History of Western Art

Goya, Caprichos

an announcement regarding Goya - It's extremely short - about 3 paragraphs.

qualifications for Degas as a realist

1. A depiction of modern life, anti spectacle 2. Unstabilized composition (figures not at the center, arranged in a seemingly random manner) 3. A large, off-center, empty space 4. Cut-off figures 5. Spontaneous brushwork 6. However, it was not painted in the dancing class! (it was painted based on sketches of ballet dancers in Degas's studio) 7. He succeeded in visually representing modern life by composing fleeting, unbalanced images.

Vigee-Lebrun, Marie Antoinette and her Children

18th century, neoclassicism She is viewed with her three surviving children in a pyramidal composition recalling Renaissance paintings of the Virgin, Jesus and St. John. When Vigée Le Brun was painting this work the queen's youngest child, Sophie-Béatrix died so the empty cradle refers to her demise. This flattering portrait depicting the much-hated queen as a loving mother had an important propaganda purpose. An apt visual metaphor for Marie Antoinette's deeply troubled relationship with children.

David, Oath of Horatii

18th century, neoclassicism --Antique, moralizing subject-matter (exemplum virtutis) --Clearly and rationally organized composition; figures and/or figural groups fit very neatly into the architectural surroundings --planarity: shallow, boxy, stage-like space with figures arranged latterly across the foreground --clear representation of spatial recession via the patterns of the paving stones --silent, invisible brushwork producing an effect of extreme transparency --emphasis on drawing and modeling of forms versus color Doctrine of Separate Spheres Definition: Polarization of masculinized public space versus a no-less thoroughly feminine private/domestic sphere Manifested in David's picture by the patriotism and will to selfsacrifice expressed by the Horatii men, versus their womenfolk, who identify exclusively with the private, domestic, familial realm Painting is segregated according to gender; contrasting articulation of the male and female anatomies; the mounting tension of the men versus the complete enervation of the women Context: fear during the last years of the ancien régime (the period before the French Revolution) that male leaders had surrendered their prerogative over the public sphere—that France was being ruled by powerful women

David, Death of Marat

18th century, neoclassicism Marat is dying: his eyelids droop, his head weighs heavily on his shoulder, his right arm slides to the ground. His body, as painted by David, is that of a healthy man, still young. The scene inevitably calls to mind a rendering of the "Descent from the Cross." The face is marked by suffering, but is also gentle and suffused by a growing peacefulness as the pangs of death loosen their grip. David has surrounded Marat with a number of details borrowed from his subject's world, including the knife and Charlotte Corday's petition, attempting to suggest through these objects both the victim's simplicity and grandeur, and the perfidy of the assassin. The petition ("My great unhappiness gives me a right to your kindness"), the assignat Marat was preparing for some poor unfortunate ("you will give this assignat to that mother of five children whose husband died in the defense of his country"), the makeshift writing-table and the mended sheet are the means by which David discreetly bears witness to his admiration and indignation. The face, the body, and the objects are suffused with a clear light, which is softer as it falls on the victim's features and harsher as it illuminates the assassin's petition. David leaves the rest of his model in shadow. In this sober and subtle interplay of elements can be seen, in perfect harmony with the drawing, the blend of compassion and outrage David felt at the sight of the victim. The painting was presented to the Coinvention on 15 November 1793. It immediately the object of extravagant praise; one critic claimed "the face expresses a supreme kindness and an exemplary revolutionary spirit carried to the point of sacrifice." --employed a mode of representation that was at once documentary (meticulously recreates the "crime scene") and transcendent (eliminates the setting; double lighting scheme—one terrestrial, one celestial) Relies heavily on the visual and emotional theatrics of Counter Reformation art, especially that of Caravaggio (tenebrism, extreme proximity of the figures, idealized body of the hero, blurring of the boundaries between the life and art

Renoir, La Grenouillere (Frog Pond)

19th century, French interested in the human activity Renoir: feathery strokes in the background, greater variation of color Auguste Renoir's La Grenouillère, the frog pond, has all these ingredients - a sketch-like painting, which to contemporaries seemed unfinished, no carved-out details, a glitter of sun reflecting the movements of the water, the boats partly truncated to convey a sense of the passing moment, and the individual details toned down in favour of the overall picture. But, the depiction of reality is still there. Renoir has depicted an actual moment and life as it is lived, a fragment without any greater depth of interpretation. The theme is a new one: instead of something heroic, we have a casual, trivial excerpt from reality, held together by the lighting. more focus on the actions, blended more

Monet, La Grenouillere (Frog Pond)

19th century, Impressionism Subject: Monet: less interested in people and more in the overall setting Composition: Monet's is more orderly than Renoir's Technique: Monet: bolder strokes High Horizon Monet started out painting broader views of his pond, but increasingly narrowed his focus downward until he was only showing the water's surface. This painting was done somewhere in between, showing no sky and only a bit of the growth around the pond's edge. Sense of Depth In his water lily paintings, Monet often rejected the painter's usual tools, like lines of perspective. However, you can still see the recession of space, mainly because of the diminishing scale of the clusters of flowers—the further away the flowers, the smaller they appear. Reflection A large portion of the painting shows the surface of the water. Monet paints both the actual flower clusters on the water's surface as well as the changing effects of light reflected in the water. For Monet, the reflection was really the subject of his painting. He said, "The water flowers are far from being the whole scene; really, they are just the accompaniment. The essence of the motif is the mirror of water whose appearance alters at every moment." Layers of Paint (different paint for different subjects) Monet worked his canvases over and over, adding many layers of paint. For the flowers, he applied such thick globs of paint that they project out from the canvas's surface, but he painted the water so sparingly that you can still see the texture of the canvas underneath. Compare the drier application of paint in the water, the thick application of paint for the flowers, and the lively swirls of paint in the plants on the bank. Discovery and Expression Through Art K-3 Bristle Marks Monet often used a brush made of stiff bristles; in some places, you can see the mark of the bristles in the paint. He also used a softer, rounded brush in places where the paint rises up from the canvas. Color Monet said in 1905 that he only uses five colors: cadmium yellow, vermillion (a red), cobalt blue, emerald green, rose madder deep (a pink), and silverwhite. While we don't know for sure that Monet only used these five colors in this Denver Art Museum painting, it is entirely possible, as Monet made that statement only a year after finishing it. No Black (color) Monet felt that black had a dulling effect, so instead of black, he used a color's complement to darken an area. You can see reds laid into the greens in the darkest part of the water.

