This drawing is a plain pencil drawing of characters from Gail Carriger's series, Finishing School. Click the image to go to my book blog and learn more about Gail and the books.
Wednesday, May 25, 2016
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Art Terms and Lighting
Abstract Expressionism
Abstract expressionism was an American post World War II art movement. It was the first American movement to achieve worldwide influence, a role formerly filled by Paris.
In the USA, Alfred Barr was the first to use this term in 1929 in relation to works by Wassily Kandinsky.
Technically, an important predecessor is surrealism, Jackson Pollock's dripping paint onto a canvas laid on the floor is a technique that has its roots in the work of Max Ernst. Another important early manifestation of what came to be abstract expressionism is the work of American Northwest artist Mark Tobey, especially his "white writing" canvases, which, though generally not large in scale, anticipate the "all over" look of Pollock's drip paintings.
Color Field Painting
Color Field painting is an abstract style that emerged in the 1950s after Abstract Expressionism and is largely characterized by abstract canvases painted primarily with large areas of solid color. An alternate but less frequently encountered term for this style is chromatic abstraction.
Color Field painting initially referred to a particular type of abstract expressionism, especially the work of Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still, Barnett Newman, Robert Motherwell and Adolph Gottlieb. Art critic Clement Greenberg perceived Color Field painting as related to but different from Action painting. During the early to mid-1960s Color Field painting was the term used to describe artists like Jules Olitski, Kenneth Noland, and Helen Frankenthaler, whose works were related to second generation abstract expressionism, and to younger artists like Larry Zox, and Frank Stella.
Hard Edge Abstraction
It encompasses rich solid colors, neatness of surface, and arranged forms all over the canvas. The Hard-edge painting style is related to Geometric abstraction, Post-painterly Abstraction, and Color Field painting. Hard edge is also a simply descriptive term, as applicable to past works as to future artistic production. The term refers to the abrupt transition across "hard edges" from one color area to another color area. Color within "color areas" is generally consistent, that is, homogenous. Hard-edged painting can be both figurative or nonrepresentational.
Some people in the book and not in the book associated with hard-edged painting: (as a side note I got to see some of these works when I went to New York last year!)
Geometric abstraction was used in the earlier work of Josef Albers and Piet Mondrian. Other artists associated with Hard-edge painting include Richard Anuszkiewicz, Victor Vasarely, Bridget Riley, Robert Irwin, David Simpson, Barnett Newman, Myron Stout, Al Held, Ludwig Sander, Burgoyne Diller, Ellsworth Kelly, Alexander Liberman, Gene Davis, Morris Louis, Larry Zox, Brice Marden, Ronald Davis, Ronnie Landfield, Larry Poons, Charles Hinman, Pat Lipsky, Kenneth Noland, Neil Williams, David Novros, Ad Reinhardt, Frank Stella, and Jack Youngerman.
Pop Art
I saw a large exhibit of Pop art four years ago in Des Moines at the Wells Fargo Gallery downtown, and in New York at Moma. It’s interesting upclose, not my favorite style, but certainly tells a story. I also saw some of this art in Aachen, Germany in October. I saw pieces like:
Drowning Girl
Andy Warhol’s Cambel soup montage
Andy Warhol’s Maryln Monroe
Just What Is It That Makes Today’s Homes So Different, So Appealing?
And some anime inspired Japanese pop art
Pop art emerged in the mid 1950s in Britain and in parallel in the late 1950s in the United States. Alloway was one of the leading critics to defend mass culture and Pop Art as a legitimate art form. Pop art is one of the major art movements of the twentieth century. Characterized by themes and techniques drawn from popular mass culture, such as advertising and comic books, pop art is widely interpreted as either a reaction to the then-dominant ideas of abstract expressionism or an expansion upon them.
Conceptual Art
My art theory class studied conceptual art extensively. Conceptual art are concepts or ideas that take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. Many of the works of the artist Sol LeWitt may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions. This method was fundamental to LeWitt's definition of Conceptual art, one of the first to appear in print:
In conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work. When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes a machine that makes the art. – Sol LeWitt, "Paragraphs on Conceptual Art", Artforum, June 1967.
The French artist Marcel Duchamp paved the way for the conceptualists, providing them with examples of prototypically conceptual works -- the readymades, for instance. The most famous of Duchamp's readymades was Fountain (1917), a standard urinal basin signed by the artist with the pseudonym "R.Mutt", and submitted for inclusion in the annual, un-juried exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists in New York--it was rejected. He signed the work as an alias so that his name would not sway the judges opinion when set next to the many less famous artists his piece was up against.
Combines
Related to Abstract expressionism was the emergence of combined manufactured items - with artist materials, moving away from previous conventions of painting and sculpture. This trend in art is exemplified by the work of Robert Rauschenberg, whose "combines" in the 1950s were forerunners of Pop Art and Installation art, and made use of the assemblage of large physical objects, including stuffed animals, birds and commercial photography.
Minimalism
Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is stripped down to its most fundamental features. As a specific movement in the arts it is identified with developments in post-World War II Western Art, most strongly with American visual arts in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Prominent artists associated with this movement include Donald Judd, Carl Andre and Richard Serra.
Performance Art
Performance art is art in which the actions of an individual or a group at a particular place and in a particular time constitute the work. Performance art can be any situation that involves four basic elements: time, space, the performer's body and a relationship between performer and audience. It is opposed to painting or sculpture, for example, where an object constitutes the work. Of course the lines are often blurred. For instance, the work of “Survival Research Laboratories” is considered by most to be "performance art", yet the performers are actually machines.
Although performance art could be said to include relatively mainstream activities such as theater, dance, music, and circus-related things like fire breathing, juggling, and gymnastics, these are normally instead known as the performing arts. Performance art, as the term is usually understood, began to be identified in the 1960s with the work of artists such as Yves Klein, Vito Acconci, Hermann Nitsch, Chris Burd, Yoko Ono, Joseph Beuys, and Allan Kaprow, who coined the term happenings. In 1970 the British-based pair, Gilbert and George, created the first of their "living sculpture" performances when they painted themselves gold and sang "Underneath The Arches" for extended periods.
Feminist Art
The feminist art movement refers to the efforts and accomplishments of feminists internationally to bring more visibility to women within art history and art practice. The increased prominence of women artists within art history as well as contemporary art practice can be attributed to this movement.
Some of the important names associated with feminist art are Judy Chicago, Suzanne Lacy, Kate Millett, Miriam Schapiro, Arlene Raven, and Eleanor Tufts.
Assemblage
Assemblage is an artistic process in which a three-dimensional artistic composition is made from putting together found objects.
Assemblage is the 3-dimensional cousin of collage. The origin of the word can be traced back to the early 1950s, when Jean Dubuffet created a series of collages of butterfly wings.
Late Modernist (architecture)
Mies van der Rohe’s Seagram’s building, the ultimate monument of high modernism and Philip Johnson’s AT&T building, which declared the advent of postmodernism, this period produced the vast majority of the modern architecture that surrounds us.
“Viet Nam Veterans Memorial”
Mia Lynn produced this masterpiece as a grad student for a contest. She is now a world celebrated artist and designer. I have seen many of her famous works in person, and some of her work that is not so well known such as the interior and outer paint schemes of the Des Moines Thomson Engineering Golf Stream X. She designed the memorial in a minimalist fashion so that those who came to visit the art work would walk in and out of it just as the work goes in and out of the ground. The reflective marble makes the viewer see themselves, like a dark mirror pale against the hard surface with the facts of lost lives thrust before them. The piece was originally loved and hated by many. She was criticized for designing it, because of her ethnicity while others cried out for more visual pieces to be added to the memorial so people would notice the piece. She disagreed and fought with the idea of additions to her work. Finally a flag was moved around the area and three small statues. Now it is one of the most celebrated American memorials for the way the piece touches people’s hearts and all five senses.
“Spiral Jetty”
The Spiral Jetty, considered to be the central work of American earthwork sculptor Robert Smithson. It was built of mud, salt crystals, basalt rocks, earth, and water on the northeastern shore of the Great Salt Lake near Rozel Point in Utah, when the lake was unusually low because of drought, it forms a 1500-foot long and 15-foot wide counterclockwise coil jutting from the shore of the lake. Due to a recent drought, the jetty re-emerged in 1999 and is now completely exposed.
“Running Fence”
Christo and Jeanne-Claude's Running Fence traversed Sonoma and Marin Counties in California. Inspired in part by fencing that separate the continental divide in Colorado, the fence was 18 feet high and followed a 24 1/2-mile-long-serpentine path through hilly pasturelands into Bodega Bay.
First conceived in 1972, Running Fence took more than four years to realize. For the installation, the artists obtained permission for land use from the counties and fifty-nine ranching families; they also filed an Environmental Impact Report as stipulated by the Coastal Commission. In April 1976, construction finally began. In early September, the artists working with nearly 400 people installed the nylon fabric panels. This brilliant white fence threaded through the landscape like a "ribbon of light."
Postmodern
Postmodernism is a term emerging from, in reaction to, or superseding, modernism. postmodernism tends to refer to a cultural, intellectual, or artistic state lacking a clear central hierarchy or organizing principle and embodying extreme complexity, contradiction, ambiguity, diversity, and interconnectedness. Postmodernity is a derivative referring to non-art aspects of history that were influenced by the new movement, namely the evolutions in society, economy and culture since the 1960s.
Stravinsky, Mann, Kandinsky, Mondrian and Baudelaire
Neo-Expressionism
Neo-expressionism was a style of modern painting that emerged in the late 1970s and dominated the art market until the mid-1980s. Neo-expressionists returned after the minimalists to portraying recognizable objects, such as the human body (although sometimes in a virtually abstract manner), in a rough and violently emotional way using vivid colours and banal colour harmonies. Overtly inspired by the so-called German Expressionist painters--Emil Nolde, Max Beckmann, George Grosz--and others such as James Ensor and Edvard Munch.
Center for Contemporary Art, Cincinnati
The Contemporary Arts Center is a pioneering contemporary art museum located in Cincinnati, Ohio. The CAC is a free museum that focuses on new developments in painting, sculpture, photography, architecture, performance art and new media. Remaining committed to programming that reflects "the art of the last five minutes," the CAC has displayed the works of many now-famous artists early in their careers, including Andy Warhol.
“You are a Captive Audience”
Several cultural factors have influenced this corresponding art shift from modernism to post-modernism. Perhaps the biggest factor is the advent of the technological age. Just as modern culture was influenced by the industrial age, so post-modernism has had to deal with the electronic age. As a result of this electronic, or information, age, traditional geographic boundaries have been destroyed. Images of artworks are instantly accessible to an international audience. Whereas modernists promoted abstraction, post-modern painters advocated a return to traditional subject matter such as landscape and history painting. Some post-modernists reject the modern notion that each art movement be completely original; this rejection takes the form of borrowing (appropriation) from art or architectural history, or other sources, and combining previous images and styles in new juxtapositions. Often, post-modern subject matter in the visual arts is issue-oriented and activist. Toward this end, and because post-modernism has its roots in literature, visual artists often incorporate text into their work. Extremely varied and eclectic in both art and architecture, although post-modern visual artists use identifiable, representational images. KRUGER, You Are a Captive Audience, 1983 is a perfect example of this style.
“Untitled Film Still #15”
Untitled Film Still, #15 depicts the tough girl with a heart of gold. Contrary to the media images they appropriate, which may require a transparent sense of realism to sell an illusion, Sherman’s stills have an artifice that is heightened by the often visible camera cord, slightly eccentric props, unusual camera angles, and by the fact that each image includes the artist, rather than a recognizable actress or model.
“Light Cycle: Explosion Project for Central Park”
Commissioned to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Central Park, Cai's Light Cycle fireworks display lit the New York sky with a circle of explosions on a September night in 2003. This 24-page accordion book documents it all from planning to performance, executed by the famous Grucci fireworks family. Separating the book's hardbound cloth covers reveals a continuous folded sheet with reproductions of Cai's gunpowder drawings (made by burning scant gunpowder on paper) on one side and photographs of the event and text on the other. In an interview, the artist compares his drawings to "love-making" and explains some technical aspects of his displays, such as a computer chip in each explosive shell.
Abstract expressionism was an American post World War II art movement. It was the first American movement to achieve worldwide influence, a role formerly filled by Paris.
In the USA, Alfred Barr was the first to use this term in 1929 in relation to works by Wassily Kandinsky.
Technically, an important predecessor is surrealism, Jackson Pollock's dripping paint onto a canvas laid on the floor is a technique that has its roots in the work of Max Ernst. Another important early manifestation of what came to be abstract expressionism is the work of American Northwest artist Mark Tobey, especially his "white writing" canvases, which, though generally not large in scale, anticipate the "all over" look of Pollock's drip paintings.
Color Field Painting
Color Field painting is an abstract style that emerged in the 1950s after Abstract Expressionism and is largely characterized by abstract canvases painted primarily with large areas of solid color. An alternate but less frequently encountered term for this style is chromatic abstraction.
Color Field painting initially referred to a particular type of abstract expressionism, especially the work of Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still, Barnett Newman, Robert Motherwell and Adolph Gottlieb. Art critic Clement Greenberg perceived Color Field painting as related to but different from Action painting. During the early to mid-1960s Color Field painting was the term used to describe artists like Jules Olitski, Kenneth Noland, and Helen Frankenthaler, whose works were related to second generation abstract expressionism, and to younger artists like Larry Zox, and Frank Stella.
Hard Edge Abstraction
It encompasses rich solid colors, neatness of surface, and arranged forms all over the canvas. The Hard-edge painting style is related to Geometric abstraction, Post-painterly Abstraction, and Color Field painting. Hard edge is also a simply descriptive term, as applicable to past works as to future artistic production. The term refers to the abrupt transition across "hard edges" from one color area to another color area. Color within "color areas" is generally consistent, that is, homogenous. Hard-edged painting can be both figurative or nonrepresentational.
Some people in the book and not in the book associated with hard-edged painting: (as a side note I got to see some of these works when I went to New York last year!)
Geometric abstraction was used in the earlier work of Josef Albers and Piet Mondrian. Other artists associated with Hard-edge painting include Richard Anuszkiewicz, Victor Vasarely, Bridget Riley, Robert Irwin, David Simpson, Barnett Newman, Myron Stout, Al Held, Ludwig Sander, Burgoyne Diller, Ellsworth Kelly, Alexander Liberman, Gene Davis, Morris Louis, Larry Zox, Brice Marden, Ronald Davis, Ronnie Landfield, Larry Poons, Charles Hinman, Pat Lipsky, Kenneth Noland, Neil Williams, David Novros, Ad Reinhardt, Frank Stella, and Jack Youngerman.
Pop Art
I saw a large exhibit of Pop art four years ago in Des Moines at the Wells Fargo Gallery downtown, and in New York at Moma. It’s interesting upclose, not my favorite style, but certainly tells a story. I also saw some of this art in Aachen, Germany in October. I saw pieces like:
Drowning Girl
Andy Warhol’s Cambel soup montage
Andy Warhol’s Maryln Monroe
Just What Is It That Makes Today’s Homes So Different, So Appealing?
And some anime inspired Japanese pop art
Pop art emerged in the mid 1950s in Britain and in parallel in the late 1950s in the United States. Alloway was one of the leading critics to defend mass culture and Pop Art as a legitimate art form. Pop art is one of the major art movements of the twentieth century. Characterized by themes and techniques drawn from popular mass culture, such as advertising and comic books, pop art is widely interpreted as either a reaction to the then-dominant ideas of abstract expressionism or an expansion upon them.
Conceptual Art
My art theory class studied conceptual art extensively. Conceptual art are concepts or ideas that take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. Many of the works of the artist Sol LeWitt may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions. This method was fundamental to LeWitt's definition of Conceptual art, one of the first to appear in print:
In conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work. When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes a machine that makes the art. – Sol LeWitt, "Paragraphs on Conceptual Art", Artforum, June 1967.
The French artist Marcel Duchamp paved the way for the conceptualists, providing them with examples of prototypically conceptual works -- the readymades, for instance. The most famous of Duchamp's readymades was Fountain (1917), a standard urinal basin signed by the artist with the pseudonym "R.Mutt", and submitted for inclusion in the annual, un-juried exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists in New York--it was rejected. He signed the work as an alias so that his name would not sway the judges opinion when set next to the many less famous artists his piece was up against.
Combines
Related to Abstract expressionism was the emergence of combined manufactured items - with artist materials, moving away from previous conventions of painting and sculpture. This trend in art is exemplified by the work of Robert Rauschenberg, whose "combines" in the 1950s were forerunners of Pop Art and Installation art, and made use of the assemblage of large physical objects, including stuffed animals, birds and commercial photography.
Minimalism
Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is stripped down to its most fundamental features. As a specific movement in the arts it is identified with developments in post-World War II Western Art, most strongly with American visual arts in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Prominent artists associated with this movement include Donald Judd, Carl Andre and Richard Serra.
Performance Art
Performance art is art in which the actions of an individual or a group at a particular place and in a particular time constitute the work. Performance art can be any situation that involves four basic elements: time, space, the performer's body and a relationship between performer and audience. It is opposed to painting or sculpture, for example, where an object constitutes the work. Of course the lines are often blurred. For instance, the work of “Survival Research Laboratories” is considered by most to be "performance art", yet the performers are actually machines.
Although performance art could be said to include relatively mainstream activities such as theater, dance, music, and circus-related things like fire breathing, juggling, and gymnastics, these are normally instead known as the performing arts. Performance art, as the term is usually understood, began to be identified in the 1960s with the work of artists such as Yves Klein, Vito Acconci, Hermann Nitsch, Chris Burd, Yoko Ono, Joseph Beuys, and Allan Kaprow, who coined the term happenings. In 1970 the British-based pair, Gilbert and George, created the first of their "living sculpture" performances when they painted themselves gold and sang "Underneath The Arches" for extended periods.
Feminist Art
The feminist art movement refers to the efforts and accomplishments of feminists internationally to bring more visibility to women within art history and art practice. The increased prominence of women artists within art history as well as contemporary art practice can be attributed to this movement.
