ARH 253 Test 4
Paul Gauguin
'vision after the semon of Jacob wrestling with the angel' was made while visiting Van Gogh - manipulated space by putting the red ground, its outside not a rug - women aren't nuns that's just what they wear; 'where do we come from? what are we? where are we going?' was made in Tahiti, spirit of adam and eve (didn't cover themselves in public, kid in middle splits picture into 2 sides)
Henri Matisse
'woman with the hat' (woman was his wife)- was about design and color and less about narrative; Matisse was the dominant figure of the Fauve group- believe that color could play a primary role in conveying meaning and consequently focused his efforts on developing this notion; first experimented with impressionism- made work about world for artist/their experience of that world
The Blue Rider
(Der Blau Reiter) second major German expressionist group; selected this name because of their mutual interest in horses and the color blue; group produced paintings that captured their feelings in visual form while also eliciting intense emotional responses from viewers; influenced by Vassily Kandinsky (russian avant garde artist) brought interesting ideas to germany/was interested in modern ideas
The Bridge
(Die Brucke) first group of German expressionists; thought of themselves as paving the way for a more perfect age by bridging the old age and the new (hence the name); artists protested the hypocrisy and materialistic decadence of those in power; politically motivated artists; interested in utopian visions of ideal society (also named the bridge to depict the bridge between art and politics)
Claude Monet
(part of private company); painter of 'Impression: Sunrise', is believed that this is where the term impressionism came from; this painting is set in north of France, where Monet was from, its a moment in time where the sun starts to rise over the harbor (first step into abstraction); not about a literal narrative, about monet's experience (impermanence); made no attempt to disguise the brushstrokes or blend the pigment to create smooth tonal gradations and an optically accurate scene;
Jasper Johns
(pop artist) sought to draw attention to common objects in the world- what he called things "seen but not looked at"; did several series of paintings of numbers, alphabets, flags, and maps of the US- all of which are items that people view frequently but rarely scrutinize; color field painting-using language; ambiguity: what is this painting trying to accomplish/what's it about; used language of the New York School against itself
Abstract Expressionism
1st major modern art movement to come from the US; was symbolic of the shift in power from Europe to America following WWII; central to this movement was Clement Greenberg who argued that art should achieve a sense of "purity" by dealing with their respective selves by becoming 'abstract' or 'nonfigurative'; existed in 2 wings: gesture painting and color field painting (both influenced by biomorphic surrealism);
Surrealism
20th century art movement that searched for ways to express the world of dreams and the unconscious
Land Art (Robert Smithson)
Pioneer of environmental artists; land art emerged as a major form of artistic expression in the 1960s and includes a wide range of artworks, most of which are site specific (created for a unique location) and in the open air; used natural or organic materials, including the land itself
Regionalism
a 20th century American art movement that portrayed American rural life in a clearly readable, realist style
New Objectivity
a German art movement that grew directly from the wartime experience of artists who sought to show the horrors of war and its effects
De Stijl
a dutch movement that promoted utopian ideals and developed a simplified geometric style; primarily a design movement; created non-representational images because they wanted a universal language; didn't want meaning of the piece to be confined in any way
Symbolism
a late 19th century movement based on the idea that the artist was not an imitator of nature but a creator who transformed the facts of nature into a symbol of the inner experience of that fact; symbolist artists rejected the "trivial" nature of realism, including impressionism and much of post-impressionism; inner experience is perception; symbolism takes ideas from nature and transforming it into something personal - artists weren't imitator of nature but someone who transformed nature into a symbol of inner experience; symbolists were interested in content before impressionism and realism - not just interested in the world around them but also willing to investigate old allegories and mythological stories; content and subject matter were different from impressionism; elements of art lost their connection to the observed world and became symbols of personal emotion; symbolists used color as language
Futurism
a movement created by militant Italian artists- they declared revolution in art against traditional values and championed the modern age of steel and speed
Dada
a nihilistic and cynical art movement that stemmed from the collapse of social and moral values which resulted from WWI (feels like it's making fun of you? it is)
Bauhaus
a school of architecture in Germany that emphasized the unity of art, architecture, and design; some instructors were very well known artists, they taught students a variety of skills so they could create more compelling work
Suprematism
a type of art that conveyed the belief that the supreme reality in the world was pure feeling , which did not relate to objecting the visible world (*to exist is to feel*); non-representational art form; flat/simplified language
German Expressionism
