ArtHum Spring 2023 Final Review

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Romare Bearden, Patchwork Quilt, 1970. Collage of cloth, paper, and synthetic polymer on compositional board.

- A quilt is comfortable, about soothing, always pushes with a positive connotation - Syncretism - collaboration of europe and africa, it's not either or but both happening at once - Laying down and standing up at the same time - modernist tricks - Does modernism and takes it apart at the same time - Thinking through the object of desire - "I try to show," Bearden once said, "that when some things are taken out of the usual context and put in the new, they are given an entirely new character." And a patchwork quilt, no matter how rich its pattern, is always made out of remnants cut from their context—out of scraps of outworn cloth, now put to a new use, and acquiring a nobler quality. Whether faded or frayed, their role in a new design refreshes their meaning and beauty. Bearden's Patchwork Quilt, made up, in part, of exactly such fragments of cloth, has a share in this kind of ennoblement. A student of many cultures, Bearden took Egyptian tomb reliefs as his inspiration for the figure, with its graceful lines, its distinctive left arm and hand, its sideways posture, and its legs parted as if in midstride. Another influence was the centuries-old sculpture of Benin. These bases in high, specifically African aesthetics claim a regal ancestry for Bearden's lounging African American woman. In fact, his work lives in its cosmopolitan and democratic fusions—of the distinguished heritage of painting and the domestic practice of quilting (in which there is a distinct African American tradition), of analytic art (in the echoes of Cubism) and household decoration, and of everyday leisure and utter elegance.

Le Corbusier, Unite d'Habitation, 1952 (Cité radieuse, Marseille)

- Building so massive that accounts for all human interactions that people would not need to go outside - Idealism of modernism: the legacy of this type of attempt to program or account for all human interaction, its legacy here was that formally it was used to implement economic segregation - the advent of the projects - Architecture is programming certain aspects about class and race relations

Andy Warhol, Jackie (The Week That Was I), 1964

- Exploiting her trauma What he is messing with is the relationship to secondary information - Private and public - how that media is undermining that - Would u say that her grieving is a performance? - Making it unable to distinguish between private and public - We use social media to play with different kinds of emotional charges - Even when you're asleep, you're performing for a camera (movie where he records someone sleeping) - Can't escape the way technology is encoding your emotions, even your ability to grief - Your ethical response to secondary information - warhol is playing with this - Is it bad that he's showing this in a gallery and selling for a lot of money or is it bad that you see this in a newspaper and you don't care?

Mary Cassatt, In the Loge (At the Opera), 1878. MFA Boston

- Guy looking at her, everyone can see everyone else even though they are here for opera - Everything is on display - She has agency because she's not giving into the gaze, we have no idea what she is looking at - We are guilty here, too, because we are gazing at this woman - She is guilting us saying now we know how it feels - Is the guy gazing at her or gazing at us - Does this guy bother us because we are being caught for gazing at her?

Andy Warhol, 32 Campbell's Soup Cans, 1962

- Has the optical flicker, feels like endless reproduction - Completely by hand, implication of the hand - Cares about the viewing in mindless repetition, there is numbness in the viewing - They're not all the same - they're the same but different - This is the legacy of dada - Different between avant garde and neo avant garde : is this about shocking you or about doing something in this field of boredom? - What is the criteria for judgment? How do you distinguish one from the other? It is insulting to the viewer/collector to make value judgements based on if they want a chilli beef or a pepper whatever - This is the legacy of dada affirming itself as capitalism - Optical unconscious - reproducing something on the smaller scale and the larger scale - Supermarket or this doing the exact same thing as pollock - not only is this overwhelming but there is this idea of freedom that is happening in pollock, or maybe what pollock thinks he is doing is just repressing this (andy) - Fisher - The success of capitalism is that it colonizes the imagination and makes it impossible to think of an alternative - Cynicism : everything is determined by the market, harsh economic cynicism - What does this do to walter benjamin? Romantic cynic

Jean-Michel Basquiat, Horn Players, 1983

- He is responding to bebop - fast tempo, virtuosic musicians - Charlie parker - one of the heroes of bebop - Improvisation is in here - The improvisational is all very highly citational - If bebop is improv and free movement but is also very citation, it is working with deep structures of consciousness and sort of rearranging them around - THIS IS WHAT BASQUIAT IS DOING - Basquiat is playing with repetitions and citations - It looks like noise, but it's actually highly organized (almost like a camouflage) - Basquiat - copywriting as undermining the radicality of what he is doing - Hated the idea of street art as a form of segregation, making fun of that - Undermining the fantasy of the outside saying you're just commodifying us - Crosses out graffiti to produce desire - Censorship reduces the thing it tries to conceal - basquiat is playing with suppression and desire

Hans Namuth, photograph of Jackson Pollock at work, 1950

- Not alone - About creating a celebrity, a myth, a figure - You wanted to find the unconscious, congratulations you did, you have no clue what you're doing, you don't know how the media is perceiving you

Robert Rauschenberg, Rebus, 1955

- Media is interfering with things - The commodification of paint is present - Painting through news print - Expressivity in the dripping paint (similar to Pollock maybe) - Flat bed picture plane - View is almost like you're looking down - post modern way of thinking about images as having materiality, tangible - A collection of words and images, it constitutes a kind of unsolvable puzzle. The materials, found in the neighborhood around his studio, include comic strips, fabric remnants, a museum poster, and a drawing by his friend the artist Cy Twombly. The work functions as both portrait and landscape, recording the artist's creative impulses at the moment of its making, while also using materials drawn from mass media.

Robert Rauschenberg, Factum I and II, 1957

- One work, made them both at the same time, making it impossible to tell which is the original - This is a critique of pollock → look, i can reproduce your drip - But if one condition of photography is to capture the world - its 'lights, shadows and particles' - then its logic is to double or repeat that world through a separation. Photography carves off a piece of the world and splits it from itself: a lesson readily available via the medium of collage and taught by the Factum twins. So it is Factum I and Factum I/I which first introduce this logic into the geography of Rauschenberg's painting, a logic which makes it impossible to read these two canvases as just one Factum after another. - also gives an indication of a past action like pollock

Pablo Picasso, Violin, 1912

- Synthetic cubism - collage - Picasso is a humanist, he is consenting to mass culture (industrialization), but he is keeping the candle alive for that optical flicker (violin goes in front and behind of the paper at the same time) - Why does greenburg care so much about medium specificity: he wants to be able to distinguish fine art from art for the masses (but he's a communist so how does that even make sense) - There comes a point where he is realizing he has to deal with the mass productions of the world yet still holds onto that glimmering hope for vision - Violin passes in front and behind of the paper at the same time - Context dictating meaning - Left newspaper - signifies void - Right paper - signifies part of the atmosphere - Almost a sculptural element - context dictates meaning

Claude Monet, Women in a Garden, 1867

- They are all the same person - Relationship to nature - THE SAME FIGURE OVER AND OVER, IDEA OF ADVERTISING - The model for each of the four figures was Monet's mistress, Camille Doncieux. - The picture, however, was rejected, which may not have surprised Monet unduly; since his time at Charles Gleyre's studio in Paris he had had little regard for academic art and its champions on the Salon Jury. Although the work might have appeared to conform to the pattern of figure composition that was acceptable to the French Academy it lacked one important element: the figures in the group lacked any dramatic relationship with each other, that is, there is no "story line" in the painting. At the time, this element was regarded as the raison d'etre of a painting, whether it was historical, literary, religious or social, but in Monet's work the people simply exist. Also they all look rather alike - which was hardly surprising, since his wife had posed for all of them.

Jean-Michel Basquiat, Grillo, 1984

- This is about synchronization - Trying to regulate history - Trying to think through artifacts, trying to being texture (right edge) - Across the continents texture means different things - Bebop structure, there is a repeated pattern (looks like chaos on the surface, but as you get through them, body comes forward) - How is he thinking through his identity in New York - Something going on in this that is somewhat a continuation of ... - Street culture is a racist construct - Thinking through urbanism and fine art - Remaking the body is a project that is in his thoughts

Rembrandt, Self-Portrait, 1640 National Gallery of Art, London (Oil on canvas, 91 x 75 cm)

- This is one of dozens of self portraits by Rembrandt. We see the artist in confident pose - self-assured, dressed in expensive-looking fur and velvet, his hat laced with jewels. But, though he is a Dutchman living in the 1640s, Rembrandt is wearing the clothes of a gentleman of the 1520s and his pose is based on paintings by Dürer, Titian and Raphael from a similar date. So, as the subject of the painting, Rembrandt is portraying himself as a Renaissance gentleman, and as the artist he is both paying homage to and directly comparing himself with the most famous artists of that time. - It depicts the artist wearing an elaborate costume from the previous century, including a cap with a scalloped edge that was a favorite attribute of the artist. This portrait is one of many self-portraits created by Rembrandt throughout his life. - Rembrandt's self-portraits evolved over time to become more serious and introspective in nature as he aged. However, Self-Portrait at the Age of 34 stands apart from his other later works for its striking background featuring two drawn circles. The portrait exudes confidence and urbanity, modeled after courtly portraits by Raphael and Titian. - In addition to creating over forty paintings depicting himself, Rembrandt also produced thirty-one etchings and about seven drawings featuring Self-Portraits. His self-portraiture was influenced by his desire to master different techniques and reflect changes in his appearance over time.