Cezanne, Still Life with Curtain and Flowered Pitcher

19th century, Post-Impressionism Cezanne: "wanted to make of impressionism something solid and durable like the art of the museums." influenced cubism refuse to represent the figure from one perspective—find out the underlying form Cézanne painted five still lifes showing the same flower-decorated pitcher and, in the background, the same brownish curtain with leaves. In view of the fact that the curtain appears also in a much earlier work, Mardi-Gras, known to have been executed in Paris, it may be presumed that all five compositions were done there, although this painting shows a second drapery or rug that the artist subsequently used in his Aix studio. "At first sight," as John Richardson has observed, this painting "seems a relatively straightforward representation of a classic still-life subject, but on closer examination anomalies emerge. The central dish of fruit, for instance, is tilted so precariously that it threatens to slide out at the onlooker. Likewise the tabletop slopes leftwards out of the picture, and the perspective of the side of the table is awry. Sometimes we seem to be looking up, sometimes down at the objects, as if the artist had changed his viewpoint. There is nothing arbitrary in the liberties that Cézanne has taken. On the contrary, by subtly adjusting the way things look and registering tonal relationships with almost scientific precision, he has endowed his still life with an extra measure of tangible reality and heightened our experience of forms in space. In the other two more elaborate variants of this theme . . . Cézanne switches his viewpoint even more drastically, in a way that anticipates Cubist still lifes of 1908-09. "Far from being at odds with the rest of the highly worked picture, the 'unfinished' passage in the right-hand bottom corner plays an important pictorial role. The transparency of the napkin provides a necessary note of spontaneity and emphasizes the solidity of everything else in the still life. It is also important to remember that Cézanne never thought in terms of 'finished' pictures; he had the courage to stop before killing a picture with a last fatal brushstroke."

Cezanne, Mont Sainte-Victoire

19th century, Post-Impressionism This painting is of the landscape from Cezanne's home in Aix-en-Provence, where he spent many of his later years painting. He developed a special relationship with this landscape and painted many rendition of it, especially the mountain in the background. The painting clearly illustrates the way Cezanne sought to depict the nature of reality and our perception of it. The mountain gives way to simple forms and the building in the foreground have been devolved into their particular shapes, all the while keeping the entirety of the landscape intact. Cezanne's use of light and color give the impression that it is not his rendering of the landscape that give it a fragmented quality, but that it is an inherent quality of the landscape itself. nothing that shows when created in time Setting up his easel near Chemin de Marguerite, the artist chose the highest viewpoint of the mountain. He often returned between 1902 and 1906, to finish 11 oils on canvas and 17 watercolours, which can be seen today in the world's greatest museums or in private collections. Some features of the landscape in the earliest paintings can still be seen: wheat fields, road to the Alps, red roofs of houses and the power plant. In February 1904, Emile Bernard accompanied Cézanne « on the motif ». « It was two kilometres from the studio, facing a valley, at the foot of Sainte-Victoire, that bold mountain that he never stopped painting in watercolour and oil, and which filled him with admiration ». Cézanne would settle down opposite the mountain with his easel, his paint box, his palette and his paintbrushes. He hid from prying eyes, away from the sunshades of landscape artists. This is one of the last landscapes of Mont Sainte-Victoire, favored by Cézanne at the end of his life. The view is rendered in what is essentially an abstract vocabulary. Rocks and trees are suggested by mere daubs of paint as opposed to being extensively depicted. The overall composition itself, however, is clearly representational and also follows in the ethos of Japanese prints. The looming mountain is reminiscent of a puzzle of various hues, assembled into a recognizable object. This and other such late works of Cézanne proved to be of a paramount importance to the emerging modernists, who sought to liberate themselves from the rigid tradition of pictorial depiction.

Goya, Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters (Los Caprichos)

19th century, Romanticism A man sleeps, apparently peacefully, even as bats and owls threaten from all sides and a lynx lays quiet, but wide-eyed and alert. Another creature sits at the center of the composition, staring not at the sleeping figure, but at us. Goya forces the viewer to become an active participant in the image--the monsters of his dreams even threaten us. Many of the prints in the Caprichos series express disdain for the pre-Enlightenment practices still popular in Spain at the end of the Eighteenth century (a powerful clergy, arranged marriages, superstition, etc.). Goya uses the series to critique contemporary Spanish society. As he explained in the advertisement, he chose subjects "from the multitude of follies and blunders common in every civil society, as well as from the vulgar prejudices and lies authorized by custom, ignorance or interest, those that he has thought most suitable matter for ridicule."

