ARS 102 Unit 3: 19th and 20th Century Art

Impressionism

An artistic movement that sought to capture a momentary feel, or impression, of the piece they were drawing -En plein-air painting is usually associated with impressionism

Abstract Expressionism

An experimental style of mid-twentieth-century modern art exemplified by Jackson Pollock's spontaneous "action paintings," created by flinging paint on canvases stretched across the studio floor.

Which art movement sought to promote the use of "ready-mades" as art? Romanticism Dada Impressionism Abstract Expressionism

Dada

Dejeuner sur l'Herbe (Luncheon on the Grass) was well received at the 1863 Salon. True False

False

The Rue Transnonain depicts the government support for the poor of Paris. True False

False

The Vietnam Memorial was based on traditional figurative commemorative sculpture. True False

False

Which work of art is associated with the Spanish Pavilion at the 1938 Paris Exposition? Liberty Leading the People The Third of May, 1808 Guernica Birth of Liquid Desires

Guernica

Which is an important Realist painting? Liberty Leading the People The Rehearsal on Stage Rue Transnonain The Stone Breakers

The Stone Breakers

One important work that was initially disliked but is now very much valued and appreciated is Fountain Liberty Leading the People The Vietnam Memorial The Burghers of Calais

The Vietnam Memorial

During the 19th century artists began to move away from patrons and commissioned works and focused instead on their own creative ideas. True False

True

John Ruskin was an art critic who championed Turner and disliked Whistler. True False

True

Poets such as Goethe, Byron and Wordsworth were part of the Romantic movement. True False

True

The Salon des Refuses was an exhibit of works of art rejected by the official Salon. True False

True

Expressionism

a style of painting, music, or drama in which the artist or writer seeks to express emotional experience rather than impressions of the external world.

One word that can be used to describe Cubist imagery is idealized simplified photographic fragmented

fragmented

The art associated with Dada can be considered

irrational and nonsensical

Maya Lin, Vietnam Veterans Memorial

-For veterans, the toll was even greater. The war had profound psychological effects, and even 40 years later veterans suffer from PTSD, exposure to chemicals like Agent Orange and wounds they received in the war. Over 300,000 Americans were wounded during the war. -Lin was aware of those costs, and she wanted to commemorate them with a fiercely modern design. She created it as part of a college architecture class that challenged students to make an entry for the national design competition for the planned memorial. -Lin imagined two stark black walls that began inside the earth, then grew and grew in height until they met—like a "wound that is closed and healing." The V-shaped wall, designed to point toward the Lincoln and Washington Memorials, would be inscribed with the names of the dead in chronological order. It would exist inside a park, as inextricable from the landscape as it was from the minds of Americans.

Pablo Picasso, Guernica

-Guernica was the artist's response to the Fascist bombing of a town in Spain -German bombers attacked the town of Guernica in the Basque region of Spain -killing and wounding 1,600 civilians -made preliminary sketches for his visual response to this atrocity -a monumental history painting detailing historic and ignoble events of the attack -complex painting layered with meaning -painted black, white, and gray (image resonates with anguish) -The effect of Guernica comes from the artist's distortion of shape and space -freezes figures in mid-movement in stark black and white -obvious symbolism

Jackson Pollack, Autumn Rhythm (Number 30)

-In Autumn Rhythm, as in many of his paintings, Pollock first created a complex linear skeleton using black paint. For this initial layer the paint was diluted, so that it soaked into the length of unprimed canvas, thereby inextricably joining image and support. Over this black framework Pollock wove an intricate web of white, brown, and turquoise lines, which produce the contrary visual rhythms and sensations: light and dark, thick and thin, heavy and buoyant, straight and curved, horizontal and vertical. Textural passages that contribute to the painting's complexity — such as the pooled swirls where two colors meet and the wrinkled skins formed by the build-up of paint — are barely visible in the initial confusion of overlapping lines. Although Pollock's imagery is nonrepresentational, Autumn Rhythm is evocative of nature, not only in its title but also in its coloring, horizontal orientation, and sense of ground and space.

James Abott McNeil Whistler, Nocturne in Black and Gold (The Falling Rockets)

-Ruskin's objections to it set off one of the most notorious court dramas in art history (Whistler sued the critic for libel) - he turned the courtroom into a public forum, both to defend and advertise his art -on the witness stand, he maintained that art has no higher purpose than creating visual delight and denied the need for paintings to have "subject matter" -painted restricted tonalities, at first glance the work appears abstract -painting is a night scene depicting firework show over a lake at Cremorne Gardens in London with viewers vaguely discernible along the lakes edge in the foreground

