Art Hist II: Final
en plein air
"in the open air", and is particularly used to describe the act of painting outdoors.
Wassily Kandinsky, Several Circles, 1926, Oil on canvas
60 years old when he painted this, demonstrates his lifelong search for ideal form of spiritual expression in art. LEGACY: Kandinsky set the stage for much of the expressive modern art produced in the 20th century.
Van Gogh, Japonaiserie: Trees in Blossom
A COMPARISON TO (Hiroshige, Plum Estate, Kameido, from One Hundred Famous Views of Edo) SHOW HOW VAN GOGH WAS INSPIRED BY JAPONISME.
Wassily Kandinsky Color Study Squares 1913, Watercolor, gouache and crayon on paper
A small study on perception of different color combinations. Wassily Kandinsky Composition VIII, 1923, Oil on canvas In 1922 Kandinsky joined faculty of the BAUHAUS in Weimar, a German art school from 1919-1933 that combined crafts and fine arts, famous for approach to design, closed by own leadership under pressure from Nazis. The rational, geometric order of Composition VIII is polar opposite of the operatic composition of Composition VII (1913). SO COMPOSITION VIII COULD BE CONSIDERED BAUHAUS. This work is an expression of Kandinsky's clarified ideas about modern, non-objective art, particularly the significance of shapes like triangles, circles, and the checkerboard. Kandinsky relied upon a hard-edged style to communicate the deeper content of his work for the rest of his career.
Aesthetic Movement
Advocated "art for art's sake."
John Singer Sargent, Portrait of Madame X, American Impressionism
Best known painting. Celebrity, theatricality central to Sargent's style and success. Working on the painting, told friend he was "struggling with the unpaintable beauty and hopeless laziness" of his sitter eventually fusing techniques from Velázquez, Titian and Manet, as well as Japanese art, produced a painting now seen as masterpiece, but first inspired outrage, creating a succes de scandale when it was exhibited at the 1884 Paris Salon.
Renoir, Luncheon of the Boating Party, Impressionism, oil on canvas
Best known, most popular work at The Phillips Collection.
Cezanne, Mont Sainte-Victoire, Post-Impressionist.
Cezanne admired other artists but believed only in himself and his own theories. He was not a totally abstract painter, as form and structure were most important to him: the cone, the cylinder and the sphere.
Paul Cezanne, The Great or Large Bathers, Post-Impressionist.
Cezanne often known as the Father of Modern Art. A quote from the artist: "Everything in Nature is modeled after the sphere, the cone, and the cylinder. One must learn to paint from these simple figures." Cezanne took an intellectual approach to form and space issues. He laid the foundation for Picasso and other artists' explorations with Cubism; his investigations of color and his brushstroke influenced Matisse and other Fauve artists.
Vincent van Gogh, The Potato Eaters, Post-Impressionist.
Considered his first masterpiece, 1885. Inspired by the Impressionists' use of color and light, studied with Toulouse-Lautrec, Pissarro, Seurat, others. About the same time discovered Japanese prints.
art movements in the 20th century (style)
Dada, Surrealism, Cubism, Futurism, Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, Minimalism, Conceptualism
Matisse, The Joy of Life, 1906. Fauvism
Fauvism only lasted till about 1910, they received their name from an art critic who said they painted like "Les Fauves", or "wild beasts". Fauve paintings use pure vivid color, bold brushwork, and non-natural colors for expressing emotion. Their color choice were expressive and somewhat arbitrary. They wished to appeal to viewer's senses in a joyful way. This painting is a good example of it
Wassily Kandinsky, Composition IV, 1911.
Felt the Compositions his most important paintings, assigned the name to only ten works, executed between 1910 and 1939. In 1911, he and Franz Marc co-founded "Der Blaue Reiter" (The Blue Rider) - a loose association of nine Expressionist artists. SO THIS TIME PERIOD COULD BE CONSIDERED EXPRESSIONIST OR DER BLAUE REITER. It lasted roughly 3 years. Kandinsky published Concerning the Spiritual in Art (1911), his first theoretical treatise on abstraction, articulated his theory that the artist was a spiritual being who communicated through and was affected by line, color, and composition. This is still an important writing on art.
IMPRESSIONIST HISTORICALLY
French Impressionism refers to work produced between about 1867-1886 by artists who shared similar approaches and techniques. They were unhappy with academic painting. They wanted to create an art that was modern, capturing the rapid pace of contemporary life and the fleeting conditions of light. They preferred a personal approach to subject matter.