Claude Monet, Terrace at Saint-Adresse, 1867

- Monet spent the summer of 1867 with his family at Sainte-Adresse, a seaside resort near Le Havre. It was there that he painted this buoyant, sunlit scene of contemporary leisure, enlisting his father (shown seated in a panama hat) and other relatives as models. By adopting an elevated viewpoint and painting the terrace, sea, and sky as three distinct bands of high-keyed color, Monet emphasized the flat surface of the canvas. His approach—daring for its time—reflects his admiration for Japanese prints. - The elevated vantage point and relatively even sizes of the horizontal areas emphasize the two-dimensionality of the painting. The three horizontal zones of the composition seem to rise parallel to the picture plane instead of receding into space. The subtle tension resulting from the combination of illusionism and the two-dimensionality of the surface remained an important characteristic of Monet's style.

John Cage, 4'33", 1952

- Neo-Dada simultaneously mocked and celebrated consumer culture, united opposing conventions of abstraction and realism, and disregarded boundaries between media through experimentation with assemblage, performance, and other hybrid fusions. - John Cage - talks about listening and hearing, one is active and one is about taking in sound with your own experience - Noise and silence are constructs - 4′33″ (pronounced "four minutes, thirty-three seconds" or just "four thirty-three") is a three-movement composition by American experimental composer John Cage. It was composed in 1952, for any instrument or combination of instruments, and the score instructs performers not to play their instruments during the entire duration of the piece throughout the three movements. The piece consists of the sounds of the environment that the listeners hear while it is performed,although it is commonly perceived as "four minutes thirty-three seconds of silence". - Meant to change from performance to performance because the performance is based on the audience - In the silence, you start to hear traffic outside, people coughing, etc. - Anarchist? - Visual experience starts to be part of it - deskilling, messing how sounds and noise can be produced, somewhat the father of neo-dada - Cage - Neo-avant garde

Corbusier, Dom-ino Frame, 1914

- This model proposed an open floor plan consisting of concrete slabs supported by a minimal number of thin, reinforced concrete columns around the edges, with a stairway providing access to each level on one side of the floor plan. The frame was to be completely independent of the floor plans of the houses thus giving freedom to design the interior configuration. The model eliminated load-bearing walls and the supporting beams for the ceiling. - Because of steel, reinforced concrete, etc. he can move the stairwells out to the four corners because structurally he has the support to do that which contributes to a big, open space in the center - Technology is allowing corbusier to redefine the program of the building and use the relationship between ornament and structure is being confused - A lot of light - Forest origins - think about amien (what's being naturalized? White collar work) - BUZZ WORD: BREAKING THE BOX, OPENS THE SPACE UP, STAIRS AT THE FOUR CORNERS - Artificial paradise

Romare Bearden, The Prevalence of Ritual: Baptism, 1964

- Very aware of the medium - An argument about reading in this in terms of source materials - Source materials are all from textbooks that he got in the United States from Africa - widening the scope of how you read - Arranging this in a style of collage that had prominence in europe and saying something about how being an american it's a mix between both africa and europe - mixing both sources together - His notion of identity as an american is that of syncretic culture - he thinks his identity is a composite of all of these different strands and what better way to do that than through a collage - he understands how form mediates history - Paradoxically both doing modernism and taking it apart (deconstructing it) at the same time - We have flicker, we have form ^ - Texture - he did what was called photostat - makes it seamless

Andy Warhol, Large Campbell's Soup Can, 1964 and silkscreen process

- Warhol is doing what benjamin is telling us to do but in a completely opposing manner - One of the main sort of pushers in this school is dialectical material - Walter benjamin was a huge fan of baudelaire but - we saw in dandyism even in baudelaire's own words that dandy is a threat to social economics, dandy is someone who abuses loopholes in social performance to embody a certain mode of existence and accumulate capital, but without it we couldn't explain things like social capital which is why this moment of reversal is important to think about - Walter benjamin teaches us that perception - the ability to see - is something that is historically determined; the modern era, the era that he's talking about, he's talking about a decline in the idea of presence - The destruction of the aura - mass production - carries with it a hope - One of the things walter benjamin is most interested in is that going to the movies will sit together in the dark for an hour and a half and he believes this could be used for progressive change???? New social organizations create new types of communal living - Technology is something that reveals - Aura and its withering - Technology is never anything necessarily new, it just reveals something that was always there (tourists taking a picture of mona lisa) this interface reveals something about seeing and reproducing a whole sort of institutional framework where viewing the mona lisa, showing us how political the mona lisa is

Pablo Picasso, Guitar, 1912

- synthetic cubism - Sculpture but flattened like a painting - Hole of the guitar is protruding outwards - Reversing directions of space - Reversal of positive and negative space - Getting this from african art ^^^^ - Picasso's treatment of forms differed significantly from traditional sculpture materials; therefore, the Maquette for Guitar represents a schism between past and present modes of creating sculpture. - This is about putting all of these elements in place as a game that in your flickering eye would create an image of a guitar - Picasso is saying how the people in africa totally understand language better than us; can't have irony, or humor, or poetry without context dictating meaning (think shells as eyes)

CORBUSIER: THE FIVE POINTS OF A NEW ARCHITECTURE, 1927

-Pilotis. -The Roof Garden. -The Free Plan. -The Horizontal Window. -Free Façade.

Bruegel, The Battle between Carnival and Lent, 1559 VS Jan van Eyck, The Arnolfini Portrait, 1434

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Pablo Picasso, Demoiselles d'Avignon, 1907 VS Diego Velazques, Las Meninas, 1656

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Corbusier, Villa Savoye, Poissy, 1929-1931

THE FIVE POINTS OF A NEW ARCHITECTURE, 1927 PILOTIS THE ROOF GARDEN THE FREE PLAN THE HORIZONTAL WINDOW FREE FACADE - Shift between inside and outside happening here between nature and technology - Difference between wright and corbusier → different than a blending of nature - Sitting next to each other in a car, seen from a car - The whole structure of the bottom floor is scaled to the running radius of the car, the car enters the car - The boundaries in which the car and the house are being undermined is a big part of this - Who enters this house? Looks like the inside of a parking garage - Owner walks up conveyer belt, they are always gliding this machine like apparatus - The housekeepers use the stairs - class distinction World outside is flat - More preprogrammed compared to wright's open space

Parthenon (Acropolis, Athens), 447-432 BCE, Architects: Iktinos and Kallikrates, Overseen by Pheidias

context/concept: roof was blown off in 1687 ... should it have been restored? would erase history ... still retains its structure and significance ... signifies resilience; people saw it differently back then than we do now ... the more accurate you are about the past, the less you actually know b/c the scientific method is further pushing the simulation ... you can't beat history ... even the terms of reconstruction have history build: of post and lintel construction; doric temple with Ionic architectural features; frieze of carved pictorial panels (metopes) separated by formal architectural triglyphs (typical of the doric order); continuous frieze in low relief around the cella and across the lintels of the inner columns - in contrast - reflects the Ionic order frieze = we project ourselves onto monuments, but also want to display our society/legacy for others; pride in past/present and wish to continue legacy three parts of the temple were carved: frieze, metopes and pediments themes: represents power, strength, prestige; 490 feet above sea level (enemy ships can see it from far away as a statement) during war, you can showcase your dominance during times of peace, create a massive monument to showcase your superiority

Diego Velazques, Las Meninas, 1656

inside/outside: the king and queen are supposedly "outside" the painting yet their reflection in the back wall mirror also places them "inside" the space; viewer is the subject of the painter (inside and outside the canvas), window (person in the door lit by the same light, but outside the room) (compare to the mirror --> perspective bounces back at us and it also extends farther than the painting) themes: radical b/c royal power is considered bestowed by God but we (viewers) are being put in the position of the king/queen (eyes looking at you = power assigned to you) (royalty is socially ordained, not divinely assigned); secularization (contrasting the christian way of looking at the world)

Clara Peeters, Still Life with Flowers, a Silver-Gilt Goblet, Dried Fruit, Sweetmeats, Bread Sticks, Wine, and a Pewter Pitcher, 1611, Museo del Prado, Madrid (Oil on panel, 52 x 73 cm)

theme: - Flowers are modern... why? Something about the way is being constructed and the environment around nature is being framed ... the flower dies there is a temporality imposed on it, the symbol is forever - Still life - This is what women at the time had access to and what they could paint - Objects of consumption, perishable → time is very much of discussion here (things that die and don't last) - Decadent image, luxury - Perspective --> this could be you standing over the table rather than standing eye-level with the table - The passage of time and trying to locate yourself without mediation of the church

Romare Bearden, The Dove (Projection), 1964. Photostat on fibreboard. 38 1⁄2 x 54 1⁄2 inches.

themes: - 360 totality of a street scene Public sphere becomes the private sphere - Light (guernica) says indoor, dove says outdoor - You see the red bricks and you know your in America - Sharing a cig on a fire escape - space where communication felt safe - Grid like structure - Consuming class are not serving the producers - The middle class - when its instrumentalized - keeps the poor poor and the rich rich - Documentary feeling - convey a sense of "you are there" - Discontinuity of collage technique draws attention to social fragmentation - Thinking through location - harlem - Documenting the united states - way in which harlem was becoming an object of consumption - Inside and outside is being scrambled - Racist thenography - The artist created the essence of a vibrant, ever changing neighborhood by gluing cut-up photographs, clippings from newspapers and magazines, and colored paper to a piece of cardboard in such a way that the viewer's eye, like an inhabitant of the street itself, is constantly on the move, jumping from light areas to dark areas and from pattern to pattern. We glimpse people with large heads and hands and small feet walking, sitting, smoking, and peering from open doors and windows; We eye cats roaming—perhaps looking for a meal—and spy body parts that emerge mysteriously from undefined openings in the buildings. - Amid all this activity it is hard to imagine any sense of order, but Bearden carefully composed The Dove so that, beginning with the white cat at bottom left, we travel into and around the street, always noticing something different. - Consider how we perceive our environment. For example, when we're sitting in a room or walking down the street, do we see everything at once in equal detail? We perceive our surroundings in fragments, a little at a time. We see a complicated or an active scene, piece by piece over time. Bearden magnified this in his art.