Goya, Third of May 1808

19th century, Romanticism In 1807, Napoleon, bent on conquering the world, brought Spain's king, Charles IV, into alliance with him in order to conquer Portugal. Napoleon's troops poured into Spain, supposedly just passing through. But Napoleon's real intentions soon became clear: the alliance was a trick. The French were taking over. Joseph Bonaparte, Napoleon's brother, was the new king of Spain. 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 is far behind them. Even a monk, bowed in prayer, will soon be among the dead. Goya's painting has been lauded for its brilliant transformation of Christian iconography and its poignant portrayal of 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, "Forgive them Father, they know not what they do." 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.

Degas, The Tub

19th century, realism Presented at the eighth Impressionist exhibition in 1886, this pastel is one of a series of seven pictures produced by Degas in the mid 1880's on the theme of women at their ablutions, a subject already explored by the artist in a series of monotypes some ten years previously. His minute observation of their intimate, everyday gestures is a far cry from the traditional romantic scenes of ladies at their toilette. The young woman's pose, sometimes interpreted by contemporary critics as the expression of a certain animality, is derived from that of the Crouching Aphrodite of antiquity. Its still life of toilet articles, with a distorted Japanese-style perspective, and its plunging view, make this pastel one of the most audacious and accomplished of Degas' works on the modern theme of the woman in her bathtub.

Cassatt, Woman in a Loge

19th century, realism 1. Simplicity and seriousness in composition and color scheme composition, woman's body composed of a series of diagonals [angularity against the cursiveness of the architecture] color scheme: three tones-black of woman's dress, orangish red, and yellow 2. the seriousness, aggressiveness in the woman engaging in the act of looking 3. Cassat might have painted it in answer to Renoir's work (a male looking at the woman)-social complexity of vision Other stylistic features: Flatness, loose brushwork

Cassatt, Modern Woman*****

19th century, realism Painted for the Woman's Pavilion of the Chicago's World Fair. The goal of the Women's Pavilion was to showcase the advancement of women throughout history. 2. Rethinking the founding myth of western Chris-an patriarchy— Woman not as the one who caused the original sin, but as the one who pursued knowledge.

Degas, Ballet Rehearsal****

19th century, realism The ballet allowed Degas to paint the contemporary while keeping company with the artists of the past whom he revered so much, and who represented for him the eternal quality of art.

Pollock, Autumn Rhythm

20th Century, Abstract Expressionism Pollock's tough and unsettled early life growing up in the American West shaped him into the bullish character he would become. Later, a series of influences came together to guide Pollock to his mature style: years spent painting realist murals in the 1930s showed him the power of painting on a large scale; Surrealism suggested ways to describe the unconscious; and Cubism guided his understanding of picture space. In 1939, Pollock began visiting a Jungian analyst to treat his alcoholism, and his analyst encouraged him to create drawings. These would later feed his paintings, and they shaped Pollock's understanding of his pictures not only as outpourings of his own mind, but expressions that might stand for the terror of all modern humanity living in the shadow of nuclear war. Pollock's greatness lies in developing one of the most radical abstract styles in the history of modern art, detaching line from color, redefining the categories of drawing and painting, and finding new means to describe pictorial space. While only one painting from Pollock's 1950 solo exhibition was actually sold, the show gained much attention. It was described by Art News as one of the three best exhibitions of the year, and Cecil Beaton staged a famous fashion shoot in the exhibition space, which subsequently appeared in Vogue. Autumn Rhythm was one of the major works which appeared in that show. As with many of Pollock's paintings, he began it with a linear framework of diluted black paint which in many areas soaked through the unprimed canvas. Over this he applied more skeins of paint in various colors - lines thick and thin, light and dark, straight and curved, horizontal and vertical. As the title suggests, the coloring, horizontal orientation, and sense of ground and space in Autumn Rhythm are strongly evocative of nature. The balance between control and chance that Pollock maintained throughout his working process produced compositions that can have as much calm tranquillity as some works by Rothko. "medium specificity": purification of each medium to its essence 2. Alignment of painting with vision, "opticality" 3. Self-criticality

Rothko, No. 14

20th Century, Color Field Highly informed by Nietzsche, Greek mythology, and his Russian-Jewish heritage, Rothko's art was profoundly imbued with emotional content that he articulated through a range of styles that evolved from figurative to abstract. Rothko's early figurative work - including landscapes, still lifes, figure studies, and portraits - demonstrated an ability to blend Expressionism and Surrealism. His search for new forms of expression led to his Color Field paintings, which employed shimmering color to convey a sense of spirituality. Rothko maintained the social revolutionary ideas of his youth throughout his life. In particular he supported artists' total freedom of expression, which he felt was compromised by the market. This belief often put him at odds with the art world establishment, leading him to publicly respond to critics, and occasionally refuse commissions, sales and exhibitions. Rothko emphatically rejected the reading of his work in merely formal, aesthetic terms, insisting that he was "not interested in the relationship of color or form or anything else." Rather, he used abstract means to express "basic human emotions - tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on," earnestly striving to create an art of awe-inspiring intensity for a secular world. Those viewers who broke down and wept before his paintings, he stated, had "the same religious experience I had when I painted them." Scale was an enormously important factor for Rothko: as he explained in a 1951 symposium, he painted on such a large scale not in order to produce something "grandiose and pompous," but rather "precisely because I want to be intimate and human. To paint a small picture is to place yourself outside your experience, to look upon an experience as a stereopticon view or with a reducing glass. However you paint the larger picture, you are in it. It isn't something you command."

