Works with Text

Jean-Auguste-Dominique-Ingres, Napoleon I on his Imperial Throne, 1806

After the French Revolution, military leader Napoleon Bonaparte took control from the revolutionary government, crowning himself Holy Roman Emperor and using the military to control areas outside of France. Napoleon I will also commission art, most of which is in the style of Neoclassicism, as it helped to legitimize his rule by linking him to the classical past and to other emperors. Napoleon I on his Imperial Throne is a portrait by Ingres of Napoleon I of France in his coronation costume. Napoleon sits on a circular-backed throne with armrests adorned with ivory balls. He holds the scepter of Charlemagne in his right hand and the hand of justice in his left. In addition to his coronation gown, he wears a golden laurel wreath, similar to the one worn by Caesar. He also wears an ermine hood under the great collar of the Légion d'honneur, a gold-embroidered satin tunic and an ermine-lined purple velvet cloak decorated with gold bees. The coronation sword is in its scabbard and held up by a silk scarf. Napoleon wears white shoes embroidered in gold and resting on a cushion. The carpet under the throne displays an imperial eagle. The painting is highly reminiscent of Jan van Eyck's depiction of the enthroned God the Father in the central panel of his Ghent Altarpiece which was visible at the Musée Napoléon (now the Louvre) when Ingres painted this portrait. Thus, Ingres' Napoleon can be read as a figure with quasi-divine power. Indeed, he is seated in a position similar to that of the Greek god Zeus in a well-known representation made by the sculptor Phidias- with one arm raised and the other at rest. Additionally, the whole painting is rendered with meticulous attention to the luxurious materials, revealing Ingres' admiration for Renaissance artists such as Raphael. In an essay about Napoleon's fashion, Margaret Waller, in "The Emperor's New Clothes: Display, Cover-Up, and Exposure in Modern Masculinity," argues that while Napoleon often treated fashion as a superficial concern left to women, in fact he attempted to mastermind the details of dress as a method of male rule for himself as well as for his subjects. The coronation attire in the painting is an example of the ways in which the emperor made male rule once again a matter of spectacular exhibitionism so as to avoid certain kinds of exposure. As mentioned earlier, the new regime's motifs, the bee, the eagle, and the "N," are everywhere. In his imperial garb, the emperor's claim to power was signaled through repeated detail and attention to every detail--as if it were possible to leave no space for opposition or objection, no room for exposure. In Ingres's painting, what symbolizes Napoleon's power is far less the man than the sartorial accoutrements of his rank. The painting is full-length and the body is almost entirely covered, excluding his face. Each of the layers of clothing and the accessories are painted in rich detail. Napoleon is shown as a ruler fit for his office precisely because the accoutrements of rank are presumably shown to fit. Napoleon's placid, empty expression is meant to convey that his assumption of authority was in the natural order of things. Although the painting is a celebration of Napoleon, critics and the public lampooned it as being too much or saying it is too wrong. Though his impassive stare and excessive clothing and accessories were meant to conceal the fact that this emperor had "made his own clothes," the clothes actually suggest that the regime's effort at absolute coverage was a form of overcompensation.

George Bellows, Stag at Sharkey's, 1909

Beliefs about masculinity and male identity continue to pervade artworks into the 20th century. Bellows belonged to the Ashcan School, a group of artists who had ties to journalism. They did not aestheticize or beautify their creations and often looked at urban life, particularly the lower class. They often used broad brushstrokes and an earthy palette. George Bellows was one of the most famous Ashcan School artists and is known for his boxing scenes. Stag at Sharkey's depicts 2 boxers fighting at the Sharkey Athletic Club that was across the street from Bellows' studio. The club seems to be packed. We see the crowd: some are excited and enthusiastic, some duck away, and others are too far away to be seen distinctly.The two boxers swell into each other with extreme force as they lock head to head and the referee futilely tries to break them apart. Boxers were usually members of the club, but sometimes outsiders, known as stags, fought with temporary memberships. Bellow used broad and quick strokes to create a blurred image, as if to suggest motion. He also chose a low viewpoint to make it seem like the viewer is among the crowd of spectators in the painting. According to Robert Haywood in his article "George Bellows's Stag at Sharkey's: Boxing, Violence, and Male Identity," clubs like Sharkey's were condemned as sordid places, where lower class men, especially immigrants, fought. By attending a fight, people revolted against authority and mainstream society and were part of illicit prizefighting. Stag at Sharkey's, with its energetic, variegated strokes, reverberates with the public contentions about boxing during this time. Pres Teddy Roosevelt, who boxed while in school, supported boxing as a healthy and manly sport while railing against prizefighting as brutal, degrading, and led to moral corruption. The 2 almost nude males literally take center stage. The fighter's power over his own body and his attempt to overpower another was seen as natural masculine preoccupations. Masculinity was tied to physical form so great anxiety surrounded the male body. The concern for male potency, and the perception of sports as a generator of virility and endurance, helped to reinforce and expand interest in boxing. Boxing rings were stages on which male bodies were displayed as objects for admiration. The agile bodies were admired for their muscularity, order, tautness, and vigor. Bellows' slashing brushstrokes, themselves a violent act, magnify boxing's anxiety and vehemence toward the perfected body. The brutal brushstrokes combined with the fighters' extended limbs, exaggerate boxing as a muscular primal performance. The legs, ribs, backs, and arms of Bellows's fighters are stressed and stretched and their indistinct faces are a mass of flesh and blood. The spectators are just as important as the fighters in the ring. They encourage their favorite fighter and react to and with the punches and so boxing, as a demonstration of male strength, belongs to the audience as much as to the fighters. Haywood also says that the struggle of 2 boxers engaged and on display magnified the tensions and private desires between men. Boxing functioned as an agent for maintaining and reinforcing the ideology of the dominant, virile male. In the painting, the boxers' flesh is exposed, except for the barely dressed groin. In boxing, the groin is sacred because it is an area that marks both anxiety and pleasure. In Stag at Sharkey's, the libidinal powers propelling the boxers are emphasized by the accent on this region: one of knees points at his opponent's groin. Boxing centers around anxiety of masculine adequacy and demonstration of male potency but the homoeroticism that boxing attempts to escape is inescapably built into the action. Men are in contact and combat and they pose, posture, and punch for the pleasure and thrill of other men.

Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, Self-Portrait with Two Pupils, Marie Gabrielle Capet and Marie Marguerite Carreaux de Rosemond, 1785

Compared to Gentileschi's self-portrait, this one is much "busier," but it is a "combined" portrait like Gentileschi's, but this time it is a combo of a self-portrait and a group portrait. Leyster wanted to show off her skills and L-G's self-portrait acts much in the same way. Like Gentileschi and Leyster, Labille-Guiard was faced with many challenges because of her gender--many of the women artists were pitted against each other and crass rumors circulated that L-G was having an affair with the man who became her 2nd hubby (he was "touching up" both L-G and her paintings). Labille-Guiard's father, in contrast to Gentileschi's, was not an artist. In 1648, the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture was founded in Paris to teach and train artists. This was a place where artists were trained to work in a particular style. Training at the academy was rooted in the classical aesthetic and especially in figure drawing. After admittance, students spent years drawing from plaster casts of sculpture and after mastering that, they could draw from life, from nudes. And only after entirely mastering drawing were they allowed to put paint to canvas by studying with master painters. Regulations were put in place that ensured only academically trained artists could receive commissions from the government, be court painters, or teach at the academy. To even get into the academy, a prospective student had to have a recommendation from the academy's masters. Students at the academy wanted to win the Prix de Rome, a scholarship that allowed them to travel from Paris to Rome to study for five years. Art was shown publicly only at the annual Salon, a public exhibition of art at the Louvre in Paris, and the same folks who controlled the academy controlled the Salon—so, artists did not have a chance to exhibit, unless they played by the rules and pleased the academy. And they had a better chance of getting into the academy if they created certain types of art. In France at the academy, there was a hierarchy of genres. At the top of the list with the most prestige and status was history painting, which are depictions of religious, mythological, allegorical, historical, and literary subjects. Followed by portraiture, genre, landscape, and still life. The more perceived intellectual content a work of art required, the more status it held. The system tightly controlled the type of art made, which had to suit a very specific classical aesthetic. The system also controlled the artists and where they could work and controlled where and what art was exhibited. Regulations at the French Academy limited the number of women artists who could be admitted to just four per year, but even if they got in, aspects of academic training were completely closed to them, by virtue of their gender—they could not draw from the nude or dissect cadavers to learn anatomy. Adélaïde Labille-Guiard was one of the women painters who did receive acceptance to the academy. She had no artists in her family, but her neighbor was a miniaturist and she was apprenticed to him. She joins the painter's guild in Paris, but the government shuts down the guild, so she learns how to paint in oils so she can apply to the French Academy—and her oil-painting teacher recruits friends of his in the Royal Academy to order portraits from her to help her get in—and she does! She's admitted to the academy in 1783 and exhibits her work at the annual Salons. She specializes in portraiture. This combined self-portrait and group portrait makes a statement about how she perceived the world of art making. She shows this self-portrait at the 1785 Salon. In the portrait, we see the artist in a self-portrait at work in front of a canvas. She is holding her palette with other tools essential to her painting. She shows herself at work, trying to show herself as a creator, as a professional. But, she's not wearing clothes she would be sporting if she was painting—she's fancy—she wears silk and a straw hat, showing off her ability to paint silk-satin, a very complex texture—she even shows the reflection of her dress in the floor below. And this statement of status economically and as a creator is magnified by her inclusion of two of her female students. In 1780, even before she joined the Academy, she started teaching female pupils—so she is not just showing us her success, but theirs as well—as she created the painting, so she created them. She presents herself not just as a talented painter, but also as an effective teacher—who makes artists in her own image—they look like triplets! Labille-Guiard makes an effective visual supporting the abilities of women artists and advocating for their place in the academic system as students and eventually as teachers like her. In 1790, Labille-Guiard stood up in front of the Academy and argued passionately for lifting the cap on women artists who were allowed entrance to the academy each year. Her petition was denied, and women were barred from entrance to the academy until the late nineteenth century. But Labille-Guiard's mentorship of other aspiring women artists and membership in the academy helped to pave the way for the increasing numbers of women artists who would enter the profession through alternative paths in the nineteenth century. Art historian Laura Auricchio has written extensively on Labille-Guiard and this painting. Auricchio asserts that while the painting echoes old master traditions, she also drew on an uncommonly wide range of sources and genres in an effort to picture herself to the best advantage and tinges the painting with sexuality and commerce. The composition evokes the effect of a luxury boutique, as it calls out for admiration by spectators and the financial support of paying clientele. The self-portrait also played an important role in her attempt to make the most of her fraught position as a professional woman artist. Auricchio argues that this painting was meant to create publicity and clients for L-G--creating a new and original mode of self-representation that could engender discussion and appeal to prospective patrons so made it full-length portrait and group portrait made it more like a history painting. The iconographic complexity and ambiguity that takes place was also meant to be intriguing to the viewer. Work in progress could be the self-portrait itself, she may be painting her students, or she's painting an unseen person or group. Viewers become the models as we approach the painting--it generates clients as we view the painting. Auricchio argues that bidding for commissions in a forum whose structure reproduces the persuasive display of a shop window, L-G was perhaps following in the steps of her father who owned a fashionable women's clothing store--the painting conjures a cornucopia of visual treats whose overabundance calls attention to the notion of display (various objects and skills, props, textures/materials, illusion of depth, etc.). Additionally, the elaborately clothed but revealed body of the artist engages in a similar kind of display (and even more striking against students' more demure clothes). Her appearance even allies her with the fashion plate because of the latest styles and the poses--lots of elite audiences looked at these and her indecorous display could be justified by using these as templates. The self-portrait also deals with notions of gendered virtue--she balances bold professional claims (masculine) against signs of virtuous femininity. The two sculptures= evoke antiquity and Neoclassicism (masculine) and paragone as painter whose oils rival sculpture and places her within lineage of artist who did this (masculine) but filial piety with bust by Pajou of her father and sexual purity with one of Houdon's vestal virgins and maternity with relationship with her 2 students.