Joseph Mallord William Turner, The Slave Ship

-Turner decided to commemorate the event in this dramatic painting which shows the sky and sea merge in one roiling, colorful intense moment - suggestions of forms in the water (legs with manacles) - not a detailed image of the slave ship (It is nothing like The Raft of the Medusa) -uses brilliant brushwork and color to present nature at its most sublime -The Slave Ship is associated with the sublime in nature -*The powers of nature are used as social commentary -paint is loose and thickly placed especially where the sky and water meet on the horizon line -one of his trademarks is the light from the sun reflecting on the water -a romanticized view that contemplates nature and man -Nature here condemns the slave trade rather than man

Romanticism

-a movement in the arts and literature that originated in the late 18th century, emphasizing inspiration, subjectivity, and the primacy of the individual. past -nostalgia and revival of the medieval past -"Return to Nature" Reactions against Science, Enlightenment, nationalism Focus on contemporary events—not the classical past.

Edgar Degas, The Rehearsal on Stage

-calculated to delight the eye but also refocus the mind on the stern realities of modern life -dancers look bored, exhausted perhaps to mitigate the physical toll -in the background on the right sitting are two well-dressed middle-aged men (each probably wealthy prospectors) -set in a space that seems to tilt upward (as if viewed from a box close to the stage) - abrupt foreshortening, emphasized by dark scrolls of the double basses that jut up from lower left -angular viewpoint from above from Japanese prints -highlights informal moments associated with public performances -*The influence of photography--notice for Degas especially the cropped edges of his paintings

Winslow Homer, The Life Line

-depicts a coastguard saving a shipwrecked woman with the use of a breeches buoy (a testament not to simply valor but also human ingenuity) -the artist emphasized the real hero, the Breeches Buoy by covering the man's face with the red cloth -oil on canvas -Secured firmly to ship and shore, the device permitted the transfer of stranded passengers to safety by means of a pulley that was hauled back and forth by crews at either end. -Cropped down to its essentials, Homer's composition thrusts us into the midst of the action with massive waves rolling past, drenching the semiconscious woman and her anonymous savior -mountainous waves, wind and spray, a helpless vessel, and a desperate human struggle -continues his themes of anxiety, struggle, and stoicism in the face of tragedy

Edouard Manet, Luncheon on the Grass (Le Dejeuner sur l'Herbe)

-featured in Salon des Refuses(Salon of Rejected Ones) -artist was committed to realism and modernity -provoked a critical avalanche that mixed shock with bewilderment resulting= succes de scandale(success from scandal) helped establish Manet's career as a radical, avant-garde, modern artist -most scandalous aspect of the painting was the "immortality" of Manet's theme: a suburban picnic featuring two fully dressed bourgeois gentlemen seated alongside a naked woman with another scantily dressed woman in the back -modern version of Raphael's Judgment of Paris -a visual "quote -stark lighting and sharp outlining of his nude, the cool colors, and the flat quality of his figures, who seem as if they are silhouetted cut-outs set against a painted backdrop

Gustave Courbet, The Stone Breakers

-first artist to call himself a avant-garde or a Realist -*one of the significant things about The Stone Breakers is the size and subject -young boy and old man are crushing rock to produce the gravel used for rooadbeds -stone breakers represent the disenfranchised peasants on whose backs modern life was being built -it was a political statement by the artist -younger figure strains to lift a large basket of rocks to the side of the road, dressed in a tattered shirt and trousers but wearing modern work boots -older companion, seemingly broken by the lowly work, pounds the rocks as he kneels, wearing more traditional clothing of a peasant with wooden clogs -boy seems to represent a grim future,while the man signifies a rural past -"labor such as this, one's life begins that way, and it ends the same way." -Gustave -political statement, was asserting that peasant laborers should be venerated as heroes -brutality of modern life -rough use of paint and choice of dull, dark colors, awkward poses, and stilted composition -realistically gloomy and degrading

Auguste Rodin, The Burghers of Calais

-for the city of Calais, commemorating a local event from the Hundred Years' War -history: Edward III of England had offered to spare the besieged city if 6 leading citizens(burghers) surrendered themselves to him for execution the Queen convinced him to pardon the men (feared the execution would be a bad omen for their unborn child) -sculpture captures a moment before this pardon was known -the artist was influenced by Donatello and Michelangelo -commemorated an event from the Hundred Years War between France and England -elimination of a pedestal -his commissioners were neither pleased with his conception of the event or the figures being displayed on a low base (in the real space of the viewer) -present ordinary-looking men in variuos attitudes of resignation and despair -dressed in only sackcloth with rope halters and carrying the keys to the city -exaggerated facial expressions , lengthened arms, enlarged hands and feet -swathed them in heavy fabric (not only showing how they looked but how they felt)

Earth Works Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty

-identified as Site-specific -Undoubtedly the most famous large-scale earthwork of the period, it has come to epitomize Land art. Its exceptional art historical importance and its unique beauty have drawn visitors and media attention from throughout Utah and around the world. Rozel Point attracted Smithson for a number of reasons, including its remote location and the reddish quality of the water in that section of the lake (an effect of algae). Using natural materials from the site, Smithson designed Spiral Jetty to extend into the lake several inches above the waterline. However, the earthwork is affected by seasonal fluctuations in the lake level, which can alternately submerge the work or leave it completely exposed and covered in salt crystals. The close communion between Spiral Jetty and the super-saline Great Salt Lake emphasizes the entropic processes of erosion and physical disorder with which Smithson was continually fascinated.