Romare Bearden, The Dove, 1964. Cut-and-pasted printed paper, gouache, pencil, and colored pencil on board. 13 3⁄8 x 18 3⁄4 inches. MoMA.

Francisco Goya, Second of May, 1808, 1814

themes: - Goya was asked to paint a painting commemorating this day of uprising by those who had oppressed him - Captive to the conservatives that were asking him to commemorate the day - What is Goya's agency in this painting? Swirling cyclone and what is the center of this painting → a horse's ass, laughing at authority - Goya is the great political artist

Constantin Guys, Carriages and Promenaders on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, (1802-1892)

themes: - How does this connect with dandyism? - Camouflage - everyone who is wearing a top hat feels the same - Clothing is holding society together - Baudelaire thinks of this as an orgy - pleasure in being numbered - Mass experience, the eternal and the ephemeral → u see someone on the subway, find them incredibly attractive, image stays in your head, you never see them again (Baudelaire) - Authority is loosening and they are becoming objects of exchange

Francisco Goya, Meadow of San Isidro, 1788

themes: - How is outside being generated? - Outside of the city, river in between (acting as a barrier) - Kind of bourgeois way of enjoying nature (contrast with nature) - Battle? Karl marx would probably say this is a class war - People in the back are selling things, jumping in the water - Maybe the people at the front don't necessarily want to be with the people in the back - We are outside, but we see that enclosures are being reproduced outside that are regulated - Bourgeois is creating an enclosure that reinforces a class distinction OUTSIDE - Disgust is an emotional way to regulate class distinctions - People at the front may be disgusted by people jumping in the water and taking their clothes off - Whereas the people in the back may be disgusted by the stuffy bourgeois class at the front - Modern politics is a shift from governing territories to governing populations (this would lead to clothing, etiquette, etc.) - Bourgeois triggered, bottom people cringing - Using and distributing positions, forms of regulation

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Monet Painting in his Garden at Argenteuil, 1873

themes: - We are outside - (artist in his studio is the opposition) - but how outside? We are in HIS garden, birth of the suburbs is happening, enclosure is being produced outside - He is working from impression and transmitting that experience onto a canvas - Flowers are modern because they die (temporality) but have an eternal - symbolic function - This is part of that ^ - Building an artificial space in a natural setting - If you give an image back to a human viewer, is it about being outside the boundary OR simply about extending the scope of their inside boundary, are u just reflecting a boundary (camera obscura) - Technology - this is all product of the industrialization of the tube of paint that makes this possible (mobility and the moving eye) making painters more mobile (u can connect this to Baudelaire) - Birth of the suburbs kicking poor farmers out of their neighborhoods (connect to Rembrandt) - Leisure does something, when someone is sitting in their backyard, they are also holding place, the way these open spaces are bring constructed have a politics to it

Rembrandt, The Anatomy of Dr. Tulp, 1632

themes: - Where are they looking - What's going on in bernini is that he is sculpting with painting elements - He is painting in a sculptural way - Rembrandt notes the doctor's significance by showing him as the only person who wears a hat. Seven colleagues surround Dr. Tulp, and they look in a variety of directions—some gaze at the cadaver, some stare at the lecturer, and some peek directly at the viewer. Each face displays a facial expression that is deeply personal and psychological. The cadaver—a recently executed thief named Adriaen Adriaenszoon—lies nearly parallel to the picture plane. In all, Rembrandt shows nine distinct figures, but does so as if they are a unified group.

Angelica Kauffman, Zeuxis Choosing his Models for his Painting of Helen of Troy, c. 1775-1780

themes: - How is she subverting and playing with the formal template of a history painting? She is depicting the process of how to depict a history painting - Woman has agency in the back of this man (something happening in the blindspot, subversion) - Female ghostly figure happening in the back - passivity and activity - The painting tells the story of Zeuxis, who, in order to portray the world's most beautiful women, chooses five becoming models from whom to distill an ideal synthesis. Kauffman shows Zeuxis in the act of anatomical study, inspecting one of the models as three others prepare for the master's gaze. But one model, set behind the artist and in the right background, defies the patriarchal conventions of representation encoded in the narrative and in Zeuxis's attentive gaze. Stepping behind the male artist, she takes up the artist's brush and moves toward the empty canvas. The active model claims the canvas and in doing so seems to enact what Kauffman herself performs. The analogy is given substance by the inclusion on the fictive canvas of a signature: Angelica Kauffman pinx."

Edouard Manet, Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe, 1862-1863

themes: - In a location that would be associated with prostitution - To those that were educated, it felt like he was doing some violence to the way the female nude and nature appear - Manet is not supportive but rather showing how grotesque these people are - Why this painting was important was that it was so shocking to the public that it was not allowed into salons → this is important because it created a whole new concept of the salon (the salon that would refuse) - We know have a moment in which artists are questioning the state and its morals and are proud of being rejected - Cancel culture → love that you are not accepted because that means you hold some version of truth (another ex. Punk rockers, proud of being canceled) (Bow Wow Wow, Last of the Mohicans, 1982) - Inside and outside is happening here

Jacques-Louis David, Académie d'homme, dite Patroclus, 1780

themes: - Moment where the male body becomes the agent of history (alluding to this idea in Death of Socrates) - History is being told through male bodies - Michelangelo, Dying Slave, 1513-1515 (gazes create psychologies and emotion) the psychological state is coming through the exterior - Paradox: exceptionality in rules (athena the warrior princess)

Pablo Picasso, Demoiselles d'Avignon, 1907

- Analytic cubism - Where are we? In spain - Why is this modern? Sex work is where the social and economic collapse into each other which is predominantly what happens with modernism - This image is insanely confrontational - this confrontation - You can make modernism about the beginning stage of confrontation - Excess - not one central figure, but five - What is happening in this image - looks like they are displaying themselves to the viewer, scene in which women are being presented to the customer - In the sketch there are two male customers - puts the viewer in their position maybe? - Theres a narrative in the sketch whereas there is no narrative in the actual painting its simply immediate confrontation - Vs Las Meninas → in las meninas you fit seamlessly into the frame, whereas demoiselles is right in your face; theres a receding window in las meninas, picasso is shattering perspective → canvas interfering with the image, there is no illusion, analytic cubism breaks down how the vision, canvas, and the eye are broken down... this image is so confrontational that it is shattering illusional depth and perspective - Rampant gisante (steinberg) → composition of french formulation, he thinks that she embodies a contradiction, this figure is laying down and standing up at the same time, the way he is dancing around formalism: this is something you can only do in painting, - African art → he is doing shadow and shade still thinking about the canvas as a flat surface and picasso is interested in how african artists were not playing into illusionism

Jackson Pollock, One: Number 31, 1950, 1950

- Attempt at totality and doing everything at once - American imperialism - Someone like pollock would think that his work is above - humans deny the horizontal axis for a vertical axis, and the horizontal axis is that of the animal; pollock reverses this - Flat, but still has this Optical flicker - Seems very violent - You are in this position where you are reconstructing an event - An index is a marker that something happened, no value judgments or narratives about it - Action painting - An index gives you nothing except the fact that it happened - You are looking at a displacement, an action happened, and now we do the labor to figure out what the action was - When its horizontal, it simply paint on the ground, but when it is vertical, it becomes a work of art, even viewers treat it like a masterpiece - Has its precedence in surrealists (andre masson automatic drawing) - Is it paint? Is it painting? Paint vs painting - About making something that is fundamentally transformed when it is horizontal vs vertical - About making something that is fundamentally transformed when it is horizontal vs vertical - models posing in front of these painting: This is good because it is vulgar because it shows all of the idealism of modernism of trying to do everything at once (vulgar = backhanded insult) American version of totality Showing how blind pollock was to the way he was being manipulated in the market; About the unconscious ^ the way you repress your own body working - sort of producing the same thing over and over, almost like a logo or a signature

