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Baroque Art, 17 th Century. Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith Slaying Holofernes , 1614-20, Uffizi, Florence, Italy. Italian Baroque artists embraced a more dynamic and complex aesthetic.
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Baroque Art, 17th Century Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith Slaying Holofernes, 1614-20, Uffizi, Florence, Italy. • Italian Baroque artists embraced a more dynamic and complex aesthetic. • …dramatic theatricality, grandiose scale, and elaborate ornateness…characterized… the art and architecture. • Baroque art production further suggests the role art played in supporting the aims of the [Catholic] Church. -Gardner’s Art Through the Ages, 11th Ed. Bernini, David, 1623, Galleria Borghese, Rome. Bernini, baldacchino, 1623-24, St. Peter’s, Vatican City. Bernini, Trevi Fountain, 1629-1762, Rome.
Baroque art reaches out to people and provokes action. • Baroque paintings are filled with dramatic movement, striking contrasts of light and dark, vivid colors, and earthly realism. • Baroque artists depicted the heroic acts of martyrs and saints to inspire the lower classes to accept their own suffering and not lose faith.
Baroque Art & Architecture Frans Hals, Archers of Saint Hadrian, Haarlem, 1633. Mansart & LeBrun, Hall of Mirrors, Versailles, France, 1680. Vermeer, Girl with a Pearl Earring, Mauritshuis, The Hague. Caravaggio, Conversion of St. Paul, Sta. Maria del Popolo, Rome, 1601. Rembrandt, Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp, 1632, Mauritshuis, The Hague.
Neoclassical Art, 18th C. • One of the defining characteristics of the late 18th century was a renewed interest in classical antiquity. • The Neoclassical movement encompassed painting, sculpture, but architecture is regarded as the most prominent manifestation of this interest & fascination with Greek and Roman culture. • The geometric harmony of classical art & architecture seemed to embody Enlightenment ideals. • Greco-Roman traditions of liberty, civic virtue, morality, and patriotic sacrifice served as ideal models. • The Neoclassical style became the French Revolution’s semiofficial voice. Ingres, Apotheosis of Homer, 1827, Louvre, Paris. Boyle & Kent, Chiswick House, London, 1725.
Neoclassical Art Soufflot, the Pantheon, Paris, 1755-92. Elisabeth Louise Vigee-LeBrun, Self-Portrait, 1790, Uffizi, Florence. Angelica Kauffmann, Cornelia Presenting Her Children as Her Treasures, 1785, Virginia. Pierre Vignon, La Madeleine, Paris, 1807-42.
Antonio Canova: Apollo Crowning Himself Italian, 1781 Marble H: 33 3/8 in. 95.SA.71 As Ovid told the story in his Metamorphoses, when the beautiful nymph Daphne finally escaped the pursuing Apollo by turning into a laurel tree, the Roman god of music and poetry pledged his unrequited love: Although you cannot be my wife, you shall at least, be my tree; I shall always wear you on my hair, on my quiver, O Laurel. In this marble, half-life-size statue inspired by this episode of the Metamorphoses, Apollo crowns himself with a laurel wreath. Nude except for sandals, his lyre hangs on the tree trunk that supports a piece of rumpled drapery. He stands in contrapposto, a balanced stance characterized by the opposition of straight and bent limbs, in a moment of reflection after the dramatic chase. Apollo's nudity, his broad, muscular chest, and his relaxed, balanced pose all recall famous antique representations of the god. But while sculptor Antonio Canova clearly emulated several antiques, his Apollo is not a copy of an already existing statue. The commission for the marble was the result of a competition organized by Don Abbondio Rezzonico, nephew of the Venetian Pope Clement XIII. It is Canova's first fully classicizing work, carved in the Neoclassical style for which he soon became famous.
Elisabeth-Louise Vigee-Le Brun: Vicomtesse de Vaudreuil French, 1785 Oil on panel 32 3/4 x 25 1/2 in. 85.PB.443 On an oval panel, a young woman poses in front of a landscape. Smiling slightly, she looks candidly out at the viewer. The sitter, Victoire-Pauline de Riquet de Carama, was an aristocrat and her status improved when she married Jean-Louis, Vicomte de Vaudreuil in 1781. The artist Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun emphasized the Vicomtesse's status and refinement by carefully describing her fashionable straw hat, silk dress, and gauze scarf, collar, and cuffs. Displaying her learning, the Vicomtesse places her right thumb in her book to mark her place, as if she has been interrupted while reading. Vigée Le Brun adopted this obvious gesture, often used in men's portraits, to illustrate women's importance in French Enlightenment circles.