Dali, The Lugubrious Game

20th Century, Naturalistic Surrealism Freudian theory underpins Dali's attempts at forging a formal and visual language capable of rendering his dreams and hallucinations. These account for some of the iconic and now ubiquitous images through which Dali achieved tremendous fame during his lifetime and beyond. Obsessive themes of eroticism, death, and decay permeate Dali's work, reflecting his familiarity with and synthesis of the psychoanalytical theories of his time. Drawing on blatantly autobiographical material and childhood memories, Dali's work is rife with often ready-interpreted symbolism, ranging from fetishes and animal imagery to religious symbols. Dali subscribed to Surrealist André Breton's theory of automatism, but ultimately opted for a method of tapping the unconscious that he termed "critical paranoia," a state in which one could cultivate delusion while maintaining one's sanity. Paradoxically defined by Dali himself as a form of "irrational knowledge," the paranoiac-critical method was applied by his contemporaries, mostly Surrealists, to varied media, ranging from cinema to poetry to fashion. indicative of multitude of anxieties and representative of repressed fears and desires of people in the 1920s masked by a facade of carelessness through vibrant colors and a multitude of sexual and representative imagery vibrant colors to cover anxieties

Johns, Flag

20th Century, Pop Rather than direct representation or abstraction, Johns made signs, like flags and targets, the main images in his works. The "things the mind already knows" were his ideal subject because of the host of varied meanings each carried with it. This fostered the perceptual ambiguity and semiotic play at the heart of his works. Johns quoted the gesturally evocative Abstract Expressionist brushstroke, using the idea of the artist's mark as merely another symbol that enhanced the multiplicity of meanings and interpretations in his paintings. Like his Dada predecessor and mentor, Marcel Duchamp, Johns artistically initiated a dialogue in each artwork that was meant to be resolved within the mind of the viewer. His expansion of this ideal throughout his oeuvre ushered the open-ended aesthetic typically associated with movements at the start of Postmodernism, like Conceptual art. Through his use of shreds of newspaper, found objects, and even mass-produced goods like Ballantine Ale and Savarin Coffee cans, Johns erased the division between fine art and mass culture. This shifted modern art away from abstraction towards the consumer landscape of mid-twentieth century America. This, Johns' first major work, broke from the Abstract Expressionist precedent of non-objective painting with his representation of a recognizable everyday object - the American flag. Johns built the flag from a dynamic surface made up of shreds of newspaper dipped in encaustic - with snippets of text still visible through the wax - rather than oil paint applied to the canvas with a brush. As the molten, pigmented wax cooled, it fixed the scraps of newspaper in visually distinct marks that evoked the gestural brushwork of the Abstract Expressionists of the previous decade. The frozen encaustic embodied Johns' interest in semiotics by quoting the "brushstroke" of the action painters as a symbol for artistic expression, rather than a direct mode of expression, as part of his career-long investigation into "how we see and why we see the way we do." The symbol of the American flag, to this day, carries a host of connotations and meanings that shift from individual to individual, making it the ideal subject for Johns' initial foray into visually exploring the "things the mind already knows." He intentionally blurred the lines between high art and everyday life with his choice of seemingly mundane subject matter. Johns painted Flag in the context of the McCarthy witch-hunts in Cold War America. Then and now, some viewers will read national pride or freedom in the image, while others only see imperialism or oppression. Johns was one of the first artists to present viewers with the dichotomies embedded in the American flag. Johns referred to his paintings as "facts" and did not provide predetermined interpretations of his work; when critics asked Johns if the work was a painted flag, or a flag painting, he said it was both. As with other Neo-Dada works, the meaning of the artwork is determined by the viewer, not the artist.

Hamilton, Just What is it...

20th Century, Pop Richard Hamilton uses popular images and symbols as fodder to explore an interior realm and to comment on the rapid and fundamental change of everyday existence. Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing? is iconographic because it was created during a time in which people all over the world became mall shoppers, television watchers, car drivers, and throwaway buyers. Simultaneously, the boundaries of old world civilizations and of international politics were consumed by capitalism; some countries chose to adopt the trappings of that economic system without embracing its basic values of competition, efficiency, legitimacy of profit, all of which ultimately make the consumerist structure function and flourish properly. The perversion of Western ideas of effective business conduct is translated in this 1956 collage by the plethora of items acquired through conspicuous consumption. They are shown as a symbol of leisure. And the viewer is reminded of how speedily the public forgets about the consequences of irresponsible expenditure, since the "buy, buy, buy" lifestyle continues at an ever faster rate, even after the world's nations were cast askew as a result of the economic catastrophes of 1929. This can be seen through the technological advancements that are infiltrating this warped interior, with the presence of the television playing an ad of a woman speaking on the telephone, the obscure box-like recording device on the floor, the glitz and glamour related to the theater beyond the living room window, and the Ford hood ornament adorned on the lampshade. Aside from the financially related historical subject matter, Hamilton also identifies the specter of Communism as the planet that doubles as the household's ceiling. This Mars-like crescent is unassumingly present, hovering over and haunting the American family with the ambiguous signifier of all that was alien during the 1950s: communism. This reference to outer space brings attention to the informal "Space Race" between Russia and America, a critical ideological rivalry that would declare the more accomplished country to be the symbolic leader of the world. The morale-boosting societal benefits and potential propitious military advancements a space-related victory allowed for such a proposition. The iconography of modernity, material comfort, and desirability present in Hamilton's labor has opened the possibilities of Pop Art by assuring an idyllic realm of the upcoming buyer's paradise, while relaying a doubtful and ironic tone - pronouncing the mode of sheer parody. This piece therefore becomes not only a visually creative playing field, but also a historical milestone in the world of art and in the context of societal criticism.