Some of the important names associated with feminist art are Judy Chicago, Suzanne Lacy, Kate Millett, Miriam Schapiro, Arlene Raven, and Eleanor Tufts.
Assemblage
Assemblage is an artistic process in which a three-dimensional artistic composition is made from putting together found objects.
Assemblage is the 3-dimensional cousin of collage. The origin of the word can be traced back to the early 1950s, when Jean Dubuffet created a series of collages of butterfly wings.
Late Modernist (architecture)
Mies van der Rohe’s Seagram’s building, the ultimate monument of high modernism and Philip Johnson’s AT&T building, which declared the advent of postmodernism, this period produced the vast majority of the modern architecture that surrounds us.
“Viet Nam Veterans Memorial”
Mia Lynn produced this masterpiece as a grad student for a contest. She is now a world celebrated artist and designer. I have seen many of her famous works in person, and some of her work that is not so well known such as the interior and outer paint schemes of the Des Moines Thomson Engineering Golf Stream X. She designed the memorial in a minimalist fashion so that those who came to visit the art work would walk in and out of it just as the work goes in and out of the ground. The reflective marble makes the viewer see themselves, like a dark mirror pale against the hard surface with the facts of lost lives thrust before them. The piece was originally loved and hated by many. She was criticized for designing it, because of her ethnicity while others cried out for more visual pieces to be added to the memorial so people would notice the piece. She disagreed and fought with the idea of additions to her work. Finally a flag was moved around the area and three small statues. Now it is one of the most celebrated American memorials for the way the piece touches people’s hearts and all five senses.
“Spiral Jetty”
The Spiral Jetty, considered to be the central work of American earthwork sculptor Robert Smithson. It was built of mud, salt crystals, basalt rocks, earth, and water on the northeastern shore of the Great Salt Lake near Rozel Point in Utah, when the lake was unusually low because of drought, it forms a 1500-foot long and 15-foot wide counterclockwise coil jutting from the shore of the lake. Due to a recent drought, the jetty re-emerged in 1999 and is now completely exposed.
“Running Fence”
Christo and Jeanne-Claude's Running Fence traversed Sonoma and Marin Counties in California. Inspired in part by fencing that separate the continental divide in Colorado, the fence was 18 feet high and followed a 24 1/2-mile-long-serpentine path through hilly pasturelands into Bodega Bay.
First conceived in 1972, Running Fence took more than four years to realize. For the installation, the artists obtained permission for land use from the counties and fifty-nine ranching families; they also filed an Environmental Impact Report as stipulated by the Coastal Commission. In April 1976, construction finally began. In early September, the artists working with nearly 400 people installed the nylon fabric panels. This brilliant white fence threaded through the landscape like a "ribbon of light."
Postmodern
Postmodernism is a term emerging from, in reaction to, or superseding, modernism. postmodernism tends to refer to a cultural, intellectual, or artistic state lacking a clear central hierarchy or organizing principle and embodying extreme complexity, contradiction, ambiguity, diversity, and interconnectedness. Postmodernity is a derivative referring to non-art aspects of history that were influenced by the new movement, namely the evolutions in society, economy and culture since the 1960s.
Stravinsky, Mann, Kandinsky, Mondrian and Baudelaire
Neo-Expressionism
Neo-expressionism was a style of modern painting that emerged in the late 1970s and dominated the art market until the mid-1980s. Neo-expressionists returned after the minimalists to portraying recognizable objects, such as the human body (although sometimes in a virtually abstract manner), in a rough and violently emotional way using vivid colours and banal colour harmonies. Overtly inspired by the so-called German Expressionist painters--Emil Nolde, Max Beckmann, George Grosz--and others such as James Ensor and Edvard Munch.
Center for Contemporary Art, Cincinnati
The Contemporary Arts Center is a pioneering contemporary art museum located in Cincinnati, Ohio. The CAC is a free museum that focuses on new developments in painting, sculpture, photography, architecture, performance art and new media. Remaining committed to programming that reflects "the art of the last five minutes," the CAC has displayed the works of many now-famous artists early in their careers, including Andy Warhol.
“You are a Captive Audience”
Several cultural factors have influenced this corresponding art shift from modernism to post-modernism. Perhaps the biggest factor is the advent of the technological age. Just as modern culture was influenced by the industrial age, so post-modernism has had to deal with the electronic age. As a result of this electronic, or information, age, traditional geographic boundaries have been destroyed. Images of artworks are instantly accessible to an international audience. Whereas modernists promoted abstraction, post-modern painters advocated a return to traditional subject matter such as landscape and history painting. Some post-modernists reject the modern notion that each art movement be completely original; this rejection takes the form of borrowing (appropriation) from art or architectural history, or other sources, and combining previous images and styles in new juxtapositions. Often, post-modern subject matter in the visual arts is issue-oriented and activist. Toward this end, and because post-modernism has its roots in literature, visual artists often incorporate text into their work. Extremely varied and eclectic in both art and architecture, although post-modern visual artists use identifiable, representational images. KRUGER, You Are a Captive Audience, 1983 is a perfect example of this style.
“Untitled Film Still #15”
Untitled Film Still, #15 depicts the tough girl with a heart of gold. Contrary to the media images they appropriate, which may require a transparent sense of realism to sell an illusion, Sherman’s stills have an artifice that is heightened by the often visible camera cord, slightly eccentric props, unusual camera angles, and by the fact that each image includes the artist, rather than a recognizable actress or model.
“Light Cycle: Explosion Project for Central Park”
Commissioned to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Central Park, Cai's Light Cycle fireworks display lit the New York sky with a circle of explosions on a September night in 2003. This 24-page accordion book documents it all from planning to performance, executed by the famous Grucci fireworks family. Separating the book's hardbound cloth covers reveals a continuous folded sheet with reproductions of Cai's gunpowder drawings (made by burning scant gunpowder on paper) on one side and photographs of the event and text on the other. In an interview, the artist compares his drawings to "love-making" and explains some technical aspects of his displays, such as a computer chip in each explosive shell.
Suprematist
Who was the leader of the Fauves and what were their painting goals?
Les Fauves were a short-lived and loose grouping of early 20th century Modern artists whose works emphasized painterly qualities, and the imaginative use of deep color over the representational values retained by Impressionism. Fauvists simplified lines, made the subject of the painting easy to read, exaggerated perspectives and an interesting prescient prediction of the Fauves was expressed in 1888 by Paul Gauguin to Paul Sérusier. The name was given, humorously and not as a compliment, to the group by art critic Louis Vauxcelles. The French word, "Fauves" means "wild beasts". Gustave Moreau was the movement's inspirational teacher; a professor at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and a Symbolist painter he pushed his students to think outside of the lines of formality and to follow their visions.
When Picasso painted “Les Desmoiselles d’Avigon” he started a new style of art known as Cubism. What is the meaning of this painting?
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), a pivotal work in the development of modern art and in The Museum of Modern Art's permanent collection. Les Demoiselles d'Avignon means The Young Ladies of Avignon in English is a celebrated painting by Pablo Picasso that depicts five prostitutes in a brothel, in the Avignon Street of Barcelona. Picasso painted it in France, and completed it in the summer of 1907. The eye-catching painting is one of Picasso's most famous. It now hangs in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
Picasso created over one hundred sketches and studies in preparation for this work, one of the most important in the early development of Cubism. Within the narrative of early modern art, it is widely held as a seminal work. This painting was stylized from his trips to Africa and the unique wood carving he found there.
Who was the leader of Die Brucke and what were their goals?
Die Brücke (The Bridge) was a group of German expressionist artists formed in Dresden. The group was one of the seminal ones, which in due course had a major impact on the evolution of modern art in the 20th century and created the style of Expressionism.
The founding members of Die Brücke in 1905 were four Jugendstil architecture students: Fritz Bleyl (1880-1966), Erich Heckel (1883-1970), Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880-1938) and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. They met through the Königliche Technische Hochschule (technical university) of Dresden, where Kirchner and Bleyl began studying in 1901 and became close friends in their first term. They discussed art together and also studied nature, having a radical outlook in common. Kirchner continued studies in Munich 1903–1904, returning to Dresden in 1905 to complete his degree. The institution provided a wide range of studies in addition to architecture, such as freehand drawing, perspective drawing and the historical study of art.
Who was the leader or key figure of Der Blau Reiter and what were the goals of this group?
Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) was a group of artists from the Neue Künstlervereinigung München secessioning in Munich, Germany. Der Blaue Reiter was a German movement lasting from 1911 to 1914, fundamental to Expressionism, along with Die Brücke which was founded the previous decade in 1905. Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, August Macke, Alexej von Jawlensky, Marianne von Werefkin, Lyonel Feininger, Albert Bloch and others founded the group in response to the rejection of Kandinsky's painting Last Judgement from an exhibition. Der Blaue Reiter lacked a central artistic manifesto, but was centred around Kandinsky and Marc. Artists Gabriele Münter and Paul Klee were also involved.
The name of the movement comes from a painting by Kandinsky created in 1903 (see illustration). It is also claimed that the name could have derived from Marc's enthusiasm for horses and Kandinsky's love of the colour blue. For Kandinsky, blue is the colour of spirituality: the darker the blue, the more it awakens human desire for the eternal (see his 1911 book On the Spiritual in Art).
Within the group, artistic approaches and aims varied from artist to artist; however, the artists shared a common desire to express spiritual truths through their art. They believed in the promotion of modern art; the connection between visual art and music; the spiritual and symbolic associations of colour; and a spontaneous, intuitive approach to painting. Members were interested in European medieval art and primitivism, as well as the contemporary, non-figurative art scene in France. As a result of their encounters with cubist, fauvist and Rayonist ideas, they moved towards abstraction.
Modern art came to America with the Armory Show of 1913. Which painting in that exhibition was called ‘an explosion in a shingle factory’ by a reviewer? Who painted it?
In 1913 the International Exhibition of Modern Art opened at the Sixty-Ninth Regiment Armory in New York City. Art historian Milton Brown calls it "the most important single exhibition ever held in America." Prior to what became known as the Armory Show, contemporary art and artists had received little attention from the American public, and this exhibition brought curious onlookers in numbers previously unimaginable. Displayed were works by avant-garde European artists such as Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and Marcel Duchamp, all of whose abstract work had been shown in Europe beginning in 1905, with the Fauviste exhibition (where Gertrude Stein and her brother began collecting modern art). A similar exhibition in London in 1910 had prompted Virginia Woolf to tie a fundamental shift in the world to the display of those paintings, claiming that "on or about December 1910 human character changed." Cubism, a style of painting that emphasized the underlying geometric forms of objects, shocked American viewers, many of whom thought that the artists were trying to conceal their own lack of artistic talent or were simply insane. Marcel Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase caused the greatest public furor, standing for all that was wrong in modern art in the eyes of its critics. It became a target of public ridicule, and parodies of the work appeared in newspapers and journals. As Brown puts it, "American critics were as unprepared for the European visitation as they were for an exhibition of art from Mars." An art critic for the New York Times thought the work resembled "an explosion in a shingle factory."
Who was the leader or key figure of Suprematism and what were the goals of this group?
Suprematism is an art movement focused on fundamental geometric forms (squares and circles) which formed in Russia in 1915-1916.
When Kasimir Malevich originated Suprematism in 1915 he was an established painter having exhibited in the Donkey’s Tail and The Blue Rider exhibitions of 1912 with cubo-futurists works. The proliferation of new artistic forms in painting, poetry and theatre as well as a revival of interest in the traditional folk art of Russia were a rich environment in which a Modernists culture was being born.
He created a Suprematist 'grammar' based on fundamental geometric forms; the square and the circle. Malevich exhibited his early experiments in Suprematist painting. The centrepiece of his show was the Black square on white, placed in what is called the red/beautiful corner in Russian Orthodox tradition ; the place of the main icon in a house.
Another important influence on Malevich were the ideas of Russian mystic-mathematician who wrote of
'a fourth dimension beyond the three to which our ordinary senses have access'.
Abstractions of egg-like figures or birds were the subjects of which artist’s sculptures?
Constantin brancusi simplified his works, such as in the Newborn. He reduced his subject to an ovoid suggesting an egg. The form also resembles a head with the concave depression as the mouth releasing its first cry and the narrow triangle as the nose. Yet the whole is so abstract that we are left with a sense of the elemental ower of the marble which seems
Les Fauves were a short-lived and loose grouping of early 20th century Modern artists whose works emphasized painterly qualities, and the imaginative use of deep color over the representational values retained by Impressionism. Fauvists simplified lines, made the subject of the painting easy to read, exaggerated perspectives and an interesting prescient prediction of the Fauves was expressed in 1888 by Paul Gauguin to Paul Sérusier. The name was given, humorously and not as a compliment, to the group by art critic Louis Vauxcelles. The French word, "Fauves" means "wild beasts". Gustave Moreau was the movement's inspirational teacher; a professor at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and a Symbolist painter he pushed his students to think outside of the lines of formality and to follow their visions.
When Picasso painted “Les Desmoiselles d’Avigon” he started a new style of art known as Cubism. What is the meaning of this painting?
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), a pivotal work in the development of modern art and in The Museum of Modern Art's permanent collection. Les Demoiselles d'Avignon means The Young Ladies of Avignon in English is a celebrated painting by Pablo Picasso that depicts five prostitutes in a brothel, in the Avignon Street of Barcelona. Picasso painted it in France, and completed it in the summer of 1907. The eye-catching painting is one of Picasso's most famous. It now hangs in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
Picasso created over one hundred sketches and studies in preparation for this work, one of the most important in the early development of Cubism. Within the narrative of early modern art, it is widely held as a seminal work. This painting was stylized from his trips to Africa and the unique wood carving he found there.
Who was the leader of Die Brucke and what were their goals?
Die Brücke (The Bridge) was a group of German expressionist artists formed in Dresden. The group was one of the seminal ones, which in due course had a major impact on the evolution of modern art in the 20th century and created the style of Expressionism.
The founding members of Die Brücke in 1905 were four Jugendstil architecture students: Fritz Bleyl (1880-1966), Erich Heckel (1883-1970), Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880-1938) and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. They met through the Königliche Technische Hochschule (technical university) of Dresden, where Kirchner and Bleyl began studying in 1901 and became close friends in their first term. They discussed art together and also studied nature, having a radical outlook in common. Kirchner continued studies in Munich 1903–1904, returning to Dresden in 1905 to complete his degree. The institution provided a wide range of studies in addition to architecture, such as freehand drawing, perspective drawing and the historical study of art.
Who was the leader or key figure of Der Blau Reiter and what were the goals of this group?
Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) was a group of artists from the Neue Künstlervereinigung München secessioning in Munich, Germany. Der Blaue Reiter was a German movement lasting from 1911 to 1914, fundamental to Expressionism, along with Die Brücke which was founded the previous decade in 1905. Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, August Macke, Alexej von Jawlensky, Marianne von Werefkin, Lyonel Feininger, Albert Bloch and others founded the group in response to the rejection of Kandinsky's painting Last Judgement from an exhibition. Der Blaue Reiter lacked a central artistic manifesto, but was centred around Kandinsky and Marc. Artists Gabriele Münter and Paul Klee were also involved.
The name of the movement comes from a painting by Kandinsky created in 1903 (see illustration). It is also claimed that the name could have derived from Marc's enthusiasm for horses and Kandinsky's love of the colour blue. For Kandinsky, blue is the colour of spirituality: the darker the blue, the more it awakens human desire for the eternal (see his 1911 book On the Spiritual in Art).
Within the group, artistic approaches and aims varied from artist to artist; however, the artists shared a common desire to express spiritual truths through their art. They believed in the promotion of modern art; the connection between visual art and music; the spiritual and symbolic associations of colour; and a spontaneous, intuitive approach to painting. Members were interested in European medieval art and primitivism, as well as the contemporary, non-figurative art scene in France. As a result of their encounters with cubist, fauvist and Rayonist ideas, they moved towards abstraction.
Modern art came to America with the Armory Show of 1913. Which painting in that exhibition was called ‘an explosion in a shingle factory’ by a reviewer? Who painted it?
In 1913 the International Exhibition of Modern Art opened at the Sixty-Ninth Regiment Armory in New York City. Art historian Milton Brown calls it "the most important single exhibition ever held in America." Prior to what became known as the Armory Show, contemporary art and artists had received little attention from the American public, and this exhibition brought curious onlookers in numbers previously unimaginable. Displayed were works by avant-garde European artists such as Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and Marcel Duchamp, all of whose abstract work had been shown in Europe beginning in 1905, with the Fauviste exhibition (where Gertrude Stein and her brother began collecting modern art). A similar exhibition in London in 1910 had prompted Virginia Woolf to tie a fundamental shift in the world to the display of those paintings, claiming that "on or about December 1910 human character changed." Cubism, a style of painting that emphasized the underlying geometric forms of objects, shocked American viewers, many of whom thought that the artists were trying to conceal their own lack of artistic talent or were simply insane. Marcel Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase caused the greatest public furor, standing for all that was wrong in modern art in the eyes of its critics. It became a target of public ridicule, and parodies of the work appeared in newspapers and journals. As Brown puts it, "American critics were as unprepared for the European visitation as they were for an exhibition of art from Mars." An art critic for the New York Times thought the work resembled "an explosion in a shingle factory."
Who was the leader or key figure of Suprematism and what were the goals of this group?
Suprematism is an art movement focused on fundamental geometric forms (squares and circles) which formed in Russia in 1915-1916.
When Kasimir Malevich originated Suprematism in 1915 he was an established painter having exhibited in the Donkey’s Tail and The Blue Rider exhibitions of 1912 with cubo-futurists works. The proliferation of new artistic forms in painting, poetry and theatre as well as a revival of interest in the traditional folk art of Russia were a rich environment in which a Modernists culture was being born.
He created a Suprematist 'grammar' based on fundamental geometric forms; the square and the circle. Malevich exhibited his early experiments in Suprematist painting. The centrepiece of his show was the Black square on white, placed in what is called the red/beautiful corner in Russian Orthodox tradition ; the place of the main icon in a house.
