology, but in ancient works such as the Parthenon, whose refined forms represented, in his view, the perfection of earlier Archaic systems Plan: During the 1920s, Le Corbusier designed a series of houses, which allowed him to develop his ideas further. By 1926, he had devised his Five Points of Architecture, which he viewed as a universal system that could be applied to any architectural site. The system demanded pilotis, slender columns, to raise the building off the ground and allow air to circulate beneath; roof terraces to bring nature into an urban setting; a free plan that allowed interior space to be distributed at will; a free facade whose smooth plane could be used for formal experimentation; and ribbon windows, which let in light but also reinforced the planarity of the wall Layout: Located just outside Paris, the Villa Savoye offered an escape from the crowded city for its wealthy patrons. Its location on a large unrestricted site allowed Le Corbusier total creative freedom. The delicate floating box that he designed is both functional house and modernist sculpture. Made of reinforced concrete, the ground floor walls are recessed and painted green so that the house looks like a box floating on delicate pilotis. The stark white exterior wall, with its strips of ribbon windows, has a remarkably smooth, planar quality. This stands in contrast to the fluidity of the interior, which is organized by a multistory ramp that leads the viewer on a gently curving plan through a building that is nearly square. The contrast between the sharp angles of the plan and the dynamism of the spaces inside charge the house with a subtle energy Inside and outside: The ramp winds from the entrance up to the salon, a formal interior space that flows seamlessly into the roof terrace outside. He treated the terrace as a room without walls, reflecting his desire to fully integrate landscape and architecture. The ramp finally culminates in the curved solarium crowning the house. Le Corbusier and Madame Savoye believed in the health benefits of fresh air and sunshine and considered leisure time spent outdoors one mark of a modern lifestyle. The Villa Savoye's integration of indoor and outdoor spaces allowed the family to spend time outdoors in the most efficient way possible--the house was, in a sense, a machine designed to maximize leisure in the machine age

136. Composition with Red, Blue, and Yellow

Date: 1930 CE, 20th century CE, Neo-Plasticism period Materials: Oil on canvas (CWRBAY) Location: Paris, France (CWRBAY) Artist: Piet Mondrian Purpose: This piece demonstrates Mondrian's commitment to relational opposites, asymmetry, and pure planes of color. Mondrian composed this painting as a harmony of contrasts that signify both balance and tension of dynamic forces. Mondrian viewed his black lines, not as outlines, but as planes of pigment in their own right. Mondrian destroys the entire notion of illusionistic depth. He achieves a harmonious tension by his asymmetrical placement of primary colors that balance the blocks of white paint. The large red square at the upper right, which might otherwise dominate the composition, is balanced by the small blue square at the bottom left. Mondrian used varying shades of blacks and whites, some of which are subtly lighter or darker. Even the visible traces of the artist's brushwork challenge what might otherwise be a rigid geometric composition, and balance the artist's desire for a universal truth with the intimately personal experience of the artist Themes: Innovation, space-play, balance and tension Neo-Plasticism: Neo-plasticism was a response to the devastation wreaked by World War I, offering a way to achieve a visual harmony in art that could provide a blueprint for restoring order and balance to everyday life Mondrian's founding of Neo-Plasticism: Mondrian called his style Neo-Plasticism, or "The New Plastic Painting," the title of his famous 1917 essay promoting abstraction for the expression of modern life. For centuries, European painters had attempted to render three-dimensional forms in believable spaces, creating convincing illusions of reality. Mondrian and other modernists wanted to move painting beyond naturalistic depiction, and focus instead on the material properties of paint and its unique ability to express ideas abstractly using formal elements such as line and color. Mondrian believed his abstraction could serve as a universal pictorial language representing the dynamic, evolutionary forces that command nature and human experience. He believed that abstraction provides a truer picture of reality than illusionistic depictions of objects from the visible, physical world. Mondrian characterized his style as "abstract real" painting Mondrian's development: Mondrian's earliest paintings were quite traditional in both subject and style. Then, as with many artists during the early 20th century, he began to emulate a variety of contemporary styles, including Impressionism, Neo-Impressionism, and Symbolism in an effort to find his own artistic voice. Mondrian was inspired by Cubism. He began experimenting with abstracted forms around the time he moved to Paris in 1912. He wanted to push beyond Cubism's strategy of fragmenting forms and move toward pure abstraction Mondrian's artistic process: His production of paintings within a series of canvases was a part of Mondrian's method and how he worked through thematic and compositional issues. His use of the term "composition" signals his experimentation with abstract arrangements. Mondrian had returned home to the Netherlands just prior to the outbreak of World War I and would remain there until the world ended. While in the Netherlands, he further developed his style, ruling out compositions that were either too static or too dynamic, concluding that asymmetrical arrangements of geometric, rather than organic, shapes in primary, rather than secondary, colors best represent universal forces. He combined his development of an abstract style with his interest in philosophy, spirituality, and his belief that the evolution of abstraction was a sign of humanity's progress Mondrian's philosophy translated into his art: Some art historians have viewed Mondrian's painting as an expression of his interest in dialectical relationships, that art and civilization progress by successive moments of tension and reconciliation between oppositional forces. For Mondrian then, composing with opposites such as black and white pigments or vertical and horizontal lines suggest evolutionary development. Mondrian's painting may also reflect his association with the Theosophical Society, an esoteric group that had a strong presence in Europe. Theosophists were interested in opposites as an expression of hidden unity. MHJ Schnoenmaker, a prominent Theosophist, who used terms such as "New Plastic" to promote his ideas on spiritual evolution and the unification of the real and ideal, the physical and immaterial. In Theosophy, lines, shapes and colors symbolized the unity of spiritual and natural forces