Oppenheim, Object (Luncheon en Fur)

20th Century, Surrealism Oppenheim was one of the few women Surrealists whose work was exhibited with the group. Like Giacometti she worked primarily with objects. Luncheon in Fur, with its unsettling juxtaposition of a domestic object and animality, is an excellent example of Surrealism. The artist makes strange a teacup, saucer, and spoon purchased at the Monoprix department store - objects that are familiar are made disturbingly off-putting as the viewer must imagine drinking tea in a fur-covered cup.

Kandinsky, Study for Composition VII (no.2)

20th century, Abstraction his belief that abstract colors and forms can be used to express the "inner life" of the artist. Painting was, above all, deeply spiritual for Kandinsky. He sought to convey profound spirituality and the depth of human emotion through a universal visual language of abstract forms and colors that transcended cultural and physical boundaries. Kandinsky viewed non-objective, abstract art as the ideal visual mode to express the "inner necessity" of the artist and to convey universal human emotions and ideas. He viewed himself as a prophet whose mission was to share this ideal with the world for the betterment of society. Kandinsky viewed music as the most transcendent form of non-objective art - musicians could evoke images in listeners' minds merely with sounds. He strove to produce similarly object-free, spiritually rich paintings that alluded to sounds and emotions through a unity of sensation. Commonly cited as the pinnacle of Kandinsky's pre-World War I achievement, Composition VII shows the artist's rejection of pictorial representation through a swirling hurricane of colors and shapes. The operatic and tumultuous roiling of forms around the canvas exemplifies Kandinsky's belief that painting could evoke sounds the way music called to mind certain colors and forms. Even the title, Composition VII, aligned with his interest in the intertwining of the musical with the visual and emphasized Kandinsky's non-representational focus in this work. As the different colors and symbols spiral around each other, Kandinsky eliminated traditional references to depth and laid bare the different abstracted glyphs in order to communicate deeper themes and emotions common to all cultures and viewers. Preoccupied by the theme of apocalypse and redemption throughout the 1910s, Kandinsky formally tied the whirling composition of the painting to the theme of the cyclical processes of destruction and salvation. Despite the seemingly non-objective nature of the work, Kandinsky maintained several symbolic references in this painting. Among the various forms that built Kandinsky's visual vocabulary, he painted glyphs of boats with oars, mountains, and figures. However, he did not intend for viewers to read these symbols literally and instead imbued his paintings with multiple references to the Last Judgment, the Deluge, and the Garden of Eden, seemingly all at once.

Duchamp, Fountain

20th century, Dada "Whether Mr. Mutt with his own hands made the fountain or not has no importance. He CHOSE it. He took an ordinary article of life, placed it so that its useful significance disappeared under the new title and point of view—created a new thought for the object." This was no small matter. The idea of having a jury-free exhibition of contemporary art had become invested with the aspirations of many in the art world for New York to become a dynamic artistic centre that would rival and even outstrip Paris. Duchamp, as head of the hanging committee, had already signaled the democratic ethos of the new Society by proposing that works should be hung by the artists' last names (in alphabetical order) rather than according to the subjective views and preferences of one or more individuals. With the support of some backers, he and his close friends Henri-Pierre Roché (1879-1959) and Beatrice Wood (1892-1998) produced the first dada periodical in New York, titled pointedly the Blindman, on the first day of the show in part to celebrate (and in part to observe and comment upon) 'the birth of the Independence of Art in America' (Henri-Pierre Roché, 'The Blind Man', Blindman, no.1, 10 April 1917, p.3). There was therefore a good deal at stake in the decision of the board to defend a particular conception of art at the expense of departing from its own much advertised policy of 'no jury - no prizes'. Responding to press interest in the affair, the board issued a statement defending its position: 'The Fountain may be a very useful object in its place, but its place is not in an art exhibition and it is, by no definition, a work of art.' (Naumann 2012, p.72.)

Mondrian, Composition in Blue, Grey, and Pink

20th century, De Stijl Piet Mondrian was a famous abstract painter, born in the Netherlands in 1872. His most recognized works are abstract paintings of colored squares, rectangles, and thick black lines, some of which you'll see farther down. Of course Mondrian didn't start out painting squares and rectangles—growing up during the tail end of Impressionism, Piet Mondrian's first paintings were consistent with that time period, as well as the Post-impressionism of Van Gogh. Later on he also took cues from Braque and Picasso, although he soon formed a very distinct style all his own.

Mondrian, Composition with Red Plane, Black, Blue, Yellow and Gray

20th century, De Stijl • title avoid content, anti-representation • rectilinear, complete straight line and right angles • color: black, white, three primary colors • flatness. • Nature vs. reality: - Art should express something that is not immediately visible to the eye - The underlying essence of reality, as opposed to the particularities that we encounter in our day to day lives • to achieve reality, one need to reduce natural forms and use fundamental forms and the purest forms and colors • theosophy—they believed that the world was structured around a series of binary oppositions (black/white, vertical/horizontal, life/death). • Visible brushstrokes - hand-crapness, Mondrian was s0ll viewing art as a handmade object

Miro, Birth of the World

20th century, Surrealism Here Miró applied paint to an unevenly primed canvas in an unorthodox manner—pouring, brushing, and flinging—so that the paint soaked into the canvas in some places while resting on the surface in others. On top of this relatively uncontrolled application of paint, he added schematic lines and shapes planned in preparatory studies. The bird or kite, shooting star, balloon, and figure with white head may all seem somehow familiar, yet their association is illogical. Miró once said that The Birth of the World describes "a sort of genesis," an amorphous beginning out of which life may take form. Joan Miró said that The Birth of the World depicts "a sort of genesis"—the amorphous beginnings of life. To make this work, Miró poured, brushed, and flung paint on an unevenly primed canvas so that the paint soaked in some areas and rested on top in others. Atop this relatively uncontrolled application of paint, he added lines and shapes he had previously planned in studies. The bird or kite, shooting star, balloon, and figure with white head may all seem somehow familiar, yet their association is illogical. Describing his method, Miró said, "Rather than setting out to paint something I began painting and as I paint the picture begins to assert itself, or suggest itself under my brush.... The first stage is free, unconscious."1