Another important influence on Malevich were the ideas of Russian mystic-mathematician who wrote of
'a fourth dimension beyond the three to which our ordinary senses have access'.
Abstractions of egg-like figures or birds were the subjects of which artist’s sculptures?
Constantin brancusi simplified his works, such as in the Newborn. He reduced his subject to an ovoid suggesting an egg. The form also resembles a head with the concave depression as the mouth releasing its first cry and the narrow triangle as the nose. Yet the whole is so abstract that we are left with a sense of the elemental ower of the marble which seems
late 1800’s
1. In the late 1800’s some artists became dissatisfied with Impressionism so they branched into a new style, Post-impressionism. Name two artists that followed that path and the reasons they left Impressionism. (2 pts.)
Post-Impressionism in Western painting, movement in France that represented both an extension of Impressionism and a rejection of that style's inherent limitations. The term Post-Impressionism was coined by the English art critic Roger Fry for the work of such late 19th-century painters as Paul Cézanne, Georges Seurat, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and others. All of these painters except van Gogh were French, and most of them began as Impressionists; each of them abandoned the style, however, to form his own highly personal art. Impressionism was based, in its strictest sense, on the objective recording of nature in terms of the fugitive effects of colour and light. The Post-Impressionists rejected this limited aim in favour of more ambitious expression, admitting their debt, however, to the pure, brilliant colours of Impressionism, its freedom from traditional subject matter, and its technique of defining form with short brushstrokes of broken colour. The work of these painters formed a basis for several contemporary trends and for early 20th-century modernism.
The Post-Impressionists often exhibited together, but, unlike the Impressionists, who began as a close-knit, convivial group, they painted mainly alone. Cézanne painted in isolation at Aix-en-Provence in southern France; his solitude was matched by that of Paul Gauguin, who in 1891 took up residence in Tahiti, and of van Gogh, who painted in the countryside at Arles. Both Gauguin and van Gogh rejected the indifferent objectivity of Impressionism in favour of a more personal, spiritual expression. After exhibiting with the Impressionists in 1886, Gauguin renounced “the abominable error of naturalism.” With the young painter Émile Bernard, Gauguin sought a simpler truth and purer aesthetic in art; turning away from the sophisticated, urban art world of Paris, he instead looked for inspiration in rural communities with more traditional values.
2. Toulouse-Lautrec found his subject matter in the nightlife of Paris cafes. What 'new' graphic art media did he excel in that advertised the evening establishments? (1 pt.)
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, paradoxically seurat, like the other post-impressionist artists, constituted a new avant garde style that lead him down a path of esoteric, incomprehensible new designs, that captured the urban exuberance towards the close of the nineteenth century. In particular, his pictures of Cirque Fernando, were exhibited at the circus, dance halls, cabarets, and nightclubs. What really caught the attention of audiences was the ‘new’ graphic art media called lithography.
3. What was Gauguin searching for in Tahiti that he could not find in Western society? (1 pt.)
Gauguin was quoted in a letter to Danish painter J.f. Willumsen, telling his friend:
As for me, my mind is made up. I am going to Tahiti, a small island in Oceania, where the material necessities of life can be had without money. I want to forget all the misfortunes of the past, I want to be free to paint without any glory whatsoever in the eyes of the others and I want to die there and to be forgotten there.. A terrible epoch I brewing in Europe for the coming generation: the kingdom of gold. Everything is putrefied, even men, even the arts. There at least, under eternally summer sky, on a marvelously fertile soil, the Tahitian has only to lift his hands to gather his food; and in addition he never works. When in Europe men and women survive only after unceasing labor during which they struggle in convulsions of cold and hunger, a prey to misery, the Tahitians, on the contrary, happy inhabitants of the unknown paradise of the Oceania, know only sweetness of life. To live, for them, is to sing and to love… Once my material life is well organized, I can there devote myself to great works of art, freed from all artistic jealousies and with no need whatsoever of lowly trade.
4. Define Symbolism. Name one artist associated with that movement and the title of one of his works. How is Symbolism different from Post-Impressionism? (3 pts.)
Although Gauguin devised the label Synthetism to describe his art, he was soon heralded as a Symbolist. Symbolism was a literary movement announced in a manifesto issued by poet Jean Moreas. The label was soon extended to art, and Gauguin’s name always topped anyone’s list of important Symbolists. Van Gogh, with his expressionist fantasies was considered a Symbolist as well. In 1891, art critic Georges Albert Aurier defined Symbolism with five adjectives:
“Ideal, symbolist, synthesis, subjective, and decorative.” Gauguin himself felt compelled to use symbolist terminology to describe his painting ‘Where Do We Come From?’
5. Who was the leader of the Vienna Session? Describe this style of painting. (1 pt.)
The Vienna Secession in Austria was part of the highly varied Secessionism movement that is now covered by the general term Art Nouveau. It was formed in 1897 by a group of 19 Vienna artists who had resigned from the Association of Austrian Artists, housed in the Vienna Künstlerhaus. The first president of the Secession was Gustav Klimt.
In 1895, a German entrepreneur, Siegfried Bing, opened a decorative arts shop called La Maison de l’Art Nouveua in Paris. He made a fortune importing Japanese art and furnishings, and now sought to promote the Japanese principle of total design: Every detail of an interior space would be integrated into a single style. Aiming to eliminate any distinction between the fine and decorative arts, he hired famous architects, artists and designers to develop ever detail of entire rooms fo his shop, as well as to design individual products including furniture, vases, tiles , and stained-glass windows. This new style was called Art nouveau, after Bing’s shop. Art Nouveau was considered a response to William Morris’s Arts and Crafts Movement, and certainly the emphasis on handcrafted, finely designed products reflects this. Many Art Nouveau artists embraced mass-production and new, industrial materials. Also, it is important to note that Art Noveau designs, though clearly organic, are often purely abstract rather than based on identifiable botanical specimens, as is the case in Morris’s designs.
6. Where was Rodin’s ‘The Thinker’ supposed to have been placed? Why did it not go there? (1 pt.)
The Thinker is a bronze and marble sculpture by Auguste Rodin, held in the Musée Rodin, in Paris. It depicts a man in sober meditation battling with a powerful internal struggle. It is sometimes used to represent philosophy.
Originally named The Poet, the piece was part of a commission by the Musee de Arts Decoratives, Paris, to create a monumental portal to act as the door of the museum. Rodin based his theme on The Devine Comedy of Dante and entitled the portal The Gates of Hell. Each of the statues in the piece represented one of the main characters in the epic poem. The Thinker was originally meant to depict Dante in front of the Gates of Hell, pondering his great poem. (In the final sculpture, a miniature of the statue sits atop the gates, pondering the hellish fate of those beneath him.)
The Thinker in front of Philosophy at Columbia University
The first large-scale bronze cast was finished in, but was not presented to the public until 1904. It became the property of the city of Paris, thanks to a subscription organized by Rodin admirers, and was put in front of the Pantheon. It was moved to the Hotel Biron, transformed into a Rodin Museum.
More than any other Rodin sculpture, The Thinker moved into the popular imagination, as an immediately recognizable icon of intellectual activity; consequently it has been subject to endless satirical use. This began already in Rodin's lifetime. Armand Hammer records that, on meeting Lenin face to face in 1912, he gave the leader a small sculpture of a chimpanzee in Thinker pose, meditating on a human skull, in recognition of the Darwinist slant of Lenin's thinking.
Until September 2006, the original cast was on display at Sakip Sabancı Museum in Istanbul, Turkey. Prior to that, the original cast was displayed in Hartford, Connecticut, at the Wadsworth, in March and April 2006. Since the beginning of 2007, it is back in Paris.
7. Define Art Nouveau and provide an example of it by naming a building and the artist who constructed it. (1 pt.)
The Vienna Secession in Austria was part of the highly varied Secessionism movement that is now covered by the general term Art Nouveau. It was formed in 1897 by a group of 19 Vienna artists who had resigned from the Association of Austrian Artists, housed in the Vienna Künstlerhaus. The first president of the Secession was Gustav Klimt.
In 1895, a German entrepreneur, Siegfried Bing, opened a decorative arts shop called La Maison de l’Art Nouveua in Paris. He made a fortune importing Japanese art and furnishings, and now sought to promote the Japanese principle of total design: Every detail of an interior space would be integrated into a single style. Aiming to eliminate any distinction between the fine and decorative arts, he hired famous architects, artists and designers to develop ever detail of entire rooms fo his shop, as well as to design individual products including furniture, vases, tiles , and stained-glass windows. This new style was called Art nouveau, after Bing’s shop. Art Nouveau was considered a response to William Morris’s Arts and Crafts Movement, and certainly the emphasis on handcrafted, finely designed products reflects this. Many Art Nouveau artists embraced mass-production and new, industrial materials. Also, it is important to note that Art Noveau designs, though clearly organic, are often purely abstract rather than based on identifiable botanical specimens, as is the case in Morris’s designs.
Compared to the dark ponderous interiors of the Victorian era, the buoyant naturalism of Art Nouvea was a breath of fresh air. Exuding youth, liberation, and modernity. It shared with Symbolism the elemet of fantasy, in this case a biomorphic fantasy, which can especially be seen in architecture. Art Nouveau designers converned themselves equally with exterior finish and interior space.
The style began in Brussels with Belgian architect Victor Horta. Horta studied drawing, textiles, and architecture there at the Academie des beaux-arts, and worked in paris before returning to Belgium to start his own practice. Horta designed the Tassel House in Brussels in 1892. The centerpiece of the Tassel House’s design was in the ironwork of the stairwell. The malleable wroght-iron columns and railings that were easily shaped into vienes that evolve into whiplash tendrils on the walls, ceilings, and mosaic floor.
8. Skyscrapers become the architectural symbol for modern architecture in America in the late 19th century. What new fire tolerant metal was invented to build them? Name a Chicago architect who was a leader in this field who coined the phrase ‘form ever follows function’. (2 pts.)
Louis Sullivan was coined saying, “form ever follows function.” As the early fires of Chicago demonstrated, iron is not fire resistant; instense heat makes it soften, bend, and if hot enough, melt. To avoid towering infernos, it was necessary to fireproof the metal, enveloping iron, and shortly thereafter steel(which was only developed as we know it today in the early twentieth century) with terra-cotta tiles and later in a coating of concrete (modern concrete, called Portland cement, was invented in England in 1825). The insulation also prevented corrosion.
Equally important was the invention of the curtain wall. Unlike a self-supporting wall, the curtain wall hangs from the lip of a horizontal I-beam. Without this innovation the base of the wall for a tall building would have had to be extremely thick in order to support the weight of the wall above. The curtain walls allow for entire walls to be made of glass.
9. Frank Lloyd Wright, one of America’s most famous architects, began designing Prairie Houses [also called Prairie School Houses] during the 1890’s and into the early 20th century. Describe 2 features of these structures and name a building that uses this design. [Instructor’s note: Mason City, IA has 3 of his buildings from this era and I’m helping to restore them. I live in a home of this period design by another Chicagoan, Walter Burley Griffin.] (2 pts.)
Frank Lloyd Wright was one of the world's most prominent and influential architects. He developed a series of highly individual styles over his extraordinarily long architectural career (spanning the years 1887–1959) and he influenced the entire course of architecture and building internationally.
Between 1900 and 1917, his residential designs were “Prairie Houses" (extended low buildings with shallow, sloping roofs, clean sky lines, suppressed chimneys, overhangs and terraces, using unfinished materials), so-called because the design is considered to complement the land around Chicago. These houses are credited with being the first examples of the “open plan."
The Darwin D. Martin House, in Buffalo, NY, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, is a famous prairie style house. Wright came to Buffalo and designed not only the first sketches (completed in 1904, demolished in 1950), but also homes for three of the company's executives:
· George Barton House, Buffalo NY, 1903
· Hillside Home School, 1902, Taliesin, Spring Green, Wisconsin
· Darwin D. Martin House, Buffalo NY, 1904
· William Heath House, Buffalo NY, 1905
o and later, the Graycliff estate, Derby, NY 1926
The Westcott House was built between (1907 and 1908), in Springfield, Ohio. It not only embodies Frank Lloyd Wright’s innovative Prairie Style design but also reflects his passion for Japanese art and culture as the Westcott House displays unique design traits characteristic of traditional Japanese design. The Westcott House is the only Prairie house to be built in Ohio, and it represents an important evolution of Wright’s Prairie concept. The Westcott House includes an extensive ninety-eight foot pergola, capped with an intricate wooden trellis, that connects a detached carriage house and garage to the main house -- features that are included in only a few of Wright’s later Prairie Style houses designs.
It is not known exactly when Wright designed The Westcott House; scholars speculate that it may have been several months prior to more than a year after the architect returned from his first trip to Japan in 1905. Wright created two separate designs for the Westcott House; both are included in Studies and Executed Buildings of Frank Lloyd Wright, published by the distinguished Ernst Wasmuth (Germany, 1910-1911). This two-volume work contains more than one hundred lithographs of Wright’s designs and is commonly known as the Wasmuth Portfolio.
Other Frank Lloyd Wright houses considered to be masterpieces of the late Prairie Period (1907–1909) are the Frederick Robbie House in Chicago and the Avery and Queene Coonley House in Riverside. The Robie House, with its soaring, cantilevered roof lines, supported by a 110 foot (34 m)-long channel of steel, is the most dramatic.
10. Once photography was invented it progressed quickly into other creative applications. What did Muybridge contribute to the field? Why were his photographs so important? (1 pt.)
Eadweard Muybridge was an English-born photographer, known primarily for his early use of multiple cameras to capture motion, and his zoopraxiscope, a device for projecting motion pictures that pre-dated the celluloid film strip that is still used today.
Muybridge began to build his reputation in 1867 with photos of Yosemite and San Fransico. Muybridge quickly became famous for his landscape photographs, which showed the grandeur and expansiveness of the West. The images were published under the pseudonym “Helios.” Muybridge was commissioned to photograph one of the U.S. Army's expeditions into the recently territorialized Alaska purchase.
In 1871 the California Geographical Survey invited Muybridge to photograph for the High Sierra survey. That same year he married Flora Stone. He then spent several years traveling as a successful photographer. By 1873 the Central Pacific Railroad had advanced into Indian Territory and the United States Army hired Muybridge to photograph the ensuin and the Modaic Wars.
Soon-to-be Govenor of California, Leland Stanford, a businessman and race horse owner, had taken a position on a popularly-debated question of the day: whether during a horse's trot, all four hooves were ever off the ground at the same time. Stanford sided with this assertion, called "unsupported transit", and took it upon himself to prove it scientifically. (Though legend also includes a wager of up to $25,000, there is no evidence of this.) Stanford sought out Muybridge and hired him to settle the question. Muybridge's relationship with Stanford was long and torrid, and it would ultimately prove to be his entrance and exit from the history books.
To prove Stanford's claim, Muybridge developed a scheme for instantaneous motion picture capture. Muybridge's technology involved chemical formulas for photographic processing and an electrical trigger created by Stanford's electircal engineer, John D. Isaacs.
In 1877, Muybridge settled Stanford's question with a single photographic negative showing Stanford's racehorse Occident airborne during trot. This negative has not survived, although woodcuts made of it did.
By 1878, spurred on by Stanford to expand the experiment, Muybridge had successfully photographed a horse in fast motion using a series of twenty-four cameras. The cameras were arranged along a track parallel to the horse's, and each of the camera shutters was controlled by a trip wire which was triggered by the horse's hooves.
Post-Impressionism in Western painting, movement in France that represented both an extension of Impressionism and a rejection of that style's inherent limitations. The term Post-Impressionism was coined by the English art critic Roger Fry for the work of such late 19th-century painters as Paul Cézanne, Georges Seurat, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and others. All of these painters except van Gogh were French, and most of them began as Impressionists; each of them abandoned the style, however, to form his own highly personal art. Impressionism was based, in its strictest sense, on the objective recording of nature in terms of the fugitive effects of colour and light. The Post-Impressionists rejected this limited aim in favour of more ambitious expression, admitting their debt, however, to the pure, brilliant colours of Impressionism, its freedom from traditional subject matter, and its technique of defining form with short brushstrokes of broken colour. The work of these painters formed a basis for several contemporary trends and for early 20th-century modernism.
The Post-Impressionists often exhibited together, but, unlike the Impressionists, who began as a close-knit, convivial group, they painted mainly alone. Cézanne painted in isolation at Aix-en-Provence in southern France; his solitude was matched by that of Paul Gauguin, who in 1891 took up residence in Tahiti, and of van Gogh, who painted in the countryside at Arles. Both Gauguin and van Gogh rejected the indifferent objectivity of Impressionism in favour of a more personal, spiritual expression. After exhibiting with the Impressionists in 1886, Gauguin renounced “the abominable error of naturalism.” With the young painter Émile Bernard, Gauguin sought a simpler truth and purer aesthetic in art; turning away from the sophisticated, urban art world of Paris, he instead looked for inspiration in rural communities with more traditional values.
2. Toulouse-Lautrec found his subject matter in the nightlife of Paris cafes. What 'new' graphic art media did he excel in that advertised the evening establishments? (1 pt.)
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, paradoxically seurat, like the other post-impressionist artists, constituted a new avant garde style that lead him down a path of esoteric, incomprehensible new designs, that captured the urban exuberance towards the close of the nineteenth century. In particular, his pictures of Cirque Fernando, were exhibited at the circus, dance halls, cabarets, and nightclubs. What really caught the attention of audiences was the ‘new’ graphic art media called lithography.
