Caravaggio, Calling of St. Matthew, 1599-1601

--All the appropriate stuff in that handy-dandy text I posted in the review about “characteristics of Baroque art.”

--Caravaggio’s Earthy, Dirty Style that uses models drawn from the lower-class neighborhoods and gambling dens he liked to frequent.

--Relationship of the painting (with its tenebrism) to the spotlight-technique of lighting a stage that was developed during the same time as Opera was invented in Italy.

DIEGO VELÁZQUEZ,

Las Meninas (The Maids of Honor)

1656

--Important thing here is the de-centered subjectivity of the painting (We are looking at Velazquez painting a picture of us looking at Velazquez painting a picture of us…etc. etc.)

Taj Mahal, Agra, India, 1632–1647

--Persian Elements (Garden Design based on Islamic paradise), Iwan

--Story of why it was made (Tomb for his wife, exhausted the treasury, led to the downfall of Shah Jahan)

--“Minarets” lean outward so that if there is an Earthquake they fall AWAY from the central tomb.

Tawaraya Sotatsu

Waves at Matsushima, second quarter of the 17thCentury

--Zen parable of forgetting one’s assumptions about how the world is put together in a way that de-centers and disorients the viewer in a meditatively productive way

ANTOINE WATTEAU, Return from Cythera, 1717–1719

--Rich patons commissioned fancy works of art that celebrated their care-free lifestyle.  No mention here of the labor of the peasants that enabled them to live (literally) like royalty

--Creamy, sensuous, vivacious pictures that often, like this one, depicted fete galantes (gallant party) subjects.

--This painting, however, shows the end of the party.  People are leaving.  Seems like an age is coming to and end.  And it was.

JEAN-HONORÉ FRAGONARD, The Swing, 1766

--Ribaldry, Lascivious painting that shows the pursuit of love.  Aristocrats, who never had to work for a living, had a lot of time to flirt, it seems.

--Fragonard allows the lightning-bolt power of the tree branches to communicate the energy of the painting.

--Here and for #5 you would do well to mention the word…ROCOCO, right? :D

BENJAMIN WEST, The Death of General Wolfe, 1771

--Set in North America, this shows the climactic scene in the battle for Quebec

--Diagonal line of the flag pole suggests the apotheosis of Wolfe’s soul into heaven

--Based on Religious paintings of the deposition of Christ by earlier artists like Van Der Weyden and Jordaens…so Wolfe is positioned as a Christ-like martyr for his cause.

JACQUES-LOUIS DAVID, The Oath of the Horatii, 1784

--Painted for Louis XVI, but it was eventually reinterpreted as a Revolutionary call to action.

--Extreme gender bifurcation

-- Crisp, linear, didactic.

objectivity

reason

clarity

illustration

linear 

didactic

contained

subjectivity

emotion

obfuscation

evocation

painterly

introspective

transgressive

FRANCISCO GOYA, The Third of May 1808, 1814

--Context of the brutal campaign by Napoleon and his brother Jerome to conquer Spain

--Another Christ-like martyr figure….does this show the limits of Enlightenment?

--Faceless, Automaton soldiers firing like machines….not entirely human

THÉODORE GÉRICAULT, Raft of the Medusa, 1818–1819

Their boat crashes and they create a raft. But they end up cannibalizing the rest of the crew. Eating the dead and surviving off their flesh. The overly muscled bodies were unrealistic. 

EUGÈNE DELACROIX, Death of Sardanapalus, 1826

--Romanticism!!!  See the text in the powerpoint.

--Story of the king who killed all his servant, slaves, and concubines, and burned his palace down instead of letting them/it fall into the hands of his enemy.  Bit of an ego problem.

--Vibrant colors, figures writhing, cut off, hard to follow…not meant to be read unit-by-unit, but as a seething, flowing whole.

JOSEPH MALLORD WILLIAM TURNER, The Slave Ship, 1840

--Illustrates the Zong Affair, e.g. over-insured “Coffin Ships” whose human cargo was worth more dead/”lost at sea” than sick.

--Tumultuous, sublime seascape with churning water and firey colors.

--Impasto (thick brushstrokes) gives the painting texture.

Gustave Gustave Courbet, The Stonebreakers, 1849

--Illustration of hard labor done by most people at the time…Realism text from the powerpoint can help here

--Faceless workers turn them into “everymen.”

--Young and old juxtaposition show that there is no real way to “advance” ones career in stonebreaking.  If one does a good job, the reward is the same lousy pay breaking more stones. 

--Drab colors = monotony of the labor

ÉDOUARD MANET, Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe (Luncheon on the Grass), 1863

--Naked ladies, who have always been a feature of painting/fine art, freaked people out in this case because she was not “clothed in a mythological trope.”

--rejected from the Salon.  Picture that won “picture of the year” in the same Salon was a lubricious Cabanel that was arguably much more obscene that the lady Luncheon on the Grass.

--No discernable narrative.  People didn’t like open-endedness back then….they wanted to be told what was going on.  Manet wanted people to think, instead.  Those with power (naturally) prefer art that discourages free thought. 