Magritte, The Treachery of Images

20th century, Surrealism The Treachery of Images displays Magritte's attempt to have the viewer question their reality. The painting portrays a large single pipe, and at the bottom of the painting, in French, states "This is not a pipe." Magritte's point is simple: the painting is not a pipe; it is an Image of a pipe. An anecdotal story is that when Magritte was asked if the painting was a pipe, he replied that of course it is not a pipe, and suggested that they try to stuff it with tobacco. He used the same technique in a painting of an apple, portraying a large green apple, with the line "This is not an apple." The Treachery of Images is painted when Magritte was 30 years old. The picture shows a pipe. Below it, Magritte painted, "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" French for "This is not a pipe." The painting is not a pipe, but rather an image of a pipe, This masterpiece of Surrealism creates a three-way paradox out of the conventional notion that objects correspond to words and images. The Treachery of Images belongs to a series of word-image paintings by Magritte from the late 1920s. He combined images and text in a style suggested both by childrenÂ''s books, and by MagritteÂ's early career in advertising. The artist laid out his rationale for word-image paintings in an illustrated text called Words and Images.Â" Like the other artists and poets associated with the Surrealist movement, Magritte sought to overthrow what he saw as the oppressive rationalism of bourgeois society. His art during these essential years is at times violent, frequently disturbing, and filled with discontinuities. He consistently interrogated conventions of language and visual representation, using methods that included the misnaming of objects, doubling and repetition, mirroring and concealment, and the depiction of visions seen in half-waking states-all of them devices that cast doubt on the nature of appearances, both in the paintings and in reality itself. The persistent tension Magritte maintained during these years between nature and artifice, truth and fiction, reality and surreality is one of the profound achievements of his art.

Picasso, Still Life with Chair Caning

20th century, cubism Virtually all avant-garde art of the second half of the twentieth century is indebted to this brave renunciation. But that doesn't make this kind of Cubism, often called Synthetic Cubism (piecing together, or synthesis of form), any easier to interpret. At first glance, Picasso's Still-Life with Chair Caning of 1912 might seem a mish-mash of forms instead of clear picture. But we can understand the image—and other like it—by breaking down Cubist pictorial language into parts. Let's start at the upper right: almost at the edge of the canvas (at two o'clock) there is the handle of a knife. Follow it to the left to find the blade. The knife cuts a piece of citrus fruit. You can make out the rind and the segments of the slice at the bottom right corner of the blade. Below the fruit, which is probably a lemon, is the white, scalloped edge of a napkin. To the left of these things and standing vertically in the top center of the canvas (twelve o'clock) is a wine glass. It's hard to see at first, so look carefully. Just at the top edge of the chair caning is the glass's base, above it is the stem (thicker than you might expect), and then the bowl of the glass. It is difficult to find the forms you would expect because Picasso depicts the glass from more than one angle. At eleven o'clock is the famous "JOU," which means "game" in French, but also the first three letters of the French word for newspaper (or more literally, "daily"; journal=daily). In fact, you can make out the bulk of the folded paper quite clearly. Don't be confused by the pipe that lays across the newspaper. Do you see its stem and bowl? Looking Down and Looking Through But there are still big questions: why the chair caning, what is the gray diagonal at the bottom of the glass, and why the rope frame? (Think of a ship's port hole. The port hole reference is an important clue.) Also, why don't the letters sit better on the newspaper? Finally, why is the canvas oval? It has already been determined that this still life is composed of a sliced lemon, a glass, newspaper, and a pipe. Perhaps this is a breakfast setting, with a citron pressé (French lemonade). In any case, these items are arranged upon a glass tabletop. You can see the reflection of the glass. In fact, the glass allows us to see below the table's surface, which is how we see the chair caning—which represents the seat tucked in below the table. Okay, so far so good. But why is the table elliptical in shape? This appears to be a café table, which are round or square but never oval. Yet, when we look at a circular table, we never see it from directly above. Instead, we see it at an angle, and it appears elliptical in shape as we approach the table to sit down. But what about the rope, which was not mass-produced, nor made by Picasso, but rather something made especially for this painting? We can view it as the bumper of a table, as it was used in some cafés, or as the frame of a ship's port hole, which we can look "through," to see the objects represented. The rope's simultaneous horizontal and vertical orientation creates a way for the viewer (us) to read the image in two ways—looking down and looking through/across. Put simply, Picasso wants us to remember that the painting is something different from that which it represents.

Picasso, Demoiselles d'Avignon

20th century, cubism Les Demoiselles d'Avignon marks a radical break from traditional composition and perspective in painting. It depicts five naked women with figures composed of flat, splintered planes and faces inspired by Iberian sculpture and African masks. The compressed space the figures inhabit appears to project forward in jagged shards; a fiercely pointed slice of melon in the still life of fruit at the bottom of the composition teeters on an impossibly upturned tabletop. These strategies would be significant in Picasso's subsequent development of Cubism, charted in this gallery with a selection of the increasingly fragmented compositions he created in this period. Picasso unveiled the monumental painting in his Paris studio after months of revision. The Avignon of the work's title is a reference to a street in Barcelona famed for its brothel. In Picasso's preparatory studies for the work, the figure at the left was a man, but the artist eliminated this anecdotal detail in the final painting.