3. What was Gauguin searching for in Tahiti that he could not find in Western society? (1 pt.)
Gauguin was quoted in a letter to Danish painter J.f. Willumsen, telling his friend:
As for me, my mind is made up. I am going to Tahiti, a small island in Oceania, where the material necessities of life can be had without money. I want to forget all the misfortunes of the past, I want to be free to paint without any glory whatsoever in the eyes of the others and I want to die there and to be forgotten there.. A terrible epoch I brewing in Europe for the coming generation: the kingdom of gold. Everything is putrefied, even men, even the arts. There at least, under eternally summer sky, on a marvelously fertile soil, the Tahitian has only to lift his hands to gather his food; and in addition he never works. When in Europe men and women survive only after unceasing labor during which they struggle in convulsions of cold and hunger, a prey to misery, the Tahitians, on the contrary, happy inhabitants of the unknown paradise of the Oceania, know only sweetness of life. To live, for them, is to sing and to love… Once my material life is well organized, I can there devote myself to great works of art, freed from all artistic jealousies and with no need whatsoever of lowly trade.
4. Define Symbolism. Name one artist associated with that movement and the title of one of his works. How is Symbolism different from Post-Impressionism? (3 pts.)
Although Gauguin devised the label Synthetism to describe his art, he was soon heralded as a Symbolist. Symbolism was a literary movement announced in a manifesto issued by poet Jean Moreas. The label was soon extended to art, and Gauguin’s name always topped anyone’s list of important Symbolists. Van Gogh, with his expressionist fantasies was considered a Symbolist as well. In 1891, art critic Georges Albert Aurier defined Symbolism with five adjectives:
“Ideal, symbolist, synthesis, subjective, and decorative.” Gauguin himself felt compelled to use symbolist terminology to describe his painting ‘Where Do We Come From?’
5. Who was the leader of the Vienna Session? Describe this style of painting. (1 pt.)
The Vienna Secession in Austria was part of the highly varied Secessionism movement that is now covered by the general term Art Nouveau. It was formed in 1897 by a group of 19 Vienna artists who had resigned from the Association of Austrian Artists, housed in the Vienna Künstlerhaus. The first president of the Secession was Gustav Klimt.
In 1895, a German entrepreneur, Siegfried Bing, opened a decorative arts shop called La Maison de l’Art Nouveua in Paris. He made a fortune importing Japanese art and furnishings, and now sought to promote the Japanese principle of total design: Every detail of an interior space would be integrated into a single style. Aiming to eliminate any distinction between the fine and decorative arts, he hired famous architects, artists and designers to develop ever detail of entire rooms fo his shop, as well as to design individual products including furniture, vases, tiles , and stained-glass windows. This new style was called Art nouveau, after Bing’s shop. Art Nouveau was considered a response to William Morris’s Arts and Crafts Movement, and certainly the emphasis on handcrafted, finely designed products reflects this. Many Art Nouveau artists embraced mass-production and new, industrial materials. Also, it is important to note that Art Noveau designs, though clearly organic, are often purely abstract rather than based on identifiable botanical specimens, as is the case in Morris’s designs.
6. Where was Rodin’s ‘The Thinker’ supposed to have been placed? Why did it not go there? (1 pt.)
The Thinker is a bronze and marble sculpture by Auguste Rodin, held in the Musée Rodin, in Paris. It depicts a man in sober meditation battling with a powerful internal struggle. It is sometimes used to represent philosophy.
Originally named The Poet, the piece was part of a commission by the Musee de Arts Decoratives, Paris, to create a monumental portal to act as the door of the museum. Rodin based his theme on The Devine Comedy of Dante and entitled the portal The Gates of Hell. Each of the statues in the piece represented one of the main characters in the epic poem. The Thinker was originally meant to depict Dante in front of the Gates of Hell, pondering his great poem. (In the final sculpture, a miniature of the statue sits atop the gates, pondering the hellish fate of those beneath him.)
The Thinker in front of Philosophy at Columbia University
The first large-scale bronze cast was finished in, but was not presented to the public until 1904. It became the property of the city of Paris, thanks to a subscription organized by Rodin admirers, and was put in front of the Pantheon. It was moved to the Hotel Biron, transformed into a Rodin Museum.
More than any other Rodin sculpture, The Thinker moved into the popular imagination, as an immediately recognizable icon of intellectual activity; consequently it has been subject to endless satirical use. This began already in Rodin's lifetime. Armand Hammer records that, on meeting Lenin face to face in 1912, he gave the leader a small sculpture of a chimpanzee in Thinker pose, meditating on a human skull, in recognition of the Darwinist slant of Lenin's thinking.
Until September 2006, the original cast was on display at Sakip Sabancı Museum in Istanbul, Turkey. Prior to that, the original cast was displayed in Hartford, Connecticut, at the Wadsworth, in March and April 2006. Since the beginning of 2007, it is back in Paris.
7. Define Art Nouveau and provide an example of it by naming a building and the artist who constructed it. (1 pt.)
The Vienna Secession in Austria was part of the highly varied Secessionism movement that is now covered by the general term Art Nouveau. It was formed in 1897 by a group of 19 Vienna artists who had resigned from the Association of Austrian Artists, housed in the Vienna Künstlerhaus. The first president of the Secession was Gustav Klimt.
In 1895, a German entrepreneur, Siegfried Bing, opened a decorative arts shop called La Maison de l’Art Nouveua in Paris. He made a fortune importing Japanese art and furnishings, and now sought to promote the Japanese principle of total design: Every detail of an interior space would be integrated into a single style. Aiming to eliminate any distinction between the fine and decorative arts, he hired famous architects, artists and designers to develop ever detail of entire rooms fo his shop, as well as to design individual products including furniture, vases, tiles , and stained-glass windows. This new style was called Art nouveau, after Bing’s shop. Art Nouveau was considered a response to William Morris’s Arts and Crafts Movement, and certainly the emphasis on handcrafted, finely designed products reflects this. Many Art Nouveau artists embraced mass-production and new, industrial materials. Also, it is important to note that Art Noveau designs, though clearly organic, are often purely abstract rather than based on identifiable botanical specimens, as is the case in Morris’s designs.
Compared to the dark ponderous interiors of the Victorian era, the buoyant naturalism of Art Nouvea was a breath of fresh air. Exuding youth, liberation, and modernity. It shared with Symbolism the elemet of fantasy, in this case a biomorphic fantasy, which can especially be seen in architecture. Art Nouveau designers converned themselves equally with exterior finish and interior space.
The style began in Brussels with Belgian architect Victor Horta. Horta studied drawing, textiles, and architecture there at the Academie des beaux-arts, and worked in paris before returning to Belgium to start his own practice. Horta designed the Tassel House in Brussels in 1892. The centerpiece of the Tassel House’s design was in the ironwork of the stairwell. The malleable wroght-iron columns and railings that were easily shaped into vienes that evolve into whiplash tendrils on the walls, ceilings, and mosaic floor.
8. Skyscrapers become the architectural symbol for modern architecture in America in the late 19th century. What new fire tolerant metal was invented to build them? Name a Chicago architect who was a leader in this field who coined the phrase ‘form ever follows function’. (2 pts.)
Louis Sullivan was coined saying, “form ever follows function.” As the early fires of Chicago demonstrated, iron is not fire resistant; instense heat makes it soften, bend, and if hot enough, melt. To avoid towering infernos, it was necessary to fireproof the metal, enveloping iron, and shortly thereafter steel(which was only developed as we know it today in the early twentieth century) with terra-cotta tiles and later in a coating of concrete (modern concrete, called Portland cement, was invented in England in 1825). The insulation also prevented corrosion.
Equally important was the invention of the curtain wall. Unlike a self-supporting wall, the curtain wall hangs from the lip of a horizontal I-beam. Without this innovation the base of the wall for a tall building would have had to be extremely thick in order to support the weight of the wall above. The curtain walls allow for entire walls to be made of glass.
9. Frank Lloyd Wright, one of America’s most famous architects, began designing Prairie Houses [also called Prairie School Houses] during the 1890’s and into the early 20th century. Describe 2 features of these structures and name a building that uses this design. [Instructor’s note: Mason City, IA has 3 of his buildings from this era and I’m helping to restore them. I live in a home of this period design by another Chicagoan, Walter Burley Griffin.] (2 pts.)
Frank Lloyd Wright was one of the world's most prominent and influential architects. He developed a series of highly individual styles over his extraordinarily long architectural career (spanning the years 1887–1959) and he influenced the entire course of architecture and building internationally.
Between 1900 and 1917, his residential designs were “Prairie Houses" (extended low buildings with shallow, sloping roofs, clean sky lines, suppressed chimneys, overhangs and terraces, using unfinished materials), so-called because the design is considered to complement the land around Chicago. These houses are credited with being the first examples of the “open plan."
The Darwin D. Martin House, in Buffalo, NY, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, is a famous prairie style house. Wright came to Buffalo and designed not only the first sketches (completed in 1904, demolished in 1950), but also homes for three of the company's executives:
· George Barton House, Buffalo NY, 1903
· Hillside Home School, 1902, Taliesin, Spring Green, Wisconsin
· Darwin D. Martin House, Buffalo NY, 1904
· William Heath House, Buffalo NY, 1905
o and later, the Graycliff estate, Derby, NY 1926
The Westcott House was built between (1907 and 1908), in Springfield, Ohio. It not only embodies Frank Lloyd Wright’s innovative Prairie Style design but also reflects his passion for Japanese art and culture as the Westcott House displays unique design traits characteristic of traditional Japanese design. The Westcott House is the only Prairie house to be built in Ohio, and it represents an important evolution of Wright’s Prairie concept. The Westcott House includes an extensive ninety-eight foot pergola, capped with an intricate wooden trellis, that connects a detached carriage house and garage to the main house -- features that are included in only a few of Wright’s later Prairie Style houses designs.
It is not known exactly when Wright designed The Westcott House; scholars speculate that it may have been several months prior to more than a year after the architect returned from his first trip to Japan in 1905. Wright created two separate designs for the Westcott House; both are included in Studies and Executed Buildings of Frank Lloyd Wright, published by the distinguished Ernst Wasmuth (Germany, 1910-1911). This two-volume work contains more than one hundred lithographs of Wright’s designs and is commonly known as the Wasmuth Portfolio.
Other Frank Lloyd Wright houses considered to be masterpieces of the late Prairie Period (1907–1909) are the Frederick Robbie House in Chicago and the Avery and Queene Coonley House in Riverside. The Robie House, with its soaring, cantilevered roof lines, supported by a 110 foot (34 m)-long channel of steel, is the most dramatic.
10. Once photography was invented it progressed quickly into other creative applications. What did Muybridge contribute to the field? Why were his photographs so important? (1 pt.)
Eadweard Muybridge was an English-born photographer, known primarily for his early use of multiple cameras to capture motion, and his zoopraxiscope, a device for projecting motion pictures that pre-dated the celluloid film strip that is still used today.
Muybridge began to build his reputation in 1867 with photos of Yosemite and San Fransico. Muybridge quickly became famous for his landscape photographs, which showed the grandeur and expansiveness of the West. The images were published under the pseudonym “Helios.” Muybridge was commissioned to photograph one of the U.S. Army's expeditions into the recently territorialized Alaska purchase.
In 1871 the California Geographical Survey invited Muybridge to photograph for the High Sierra survey. That same year he married Flora Stone. He then spent several years traveling as a successful photographer. By 1873 the Central Pacific Railroad had advanced into Indian Territory and the United States Army hired Muybridge to photograph the ensuin and the Modaic Wars.
Soon-to-be Govenor of California, Leland Stanford, a businessman and race horse owner, had taken a position on a popularly-debated question of the day: whether during a horse's trot, all four hooves were ever off the ground at the same time. Stanford sided with this assertion, called "unsupported transit", and took it upon himself to prove it scientifically. (Though legend also includes a wager of up to $25,000, there is no evidence of this.) Stanford sought out Muybridge and hired him to settle the question. Muybridge's relationship with Stanford was long and torrid, and it would ultimately prove to be his entrance and exit from the history books.
To prove Stanford's claim, Muybridge developed a scheme for instantaneous motion picture capture. Muybridge's technology involved chemical formulas for photographic processing and an electrical trigger created by Stanford's electircal engineer, John D. Isaacs.
In 1877, Muybridge settled Stanford's question with a single photographic negative showing Stanford's racehorse Occident airborne during trot. This negative has not survived, although woodcuts made of it did.
By 1878, spurred on by Stanford to expand the experiment, Muybridge had successfully photographed a horse in fast motion using a series of twenty-four cameras. The cameras were arranged along a track parallel to the horse's, and each of the camera shutters was controlled by a trip wire which was triggered by the horse's hooves.
Academic art -- Académie des beaux-arts
1. During the second half of the 18th century the Western culture entered the ‘modern’ era. Change happened quickly in technological advances as well as with governments being challenged to become democracies. Give the years of the revolutions and the names of the two countries that became democracies during this century.
1774-1783: the American Revolution establishes independence of the thirteen North American colonies from Great Britain, creating the republic of the United States of America.
The French Revolution 1789–1799 was a period of political and social upheaval in the political history of France and Europe as a whole, during which the French governmental structure, previously an absolute monarchy with feudal privileges for the aristocracy and Catholic clergy, underwent radical change to forms based on Enlightenment principles of republic, citizenship, and inalienable rights.
2. What is so shocking about West’s painting The Death of General Wolfe #23.7?
The inclusion of Simon Fraser, Lieutennant Colonel of the 78th Fraser Highlanders (the man in the green) is interesting, because General Wolfe had always spoken highly of Fraser's regiment, but Fraser was not at the battle, he was recovering from wounds received earlier. In the painting, Fraser wears the Fraser tartan, which was probably worn by officers in that regiment.
There are many themes in this painting, including a biblical layout resembling La Pietra and the Indian warrior knelt with his chin on his fist, looking at General Wolfe. In art, the touching of one's face with one's hand is a sign of deep thought and intelligence. The depiction of the Native American in the painting has been analyzed in various ways. Some consider it an idealization inspired by the noble savage concept.
On the ground in front of Wolfe is his musket, a cartridge box, and bayonet. Wolfe went into battle armed as his men were, although his musket was of higher quality. He is also wearing a fairly simple red coat, a red waistcoat, red breeches, and a white shirt. Such dress was rather simple, especially for a commanding officer.
The clothing West depicted in this scene was highly controversial at the time. Although the event was relatively recent -- only eleven years prior -- its subject matter made it a fitting example of the genre of history painting, for which contemporary dress was unsuitable. During the painting, several influential people, including Sir Joshua Reynolds, instructed him to dress the figures in classical attire, and after its completion, George III refused to purchase it because the clothing compromised the dignity of the event.
3. American architect, Thomas Jefferson [the 3rd US President] created a beautiful home in Virginia in the neoclassical style. [Some refer to it as Georgian style.] Describe the features that make it Neoclassical.
Neoclassical architecture was an architectural style produced by the neoclassical movement that began in the mid-18th century, an anti-tectonic naturalistic ornament, and an outgrowth of some classicizing features of Late Baroque. In its purest form it is a style principally derived from the architecture of Classical Greece.
The house is of Jefferson's own design and is situated on the summit of an 850-foot-high peak in the Southwest Mountains. The he named the house Monticello, in Italian, means "little mountain."
The original design was based on the classical style of Palladian architecture. When Jefferson left Monticello in 1784 for extended travels in Europe, the original design of the house was largely completed except for porticos and decorative interior woodwork. Upon his return, Jefferson expanded his vision for Monticello to incorporate features of Palladian buildings and ruins he admired overseas.
The original main entrance is through the portico on the east front. The ceiling of this portico incorporates a wind plate connected to a weather vane, showing the direction of the wind. A large clock face on the external east-facing wall has only an hour hand since Jefferson thought this was accurate enough for outdoor laborers. The clock reflects the time shown on the "Great Clock" (designed by Jefferson) in the entrance hall. The entrance hall contains recreations of items collected by on their famous expedition. The floor cloth here is painted a, "true grass green" upon the recommendation of artist Gilbert Stuart in order for Jefferson’s ‘essay in architecture’ to invite the spirit of the outdoors into the house.
The south wing includes Jefferson's private suite of rooms. The library holds many books in Jefferson's third library collection. His first library was burned in a plantation fire, and his second library to the US Congress to replace the books burned by the British. Jefferson considered much furniture to be a waste of space, so the dining room table was erected only at mealtimes, and beds were built into alcoves cut into thick walls that contain storage space. Jefferson's bed opens to two sides: to his cabinet (study) and to his bedroom (dressing room).
What relates the Monticello to neoclassical design?
A portico is a porch leading to the entrance of a building, or extended as a colonnade, with a roof structure over a walkway, supported by columns or enclosed by walls. This idea first appeared in ancient Greece and has influenced many cultures, including most Western cultures.
Some famous examples of porticos are the East Portico of the United States Capitol, Bologna, Italy’s Sanctuary of the Madonna di San Luca, and the portico adorning the Pantheon in Rome.
Villas with reference to their setting, and if on a hill, such as Villa Capra, had facades that were frequently designed to be of equal value so that occupants could have fine views in all directions.
4. English Gardens are a perfect compliment to Neoclassical structures. Describe several features that can be found in an English Garden.
The term English garden or English park (French: Jardin anglais, Italian: Giardino all'inglese, German: Englischer Landschaftspark) is used in Continental Europe to refer to a type of garden with its origins on the English landscape gardens of the 18th century. The main ingredients of every garden are statues, water, and the surrounding land. The name differentiates it from the formal baroque design of the French formal garden.
The canonical European English park contains a number of Romantic elements. Always present is a pond or small lake with a pier or bridge. Overlooking the pond is a round or hexagonal pavilion, often in the shape of a monopteros, a Roman temple. Sometimes the park also has a "Chinese" pavilion. Other elements include a grotto and imitation ruins.
Notable designers of English gardens include Stephen Switzer (1682-1745), William Kent (1685-1748), Charles Bridgeman, Capability Brown (1716-1783), John Vanbrugh (1664-1726), and Lucas Pieters Roodbaard.
THERE IS NO QUESTION FIVE
6. State the difference between ‘picturesque’ and ‘sublime’.
Picturesque is an aesthetic ideal first introduced into English cultural debate in 1782 by William Gilpin in the year 1770, Picturesque, along with the aesthetic and cultural strands of Gothic and Celticism, was a part of the emerging Romantic sensibility of the 18th century.