137. The Results of the First Five-Year Plan

Date: 1932 CE, 20th century CE Materials: After World War I, artists in Germany and the Soviet Union began to experiment with photomontage, the process of making a composite image by juxtaposing or mounting two or more photographs in order to give the illusion of a single image. A photomontage can include photographs, text, words, and even newspaper clippings Location: Russia Artist: Varvara Stepanova Purpose: A photomontage meant to establish the success of Stalin's Five-Year Plan in the USSR Themes: Political power, history, innovation, controversy Political background information: Russia had, for centuries, been an absolute monarchy ruled by a tsar, but between 1905 and 1922, the country underwent tremendous change, the result of two wars (World War I, 1914-1918 and Civil War, 1917-1922) and a series of uprisings that culminated in the October Revolution of 1917. The Union of Socialist Soviet Republics (USSR) was established in 1922 under Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. The young Communist state was celebrated by many artists and intellectuals who saw an opportunity to end the corruption and extreme poverty that had defined Russia for so long. The Russian avant-garde had experimented with new forms of art for decades, and in the years after the Revolution, photomontage became a favorite technique of artists such as Varvara Stepanova Background on Stepanova: Stepanova was a talented painter, designer and photographer. She defined herself as a constructivist and focused her art on serving the ideals of the Soviet Union. She was a leading member of the Russian avant-garde and later in her career, she became well known for her contributions to the magazine, USSR in Construction, a propagandist publication that focused on the industrialization of the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin, a ruthless dictator who took power after Lenin's death and whose totalitarian policies are thought to have caused suffering and death for millions of his people. The public targeted by USSR in Construction was mostly foreign. The purpose of the magazine was to show countries such as France and Great Britain that the USSR was also a leading force in the global market and economy. By choosing to include images rather than just articles, the public would be able to see with their own eyes the accomplishments achieved under Stalin. At first the subjects depicted were strictly industrial, but as the magazine gained recognition and readers, topics diversified and included subjects from education to sports to leisure. Soviet strategists were well aware that many European countries were witnessing the rise of a small base of devoted Communists, despite general mistrust and even contempt by the continental social and political elite The Five-Year Plan: As the title suggests, this photomontage is an ode to the success of the First Five-Year Plan, an initiative started by Stalin in 1928. The Plan was a list of strategic goals designed to grow the Soviet economy and accelerate its industrialization. These goals included collective farming, creating a military and artillery, and increasing steel production. By the end of the First Five-Year Plan in 1933, the USSR had become a leading industrial power, though its worth nothing that contemporary historians have found that economists from the USSR inflated results to enhance the image of the Soviet Union. In this work of art, Stepanova used the tools of the propagandist. This photomontage is an ideological image intended to help establish, through visual evidence, the great success of the Plan Imagery: The artist uses only three types of color and tone. She alternates black and white with sepia photographs and integrates geometric planes of red to structure the composition. On the left, Stepanova has inserted public address speakers on a platform with the number 5, symbolizing the Five-Year Plan along with placards displaying the letters CCCP, the Russian initials for USSR. The letters are placed above the horizon, as is a portrait of Lenin, the founder of the Soviet Union. The cropped and oversized photograph of Lenin shows him speaking, his eyes turned to the left as if looking to the future. Lenin is linked to the speakers and letter placards at the left by the wires of an electrical transmission tower. Below, a large crowd of people indicate the mass popularity of Stalin's political program and their desire to celebrate it. Red, the color of the Soviet flag, was often used by Stepanova in her photomontages. She also mis-matched the scale of photographic elements to create a sense of dynamism in her images. Despite the flat paper format, different elements are visually activated and can even seem to pop out The real results of the Five-Year Plan: The Plan resulted in radical measures that forced farmers to give up their land and their livestock. Many people were reduced to extreme poverty and famine became widespread. Terror, violence and fear replaced the initial optimism about the Plan. What started as positive propaganda became, little by little, a means to hide a disastrous economic policy from the rest of the world. It became an absolute necessity for the State to project a pristine image of its society no matter how dire the situation became. Stepanova admits no fault or imperfection in The Results of the First Five-Year Plan Innovation: Although Stepanova worked hand in hand with the Soviet government, her work shows great personal creativity. By using vibrant color and striking images in a dynamic composition, she pioneered photomontage and revolutionized the way we now understand photography. Historical hindsight can make it difficult for contemporary viewers to engage the overtly propagandistic aspects of these images, in fact, their exaggerated euphoria can even be mistaken for irony. Nevertheless, despite our increasingly sophisticated understanding of the distinction between image and reality, Stepanova's photomontage are an important reminder of how an artist can blur the line between aesthetic passion and ideology