Jackson Pollock, Autumn Rhythm, 1950

- Attempt at totality and doing everything at once - American imperialism - Someone like pollock would think that his work is above - humans deny the horizontal axis for a vertical axis, and the horizontal axis is that of the animal; pollock reverses this - Flat, but still has this Optical flicker - Seems very violent - You are in this position where you are reconstructing an event - An index is a marker that something happened, no value judgments or narratives about it - Action painting - An index gives you nothing except the fact that it happened - You are looking at a displacement, an action happened, and now we do the labor to figure out what the action was - When its horizontal, it simply paint on the ground, but when it is vertical, it becomes a work of art, even viewers treat it like a masterpiece - Has its precedence in surrealists (andre masson automatic drawing) - Is it paint? Is it painting? Paint vs painting - About making something that is fundamentally transformed when it is horizontal vs vertical - models posing in front of these painting: This is good because it is vulgar because it shows all of the idealism of modernism of trying to do everything at once (vulgar = backhanded insult) American version of totality Showing how blind pollock was to the way he was being manipulated in the market; About the unconscious ^ the way you repress your own body working - sort of producing the same thing over and over, almost like a logo or a signature

Marcel Duchamp, Fountain, 1917

- Big middle finger to the criteria of judgment - Important because it makes visible how bs the egalitarianism of the art world is - Thinking about picasso, thinking about cubism - Photography as a condition, showing up like a camera - 'readymade', an ordinary manufactured object designated by the artist as a work of art (and, in Duchamp's case, interpreted in some way). - Duchamp was one of the very first to bring manufactured objects - which he called 'Readymades' - into the gallery space. His Fountain was a particularly attention grabbing Readymade because it was such a crass, crude object (even if the one he bought was brand new). - Of all the artworks in this series of readymades, Fountain is perhaps the best known because the symbolic meaning of the toilet takes the conceptual challenge posed by the readymades to their most visceral extreme - The impact of Duchamp's Fountain changed the way people view art due to his focus upon "cerebral art" contrary to merely "retinal art", as this was a means to engage prospective audiences in a thought-provoking way as opposed to satisfying the aesthetic status quo "turning from classicism to modernity - Since the photograph taken by Stieglitz is the only image of the original sculpture, there are some interpretations of Fountain by looking not only at reproductions but this particular photograph. Tomkins notes: Arensberg had referred to a 'lovely form' and it does not take much stretching of the imagination to see in the upside-down urinal's gently flowing curves the veiled head of a classic Renaissance Madonna or a seated Buddha or, perhaps more to the point, one of Brâncuși's polished erotic forms - In a 1964 interview with Otto Hahn, Duchamp suggested he purposefully selected a urinal because it was disagreeable. The choice of a urinal, according to Duchamp, "sprang from the idea of making an experiment concerned with taste: choose the object which has the least chance of being liked. A urinal—very few people think there is anything wonderful about a urinal - Fountain is what's called an "acheropoietoi," [sic] an image not shaped by the hands of an artist. Fountain brings us into contact with an original that is still an original but that also exists in an altered philosophical and metaphysical state. It is a manifestation of the Kantian sublime: A work of art that transcends a form but that is also intelligible, an object that strikes down an idea while allowing it to spring up stronger

Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still #54, 1980

- Cindy Sherman's Untitled Film Stills is a suite of seventy black-and-white photographs in which the artist posed in the guises of various generic female film characters, among them, ingénue, working girl, vamp, and lonely housewife. Staged to resemble scenes from 1950s and '60s Hollywood, film noir, B movies, and European art-house films, the printed images mimic in format, scale, and quality the often-staged "stills" used to promote films. By photographing herself in such roles, Sherman inserts herself into a dialogue about stereotypical portrayals of women. Whether she was the one to release the camera's shutter or not, she is considered the author of the photographs. However, the works in Untitled Film Stills are not considered self-portraits. - Technology exposes the apparatus - The apparatus is invisible yet she still has this - Flicking of the collar → like she's cool → apparatus not necessarily a movie camera - All she has to do was flick up her collar and that implies cinema Perhaps hiding by flicking up her collar - maybe talking about the omnipresence of cinema - Orchestrated it as a candid - curating a certain look - If u try to connect any of these works to an actual film, it doesn't exist (strength - Saying something about cinema as a generic condition - media is rewriting the environment, recreating new york - Does she even exist? Or is she stepping into a pre prescribed role - Is she just deflecting? Do you ever really see her? Or is this stepping into fantasies - Rethinking new york city as an object of cinema - Douglass - pictures - read - No actual source filming this - way in which douglas crimp defines pictures: representation free from the tyranny of the represented ... most postmodern thing ever, creating an image that generates its own reality, does not correspond to the existing world - something completely fake that happens online but has real consequences/effects - They just care about the image, no connection to reality Inserting herself into history Cindy Sherman vs Marilyn Diptych - Warhol → comment on who she is being constructed - CINDY → deflection, you never necessarily get the person

Jean-Michel Basquiat, Untitled (Maid from Olympia), 1982

- Compare to manet's olympia - Thinking about framing - Not treated like picture paintings - form of segregation COMPARE OLYMPIA AND UNTITLED - Basquiat Art about art .. an image about an image ... what postmodernism is about; freeing representation from the tyranny of the represented - Purely racism that basquiat is considered a street artist Setting her in parenthesis and giving her a new space to breathe

Frank Lloyd Wright, Darwin and Isabelle Martin House, south facade with covered veranda at east (right), main body of house in center, and porte cochere at west (left), Buffalo, NY, 1903-1905

- How is freedom and capitalism intertwined? - Nature is being taken into the building - Trying to find the unity between the natural environment and the idea of enclosure - Thinking about Japanese architecture - Lot of light in the house, opaque you can't see inside FROM the outside - How do we get to the opacity of the exterior? Using the cantilever to create asymmetrical ... with the outside world - The house itself looks like a fortress - cantilevers are being implemented to create this asymmetric power dynamic with optics - Maybe this is an extension of the panoptic tower - what is the view it is casting on the street and how much would an architecture like this be used into promoting an ethic system in an area with - Go from this and talk about the suburbs as a prison - Bricks - wanted to show unity and repetition to such an intense degree that the bricks don't actually break but rather he painted on the cracks - No designated backyard - everything is free flowing - All of his houses are generated around the idea of the fire palace - the fireplace is the grounding structure of suburban architecture (nuclear family) - Everything flows around trying to keep this ideal alive^^ - No clear division between spaces - For wright, the furniture was also thought of as an extension of the architecture - Furniture can create division in the spaces - this would be the difference - these objects are also a part of the architecture in an effort to delineate the space - The actual tables and the chair (dining) are doing the work to designate the space, not walls The different spaces sort of slam into each other - You can read the truth of anything on the surface - how would you start to talk about the united states - american individualism - Cantilevers describe american history - not wanting to touch a foundation, free forms, funneling social interaction and free movement to generating an enclosure for a nuclear family, these houses are allegories or manifestations to aspects of how america found itself which is reluctance to touch aspects of its own history - The horizontal structure of this was about the horizon of push less, these buildings are about US refusing to touch the ground, hovering right above the surface and not facing their own history, their own foundation, this is called primitive accumulation in marxism (the brutal processes that separated working people from the means of subsistence and concentrated wealth in the hands of landlords and capitalists.

Berthe Morisot, Mother and Sister of the Artist, 1869-1870. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

- If the outside space is a theater, how does a man represent an interior space v. a woman - Man → her back is to the window, empty chair b/c the patriarch is absent - Woman → she is reading, not reaching out to the outside - The scene takes place in the living room of Morisot's parents' house. In the background there is a mirror where a curtained door is reflected. The large upholstered sofa and the wooden table show the social class to which her aristocratic family belonged

Andy Warhol, Marilyn Diptych, 1962

- Is the aura withering here? - He wants to be an observer, he doesn't want to say anything What is the aura for Andy Warhol vs the aura for Walter Benjamin - Warhol - celebrities, andy warhol the aura is this horrible synthetic thing that holds everything that holds society in place, but its my avatar im gonna use it to navigate society, use your aura / celebrity / fabricated self as a pint of leverage to cynically go through and maneuver society - We see celebrities as objects of consumption just like the soupcans - Made after marilyn committed suicide, not a funny joke - Warhol is trolling in the most harmful sense and saying something about the artifice and constructed commodity - ANTHER IMPORTANT CATEGORY FOR WALTER BENJAMIN: IDEA OF THE APPARATUS, CINEMA - CINEMA FOR WLATER BENJAMIN SHOWS A VERY IMPORTANT SHIFT - DISTINGUISHES CINEMA IN THE THEATER - IDEA IS IN A WORK OF THEATER THE ACTOR PERFORMS HIS LINES AND THE ACTOR IS SPEAKING TO AN AUDIENCE HAVE MORE PRESNE AND MORE SELF CONTROL, IN CINEMA WHAT HE CARES ABOUT IS THAT THE ACTR IS AT THE MERCY OF THE DIRECTOR AND AT MERCY AT THE EDITOR - This is to say that this is about a fundamental lack of control of the actor in this situation; its about an inability to fully understand who you are in the act of performance - Shift from being able to fully self presently be self possessed in front of an audience; the cinema's actors actions are completely fragmented and subject to many takes and the final say of their identity is in the hands of someone else - This is about how identity is being placed in the hands of others - Apparatus: in benjamin, more or less not necessarily located just to the movie camera, rather the social ensemble - force that elicits a performance, THE APPARATUS CREATES SUBJECTS, CREATES MARILYN AS A COMMODITY - For foucault, the great pitstem of modernity is the panopticon prison - Baudelaire's whole thing is in praise of cosmetics; the way you perform is what your identity is... this is now all happening through movie cameras, the way you're frame dis more determinant of who you are than how you perform - You're more vulnerable to be subjected to ways to reconceptualization in ways you don't understand - Aura is withering → something that warhold is doing is thinking about the ethical response we have; in theater, it's unmediated, but in cinema, the persona is constructed - BAUDELAIRE → IDENTITY IS A PERFORMATIVE THING (FAKE IT TIL YOU MAKE IT) - Warhol is showing us how the performative show of identity is being done by cameras What's the aura? HISTORICAL CULTURAL AUTHORITY THAT SOMETHING WILLS, THE AURA WITHERS BECAUSE -? Wlater benjamin is writing about a decline in presence, the aura is the experience of nearingness no matter how far something is (proximity) mass reproduction is changing the way we experience this, benjamin thinks that the destruction of the aura can restructure society, warhol is an antithesis to benjamin because warhol does the operations benjamin lays out... warhol reaffirms a cynical conception of capitalism - COMPARE THIS WITH CLAUDE MONET, WOMEN IN A GARDEN