In aesthetics, the sublime is the quality of greatness or vast magnitude, whether physical, moral, intellectual, metaphysical or artistic. The term especially refers to a greatness with which nothing else can be compared.
7. President George Washington was sculpted by Houdon, a Frenchman. Describe its style and symbolism.
Houdon's portrait sculpture of Washington was the result of a specific invitation by Benjamin Franklin to cross the Atlantic specifically to visit Mount Vernon, so that Washington could model for him. Washington sat for wet clay life models and a plaster life mask in 1785. These models served for many commissions of Washington, including the standing figure commissioned by the Legislature of Virginia, and located in the Virginia State Capitol in Richmond. Numerous variations of the Washington bust were produced, portraying him variously as a general in uniform, in the classical manner showing chest musculature, and as Roman Consul Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus clad in a toga. A version of the latter is located in the Vermont State House.
8. What is the meaning of David’s painting ‘The Death of Marat’ #23.30?
The painting represents the 1793 fate of Jean-Paul Marat, the writer of the radical newspaper L'Ami du peuple (The Friend of the People). The paper was prominently associated with the Jacobin faction during the Reign of Terror, although he was never an outright member. Marat often took cold baths to ease violent itching caused by a skin disease called coeliac that he contracted in his earlier years from hiding from his enemies in sewers. Marat was stabbed on July 13 by Charlotte Corday while writing in his bathtub. Corday was a supporter of the more moderate Girondist faction.
David was a close friend of Marat, as well as a strong supporter of Robespierre and the Jacobins. He was overwhelmed by their natural capacity for convincing crowds with their speeches, something he hadn't yet easily achieved through painting (not to mention his difficulty to speak, due to a facial deformation caused by an injury during a duel). Determined to memorialize his friend, David not only organized for him a lavish funeral, but painted his portrait soon afterwards.
9. Define Romantism as a style. Identify one painting by title and artist that fits your deinition. [2 pts.]
Romanticism is an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated around the middle of the 18th Century in Western Europe, during the industrial revolution. It was partly a revolt against aristocratic, social, and political norms of the enlightenment period and a reaction against the scientific rationalization of nature in art and literature.
The name "romantic" itself comes from the term “romance" which is a prose or poetic heroic narrative originating in medieval literature and romantic literature. The ideologies and events of the French Revolution are thought to have influenced the movement. Romanticism elevated the achievements of what it perceived as misunderstood heroic individuals and artists that altered society. It stressed strong emotion as a source of aesthetic experience, placing new emphasis on such emotions as trepidation, horror, and the awe experienced in confronting the sublime aesthetics of untamed nature. These sublime emotions are aesthetically drawn out in the romantic heroine, drawn by John William Waterhouse, called The lady Shalott (1888). This exotic scene relates to a neo-medieval techniques and the figures closely relate to the Arthurian Romance.
10. Compare a landscape painting by Joseph Mallard William Turner with another landscape painting found in Chapter #24. State the name of the artist and the title of each painting. Describe the differences in the painters’ techniques. [2 pts.]
Thomas Cole. The Oxbow (1908).
Thomas Cole gave himself a goal to develop The Course of Empire to comprise no less than five paintings of a historic composition. His friend, Reed, had begun to notice Cole was becoming lonely and depressed, and suggested that he suspend work on The Course of Empire and paint something that was more in his element for the April 1836 opening of the National Academy of Design's annual exhibition.
The Oxbow was the substitute, the painting moves from a dark wilderness with shattered tree trunks on rugged cliffs in the foreground covered with violent rain clouds on the left to a light-filled and peaceful, cultivated landscape on the right, which borders the tranquility of the bending river. This painting is designed with a technique commonly used by realists for precession in large scale design.
Joseph Mallard William Turner used basic operating premises similar to Constable. Constable, like Thomas Cole, painted with scientific accuracy in the land. Turner was aspired to rival great history history painting and consequently invested his views with a rich overlay of historical motifs, references to Old Masters, and metaphorical themes. Constable’s paitings became more like Turner’s paintings in the later years with cataclysmic, symbolic, and metaphorical complexity associated to historical paintings.
11. What makes Francis Rude’s sculpture ‘The Departure of the Volunteers of 1792’ Romanticism?
Romanticism elevated the achievements of what it perceived as misunderstood heroic individuals and artists that altered society. It stressed strong emotion as a source of aesthetic experience, placing new emphasis on such emotions as trepidation, horror, and the awe experienced in confronting the sublime aesthetics of untamed nature.
In the case of the Arc de Triomphe, in Paris, the Départ des volontaires de 1792 (Departure of the Volunteers of 1792), also known as La Marseillaile is a work full of energy and fire, immortalizes the name of Rude.
12. Romanticism in architecture involved revivals of various historical styles. Name two of these architectural revival structures by title and artist’s name. [2pts.][2pts.]
· Expressionism
· Gothicism
· Nationalism
· Symbolism
· Surrealism
Romanticism typified by the artwork of Eugène Delacroix. Debates also occurred over whether it was better to learn art by looking at nature, or to learn by looking at the artistic masters of the past.
Academic art is a style of painting and sculpture produced under the influence of European academies or universities.
Specifically, academic art is the art and artists influenced by the standards of the French Académie des beaux-arts, which practiced under the movements of Neoclassicism and Romanticism, and the art that followed these two movements in the attempt to synthesize both of their styles, and which is best reflected by the paintings of William-Adolph Bouguereau, Suzor-Coté, Thomas Couture, and Hans Makart. In this context it is often called "academism", "academicism", "L'art pompier", and "eclecticism", and sometimes linked with "historicism" and "syncretism".
1774-1783: the American Revolution establishes independence of the thirteen North American colonies from Great Britain, creating the republic of the United States of America.
The French Revolution 1789–1799 was a period of political and social upheaval in the political history of France and Europe as a whole, during which the French governmental structure, previously an absolute monarchy with feudal privileges for the aristocracy and Catholic clergy, underwent radical change to forms based on Enlightenment principles of republic, citizenship, and inalienable rights.
2. What is so shocking about West’s painting The Death of General Wolfe #23.7?
The inclusion of Simon Fraser, Lieutennant Colonel of the 78th Fraser Highlanders (the man in the green) is interesting, because General Wolfe had always spoken highly of Fraser's regiment, but Fraser was not at the battle, he was recovering from wounds received earlier. In the painting, Fraser wears the Fraser tartan, which was probably worn by officers in that regiment.
There are many themes in this painting, including a biblical layout resembling La Pietra and the Indian warrior knelt with his chin on his fist, looking at General Wolfe. In art, the touching of one's face with one's hand is a sign of deep thought and intelligence. The depiction of the Native American in the painting has been analyzed in various ways. Some consider it an idealization inspired by the noble savage concept.
On the ground in front of Wolfe is his musket, a cartridge box, and bayonet. Wolfe went into battle armed as his men were, although his musket was of higher quality. He is also wearing a fairly simple red coat, a red waistcoat, red breeches, and a white shirt. Such dress was rather simple, especially for a commanding officer.
The clothing West depicted in this scene was highly controversial at the time. Although the event was relatively recent -- only eleven years prior -- its subject matter made it a fitting example of the genre of history painting, for which contemporary dress was unsuitable. During the painting, several influential people, including Sir Joshua Reynolds, instructed him to dress the figures in classical attire, and after its completion, George III refused to purchase it because the clothing compromised the dignity of the event.
3. American architect, Thomas Jefferson [the 3rd US President] created a beautiful home in Virginia in the neoclassical style. [Some refer to it as Georgian style.] Describe the features that make it Neoclassical.
Neoclassical architecture was an architectural style produced by the neoclassical movement that began in the mid-18th century, an anti-tectonic naturalistic ornament, and an outgrowth of some classicizing features of Late Baroque. In its purest form it is a style principally derived from the architecture of Classical Greece.
The house is of Jefferson's own design and is situated on the summit of an 850-foot-high peak in the Southwest Mountains. The he named the house Monticello, in Italian, means "little mountain."
The original design was based on the classical style of Palladian architecture. When Jefferson left Monticello in 1784 for extended travels in Europe, the original design of the house was largely completed except for porticos and decorative interior woodwork. Upon his return, Jefferson expanded his vision for Monticello to incorporate features of Palladian buildings and ruins he admired overseas.
The original main entrance is through the portico on the east front. The ceiling of this portico incorporates a wind plate connected to a weather vane, showing the direction of the wind. A large clock face on the external east-facing wall has only an hour hand since Jefferson thought this was accurate enough for outdoor laborers. The clock reflects the time shown on the "Great Clock" (designed by Jefferson) in the entrance hall. The entrance hall contains recreations of items collected by on their famous expedition. The floor cloth here is painted a, "true grass green" upon the recommendation of artist Gilbert Stuart in order for Jefferson’s ‘essay in architecture’ to invite the spirit of the outdoors into the house.
The south wing includes Jefferson's private suite of rooms. The library holds many books in Jefferson's third library collection. His first library was burned in a plantation fire, and his second library to the US Congress to replace the books burned by the British. Jefferson considered much furniture to be a waste of space, so the dining room table was erected only at mealtimes, and beds were built into alcoves cut into thick walls that contain storage space. Jefferson's bed opens to two sides: to his cabinet (study) and to his bedroom (dressing room).
What relates the Monticello to neoclassical design?
A portico is a porch leading to the entrance of a building, or extended as a colonnade, with a roof structure over a walkway, supported by columns or enclosed by walls. This idea first appeared in ancient Greece and has influenced many cultures, including most Western cultures.
Some famous examples of porticos are the East Portico of the United States Capitol, Bologna, Italy’s Sanctuary of the Madonna di San Luca, and the portico adorning the Pantheon in Rome.
Villas with reference to their setting, and if on a hill, such as Villa Capra, had facades that were frequently designed to be of equal value so that occupants could have fine views in all directions.
4. English Gardens are a perfect compliment to Neoclassical structures. Describe several features that can be found in an English Garden.
The term English garden or English park (French: Jardin anglais, Italian: Giardino all'inglese, German: Englischer Landschaftspark) is used in Continental Europe to refer to a type of garden with its origins on the English landscape gardens of the 18th century. The main ingredients of every garden are statues, water, and the surrounding land. The name differentiates it from the formal baroque design of the French formal garden.
The canonical European English park contains a number of Romantic elements. Always present is a pond or small lake with a pier or bridge. Overlooking the pond is a round or hexagonal pavilion, often in the shape of a monopteros, a Roman temple. Sometimes the park also has a "Chinese" pavilion. Other elements include a grotto and imitation ruins.
Notable designers of English gardens include Stephen Switzer (1682-1745), William Kent (1685-1748), Charles Bridgeman, Capability Brown (1716-1783), John Vanbrugh (1664-1726), and Lucas Pieters Roodbaard.
THERE IS NO QUESTION FIVE
6. State the difference between ‘picturesque’ and ‘sublime’.
Picturesque is an aesthetic ideal first introduced into English cultural debate in 1782 by William Gilpin in the year 1770, Picturesque, along with the aesthetic and cultural strands of Gothic and Celticism, was a part of the emerging Romantic sensibility of the 18th century.
In aesthetics, the sublime is the quality of greatness or vast magnitude, whether physical, moral, intellectual, metaphysical or artistic. The term especially refers to a greatness with which nothing else can be compared.
7. President George Washington was sculpted by Houdon, a Frenchman. Describe its style and symbolism.
Houdon's portrait sculpture of Washington was the result of a specific invitation by Benjamin Franklin to cross the Atlantic specifically to visit Mount Vernon, so that Washington could model for him. Washington sat for wet clay life models and a plaster life mask in 1785. These models served for many commissions of Washington, including the standing figure commissioned by the Legislature of Virginia, and located in the Virginia State Capitol in Richmond. Numerous variations of the Washington bust were produced, portraying him variously as a general in uniform, in the classical manner showing chest musculature, and as Roman Consul Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus clad in a toga. A version of the latter is located in the Vermont State House.
8. What is the meaning of David’s painting ‘The Death of Marat’ #23.30?
The painting represents the 1793 fate of Jean-Paul Marat, the writer of the radical newspaper L'Ami du peuple (The Friend of the People). The paper was prominently associated with the Jacobin faction during the Reign of Terror, although he was never an outright member. Marat often took cold baths to ease violent itching caused by a skin disease called coeliac that he contracted in his earlier years from hiding from his enemies in sewers. Marat was stabbed on July 13 by Charlotte Corday while writing in his bathtub. Corday was a supporter of the more moderate Girondist faction.
David was a close friend of Marat, as well as a strong supporter of Robespierre and the Jacobins. He was overwhelmed by their natural capacity for convincing crowds with their speeches, something he hadn't yet easily achieved through painting (not to mention his difficulty to speak, due to a facial deformation caused by an injury during a duel). Determined to memorialize his friend, David not only organized for him a lavish funeral, but painted his portrait soon afterwards.
9. Define Romantism as a style. Identify one painting by title and artist that fits your deinition. [2 pts.]
Romanticism is an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated around the middle of the 18th Century in Western Europe, during the industrial revolution. It was partly a revolt against aristocratic, social, and political norms of the enlightenment period and a reaction against the scientific rationalization of nature in art and literature.
The name "romantic" itself comes from the term “romance" which is a prose or poetic heroic narrative originating in medieval literature and romantic literature. The ideologies and events of the French Revolution are thought to have influenced the movement. Romanticism elevated the achievements of what it perceived as misunderstood heroic individuals and artists that altered society. It stressed strong emotion as a source of aesthetic experience, placing new emphasis on such emotions as trepidation, horror, and the awe experienced in confronting the sublime aesthetics of untamed nature. These sublime emotions are aesthetically drawn out in the romantic heroine, drawn by John William Waterhouse, called The lady Shalott (1888). This exotic scene relates to a neo-medieval techniques and the figures closely relate to the Arthurian Romance.
10. Compare a landscape painting by Joseph Mallard William Turner with another landscape painting found in Chapter #24. State the name of the artist and the title of each painting. Describe the differences in the painters’ techniques. [2 pts.]
Thomas Cole. The Oxbow (1908).
Thomas Cole gave himself a goal to develop The Course of Empire to comprise no less than five paintings of a historic composition. His friend, Reed, had begun to notice Cole was becoming lonely and depressed, and suggested that he suspend work on The Course of Empire and paint something that was more in his element for the April 1836 opening of the National Academy of Design's annual exhibition.
The Oxbow was the substitute, the painting moves from a dark wilderness with shattered tree trunks on rugged cliffs in the foreground covered with violent rain clouds on the left to a light-filled and peaceful, cultivated landscape on the right, which borders the tranquility of the bending river. This painting is designed with a technique commonly used by realists for precession in large scale design.
Joseph Mallard William Turner used basic operating premises similar to Constable. Constable, like Thomas Cole, painted with scientific accuracy in the land. Turner was aspired to rival great history history painting and consequently invested his views with a rich overlay of historical motifs, references to Old Masters, and metaphorical themes. Constable’s paitings became more like Turner’s paintings in the later years with cataclysmic, symbolic, and metaphorical complexity associated to historical paintings.
11. What makes Francis Rude’s sculpture ‘The Departure of the Volunteers of 1792’ Romanticism?
Romanticism elevated the achievements of what it perceived as misunderstood heroic individuals and artists that altered society. It stressed strong emotion as a source of aesthetic experience, placing new emphasis on such emotions as trepidation, horror, and the awe experienced in confronting the sublime aesthetics of untamed nature.
In the case of the Arc de Triomphe, in Paris, the Départ des volontaires de 1792 (Departure of the Volunteers of 1792), also known as La Marseillaile is a work full of energy and fire, immortalizes the name of Rude.
12. Romanticism in architecture involved revivals of various historical styles. Name two of these architectural revival structures by title and artist’s name. [2pts.][2pts.]
· Expressionism
· Gothicism
· Nationalism
· Symbolism
· Surrealism
Romanticism typified by the artwork of Eugène Delacroix. Debates also occurred over whether it was better to learn art by looking at nature, or to learn by looking at the artistic masters of the past.
Academic art is a style of painting and sculpture produced under the influence of European academies or universities.
Specifically, academic art is the art and artists influenced by the standards of the French Académie des beaux-arts, which practiced under the movements of Neoclassicism and Romanticism, and the art that followed these two movements in the attempt to synthesize both of their styles, and which is best reflected by the paintings of William-Adolph Bouguereau, Suzor-Coté, Thomas Couture, and Hans Makart. In this context it is often called "academism", "academicism", "L'art pompier", and "eclecticism", and sometimes linked with "historicism" and "syncretism".
Venetian experience
1. Poussin took an intellectual approach to painting. What did he emphasis and what did he downplay when creating #21.5 'The Abduction of the Sabine Women'?(1 pt.)
Nicholas Poussin’s “ The Abduction of the Sabine Women” is a very powerful, emotional, and theatrical piece of art. In this painting all of the people are frozen in their actions. It looks as if, the women are being taken away from their families by soldiers. There are babies on the ground crying while this struggle is taking place. There is a man that looks like royalty watching this happen. There are gray skies in the painting which give it a feeling of remorse and sadness.
2. What is notable about the paintings of Claude Lorraine? (1 pt.)
Landscape was a subject considered distinctly unclassical and secular during Claude Lorraine’s time in fact it wasn’t accepted until the 17th century. After befriending Nicolas Poussin; they would travel the Roman Campagna, sketching landscapes. Though both have been called landscape painters, in Poussin the landscape is a background to the figures; where as for Lorrain, despite figures in one corner of the canvas, the true subjects are the land, the sea, and the air. By report, he often engaged other artists to paint the figures for him, including Courtois and Filippo Lauri. He remarked to those purchasing his pictures that he sold them the landscape; the figures were gratis. The former quality was not consonant with Renaissance art, which boasted its rivalry with the work of the ancients. The second quality had less public patronage in Counter-Reformation Rome, which prized subjects worthy of "high painting," typically religious or mythic scenes. Pure landscape, like pure still-life or genre painting, reflected an aesthetic viewpoint regarded as lacking in moral seriousness. Rome, the theological and philosophical center of 17th century Italian art, was not quite ready for such a break with tradition.