138. Object (Fur-covered cup, saucer, and spoon)

Date: 1936 CE, 20th century CE, Surrealist period Materials: Gazelle fur and china Location: Paris, France (OFCSAS) Artist: Meret Oppenheim Purpose: The 22 year old Basel-born artist had been in Paris for four years when, one day, she was at a café with Pablo Picasso and Dora Maar. Oppenheim was wearing a brass bracelet covered in fur when Picasso and Maar, who were admiring it, proclaimed, "Almost anything can be covered in fur!" As Oppenheim's tea grew cold, she jokingly asked the waiter for "more fur." Oppenheim is said to have gone straight from the café to a store where she purchased the cup, saucer and spoon used in this piece Themes: Mystery, innovation, gender roles, destruction Surrealism: The principles, ideals, or practice of producing fantastic or unnatural imagery or effects by means of unnatural or irrational juxtapositions and combinations. The Surrealism movement focused on these ideas of chaos and unconscious desires in an effort to dig deep into the unconscious mind to find inspiration for political and artistic creativity. They believed this rejection of overly rational thought would lead to superior ideas and expressions Object and Surrealism: Oppenheim's Object was created at a moment when sculpted objects and collections had become prominent figures of Surrealist art practice. British art critic, Herbert Read, emphasized that all Surrealist objects were representative of an idea, and Salvador Dalí described some of them as "objects with symbolic function." In other words, how might an otherwise typical, functional object be modified so that it represents something deeply personal and poetic? How might it resonate as a combination of internal desire and aspiration? Such physical manifestations of our internal psyches were indicative of a surreality, or the point in which external and internal realities united Interpretations: The art historian, Whitney Chadwick, described it as linked to the Surrealist's love of alchemical transformation by turning cool, smooth ceramic and metal into something warm and bristly, while many scholars have noted the fetishistic qualities of the fur-lined set, as the fur imbues these functional, hand-held objects with sexual connotations. Oppenheim stresses the physicality of Object, reinforcing the way we can readily imagine the feeling of the fur while drinking from the cup and using the saucer and spoon. The frisson we experience when china is unexpectedly wrapped in fur is based on our familiarity with both, and the four requires us to extend our sensory experiences to fully appreciate the work, how we understand those visceral memories, how we create metaphors and symbols out of this act of tactile extension, is entirely open to interpretation by each individual, which is, in many ways, the whole point of Surrealism itself Incorrect interpretation: When Object was finished, Oppenheim submitted it to Breton for an exhibition for Surrealist objects at the Charles Ratton Gallery in Paris in 1936. However, while Oppenheim preferred a non-descriptive title, Breton took the liberty of titling the piece Le Déjeneur en Fourrure, or Luncheon in Fur. This title is a play on two 19th century works: Édouard Manet's Luncheon on the Grass and Leopold von Sacher Masoch's erotic novel Venus in Furs. With these two references, Breton forces an explicit sexualized meaning onto Object. Perhaps the truth of the meaning behind this piece is that Oppenheim asked the waiter for more fur for her cooling teacup; perhaps the meaning is not necessarily as overtly sexual A pattern of incorrect interpretations: The way meanings have been ascribed to Oppenheim's pieces by others has plagued many of her works. For example, art historian, Edward Powers, has noted that when Oppenheim sent her Surrealist object Das Paar to a photographer before submitting it for exhibition, the photographer took the liberty of tying up the laces before photographing it. When Breton saw the photo with tied laces, he dubbed this object "a dé lacer," which in French means "to untie," typically either shoes or a corset. The title and laced shoes together suggest the potential act of undressing and a fascination with exposing the female body. However, when Oppenheim later described Das Paar, with the laces untied, she stated that it was an "odd unisexual pair: two shoes, unobserved at night, doing 'forbidden' things." She expressly assigned no gender, and suggests the "forbidden" acts are already taking place between anthropomorphized shoes. She takes a more literal approach, the shoes as expressive things in themselves, rather than symbolically resonant of something else Consequences of the incorrect interpretations: When Object was purchased by The Museum of Modern Art and featured in their influential 1936-1937 exhibition "Fantastic Art, Dada, and Surrealism," visitors declared it the "quintessential" Surrealist object. For Oppenheim, the prestige and focus on this one object proved too much, and she spent more than a decade out of teh artistic limelight, destroying much of the work she produced during that period. It was only later when she reemerged and began publicly showing new paintings and objects with renewed vigor and confidence that she began reclaiming some of the intent of her work. When she was given an award for her work by the City of Basel, she touched upon this in her acceptance speech: "I think it is the duty of a woman to lead a life that expresses her disbelief in the validity of the taboos that have been imposed upon her kind for thousands of years. Nobody will give you freedom; you have to take it"

117. The Horse in Motion

Date: June 19th, 1878 CE, 19th century CE Materials: Dry glass plate Location: Palo Alto track Artist: Eadweard Muybridge, owned by Leland Stanford Purpose: Prepared glass plates could be purchased, eliminating the need to fool with chemicals. In 1878, new advances decreased the exposure time to 1/25th of a second, allowing moving objects to be photographed and lessening the need for a tripod. This new development is celebrated in Eadweard Muybridge's sequence of photographs called Galloping Horse. Designed to settle the question of whether or not a horse ever takes all four legs completely off the ground during a gallop, the series of photographs also demonstrated the new photographic methods that were capable of nearly instantaneous exposure Dry glass plate: Further advances in technology continued to make photography less labor intensive. By 1867 a dry glass plate was invented, reducing the inconvenience of the wet collodion method