Braque, The Portuguese

20th century, cubism To understand Cubism it helps to go back to Cézanne's still life paintings or even further, to the Renaissance. Let me use an example that worked nicely in the classroom. I was lecturing, trying to untangle Cubism while drinking incresingly cold coffee from a paper cup. I set the cup on the desk in the front of the room and said, "If I were a Renaissance artist in mid-15th century Italy painting that cup on that table, I would position myself at particular point in space and construct the surrounding objects and space frozen in that spot and from that single perspective. On the other hand, if this was the late 19th century and I was Cézanne, I might allow myself to open this view up quite a bit. Perhaps I would focus on, and record, the perceptual changes of shape and line that result when I shift my weight from one leg to the other or when I lean in toward the cup to get a closer look. I might even allow myself to render slightly around the far side of the paper cup since, as Cézanne, I am interested in vision and memory working together. Finally, if I were Braque or Picasso in the early 20th century, I would want to express even more on the canvas. I would not be satisfied with the limiting conventions of Renaissance perspective nor even with the initial explorations of the master Cézanne. As a Cubist, I want to express my total visual understanding of the paper coffee cup. I want more than the Renaissance painter or even Cézanne, I want to express the entire cup simultaneously on the static surface of the canvas since I can hold all that visual information in my memory. I want to render the cup's front, its sides, its back, and its inner walls, its bottom from both inside and out, and I want to do this on a flat canvas. How can this be done? The answer is provided by The Portuguese. In this canvas, everything was fractured. The guitar player and the dock was just so many pieces of broken form, almost broken glass. By breaking these objects into smaller elements, Braque and Picasso are able to overcome the unified singularity of an object and instead transform it into an object of vision. At this point the class began to look a little confused, so I turned back to the paper cup and began to tear it into pieces (I had finished the coffee). If I want to be able to show you both the back and front and inside and outside simultaneously, I can fragment the object. Basically, this is the strategy of the Cubists.

Neo-classism

A style of art and architecture that emerged in the late 18th century as part of a general revival of interest in classical cultures. France before its first revolution in 1789 Greece and Rome: models of enlightened political organization Enlightenment's emphasis on rationality Painting - "clarity of form; sober colors; shallow space; strong horizontal and verticals that render that subject matter timeless, instead of temporal as in the dynamic Baroque works; and, Classical subject matter—or classicizing contemporary subject matter."

Dada

An artistic and literary movement that began in 1916. It began independently in New York and Zurich, and also emerged in Paris, Berlin, and Cologne, among other cities. More a mindset or attitude than a single identifiable style. The Dadaist believed Enlightenment reasoning had produced global devastation, and consequently they turned away from logic in favor of the irrational. Its output was wildly diverse, ranging from performance art to poetry, photography, sculpture, painting and collage. readymades art work entail physical transformation where artist show craftsmanship art object has to be highly expressive of the person who made it commodification of art: works of art are the ultimate commodity fetish: they are given value far higher than its material value. deny the possibility of artistic production in such a time of suffer, pessimistic of human reason and logic Irony, humor Ready-made Reacting against traditions (painting etc) Ignores aesthetics

Baudelaire Modern Life

An important text defining modernity; discusses various aspects of modern life - "Beauty is made up of an eternal, invariable element, whose quantity it is excessively difficult to determine, and of a relative circumstantial element, which will be, if you like, whether severally or all at once, the age, its fashions, its morals, its emotions. Without the second element, which might be described as the amusing, enticing, appetizing icing on the divine cake, the first element would be beyond our powers of digestion or appreciation, neither adapted nor suitable to human nature."

Bashkirtseff

Bashkirtseff's diary, recording both her ambitions as an artist and her frustration at the restrictions imposed on her by late-nineteenth century society - "What I long for is the freedom of going about alone, of coming and going, of sitting on the seats in the Tuilieries, and especially in the Luxembourg, of stopping and looking at the artistic shops, of entering the churches and museums, of walking about the old streets at night; that's what I long for; and that's the freedom without which one can't become a real artist. Do you imagine I can get much good from what I see, chaperoned as I am, and when, in order to go to the Louvre, I must wait for my carriage, my lady companion, or my family?" - "Ah! How women are to be pitied; men are at least free. Absolute independence in every-day life, liberty to come and go, to go out, to dine at an inn or at home, to walk to the Bois or the café: this liberty is half the battle in acquiring talent, and three- parts of every-day happiness."

1785 Salon

David's works are none the less a masterpiece, flaws are noticed later after discussion, no work is without flaws

Duchamp

Duchamp's response to being rejected - "They say any artist paying six dollars may exhibit. Mr. Richard Mutt sent in a fountain. Without discussion this article disappeared and never was exhibited. What were the grounds for refusing Mr. Mutt's fountain: 1) Some contended it was immoral, vulgar. 2) Others, it was plagiarism, a plain piece of plumbing. Now Mr. Mutt's fountain is not immoral, that is absurd, no more than a bathtub is immoral. It is a fixture that you see every day in plumbers' show windows. Whether Mr. Mutt with his own hands made the fountain or not has no importance. He CHOSE it. He took an ordinary article of life, placed it so that its useful significance disappeared under the new title and point of view—created a new thought for that object. As for plumbing, that is absurd. The only works of art America has given are her plumbing and her bridges."

18th Century Art in Europe

Europe started the 18th century in a semi-feudal state • Economic and poli,cal power was centrally-based Aristocratic class held most of the power The Enlightenment pushed thinkers to improve the institutions of mankind; enlightenment thinking saw nature as both rational and good; observation of natural laws could lead to happiness for mankind. We'll see the effects of the Enlightenment in paintings of science, and in the order and rationality of neoclassical painting, a reaction against the frivolity of Rococo and a response to social upheavals across Europe in this century.