Judith Leyster, Self-Portrait, 1633

Dutch Baroque painter Judith Leyster takes a different route to become an artist and joins her local painting guild and takes students herself—the social liberality of the Dutch Republic made this possible for her, as her gender would have precluded guild membership in other countries. Unlike Gentileschi, she did not have a painter for a father and we don't know how she received training. Like Gentileschi, Leyster paints herself close up to the picture plane (foreshortening again), but Leyster is looking out at the viewer as she pauses painting. For women during this time, being a painter was unusual. Judith Leyster, however, was a working artist at the age of eighteen. She became the first successful woman painter in the Netherlands during the height of Dutch art, known as the Dutch Golden Age. She taught students while running her own workshop and selling her works. Leyster specialized in genre scenes, along with portraits and still lives. Judith Leyster was also the first woman member of the Haarlem painters' guild which was dominated by men. Unfortunately after her death, her artistic reputation became nonexistent and this painting was misattributed to Frans Hals. In this painting she is showing off her skills. She painted herself in a huge lace collar and silk sleeves which would have been extremely expensive and probably her best clothes. It is unlikely that she ever actually painted wearing these. Like most sitters for portraits, she wanted to be shown at her best. They also allowed her to show off her skill at depicting the different textiles. On the easel there is a laughing fiddler in progress, a typical example of the sort of genre painting subject she mostly painted.Continuing in the tradition of sixteenth-century artists who pushed to have painting seen as a profession as opposed to a craft, Leyster chose to depict herself wearing lace cuffs, rich fabric and a huge collar, which would not have been suitable for painting, but instead draw attention to her wealth and success. She also portrayed raw paint on her palette. This demonstrates her skill as an artist because she carefully placed painted raw paint on her palette. In doing this, she both distinguished herself from less skilled artisans and showcased her technical abilities. While it is unclear whether Leyster studied under Hals, the loose brush strokes and casual pose echo his stylistic choices. Although this is a self portrait of the artist, it is a unique approach to a self portrait. Leyster painted herself but not just herself. Judith Leyster painted herself doing what she is good at. She shows herself working on a figure who appears in another surviving painting of hers, The Merry Trio. Similar to other paintings of hers, Leyster's self-portrait has a momentary quality to it—she is turned partially to the viewer with her lips parted as if to speak. Leyster also paints herself with her arm propped up resting on the chair that mimics the casual and free confidence she had in her skill. She also is looking towards the viewer, as if to invite them into her studio. This, along with the fistful of brushes and inclusion of the fiddler from her later painting The Merry Trio, suggest that this piece was calculated to advertise her abilities. This is also another way of the artist letting the viewers know that she was capable of creating a portrait as well as creating genre scenes.

Gustave Caillebotte, Man at his Bath, 1884

Ideas of masculinity and historical context also surround Caillebotte's Male Bather, a painting of an unheroic, unidealized male nude in a contemporary setting performing an everyday action. A man is drying himself, presumably after having just gotten out of the large metal tub in the right side of the composition. His clothes are folded and placed on the chair and his boots are on the floor by the chair. A mat is by the tub, but the man has still left wet footprint tracks on the wood floor. A crumpled white nightshirt/towel/robe is on the floor. Interestingly, the man is shown from behind rather than from the front, with his buttocks, legs, and shoulders visible. In the late 1800s, the subject of bathing or nude grooming was usually associated with the female nude. It challenged the gender norms of the time, showing the male nude in a domestic setting, one that's typically aligned with femininity. The realism and contemporary setting also eschewed the priorities of artists who painted academic male nudes. The painting was shown in 1888 but it wasn't received well and was removed. Tamar Garb writes about Male Bather in her essay "Gustave Caillebotte's Male Figures: Masculinity, Muscularity and Modernity." Garb argues that Male Bather is one of the most unconventional images of the human body created in the nineteenth century because of the way he rendered the male body unlike his contemporaries and predecessors. Muscular and vigorous, the assertive masculinity of the figures belies their insertion into what had conventionally been perceived as a female environment. Historically, men were more likely to be placed in settings that enhanced their masculinity rather than threatening to undermine it. Naturalism posed a threat to heroic masculinity, depriving it of its conventional props and epic significance. Garb argues that when the male artist confronts the male body in the assertively contemporary setting that naturalism demands, his own subjectivity (his own psychic and social position) is as visibly on display as that of the model. Garb writes about some of the expectations that surrounded males and masculinity in nineteenth-century France. Masculinity in the 1870s and 80s was fraught, especially because the French had just lost the Franco-Prussian War and fears about the emasculation of France reached a crescendo. The clothing of urban males insulated them and made them feel protected against scrutiny and emasculation. As a bachelor and childless man who performed non-physical work, Caillebotte was a deviant and non-productive male, one whose masculinity always remained in question. Garb states that the ease with which this man occupies the space, his flagrantly displayed bottom and glimpsed genitals, make him appear manly, and yet the question of his masculinity remains laden with anxiety, especially because of the vulnerable view of his backside. The buttocks is problematic because it is a part of the male body that is penetrable and symbolically feminine.

Jan Vermeer, The Geographer, 1668-69

Jan Vermeer, a contemporary of Nicolaes Maes, was also known for his genre scenes. The Geographer, only 1 of 3 paintings signed and dated by Vermeer, is closely related to The Astronomer--the two may be pendants. The geographer is in an active stance and holds dividers. He also wears a Japanese-style robe. Martha Hollander, in "Vermeer's Robe: Costume, Commerce, and Fantasy in the Early Modern Netherlands," writes that the japon were first presented annually by Japanese shoguns to Dutch East India Company officials and were then made available as Western copies. In art, forms of Asian dress appear in portraits of prominent men and in genre images of scholars and scientists. Therefore, Vermeer and others developed a generic form of costume specifically for portraying men of learning. The type of the robed distinguished man offers a fantasy of class, intellect, and materialism. Hollander argues that its representation in art creates an interplay between exotic consumption and artistic invention, fuelled by the unprecedented power of global trade. The geographer is surrounded by maps, charts, books, a cross-staff, an oriental carpet, and a globe. Vermeer made several changes to enhance the energy of the painting: the man was looking down rather than curiously looking out of the window, the dividers were originally vertical not horizontal, and a sheet of paper was originally placed on the small stool at the lower right. The globe is turned toward the Indian Ocean, where the Dutch East India Company was active. Some scholars believe that the model for The Geographer and The Astronomer was Anthonie van Leeuwenhoek, a contemporary of Vermeer who was described as being skilled in navigation, astronomy, mathematics, philosophy, and natural science. A later painting by a different artist of Leeuwenhoek looks very similar to Vermeer's figure. In a way, then, The Geographer is a hybrid genre image in that it may also have elements of portraiture.