120. The Starry Night

Date: Late June-early July, 1889 CE, 19th century CE, Post-Impressionist period Materials: Oil on canvas (TSN) Location: Saint-Paul-de-Mausole, outside of Saint-Rémy, France Artist: Vincent van Gogh Purpose: 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 The Starry Night are an expression of the artist's turbulent state of mind. It is an exceptional work of art with the the artist's collection, since in comparison to favored subjects like irises, sunflowers or wheat fields, night landscapes are rare Themes: Innovation, nature, state of mind Post-Impressionism: Post-Impressionism emerged as a reaction against Impressionists' concern for the naturalistic depiction of light and color. Artists wanted to evoke emotion rather than realism in their work. They continued using vivid colors, often a thick application of paint, and real-life subject matter, but they were more inclined to emphasize geometric forms, distort form for expressive effect, and use unnatural colors. Rejecting interest in depicting the observed world, they instead looked to their memories and emotions in order to connect with the viewer on a deeper level Why the night sky: Van Gogh had had the subject of a blue night sky dotted with yellow stars in mind for many months before he painted The Starry Night. It presented a few technical challenges he wished to confront, such as the use of contrasting color and the complications of painting outdoors at night. "A starry sky, for example, well - it's a thing that I'd like to try to do, but how to arrive at that unless I decide to work at home and from the imagination?" Van Gogh remarked to the painter Emile Bernard in the spring of 1888 Where he painted it: In 1888 after the infamous breakdown during which he mutilated part of his own ear, Van Gogh was ultimately hospitalized at Saint-Paul-de-Mausole, an asylum and clinic for the mentally ill, near the village of Saint-Rémy. During his recovery there, Van Gogh was encouraged to paint, though he rarely ventured more than a few hundred yards from the asylum's walls. Besides his private room, he was also given a small studio for painting Stylization: It is assumed that Van Gogh composed The Starry Night using elements of a few previously completed works still stored in his studio, as well as aspects from imagination and memory. It has even been argued that the church's spire in the village is somehow more Dutch in character and must have been painted as a combination of several different church spires that Van Gogh had depicted years earlier while living in the Netherlands. Van Gogh understood the painting to be an exercise of deliberate stylization, telling his brother, "These are exaggerations from the point of view of arrangement, their lines are contorted like those of ancient woodcuts." Van Gogh was experimenting with a style inspired in part by medieval woodcuts, with their thick outlines and simplified forms. On the other hand, The Starry Night is evidence of Van Gogh's extended observation of the night sky. After leaving Paris for more rural areas in southern France, Van Gogh was able to spend hours contemplating the stars without interference from city street lights. "This morning I saw the countryside from my window a long time before the sunrise, with nothing but the morning star, which looked very big." 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 Colors: He wrote to his sister, Willemien van Gogh, from Arles, "It often seems to me that the night is even more richly colored than the day, colored with the most intense violets, blues and greens. If you look carefully, you'll see that some stars are lemony, others have a pink, green, forget-me-not glow. And without laboring the point, it's clear to paint a starry sky it's not nearly enough to put white spots on blue-black" Objective: Inspiring and encouraging other artists is precisely what Van Gogh sought to achieve with his night scenes. The prospect of painting the night sky was so fascinating to him, he wanted other artists to recognize the complex beauty of it, too. Vincent told Theo, his brother, he hoped that it "might give others the idea of doing night effects better than I do"

114. Nadar elevating Photography to the Height of Art

Date: May 25, 1863 CE, 19th century CE Materials: Collodion Location: France (NEPTTHOA) Artist: Honoré Daumier Purpose: The big disadvantage of the collodion process was that it needed to be exposed and developed while the chemical coating was still wet, meaning that photographers had to carry portable darkrooms to develop images immediately after exposure. Both the difficulties of the method and uncertain but growing status of photography were lampooned by Honoré Daumier in his Nadar Elevating Photography to the Height of Art. Nadar, one of the most prominent photographers in Paris at the time, was known for capturing the first aerial photographs from the basket of a hot air balloon. Obviously, the difficulties in developing a glass negative under these circumstances must have been considerable Themes: History, advanced technique, innovation, perspective, science (NEPTTHOA) Collodion: The collodion method was introduced in 1851. This process involved fixing a substance known as gun cotton onto a glass plate, allowing for an even shorter exposure time (3-5 minutes), as well as a clearer image

127. The Steerage

Date: May, 1907 CE, 20th century CE Materials: Photogravure Location: The ship Kaiser Wilhelm II docked in the United States Artist: Alfred Stieglitz Purpose: A photograph taken on a ship, inspired by Stieglitz's distaste for the people sharing first class with him. The shapes and abstract forms that the people in front of him formed helped prove the fact that photography was a fine art form and dealt with the same themes and stylizations as avant-garde painting of the same time Themes: Community, momentary, space-play, timelessness Story behind the photograph: After his 8 year old daughter, Kitty, finished the school year and he closed his Fifth Avenue art gallery for the summer, Alfred Stieglitz gathered her, his wife, Emmeline, and Kitty's governess for their second excursion to Europe as a family. The Stieglitzes departed for Paris on May 14, 1907, aboard the first class quarters of the fashionable ship, "Kaiser Wilhelm II." Although Emmeline looked forward to shooping in Paris and visiting her relatives in Germany, Stieglitz was anything but enthusiastic about the trip. His marriage to the status-conscious Emmeline had become particularly stressful amid rumors about his possible affair with the tarot card illustrator/artist, Pamela Coleman Smith. In addition, Stieglitz felt out of place in the company of his fellow first class passengers. But it was precisely this discomfort among his peers that prompted him to take a photograph Stieglitz's explanation of his distaste: In his 1942 account, "How The Steerage Happened," Stiegltiz recalls: "How I hated the atmosphere of the first class on that ship. One couldn't escape the "nouveau riches"...On the third day out I finally couldn't stand it any longer. I had to get away from that company. I went as far forward on the deck as I could. As I came to the end of the desk I stood alone, looking down. There were men and women and children on the lower deck of the steerage...On the upper deck, looking over the railing, there was a young man with a straw hat. The shape of the hat was round. He was watching the men and women and children on the lower storage deck. Only men were on the upper deck. The whole scene fascinated me. I longed to escape from my surroundings and join these people Stieglitz's recollection of how he took the photo: In the essay, "How The Steerage Happened," written 35 years after he took the photograph, Stieglitz describes how The Steerage encapsulated his career's mission to elevate photography to the status of fine art by engaging the same dialogues around abstraction that preoccupied European avant-garde painters: "A round straw hat, the funnel leading out, the stairway leaning right, the white drawbridge with its railings made of circular chains--white suspenders crossing on the back of a man in the steerage below, round shapes of iron machinery, a mast cutting into the sky, making a triangular shape. I stood spellbound for a while, looking and looking. Could I photograph what I felt, looking and looking and still looking? I saw shapes related to each other. I saw a picture of shapes and underlying that the feeling I had about life...Spontaneously I raced to the main stairway of the steamer, chased down to my cabin, got my Graflex, raced back again all out of breath, wondering whether the man with the straw hat had moved or not. If he had, the picture I had seen would no longer be. The relationship of shapes as I wanted them would have been disturbed and the picture lost. But there was the man with the straw hat. He hadn't moved. The man with the crossed white suspenders showing his back, he too, talking to a man, hadn't moved. And the woman with a child on her lap, sitting on the floor, hadn't moved. Seemingly, no one had changed position...It would be a picture based on related shapes and on the deepest human feeling, a step in my own evolution, a spontaneous discovery" Stieglitz's defense of his photography as fine art: Stieglitz argues that The Steerage suggests that photographs have more than just a "documentary" voice that speaks to the truth-to-appearance of subjects in a field of space within a narrowly defined slice time. Rather, The Steerage calls for a more complex, layered view of photography's essence that can accommodate and convey abstraction The issue of immigration in the photograph: In his account for The Steerage, Stieglitz also calls attention to its ability to provide more than just an abstract interpretation to The Steerage is not only about the "significant form" of shapes, forms and textures, but it also conveys a message about its subjects, immigrants who were rejected at Ellis Island, or who were returning to their old country to see relatives and perhaps to encourage others to return the United States with them. But to Stieglitz, this is not a main theme of the photograph Stieglitz's view on immigration: Stieglitz would have been familiar with the debates about immigration reform and the ghastly conditions to which passengers in steerage were subjected. Stieglitz's father had come to American in 1849 during a historic migration of 1120000 Germans to the United States between 1845-1855. His father became a wool trader and was so successful that he retired by age 48. Stieglitz's father exemplified the "American dream" that was just beyond the grasp of many of the subjects of The Steerage. Still, Stieglitz was conflicted about the issue of immigration. While he was sympathetic to the struggle of aspiring new arrivals, Stieglitz was opposed to admitting the uneducated and marginal to the United States, despite his claims of sentiment for the downtrodden. Perhaps this explains his preference to avoid addressing the subject of The Steerage, and to see in his photograph, not a political statement, but a place for arguing the value of photography as fine art