In this matter of the importance of landscape, Lorrain was prescient. Living in a pre-Romantic era, he did not depict those uninhabited panoramas that were to be esteemed in later centuries, such as with Salvatore Rosa. He painted a pastoral world of fields and valleys not distant from castles and towns. If the ocean horizon is represented, it is from the setting of a busy port. Perhaps to feed the public need for paintings with noble themes, his pictures include demigods, heroes and saints, even though his abundant drawings and sketchbooks prove that he was more interested in scenography.
3. What was the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture founded in Paris? When did it begin? How did it 'grade' the merits of artists of the past and present?(3 pts)
From the seventeenth century to the early part of the twentieth century, artistic production in France was controlled by artistic academies which organized official exhibitions called salons. The Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture (Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture), Paris, was founded in 1648, modelled on Italian examples, such as the Accademia di San Luca in Rome.
In 1661, it came under the control of Jean-Baptiste Colbert who made the arts a main part in the glorification of Louis XIV. From 1683 on, it reached its greatest power under the directorship of Charles Le Brun with its hierarchy of members and strict system of education. On August 8, 1793, it was suspended by the revolutionary National Convention, when the latter decreed the abolition of "toutes les académies et sociétés littéraires patentées ou dotées par la Nation". It was later renamed Académie de peinture et de sculpture.
The "Académie de peinture et sculpture" is also responsible for the Académie de France in the villa Médicis in Rome (founded in 1666) which allows promising artists to study in Rome. In 1816, it was merged with the Académie de musique (Academy of Music, founded in 1669) and the Académie d'architecture (Academy of Architecture, founded in 1671), to form the Académie des beaux-arts, one of the five academies of the Institut de France.
In France, "Academies" are institutions and learned societies which monitor, foster, critique and protect French cultural production. By the middle of the century, the number of private academies decreased as academies gradually came under government control, sporsorship and patronage. In the fine arts, the Académie de peinture et de sculpture ("Academy of Painting and Sculpture") was founded by Cardinal Mazarin in 1648; the Académie d'architecture ("Academy of Architecture") was founded by Jean-Baptiste Colbert in 1671; the "Académie de musique" ("Academy of Music") was founded in 1669. In 1816, these three academies were reunitied as the Académie des beaux-arts ("Academy of Fine Arts"), which is (along with the "Académie française") one of the five academies that make up the "Institut de France" ("French Institute").
4. The Palace of Versailles was the largest building constructed under the rein of Louis XIV. Name the architects and designers involved in this project. How were the grounds designed that surround the palace?(2 pts.)
In English it is often referred to as the Palace of Versailles. When the château was built, Versailles was a country village, but it is now a suburb of Paris. From 1682, when King Louis XIV moved from Paris, until the royal family was forced to return to the capital in 1789, the Court of Versailles was the centre of power in Ancien Régime France. Versailles is therefore famous not only as a building, but as a symbol of the system of absolute monarchy which Louis XIV espoused.
Upon the death of Jules Cardinal Mazarin in 1661, who had served as co-regent during the minority of Louis XIV, Louis XIV (b. 5 September 1638 at Saint-Germain-en-Laye; d. 1 September 1715 at Versailles; reigned 14 May 1642 – 1 September 1715) began his personal reign by vowing to be his own prime minister. From this point, construction and expansion at Versailles became synonymous with the absolutism of Louis XIV.
After the disgrace of Nicolas Fouquet in 1661 — Louis claimed the finance minister would not have been able to build his grand château at Vaux-le-Vicomte with out having embezzled from the crown— Louis XIV, after confiscation of Fouquet’s estate, employed the talents of architect Louis Le Vau, landscape architect André Le Nôtre, and painter/decorator Charles Le Brun for his building campaigns at Versailles and elsewhere. For Versailles, there were four distinct building campaigns (after minor alterations and enlargements had been executed on the château and the gardens in 1662-1663), all of which corresponded to Louis XIV’s wars.
The First Building Campaign (1664-1668) commenced with the Plaisirs de l’Île enchantée of 1664, a party that was held between 7th and 13th May 1664. The party was ostensibly given to celebrate the two queens of France — Anne of Austria, the Queen Mother and Marie-Thérèse, Louis XIV’s wife, but in reality celebrated the king’s mistress, Louise de La Vallière. The fête of the Plaisirs de l’Île enchantée is often regarded as a prelude to the War of Devolution, which Louis XIV waged against Spain — both the Queen Mother and Marie-Thérèse were Spanish by birth — from 1667 to 1668). The First Building Campaign (1664-1668) saw alterations in the château and gardens in order to accommodate the 600 guests invited to the party.
The Second Building Campaign (1669-1672) was inaugurated with the signing of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (the treaty that ended the War of Devolution). During this campaign, the château began to assume much of the appearance that it has today. The most important modification of the château was Louis LeVau’s envelope of Louis XIII’s hunting lodge. The envelope — often referred to as the château neuf to distinguish it from the older structure of Louis XIII — enveloped the hunting lodge on the north, west, and south. The new structure provided new lodgings for members of the king and his family.
With the signing of the Treaty of Nijmegen (1678, which ended the Dutch War of 1672-1678), the Third Building Campaign at Versailles began (1678-1684). Under the direction of the architect, Jules Hardouin Mansart, the palace of Versailles acquired much of the look that it has today. In addition to the Hall of Mirrors, Mansart designed the north and south wings (which were used by the nobility and Princes of the Blood, respectively), and the Orangerie. Charles Le Brun was occupied not only with the interior decoration of the new additions of the palace, but also collaborated with André Le Notre in landscaping the palace gardens. As symbol of France’s new prominence as a European super-power, Louis XIV officially installed his court at Versailles in May of 1682.
Soon after the crushing defeat of the War of the League of Augsburg (1688-1697) and owing possibly to the pious influence of Madame de Maintenon, Louis XIV undertook his last building campaign at Versailles. The fourth building campaign (1701-1710) concentrated almost exclusively on construction of the Chapel Royal, designed by Mansart and finished by Robert de Cotte and his team of decorative designers. There were also some modifications in the king’s Petit Appartement, namely the construction of the Salon de l’Oeil de Boeuf and the King’s Bedchamber. With the completion of the chapel in 1710, virtually all construction at Versailles ceased; building would not be resumed at Versailles until some 20 years later during the reign of Louis XV.
The grounds of Versailles contain one of the largest formal gardens ever created, with extensive parterres, fountains and canals, designed by André Le Nôtre. Le Nôtre modified the original gardens by expanding them and giving them a sense of openness and scale. He also liked to enjoy sunbathing in his wonderful work of art. He created a plan centered around the central axis of the Grand Canal. The gardens are centered on the south front of the palace, which is set on a long terrace to give a grand view of the gardens. At the foot of the steps the Fountain of Latona is located. This fountain tells a story taken from Ovid's poem Metamorphoses and served — and still serves — as an allegory of the Fronde. Next, is the Royal Avenue or the Tapis Vert. Surrounding this to the sides are the formal gardens. Beyond this is the Fountain of Apollo. This fountain symbolizes the regime of Louis XIV, or, the "Sun King". Beyond the Fountain lies the massive Grand Canal. The wide central axis rises on the far side. Even farther into the distance lie the dense woods of the King's hunting grounds.
Several smaller buildings were added to the park of Versailles, starting with the Ménagerie, which was built between 1663 and 1665 and modified in the 1690s for the use of Louis XIV's granddaughter, the duchess de Bourgogne, followed by the Grand Trianon (originally the Porcelain Trianon), continuing with additions by Louis XV and Louis XVI including the Petit Trianon, and the Hamlet of Marie Antoinette known as the le Hameau.
5. What unique catastrophy in London in 1666 caused Sir Christopher Wren's career as an architect to move forward? Describe the plan of his St. Paul's Cathedral.(2 pts.)
Wren was elected Savilian Professor of Astronomy at Oxford, and in 1669 he was appointed Surveyor of Works to Charles II. From 1661 until 1668 Wren's life was based in Oxford, although the Royal Society meant that he had to make occasional trips to London. It was also around these times that his attention turned to architecture.
It was probably around this time that Wren was drawn into redesigning a battered St. Paul's Cathedral. Making a trip to Paris in 1665, Wren studied the architecture, which had reached a climax of creativity, and perused the drawings of Bernini, the great Italian sculptor and architect. Returning from Paris, he made his first design for St. Paul’s. A week later, however, the Great Fire destroyed two-thirds of the city. Wren submitted his plans for rebuilding the city to King Charles II, although they were never adopted. With his appointment as King’s Surveyor of Works in 1669, he had a presence in the general process of rebuilding the city, but was not directly involved with the rebuilding of houses or companies' halls. Wren was personally responsible of the rebuilding of 51 churches; however, it is not necessarily true to say that each of them represented his own fully developed design.
The task of designing a replacement structure was assigned to Christopher Wren in 1668, along with over 50 other City churches. His first design, to build a replacement on the foundations of the old cathedral, was rejected in 1669. The second design, in the shape of a Greek cross (circa 1670-1672) was rejected as too radical, as was a revised design that resulted in the 1:24 scale "Great Model", on display in the crypt of the cathedral. The 'warrant' design was accepted in 1675 and building work began in June. The 'warrant' design included a small dome with a spire on top, but King Charles II had given Wren permission to make "ornamental" changes to the approved design and Wren took the liberty to radically rework the design to the current form, including the large central dome and the towers at the west end.
6. Define "Rococo." How is it different from Baroque Art? (2 pts.)
A style of 18th century French art and interior design, Rococo style rooms were designed as total works of art with elegant and ornate furniture, small sculptures, ornamental mirrors, and tapestry complementing architecture, reliefs, and wall paintings. It was largely supplanted by the Neoclassic style.
The word Rococo is seen as a combination of the French rocaille, or shell, and the Italian barocco, or Baroque style. In the arts, the Baroque was a Western cultural epoch, commencing roughly at the turn of the 17th century in Rome, that was exemplified by drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music. Due to Rococo love of shell-like curves and focus on decorative arts, some critics used the term to derogatively imply that the style was frivolous or merely fashion; interestingly, when the term was first used in English in about 1836, it was a colloquialism meaning "old-fashioned". However, since the mid 19th century, the term has been accepted by art historians. While there is still some debate about the historical significance of the style to art in general, Rococo is now widely recognized as a major period in the development of European art.
7. Describe the conflict between Poussinistes and Rubenistes. Which group eventually won out? (2 pts.)
The Poussinistes were a group of conservative French artists during the 17th Century. The Poussinistes defended Poussin's view that drawing appealed to the mind and was superior to color, which they believed appealed to the senses. They were opposed by the Rubénistes who believed that color, not drawing, was superior due to its being more true to nature. Drawing was, according to the Rubénistes, based on reason and only appealing to the few experts whereas color could be enjoyed by everyone. This challenged the notions of the Renaissance when only the educated were believed to appreciate art. (Janson, 584)
While actually, Poussin and Rubens themselves had little or nothing to do with the controversy. The real protagonists were Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (pronounced Ang) and Eugène Delacroix (pronounced Dela-qua). Ingres had been a student of the outstanding classical master-painter Jacques-Louis David (pronounced Da-veed) and was 18 years older than his rival. The competition between the two split the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture down the middle and continued largely unabated from the early 1820s until both men died in the mid-1860s. Of course by that time, the young Turks of Impressionism were deciding the whole matter was something of a moot point anyway. And while they might tend toward The Rubenistes colour theories and painting techniques, they hated the academic arguments and classical subject matter of both camps.
The fact is, neither side was entirely right or entirely wrong. Given the state of art, and painting in particular, in the 1800s, both sides needed each other. Drawing offered form, and paint provided colour. Without both there would have been no painting at all. The theories of hemispheric domination were, of course, unknown at the time, but the matter essentially came down to a left-brain/right-brain approach to painting. The left side of the brain being the analytical side, demanded careful drawing, adherence to scientific rules, even in matters of aesthetics and colour theory. Dozens of preliminary sketches were meticulously condensed to a single, tightly drawn image on canvas to which carefully muted colours were delicately added over an extended period of time. The right side of the brain, being the visual and emotional hemisphere, tended toward an instinctive approach both in drawing, and especially in colour use. Drawing was done with a brush with wet paint swishing sensuously over virgin canvas, evolving into emotionally charged patterns of light and dark, then to powerful masses of vibrant colour and texture. Paintings were often executed, start to finish, in only a few hours of ecstatic painting frenzy. Today, not all that much has changed of course. The only difference is the names--the Rockwellians and the Pollockers perhaps?
8. What new category was added to the French Academy in order to admit Watteau?(1 pt.)
Fete galante a type of painting introduced by Jean Antoine Watteau.
9. Chardin's paintings do not follow the typical Rococo formula. What previous group of artists does it reflect? (1 pt.)
Chardin was very active in the French Academy, but his expertise was in still life. Still life is the area of painting considered the lowest in the Academy’s hierarchy of subjects. The interest in still life paintings as well as in genre was inspired by many Dutch and Flemish seventeenth century paintings then again in France.
10. One of the most successful Rococo portraitists was a woman. Who was she and who were her clients?(2 pts.)
Rococo artists, who were particularly interested in rich and intricate ornamentation, excelled at the refined portrait. Their attention to the details of dress and texture increased the efficacy of portraits as testaments to worldly wealth. French painters François Boucher and Hyacinthe Rigaud proved to be remarkable chroniclers of opulence, as were English painters Thomas Gainsborough and Sir Joshua Reynolds. In the 18th century, female painters gained new importance, particularly in the field of portraiture. Notable female artists include French painter Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, Italian pastel artist Rosalba Carriera, and Swiss artist Angelica Kauffmann.
Élisabeth-Louise Vigée-Le Brun (April 16, 1755 - March 30, 1842) was a French painter, and is recognized as the most famous woman painter of the eighteenth century. Her style is neoclassical in exhibiting ideals of simplicity and purity. Her work can also be considered Rococo in its grace, delicacy, and naturalism. She painted portraits of many of the nobility of the day and as her career blossomed, she was invited to the Palace of Versailles to paint Marie Antoinette, the French Queen consort.
Rosalba Carriera (October 7, 1675 – April 15, 1757) was a Venetian Rococo painter. In her younger years, she specialized in portrait miniatures. She later became known for her pastel work, a medium appealing to Rococo styles for its soft edges and flattering surfaces. The portraits of her early period include those of Maximilian II of Bavaria; Frederick IV of Denmark; the 12 most beautiful Venetian court ladies; the "Artist and her Sister Naneta" (Uffizi); and August the Strong of Saxony, who acquired a large collection of her pastels.
11. What is the meaning of the engraving #22.15 "He Revels" by Hogarth? (1 pt.)
The painting is of a young wastrel who is overindulging in wine and women. It is a series were the rogue becomes arrested for debt, enters into marriage, and turns to gambling, then is imprisoned, and even goes insane, and is instituted. This scene is set in a famous London brothel, The Rose Tavern. I personally believe that this series like many of the Hogarth series is meant to convey Hogarth’s deep distain for what he considered societies slow sloping down fall of young men and women. This scene in particular is full of witty visual clues, which the viewer would disvoer little by little, adding a comic element to the satire of social evils. He combines Watteau’s color with an emphasis on narrative by delicately placing objects meant to be referenced to small stories.
12. Describe the main features of Die Wies (illustration #22.23 & 22.24).(1 pt.)
The main features of the Die Wies are full of richness reflecting the fact that the architect and his brother, Johann Baptist Zimmermann was responsible for frescoes. The exterior may be simple but the interior is elaborately decorated with a combination of sculptural painted stucco decoration and painting. The ceiling rests on paired, free standing supports, the space is more fluid and complex, recalling a German Gothic Hallenkirche (hall church).
13. What type of paintings did the Italian Canaletto make and who purchased his works?(1 pt.)
How he came to be known as Canaletto is uncertain, however; perhaps the name was first used to distinguish him from his father, Bernardo Canal, a theatrical scene painter in whose studio Canaletto assisted. Canaletto is recorded as working with his father and brother in Venice from 1716 to 1719 and in Rome in 1719–20, painting scenes for Alessandro Scarlatti operas. It was in Rome that Canaletto left theatrical painting for the topographical career that was to bring him international fame so quickly, although a close connection to his theatrical work remained in his choice of subject matter, his use of line and wash drawings, and his theatrical perspective.
When he returned to Venice, he began his contact with the foreign patrons who would continue as his chief support throughout his career. Four large paintings were completed for the Prince of Liechtenstein, in or before 1723, and in 1725–26 he finished a series of pictures for Stefano Conti, a merchant from Lucca. Dated memorandums accompanying the Conti pictures suggest how busy and yet how exacting the artist was at this time. Canaletto indicates that delays in the delivery of the pictures had been due to the pressure of other commissions and his own insistence on obtaining reliable pigments and on working from nature. In his pictures of the late 1720s, such as “The http://www.britannica.com/eb/topic?idxStructId=567355&typeId=13Stonemason's Yard,” he combined a freedom and subtlety of manner that he was rarely to achieve again with an unrivaled imaginative and dramatic interpretation of Venetian architecture. His understanding of sunlight and shadow, cloud effects, and the play of light on buildings support the contention in his memorandums that he was working out-of-doors, which was a most unusual procedure for painters of that time.
Throughout the 1730s Canaletto was deeply absorbed in meeting foreign demands for souvenir views of Venice. Such was the pressure upon him that he ultimately was forced to work largely from drawings and even from other artists' engravings, rather than from nature. He also developed the use of the http://www.britannica.com/eb/topic?idxStructId=90871&typeId=13camera ottica, a device by which a lens threw onto a ground-glass screen the image of a view, which could be used as a basis for a drawing or painting. Finally, he developed a mechanical technique, in which ruler and compasses played a part, and architecture and figures were put into the picture according to a dexterous and effective formula. Such a vast number of views of Venice were produced during his lifetime that it is often thought that Canaletto was head of a large studio, but there is no evidence of this.