Paul Gauguin, The Vision After the Sermon, also called Jacob Wrestling with the Angel. Post-Impressionist.
Gauguin a painter, printmaker, sculptor sought to achieve PRIMITIVE spirit and emotion in his work, categorized as a POST-IMPRESSIONIST, SYMBOLIST, AND SYNTHETIST, known for his difficult friendship with van Gogh in Arles, and particularly for leaving Paris for the South Seas. Moved towards his primitive vision with Vision After the Sermon (1888), with broad planes of color, clear outlines, simplified forms. Gauguin coined the term "Synthetism" to describe his style during this period. This is a famous image, he was declaring his interest in an art based on ideas, imagination rather than OBSERVED REALITY. Gauguin, in Vision, attempts to combine the real with the imagined, women are in native Breton clothing, have just listened to a sermon from Genesis 32:22-32, of Jacob wrestling with the angel.
Bauhaus
German school of design and art A school of architecture in Germany in the 1920s under the leadership of Walter Gropius. closed by the Nazis
Hokusai
Greatest Japanese woodblock printmaker, creator of Great Wave Japanese ukiyo-e painter and printmaker from the Edo period. The great wave of kanagawa. (KEY PLAYERS OTHER THAN IMPRESSIONIST ARTISTS)
Winslow Homer, The Gulf Stream, American Impressionism
HERE, a black man lies inert on deck of small sailboat, hurricane has shredded the sails, snapped off the mast, snatched away the rudder. Unlike boys in Breezing Up this man is powerless to control his vessel, at the mercy of the elements. Sharks circle the boat, a waterspout hovers in distance, a boat on distant horizon passes by unseeing and unseen.
Paul Gauguin, Where do we come from? What are we? Where are going? Post-Impressionist.
HIS MAJOR WORK, 1897, PAINTED ON HEAVY, ROUGH SACKCLOTH, enormous contemplation of life, death told through series of figures, invites viewer to "read" the image like a sacred scroll, from right to left: from the sleeping infant—where we come from—to the standing figure in the middle—what we are—and ending at the left with the crouching old woman—where we are going. Composition designed to recall frescoes or icons painted on a gold ground.
Claude Monet, Haystacks, Impressionism.
Haystack series—nearly 30 canvases painted near Giverny, spent almost 2 years on series starting in 1890.
NOTES ON PICASSO
He was a prodigy, his father was an art teacher, he was classically trained, then spent a lifetime tearing that apart to build it up again in his own way. Prolific painter, daring, friends and rivals with Matisse. They held several joint exhibitions.
Henri Rousseau, The Dream, NAÏVE ART AND POST-IMPRESSIONIST.
He was self-taught, aspired to be an academic artist like William-Adolphe Bouguereau and Jean-Leon Gerome. He was never like that, his compositions were unusual and techniques amateurish, yet modern artists appreciated his simplicity. Rousseau's best-known works are lush jungle scenes. Shortly before death, Rousseau painted most ambitious of jungle paintings, The Dream (also called Yadivigha's Dream), one of his greatest works. He explained that the woman asleep on the sofa dreams she is transported to this fantasy region. This painting shows his powerful and uncommon imagination. Incredible attention to detail, vibrant palette, absurdist combination of imagery, The Dream shows why Rousseau's art was admired by the Surrealists.
Mary Cassatt, The Child's Bath (The Bath), Impressionism,
Her subjects, like Berthe Morisot's, were mostly women, children, families, interiors, which show the restrictions placed on late 19th and early 20th century female artists. Good friend of Degas, they influenced each other, she was printmaker, painter, pastel artist. She was an American. After seeing Japanese prints, shifted her emphasis from form to line and pattern. She was a major influence on American collectors of Impressionist art.
Degas, The Dance Foyer at the Opera, Impressionism
His principal subject was the human figure, especially females. An innovator who bridged the gap between traditional academic art and the radical movements of the 20th century. One of the finest draftsmen of his age, Degas experimented with a wide variety of media, including oil, pastel, gouache, etching, lithography, photography. EQUALLY ATTRACTED TO LINE AND COLOR. Unlike other Impressionists, Degas painted IN THE STUDIO, NOT EN PLEIN AIR.
Post-Impressionists Historically
Impact of two World Wars and a depression led to artists leaving Europe for New York, which supplanted Paris as the world art center. The Vienna Secession, 1897, was a reaction to the conservative art in Vienna at the end of the 19th century, it marked the formal beginning of modern art in Austria. Gustav Klimt led the Vienna Secession group.