108. Liberty Leading the People

Date: September-December 1830, 19th century CE, Romantic period Materials: Oil on canvas (LLTP) Location: France (LLTP) Artist: Eugene Delacroix Purpose: Delacroix depicts an event from the July Revolution of 1830, an event that replaced the abdicated King Charles X, (reigned 1824-1830), the younger brother of the guillotined King Louis XVI. This uprising of 1830 was the historical prelude to the June Rebellion of 1832, an event featured in Victor Hugo's famous novel, Les Misérables (1862) Themes: Political power, military power, community, violence, symbolism Art styles: If Jacque-Louis David is the most perfect example of French Neoclassicism, and his most accomplished pupil, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, represents a transitional figure between Neoclassicism and Romanticism, then Eugene Delacroix stands (with, perhaps, Theodore Gericault) as the most representative painter of French Romanticism Neoclassicism and Romanticism: French artists in the early 19th century would be broadly placed into one of two different categories. The Neoclassically trained Ingres led the first group, a collection of artists called the Poussinists, named after the French Baroque painter, Nicolas Poussin. These artists relied on drawing and lines for their compositions. The second group, the Rubenists, named after the Flemish master, Peter Paul Rubens, instead elevated color over line. By the time Delacroix was in his mid-20s, by 1823, he was one of the leaders of the ascending French Romantic movement Delacroix as an artist: In 1824, Delacroix exhibited his monumental Massacres at Chios. This painting serves as an excellent example of the Classical of what Delacroix hoped Romanticism would become. Rather than look to the examples of the Classical past for a narrative, Delacroix instead looked to contemporary world events for his subject. This "ripped from the headlines" approach became common for many Romantic painters. It is clear that the artist placed more effort on his use of color and employed a fluid open brushwork rather than relying on line and a carefully polished painting surface as the Poussinists were doing. Massacres at Chios is an eloquent painting to explore when it comes to Delacroix's commitment to Romanticism. The subject was topical and exotic, and the artist used color and brushwork to elicit an emotional response from the viewer Liberty: The first thing the viewer's eye goes to is the monumental and nude to the waist female figure. Her yellow dress has fallen from her shoulders as she holds a bayonetted musket in her left hand and raises the French flag in her right. This red, white and blue arrangement of the flag is mirrored by the attire worn by the boy looking up at her. She powerfully strides forward and looks back over her right shoulder as if to ensure that those who she leads are following. Her head is shown in profile--like a ruler on a Classical coin--and she wears a Phrygian cap, a Classical signifier of freedom. In ancient Rome, freed slaves were given one to wear to indicate their newly liberated status, thus this headwear became a symbol of freedom. On both sides of the Atlantic Ocean during the 18th and 19th centuries, she serves as an allegory of Liberty Men: The man on the far left holds a briquet, which is an infantry saber commonly used during the Napoleonic Wars. His clothing--apron, working shirt and sailor's trousers--identify him as a factory worker, a person on the lower end of the economic ladder. The handkerchief around his waist that secures a pistol has a pattern similar to that of the Cholet handkerchief, a symbol the government established as a result of the French Revolution. The white cockade and red ribbon secured to his beret also identify his revolutionary sensibilities. This factory worker provides a counterpoint to the younger man beside him, who is clearly of a different economic status. He wears a black top hat, an open-collared white shirt and cravat, and an elegantly tailored black coat. Rather than hold a military weapon, he instead grasps a hunting shotgun. These two figures make clear that this revolution is not just for the economically downtrodden, but for those of affluence, as well Children: This revolution was not just for the adults; two young boys can be identified among the insurgents. On the left, a fallen adolescent, who wears a light infantry bicorne and holds a short saber, struggles to regain his footing against the piled cobblestones that make up the barricade as he looks up at Lady Liberty. The more famous of the pair is on the right side of the painting. Often thought to be the visual inspiration for Gavroche in Les Misérables, this boy wildly wields two pistols. He wears a faluche, a black velvet beret common to students, and carries what appears to be a school satchel across his body Other details: The ground is littered with the dead. Some are members of the military--note the uniform decorated with shoulder epaulettes on the figure in the lower right--while others are likely revolutionaries. In total, the painting accurately renders the fervor and chaos of urban conflict. Notre Dame, the defining architectural monument of Paris (at least until the Eiffel Tower arrived at the end of the 19th century) can be seen on the right side of the painting. Delacroix signed and dated this painting immediately underneath the monument, perhaps to signify his personal pride with Paris and France Delacroix's pride: With this painting, Delacroix would have us believe that everyone can be a revolutionary. Less than three months after the July Revolution, Delacroix wrote, "I have undertaken a modern subject, a barricade, and although I may not have fought for my country, at least I shall have painted for her. It has restored my good spirits"