an art that is the result of the artist's inner vision, often layered with emotional and psychological elements; early 20th century; german's interested in northern tradition of the psychological landscape/reality; art that results of the artists inner vision remind you of symbolism/romanticism (dreams and nightmares)
Vincent Van Gogh
art is about atmosphere; always gave heavy outlines to things; its a late night, as viewers we don't want to be there because everyone is creepy; wrote about his work and tried to sell it but people weren't into it (when he died he thought he was a failure); made 'starry night' after he was institutionalized, paint is thick like toothpaste (materiality); tumbling effect is a sense of instability (iconic), painting with perception - explored the capabilities of colors and distorted forms to express his emotions as he confronted nature
Jaune Quick-to-see Smith
art was made by people who aren't from Western tradition; takes background/incorporating it with Western tradition; artists are trying to come to terms with western tradition but from their own ethnicities-diverse
Jackson Pollock
best exemplifies gestural abstraction; consists of rhythmic drops, splatters, and dribbles of paint; using sticks or brushes, Pollock flung, poured and dripped paint (not only traditional paint but aluminum paints and household enamels as well) onto a section of canvas that he simply unrolled across his studio floor (nickname: Jack the Dripper)
Paul Cezanne
brush work shows materiality (brush work is in packs); landscape (not about the actual landscape, but about experience); mattered that you achieve perception; details don't matter; brush work is shown and things aren't perfectly straight;thinking of impressionism as something that offered the possibility of a new system, new method of making art (not as interested in narrative art, but more interested in a process- how you can take an idea of impressionism and use it as a process for making really important art); articulated how this art is more real than realism because it's more honest; key influences for Picasso and cubism
Post-impressionism
came to feel that in attempting to capture momentary sensations of light and color on canvas, too many important elements of traditional painting were being sacrificed; began to examine more systematically the properties and expressive qualities of line, pattern, form, and color; their art had its roots in Impressionist precepts and methods, but was not stylistically homogeneous
New Media
developed in the postwar period- art dealing with digital photography, computer graphics, and video
Fauvism
early 20th century art movement led by Matisse which used color as the primary conveyor of meaning; abstraction, not art that's meant to convey a kind of absolute classical truth/about perception and experience of color
Modernism
emerged as a cultural movement of artists and designers who rebelled against late 19th century academic and historicist traditions and embraced the new economic, social, and political aspects of the emerging modern world ; world is modern because of industry, inventions, technological innovations -> life is changing ; think of it from the cultural aspect, it affected everything, not just art but everything in the western world
Avant-garde
french for 'advance guard'; late 19th/20th century artists who emphasized innovation and challenged established convention in their work
Stages of Cubism
grew from experiments of Picasso and Braque and their mutual interests in Paul Cezanne; first major stage of cubism was "analytics" which was an effort to analyze form and investigate meaning; second major stage of cubism was "synthetic" which was a conscious effort to challenging the viewer's understanding of reality
Alfred Stieglitz
important proponent of modernism in the US; argued photography is a modern art form, 2 decisions photographers make: 1. What to photograph and 2. When to photograph (time based media, need the right moment);
Edgar Degas
impressionist- rejected classicism in favor of impressionism; specialized in indoor subjects and made many preliminary studies for his finished paintings; interested primarily in recording body movement and exploring unusual angels of viewing; later became fascinated by photography and regularly used a camera to make preliminary studies for his works; often used ballet dancers as subjects; was a great master of pastel/sculpture; his impermanence is often communicated by formal clarity being distorted- not a significant number of hard edges/lines to construct a more classically accurate environment (everything is soft/jumbled)
Armory Show
in 1913 in NY; introduced avant-garde European art to America; was an ambitious endeavor organized primarily by Walk Kuhn and Arthur B Davies - included more than 1,600 artworks by American and European artists; significant catalyst for the reevaluation of the nature and purpose of American art
Shahzia Sikander
in the Muslim world, women and homosexuals face especially difficult challenges, which she addresses in her work; so thoroughly immersed in the methods of miniature painting that she makes her own paper, pigments, and squirrel-hair brushes
Impressionism
influenced by Gustav Courbet's realism (i've never seen an angel, show me an angel and i'll paint one); impressionists were interested with their world as they engaged/understood it; illusiveness and *impermanence* (associate with modern world) of images and conditions ** ; impressionists were the first group of artists who weren't going to bother with the academy because it had become so conservative (did their own thing); said that this work was so bad/artists were so terrible and "didn't know how to make paintings", rather than make paintings to look at to enjoy they were impressions of paintings, which was supposed to be an insult but the impressionists took that as an honor