Berthe Morisot, The Cradle, 1872 (Orsay) Ex. 1874, first impressionist exhibition

- It shows one of the artist's sisters, Edma, watching over her sleeping daughter, Blanche. It is the first image of motherhood—later one of her favourite subjects—to appear in Morisot's work. - The mother's gaze, her bent left arm, a mirror image of the child's arm, and the baby's closed eyes form a diagonal line which is further accentuated by the movement of the curtain in the background. This diagonal links the mother to her child - Manet lured her (Berthe Morisot) into the Impressionist movement but she was never his pupil. They influenced one another, and it was partly due to Berthe Morisot that Manet abandoned his sombre manner, brightened his palette and took up plein air painting. They were greatly attracted to one another, as can be seen by the many portraits Manet made of her: with a fan, with opera glasses, with a muff, with a bouquet of violets, and so on. - it related to one of the Impressionism features, which emphasized on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities. There is no obvious light source in the painting. Morisot, however, used strong different degrees of light and dark. Take curtain as an example that she used the reflection and the background color to make it be transparent. We can still see the face of the baby through the mesh of the certain. The effect of transparent is also a typical feature of some works of impressionism - the curtain falls over the face of the infant to shield it from the viewer and we can just see the infant through the mesh of the certain, which also reflected the protective love of the mother. It shows the traditional family values and also the family bonding existing in her generation.

Rembrandt, Portrait of Jan Six, 1654, Six Collection, Amsterdam (Oil on canvas, 112 x 102 cm)

- Rembrandt → clothing animates agency - he could impose his own terms instead of having them dictated by others. He could light his models in the way that seemed to him most beautiful; he could adorn them in the manner that he thought appropriate to their character, indicate to them the best pose to take, and determine the degree of finish in the execution. Free from all external hindrances, he could then create; he no longer aimed at securing so exact a likeness of his sitter. - When Rembrandt needed money in 1653 to pay his creditors, Jan Six was one of those who lent to him, providing 1000 guilders. Just a year later Rembrandt painted this portrait of Jan Six, perhaps to pay off his debt in kind. The portrait of Jan Six has been called the most beautiful portrait ever painted, combining style with psychological insight. Jan Six is 36 years old, a man of the world, well read and with wide interests. The portrait is not static, but catches Six in a moment of action: he has just drawn on his left glove, and gives the impression of being on the point of departure. Rembrandt has reinforced the impression of immediacy by the manner in which he painted the picture, quickly and confidently. The gold embroidery on the red coat is just a series of strokes of paint, done with a broad brush; the glove shows little detail, whereas the right hand is strikingly rendered, even the tension in the hand necessary to draw on the glove is made visible. - The attitude of the head is not that of any ordinary sitter: Jan Six is looking at the observer rather enquiringly, his head slightly on one side, without posing or vanity, but with the justified hesitation of someone encountering a stranger. Because the portrait is approximately life-size, the spectator inevitably feels as if he or she were face to face with a living man.

Édouard Manet, La négresse (Portrait of Laure), 1863. Pinacoteca Giovanni e Marella Agnelli, Turin

- She was one of many black individuals who moved to the area following France's 1848 abolition of territorial slavery, Sheets writes, and was likely featured in "Olympia" as a nod to the city's growing black working class. - "La Négresse (Portrait of Laure)" further highlights its model's individuality, exhibiting a specificity of features unusual in its "departure from the dominant ethnographic lenses used to portray people of color."

Andy Warhol, Ethyl Scull 36 Times, 1963

- Something fundamentally "American Dream" about it; make your wealth and then do something like this with the coolest "artist" - Upward mobility → at the core of american identity - Is warhol critical or is he doing something? He says he wants to be observant; or is this a point where criticism itself is understanding that it can't do the task necessary at the moment; is it better in some instances to critique or to exploit? Does morality run out? - No deception, even if it's capitalism: capitalist realism - Apparatus is an epistem → what is the apparatus here? It's not necessarily a fetishized camera but it is the entire ensemble of relationships - This allows us to think of society as an apparatus, who is she performing for? - They are eliciting this from her - Criticism vs exploitation → this is so over the top, so can criticism even apply here? Is this person even someone who can be a recipient of that? (he is giving more by pushing the situation as far as he can, rather than being conservative) - Cold, no comment - Walter benjamin → apparatus as a metaphor that extends beyond cinematic experience, who is she performing her? Warhol is the lens for all of society... social relations as an apparatus ... eliciting a performance out of her - Dandyism is at the core of what andy was doing: "it's absolutely no different at the top" - Prisoner of panopticon being locked into his role

Edouard Manet, A Bar at the Folies-Bergère, 1882

- We are positioned as the customer at this time in these certain places, spectacle going on here, here was an expectation that they were available for sex work - Who are we to assume that she's a sex worker, we are put in a guilty position - Mimics the bottles of champagne, the body and the commodity are sliding into each other - Women in spectacle - While at first glance it may appear that there is a crowd behind the barmaid, it is actually the reflection of a mirror. - By depicting one of these women and her male customer on an imposing scale, Manet brazenly introduced a morally suspect, contemporary subject into the realm of high art. By treating the topic with deadpan seriousness and painterly brilliance, Manet staked his claim to be remembered as the heroic "painter of modern life" envisaged by critics like Charles Baudelaire.In addition to the social tensions evoked by the painting's subject, Manet's composition presents a visual puzzle. The barmaid looks directly at the viewer, while the mirror behind her reflects the large hall and patrons of the Folies-Bergère. Manet seems to have painted the image from a viewpoint directly opposite the barmaid. Yet this viewpoint is contradicted by the reflection of the objects on the bar and the figures of the barmaid and a patron off to the right. Given such inconsistencies, Manet seems not to have offered a single, determinate position from which to confidently make sense of the whole.

Francisco Goya, Family of Carlos IV, 1800-1801

- What makes this unflatteringly real? Everyone looking in a different direction, seems like still motion rather than a moving frame. - Very obviously an aristocratic family. - Much more detail, which is making it more unflattering. - Enlightenment - People as placeholders - Goya is the critic, David is the propagandist - Goya is making you READ it, learning how to read critically, you are reading this as a critic - Goya is THE political artist, THE critic, he invented the way we criticize culture, at the forefront of creating this sort of motion. - As in Las Meninas, the artist is shown working on a canvas, of which only the rear is visible; however, the atmospheric and warm perspective of the palace interior of Velázquez's work is replaced here by a sense of, in the words of Gassier, "imminent suffocation" as the royal family are presented on a "stage facing the public, while in the shadow of the wings the painter, with a grim smile, points and says: 'Look at them and judge for yourself!' - the queen's inane smile (formed by crude dentures), her sagging, pallid skin contrasted with sumptuous gown and jewels, and her overall appearance of doddering senescence, provide satirical fodder. - Goya is generally thought to have intended this painting as a critique of the royal family. The queen stands at the center not because she was rumored to be the real power behind matters of state, but because this would be her place in any European family portrait: women occupied the center, flanked by husband and children. Goya employed the same arrangement in other canvases. Nor is the somewhat paralyzed physiognomy of the sitters a veiled caricature. It is simply the result of the huge painting's not being drawn from life but rather assembled from studies. The final version, if anything, plays down excessively realistic details: comparing the early sketch of the elderly Infanta Maria Josefa with the final product, we see that Goya has tempered her vanity, concealing her face in the shadows of the background.