102. Monticello

Date: 1768-1809 CE, 18th-19th century CE, Neoclassical period Materials: Brick, glass, stone, wood Location: Charlottesville, Virginia Artist: Thomas Jefferson Purpose: Jefferson's self-designed house, redesigned after living in France, inspired by the Classical and Neoclassical architecture there Themes: Architecture, residence, political power, cultural exchange, innovation Neoclassicism: Neoclassicism drew inspiration from Classical antiquity Thomas Jefferson background: In an undated note, Thomas Jefferson left clear instructions about what he wanted engraved upon his burial marker: "Here was buried/Thomas Jefferson/Author of the Declaration of American Independence/of the Statute of Virginia for religious freedom/Father of the University of Virginia." There are important achievements Jefferson neglected to mention, however. He was also the Governor of Virginia, the American minister to France, the first Secretary of State, the third president of the United States, and one of the most accomplished gentleman architects in American history, although he was never formally trained. Even if he never entered political life, Jefferson would be remembered today as one of the earliest promoters of Neoclassical architecture in the United States. Jefferson believed art could elicit social change, inspire the public to seek education, and bring about a general sense of enlightenment to the American public What made Jefferson interested in architecture: Jefferson went to the College of William and Mary and took an immediate interest in the architecture of the college's campus and of Williamsburg in general. He expressed dissatisfaction with the architecture in Williamsburg, believing that the Wren-Baroque aesthetic common in colonial Virginia was too British for a North American audience. Jefferson critically wrote of the architecture in Williamsburg: "The College and Hospital are rude, mis-shapen piles...There are no other public buildings but churches and court-houses, in which no attempts are made at elegance." When Jefferson began to design his own home, he instead adopted the Classically inspired architecture of Antonio Palladio and James Gibbs. Rather than place his plantation house along the bank of a river, as was the norm, Jefferson placed his home, which he named Monticello, Italian for "little mountain," atop a solitary hill just outside Charlottesville, Virginia French influence: Construction began in 1768 and it was fully completed in 1771. He left Monticello and the US in 1784 as American minister to France. He returned to the US to serve as Secretary of State in 1789, so he was able to visit the Classical and Neoclassical architecture in France. This exposure highly influenced his own architecture. The Virginia State Capitol is a modified version of the Maison Carrée (16 BCE), a Roman temple. The influence that the Pantheon (125 CE) had over his Rotunda at the University of Virginia is very evident. The last day of 1793, he formally resigned from Washington's cabinet. From this year until 1809, Jefferson redesigned and rebuilt his home, fully integrating the ideals of French Neoclassical architecture for an American audience Layout: Jefferson fundamentally changed the proportions of Monticello. If the early construction gave the impression of a Palladian two-story pavilion, Jefferson's later remodeling, based in part on the Hôtel de Salm in Paris, gives the impression of a symmetrical single-story brick home under a strict Doric entablature. The west garden facade--the view that is featured on the American nickel--shows Monticello's most recognized architectural features. The two-column deep extended portico contains Doric columns that support a triangular pediment that is decorated by a semicircular window. While the short octagonal drum and shallow dome provide a sense of verticality, the wooden balustrade that circles the roofline provides a powerful sense of horizontality Politcal connection: Jefferson detested the English, so he continually rejected British architectural precedents for those from France. By helping to introduce Classical architecture to the United States, Jefferson intended to reinforce the ideals behind Classical past: democracy, education, rationality, and civic responsibility

103. The Oath of the Horatii

Date: 1785 CE, 18th century CE, Rococo/Neoclassical period Materials: Oil on canvas (TOOTH) Location: Rome, Italy Artist: Jacques-Louis David, commissioned by Louis XVI Purpose: Shows the story of the Oath of the Horatii, which comes from a Roman legend involving a conflict between the Romans and a rival group from nearby Alba. Rather than continue a long-lasting and detrimental war, they elect representative combatants to settle their dispute. The Romans select the Horatii and the Albans choose another trio of brothers, the Curatii. In the painting, the Horatii take an oath to defend Rome. The women know that they will also bear the consequence of battle because the two families are united by marriage. One of the wives in the painting is a daughter of the Curatii and the other, Camilla, is engaged to one of the Curatii brothers. At the end of the legend, the only surviving Horatii brother kills Camilla, who disapproved of his murder of her beloved, accusing Camilla of putting her sentiment over her duty to Rome. The moment David chose to represent was, in his words, "the moment which must have preceded the battle, when the elder Horatius, gathering his sons in their family home, makes them swear to conquer or die" Themes: Political power, military power, cultural exchange, gender roles, familial relationships Organization of the painting: David created a rigorously organized painting with a scene set in what might be a Roman atrium dominated by three arches at the back that keep our attention focused on the main action in the foreground. There we see the three young Horatii brothers framed by the first arch, bound together with their muscular arms raised in a rigid salut toward their father, framed by the central arch. The father holds three swords aloft in his left hand and raises his right hand signifying a promise or sacrifice. The male figures create tense, geometric forms that contrast noticeably with the softly curved, flowing poses of the women seated behind. David lit the figures with a stark, clinical light that contrasts with the heightened drama of the scene, requiring the viewer to respond to the painting with a mixture of emotion and rationality Neoclassicism: This painting is typically presented as a prime example of Neoclassical painting. It tells a story derived from the Classical world that provides an example of virtuous behavior (exemplum vertutis). The dramatic gestures of the male figures clearly convey the idea of oath-taking and the clear, even light makes every aspect of the story legible. Instead of creating an illusionistic extension of space into a deep background, David radically cuts off the space with the arches and pushes the action to the foreground in the manner of Roman relief sculpture A conversation between Rococo and Neoclassical painting: Before Oath of the Horatii, French history paintings in a more Rococo style involved the viewer by appealing to sentiment and presenting softly modeled graceful figures. David acknowledged that approach in the figures of the women, but challenged it with the starkly athletic figures and resolute poses of the men Revolutionary or not: One might read Oath of the Horatii as a painting designed to rally those who believed that France should be a republic and no longer a monarchy by telling them that their cause will require the dedication and sacrifice of the Horatii. Those who disagree with this interpretation argue that David was entangled in the system of royal patronage and that the painting was accepted into the Salon with no negative response from official quarters and later royal commissions followed

