Bernini: Ecstasy of St. Theresa, 1647-1652

• Gesamtkunstwerk

• A total work of art; combining different styles (music, architecture, sculpture, like an opera with stage design, dancing, etc)

• Marbles floor, fresco above, sculpture in back

• Poronoro family who commissioned the work in box office reading from the diary of St. Theresa (a nun who had visions; feeling of being pierced with an error of God’s / Christ’s love that was simultaneously painful and beautiful, agonising and a state of ecstasy

• Asserting spirituality

• St. There is floating on a crowd in a visionary state; angel holds arrow about to pierce her  

• Bernini uses rods to look like rays of light, windows above shine light onto them which adds the supernatural to the scene

• Sexual innuendo; arrow looks like it is directed to her nether regions and St. Theresa is in ecstacy: most appropriate analogy for ecstasy is sex; love that transcends reality

• Angel about to thrust arrow into her heart

• Sexual innuendo: providing a point reference for the experience

• Recalls: spiritual exercises published in diaries by Catholic church in response to reformation

• Bernini leaves part of the marble unfinished (clouds) → dynamic movements

Palace of Versailles (the overall concept), 1661-1715

• Norte, Brun, Vau, and Mansart

• Louis XIV Moves royal house to Versailles, 12 miles outside of Paris

• Apartments are on second floor

• Emblem of sun on gate

• Presented himself in the court throughout the day: performance for court, court needs to follow suit.

   

  Physical Layout

• Ceremonial bedroom
• Sacred and secular area

• Division of who belongs where

• Richly embellished and colored cloth

• Largest construction project at the time in Europe; 75,000 works

• Economic stimulus and boost

• Hall of mirrors; very expensive to contract (used to have gold and silver tress and furniture)

• Mirrors reflect windows on other side of the room; expansive and light

• Windows were very expensive to construct

• Mirrors: wanted construction in France —> invited mirror manufacturers; they were executed for exposing trade secrets

• Andre le Notre

• Emblem of power and reign

• Designed gardens

• Nature is tamed

• Exotic trees (ex: orange trees)

• Manicured lawn —> French Garden Design

• Louis XIV’s domain and control of nature: appearance of structure and organization

• Areas for stage production

• Fountains and constructed lakes

• Effect of rising out of water; drama of Apollo

• Jean-Baptiste Tuby, Apollo Fountain, 1671

• Every royal court in Europe came to emulate the French style and Versailles

• Like Apollo, Louis was often attended by many people, like Apollo with the nymphs, lots of women, center of attention

• Classic style made grand and pompous

• Francis Girardon, Apollo Attended by Nymphs, 1666-1667

Ruisdael, View of Haarlem, 1670

• People bleaching lenin: important part of societies economy

• Industrial pride

• Contrast of work and religion

• Graced by god; they were doing it right

• Attention to detail and everyday life; this painting is a celebration of life!

• IMportant landscape painter

Jean-Antoine Watteau: Pilgrimage to the Island of Cythera, 1717

• Watteau was from Belgium, but as France was center of art he moved there.

• Term: fete galante

• Amourous gatherings/festivals

• Enters this piece into a major contest for royal academy

• They don't quite know how to classify this → own category of fete galante

• Academy’s loves history painting/royal portraits/easily classifiable scenes.

• Displays natural gardens of 18th century

• Amorous couples; leaving the Island or going to it? → Ambiguity

• Elites (artists) leading schools and academies, got their pupils works sold and displayed

• Diagnosed with tuberculosis early on; spent many years suffering until death

• Impending knowledge of this own death

• Cythera

• Birthplace of Aphrodite/Venus

• Sculpture of her with roses in right

• Conch shell in left of image; Aphrodite was born and came in on a conch shell

• Background: sunset or sunrise? Blossoming new love entering into, or sunset and they must return from the Island to their lives?

• Speaks to the fleeting nature of love; their will be an end one way or another. Royalty: marriage for alliances and not love.

• Speaking to the pastimes of the nobility; dressed luxuriously. Market that he is addressing; trees look fluffy, English garden design.

• Rococo period; like a cupcake, intimate, pastel, lighter, associated with major important women of the day. Ex: Catherine the Great, Louis XV’s mistresses. Is the lesser version of what you would see in the Baroque.