Frédéric Bazille, Fisherman with a Net, 1868

Like Man at his Bath, Bazille chose to paint the male main figure mostly from behind performing an everyday act. However, Bazille situates his male nude in an outdoor setting. Bazille, who was studying to be a doctor before becoming an artist, wanted to demonstrate his capability as a figure painter. Both male figures in the painting seem to have "perfect" proportions and the contours of their bodies are sharply defined. Bazille also accurately portrays a sense of depth in the setting and lighting. The figures are outside but are in a shaded area, allowing Bazille to show his skill at depicting natural light and how it filters through the canopy of trees. The male nude in the foreground who the viewer mostly sees from the rear holds a net, which he is preparing to cast into the river. Montpellier and Montpellier in the 1830s forbade male bathing at the River Lez. This painting was rejected by the Salon.

Giorgione, The Tempest, 1506-08

Some people had villas on the mainland (Venito) to escape. Interested in painting landscapes because they don't have much of it on islands. Everything centered on water. Light and water with reflection, lighting, and color. Brush strokes more open. More atmosphere, something similar to sfumato. Earthier colors. The Tempest inaugurates the long Venetian tradition of painterly colore (color) as the dominant expressive element in painting, eventually embodied by Giorgione's colleague Titian. Opposed to the Tuscan tradition of disegno (design) based on rigorous preliminary drawings for finished paintings, technical examinations of The Tempest's canvas reveal only minimal sketches. Giorgione employed a largely improvisational approach.Renaissance painting commissioned by the Venetian noble Gabriele Vendramin. The meaning of the scene remains elusive. On the right a woman sits in an awkward pose breastfeeding a baby. She's been described as a gypsy since around 1530 and looks out at the viewer. A man, possibly a soldier, stands across from the woman with a contrapposto pose and he carries a staff/pike. He looks in the direction of the woman and smiles. The two figures are secondary compared to the emphasis placed on the landscape--the landscape is not just a backdrop, it is one of the earliest paintings where landscape dominates. As the title suggests, it looks like a storm is coming--even looks like lightning. Subdued colors and soft lighting. Lots of blues and greens. There's a town in the background, closer to where the storm is brewing and ruins are on the left side. There is no contemporary textual explanation for The Tempest, and ultimately, no definitive reading or interpretation. To some it represents the flight into Egypt; to others, a scene from classical mythology (possibly Paris and Oenone; or Iasion and Demeter) or from an ancient Greek pastoral novel. According to the Italian scholar Salvatore Settis, the desert city would represent Paradise, the two characters being Adam and Eve with their son Cain: the lightning, as in ancient Greek and Hebrew times, would represent God who has just ousted them from Eden. Others have proposed a moral allegorical reading, or concluded that Giorgione had no particular subject in mind. X-ray analysis has shown that instead of the male figure, G had originally painted another nude female figure. In his article, "Landscape and Lyricism in Giorgione's Tempesta," Dan Lettieri acknowledges the mystery that surrounds this painting. Lettieri, however, argues that an interpretation begins with Jacopo Sannazaro's Arcadia, a romance published twice during Giorgione's lifetime. Other scholars have focused on the relationship between Arcadia and The Tempest by citing Sannazaro's use of landscape, the amorous themes, and how they parallel Giorgione's visual imagery. Lettieri is more concerned with Chapter and Eclogue 7 and how they relate to Giorgione's painting. Lettieri sees direct correspondences with Sannazaro's prose and poetry and The Tempest: a young man in the countryside away from a city, a staff that could belong to a shepherd, stillness but also a storm in the background, the man gazing off and seeing a woman before him. This woman, because of the text and by looking at older artworks that have similar iconography, may be Mother Earth. The inclusion of a storm and ruins is new though and Lettieri thinks they may descend from the elegiac tradition Petrarch, who held a pessimistic view of romance (and unrequited love in the story of Arcadia and mood of the protagonist echoed in stormy weather and ruins). By looking at another image from around the same time that deals with love, Lettieri argues that Giorgione has included the lightning bolt instead of an arrow of Amor to evoke the physical presence and passions of Amor. Additionally, in the Renaissance, ruins served as a symbol of melancholy. The dark pool in the foreground may deal with one of the protagonist's companions, the lovelorn Clonico who implores the earth and the sky (lightning) to end his suffering. The female figure that was painted over may also deal with a different companion, Carino, who invokes nymphs to hear his lament and to attend his suicide. Though Lettieri provides no reasoning as to why the nymph was painted over. Finally, Lettieri connects the painting's subject to Giorgione's life: Giorgione was described by Vasari as having a love affair with a woman from whom he contracted the plague and it seems like there are some similarities between the man in The Tempest and a self-portrait.

Nicolaes Maes, The Eavesdropper, 1657

The Eavesdropper by Maes is one such example of a genre scene that has hidden symbols that convey a deeper meaning. Between 1655-57, Nicolaes Maes produced at least 6 innovative genre scenes where the main subject is an eavesdropper. The eavesdropper from 1657 is most likely the last one made in this series, the largest, and the most ambitious. Maes' domestic subjects, accurate renderings of interiors, and expressive use of light and dark influenced many of his contemporaries in the Dutch Republic. A group of figures sit at a table in a room upstairs and are waiting to be served. Meanwhile, the lady of the house, wearing a fur-trimmed red velvet jacket and holding an empty wine glass in her hand, looks out at the viewer and holds one finger up to her lips, telling the viewer to be quiet and making the viewer complicit in the act. She is leaning forward to spy on her maidservant who is with a man, and thus shirking her responsibilities, on the lower side of the right part of the composition. The viewer also catches a glimpse of the kitchen where the cat is running wild and eating the prepared food. In almost every one of Maes' genre scenes, including the 1657 Eavesdropper in the far right, almost directly across from the lady of the house, there's a detailed map. Most of these wall decorations display the proud geography of the Netherlands, including its fragile coastline won from the North Sea. These omnipresent maps are analogies for Maes's own art, as he discovers interior worlds just as cartographers chart the outer world. In her article "The Divided Household of Nicolaes Maes," Martha Hollander writes that all of the eavesdropper paintings are guided by the principle of the division of the domestic interior into several spaces set off by dramatic chiaroscuro and touches of bright color. Hollander argues that, through this series, Maes explores the relation between servants and employers by describing the household as a cluster of territories. Along with this division of space, there are a number of motifs with sexual connotations to enrich the drama. Hollander gives another reason for the map: the map, along with the man's coat and sword propped on the chair underneath the map, are balanced by the coat that hangs on the opposite side of the composition. The coats and the sword point to a male presence, and a visiting one at that. The motif of a discarded coat and sword suggests a man disarming himself for sexual pleasure. Also, the cat in the kitchen is eating a roast fowl, a popular symbol for seduction. Hollander also asserts that the pictorial demarcation of the household into spaces that showcase different kinds of behavior suggest the social implications of the actual spaces of domestic life and make us consider the tension between private and public spaces, between secrecy and display. The precariousness of feminine experience is ultimately expressed in the tension between central and ancillary spaces. Maes assigns his young woman to a transitional zone. Poised between the rooms above and below, the lady of the house is literally descending to the level of her maid, who is, in a sense, her other half. Displayed in the doubled spaces are her alternatives, twin aspects of feminine experience.

Élisabeth Louise Vigée-LeBrun, Self-Portrait, 1790

V-LB was admitted to the Royal Academy at the same time as L-G. Unlike L-G, her father was a minor artist. She became famous as Queen Marie-Antoinette's court painter. This portrait was painted in Rome after her swift departure from France at the onset of the French Revolution. She sits in a relaxed pose at her easel and is positioned slightly off center. She wears a white turban and a fashionable dress with a ruffled collar. She also wears a red ribbon belt. She holds a paintbrush to her work in progress--probably a portrait of Marie-Antoinette. She cradles more brushes and a palette in her other arm.

Ziggurat of Ur, Iraq, Ancient Near East—Sumerian, 2100-2050 BCE

the ziggurat is a large religious structure that was surrounded by an extensive complex of administrative buildings. The Sumerian culture was complex--they were able to engage in large-scale, coordinated building projects like the ziggurat. The project required significant investment of time and funds and advanced planning and organization to produce such a complex, which also tells us that they had a bureaucracy, and enough trade to require government intervention and regulation. Religion and political structure are entirely intertwined in Ur. The temple complex was a site of commercialism and accounting, as farmers would bring their products to the complex and present them to both the city and the deity. The ziggurat is made of mud brick, not stone, as mud brick was a more available building material in this area than cut stone. Some of the mud bricks used at the site would have been fired in a kiln so that they would be more resistant to moisture, but most would have been laid out in the sun to dry and become hard. Each of the mud bricks used at the site is about the size of a three-ring binder about 12 inches on each side and a couple of inches thick. It is a solid mud brick platform with specially designed drainage channels lined with the fired bricks intended to direct water away from the structure so it would be less likely to crumble over time. Its corners are oriented to the cardinal directions and is the highest point in the area. Essentially, it is like a built/constructed mountain, an artificial platform reaching into the sky. It has axial symmetry extending from the base of the ramp up to the top of the structure. At the top of the structure is the cella, a small space intended for religious worship. Originally, there may have been more than one structure on the top of the ziggurat, but none would have been very large and all would have been rather dark and small. The strong axis moving up the structure gives us a pretty good clue that it was intended for processions. If we look at the top of the structure at the cella, the small dark area and the destination of the procession, we can tell that it was not intended for large groups of people to gather together and worship. Rather, it was intended for a small elite group. The ziggurat visualizes the social hierarchy of Ancient Near Eastern society, as priests, nobles, and the ruler may have been allowed to have access to the cella, but regular people were not afforded that privilege—they are down at the bottom of the structure, at the bottom of that hierarchy. It's a solid mud-brick platform, a sacred mountain form, and many early cultures built structures on top of high places because doing so brings worshippers closer to the heavens and closer to deity. The temple is home for a deity, like a bridge between the heavenly realm above and the earth realm below. The cella space at the top of the ziggurat, an artificial sacred mountain, provided an in-between space where the deity could come and inhabit, and man could communicate with or access deity. Thus, the design of the structure shows us how it was used in processions, visualizes the social hierarchy of society in Ur with a handful of elites able to access the most sacred location, and demonstrates their belief that deity could come down and commune with man in an elevated space between earth and heaven.