Unidentified Artist, Kru mask, ca. 1910

- compare with Pablo Picasso, Guitar, 1912 - Reversal of positive and negative space

Pablo Picasso, Daniel Henry-Kahnweiler, Fall-Winter 1910

- pinnacle of analytic cubism - Hologram - Your eye goes into the canvas and puts all the pieces together to create a flickering image - But as an artist- canvas interrupting MY OWN eye movement as im painting you - Cubism is NOT seeing an object from multiple perspectives - Cubism is about scanning the surface of an object and understanding how it fragments IN that attempt of scanning it; getting interrupted by the way the canvas is mediating your experience - The way you piece together the image is important because it's about the boundaries/limits of representation - Figure ground relations - you see black because there's white, you see white because there's black - The canvas pushes through and fragments the image - Why is this modern? Anti-perspective, no illusion, the ephemerality of the flickery of the eye; the optical effect: the flicker, it's because the flatness of the painting announces itself as a painting, you get this optical effect because it stays true to its nature - THE FIGURE DISSOLVES INTO THE GRID OF THE CANVAS

Jacques-Louis David, The Oath of the Horatii, Salon of 1785

HISTORICAL PAINTING context: - neoclassical painting - In the unrest leading up to the French Revolution of 1789, David's powerful image exhorted restrained emotion, order, and the sacrifice of the individual for the good of the state. themes: - How does form mediate history - Women on one side, men on the other (formal structure, a rhetoric of the image, divided into thirds, read it from left to right) - By interpreting the image, you are consenting to the narrative/structure of the image - Neoclassical style - What type of painting is this? A HISTORY painting (on the test) - Fate dictating the narration of history - Living as a governed being, state sanctioned message/practice (unlike Goya) - This in and of itself is a form of state propaganda and a form of criticism of that - Modern because it has this instructional quality to it → this is how you compose an image to convey a message - Institutional connection to the state? How much does state interfere with your experience of art today? Entire experience is kind of curated by the state in a way (museums for ex.) - Borderline propaganda - Academy of primarily homosexual men creating a patriarchichal message (paradox about exceptionality) APPLY THIS TO ALL PAINTINGS - Telling us to read, but in a machine-like way

Clara Peeters, Still Life with Cheeses, Almonds and Pretzels, c. 1615, Mauritshuis, The Hague (Oil on panel, 34.5 x 49.5 cm)

context: - Although a relatively inexpensive foodstuff eaten by all classes, if painted in a stack they could symbolize affluence, or even national pride, to the newly prosperous merchant class who were increasingly investing their wealth in art - bowl --> Kraak ware or Kraak porcelain is a type of Chinese export porcelain produced mainly in the late Ming Dynasty, in the Wanli reign. It was among the first Chinese export wares to arrive in Europe from the late sixteenth century via Portugal and Spain, and spread throughout the continent mainly through Habsburg networks. It often featured in Dutch Golden Age paintings of still life subjects which included foreign luxuries themes: - Still life - eye-level with the table - This is what women at the time had access to and what they could paint - Objects of consumption, perishable → time is very much of discussion here (things that die and don't last) - Decadent image, luxury - Geographic dislocation of trade and capitalism - Reflection in the cap (connection with Sofonisba in the sense that if we are going to be making an argument of secularization, this is we could say a way to find oneself through commodities and not through religion) (mediation is not an idea of God but rather objects of consumption, capitalism, commodity) - Her name on the knife - Argument to be made where you can talk about female artists finding themselves in objects of consumption throughout history vs Cindy Shermon finding herself in a movie - Women's positioning - The passage of time and trying to locate yourself without mediation of the church

Rembrandt, Self-Portrait, c. 1629, (22.5 x 18.8 cm), Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

context: - Baldinucci writes: "The ugly and plebian face with which Rembrandt was ill-favored was accompanied by untidy and dirty clothes, since it was hterm-21is custom, when working, to wipe his brushes on himself, and to do other things of a similar nature." themes: - Can't see the eyes → we are estranged from what he is seeing, creating a psychological charge - Seems counterintuitive to create a self-portrait and shadow your face - Impressionistic - The materiality of the canvas --> coming at the viewer and there is build-up of paint he is manipulating the paint while it is wet - Impasto - wetness of paint, scraping it, this all points back to an action that happened - Makes you think about the artist in his studio in his private space - Commodified genius alone in deep thought - Build up of paint from dark to light - These paintings almost have sculptural aspects to them UNLIKE Raphael who made his canvases with receding space and window-like - Related to technology (etchings) - how can you not look like yourself? (think taking a picture with a photograph) - Technology is revealing things about psychology - Temporality - IMPASTO: thick application of paint, loaded brush

Bruegel, Peasant Dance, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, ca. 1568

context: - Gluttony, lust, and promiscuity can all be identified in this picture - The peasants' celebration takes place on a Saint's day, but the dancers have turned their backs on the church as the image of the Virgin Mary hangs on the tree, and her banner hangs outside the house where the man is encouraging the woman to join the dance. - The tavern's prominence makes it clear that the people are preoccupied with material rather than spiritual matters as a beggar on the far left approaches a table begging for alms. themes: - Aesthetics of poverty and localness... where is exploitation happening? - Caricaturing their position to make fun of the viewer - Voyeurism: enjoyment from seeing the pain or distress of others - If they are over-performing and exploiting themselves, that gives the viewers nothing - Feeding back the desire of the viewer to them - Not thinking of them as subjects, but that they hold agency - Feeding back one's own assumptions back to them (u buy a cd because u assume, but it's a blank cd) - Self exploitation - Fragmentation - the way christianity is being corroded by the market or mutated through it

Bruegel, Fall of Icarus, 1568

context: - Northern Renaissance painting - an expansive landscape, diagonally extending from the left front towards the setting sun on the right - It features several separated figures attending to their daily duties in the foreground - The rustic scene with the daily life and activities of the farmers in the foreground gives way to a prodigious landscape - The sun is setting into the vanishing point of the painting - missing figure of flying Daedalus, a crucial part of the myth - Traditionally, the flight and fall of Icarus and Daedalus would hold a prominent place in the composition of a painting that tells their story. However, Bruegel places the key moment that gives clue to the story to the very edge of the painting, where, above the fisherman on the very right side of the composition, we see a pair of white legs disappearing into the water - the drowning Icarus - the artist has diminished the significance of the story by minimizing any explicit depictions of the myth themes: - Subject is dwarfed by history/context - unordinary way of handling the mythological story opens the painting to many interpretations. Looking at the painting, the story it depicts almost eludes the spectator, as the most important details are nowhere nearly as prominent as in the traditional handling of the mythological subject - attitudes of the three figures towards the circumstances of Icarus's death as the expression of man's indifference towards suffering and the passing of others. Death is an ordinary component of the everyday and Bruegel is acknowledging that despite it, daily life continues to go on

Pablo Picasso, Guernica, 1937

context: - Picasso's painting is based on the events of April 27, 1937, when Hitler's powerful German air force, acting in support of Franco, bombed the village of Guernica in northern Spain, a city of no strategic military value. It was history's first aerial saturation bombing of a civilian population. Because a majority of Guernica's men were away, fighting on behalf of the Republicans, at the time of the bombing the town was populated mostly by women and children - The scene occurs within a room where, on the left, a wide-eyed bull with a tail suggesting rising flame and smoke as seen through a window stands over a grieving woman holding a dead child in her arms. A horse falls in agony in the center of the room, with a large gaping hole in its side, as if it had just been run through by a spear or javelin. The horse appears to be wearing chain mail armor, decorated with vertical tally marks arranged in rows. - A dead and dismembered soldier lies under the horse. The hand of his severed right arm grasps a shattered sword, from which a flower grows, and the open palm of his left hand contains a stigma, a symbol of martyrdom derived from the stigmata of Christ. A bare light bulb in the shape of an all-seeing eye blazes over the suffering horse's head. - To the horse's upper right the head and extended right arm of a frightened female figure appears to have floated into the room through a window, and she witnesses the scene. In her right hand she carries a flame-lit lamp, and holds it near the bare bulb. From the right, below the witness, an awe-struck woman staggers towards the center, looking into the blazing light bulb with a blank stare. - Daggers that suggest screaming have replaced the tongues of the horse, the bull, and the grieving woman. To the bull's right a dove appears on a cracked wall through which bright light from the outside shines. - On the far right a fourth woman, her arms raised in terror, her wide open mouth and thrown back head echoing the grieving woman's, is entrapped by fire from above and below. Her right hand suggests the shape of an airplane. A dark wall with an open door defines the right side of the room. - A "hidden" image formed by the horse appears in Guernica:[23] The horse's nostrils and upper teeth can be seen as a human skull facing left and slightly downward. Another hidden image is of a bull that appears to gore the horse from underneath. The bull's head is formed mainly by the horse's entire front leg which has the knee on the ground. The leg's knee-cap forms the head's nose. A horn appears within the horse's breast. themes: - animals are more animal than humans are human inside/outside → can't tell if the light is outside or inside - Feet - signifying of humanity - Domestic vs public space - Psychological space - the boundary between what is a fantasy and what is real - Abstract expressionism - Lamb - bomb - Expressive, emotive form of cubism ish - Sense of inner life, more than what we can read on the surface - He's evocative, violent - He is psycho-sexual - human form distorted

Francisco Goya, Esto es peor. (This is worse); from "Los Desastres de la Guerra" (Disasters of War), plate 37

context: - Plate 37: Esto es peor (This is worse). In the aftermath of battle, the mutilated torsos and limbs of civilian victims were mounted on trees, like "fragments of marble sculpture" - The dead man in plate 37, Esto es peor (This is worse), forms a mutilated body of a Spanish fighter spiked on a tree, surrounded by the corpses of French soldiers. It is based in part on the Hellenistic fragment of a male nude, the Belvedere Torso by the Athenian "Apollonios son of Nestor". Goya had earlier made a black wash drawing study of the statue during a visit to Rome. In Esto es peor he subverts the classical motifs used in war art through his addition of a degree of black theatre—the branch piercing the body through the anus, twisted neck and close framing.[60] The man is naked; a daring factor for Spanish art in the 19th century, during the time of the Spanish Inquisition. - Goya abandons colour in the series, believing that light, shade and shadow provide for a more direct expression of the truth. - The title of this print follows on from previous plates in the series entitled The Disasters of War that show similar acts of depravity. This image is based on a real event that happened in December 1808 at the town of Chinchón, where Goya's brother served as the parish priest. In retaliation for the death of two French soldiers, the French army massacred every townsman they could find. The depiction of the man impaled on a tree with his arms severed from his body and his face contorted in agony is one of the most horrific images of the series. In the background, the French soldiers drag their next victim towards a similar fate, emphasising the ceaseless nature of their cruelty, and the indifference with which it is carried out.