As standardized views of Venice dropped from demand, Smith seems to have encouraged Canaletto to expand his range of subjects to include Roman monuments and the area of Padua and the Brenta River. Pictures composed of more or less recognizable elements rearranged (capriccio) and pictures composed of almost completely imaginary architectural and scenic elements (http://www.britannica.com/eb/topic?idxStructId=624498&typeId=13veduta ideata) now began to play an increasingly important part in Canaletto's work. In 1741–44 Canaletto also made a series of 30 etchings, exceptionally skillful and sensitive, showing a command of perspective and luminosity.
He worked mainly in London, on English views. It is notable, when considering the works executed during this period, that Canaletto—an artist 50 years of age who had evolved various conventions based on Venetian experience—was dealing with an entirely different set of atmospheric conditions and different subject matter. Occasionally, by putting English material into a Venetian framework, he achieved a masterpiece, but for the most part he fell below his own standards, and his work was lifeless and mechanical.
On his return to Venice, however, his reputation had not diminished; and at last he received official recognition—election to the Venetian Academy in 1763 and, in the same year, appointment as prior of the Collegio dei Pittori.
Nicholas Poussin’s “ The Abduction of the Sabine Women” is a very powerful, emotional, and theatrical piece of art. In this painting all of the people are frozen in their actions. It looks as if, the women are being taken away from their families by soldiers. There are babies on the ground crying while this struggle is taking place. There is a man that looks like royalty watching this happen. There are gray skies in the painting which give it a feeling of remorse and sadness.
2. What is notable about the paintings of Claude Lorraine? (1 pt.)
Landscape was a subject considered distinctly unclassical and secular during Claude Lorraine’s time in fact it wasn’t accepted until the 17th century. After befriending Nicolas Poussin; they would travel the Roman Campagna, sketching landscapes. Though both have been called landscape painters, in Poussin the landscape is a background to the figures; where as for Lorrain, despite figures in one corner of the canvas, the true subjects are the land, the sea, and the air. By report, he often engaged other artists to paint the figures for him, including Courtois and Filippo Lauri. He remarked to those purchasing his pictures that he sold them the landscape; the figures were gratis. The former quality was not consonant with Renaissance art, which boasted its rivalry with the work of the ancients. The second quality had less public patronage in Counter-Reformation Rome, which prized subjects worthy of "high painting," typically religious or mythic scenes. Pure landscape, like pure still-life or genre painting, reflected an aesthetic viewpoint regarded as lacking in moral seriousness. Rome, the theological and philosophical center of 17th century Italian art, was not quite ready for such a break with tradition.
In this matter of the importance of landscape, Lorrain was prescient. Living in a pre-Romantic era, he did not depict those uninhabited panoramas that were to be esteemed in later centuries, such as with Salvatore Rosa. He painted a pastoral world of fields and valleys not distant from castles and towns. If the ocean horizon is represented, it is from the setting of a busy port. Perhaps to feed the public need for paintings with noble themes, his pictures include demigods, heroes and saints, even though his abundant drawings and sketchbooks prove that he was more interested in scenography.
3. What was the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture founded in Paris? When did it begin? How did it 'grade' the merits of artists of the past and present?(3 pts)
From the seventeenth century to the early part of the twentieth century, artistic production in France was controlled by artistic academies which organized official exhibitions called salons. The Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture (Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture), Paris, was founded in 1648, modelled on Italian examples, such as the Accademia di San Luca in Rome.
In 1661, it came under the control of Jean-Baptiste Colbert who made the arts a main part in the glorification of Louis XIV. From 1683 on, it reached its greatest power under the directorship of Charles Le Brun with its hierarchy of members and strict system of education. On August 8, 1793, it was suspended by the revolutionary National Convention, when the latter decreed the abolition of "toutes les académies et sociétés littéraires patentées ou dotées par la Nation". It was later renamed Académie de peinture et de sculpture.
The "Académie de peinture et sculpture" is also responsible for the Académie de France in the villa Médicis in Rome (founded in 1666) which allows promising artists to study in Rome. In 1816, it was merged with the Académie de musique (Academy of Music, founded in 1669) and the Académie d'architecture (Academy of Architecture, founded in 1671), to form the Académie des beaux-arts, one of the five academies of the Institut de France.
In France, "Academies" are institutions and learned societies which monitor, foster, critique and protect French cultural production. By the middle of the century, the number of private academies decreased as academies gradually came under government control, sporsorship and patronage. In the fine arts, the Académie de peinture et de sculpture ("Academy of Painting and Sculpture") was founded by Cardinal Mazarin in 1648; the Académie d'architecture ("Academy of Architecture") was founded by Jean-Baptiste Colbert in 1671; the "Académie de musique" ("Academy of Music") was founded in 1669. In 1816, these three academies were reunitied as the Académie des beaux-arts ("Academy of Fine Arts"), which is (along with the "Académie française") one of the five academies that make up the "Institut de France" ("French Institute").
4. The Palace of Versailles was the largest building constructed under the rein of Louis XIV. Name the architects and designers involved in this project. How were the grounds designed that surround the palace?(2 pts.)
In English it is often referred to as the Palace of Versailles. When the château was built, Versailles was a country village, but it is now a suburb of Paris. From 1682, when King Louis XIV moved from Paris, until the royal family was forced to return to the capital in 1789, the Court of Versailles was the centre of power in Ancien Régime France. Versailles is therefore famous not only as a building, but as a symbol of the system of absolute monarchy which Louis XIV espoused.
Upon the death of Jules Cardinal Mazarin in 1661, who had served as co-regent during the minority of Louis XIV, Louis XIV (b. 5 September 1638 at Saint-Germain-en-Laye; d. 1 September 1715 at Versailles; reigned 14 May 1642 – 1 September 1715) began his personal reign by vowing to be his own prime minister. From this point, construction and expansion at Versailles became synonymous with the absolutism of Louis XIV.
After the disgrace of Nicolas Fouquet in 1661 — Louis claimed the finance minister would not have been able to build his grand château at Vaux-le-Vicomte with out having embezzled from the crown— Louis XIV, after confiscation of Fouquet’s estate, employed the talents of architect Louis Le Vau, landscape architect André Le Nôtre, and painter/decorator Charles Le Brun for his building campaigns at Versailles and elsewhere. For Versailles, there were four distinct building campaigns (after minor alterations and enlargements had been executed on the château and the gardens in 1662-1663), all of which corresponded to Louis XIV’s wars.
The First Building Campaign (1664-1668) commenced with the Plaisirs de l’Île enchantée of 1664, a party that was held between 7th and 13th May 1664. The party was ostensibly given to celebrate the two queens of France — Anne of Austria, the Queen Mother and Marie-Thérèse, Louis XIV’s wife, but in reality celebrated the king’s mistress, Louise de La Vallière. The fête of the Plaisirs de l’Île enchantée is often regarded as a prelude to the War of Devolution, which Louis XIV waged against Spain — both the Queen Mother and Marie-Thérèse were Spanish by birth — from 1667 to 1668). The First Building Campaign (1664-1668) saw alterations in the château and gardens in order to accommodate the 600 guests invited to the party.
The Second Building Campaign (1669-1672) was inaugurated with the signing of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (the treaty that ended the War of Devolution). During this campaign, the château began to assume much of the appearance that it has today. The most important modification of the château was Louis LeVau’s envelope of Louis XIII’s hunting lodge. The envelope — often referred to as the château neuf to distinguish it from the older structure of Louis XIII — enveloped the hunting lodge on the north, west, and south. The new structure provided new lodgings for members of the king and his family.
With the signing of the Treaty of Nijmegen (1678, which ended the Dutch War of 1672-1678), the Third Building Campaign at Versailles began (1678-1684). Under the direction of the architect, Jules Hardouin Mansart, the palace of Versailles acquired much of the look that it has today. In addition to the Hall of Mirrors, Mansart designed the north and south wings (which were used by the nobility and Princes of the Blood, respectively), and the Orangerie. Charles Le Brun was occupied not only with the interior decoration of the new additions of the palace, but also collaborated with André Le Notre in landscaping the palace gardens. As symbol of France’s new prominence as a European super-power, Louis XIV officially installed his court at Versailles in May of 1682.
Soon after the crushing defeat of the War of the League of Augsburg (1688-1697) and owing possibly to the pious influence of Madame de Maintenon, Louis XIV undertook his last building campaign at Versailles. The fourth building campaign (1701-1710) concentrated almost exclusively on construction of the Chapel Royal, designed by Mansart and finished by Robert de Cotte and his team of decorative designers. There were also some modifications in the king’s Petit Appartement, namely the construction of the Salon de l’Oeil de Boeuf and the King’s Bedchamber. With the completion of the chapel in 1710, virtually all construction at Versailles ceased; building would not be resumed at Versailles until some 20 years later during the reign of Louis XV.
The grounds of Versailles contain one of the largest formal gardens ever created, with extensive parterres, fountains and canals, designed by André Le Nôtre. Le Nôtre modified the original gardens by expanding them and giving them a sense of openness and scale. He also liked to enjoy sunbathing in his wonderful work of art. He created a plan centered around the central axis of the Grand Canal. The gardens are centered on the south front of the palace, which is set on a long terrace to give a grand view of the gardens. At the foot of the steps the Fountain of Latona is located. This fountain tells a story taken from Ovid's poem Metamorphoses and served — and still serves — as an allegory of the Fronde. Next, is the Royal Avenue or the Tapis Vert. Surrounding this to the sides are the formal gardens. Beyond this is the Fountain of Apollo. This fountain symbolizes the regime of Louis XIV, or, the "Sun King". Beyond the Fountain lies the massive Grand Canal. The wide central axis rises on the far side. Even farther into the distance lie the dense woods of the King's hunting grounds.
Several smaller buildings were added to the park of Versailles, starting with the Ménagerie, which was built between 1663 and 1665 and modified in the 1690s for the use of Louis XIV's granddaughter, the duchess de Bourgogne, followed by the Grand Trianon (originally the Porcelain Trianon), continuing with additions by Louis XV and Louis XVI including the Petit Trianon, and the Hamlet of Marie Antoinette known as the le Hameau.
5. What unique catastrophy in London in 1666 caused Sir Christopher Wren's career as an architect to move forward? Describe the plan of his St. Paul's Cathedral.(2 pts.)
Wren was elected Savilian Professor of Astronomy at Oxford, and in 1669 he was appointed Surveyor of Works to Charles II. From 1661 until 1668 Wren's life was based in Oxford, although the Royal Society meant that he had to make occasional trips to London. It was also around these times that his attention turned to architecture.
It was probably around this time that Wren was drawn into redesigning a battered St. Paul's Cathedral. Making a trip to Paris in 1665, Wren studied the architecture, which had reached a climax of creativity, and perused the drawings of Bernini, the great Italian sculptor and architect. Returning from Paris, he made his first design for St. Paul’s. A week later, however, the Great Fire destroyed two-thirds of the city. Wren submitted his plans for rebuilding the city to King Charles II, although they were never adopted. With his appointment as King’s Surveyor of Works in 1669, he had a presence in the general process of rebuilding the city, but was not directly involved with the rebuilding of houses or companies' halls. Wren was personally responsible of the rebuilding of 51 churches; however, it is not necessarily true to say that each of them represented his own fully developed design.
The task of designing a replacement structure was assigned to Christopher Wren in 1668, along with over 50 other City churches. His first design, to build a replacement on the foundations of the old cathedral, was rejected in 1669. The second design, in the shape of a Greek cross (circa 1670-1672) was rejected as too radical, as was a revised design that resulted in the 1:24 scale "Great Model", on display in the crypt of the cathedral. The 'warrant' design was accepted in 1675 and building work began in June. The 'warrant' design included a small dome with a spire on top, but King Charles II had given Wren permission to make "ornamental" changes to the approved design and Wren took the liberty to radically rework the design to the current form, including the large central dome and the towers at the west end.
6. Define "Rococo." How is it different from Baroque Art? (2 pts.)
A style of 18th century French art and interior design, Rococo style rooms were designed as total works of art with elegant and ornate furniture, small sculptures, ornamental mirrors, and tapestry complementing architecture, reliefs, and wall paintings. It was largely supplanted by the Neoclassic style.
The word Rococo is seen as a combination of the French rocaille, or shell, and the Italian barocco, or Baroque style. In the arts, the Baroque was a Western cultural epoch, commencing roughly at the turn of the 17th century in Rome, that was exemplified by drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music. Due to Rococo love of shell-like curves and focus on decorative arts, some critics used the term to derogatively imply that the style was frivolous or merely fashion; interestingly, when the term was first used in English in about 1836, it was a colloquialism meaning "old-fashioned". However, since the mid 19th century, the term has been accepted by art historians. While there is still some debate about the historical significance of the style to art in general, Rococo is now widely recognized as a major period in the development of European art.
7. Describe the conflict between Poussinistes and Rubenistes. Which group eventually won out? (2 pts.)
The Poussinistes were a group of conservative French artists during the 17th Century. The Poussinistes defended Poussin's view that drawing appealed to the mind and was superior to color, which they believed appealed to the senses. They were opposed by the Rubénistes who believed that color, not drawing, was superior due to its being more true to nature. Drawing was, according to the Rubénistes, based on reason and only appealing to the few experts whereas color could be enjoyed by everyone. This challenged the notions of the Renaissance when only the educated were believed to appreciate art. (Janson, 584)
While actually, Poussin and Rubens themselves had little or nothing to do with the controversy. The real protagonists were Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (pronounced Ang) and Eugène Delacroix (pronounced Dela-qua). Ingres had been a student of the outstanding classical master-painter Jacques-Louis David (pronounced Da-veed) and was 18 years older than his rival. The competition between the two split the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture down the middle and continued largely unabated from the early 1820s until both men died in the mid-1860s. Of course by that time, the young Turks of Impressionism were deciding the whole matter was something of a moot point anyway. And while they might tend toward The Rubenistes colour theories and painting techniques, they hated the academic arguments and classical subject matter of both camps.
The fact is, neither side was entirely right or entirely wrong. Given the state of art, and painting in particular, in the 1800s, both sides needed each other. Drawing offered form, and paint provided colour. Without both there would have been no painting at all. The theories of hemispheric domination were, of course, unknown at the time, but the matter essentially came down to a left-brain/right-brain approach to painting. The left side of the brain being the analytical side, demanded careful drawing, adherence to scientific rules, even in matters of aesthetics and colour theory. Dozens of preliminary sketches were meticulously condensed to a single, tightly drawn image on canvas to which carefully muted colours were delicately added over an extended period of time. The right side of the brain, being the visual and emotional hemisphere, tended toward an instinctive approach both in drawing, and especially in colour use. Drawing was done with a brush with wet paint swishing sensuously over virgin canvas, evolving into emotionally charged patterns of light and dark, then to powerful masses of vibrant colour and texture. Paintings were often executed, start to finish, in only a few hours of ecstatic painting frenzy. Today, not all that much has changed of course. The only difference is the names--the Rockwellians and the Pollockers perhaps?
8. What new category was added to the French Academy in order to admit Watteau?(1 pt.)
Fete galante a type of painting introduced by Jean Antoine Watteau.
9. Chardin's paintings do not follow the typical Rococo formula. What previous group of artists does it reflect? (1 pt.)
Chardin was very active in the French Academy, but his expertise was in still life. Still life is the area of painting considered the lowest in the Academy’s hierarchy of subjects. The interest in still life paintings as well as in genre was inspired by many Dutch and Flemish seventeenth century paintings then again in France.
10. One of the most successful Rococo portraitists was a woman. Who was she and who were her clients?(2 pts.)
Rococo artists, who were particularly interested in rich and intricate ornamentation, excelled at the refined portrait. Their attention to the details of dress and texture increased the efficacy of portraits as testaments to worldly wealth. French painters François Boucher and Hyacinthe Rigaud proved to be remarkable chroniclers of opulence, as were English painters Thomas Gainsborough and Sir Joshua Reynolds. In the 18th century, female painters gained new importance, particularly in the field of portraiture. Notable female artists include French painter Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, Italian pastel artist Rosalba Carriera, and Swiss artist Angelica Kauffmann.
Élisabeth-Louise Vigée-Le Brun (April 16, 1755 - March 30, 1842) was a French painter, and is recognized as the most famous woman painter of the eighteenth century. Her style is neoclassical in exhibiting ideals of simplicity and purity. Her work can also be considered Rococo in its grace, delicacy, and naturalism. She painted portraits of many of the nobility of the day and as her career blossomed, she was invited to the Palace of Versailles to paint Marie Antoinette, the French Queen consort.
Rosalba Carriera (October 7, 1675 – April 15, 1757) was a Venetian Rococo painter. In her younger years, she specialized in portrait miniatures. She later became known for her pastel work, a medium appealing to Rococo styles for its soft edges and flattering surfaces. The portraits of her early period include those of Maximilian II of Bavaria; Frederick IV of Denmark; the 12 most beautiful Venetian court ladies; the "Artist and her Sister Naneta" (Uffizi); and August the Strong of Saxony, who acquired a large collection of her pastels.
11. What is the meaning of the engraving #22.15 "He Revels" by Hogarth? (1 pt.)
The painting is of a young wastrel who is overindulging in wine and women. It is a series were the rogue becomes arrested for debt, enters into marriage, and turns to gambling, then is imprisoned, and even goes insane, and is instituted. This scene is set in a famous London brothel, The Rose Tavern. I personally believe that this series like many of the Hogarth series is meant to convey Hogarth’s deep distain for what he considered societies slow sloping down fall of young men and women. This scene in particular is full of witty visual clues, which the viewer would disvoer little by little, adding a comic element to the satire of social evils. He combines Watteau’s color with an emphasis on narrative by delicately placing objects meant to be referenced to small stories.