Hiroshige
Japanese ukiyo-e artist (KEY PLAYERS OTHER THAN IMPRESSIONIST ARTISTS)
Utamaro
Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints and paintings, and is best known for his bijin ōkubi-e "large-headed pictures of beautiful women" of the 1790s (KEY PLAYERS OTHER THAN IMPRESSIONIST ARTISTS)
Gustav Klimt, The Kiss, 1908, Oil on canvas, Post-Impressionist.
Klimt was the leader of the Vienna Secession. Their art was similar to Art Nouveau; they used symmetry, repetition, squares, grid, checkerboard. Japanese woodblock prints, with their flat visual planes, strong colors, patterned surfaces, linear outlines also an influence and formed a bridge between fine and graphic arts. The Secessionists came from all styles of painting - liked the restraint of Japanese work, its preference for natural materials, handwork over machine made, balance of positive and negative space.
Rodin, The Burghers of Calais, 1884-1889, Impressionism
Know story of the Burghers (group of French people who were to be executed by the English King was spared their lives due to the Queen ordering them not to be killed); those who commissioned Rodin were expecting a single figure of one of the burghers - a single figure sculpture was more customary - Rodin delivered a group statue. Rodin was able to get beneath the surface of the figure to reveal the psyche, he had an affinity for the partial figure, he focused on formal qualities rather than narrative, and his habit of retaining the marks of the sculptural process in his finished works - all these were revolutionary for his era.
Two prints by Hiroshige, from series One Hundred Views of Famous Places in Edo, 1857
LOOK UP PICTURES Many Impressionists and Post-Impressionists experimented with Japanese techniques in painting and printmaking, a number of artists emulating the Ukiyo-e style. Like photography, style of these prints contributed significantly to "snapshot" angles and unconventional compositions which would become characteristic of Impressionism. Japonisme transformed Impressionist art by demonstrating that simple, transitory, everyday subjects could be presented in appealingly decorative ways.
Manet, A Bar at the Folies Bergere, oil on canvas LATE MANET, COULD BE CALLED REALIST OR PRE-IMPRESSIONIST
MANET WAS ADMIRED BY THE IMPRESSIONISTS, THEY SAW HIM AS A LEADER. His subjects were painted with flat color, minimal perspective, focus on surface pattern and relationships. With Manet and Impressionist traditional subject matter became less important, although they all focused on presenting contemporary life. Manipulation of color, tone, texture, became important.
Edvard Munch, The Scream, Oil, pastel and casein on cardboard, Post-Impressionist.
Munch was Norwegian, prolific, troubled, preoccupied with human mortality, Expressed these obsessions through works of intense color, semi-abstraction, and mysterious subject matter. The Scream, or The Cry (1893), HIS MOST FAMOUS WORK, can be seen as a symbol of modern spiritual anguish. This painting based on actual experience.
Pablo Picasso, Guernica, 1937, Oil on canvas
Painted as a response to the Nazi bombing of the Spanish town of Guernica in northern Spain, this IS MORE THAN A PROTEST AGAINST ONE INCIDENT, BUT A POWERFUL PROTEST AGAINST TYRANNY, WAR, BRUTALITY. It premiered at the Paris World Exposition in 1937, then travelled the world for a time. Picasso would not allow it to return to Spain until the dictator Franco died, so it was housed at the Museum of Modern Art for many years. Franco outlived Picasso, and the painting returned to Spain in 1981, a refugee for over 40 years. He deliberately painted it in black, white and gray; he included Spanish iconography in the painting, and painted it in less than two months.
Gustave Caillebotte, Paris Street, Rainy Day, 1877, Impressionism
Painter, art collector, combined academic and Impressionist styles in a unique synthesis. Note surface, size, geometric order, elaborate perspective of piece tends to the academic rather than the Impressionistic. Caillebotte became chief organizer, promoter, and financial backer of the Impressionist exhibitions, used his wealth to purchase work by Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Cezanne, Degas, Sisley, Morisot.
Pablo Picasso, The Old Guitarist, 1903
Part of his BLUE PERIOD, a melancholy period of his life, reflected in his work. This period lasted about 3 years, during which is subjects were often the poor and downtrodden.
Pablo Picasso, The Tragedy, 1903
Part of his blue period
Paul Gauguin, Spirit of the Dead Watching, 1892, Post-Impressionist.