• Dog: might represent fidelity

• Swords set aside: about love, imtancy, and fun

Francois Boucher: Brown Odalisque, 1745

• Becomes most renowned when Watteau dies, replaces him

• Becomes favorite painter of Madame de Pompadour

• Was married when Louis XV met her (met at a masquerade when she was dresses and Diana), very intelligent and well read, introduces Louis to Voltaire. A very influential woman, came to give Louis advice on how to run the country and how to rule.

• Influential to court and politics: trusted adviser for a long time

• When she died Louis XV was devastated

• This painting was her “unofficial” portrait

• Painted as a concubine; given to Louis as a present, sensuous and sexual. Sexually available woman. Like the perception of what a concubine would be like.

• Rococo; pastels, frilly, done in a lighthearted tone, humor, jokes of aristocrats

Fragonard: The Swing, 1767

• Boucher’s student. Traveled to Italy, and also painted for the aristocracy.

• Became painter to Louis XV other important mistress, Madame du Barry

• Done for Baron de Saint-Julien who is on the left getting a view up his mistress’ skirt, she is kicking off her shoe at statue (cupid who is placing finger to his mouth and trying to show discretion).

• She is being swung by a clergyman in the back: Baron de Saint-Julien patron saint was the clergy (he is receiving from the clergy the gift of his mistress)

Hogarth, Marriage a la Mode, 1743

• Series conveys much of the English sentiment toward monarchy.

• Rococo style

• What takes place in the painting: a marriage between separate classes. Man and woman disinterested in one another

• “Breakfast Scene”- shows moral and financial bankruptcy of aristocracy

• “Quack Doctor” - shows husband with mistress visiting a doctor- Hogarth is saying this class of people don’t abide by the new logic

• “Death of the Earl” final installment - wife’s lover has stabbed husband while wife begs for forgiveness

   

Jacques-Louis David, Death of Socrates, 1787

• He was a businessman- neoclassicist

• Shows shift in style in Rococo

• Socrates was condemned to death

• Anti-democratic and he stands for his ethics

• He is looking to Greco-Roman style

• Even classical style shows on the figures

• Highly admired by Thomas Jefferson

Jacques-Louis David, Death of Marat, 1793

• Painted during the “Reign of Terror”

• There was mass slaughtering of the aristocrats

• Shows the influence of Caravaggio

• The arm references to the hand of Jesus

• Teneberism

Jacques-Louis David, Napoleon in his Study, 1812

• He is bringin reform

• Artists admired Napoleon

• Napoleon was successful during the French Revolution

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Grand Odalisque, 1814

• Showing exoitic women; avaible

• Crispness in painting that Inges is known for

• Singe hair brush; line by line exactness

• Body type exaggerated; torso is really long, extension of spine and curvature, tiny feet, woman of pleasure, supposed to be from middle east (looks very European)

• Looked to Italian mannerism; elongated to look more graceful

• Women for male consumption, to imagine sexually

• Smell: fresh and perfumey, or maybe nothing it’s so clean

Eugène Delacroix, Women of Algiers, 1834

• Had actually been to the middle east as an artist and on a diplomatic journey; got access into an Herom. Direct interpretation of what he saw.

• Still stereotypes and same fantasies perpetrated by Europe BUT we do get a sense that Delacroix’s is more accurate: regular proportions, more of a background

• One woman is smoking hookah, atmosphere, shoes taken off; better context

• Smell: Incense, hookah

Caspar David Friedrich, Abbey in the Oak Forest, 1810

• Painted soo many graveyards; asked about it; said you must submit yourself so many times to death to one day obtain eternal life, almost an obsession with death: close to after life = close to death

• Based on a real abbey ruins, graveyard in close proximity

• Solitary cross

• Sense of abandonment

• Evoke things from you and make you contemplate, bring you to the sublime moment; feeling it and wanting to make others feel the same thing

• The abbey is a ruin instead of a full and intact church, graves falling over, forgotten people, pockets of history in an abandoned graveyard

• Monks in procession, moving and carrying a cross to bury deceased

• Season: winter; season of death, bare trees, sunset towards the end of life, snow on the ground → contemplation of death