Anna Valdez, Self-Portrait in Studio, 2019

Jumping forward to contemporary works, as with the previous self-portraits, Valdez shows herself painting and in this case, she's in her studio. However, more emphasis seems to be placed on the studio and its objects, as the viewer only catches a glimpse of the artist. Includes her cat, herself, mirror, her plants, textiles, studio necessities, skulls and shells, venus, note to self, and Velazquez book. Her vibrant pieces probe further into Valdez's daily practice of observation and documentation. At once rooted in art-historical practices while also remaining faithful to the present moment. Flora and fauna spill from her larger-than-life canvases, punctuated by found objects, carefully placed and arranged from around the studio. Strewn throughout these compositions is the recent addition of her very own hand-painted ceramic vases and flowerpots, many of which have been thoughtfully displayed alongside their two-dimensional counterparts. The works function both as still life and self-portrait, offering vantage into Valdez's daily practice and the objects which inform it. This self-referential painting- within-a-painting nods at the time-honored tradition of oil painters breaking the fourth wall while subtly hinting at a more modern practice of image-viewing and media consumption. The careful consideration of each detail--each hand-mixed oil paint, every carefully composed vignette--invites the viewer into the artist's studio and practice of close observation. In her work, she considers the notion of collective consciousness and the traditions and visual symbols of a community. "I am working on various narratives that investigate my own traditions and history through a visual format," she says. The large 6 x 6-foot painting that's up right now at Untitled, is an actual self-portrait in the studio which is literally an autobiographical piece because I painted myself physically into the picture. My figure takes up a small amount of space in painting, and I'm faceless, my clothing is black because I wanted my form to recede into the background. I wanted the idea of the whole studio to be the actual portrait. I think that painting sums up a lot of what my subject is about. You don't even have to put the figure in it-I just wanted to be a little more obvious this time. We're putting artwork out there that's generated through our lens and our experiences and what we think about-so it's all self-portraiture in some way. Valdez's paintings depict a contemporary setting steeped in a vocabulary informed by the past. An artist's artist, she admires and emulates great painters, famous and not-so, from across time: Henri Matisse, Paul Gauguin, Lois Dodd, Joan Brown, Warren Brandt. In Study-ing, Valdez directly points out some of these influences through the many art history books littered across the foreground. However, even without the books, her handling of space links her to some of the modernists she admires. By playing with foreshortened angles and conflating different views, Valdez reveals that understanding space is more than mastering perspective. Story of who people are based on their objects (goes along with archaeology).

Palazzo della Signoria (Palazzo Vecchio) and the Piazza della Signoria, Florence, 1330

Later on, the Italians were also very intentional with the spaces in which they built and how their structures created unity and coherence. In this section, I'll focus on the exterior of the Palazzo Vecchio in the 13th and 14th centuries, before the auditions and transformations of later centuries, and the Piazza della Signoria's form and relationship to its environment. The Palazzo della Signoria/Palazzo Vecchio is the town hall of Florence, Italy. The Italians chose to place the town hall away from old wealthy families and out of the center of the city for a piece of land that was easy to get to and wasn't costly because it was received via guasto. It is polygonal because they wanted to use up as much room as possible while still being somewhat exact. The neighborhood was densely built up, surrounded by important streets, and there was no big square. The tall building uses yellow sandstone masonry and rustication to create a facade of strength and create dramatic light and shadow. There are few openings on the ground story but fancier church-like windows on upper stories and windows in front of the tower aren't real. The way the floors look on the outside don't necessarily match up with how they are on the inside. Masonry staircases were placed outside with big landings for public ceremonies. It's surrounded by battlements that project outwards and corbels, machicolations, arches. Interior walkway within battlements and can walk on top. The tower projects outwards with battlements, columns, bells, heraldic lion, and first clock of the city. So, it includes lots of military elements (like battlements) to heighten the idea of strength and also elements of palaces (arcades). Heraldic emblems were all over. The Piazza della Signoria is the L-shaped square in front of the town hall. The architects had to work around pre-existing buildings and had to deal with the Palazzo Vecchio's irregular courtyard and the tower that jutted out. Thus, the palazzo had to be made into an L-shape rather than a perfect square. The palazzo is related to the building because the dimensions were dictated by how scholars and architects perceived vision--people see out 90 degrees without tilting their heads. The commune slowly took over the surrounding buildings to create the palazzo. As Marvin Trachtenberg writes, the trajectory goes as follows: the structure is built, the space around the building opens up, regularization occurs, and then construction. In the piazza, the streets were eventually widened for better views of the town hall, the fronts of the surrounding structures were regularized, and the projecting balconies were removed to highlight the monumentality of the square and town hall, creating a panorama of governmental buildings. Additionally, the building and piazza relate to Florence because they show the magnificence of the city and the main roads surrounding the palazzo lead to other important parts of the city.

Emperor Maximilian I of Habsburg, various projects (1500s)

Like Louis IX, Maximilian I was known for numerous projects that he commissioned in the early 1500s that served as propaganda. However, unlike Louis and the S-C, I will not be focusing on architectural projects led by Maximilian. First, Maximilian I commissioned Freydal, an uncompleted woodcut illustrated narrative intended to be a romantic allegorical account of Max's own participation in a series of jousting tournaments in the guise of the tale's hero, Freydal. Freydal joins the tournaments to prove that he's worthy to marry a princess, who is a fictionalized representation of Max's late wife, Mary of Burgundy. Continuing on, Max composed Theuerdank, poems accompanied by 118 woodcuts that tell the fictionalized and romanticized story of his journey to marry Mary. Der Weisskunig is a chivalric novel and Max's idealized autobiography with 251 woodcuts. Christopher Wood, in "Maximilian I as Archaeologist'' mentions these commissions and several more. Wood demonstrates how Maximilian engaged with material relics of ancient Rome and medieval Germany. Maximilian, according to Wood, was so fascinated by these artifacts because they served to guide him with his own monument creations. For example, Maximilian grew interested in the Holy Robe, and two woodcuts of Maximilian with a constructed version of the Holy Robe were created, one for the Weisskunig and the other for the Triumphal Arch. Both woodcuts show the robe as a complete garment, although the artifact cannot have been larger than a fragment. Wood writes about Maximilian's many projects, not all of which, like the equestrian portrait and the round temple-like monument to German emperors, were fully realized. He wanted medals with his image on them. The Genealogy is a series of woodcut portraits of Maximilian's ancestors that goes back to Noah to give the emperor's genealogy a concrete reality. They're portraits that offer no reliable information about what the subjects looked like or how they dressed. The Genealogy was meant to look like the mere culminations of continuous traditions, the passive, unavoidable summations of old truths. The printed Triumphal Procession and Triumphal Arch were Maximilian's most ingenious accommodations of ancient formats to modern technology. Teams of artists working over a period of a decade produced these huge and complex syntheses of biographical, genealogical, heraldic, and mythographic material according to programs devised by Max's historiographer. The Triumphal Procession is made up of 148 woodcuts running to a length of 55 meters and was inspired by Mantegna's Triumph of Caesar. The Triumphal Arch comprises 192 woodcuts and covers an area of 7 square meters. Its model may have been the Arch of Septimius Severus but it's filled with images of Max and his family, portraits of ancestors and saints (for which he sought out historical models), battle scenes, coats of arms, and archaeological and architectural details. Max also made plans for an extravagant tomb project that would've included over 40 life-size bronze statues of princely forebears, 34 busts of Roman emperors, and 100 small statues of the Habsburg Saints. According to Wood, Maximilian's monumental projects were not only supposed to be self-glorifying. Rather, they also insinuate themselves into old legends and traditions and simply become their latest installments.

Peter Paul Rubens, The Arrival of Marie de' Medici at Marseilles, Marie de Medici Cycle, Flemish Baroque, 1622-25

Unlike Maximilian's various commissions that were meant to self-glorify and place themselves in line with Roman and German traditions, Marie de Medici commissioned a series of paintings by Peter Paul Rubens to show her power but more importantly, to legitimize her role as queen. Marie de' Medici, married to King Henry IV of France, commissioned the Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens to paint a series of scenes depicting Marie's life and her husband's life to be hung in Luxembourg Palace. In the end though, Rubens only completes the series on Marie. One of the paintings from this cycle is Marie de' Medici Arrives in Marseilles. This work depicts the first time Marie arrives in France so she can marry Henry. The viewer sees her safely arrive in Marseilles as she departs the extravagantly sculpted and gilded boat showcasing the Medici coat of arms with a Knight of Malta as her escort. In the water, three sea nymphs, two tritons, and Neptune, the king of the sea, help bring Marie safely and securely to France. The gangplank is covered in a red fabric, and the ladies in waiting are wearing fancy clothing. The allegorical figure of Fame is flying with trumpets while France is wearing armor covered in fleur de lis as she raises and opens her arms in welcome. The numerous French symbols are meant to establish good will and respect between Marie and the French people. This piece is significant because almost all of it was created because Marie wanted to promote herself as well as rewrite her history. In actuality, the trip was rough and she was not greeted warmly because she was a foreigner. The cycle as a whole is unique and important because there are not many prior examples of visual biographies of a female ruler.

Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, Portrait of Marie Antoinette with her Children, Neoclassicism, 1787

We will continue to examine art commissioned by political leaders by looking at another female ruler who used art to attempt to show her legitimacy to the throne. This large depiction of Queen Marie Antoinette is by Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, a female artist who was admitted to the Academy and became Marie Antoinette's official portrait painter. V-L was supposed to help the queen appear like a committed and loving mother, to make her approachable and like the women of France, instead of a privileged, out of touch, and foreign queen. Imbued with warm tones and luxurious textures, it shows the queen life-sized, dressed in a sable-lined red velvet gown, and seated with her youngest son on her knee. Her daughter leans lovingly on one arm, and her eldest son, the dauphin, stands on the right. An empty bassinet memorializes the baby girl who died while the painting was in progress. The painting is rich with references to religious and historical painting, each intended to resonate with French viewers of the time. On the advice of Jacques-Louis David, for instance, Vigée Le Brun used a triangular composition recalling Renaissance depictions of the Holy Family. She borrowed the red of the queen's dress from a portrait of Marie Leszczyńska, wife of Louis XV, who was beloved for her generosity and piety. Viewers familiar with Versailles might recognize, in the left background, the famed Hall of Mirrors: a tribute to Louis XIV, the first absolute monarch of France. An impressive jewellery cabinet in the shadows on the right is equally symbolic, referring to Cornelia, a citizen of ancient Rome, and mother to the politicians Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus. Faced one day with a visitor at her door selling jewellery, Cornelia famously brought out her children, revealing that they were her most precious treasures. Likewise, Vigée Le Brun signals that the queen's true jewels are her children. The work of art was an attempt to appeal to Enlightenment virtues to tamp down the negative press the queen received. This is shown at the 1787 Salon—but revolutionary fervor continues to build. During the French Revolution, the people of Paris go to Versailles, take custody of King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette, imprison them, and execute them.

Sainte-Chapelle, 1242-48

Similar to the Arch of Titus, the Sainte-Chapelle was erected by a ruler to demonstrate the ruler and the empire's power and wealth. The Sainte Chapelle is a royal chapel within the medieval Palais de la Cité, the residence of the French kings until the 1300s. It was commissioned by Louis the IX (9), King of France, as a private Chapel for his own worship services. Louis acquired Passion relics from Constantinople and had this Chapel built to hold the relics, which included the crown of thorns, one of the most important relics of all Christendom, and the nails used in the crucifixion of Christ. Sainte-Chapelle was not a public space--it was for the private use and display of the king. This structure distills very beautifully the essence of the Gothic style, creating what is a big Gothic reliquary that you can walk into. It has a lower level which helps to support the structure, and then the main sanctuary space is on the second level which is where you see the tall windows. It does not have any flying buttresses. Instead iron rods circle the structure camouflaged into it to support and hold it together. The network of thin buttresses that you see here on this end of the chapel are narrow, carefully placed buttresses on the exterior that are camouflaged on the interior, running on thin verticals between the windows on the interior of the chapel. When you enter the main space and look toward the altar end, the walls have dissolved into glass, like an extended and elongated clerestory made up of narrow lancet windows. The buttresses are camouflaged behind these supports, hidden to such a degree that you do not even notice them. Down at the far end of the structure is the reliquary where those very special relics would be kept in the structure that in essence is again like a built reliquary for them. In this image we look up at the vault: the pointed arch and rib vaulting, combining them in such a way that were able to create this intimate exceptionally special and sacred place for these relics and the private worship of the French King. We see the rose window here, and then the dazzling sea of lancet windows that create a treasure chest effect for the visitor. In her book The Sainte-Chapelle and the Construction of Sacral Monarchy: Royal Architecture in Thirteenth-Century Paris, Meredith Cohen provides an in-depth examination of the Sainte-Chapelle, 13th century Paris, and King Louis IX. Cohen argues that the concept of sacral kingship is conveyed by the architecture, decoration, and use of the chapel, leading to the advancement of Paris as a major cultural and religious center and Louis as a powerful and pious leader. Cohen begins her book by discussing the constructed image between the reigns of Philip August (Louis's grandfather) and Louis IX. Consisting of castles, towers, and urban works, the architecture of Philip Augustus projected an image of the king as a secular leader, meant to defend his subject and protect the church. Louis IX's monumental reliquary chapel transformed standard modes of royal representation as established by Philip Augustus. With its decorative motifs (gables, pinnacles, tracery, crockets), the Sainte-Chapelle aestheticized the royal residence, altering the defensive and administrative functionality of the Palais de la Cité. The chapel indexed multiple buildings and ideas: the Sacra Capella in Constantinople, the doppelkapellen (the bishop's chapel type), and other great churches. The selection of the bishop's chapel type and ecclesiatical decoration appropriated Church imagery into the royal domain and thus constituted an assertion of sacral kingship, which is deeply rooted in biblical precedent, specifically with Solomon's palace. The S-C didn't convey its position only visually; the notion of sacral kingship was also conveyed through the liturgy associated with feasts specially designed for the royal sanctuary. In them, sacred royalty was emphasized and Louis's kingship exalted. The acquisition of the crown of thorns gave the monarchy a physical justification for the comain to sacral kingship and was often exhibited as proof of Louis's chosen status. Cohen's goal was to explain how the S-C existed as a form of institutional representation and how it operated in ways that were beneficial for the monarchy. The fact that royal architecture under Louis IX had underlying political, propagandistic value does not negate it as an act of devotion or its religious function. Above all, Louis's architecture promoted sanctity, which issued from determination as much as devotion.

The creation of Spanish Inca, the 1530s-50s

An important piazza is also the focus of this paragraph, which is about Cuzco and the creation of the Spanish Inca. After all, social space is produced by society. Cuzco is a city in southeastern Peru and was the Inca imperial and sacred capital that was transformed into a Spanish colonial city during the 1530s through the 1550s. In his very recent book, Cuzco: Inca, Spaniards, and the Making of a Colonial City, Michael Schreffler, by analyzing varying 16th century texts (relaciones, legal documents, texts based on oral histories of native Andeans), focuses on architecture, the built space of Cuzco, and how the Spaniards' presence brought about change. Since its founding, the large plaza at Cuzco's core was an important public ceremonial setting and network for the Inca, and it also housed an image of the sun deity. The Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro and his company arrived in Cuzco in 1533. Four months later, Pizarro performed the ritual known as the Act of the Foundation in the plaza, formerly an important ritualistic area for the Inca. For the ceremony, and following antique and Iberian precedents, a picota, a wooden pillar linked to law and order, was installed in the plaza on top of the ushnu, the ceremonial platform where the image of the Sun deity was displayed. Pizarro even used his dagger to scrape the steps of the picota's ston platform and to carve some wood out of the picota. The text and ritualistic aspects of the Act of the Foundation began to establish Spanish Cuzco by assigning new functions and names to preexisting spaces and buildings, including the plaza. Therefore, the city, and the plaza specifically, were altered through the reading of a document, a public monument, and appropriation of important Inca customs and spaces by the Spanish.

Jack Smith, Mother Bathing Child, 1953 (Kitchen Sink Realism)

As with Ground Swell, there is a certain seriousness and gravity to Jack Smith's genre painting Mother Bathing Child. Mother Bathing Child is one of a series of paintings of the same subject all completed in 1953. Smith, after painting all of the series, destroyed the paintings except for this one. It is this particular theme which prompted the label of Kitchen Sink painting. The work is oil paint on board and entirely consists of varying browns and dark grays. The interior is very bare and so the focus is on the mother bathing her baby in a small sink. The woman, whose face and hands are painted in grays, looks sad and serious. Her baby is painted in browns, more like the interior around him/her and except for the left arm that is held out at an angle, the baby hangs limpy, almost as if he/she is lifeless. Like Courbet in France a century earlier, Smith turned to his own environment for his subject matter, "to make the ordinary miraculous." However, unlike Courbet, he claimed that his paintings' subject matter had nothing to do social commentary. Despite Smith's claim, many, like Juliet Steyn, think that the Kitchen Sink painters' celebration of the everyday does carry the implication of social and/or political statements. The Kitchen Sink artists said they wanted to simply paint what they saw around them, but experience and personal history cannot live outside discourse, history, and politics. For example, the paintings can cause people to revisit and think about domestic life. When exploring artworks, such as Mother Bathing Child, we should think about the normative family, the gendered division of domestic labor, take into account who is left out, and think about the fact that male artists are the main ones creating these representations of the home.

Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel Ceiling, 1508-12

Burke also writes about Michelangelo's Sistine ceiling in relation to procreation. Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling at the behest of Pope Julius II, but the large papal chapel was built between 1477-80 by Pope Sixtus IV. The ceiling's paintings form part of a program with the rest of the works in the chapel. The main parts of the ceiling are the 9 scenes from Genesis, particularly the Creation of Adam. The complex design also includes individual figures, clothed and nude, to demonstrate Michelangelo's skill. He painted the lunettes, the triangles, and the ceiling. The lunettes depict the ancestors of Christ and in the large pendentive is David and Goliath. The spine is all of the scenes from Genesis and the story of Noah. Old Testament prophets and sibyls are in the spaces between the triangles. In her section on the Sistine ceiling, Burke states that the ceiling is extremely important in the history of the nude. The Sistine ceiling is filled with unclothed bodies: naked men, women, and children. Nudes also play a large part in the central narrative scenes. Burke again brings in historical context and discusses the way in which Michelangelo's nudes led viewers to consider the potential perfection of mankind. The ignudi prompted the audience to see their perfect bodies as representing the divinity of humans. Again, the relationship between artmaking and procreation play a part here--Michelangelo perceived the perfect body in his mind, which echoes God's creation of the works and Michelangelo's creation of the figures and scenes on the ceiling. In fact, Michelangelo was nicknamed divine.