119. The Burghers of Calais

Date: 1884-1895 CE, 19th century CE Materials: Bronze Location: Calais, France Artist: Auguste Rodin Purpose: Rodin was commissioned by the French city of Calais to create a sculpture that commemorated the heroism of Eustache de Saint-Pierre, a prominent citizen of Calais, during the dreadful Hundred Years' War between England and France (begun in 1337) Themes: Honor, political power, history, innovation, story-telling, perspective Imagery: There are six men covered only in simple layers of tattered sackcloth, their bodies appearing thin and malnourished with bones and joints clearly visible. Each man is a burgher, or city councilman, of Calais, and each has his own stance and identifiable features. While they may stand together with a sense of familiarity, none of them are making eye contact with the men beside them. Some figures have their heads bowed or their faces obscured by raised hands, while others try to stand tall with their eyes gazing into the distance. This signifies the loneliness and solitude they each experience through their shared fate. They are drawn together, not by physical or verbal contact, but by their slumped shoulders, bare feet, and an expression of utter anguish Story: Rodin followed the recounting of Jean Froissart, a 14th century chronicler, who wrote of the war. According to Froissart, King Edward III made a deal with the citizens of Calais: if they wished to save their lives and their beloved city, then not only must they surrender the keys to the city, but six prominent members of the city council must volunteer to give up their lives. The leader of the group was Eustache de Saint-Pierre, who Rodin depicted with a bowed head and bearded face towards the middle of the gathering. To Saint-Pierre's left, with his mouth closed in a tight line and carrying a giant set of keys, is Jean d'Aire. The remaining men are identified as Andrieu d'Andres, Jean de Fiennes and Pierre and Jacques de Wissant Who were the six men sculpted: Eustache de Saint-Pierre, Jean d'Aire, Andrieu d'Andres, Jean de Fiennes, Pierre and Jacques de Wissant Stylistic choice: Unbeknownst to the six burghers at the time of their departure, their lives would eventually be spared. However, Rodin made the decision to capture these men not when they were finally released, but in the moment that they gathered to leave the city and go to their deaths. Instead of depicting victory, the threat of death is very real. Rodin stretched his composition into a circle causing no one man to be the focal point, which allows the sculpture to be viewed in-the-round from multiple perspectives with no clear leader, no clear hero Criticism: Rodin spent most of his young life looking for approval and recognition. He was denied entry into the prestigious École des Beaux-Arts in Paris three times, and yet he continued to push forward until he could finally gain professional recognition. So imagine his delight when he was asked to create a monument for Calais. The only problem was he wanted to do it his own way. It was common in the 19th century to depict a historical event with a single heroic figure--this is what the city of Calais was expecting from Rodin. As a result, they were rather displeased with Rodin's concept; they wanted only one statue, the one of Eustache de Saint-Pierre Other details: The heavy, rhythmic drapery that hangs from their shoulders fall to the ground like lead weights, anchoring them and creating a mass of strong, unyielding bodies. In fact, the fabric appears to be fused to the ground, conveying the conflict between the men's desire to live and the need to save their city. The burghers were not meant to be viewed in the form of a hierarchal pyramid with Eustache de Saint-Pierre at the top, which would have been typical in a multi-figure statue, but as a group equal in status, equal in fate. By bringing these men down to "street level," Rodin allowed the viewer to easily look up into the men's faces mere inches from their own, enhancing the personal connection between the viewer and the six men