Some Characteristics of Modern Art:

ÉDOUARD MANET, A Bar at the Folies-Bergère, 1882

--World-weariness caused by predatory viewing habits.  The painting interrogates those practices as they are deployed by the very people who view the painting.  (She was a prostitute expected to sell herself like an object to a customer at the end of the evening)

--Manet creates this curing the birth of mass advertising which quickly locks onto connections between sexual desire and material consumption

THOMAS EAKINS, The Gross Clinic, 1875

--Psychoanalytic reading of the painting as surrogate portraits of the artists mother and father

--Eakins wanted this to be exhibited as art, but it was exhibited as “Medical Illustration.”

--New sort of intellectual hero…not typical neoclassical heroes from ancient myth or military conquest

CLAUDE MONET, Rouen Cathedral: The Portal (in Sun), 1894

--Part of a series where Monet explored how light reflected off the surface of the structure

--Impressionism.  Artists worked outdoors en plein air, and worked directly on canvas…no preparatory studies.

JAMES ABBOTT MCNEILL WHISTLER, Nocturne in Black and Gold (The Falling Rocket), ca. 1875

--Art made to conjure up a subjective mood

--Synesthesia

--Sued John Ruskin.  Won.  But only a farthing.

VINCENT VAN GOGH, Starry Night, 1889

--Post-Impressionism:  Colors are subjective, and no long bound to describing nature.  All about mood and expressiveness

--Van Gogh painted this while looking out of the window of a mental hospital in Arles.  Many have interpreted the churning sky as a mirror of his soul.

--VERY thick impasto here

AUGUSTE RODIN, Walking Man, 1905

--Impressionism but in sculpture.

--Rodin leaves the surface unpolished so we can see the traces of his hands and fingers.

PABLO PICASSO, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907

First example of cubism from Picasso

Shows two viewpoints of women laying down and two women entering the room.

The lines between form and ground blurs

3 women look out at us, 2 wear masks, and one shows only her profile.

distended/flat

Draws from Sigmund Frued, african masks, Edward Manet, El Greco and Iberian Statues

We're the customers.

ERNST LUDWIG KIRCHNER, Street, Dresden, 1908

There is this cognitive dissonance between people. People don’t want to connect with anyone else. They ignore each other. He chooses to use these angry colors, these dead colors with green faces and red hands. Draws people as gremlins, dead-eyed and wandering. Highly saturated colors.

JACKSON POLLOCK, Number 1, 1950 (Lavender Mist), 1950

Painted on the floor, moved around to paint it.

Allowing the randomness of the falling paint to help.

Usually got into drunken stupors to paint.

Only titled them by number and year finished.

Very masculine and painterly.

Very dense/complex.

Used latex paints that were thinned.

Action painting.

VASSILY KANDINSKY, Improvisation 28 (second version), 1912

Lines of dynamism and force

crisply laid out areas of color

Primary colors used to give a certain amount of energy.

Tries to have the energy impact the viewer.

He hated materialism and basic "stuff"

He would only paint non-objective art. 

Separate viewer from their dependence on material things.

GIACOMO BALLA, Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash, 1912

Interested in speed and based their ideas on the manifestations of speed

the idea of speed is instrsically more beautiful than ancient works

the legs are moving back and forth to show motion

Ballla takes liberties to capture the energy and force of the movement.

Marcel Duchamp Fountain 1917

Looks at everyday objects and disengaged them from any kind of real function.

Took a urinal, turned it upside down, and called it art.

Humorous and trickster.

The name is a fake name that he chose.

Drove everyone mad and they tried to get him charged with fraud.

PIET MONDRIAN, Composition in Red, Blue, and Yellow, 1930

He started by drawing windmills

Started with expressionism and moved to abstractism

essentialized balace

This piece has asymmetrical balance.

"Art should be spiritual and not reality."

Nothing but lines, squares, rectangles, the primary colors and neutrals.

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT, Kaufmann House (Fallingwater), Bear Run, Pennsylvania, 1936–1939

Seamlessly integrates the homes into their environments.

Built over a waterfall where the owner used to play as a boy.

Buries the skeleton of the house into the bedrock.

Uses local and riverbed stone to decorate and floor the home.

Very open planned home.

A little balcony that literally makes the creek the heart of the home.

ANDY WARHOL, Marilyn Diptych, 1962

A person who is literally converted into a product/object.

Takes a publicity photo and altars the colors.

Everything is overdone and too much/almost hideous.

The Ugly overdone celebrity symbol.

She's been changed so much that she's this shell of a human being.

"You've seen one blonde actress, you've seen them all."

Hyper intensity that fades out and disappears.

TONY SMITH, Die, 1962

Industrial Products arranged with minimal artistic flare

7 feet per side

Imposing and huge steel cube.

You were forced to face this cube and pay attention to it.

You're made aware of your own existence.

MARCEL DUCHAMP, Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2, 1912

Shown at the Armory show and got some serious attention.

A New York critic called it "an explosion in a shingle factory."

Because of this review, everyone had to come out to see it!

Duchamp was actually impressed by their honesty.

HEavily influenced by cubism and futurism, through the movement.

The nude model progresses down the stairs, slice by slice.