Romanticism

Grew dramatically during Late 18th century and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate period from 1800 to 1850. The transition from Neoclassicism to Romanticism represented a shift in emphasis from reason to feeling, from objective nature to subjective emotion. Pessimistic of human nature, darker underside of human experience: human ability to suffer, degradation became more at heart of what means to be a human being Francesco Goya, Saturn Devouring His Son, 1819-1823

cubism

Multiplication of points of views: see an object with multiple points of view, no traditional one-point linear perspective • not to show a reality of vision but of conception. à Perception is more important than vision. - "We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand." Picasso on Cubism • From representation to construction of the subject. • Never achieve a pure abstraction breaking down forms and reassemble them on the canvas • Facets: planes that tilt in and out of space--no suggestion of continuous rounded form • open a muted color scheme of brown, blacks, and grays • no continuous outline through which you can locate the figure, but the forms and facets tend to be concentrated towards the middle of the canvas. • lacks the individuality and expressiveness • highly intellectual approach to art as opposed to emotional Synthetic cubism, 1912-1920s, the second phase of Cubism • synthesizing parts into a whole • mixed-media collage • brighter colours • incorporation with real life objects into pictorial object • care more about aesthetic • While Analytical Cubism focuses on the intellectuality of combining perspectives, Synthetic Cubism takes on a much more intellectually playful role

How did the outbreak of World War I impact European Art?

People's belief in reason and logic was shattered artistic reaction tended to manifest itself in two ways: conservatism deny the possibility of artistic production in such a time of suffer Dada is an example of this reaction Does this kind of artistic reaction remind you of some art style we talked about before?

Polluck

Pollock's thoughts on American art; Pollock says the greatest art has been produced in France, but he goes on to say art should transcend nationality; there's no such thing as American physics/math etc; He wants to claim universality - "The idea of an isolated American painting, so popular during the thirties, seems absurd to me, just as the idea of creating a purely American mathematics or physics would seem absurd."

Post-Impressionism

Post-Impressionism • Developed in France around 1886-1905 • reject impressionists' idea that painting is based on sense perception • embrace the idea that painting reveals the way the mind structures our experience-against Impressionists' concern for the naturalistic depiction of light and colour. • Not a cohesive movement with a common aesthetic like the impressionists: Seurat = Pointillism, Van Gogh= vibrant color to depict a state of mind, etc

surrealism

Surrealism Emerged around Paris during the1920s and 1930s Two main strands: Biomorphic/abstract Surrealism Naturalistic Surrealism Many of the tenets of Surrealism, including an emphasis on automatism, experimental uses of language, and found objects, had been present to some degree in the Dada movement that preceded it. However, the Surrealists systematized these strategies within the framework of psychologist Sigmund Freud's theories on dreams and the unconscious mind. Freud's Theory of the Unconscious: we are not aware of the workings of the unconscious mind The unconscious processes, however, impact our behavior Unconscious consists of memories, feelings, desires, etc. that we are unaware of consciously The Surrealists felt that the unconscious mind had been repressed by convention and reason, and that this is what led to World War II They gave up on reason as a way to order the world, instead giving way to subconscious drives, sexual and otherwise, in the production of art and literature

Impressionism

Term "impressionism" appears in critics in 1874 with the exhibition of the impressionist artists. It was not positive and described that they paint a feeling: "impression". • Truthfulness: painted at a specific moment, en plein air - Fleeting affects of light and shadow. Time of the year, of the day, are readable through the painting • Individuality: the trace of the master's hand that leaves mark on the canvas attest to the subjectivity - Evident brushwork and speed of execution. Sense of instantaneity that even photography could not achieve yet. • Subject: the city and the modern life • deconstruct the hierarchy of genre set up by the Academy

Geffroy Cezanne

appreciation of Cezanne's work - "He loved that, and he loved only that, to the point of forgetting all that was not that, to the point of staying before the same spectacle for hours and hours, days and days, working furiously to penetrate it, to understand it, to express it,--obstinate, searching, diligent..."

Apollinaire

defines Cubism as an austere, pure art, offering a pleasure of its own as distinct from the pleasure to be derived either from nature or from depictions of it; views it as a step on the way to potentially abstract art - "If painters still observe nature, they no longer imitate it, and they carefully avoid the representation of natural scenes observed directly or reconstituted through study. Modern art rejects all the means of pleasing that were employed by the greatest artists of the past..." - "Verisimilitude no longer has any importance, for the artist sacrifices everything to the composition of his picture. The subject no longer counts, or if it counts, it counts for very little."

Romanticism

grew dramatically during Late 18th century • The transition from Neoclassicism to Romanticism represented a ship in emphasis from reason to feeling, from objective nature to subjective emotion. • Pessimistic of human nature, darker underside of human experience: human ability to suffer, degradation became more at heart of what means to be a human being

1783 Salon

on Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun - "I don't know in which class the Academy has put Madame Lebrun, history, genre or portrait, but she is worthy of any of them, even the first. I consider the painting for which she was received into the Academy very likely to gain her admission into the first class."

Greenberg

retrospective rationale for modernist painting; medium specificity, self-criticality, opticality - See Recitation Eunice - Week 12 on Carmen for more info

Zola

supports modern art; art as "a corner of the world seen through a temperament." - "There are, in my opinion, two elements in a work: the element of reality, which is nature, and the personal element, which is man....So, a work of art is never anything more than a combination of man, the variable element, with nature, the fixed element."