121. The Coiffure

Date: 1890-1891 CE, 19th century CE Materials: Drypoint and aquatint on laid paper. Her desire to emulate the hazy and sensual possibilities of pastels is what motivated Cassatt to use, not woodblock printing, but intaglio. First, Cassatt carved her designs onto a smooth copper plate with a fine metal needle. Then the plate would be dusted with a powdered resin and heated until the resin melted in tiny mounds that hardened as they cooled. Acid was then added onto the metal plate, biting the channels along the resin droplets. The deeper penetration of acid produced richer, darker tones, while a lighter application of acid produced lighter shades of color, and a variety of nuanced gradients could be generated within a single print Location: Paris, France (TC) Artist: Mary Cassatt Purpose: A desexualized nude woman doing her hair in a style that would often require a maid or assistant to perfect Themes: Innovation, cultural exchange, gender roles, beauty standards, femininity, aristocracy Cultural exchange: In April of 1890, the École des Beaux-Arts, or School of the Fine Arts, in Paris showcased an exhibition of Japanese woodblock prints. Ever since Commodore Matthew C. Perry helped to open imperial Japan to Western trade in 1853, Europe had become fascinated with Japanese culture. Well-known European artists incorporated elements of Japanese design into their work. Some of them also visited the bustling antique shop on the Rue de Rivoli, La Porte Chinoise, that specialized in Japanese woodblock prints, jades, lacquers and porcelains. Cassatt's close friend, Edgar Degas, was a great admirer of Japanese art and had recently seen the exhibition and showed Cassatt. Cassatt was enchanted. In a letter written that week to her friend, the painter Berthe Morisot, she wrote, "You who want to make color prints wouldn't dream of anything more beautiful. I dream of doing it myself and can't think of anything else but color on copper...PS You must see the Japanese--come as soon as you can" Inspiration: The Coiffure, a woman adjusting her hair, is one of the hundreds that Cassatt made in her in-home studio in the summer and fall of 1890 and in the winter of 1891. It was inspired in part by a woodblock print in her personal collection, Kitagawa Utamaro's boudoir image of the daughter of a prosperous Edo businessman, Takashima Ohisa Using Two Mirrors to Observe her Coiffure. The Coiffure is also inspired by Old Master paintings from the 17th-19th century La coiffure: The word "la coiffure" evokes a precise image, one of wealthy women in glamorous settings. The ritual of grooming, dressing and preparing one's hair from the 17th and 18th century court days of Anne of Austria and Marie Antoinette was passed down to 19th century ideals of femininity and beauty. To wear an elaborate hairstyle such as this, one needed to have a maid to help with one's hair. "La coiffure" was part of a specific lifestyle. Yet the woman in Cassatt's print is tending to her hair alone. Perhaps what we are seeing is a working woman getting ready to start her day. There is some ironic tension within this image Imagery: The woman in Cassatt's The Coiffure sits in a plush armchair in front of a mirror, her head focused downward, her back arched, as she adjusts her bun. The sensuality here is drawn from examples in works such as Rembrandt's Bathsheba at her Bath (1654), and Ingres's La Grand Odalisque (1814), which Cassatt studied when she was a young student in the mid-1860s. The woman in The Coiffure, unlike Rembrandt and Ingres's pieces, is not sexualized. Though her breasts are exposed, her chest and the details of her body are deliberately muted into an overall structure of curves and crisp lines. The woman's body is as vividly realized as the other significant patterns of the room--the wallpaper, the fabric of the armchair, the carpet. As the viewer, we are placed at a slight leftward angle from the woman in that chair so that we see her through the mirror, while she is looking away from it. The downward gaze is similar to that of the model in the Utamaro print, done partly in homage to the modesty of the female subject in the ukiyo-e prints. Even though Cassatt's female is desexualized, artists were always aware that their works were made for a male-dominated market, and so they designed them to be enticing--that's where the modesty comes in. Also though partly in homage to the study of shape and line, so that the viewer could focus more intently on the compositional elements of the work. The curve of the woman's sloping back and neck echoes the curves of the chair, which stand in contrast to the vertical lines of the mirror--a compositional counterpoint that further enhances the tension within the tight composition. The limited color palette of shades of rose, brown and white enables us to focus closely on the form and quality of line Why prints: Cassatt's motivation in making the prints was to make her art more accessible for a larger audience. She believed that everyone, regardless of income or social status, should be able to examine art. She said, "I believe nothing will inspire a taste for art more than the possibility of having it in the home. I should like to feel that amateurs in America could have an example of my work, a print or an etching, for a few dollars. That is what they do in France. It is not left to the rich alone to buy art; the people--even the poor--have taste and buy according to their means, and here they can always find something they can afford." Cassatt understood that as the world was changing within the 20th century's new industries and technology, more and more people would have the income, education and ability to experience art in ways they hadn't been able to before

125. Mont Sainte-Victoire

Date: 1902-1904 CE, 20th century CE, Post-Impressionist period Materials: Oil on canvas (MSV) Location: France (MSV) Artist: Paul Cézanne Purpose: An abstract view of Mont Sainte-Victoire, a mountain that Cézanne is known for painting a lot throughout his career Themes: Perspective, space-play, nature Cézanne and Mont Sainte-Victoire: Cézanne painted this mountain range in many of his works. His name has become associated with it. He included it in a landscape called The Railway Cutting, 1870, and a few years later it appeared behind the monumental figures of his Bathers at Rest, 1876-1877. But it wasn't until the beginning of the next decade that he began consistently featuring the mountain in his landscapes. Writing in 1885, Paul Gauguin was probably thinking of Mont Sainte-Victoire when he imagined Cézanne spending "entire days in the mountains reading Virgil and looking at the sky." "Therefore," Gauguin continued, "his horizons are high, his blues very intense, and the red in his work has an astounding vibrancy." Cézanne's legend was beginning to emerge and this mountain ran through it. Cézanne would return to the motif of Mont Sainte-Victoire throughout the rest of his career, resulting in an incredibly varied series of works. They show the mountain from many different points of view and often in relationship to a constantly changing cast of other elements, for example, foreground trees and bushes, buildings and bridges, fields and quarries. From this series, we can extract a subgroup of over two dozen paintings and watercolors. Dating from the very last years of the artist's life, these landscapes feature a heightened lyricism and a consistent viewpoint. Cézanne bought an acre of land on a hill in 1901 and by the end of the following year he had built a studio on it. From here, he would walk further uphill to a spot that offered a sweeping view of Mont Sainte-Victoire and the land before it. Cézanne consciously cultivated his association with the mountain and perhaps even wanted to be documented painting it Imagery: In this work, Cézanne divides his composition into three roughly equal horizontal sections, which extend across the three-foot wide canvas. 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 grays, 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. 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 the foreground to background and lead the eye back. 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 within our reach, yet far away at the same time