John Constable, The Wheat Field, 1816

• Show labors of the month, associated with religious calendars

• Poor people; come in after crop had already been picked to gather the remains for their livelihood. Parliament tried to end this practice. Crappy timing; year without a summer, volcanic explosion on Mount dabur in Indonesia, cant see the sun all summer long, catastrophic for crops → immense poverty and hunger

• “No rake taken here what heaven all bestows, Children of want, for you the bounty flows!” -his stance on painting

• Painted during the summer without summer

• Beautiful countryside with political and social implications

• Elgarian life, simplicity and beauty that is disappearing very quickly with industrial revolution

Joseph Turner, The Slave Ship, 1840

• Based on book he read on the abolition of slavery. By this time slavery had ended in England, but not other parts of the world.

• Book details the throwing off of 133 sickly slaves so that captain could get insurance for the slaves (would not get money for sickly slave, but if they were lost at sea you would through insurance)  

• Shackles, sharks eating slaves thrown overboard

• Dramatic and chaotic

• Without industrialization, things like this would not have happened, since industrialization requires labor and raw material

• Have to outsource other nations

• Gruesome story told in beautiful landscape

• 9 by 12 feet; HUGE brings you into scene

Albert Bierstadt, Among the Sierra Nevada Mountains, 1868

• German

• Manifest Destiny: American belief that God had set the land out for them; to expand from sea to shining sea; God given right and destiny  

• Made people want to go to West; painted to encourage western expansion; manipulation, sky opens up in divine way, deer, birds

• Eden

• Building roads to get their required mass, cheap labor

Joseph Paxton, Crystal Palace, 1850-1851, Iron and glass, prefabricated parts

• Prince albert decides to have a large mass exhibition of fruits of contemporary labor  

• Won competition to create exhibition hall, master gardener

• Prefabricated material: epitomizes overwhelming nature of industrialization

• Took 9 months due to iron and sheet class developed during this time era, go up and taken down quickly

• 6 million visitors

• Taken to another location and burned down

• Innovative technological project

• Put in London

• Encompassed some of the trees on site at Hyde Park

• Queen Victoria at Inauguration, 1851

• 14,000 exhibitions

• Also showed colonial exports, people would dress in costume to feed imagination of expectations of other cultures; contrast b/w Western and non-western world, superiority complex   

• Basilica plan, what kind of building is it? Greenhouse like! Usually grow exoctic plants. Collection of exotica

Gustave Courbet: Burial at Ornans, 1849

• Father of realism

• Louis Philippe forced to abdicate throne in 1848 after revolution

• Social tensions; working class unhappy → social movements

• → Restoration of the Bonaparte; Napoleon's nephew becomes king and dismantles the democratic assembly and becomes like uncle

• Tumultuous period for France; things that shake the foundation about how humans think about themselves and God

• Buried romanticism with this painting, considered the father of realism

• Exhibits at French salon; absolutely scandalous

• 20 feet long; massive, stage like setting.

• Why was it scandalous?

• Background very natural, not dramatic or romantic, grey morose day (muted, bland, dark color palette)

• Makes you feel that death is pointless; people are not observing what's going on, detached and some people moving away, some of the clergy board

• Depicting what a long tedious funeral would look like; some people paying attention, some not, some crying, some don’t give a damn

• Cold hard facts

• Grave is in foreground, essentially just a pit you can just throw bones in, dog standing nearby, kind of looks very undramatic, focus not even on grave

• “Show me an angel, and I’ll paint you an angel.” Very much painting what's going on, and there are no angels ascending in real life

• No afterlife, no soul, people are confused and a bit outrage. From dust to dust vibe.

• Regardless, he becomes very famous for this controversy; might want to raise eyebrows because you will get your name out their and get commissions etc. Creates his own exhibition spaces called “Pavilion of Realism” that he curated, supports socialism in his work, is jailed for a little while.