Surrealism Salvador Dali, Birth of Liquid Desires

-large yellow biomorphic form (an organic shape resembling a living organism) -looking like a monster's face, a painter's palette, or a woman's body -a woman in white embraces a hermaphroditic figure who stands with one foot in a bowl that is being filled with liquid by a third figure(partially hidden), fourth figure enters a cavernous hole to the left -a thick black cloud rises above the scene -Dali claimed that he simply painted his paranoid-critical mind had conjured up in his nightmares -defy rational interpretation -they trigger fear, anxiety, and even regression in our empathetic minds -painting refers to the legend of William Tell -his work also draws on the surrealist interest in the unexpected juxtapositions of disparate realities

Edouard Manet, A Bar at the Folies-Bergere

-maintained focus on the complex theme of gender and class relations -a young woman serves drinks at the bar in the famous nightclub that offered circuses, musicals, and vaudeville acts (It represents the bustling interior of one of the most prominent music halls and cabarets of Paris, the Folies-Bergère) -she has an unfashionably ruddy face, and her hands look raw -the glittering light created by the electric bulbs and mirrors of the music halls -she seems stiff and distant, certainly self-absorbed, and perhaps even depressed, refusing to meet the gaze of the customer in front of her -barmaid is at once detached from the scene and part of it, one of the many items among the still life of liquor bottles, tangerines, and flowers on display for purchase -image is about sexualized looking and the barmaid's uneasy reflection in the mirror seems to acknowledge that both her class and gender expose her to visual and even sexual consumption

Thomas Cole, The Oxbow

-oil on canvas -for exhibition at the National Academy of Design in New York -considered it one of his "view" paintings, it represents a specific place and time -its scale allows for a sweeping view of an Oxbow bend (a U-shaped bend in the course of a river) in the Connecticut River from top of Mount Holyoke in Massachusetts -exaggerated steepness of the mountain and setting the scene below a dramatic sky -sweeping arc produced by clouds and edge of the mountain -shows 2 sides of America landscape: dense, stormy wilderness and its congenial, pastoral valleys with settlements -fading storm seems to suggest that the land is bountiful and ready to yield its fruits to civilization -"a union of the picturesque, the sublime, and the magnificent."-Thomas Cole -

Eugene Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People

-oil painting -painter is considered a romantic -combined realism and idealism to represent the event -half-nude female figure is a personification of the idea of liberty (outfitted with a contemporary weapon and Phrygian cap=symbol for a freed slave) -female's profile recalls that of those of rulers on Roman coins with her straight nose and full lips -Her yellow dress is loosely tied with red rope and falling from her shoulders, reminiscent of Greek sculptures -towers of Notre-Dame loom in the background through smoke and haze -full of passion, turmoil, and danger -Liberty Leading the People depicts an episode from a popular uprising against the French king

Cubism Pablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon

-one of the most radical and complex paintings of the twentieth century -"demoiselle" was a common euphemism for prostitute -Avignon was the name of the street in the red-light district in Barcelona -has boldness, in the work and its scale:nearly 8ft -revived ideas and changed the ideas of large-scale academic history painting, using traditional subject of nude women shown in an interior space -the two women in the center display themselves to the viewer like Venus rising from the sea (raise arms arms in a conventional gesture of accessibility but contradict it with their hands , piercing gazes and tights mouths) -one to the left has a rigid pose with a striding stance (recalling a Greek kouros) -the one seated on the right might suggest the pose of Manet's Luncheon on the Grass -flattened features and wide, almond-shaped eyes -mask-like faces of the two figures at the right imitate African art -women are shielded by masks, flattened into sharp, angular shapes -Picasso suggests the women are not the gentle and passive creatures that men would like them to be

Claude Monet, Rouen Cathedral

-painted it because of his fascination with the way the light played across its undulating stone surface -changing its appearance constantly as the lighting changed throughout the day -painted over 30 canvases of the Rouen facade -pursuit of of capturing the fleeting effects of light and atmosphere

Honore Daumier, Rue Transnonain

-part of a series of large prints sold by subscription to raise money fro Le Charivari's legal defense fund *(lithographs) -a government guard was shot and killed on the rue Transnonian -a riot squad killed everyone in the building where they thought a marksman was hiding (Daumier show the bloody aftermath) -shows the bloody aftermath of the event: innocent family disturbed from their sleep and murdered -the wife lies in the shadows to the left, her husband in the center of the room (under him are a bloody head & arms of a murdered child) and an elderly man to the right -Daumier was known for his biting caricatures and social commentary *(was known for working in lithography)