Kehinde Wiley
leading living African-American artist who has lamented the near total absence of blacks in Western painting and sculpture and who has set out to correct that discriminatory imbalance; his trademark paintings, however, are reworkings of historically important portraits in which he substitutes figures of young black men in contemporary dress in order to situate them in what he calls "the field of power"
Readymade
mass-produced objects that the Dada artists modified (ex: Duchamp's urinal is forced to be seen in a new light); the conversation of whether or not its art ~is the art~ it's provoking conversation; concept based artwork
Constructivism
more a sculptural movement that dealt with assembled structures rather than traditional modeled forms, constructivists thought of "volumes of mass" and "volumes of space" as two different materials
Clement Greenberg
most important champion of this strict formalism- an emphasis on an artwork's visual elements rather than its subject; wielded considerable influence from the 1940s-70s; helped redefine the parameters of modernism by advocating the rejection of illusionism and the exploration of the properties of each artistic medium
Marcel Duchamp
most influential Dadaist; exhibited "readymade" sculptures- mass produced common objects "found objects" that the artist selected and sometimes "rectified" by modifying their substance or combining them with another object; was part of an independent artist group, they put on a group show where the artist had to pay an entry fee of $6 to show whatever- Duchamp had a falling out with the leadership because he was a prick so he turned in a urinal as a prank to get back at them
Pablo Picasso
most prolific artist in history; Picasso explored every artistic medium during his career, but remained a traditional artist in making carful preparatory studied for each work; exemplified modernism in his quest for innovation which resulted in sudden shifts from one style to another; spanish painter
Xu Bing
n assemblage that creates an artistic environment in a room or gallery; the work presents an enormous number of woodblock-printed texts in characters evocative of Chinese writing but invented by the artist
Contemporary Art
organized thematically and stylistically by medium; art is more idea based than ever; viewers will interpret art differently based on race, ethnicity, national identity, gender/sexuality, and political order
Naturalistic Surrealism
presented recognizable scenes transformed into a dream or nightmare image; most people are familiar with this; looks like something real, looks like a landscape or it's got figures or there's narratives unfolding; sometimes there's very intense realism; its and expression of altered state of mind
Biomorphic Surrealism
produced largely abstract compositions; people gloss over it; work looks different; form of non-representational art; totally abstract; just shapes and forms tumbling around in space; these artists would just make marks on a surface then the subconscious would express itself
Andy Warhol
quintessential American pop artist; favored reassuringly familiar objects and people; used a visual vocabulary and a printing method that reinforced the image's connections to consumer culture; the repetition and redundancy reflect the saturation of this product in American society-in homes, at work, literally everywhere, including gas stations; so immersed was Warhol in a culture of mass production that he not only produced numerous canvases of the same image but also named his studio "the factory"
Assemblage
rather than a single mass, the assemblage is a collection of parts
Minimalism
sculptural trend characterized by works featuring a severe reduction of form, often to single, homogeneous units; happened because artists wanted to find that moment of purity; reduce art to its most fundamental form and you get a cube or pixel
Robert Rauschenberg
set out to create works that would be open and indeterminate, and he began by making multimedia works that he called 'combines' which intersperse painted passages with sculptural elements; his personal variation on assemblages, which are artworks constructed from already existing objects - influence by Marcel Duchamp
Vassily Kandinsky
spontaneous expressive style; one of the first artists to reject representation and explore abstraction as the "subject" of his paintings; interested in theosophy (a religious and philosophical belief system incorporating a wide range of tenets from, among other sources, Buddhism and mysticism); 1st artist to embrace the idea of non-representation in painting - his work was so abstract you lose any type of narrative orientation (did this to leave it open-ended, no 2 people will come away with the same interpretation)
Pop Art
term coined by British art critic Lawrence Alloway to refer to art, first appearing in the 1950s, that incorporated elements from consumer culture, the mass media, and popular culture, such as images from motion pictures and advertising; functioned as criticism of late modernism
Metaphysical School
term for the work of Giorgio de Chirico; was considered a forerunner to surrealism and in fact d Chirico's work was initially shown with the surrealists in 1924; italian movement that explored the unconscious mind through juxtapositions of ordinary objects (key theme throughout all: world has become absurd)
Gesture and Color Field Painting
variant of post-painterly abstraction in which artists sought to reduce painting to its physical essence by pouring diluted paint onto unprimed canvas and letting these pigments soak into the fabric