Paul Gauguin, Martinique Landscape, 1887

Gauguin, in contrast, wanted to escape France and in that way, it is more in line with the paintings by the Renaissance Venetian painters. Gauguin was in search of the primitive and wanted to escape from urban civilization, leaving his wife and kids behind. He spent about 4 months in Martinique, a French colony (summer and fall of 1887). This is the only landscape by Guaguin without people. Glowing colors convey the exotic character of the landscape. Visible brushstrokes but they fuse into flatter areas of color. Balanced composition and carefully structured. Fantasy—no treachery of the land. Volcano in background. Hatching technique. Slave labor here but never critically addressed. Sick a lot while he was here. In the essay "Gauguin and the Opacity of the Other: The Case of Martinique," Tamar Garb writes about Martinique Landscape and discusses the ways in which Gauguin constructed himself as a savage and a European and his identification with and distancing from the foreign places and peoples he painted and how his paintings reflect these ambiguities. In his paintings, Gauguin almost exclusively concentrates on African peasants and rural workers in his Martinique paintings, which is noteworthy because Martinique had a very diverse and mixed population. Gauguin's paintings create a mythic world, a rural paradise. Garb argues that there were many travel writings and images made about Martinique that Gauguin would've known, so he left France with a set of internalized images and stereotypes that affected his thinking and his paintings. In Martinique Landscape and others, he constructs a world where nature is abundant/plentiful and appears to nourish rather than enslave its docile inhabitants. But, the landscape was treacherous and threatening. While nature could be tamed through composition and people packaged in stereotypes, the anxiety of the white foreigner must've seeped into his paintings, despite their exotic charm. Perhaps its trace can be inadvertently found in the wriggling serpentine brushstrokes that make up Martinique Landscape and his other works created in Martinique.

Edward Hopper, Ground Swell, 1939

Ground Swell, by Edward Hopper, is not a work scene. Though it is hard work to navigate a sailboat, it seems like the people are out for leisure. However, like Courbet's painting, there is a sense of isolation that permeates Ground Swell. The painting depicts 4 young people, 3 men and 1 woman, on a sailboat in a light swell. The men are all shirtless and wear white pants and the woman wears a red kerchief in her hair, a red halter top, and dark pants. All of the figures are looking at and listening to the rocking ominous, dark buoy nearby. The sun shines bright and the painting, save for the buoy, is mostly made up of bright blues and whites. Despite this sunny atmosphere, isolation is a major theme of the painting. The boat is the only one in the ocean and none of the figures engage with each other. The dark buoy creates a sense of mystery and impending doom and the cirrus clouds that are far off in the distance may allude to a coming storm. In "Ground Swell: Edward Hopper in 1939," Alexander Nemerove examines the painting's connection with the political and cultural events of 1939 along with the personal significance of the painting for Hopper. Nemerov opens his essay by comparing Ground Swell to nautical paintings by Winslow Homer and Thomas Eakins--there are some similarities but the differences are more striking to Nemerov. In contrast to the paintings by Homer and Eakins, Ground Swell is solemn, meditative and has a looming figure, the bell buoy, that alludes to danger. Ground Swell is also similar to 2 more of Hopper's paintings from 1939: Bridle Path and Cape Cod Evening, both of which have ominous elements in them like Ground Swell. Nemerov argues that the idea of threat in Ground Swell may come from WWII and what was happening around the world in 1939, especially during the months in which Hopper worked on the painting. The title of the painting itself calls up a foreboding element that is happening far away but will eventually move closer. Americans, happily spending their free time with activities like sailing, were mostly unaware of the dark threat that loomed across the ocean. Nemerov cites two contemporary poems as possible direct sources for Ground Swell to connect the painting to WWII. The bell may bring about the feeling that not only is there a crisis beginning, but that there will also be lives lost. The piece is reminiscent of Nicolas Poussin's Arcadian Shepherds in which young people are contemplating a tomb. This is mimicked by the sailors in Ground Swell who are looking at the bell buoy, a sign of their mortality and mourning. Additionally, the work may also reference the great hurricane of 1938. Nemerov also posits that the painting may be about the radio, which was very popular by the end of the 30s. Hopper's figures in Ground Swell seem to be intently listening to the bell much like families and people would crowd around the radio. Also, "waves" is a word used with radio, and radio pioneer, Marconi, was an avid sailor and sent and received the first transatlantic wireless messages in Cape Cod. The bell and the radio were both major forms of mass communication in the 1930s and looked somewhat alike. In addition, Hopper painted Pretty Penny around the same time. The house in this painting was home of one of the most famous radio stars. Nemerov also studied the New York Movie by Hopper to see how the artist portrayed people and their relationships to mass media.

Alice Neel, Self-Portrait, 1980

In contrast to the other self-portraits studied in this essay, Neel is not idealized and is not overtly shown at work, rather she is shown holding a brush in one hand and a rag in the other. Neel studied at the Philadelphia School Design for Women and painted portraits in an expressionistic manner, one of the reasons why she was largely overlooked until about a decade before her death. This self-portrait, which took 5 years to complete, shows the artist at 80 years of age. She sits in a chair in her studio and is completely naked, with only her brush, rag, and glasses. Her white hair and sagging and wrinkled flesh show her age. She seems to look out at the viewer, but her expression is indiscernible--she may be bored, tired, or concentrating. This work was groundbreaking for Neel as well as for women artists: this was Neel's first self-portrait (she only painted one other) and very few precedents for naked female self-portraits exist. Unlike her previous work, this painting is a bolder and more intense challenge to the historical convention of idealized femininity. With indelicate strokes and patches of green and red, she frankly painted her sagging breasts and lumpy belly for everyone to see. Moreover, we know that this is a reliable representation because she painted herself in the mirror. Neel, a left-handed painter, holds the brush in her right hand in the painting, the mirror image of herself. Like Valdez, Neel is 'in dialogue' with art history. Rather than just having a one-way conversation and painting unique portraits, Neel participated in an exchange of ideas with art history, borrowing information from past works and in turn, offering her own suggestions. It is as if Neel, through this painting, is saying, or rather yelling multiple messages to art history, "Women can also be artists! Women can paint self portraits! Elderly women depicted nude can be considered art! I'm going to do it all!"

Berthe Morisot, The Wet Nurse and Julie, 1879

In her painting The Wet Nurse and Julie, Berthe Morisot, like Courbet, depicts a work scene. French artist Morisot painted women almost exclusively and at all stages of life. Her paintings indicate the temporality of immediacy and the continuous flow of everyday life. That immediacy and flow is sensed in the extreme brushiness of the painting. The background is hard to decipher from the foreground and the brushstrokes are active and sketchy. Linda Nochlin, in "Morisot's Wet Nurse: The Construction of Work and Leisure in Impressionist Painting," writes that The Wet Nurse and Julie is innovative in subject matter because it shows Morisot's own daughter being cared for by another woman, whose labor in turn gave Morisot time to paint. Two working women confront each other here, across the body of "their" child and the boundaries of class, both with claims to motherhood and mothering and both engaged in pleasurable activity that may be considered production in the literal sense of the word. The openness, the disembodiment, the reduction of figures may be signs of Morisot's conflicted identity as a devoted mother and professional artist. Nochlin discusses how many Impressionist paintings showing women at work, such as paintings of barmaids and prostitutes, are usually classified as leisure scenes. Motherhood and the domestic labor of child care were excluded from the realm of work because they were unpaid--nurturing was seen as a natural function, not as labor. Therefore, the wet nurse, part of a large-scale industry in 1800s France, is an anomaly in the 19th century scheme of feminine labor--she's like a prostitute because she sells her body, but it is for a virtuous cause. Additionally, Nochlin goes on to argue that, due to deliberateness and visibility of brushstroke and color in her paintings, they are works about work.

I. M. Pei, Louvre Pyramid, commissioned 1984 and completed 1989

Like Tilted Arc, the Louvre Pyramid was controversial for numerous reasons, including how it interacted and affected the space in which it was built. However, the Louvre Pyramid was not taken down and is now an icon and symbol of France and of I.M. Pei. The Louvre Pyramid is a monumental glass and metal pyramid surrounded by 3 smaller pyramids in the main courtyard of the Louvre and was commissioned in 1984 by the President of France, Francois Mitterand. It was designed by the Chinese-American architect I. M. Pei, and the biggest pyramid serves as the main entrance to the Louvre Museum. The pyramid and the underground lobby beneath it were created because the Louvre's original main entrance could no longer handle the enormous number of visitors on an everyday basis. I.M. Pei's plan distributes people effectively from the central concourse to myriad destinations within its vast subterranean network. The construction of the pyramid triggered much debate. Critics of the work said the pyramid was unsuitable because of its ties to Egypt as a symbol of death, the pyramid was an immodest and pretentious project devised by Metterand, the pyramid should have been designed by someone who was Parisian or French, and the modernist style of the pyramid wasn't in accordance with the classic French Renaissance style of the Louvre. However, others have heralded the work as a technological tour de force and say that the pyramid's geometric formalism actually connects it to the Parisian cityscape, to structures like the obelisk at Place de la Concorde (which also ties to Egypt) and the Arc de Triomphe. French architectural history is also laden with references to the 1700s architects Boullee and Ledoux, who relied heavily on geometric forms, including pyramids. Additionally, the original buildings of the Louvre are visible through the pyramid due to the clear and colorless French glass used for the construction. Now, the Louvre Pyramid is a significant Parisian landmark and a celebrated part of the Parisian landscape. Thousands of people visit I. M. Pei's architecture each year.