Shows adolescent girl (Gauguin's Tahitian girlfriend Tehura, fourteen years old), lying belly down on bed, her face staring out at the viewer with a fearful expression.
Winslow Homer, Breezing Up(A Fair Wind), American Impressionism
Subjects appear simple, but on closer examination deal with human struggle, skill with drawing, watercolor give his oils lively spontaneity. His work both Realist and Impressionistic.
Paul Gauguin, Yellow Christ, Post-Impressionist.
THIS PAINTING IS CONSIDERED TO BE IN THE STYLE CALLED SYMBOLISM. The Symbolists, 1880s, were weary of modern society, sought escape from reality, began to express their dreams, visions through vivid colors, forms, and compositions.
Degas, Little Dancer of Fourteen Years, 1879-1881, Impressionism
Textile, Wood, Silk, Satin, Bronze, Wax, Linen, Muslin Degas had been quietly exploring wax, other materials to make modest statuettes of horses and figures. The Little Dancer Aged 14 (1878-81) shown at Impressionist exhibition of 1881, carried visual realism to new extremes by incorporating an actual, reduced-scale tutu, ballet slippers, a human-hair wig, and a silk ribbon. This was the only Degas sculpture cast and exhibited during his lifetime.
Henri Matisse, The Red Studio, 1911.
These paintings (this and Harmony in Red) show Matisse moving away from three-dimensional space to a purer form of painting, using strong reds to push the composition forward, using his own form of perspective. In The Red Studio he actually reverses the figure-ground relationship. Matisse' paintings were colorful, full of the love of painting, optimistic; he loved the ARABESQUE, floral fabrics and patterns, the female nude. He painted beauty. Reduced images to simple forms, lines, bright color.
Picasso,The Mademoiselles of Avignon, 1907, oil on canvas
This is a KEY painting in the development of modern art, particularly CUBISM. It was not well-received when Picasso presented it to a group of friends, artists, collectors and critics in his studio. Matisse and Derain hated it. It represents a group of prostitutes, originally conceived as two men and three women; it shows the influence of African masks, and Picasso's desire to show more than one angle at a time in a human figure. The title comes from a street in Barcelona that held whorehouses, and Picasso was known to visit there. This slide shows the difference between Picasso's early portrait of Gertrude Stein with The Mademoiselles of Avignon, as well as the influence of African masks on the Mademoiselles.
Whistler, Nocturne in Black and Gold, The Falling Rocket, American Impressionism
This is a nocturne, scenes of London based on memory or on pencil sketches, evolved a special technique of liquid paint he called a sauce, stroked onto the canvas in fast sweeps of the brush, somewhat in the manner of Japanese calligraphy.
Georges Seurat, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, Post-Impressionist. Can also be called POINTILLISM, NEO-IMPRESSIONISM, OR DIVISIONISM.
This is his best known and largest painting, people relaxing in suburban park on island in the Seine called La Grande Jatte, Seurat began painting with a layer of small horizontal brush strokes of complementary colors, later added small dots in complementary colors. Seurat had unusually strong interest in the intellectual and scientific bases of art. He relied on two new theories of color, ONE that placing two colors side by side intensified the hues of each, TWO, that contiguous dots placed side by side merge into their combined color. Neo-Impressionism, using tiny brushstrokes of contrasting colors, this is more commonly known as Pointillism; Seurat himself called it Divisionism. Painted contemporary life like the Impressionists, but wished to recall art of the past, especially Egyptian and Greek sculpture and Italian Renaissance frescoes.
Claude Monet, Impression Sunrise, 1872, oil on canvas, Impressionism
This is the painting that gave the Impressionist their name.
Vincent van Gogh, Wheatfield with Crows, Post-Impressionist
This was not his last painting as is often stated.
WHISTLER AND THE Aesthetic Movement
Took place in late Victorian period from around 1868 to 1901, emphasized aesthetic values over moral or social themes in literature, fine art, the decorative arts, interior design. Belongs to the anti-Victorian reaction, had post-Romantic roots, as such anticipates modernism. Artists and writers of Aesthetic movement felt Arts should provide refined sensuous pleasure, rather moral or sentimental messages, did not accept John Ruskin conception of art as moral or useful. Instead, believed that Art did not have any didactic purpose; it need only be beautiful.
Toulouse-Lautrec, At the Moulin Rouge, Post-Impressionist.