12. Describe the main features of Die Wies (illustration #22.23 & 22.24).(1 pt.)
The main features of the Die Wies are full of richness reflecting the fact that the architect and his brother, Johann Baptist Zimmermann was responsible for frescoes. The exterior may be simple but the interior is elaborately decorated with a combination of sculptural painted stucco decoration and painting. The ceiling rests on paired, free standing supports, the space is more fluid and complex, recalling a German Gothic Hallenkirche (hall church).
13. What type of paintings did the Italian Canaletto make and who purchased his works?(1 pt.)
How he came to be known as Canaletto is uncertain, however; perhaps the name was first used to distinguish him from his father, Bernardo Canal, a theatrical scene painter in whose studio Canaletto assisted. Canaletto is recorded as working with his father and brother in Venice from 1716 to 1719 and in Rome in 1719–20, painting scenes for Alessandro Scarlatti operas. It was in Rome that Canaletto left theatrical painting for the topographical career that was to bring him international fame so quickly, although a close connection to his theatrical work remained in his choice of subject matter, his use of line and wash drawings, and his theatrical perspective.
When he returned to Venice, he began his contact with the foreign patrons who would continue as his chief support throughout his career. Four large paintings were completed for the Prince of Liechtenstein, in or before 1723, and in 1725–26 he finished a series of pictures for Stefano Conti, a merchant from Lucca. Dated memorandums accompanying the Conti pictures suggest how busy and yet how exacting the artist was at this time. Canaletto indicates that delays in the delivery of the pictures had been due to the pressure of other commissions and his own insistence on obtaining reliable pigments and on working from nature. In his pictures of the late 1720s, such as “The http://www.britannica.com/eb/topic?idxStructId=567355&typeId=13Stonemason's Yard,” he combined a freedom and subtlety of manner that he was rarely to achieve again with an unrivaled imaginative and dramatic interpretation of Venetian architecture. His understanding of sunlight and shadow, cloud effects, and the play of light on buildings support the contention in his memorandums that he was working out-of-doors, which was a most unusual procedure for painters of that time.
Throughout the 1730s Canaletto was deeply absorbed in meeting foreign demands for souvenir views of Venice. Such was the pressure upon him that he ultimately was forced to work largely from drawings and even from other artists' engravings, rather than from nature. He also developed the use of the http://www.britannica.com/eb/topic?idxStructId=90871&typeId=13camera ottica, a device by which a lens threw onto a ground-glass screen the image of a view, which could be used as a basis for a drawing or painting. Finally, he developed a mechanical technique, in which ruler and compasses played a part, and architecture and figures were put into the picture according to a dexterous and effective formula. Such a vast number of views of Venice were produced during his lifetime that it is often thought that Canaletto was head of a large studio, but there is no evidence of this.
As standardized views of Venice dropped from demand, Smith seems to have encouraged Canaletto to expand his range of subjects to include Roman monuments and the area of Padua and the Brenta River. Pictures composed of more or less recognizable elements rearranged (capriccio) and pictures composed of almost completely imaginary architectural and scenic elements (http://www.britannica.com/eb/topic?idxStructId=624498&typeId=13veduta ideata) now began to play an increasingly important part in Canaletto's work. In 1741–44 Canaletto also made a series of 30 etchings, exceptionally skillful and sensitive, showing a command of perspective and luminosity.
He worked mainly in London, on English views. It is notable, when considering the works executed during this period, that Canaletto—an artist 50 years of age who had evolved various conventions based on Venetian experience—was dealing with an entirely different set of atmospheric conditions and different subject matter. Occasionally, by putting English material into a Venetian framework, he achieved a masterpiece, but for the most part he fell below his own standards, and his work was lifeless and mechanical.
On his return to Venice, however, his reputation had not diminished; and at last he received official recognition—election to the Venetian Academy in 1763 and, in the same year, appointment as prior of the Collegio dei Pittori.
Baroque art
1.(2pts.) When and in what city did Baroque art begin? Why did it begin there?
The Baroque period was officially born in Europe, but almost immediately became international. It started in the 16th century when the demands for new art changed. The canon promulgated at the Council of Trent addressed representational arts by demanding that paintings and sculptures in church contexts should speak to the illiterate. This turn toward a populist conception of the function of ecclesiastical art is seen by many art historians as driving the innovation of the Caravaggio and the Carracci brothers, all of who happened to be working in Rome at that time.
So the appeal of Baroque style turned art from the witty, intellectual qualities of 16th century Mannerists art to a visceral appeal aimed at the senses.
2.(2pts.) Describe 2 qualities or effects that are repeatedly expressed in Italian Baroque paintings. Include the titles of artworks that show those qualities citing one produced by a female and one by a male.
It employed an iconography that was direct, simple, obvious, and dramatic. Baroque art drew on certain broad and heroic tendencies in Annibale Carracci and his circle, and found inspiration in other artists such as Correggio, Caravaggio, and Federico Barocci nowadays sometimes termed 'proto-Baroque'.
3.(2pts.) Describe the design of the plan of Borromini’s S.Carlo Quattro Fontane (#19.17 & 19.18). How is it different from Renaissance cathedrals?
San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane (also called San Carlino) is a church in Rome, designed as an iconic masterpiece of Baroque architecture. It is one of at least three churches in Rome dedicated to this saint, including San Carlo ai Catinari and San Carlo al Corso.
The tight geometric complexity of interlocking ovals and circles creates spaciousness in this small corner church. The concave-convex facade of San Carlo undulates in a non-classic way. Tall corinthian columns interrupt entablatures. Idiosyncratic winged hemi-cherubim are used to frame niches of statues. On the sides are statues of St. John of Matha and St. Felix of Valois, the founders of the Trinitarian Order. The corner fountain is a depiction of recumbent Neptune and the dome of the church has a complex patterns of coffers of crosses, ovals, and hexagons. The floor plan is a heady intersection of ovals.
It was unique in the way the architecture’s tension pulls and stretches the building into convex surfaces that seem elastic. In this building Borromini merges architecture and sculpture in a way that shocked Bernini because no such union had been attempted since Gothic art.
4.(1pt.) Describe one of Bernini’s sculptures (include its title), the emotions it expresses and how it uses space.
Bernini’s Baldacchino (fig. 19.15) is like many of his other sculpture in the way it closely relates to his architecture and conveys his Mannerist education. The Baldacchino alone displays his innovative style of integrating architecture and sculpture both on a massive scale and yet it still relates to human emotional warmth. By using an internal focal point in the large space he created a monumental sculpture in a composite form with the altar of St. Peter working as a canopy.
I know you asked us to only discuss one sculpture, but in comparison the David of St. Peter’s also exhibits a strong physical relationship between the sculptures itself, the architecture, and antiquity. It displays a union between both body, spirit, and the senses of motion and emotion. The David is fierce in his tight facial expressions and his movement is dynamic as if he could swing out of his pose. What makes the David distinct to the Baroque period is his distinctive active relationship with the surrounding space, yet it is meant to be seen from a primary point of view.
5.(1pt.) Velazquez was a master at showing various optical qualities of light. Describe how he has used light in The Maids of Honor ( #19.38).
As noted in, Janson’s History of Art, the painting Maids of Honor reveals Velazquez’s fascination with light as fundamental to vision. At the heart of the painting a mirror plays as backdrop and challenges us, as the viewer, to match the mirror image against the painting and again with the other paintings on the wall, the doorway, and the extreme light contrasts that suggest a subtle influence of Caravaggio. His aim was to represent the movement of light itself and the infinite range of its effects on both form and color to create a visible world.
6. (1pt.) In the 17th century the Netherlands were divided into north and south and known by its most important province (Holland and Flanders). What religions were dominant in each region?
The northern provinces of the Netherlands, were led by the House of Orange and independent from Spain and were protestant or reformed. Spain almost immediately recovered south Netherlands so Catholic remained the official religion.
7.(1pt.) Describe the subject and its meaning of Rueben’s The Garden of Love (#20.6).
The Garden of love is from Reuben’s later years as a painter, in which his paintings turned inward with his beautiful wife, home, and family as his primary subjects. Several of the women resemble his wife. The Garden of Love is honors life’s simple pleasures with scenery filled with couples, cupids, and even a statue of Venus to represent love. Venus is strategically placed in a garden in front of a building that resembles Rueben’s own home in Antwerp.
8.(1 pt.)Van Dyck’s fame for developing the painting of this subject continued until the late 18th century. What subject was it?
He was a young history painter that approached the canvas with mature and lyrical mythological scenes of love and court masques.
9.(1 pt.)What two themes did Rembrandt emphasize over and over during his painting career?
Religion and his own self portraits were lifelong themes for Rembrandt. Rembrant believed deeply that in wisdom and understanding accrued over a lifetime achieves a universal expression of sorrow and forgiveness. This is something he also relates through his paintings.
10.(1 pt.) What is the difference between an etching and a drypoint ?
Etching is the process of using strong acid to cut into the unprotected parts of a metal surface to create a design in intaglio in the metal. As an intaglio method of printmaking, it is, along with engraving, the most important technique for old master prints, and remains widely used today.
Like etching, but perhaps less so, drypoint is easier for an artist trained in drawing to master than engraving, the technique of using the needle is closer to using a pencil than the engraver's burin. The image is incised into a plate by scratching the surface with a hard, sharp metal point. Traditionally the plate was copper, but now acetate, zinc, or plexiglas are more commonly used. The deeper the scratch on the surface, the darker the ink will be at that point. This technique is different from engraving, in which the incisions are made by gouging, although the two can easily be combined, as Rembrandt often did.
11.(2pts.)Define 'vanitas'. Give the title of a painting that uses this theme.
Vanitas is a type of symbolic still life painting commonly made by painters in Flanders and the Netherlands. The word is Latin, meaning "emptiness" and corresponds to the meaninglessness of earthly life and the transient nature of vanity. Vanitas are meant as a reminder of the transience of life, the futility of pleasure, and the certainty of death, encouraging a sombre world view. This is translated as Vanity of vanities; all is vanity by the King James Version of the Bible, and Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless by the New International Version of the Bible.
Common vanitas symbols include skulls, which are a reminder of the certainty of death; rotten fruit, which symbolizes decay like ageing; bubbles, which symbolize the brevity of life and suddenness of death; smoke, watches, and hourglasses, which symbolize the brevity of life; and musical instruments, which symbolize brevity and the ephemeral nature of life.
The Transi of René de Chalons, is of the widow of René de Chalon and prince of Orange. The dutch still life by Willem Claesz, Heda, is a symbolic oil painting of cups, an orange, and a plate.
12.(1 pt.)Define genre. Name by title an example of this theme as painted by Vermeer.
Genre painting at the end of the seventeenth century included narrative themes of interiors of homes, taverns, and full length human figures. These paintings were smaller and more intimate. An example of this genre theme by Vermeer would be the oil painting called Woman Holding a Balance. In contrast it has no clear narrative and a single figure engaged in an every day private task set up like a still life.
13.(2pts.) Name two artists who painted their self-portraits that are shown in chapters 19 & 20.Rembrandt (20.25) and Judith Leyster (20.19)
The Baroque period was officially born in Europe, but almost immediately became international. It started in the 16th century when the demands for new art changed. The canon promulgated at the Council of Trent addressed representational arts by demanding that paintings and sculptures in church contexts should speak to the illiterate. This turn toward a populist conception of the function of ecclesiastical art is seen by many art historians as driving the innovation of the Caravaggio and the Carracci brothers, all of who happened to be working in Rome at that time.
So the appeal of Baroque style turned art from the witty, intellectual qualities of 16th century Mannerists art to a visceral appeal aimed at the senses.
2.(2pts.) Describe 2 qualities or effects that are repeatedly expressed in Italian Baroque paintings. Include the titles of artworks that show those qualities citing one produced by a female and one by a male.
It employed an iconography that was direct, simple, obvious, and dramatic. Baroque art drew on certain broad and heroic tendencies in Annibale Carracci and his circle, and found inspiration in other artists such as Correggio, Caravaggio, and Federico Barocci nowadays sometimes termed 'proto-Baroque'.
3.(2pts.) Describe the design of the plan of Borromini’s S.Carlo Quattro Fontane (#19.17 & 19.18). How is it different from Renaissance cathedrals?
San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane (also called San Carlino) is a church in Rome, designed as an iconic masterpiece of Baroque architecture. It is one of at least three churches in Rome dedicated to this saint, including San Carlo ai Catinari and San Carlo al Corso.
The tight geometric complexity of interlocking ovals and circles creates spaciousness in this small corner church. The concave-convex facade of San Carlo undulates in a non-classic way. Tall corinthian columns interrupt entablatures. Idiosyncratic winged hemi-cherubim are used to frame niches of statues. On the sides are statues of St. John of Matha and St. Felix of Valois, the founders of the Trinitarian Order. The corner fountain is a depiction of recumbent Neptune and the dome of the church has a complex patterns of coffers of crosses, ovals, and hexagons. The floor plan is a heady intersection of ovals.
It was unique in the way the architecture’s tension pulls and stretches the building into convex surfaces that seem elastic. In this building Borromini merges architecture and sculpture in a way that shocked Bernini because no such union had been attempted since Gothic art.
4.(1pt.) Describe one of Bernini’s sculptures (include its title), the emotions it expresses and how it uses space.
Bernini’s Baldacchino (fig. 19.15) is like many of his other sculpture in the way it closely relates to his architecture and conveys his Mannerist education. The Baldacchino alone displays his innovative style of integrating architecture and sculpture both on a massive scale and yet it still relates to human emotional warmth. By using an internal focal point in the large space he created a monumental sculpture in a composite form with the altar of St. Peter working as a canopy.
I know you asked us to only discuss one sculpture, but in comparison the David of St. Peter’s also exhibits a strong physical relationship between the sculptures itself, the architecture, and antiquity. It displays a union between both body, spirit, and the senses of motion and emotion. The David is fierce in his tight facial expressions and his movement is dynamic as if he could swing out of his pose. What makes the David distinct to the Baroque period is his distinctive active relationship with the surrounding space, yet it is meant to be seen from a primary point of view.
5.(1pt.) Velazquez was a master at showing various optical qualities of light. Describe how he has used light in The Maids of Honor ( #19.38).
As noted in, Janson’s History of Art, the painting Maids of Honor reveals Velazquez’s fascination with light as fundamental to vision. At the heart of the painting a mirror plays as backdrop and challenges us, as the viewer, to match the mirror image against the painting and again with the other paintings on the wall, the doorway, and the extreme light contrasts that suggest a subtle influence of Caravaggio. His aim was to represent the movement of light itself and the infinite range of its effects on both form and color to create a visible world.
6. (1pt.) In the 17th century the Netherlands were divided into north and south and known by its most important province (Holland and Flanders). What religions were dominant in each region?
The northern provinces of the Netherlands, were led by the House of Orange and independent from Spain and were protestant or reformed. Spain almost immediately recovered south Netherlands so Catholic remained the official religion.
7.(1pt.) Describe the subject and its meaning of Rueben’s The Garden of Love (#20.6).
The Garden of love is from Reuben’s later years as a painter, in which his paintings turned inward with his beautiful wife, home, and family as his primary subjects. Several of the women resemble his wife. The Garden of Love is honors life’s simple pleasures with scenery filled with couples, cupids, and even a statue of Venus to represent love. Venus is strategically placed in a garden in front of a building that resembles Rueben’s own home in Antwerp.
8.(1 pt.)Van Dyck’s fame for developing the painting of this subject continued until the late 18th century. What subject was it?
He was a young history painter that approached the canvas with mature and lyrical mythological scenes of love and court masques.
9.(1 pt.)What two themes did Rembrandt emphasize over and over during his painting career?
Religion and his own self portraits were lifelong themes for Rembrandt. Rembrant believed deeply that in wisdom and understanding accrued over a lifetime achieves a universal expression of sorrow and forgiveness. This is something he also relates through his paintings.
10.(1 pt.) What is the difference between an etching and a drypoint ?
Etching is the process of using strong acid to cut into the unprotected parts of a metal surface to create a design in intaglio in the metal. As an intaglio method of printmaking, it is, along with engraving, the most important technique for old master prints, and remains widely used today.
Like etching, but perhaps less so, drypoint is easier for an artist trained in drawing to master than engraving, the technique of using the needle is closer to using a pencil than the engraver's burin. The image is incised into a plate by scratching the surface with a hard, sharp metal point. Traditionally the plate was copper, but now acetate, zinc, or plexiglas are more commonly used. The deeper the scratch on the surface, the darker the ink will be at that point. This technique is different from engraving, in which the incisions are made by gouging, although the two can easily be combined, as Rembrandt often did.
11.(2pts.)Define 'vanitas'. Give the title of a painting that uses this theme.
Vanitas is a type of symbolic still life painting commonly made by painters in Flanders and the Netherlands. The word is Latin, meaning "emptiness" and corresponds to the meaninglessness of earthly life and the transient nature of vanity. Vanitas are meant as a reminder of the transience of life, the futility of pleasure, and the certainty of death, encouraging a sombre world view. This is translated as Vanity of vanities; all is vanity by the King James Version of the Bible, and Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless by the New International Version of the Bible.
Common vanitas symbols include skulls, which are a reminder of the certainty of death; rotten fruit, which symbolizes decay like ageing; bubbles, which symbolize the brevity of life and suddenness of death; smoke, watches, and hourglasses, which symbolize the brevity of life; and musical instruments, which symbolize brevity and the ephemeral nature of life.
The Transi of René de Chalons, is of the widow of René de Chalon and prince of Orange. The dutch still life by Willem Claesz, Heda, is a symbolic oil painting of cups, an orange, and a plate.
12.(1 pt.)Define genre. Name by title an example of this theme as painted by Vermeer.
Genre painting at the end of the seventeenth century included narrative themes of interiors of homes, taverns, and full length human figures. These paintings were smaller and more intimate. An example of this genre theme by Vermeer would be the oil painting called Woman Holding a Balance. In contrast it has no clear narrative and a single figure engaged in an every day private task set up like a still life.
13.(2pts.) Name two artists who painted their self-portraits that are shown in chapters 19 & 20.Rembrandt (20.25) and Judith Leyster (20.19)
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