Claude Monet, Le Quai du Louvre, 1867

Moving forward in time and to a different country, we now see a painting that is not in the countryside and is very much about Paris--its past and present. Monet had to get special permission from Louvre to set up there and paint from a window. 3 historic and pious buildings in the background/skyline—combining old and new. Equestrian portrait (Pont Neuf) of Henry XIV. Omnibus. Morris column for ads and a newspaper kiosk. New idea of advertising on buildings. 2 French flags.

Robert Mapplethorpe, Arnold Schwarzenegger, 1976

Musculature is also an important component in Robert Mapplethorpe's series of photos of Arnold Schwarzenegger. In the 1976 full-length black and white portrait photograph, the bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger is shown semi-nude, performing a body-building pose in the Mapplethorpe's studio. He is positioned to the right of the picture frame with his left hand clamped over his right wrist, allowing him to flex the muscles of his upper body. Schwarzenegger's weight is placed on his left leg, which is relatively relaxed, while the right side of his body is tense. The right side of his body is tilted slightly towards the viewer, emphasizing the musculature of his right bicep, thigh and calf muscles. Schwarzenegger poses in front of a blank white wall to the left of a large paisley-patterned curtain, balancing the composition. He gazes directly at the viewer with a serious expression. This is one of several photographs taken by Mapplethorpe in 1976 in which Schwarzenegger is shown in the same setting performing various body-building poses. Schwarzenegger emigrated to America from Austria in 1968 and won a variety of professional men's body-building contests. By positioning the bodybuilder within a studio setting next to a large curtain, Mapplethorpe makes reference, possibly ironically, to the nineteenth-century Western artistic tradition of representing the nude. In this tradition, the idealized male or female body was depicted either partially clothed or naked, often with drapery similar to that of the curtain in Mapplethorpe's photograph. As the critic Allen Ellenzweig writes: '[Schwarzenegger is posed] beside a fully curved drapery typical of decorative backdrops in the nude and still-life studies of the previous century.' Mapplethorpe's depiction of Schwarzenegger can be seen as both a 'homage and a parody', as Ellenzweig notes. Moreover, as the curator Christopher Bedford has argued, the homosexual artist has transformed a 'heterosexual male athlete into an object of his desire.' Mapplethorpe encourages the viewer to admire Schwarzenegger's self-created musculature and bodily excess. But he also seems to poke gentle fun at it by using the heavy curtain to mimic the dramatic curvature of the athlete's oversized body.

Attributed to Titian, Pastoral Concert, 1509-10

Pastoral Concert is also a Venetian painting that showcases landscape and like The Tempest, its exact meaning is unknown.The painting is understood to be a pastoral landscape in the Italian countryside. It is not explicitly stated or described by historical documents exactly where this painting is set. Still, as it comes from Venice, there is a high possibility in the Venetian countryside. Venetian painting's major specialty is landscape paintings, specifically idyllic landscapes. Titian highlights the landscape's rolling hills and water. In the countryside so maybe villa in the background. Earth tones except for man in red. Man in red with lute is in the center and sitting on the ground and wearing fancy clothes and is young. Man next to him isn't as wealthy because of his dress and barefoot so maybe local worker or peasant. Maybe trying to learn how to play or maybe romantic. Seated almost-naked woman holding flute. Another woman pouring water out. Maybe women are muses (water has to do with filling of inspiration) or has to do with passage of time. If muses, reference to antiquity. Contour lines made with shadows, not hard lines. May deal with pastoral poetry, like Arcadia and Virgil, so idyllic countryside/escape to perfection—see 2 different people from 2 different walks of life enjoying their time together.

Gustave Courbet, The Stone Breakers, 1849

Realism is connected to genre images because Realist paintings also monumentalize the average day. Although, Realist paintings tend to be larger than earlier genre paintings. Realism originated in France in the 1850s and 60s. Realism is about truth telling and shows aspects of contemporary life (un-idealized) but not over-sentimentalizing it. Uses dull, earthy, natural colors. French Realism aligned with Socialism so paintings have a political agenda. The Stone Breakers shows people in manual labor breaking stones, which is a task for the poor. The man on the right is old and on the left, the boy is too young for the labor. Full sun so looks hot and makes labor even more difficult. Courbet depicts figures who wear ripped and tattered clothing and the two stone breakers are set against a low hill of the sort common in the rural French town of Ornans, where the artist had been raised and continued to spend much of his time. The hill reaches to the top of the canvas everywhere but the upper right corner, where a tiny patch of bright blue sky appears. The effect is to isolate these laborers, and to suggest that they are physically and economically trapped. Additionally, Courbet's figures seem disjointed. Courbet wants to show what is "real," and so he has depicted a man that seems too old and a boy that seems still too young for such back-breaking labor. This is not meant to be heroic: it is meant to be an accurate account of the abuse and deprivation that was a common feature of mid-century French rural life. Broad brushstrokes which takes out sensuality and makes it look unfinished. Courbet quotation: "Show me an angel and I'll paint one." The painting was destroyed during WWII.

Artemisia Gentileschi, Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting, 1638-39

Self-portraiture gained prominence in the Renaissance and continued to be popular into the Baroque period, partially because of the widespread use of oil paint and easel painting. Gentileschi was trained by her artist father in his workshop in Rome--she wasn't allowed to make sketches in life-drawing classes because of her gender, so her work emphasizes depictions of female bodies, which she didn't necessarily need classes to learn about. Italian Baroque. Follower of Caravaggio--naturalism and tenebrism. She was raped by an artist brought in by her father and then he never married her so there was a trial in which she was tortured to get proof and he's convicted but the punishment never happened. This painting was probably produced during Gentileschi's stay in England between 1638 and 1639. It was in the collection of Charles I. That it is a self-portrait as well as an allegory was first proposed by Michael Levey in 1962, and has gained general acceptance. Abstract concepts like "Painting" were traditionally represented by female allegorical figures, and therefore the painting was not one that any male painter could present in the same way, as both self-portrait and allegory. The Self-Portrait was also influenced by the works of Cesare Ripa, most notably his Iconologia, in which he suggests how virtues and abstract concepts should be depicted, with human qualities and appearances. Ripa said, "Painting" should be shown as: "A beautiful woman, with full black hair, disheveled, and twisted in various ways (symbolizes the divine frenzy of the artistic temperament), with arched eyebrows that show imaginative thought, the mouth covered with a cloth tied behind her ears, with a chain of gold at her throat from which hangs a mask, and has written in front "imitation" (stands for imitation). She holds in her hand a brush, and in the other the palette, with clothes of evanescently covered drapery (alludes to painter's skills)." Other than the cloth tied around the mouth, Gentileschi follows this prescription quite accurately. Leaning outwards and actively painting. We see the tools of her trade, fine clothing, as she creates a work that shows her skill as an artist and her intellectual knowledge. Art historian Mary D. Garrard, known for her many contributions to feminist art-historical scholarship, has written a lot on Gentileschi, including the article "Artemisia Gentileschi's Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting." In this article, Garrard stresses Gentileschi's unique artistic achievement with this painting, especially since this kind of image (personification of painting as well as a self-portrait) was completely unavailable to male painters. In fact, Garrard explains that the female personification of painting didn't come into being until the painting was seen to involve inspiration and to result in a higher order of creation than the craftsman's product did (she stood as an abstract essence superior to the mere existence of artists, who were mostly male--art separate from the manual labor connected to its making). Direct personal identification with the elevated status of art was only possible for the male artist through indirect and sometimes awkward combos of attributes. In Gentileschi's self-portrait, the artist emerges forcefully as the living embodiment of the allegory--painter, model, and concept are one and the same, and the environment of the artist's studio is evoked by the barest of means. So engaged in the act of painting, she doesn't notice her gold chain slip aside her breast and her unruly hair also suggests that she's indifferent to her appearance while painting. Other scholars write that the self-portrait must have been dictated by a learned patron, but there's no evidence of this. Studying the painting along with Ripa's description shows that she made purposeful and selective use of the text. The color changes aren't just added to make it conform to the iconography, but they also reflect her use of Ripa's phrase as an opportunity to display the technical skill appropriate for Pittura herself. In contrast to the text, Gentileschi doesn't paint her skirt or feet, places herself in a foreshortened and active pose that prevents the viewer from seeing conventional markers of beauty, symmetry, or proportion, or even the arched eyebrows mentioned by Ripa. Find in Gentileschi's correspondence occasional expressions of a heightened sensitivity to conventional views of a woman's ability. As if to combat the misogynist idea of women as unintellectual, she depicts herself, the artist, as intensely and thoughtfully absorbed in her work.