Toulouse-Lautrec was influenced by Degas and Japanese prints, but while Degas' figures were carefully drawn, TL used line and color in a freer way to express movement. T-L did not worry about anatomical correctness, his colors were intense, his lines curvy and swooping, his perspective skewed.
Giverny
Where Claude Monet lived, former home and elaborate gardens, where he produced his famed water lily series
Paul Durand-Ruel
a French art dealer who is associated with the Impressionists and the Barbizon School. He was one of the first modern art dealers who provided support to his painters with stipends and solo exhibitions (KEY PLAYERS OTHER THAN IMPRESSIONIST ARTISTS)
Henri Matisse, The Green Stripe, 1905 Fauvism
a portrait of the artist's wife.
Japonisme
an attraction for Japanese art and artifacts that were imported into Europe in the late 19th century the influence of Japanese art, fashion and aesthetics on Western culture
Naïve art
any form of visual art that is created by a person who lacks the formal education and training that a professional artist undergoes.
Vincent van Gogh, The Starry Night, Post-Impressionist.
based on van Gogh's direct observations as well as his imagination, memories, and emotions.
Wassily Kandinsky, Composition VII, 1913.
believed that "inner sound" of the picture was crucial to its success and the key to its understanding. His development of a formal language that shifted focus from the external and representational to the internal and spiritual culminated in Composition VII (1913). This painting is the pinnacle of Kandinsky's pre-World War I achievement, mixing music and visual, emphasized Kandinsky's non-representational focus.
Rodin, The Thinker, 1903, Impressionism
bronze, Musee Rodin. When conceived in 1880 in its original size (approx. 70 cm) as the crowning element of The Gates of Hell. A trip to Italy, seeing the work of Michelangelo, helped him to develop his style, showed his first original work at the Paris Salon in 1877. It was so realistic, and so different from the work of his contemporaries that Rodin was accused of molding it from a living person.
Gertrude Stein
came up with the term Lost Generation supported Picasso and others.
Impressionists "MANIFESTO" (mission statement)
challenged the Academy's category codes which as we know deemed "history painting" as great painting. These young Realists and Impressionists questioned that long established hierarchy of subject matter. They believed landscapes, genres scenes were worthy and important. wanted to create an art that was modern by capturing the rapid pace of contemporary life and the fleeting conditions of light.
La Moulin Rouge
famous dance hall in late 19th century Paris
THE STYLES: Manet and the Impressionists
influenced by Japanese prints, especially Japanese relief prints, and photography. Far East revolutionized ideas on perspective, color in European painting, played central role in art style
The Japanese style of printmaking featured
limited depth, asymmetrical compositions, flat areas of color, unusual compositions, sometimes a diagonal emphasis, everyday subject matter; these all influenced the Impressionists.
Folies Bergere
musical theater in Paris
20th Centenary HISTORICALLY
see the impact of two World Wars and a depression; this led to artists leaving Europe for New York, which supplanted Paris as the world art center. Other important art cities in Europe were Munich, Dresden, Berlin, Moscow. With the onset of World War II, even more artists left Europe to escape the Nazis. Picasso and Matisse, however, stayed
Berthe Morisot, The Cradle, 1872, Impressionism
showed The Cradle at Impressionist exhibition of 1874—first woman to exhibit with the group, her paintings frequently included members of her family, particularly her sister, Edma, Delicate, subtle, exquisite color, admired by her Impressionist colleagues. This also reflects 19th century cultural restrictions of her class, gender, what was considered acceptable for a woman to paint.
Post-Impressionists Styles
united mainly by desire to move away from Impressionism, varied in approach, style and sometimes rivals. ONE THING THEY ALL HAD IN COMMON: THEY BELIEVED IN THE SUBJECTIVE VISION OF THE ARTIST, THAT PAINTING DID NOT HAVE TO RECORD THE WORLD ONE SAW, BUT COULD BE A WINDOW INTO THE ARTIST'S MIND AND SOUL. Despite individual styles, most Post-Impressionists focused on abstract form and pattern. They paved the way for later modern art. Critics grouped the styles within Post-Impressionism into two general, opposing styles: - on one side was the structured, or geometric style that was the precursor to Cubism - Cezanne, Seurat, and Paul Signac favored structure, order and optical effects of color, using relationships between colors and shapes to describe their worlds. The other side was expressive, or non-geometric art that led to Abstract Expressionism - Artists like Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh looked to memories and emotions, symbols and personal meanings in order to connect with their viewers. Paris still the center of art, but less so, the city was no longer so dominant as a subject.