Dada Marcel Duchamp, Fountain

-porcelain plumbing fixture and enamel paint -remains one of the most controversial works of art of the 20th century -incites laughter, anger, embarrassment, and disgust by openly referring to private bathroom activities (human carnality and vulnerability) -Duchamp questions the essence of what constitutes a work of art (Since Whistler's famous court case) -art was primarily conceptual -updates that practice into modern terms by arguing that art objects can actually be mass-produced for the artist by the industry "readymade"

Berthe Morisot, Summer's Day

-she concentrated on the depictions of women's lives -shows two elegant young ladies enjoying an outing on the lake of the fashionable Bois de Boulogne -first shown in the fifth Impressionist exhibition in 1880 -painting exemplifies the emphasis on formal features in Impressionist painting -the brushstrokes and colors are as much of a subject as the figures themselves

Pop Art Andy Warhol, Marilyn Diptych

-silkscreen -Marilyn Monroe died in August 1962, having overdosed on barbiturates. In the following four months, Warhol made more than twenty silkscreen paintings of her, all based on the same publicity photograph from the 1953 film Niagara. Warhol found in Monroe a fusion of two of his consistent themes: death and the cult of celebrity. By repeating the image, he evokes her ubiquitous presence in the media. The contrast of vivid color with black and white, and the effect of fading in the right panel are suggestive of the star's mortality. -*comments on the modern aspect of culture: fame

Claude Monet, Impression: Sunrise

-sun rising in the morning fog over the harbor in his hometown of Le Harve -painting is rendered almost entirely of strokes of color "tongue lickings" (Leroy called called them) -foreground is ambiguous and the horizon line disappears among the shimmering shapes of steam ships and docks in the background -clouded by a thick atmosphere of mist -records ephemeral play of reflected light and color and its effect on the eye

Edvard Munch, The Scream

-tempura and oil on unprimed canvas -stuff of nightmares and horror movies -its harsh, swirling colors and lines direct us wildly around the painting -the human head at the center and the echos of its haunting scream(sensed visually) -"sensed a shriek passing though nature....I painted this picture, painted the clouds as actual blood"-Edvard

Theodore Gericault, Raft of the Medusa

-the Captain reserved all 6 boats for himself and, his officers, and several government representatives -remaining 152 passengers were set adrift on makeshift raft -depicts the moment of the story fraught with emotion, survivors on the raft experience fear and hope -function was to expose incompetence and a willful disregard for human life -hero is Jean Charles, a black man from French Senegal who showed endurance and emotional fortitude in the face of danger -arranged in a pyramid of bodies -figures are emotionally suspended between hope of salvation and fear of imminent death -By placing Jean Charles at the top of the pyramid of survivors suggests metaphorically that freedom is often dependent on the most oppressed society -the work was a culmination of extensive study and experimentation. -the men have athletic bodies and vigorous poses (evoking the work of Michelangelo and Rubens)

de Stijl Piet Mondrain, Composition with Yellow, Red and Blue

-three primary colors and two neutrals -a grid of horizontal and vertical lines in his search for the essence of higher beauty and the balance of forces -opposing lines and colors balance a harmony of opposites called "dynamic equilibrium" -carefully plotted arrangements of colors, shapes, and visual weights grouped asymmetrically around the edges of a canvas with the center acting as a blank white fulcrum

Vincent Van Gogh, Night Cafe

-used color "expressively" -was usually inclined to use bright, intense colors rather than pale or softer hues. -used complementary colors (tend to almost bounce off each other) -colors are intended to convey a feeling about the space rather than a realistic depiction

Fauvism Henri Marisse, Madame Matisse (The Green Stripe)

-used color seemingly arbitrarily -jarring color(two sides of her face are so different) -her face is divided into two different color zones and delineated by the thick green strip of paint lengthwise down her face

Fransico Goya, The Third of May

-violent gestures of the defenseless rebels and the mechanical efficiency of a tight row of executioners in the firing squad create a nightmarish tableau -*it depicts an incident during the Napoleonic Wars -the victim is spotlighted, is in a white shirt -arms are outstretched recalling the crucified Christ -image of blind terror and desperate fear (essence of Romanticism) -loose brushwork -lifelike poses -unbalanced composition -dramatic lighting -no moral, only hopeless rage

Realism

A 19th century artistic movement in which writers and painters sought to show life as it is rather than life as it should be -The Pavilion of Realism is associated with Courbet

Post-Impressionism

A late-nineteenth-century style that relies on the Impressionist use of color and spontaneous brushwork but that employs these elements as expressive devices.