Bruegel, Netherlandish Proverbs, 1559

context: - Proverbs often focus on immorality and consequences - Netherlandish Proverbs can be read as an exploration of religiosity; it is a godless landscape where the moralistic proverbs allow the viewer to make sense of what is happening - Set in a rural, largely peasant community, it is madness of a society - In truth the image is scrutinizing all of society, but in giving it a rural setting is allowing Bruegel's audience to distance themselves from what they see - In this society of one-upmanship getting the advantage over others is more important than living well; Whatever is used to get to the top, Bruegel isolates their folly and exposes it. themes: - the absurdity, wickedness and foolishness of humans - SO much morality that it undermines all of it in and of itself? --> You can't follow EVERY proverb - Trivializing morals and showing it as subject - Why even posit something to inhibit? Doesn't it entice your desire to do so? (think quatrefoils: virtues and vices) - Each little section starts to hold its own, maybe there's something being said about morality being subjected as it fragments further - Bruegel not a moralizer, he is a trivializer Fragmentation - the way christianity is being corroded by the market or mutated through it

Rembrandt, Self-Portrait, 1630 (Etching, 50 x 45 mm)

context: - Rembrandt's self-portraits form a unique and intimate biography, in which he surveyed himself without vanity and with genuine sincerity - Rembrandt's self-portraits were created by the artist looking at himself in a mirror, in which case the paintings and drawings reverse his actual features. In the etchings, the printing process creates an inverted image, and the prints, therefore, show Rembrandt in the same orientation as he would appear to a viewer in person. themes: - Speed is unveiling different aspects of personality in what is being done - Does speed give you more access to truth? Are speed and the unconscious related? Freud would never have discovered conscious if we did not record sound, when you listen to recorded speech you listen to the mistakes - Studio and being alone, who is he posing for? If you're taking a selfie, who is it for? - Tronie: a type of work common in Dutch Golden Age painting and Flemish Baroque painting that depicts an exaggerated or characteristic facial expression. expressive , not concerned with propriety - How can you not look like yourself? - Technology is revealing things about psychology - Temporality

Jan van Eyck, The Arnolfini Portrait, 1434, National Gallery of Art, London (Oil on oak panel, 82.2 x 60 cm)

context: - The round mirror also prompts this theory: the two mysterious figures in the doorway could be witnesses and Jan van Eyck's signature is a form of official attestation of the event. Instead, scholar Margaret Koster focuses on the chandelier, interpreting the painting as a memorial portrait. The one-lit candle in the correspondence of Giovanni Arnolfini could represent a metaphor for his being still alive, while the unlit candles could symbolize his wife's. themes: - Class is depicted with their clothing and the room itself - Mirror → perspective, receding space, the single narrative that it is imposing on the world is falling apart - The way the body is postured signifies what class they're from (think Sofonisba) - Lending itself to normative gender positions perhaps? - Aristocratic interior - Secular - Mundane (think about the details) - Dog has a life of its own - Shoes... associated with what you'd wear to a funeral - Chandelier... only one candle in it - Sofonisba and Raphael would create a whole narrative, whereas the narrative is falling apart in this painting - He signs his name right above the mirror; seeing yourself and signing it reminds us of Filippo Brunelleschi... this is about how repressive perspective was (alienation) which is a form of social regulation - How corrosive capitalism was to a christian vision of the world - This is inside, the Battle between Carnival Lent is on the outside (COMPARISON!)

Andy Warhol, Thirteen Most Wanted Men at New York World's Fair, 1964

context: - Warhol chose to enlarge mug shots from a NYPD booklet featuring the 13 most wanted criminals of 1962 themes: -

Rembrandt, The Artist in his Studio, c. 1629

context: - We are in amsterdam, one of the major ports in the world, so even the context around it undermines any mobility to be inside - This is the point in history where private space is being monetized as an outsider that is being fed back to make the system work - Even the pigments that are made to create it are from mexico - At the time there is a hierarchy of the genres but during Rembrandt's time portraiture is arguably at the bottom and he elevates it to the top; there is a psychological charge; politically what's interesting to think about is that this also means psychology is becoming historically an object of consideration of what makes decisions happen and what does not themes: - Scale - he's tiny compared to his canvas - Birth of the modern studio - Dressed in shabby chicness - Shabby walls - Deep in thought, can't see what's on the canvas - The artist's studio is traditionally thought as a private space where the artist doesn't care about what's going on in the outside world - This private space can't be possible because it is still constructed - If this is a sight outside of capitalism, you are still making the wheels of capitalism turn - Commodification of privacy Studio is one of the key tropes of modernism - Space of divine insight of thought would have been a complete hallucination in and of itself given that the city is in amsterdam - Private space as an actual inside that is being used to mobilize a certain class position

Francisco Goya, Third of May, 1808, 1815

context: - We see row of French soldiers aiming their guns at a Spanish man, who stretches out his arms in submission both to the men and to his fate. A country hill behind him takes the place of an executioner's wall. A pile of dead bodies lies at his feet, streaming blood. To his other side, a line of Spanish rebels stretches endlessly into the landscape. They cover their eyes to avoid watching the death that they know awaits them. The city and civilization are far behind them. Even a monk, bowed in prayer, will soon be among the dead. themes: - man's inhumanity to man: The central figure of the painting, who is clearly a poor laborer, takes the place of the crucified Christ; he is sacrificing himself for the good of his nation. The lantern that sits between him and the firing squad is the only source of light in the painting and dazzlingly illuminates his body, bathing him in what can be perceived as spiritual light. His expressive face, which shows an emotion of anguish that is more sad than terrified, echoes Christ's prayer on the cross - Close inspection of the victim's right hand also shows stigmata, referencing the marks made on Christ's body during the Crucifixion. - The man's pose not only equates him with Christ, but also acts as an assertion of his humanity. The French soldiers, by contrast, become mechanical or insect-like. They merge into one faceless, many-legged creature incapable of feeling human emotion. Nothing is going to stop them from murdering this man. The deep recession into space seems to imply that this type of brutality will never end. - Who do you sympathize with? Figure with the praying hands under much duress - Goya's central figure is not perishing heroically in battle, but rather being killed on the side of the road like an animal. Both the landscape and the dress of the men are nondescript, making the painting timeless. - Foucault defines this as not being governed so much - While goya's is interpreted differently than the context it was produced in - we sympathize with the man on the the left, not the the men on the right - Picasso is working under similar political pressure - Goya is not only criticizing the nations that wage war on one another, but is also admonishing us, the viewers, for being complicit in acts of violence, which occur not between abstract entities like "countries," but between human beings standing a few feet away from one another.

Angelica Kauffman, Design, 1778-1780

context: - although male artists frequently represented female bodies, it was rare for a woman to draw a male body --> even an antique torso themes: - This would be thought of as not as good as a male artist on qualitative terms - Bias → she doesn't have the same access - On display in the royal academy in one of the transitional spaces - Perhaps there's something critical in this in that her access to history is somewhat prepackaged - This could be a comment in making fun of the fact that this inequality exists and she doesn't have the same type of access as (Academicians of the Royal Academy) - Allegorizing this inequality (women as allegory) - Making fun like Sofonisba is - "makes use of a combination of self-portrait and Muse"

Rembrandt, The Syndics of the Draper's Guild, 1662, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (Oil on canvas, 191.5 x 279 cm)

context: The men (with the exception of Bel who is an attendant as indicated by his calotte) are drapers who were elected to assess the quality of cloth that weavers offered for sale to members of their guild. Their one-year terms in office began on Good Friday and they were expected to conduct their inspections thrice weekly. The Dutch word staal means 'sample' and refers to the samples of cloth that were assessed. The inspectors used pliers to press the seals of their city (front) and guild (reverse) into penny-sized slugs of lead that were specially affixed to record the results of the inspection.[3] There were four grades of quality, the highest was indicated by pressing four seals and the lowest by pressing only one. themes: - each of the five Staalmeesters is given an individual position and personality within the composition. Indeed, there seems to be an amazing cross-section of human characteristics on display - including irony, good nature, bluff straight-forwardness, shrewd scepticism, and dull tenacity - and equal importance is given to each of the subjects. - At the same time, however, Rembrandt unites all five in a strong sense of togetherness, using compositional devices. For example, he employs three horizontal lines to unify the group. The first runs along the edge of the table and the arm of the chair on the left; the second is expressed by the hats and heads of the five subjects; the topmost horizontal line follows the wall wainscoting.