Reclamation of the Forum Basin, 650-600 BCE

The "Romans," like the Sumerians, proved how connected and organized they were as a culture by certain projects that they spearheaded. In The Genesis of Roman Architecture, John North Hopkins researches Rome's early visual culture, its monuments, and its urban shifts, which have largely been left out of scholarship in favor of studying the Roman Republic and Imperial periods. Although much of archaic Rome is destroyed or has yet to be excavated, Hopkins starts his award-winning book by examining the beginnings of the city. Excavations provide evidence that distinct settlements were scattered along the Roman hills. Discoveries of burials, wells, post-holes, ceramics, and daub fragments show that, by the end of the eighth century, substantial settlements were founded across the hills and they slowly cooperated and cohered into a more unified center. Although more dispersed than the domestic huts, religious spaces were erected on the hills as well as the first boundary walls. The settlements were restricted to the hilltops because of the flooding of lowland Rome, which confined the hills and would destroy any buildings made in water-soluble material. However, the Romans reclaimed the Forum basin via a massive landfill project that involved the creation of an embankment wall and canal during the years 650-600 BCE. Significantly, Hopkins highlights how this project changed the landscape, helped create community among the Roman settlements, and shows that resources and human labor were available. The earthen fill created a new, artificial plain positioned so that it connected the slopes of the 5 hills. The landfill is the first archaeologically attested sign of a community that attended to these issues and sought to promote a single topographically connected polity. Due to the landfill, the Forum plain was an intermediary space, a new geography that linked the hills and engendered community. The project was perhaps the first monumental architectural undertaking in Rome, and it's the first for which archaeological evidence exists. As an act of human intervention in the natural world, the project reveals a deliberate transformation of the inherent landscape.

Arch of Titus, c. 81 CE

The Arch of Titus is a triumphal arch dedicated to the emperor Titus on the Via Sacra, the Roman processional route that leads to Rome's forum. Titus was a Roman Emperor who died in 81 CE and the arch was erected in his honor by the next emperor (and Titus's brother), Domitian, but the arch refers to Titus's and his father's (Vespasian) victory over the Jewish rebellion in Judea. The main form of the arch is a slightly stretched out round arch, creating a barrel vault, above which is the attic story with an inscription in Latin, which tells us that it was dedicated to Titus and who his father was (Vespasian). So, you would pass under and through this arch that shows the accomplishments of Titus. You can also see the two primary relief sculptures that are just under the arch, one showing Titus in a chariot, and the other is Spoils from the Temple of Solomon, showing soldiers with the spoils that Titus and his troops took from the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem when they put down a revolt of the Jews in that area. Included is the sacred Menorah from the temple, which was paraded through the streets of Rome in a celebratory act of military triumph. In the far right of the relief sculpture, soldiers are shown passing through the very arch that they are depicted on, so even though the arch was made in 81 CE it depicts a parade that happened in 71 CE. It has been carved in higher relief, so there's lots of play of light and shadow which adds to this feeling of activity and the movement of the procession, as well as contributing to the naturalism of the scene. It also would have been painted. The Arch of Titus, and the actual procession that occurred 10 years earlier, served as a display of power and ushered in a new dynasty (Flavian) for the Romans. Titus was deified because his people thought he protected Rome, defeated an enemy, and brought back with him spoils that became capital. Thus, the Arch of Titus is a monument to Titus and to the Romans' economic and political restorations sparked by the conquest of Judea.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude, The Gates, Central Park, New York City, 1979-2005, 2005

The Gates, like Spiral Jetty, were a site specific artwork. Like Spiral Jetty, it was also a collaborative project and meant to be experienced/not static. It was made up of over 7000 vinyl gates along 23 miles of pathways in Central Park. A panel of orange/saffron nylon fabric hung from each of the gates. The work was made by the husband and wife partnership of Christo and Jeanne-Claude. They referred to the work along with the date range of 1979-2005, the range of time that passed from their proposal of the work until they were able to go ahead with it and complete it. The Gates were up for a couple of weeks in February 2005. They were greeted with mixed reactions--some thought they brightened up the winter landscape and made people walk around the area more and others thought it defaced the landscape and could interfere with bike traffic. Christo and Jeanne-Claude's huge, usually outdoor sculptures were temporary and involved hundreds of assistants in their construction. Seen by all manner of passersby, including those who would not necessarily visit museums, these works forced observers to confront questions regarding the nature of art and to reconsider a particular space. As the scope of the projects widened, increased time was needed for planning and construction phases, the securing of permits, and environmental impact research—a process that could take decades. For each project, they formed a corporation, which secured financing and sold the primary models and sketches. Most installations were documented in print and on film, and the materials that created them were sold or given away after the projects were dismantled. Richard Phelan, in his article "Foliage in February? On Christo and Jeanne-Claude's The Gate," is interested in the public's reaction to The Gates and argues that they offered a pathway to the democratic unconscious and that the transition from the idea of nature to the idea of the environment is mediated by the gaze offered by art. The artwork celebrates the common man's need for nature in the city. Christo and J-C specifically referred to the park's original project--uplifting the spirit of the people--in their statements on the project. Their work returns to that political idealism through the form of the portal and by emphasizing the walkways, The Gates celebrates the walker/visitor. Phelan writes that the artists wanted to be known as environmental artists, which Phelan argues is valid because their works deal with the environment/landscape, they respect the site of their installations, they recycle their materials, and the works make viewers more aware of their environment. Christo and J-C wanted to bring out the design of the park--it's argued that art enables a frame wherein the beauty of nature can be better experienced than it would be naturally. Through The Gates, the beauty of the historical park was underlined, its taken for grantedness undermined; and the park was resantuarized.

Richard Serra, Tilted Arc, commissioned 1979

The contemporary artwork, Tilted Arc, also deals with a plaza and public space. However, regarding Tilted Arc, I am more interested in the work itself and how it interacted with its environment during its short and controversial installation. Tilted Arc was displayed in Foley Federal Plaza in Manhattan, a center of the mechanisms of state power, from 1981-89 and consisted of a 120 ft long, 12 ft high solid, unfinished plate of rusted steel. In 1979, Richard Serra was commissioned with making a work of public art to go in this plaza by the US General Services Administration. It was designed and constructed in 1981. Placed in the Federal Plaza, Tilted Arc bisected the public space, blocking views and paths of pedestrians. Serra wanted the work to interact with passersby of the plaza, a location usually passed through quickly on the way to other destinations. Tilted Arc immediately caused serious debate between those who liked it and others who hated the artwork. Advocates saw it as an important work by a famous artist that transformed its environments. Critics thought it was ugly, ruined the plaza, and was disruptive. Following a Federal lawsuit, the sculpture was removed in 1989 and in accordance with Serra's wishes who said the work is site-specific, it has never been publicly displayed again. In "Serra's Public Sculpture: Redefining Site Specificity," Douglas Crimp writes that artists, critics, museum officials, and others pleaded for the case for site specificity during the trial. They argued that the work was conceived for the site, built on the site, became an integral part of the site, and altered the very nature of the site. Serra himself stated, "To remove the work is to destroy the work." Crimp believes that Tilted Arc, and public sculpture more generally, can have an explicit statement of the contempt in which the public is held by the state projected upon it. The site, according to Crimp, is not only the site of the artwork, but it is also the site of political struggle.

Leonardo da Vinci, Vitruvian Man, c. 1490

The human figure plays an important role in the Renaissance, as many artists, Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael, created representations of the human body and defined the ideal male body. Leonardo made an ink on paper drawing of a man in two superimposed positions with his arms and legs apart and within a square and circle. The drawing's accompanied by notes based on the writings of Vitruvius. Vitruvian Man represents Leonardo's concept of the ideal male human body proportions. However, Leonardo didn't represent Vitruvius's proportions but rather did his own research based on male models that he measured. In Jill Burke's recent book, The Italian Renaissance Nude, she considers why Renaissance nudes were painted, whose gaze they were created for, and how these paintings were used by re-analyzing familiar artworks. She emphasizes the nude as a tool of colonialism, as an assertion of male superiority, and of normalizing power disparities through an investigation of Renaissance sexual practices, material culture, and thought surrounding the body. She is interested in incorporating social history because although the Renaissance respect for classical nudes is important, the antique nudes do not help clarify the ideas behind Renaissance nudes. Essentially, Burke wishes to make the nude strange again and show the potentially dark side of the nude. By using various examples, like Leonardo's Vitruvian Man, Burke argues that the nude is not a representation of any unclothed body but is a manifestation of a cultural idea and the ideal form represented by the artist. In Chapter 3 of the book, Burke states that Leo's Vitruvian Man serves as a commentary and corrective to part of Vitruvius's test and was set in the context of a well-established tradition. Burkes writes that Leo's man is different from Vitruvius's man because he took 2 centers for his circle and square, the navel for the circle and the base of the erect penis for the square. Burke is especially interested in the inclusion of the erect penis and its part as a central component of perfect humanity. Burke explains that, during the Renaissance, the works of painters and sculptors were akin to children. Burke goes on to discuss the understanding of sexual difference during this time--the emission of seed was crucial for the definition of masculinity and semen was associated with creativity.

Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty, 1970

The relationship between art and landscape began to expand even more in the 20th century. We have discussed 4 landscape paintings, but we are now going to discuss 2 landscape artworks that deal directly with the land. Spiral Jetty is an earthwork/earth art/land art construction made in 1970 over a period of numerous days by the late Robert Smithson, who documented its creation in a color film and also wrote an essay about the work. Although there is documentation of Spiral Jetty, it is really meant to be explored and experienced in person, like walking around the spiral. It is a 1500 feet long and 15 feet wide counter-clockwise coil built on the shore of the Great Salt Lake and is made entirely of mud, salt crystals, and basalt rocks. Depending on the water level, the Spiral Jetty is sometimes visible and other times is submerged. Smithson chose this specific site because of the red color of the water due to a proliferation of algae, its anti-pastoral beauty, and its relationship to industrial ruins nearby. Smithson died 3 years after the completion of Spiral Jetty and the work is now owned by the Dia Art Foundation. The issue of preservation is complicated because of ambiguous statements made by Smithson about his interest in entropy.