Manet, Olympia, 1863

• Father of modernism

• Artists not accepted into the salon rebel; Napoleon III went around essentially saying he didn't see the difference, sets up new salon “of the refused artists” which becomes very popular and free on sunday

• Massive scandal

• Horrifying for French public and art critics

• Manet; bridges the realism of Courbet with the impressionism of the impressionists

• Nude reclining figure

• Olympia; name given to women prostitutes in popular fiction of the time; based on his favorite model Victorine (who was not a prostitute)

• Very real; not like previous expected nudes from Greek mythology, painting actual women in France

• Already having presence of photography and influence of photography on painting; showing contemporary world as it is

• Reclining, wearing consumer high-heel shoes, black cat that is arching its back most likely because it is a cat in heat (carnal animal), getting a bouquet of flowers likely from a suitor

• Olympia’s face and body; challenging the gaze of the viewer, consumer/client is us as we are the ones looking at her and we are essentially purchasing her by looking at her; hand on public region suggesting that it’s not for free, you will get this when you pay for this, very forceful looking, women in charge of that economy and not giving you what you want unless you pay for it; playing with you as viewer looking at her and enjoying her but its not totally free

• Pornography in painted form

Manet: Luncheon on the Grass, 1863

• Similarly horrifying

• Using prototypes for Renaissance art and traditional topics, but making them in present reality

• Very well trained; theorized about art, intellectually aware, doing everything he is doing on purpose

• Based on 16th century engraving

• Why is this not excepted?

• Nude female figure in unflattering harsh light with clothed male figures, one a sculpter friend and one a brother, also Victorine modeling

• Set next to spilled food, comparing to food itself, sexual ravishing, fruitful fertility, disrobed here

• Sex may happen behind bushes etc.

• Probably also a prostitute

• Aware of the excitement photography brings; questions going on, what is painting?

• Explains shift in painting away from complete realism

• Depicting realism, pushing reality further, how?

• People seem much lighter than the area around them; harsh lighting

• Perspective seems a little off; women in the background who appears to be bathing is the same size as the people in the foreground

• Father of modern movement! What he is doing is saying, “I don’t have to give you the perfect reflection that a camera can do, I will do what painting does.” When you reduce painting to basics, what is it? Paint and canvas. Upmost reality of what painting is! Claiming authority as a realist in painting by using exactly what painting is.

• Following some conventions of composition but pushing them and tweaking them

Niepce: View from a Window at Le Gras, 1827

• Lawyer by training; retired to estate to experiment with how to fix and image and chemical process.

• The sun etches an image into a metal plate

• First recorded photograph

• Used lavender oil and other strange chemicals

• Earliest photographs have a long exposure time, has to be of something stationary and not people, leaves out for hours

Monet, Sunrise, 1872

• Impressionism!

• Painted on vacation

• Labeled this painting with what he felt to be an appropriate label

• Contrast to industrial cities; backdrop of smokestacks to beautiful sunrise and water in foreground

• Paint and oil tubes...new invention! No longer have to mix pigments, have ready made pigments to take out side, squeeze onto palette and paint.

• Plein Air-go outside to paint

• Captures the way light falls; camera and photography exists because of light, and so impressionists capture this with paint and color

• Monet studied things in a detached and photographic way, such as the way light falls

• Colors: new color theory had come out suggesting that similar colors in different shades side by side would lighten a painting; complementary colors (if you stare at a certain color in the light and close your eyes, you should see the complementary colors; ex: see green to close eyes and see an afterimage of red)

Monet, Haystacks, 1890

• Plein air: painting outside

• Small canvases (23⅝ by 39⅜ inches)

• Takes several small canvases and premixed pigments with him

• Paints as quickly as he possibly can to paint the light as it falls! Tries to capture the light at different times of day!

• Different colors and lighting speak to the instant nature of what he sees; like photography, capturing the moment. When the moment passed, he would take out a different canvas and start again.

• Subject does not matter; haystacks are not important! What matters is the light; focus is light and color and how it is perceived in the eye in that particular moment. Very scientific approach; not meant to draw emotion, but an empirical observation of the way he saw light and color hit. Extension of realism; capture moment and the reality of the moment  

Monet, Water Lilies, 1890s-1926

• Painted in his garden; did well selling his painting and bought a house with garden; became an avid gardener!

• Light and colors change according to seasons and weather; always fresh and new, again focus on light and color

• Eyes deteriorate with age; work becomes more and more painterly

• Influences later artists like Jackson Pollock; inspired by seeing dabs of paint on large canvases; massive scale of just paint on canvas