Claude Monet, Boulevard des Capucines, 1873

themes: - Paris used to be tiny streets, then made giant boulevards to make this city beautiful - Widens city boulevard 2 purposes: 1) u can't barricade little tiny streets, something counterinsurrectionary about the way the urban layout is being manufactured; 2) turns the city street into a theater and everyone can see each other - "The spectacle is capital accumulated to the point where it becomes image." Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, 1967 - How much money, labor, and work goes into eradicating tiny streets to create a larger theater scene - Walking down the street and displaying your class - Dog is important because it is the biggest threat to their image of bourgeois class - Right image is what spectacle is about - Gentrification and thinking about the people that inhabit gentrified spaces and pushing people out - Theatricality - this is why dandyism would come about, seeing how many identities are in this artificial matrix, being profoundly immoral, scamming the system - Hallucination in and of itself and not think that you kicked people out of their neighborhoods - Baudelaire would be someone that would praise drug use as an escape or counter than the hallucination, saying this (the image on the right) is more offensive to me than chemicals - Are hallucinations real? - "The spectacle is not a collection of images but a social relation among people mediated by images." Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, 1967 - Before the revolutions, paris had narrow streets, they are widened bc its harder to fight with the police and military, but it turns the city street into a theater (everyone performs and displays their class) - Counter Insurrectionary

Rembrandt, Self-Portrait with Cane, 1658

themes: - Rembrandt → clothing animates agency - Its not his eyes but his hands and outfit - How does psych enter history? Is it the exteriority (building of the surface) and/or costume (what you wear) - Secular, the exterior is confirming the inside of the figure - Rembrandt would go to auctions (clothes, costumes) - The portrait is the more impressive because the man is portrayed three-quarter length and the observer has to look up at him. His cap throws a shadow on the forehead, but the fierce brown eyes, unmistakably Rembrandt's eyes, look straight at the observer - The paint is applied thickly in rich layers, with broken surfaces, highlights, and glazes that confirm how carefully thought out Rembrandt's "rough manner" was. Executed during a period of constraint and adversity, at a time when Rembrandt had declared bankruptcy, and was obliged to sell his vast collections, this magisterial self-portrait presents the aging artist in historical and exotic costume. Rembrandt portrays himself in a golden-yellow pleated jerkin, worn over a linen shirt, fastened diagonally. An ornamental neck cloth is tucked into the front of the jerkin, and a red sash is wound twice around his waist. In his left hand, the artist holds a silver-tipped jointed rattan cane. Rembrandt is not shown working but attired in sixteenth-century costume that would have conjured associations with artists of the Northern Renaissance. Yet the poignancy of the artist's representation of himself remains. - The gigantic hands that loom before us are crucial to the portrait's effect, reminding us of Rembrandt's dependence on them.

Claude Monet, Impression, Sunrise, 1872

themes: - Self-reflexivity is modern (not trying to hide that it is done in paint) History painting - How would you distinguish this from a David? - No narrative, no specific details, David is state propaganda while this is making a completely different claim about history - This is where Walter Benjamin starts to scream in ur face - This is about thinking about historicizing the senses - This is an after effect of technology Subjective experience, separate from the state - It is baudelairian - extract the eternal from the ephemeral - The natural and the artificial - technology is part of all of this - Technology provides a contrast to let you see the natural

Edouard Manet, Olympia, 1863-1865

themes: - She's a prostitute - Sex worker is a figure of modernity because its a point where the social and the economic can meet, the sex worker embodies the collapse of the social into the economic - Why does someone tip a sex worker? Implied equality, the patron supposedly pays to show that he's better than the act that was done, the tipping is completely self-serving and a way of reestablishing power dynamics - Tip is violent, about recreating hierarchy - sex worker poses a threat to the family of a unit; sex worker has authority that could undermine the social structure if played out - The sex worker is the figure who understands these new terms - The morality of the money is benefit to the patron rather than the worker - Why is this scandy? Even in her nudity, you could tell what she does for a living - Secularization is @ play here, here you see class relations rather than nudity, it isnt the church telling you who you are but the people who are taking care of your excess needs - Salvation is something that is happening in the streets, not in church - You are making a subject out of someone who wouldn't normally be a subject - Equality is being posited with a sex worker, and you need economic relations (tip) to reinforce hierarchy - Her hand covering her genitals → she is completely self-possessed (the gaze is important, the posture is important) all leads up to her having power - The nudity in this image is usually considered a mirror, it made white bourgeois male sexuality shows that male desire is basic, stupid, easy, how much she understands and can manipulate male sexuality... its less what it said about her and more about what it said ab men - This was displayed in a salon, and to the embarrassment of men, they viewed this in the company of their wives, daughters, coworkers... this is part of it - Sex worker also having someone work for her... labor goes into commodities ... colonialism , she has agency - Something progressive here - Maybe the idea of sincerity is a modern problem, the way you present yourself as a body doesn't always correspond - Flat - modern - self-reflexivity - talking about itself - Laure: a nod to the city's growing black working class

Francisco Goya, Caprices #43, The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, 1799

themes: - Something about neglect producing monsters - Blind spots to reason - Goya is THE political artist, THE critic, he invented the way we criticize culture, at the forefront of creating this sort of motion - What happens when you disregard logic, or act purely out of emotion, chaos can creep in - If you don't have a sort of structure, chaos may ensue - Enlightenment (Kant) → use your own reason, look and think critically - Kant is writing for a mass public/audience and thinking about different audiences and degrees of accessibility that would make his philosophy critical → this concept is in this picture, too (THINK ABOUT ACCESSIBILITY, IF IT IS TOO CONSTIPATED, WHAT GOOD IS IT?) - Goya is thinking about a different type of consumer → a mass audience that he can convey these critical messages - Feucault trying to make his work accessible as well - Human and animal distinction - In spanish, it says the DREAM of reason produces monsters b/c his argument is ... no germany was on its way to being the intellectual center of the world and the actual conclusion of that is that it produced the horrors of world war ii, can rationality be pushed to do irrational things!!!!!!!!!! - Goya is making you READ it, learning how to read critically, you are reading this as a critic

Rembrandt, The Night Watch: The Militia Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq, 1642

themes: - Those illuminated most almost look like angels - Secularization - How capitalism is trying to reorganize - everyone paying a different amount - prioritization of the church coming undone - Hand at the center reaching for you (opposite perspective than school of athens by raphael) - Materiality to the painting that undermines School of Athens - Clothing as something that is bearing the weight of telling the narrative - People argue that the "angel" is simply the logo for the militia - Rather than replicating the typical arrangement of rows of figures, Rembrandt animates his portrait. Sitters perform specific actions that define their roles as militiamen. - A great deal of energy is generated as these citizens spring to action in response to their captain's command. Indeed, the scene has the appearance of an actual historical event taking place although what we are truly witnessing is the creative genius of Rembrandt at work. Men wearing bits of armor and varied helmets, arm themselves with an array of weapons before a massive, but imaginary archway that acts as a symbol of the city gate to be defended. On the left, the standard bearer raises the troop banner while on the far right a group of men hold their pikes high. - In addition to the eighteen paid portraits, Rembrandt introduced a number of extras to further animate the scene and allude to the much larger makeup of the company as a whole. Most of these figures are relegated to the background with their faces obscured or only partly visible. One, wearing a beret and peering up from behind the helmeted figure standing next to the standard bearer has even been identified as Rembrandt himself. - Probably the most unusual feature is the mysterious girl who emerges from the darkness just behind the musketeer in red. With flowing blond hair and a fanciful gold dress, the young girl in all her brilliance draws considerable attention. Her most curious attribute, however, is the large white chicken that hangs upside down from her waistband. The significance of this bird, particularly its claws, lies in its direct reference to the Kloveniers. Each guild had its own emblem and for the Kloveniers it was a golden claw on a blue field. The girl then is not a real person, but acts as a personification of the company. - actually a day watch - perspective as if you just entered the room

Bruegel, The Battle between Carnival and Lent, 1559

themes: - Class relations disregarded, time to eat a lot, but then lent comes in and relations are imposed once more - would make you think of the social and political function of these types of events - The left side is dominated by an inn, which according to its signboard is called the Blau Schuyt (Blue Barge), referencing a Middle Dutch poem popular during Lenten celebrations, in which the bourgeois world was turned upside down - Puts things back into place - Another more generalized meaning that is often given to the painting is the belief that Bruegel had about human activities being motivated by self-seeking and folly. - You can try on my identity only so you can know when to be you and when to be me - Symbolically, the inn is on the left side, and the church on the right. These respectively represent the opposing, balanced forces of Carnival and Lent, part of the traditions of the Christian church Laws of exceptionality (you can dress like the "king" today because it sets the cycle back in motion) - Articulated as freedom through the market, moment at which capitalism is bring born, - Antithetical to Raphael "School of Athens" b/c Raphael: one narrative, produces consent in the viewer, looking through Brunelleschi's hole (not human) while Bruegel: Chaos, can't hold on to one single narrative, the more you read the image the more it fragments, you start to impose your own narrative on it - Visual noise - how the performance of identity fits in the social matrix and temporary suspension of rules are important in terms of the performance/production of identity are necessary to be recognized as a part in society - Regulating itself

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