Romanticism, 18th-19th Centuries: “Trust your heart rather than your head.” Goya, Saturn Devouring One of His Children, 1819-1823, Prado, Madrid, Spain. • Reaction against neoclassicism’s emphasis on reason and order; inspired by Rousseau’s Social Contract: “Man is born free, yet everywhere he is in chains!” • Emphasis on emotion in art, individual liberty, ending social injustices, and achieving democracy; the path to freedom was through imagination and feeling (rather than reason and thinking) • Romantic artists to know: Delacroix, Goya, Gericault, Turner “I am like no one in the whole world. I may be no better, at least I am different.” -Rousseu Franciso de Goya, The Family of Charles IV, 1800, Prado, Madrid, Spain.
Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People, 1830, Louvre, Paris. Gericault, Raft of the Medusa, 1818-1819, Louvre, Paris. Delacroix, Death of Sardanapalus, 1826, Louvre, Paris. Turner, The Slave Ship, 1840, Boston, MA.
Realism, mid-19th Century • Industrialization and urbanization spread from England to the U.S. and the Continent of Europe in the 19th Century. • Western cities grew dramatically due to migration from rural areas due to new job opportunities, as well as improving health and living conditions. • Scientific advances led to industrial growth. • Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection promoted an interest in science and challenged traditional Christian beliefs, which led to the rise of secularism. • Darwin’s theory was applied to socioeconomics in that those that industrialized became the most economically “fit” companies and countries. This was used to justify Western racism, imperialism, nationalism, and militarism going into the early 20th Century. • Industrialization & Social Darwinism were the justification for the colonization by Western nations of peoples they believed were inferior to them on a social and national hierarchy. Edouard Manet, Olympia, 1863, Musee d’Orsay, Paris. Gustave Courbet, The Stone Breakers, 1849, Dresden.
Karl Marx & Class Struggle • Marx believed those that controlled the means of production did so at the expense of the exploitation of the laborer. (Haves vs. Have-nots) • He hoped to create a socialist state in which the workers would seize power and destroy capitalism. • His theory of class struggle appealed to the oppressed and led to the rise of trade unions and socialist groups. Jean-Francois Millet, The Gleaners, 1857, Louvre, Paris. Honore Daumier, Rue Transnonain, 1834, lithograph, Philadelphia.
Paintings of Modern Life • Realism is considered the first modernist movement. • Artists and writers of the realist movement were reevaluating “reality” and focused on only what they could see and experience on a daily basis. • They did not paint fictional subjects because they were not real nor visible in the present world. • Realists portrayed scenes that were not considered worthy prior to this period. Scenes of laborers, peasants, and daily life. Gustave Courbet, Burial at Ornans, 1849, Louvre, Paris. Honore Daumier, The Third Class Carriage, 1862, The Met, NY.
Dada, post-WWI • WWI horrified many artists and writers. • Millions were killed, wounded, or missing. • The devastation resulting from the use of artillery, gas attacks, machine guns, and the stalemate of trench warfare had a deep psychological affect on those that had believed in progress and civilization occurring in the late 19th century. Marcel Duchamp, Fountain, 1917
“Dada means nothing. We want to change the world with nothing.”--Richard Huelsenbeck • The Dada movement was a reaction to “the butchery of WWI,” and began independently in New York and Zurich, but spread. • It was more “a state of mind” than a movement • They believed reason and logic had been responsible for the War and the only way to salvation was through political anarchy and the irrational • Dada art is thus “absurd,” unconventional, and pessimistic • Artists showed contempt for all traditional and established values Raoul Hausmann, Mechanic Head, 1919-20)
Surrealism, 1924 • Dada led to Surrealism-aspects of Dadaism, but serious art • Wanted to explore ways to express in art the dream world and the unconscious-areas deep within the human psyche • Sought to bring both inner and outer “reality” together • Some surrealists use more abstract techniques (Joan Miro), while others used recognizable images in a dream-like world (Dali) Joan Miro, Characters and Birds with Dog
Rene Magritte, The Treachery of Images, 1928-29 Frida Kahlo, Girl with a Death Mask, 1937
Salvador Dali The Persistence of Memory, 1931 An allegory of empty space where time has ended The Burning Giraffe, 1937
"[A]s I have never seen anything but fields since I was born, I try to say as best I can what I saw and felt when I was at work," wrote Jean-François Millet. At the Salon of 1863, Man with a Hoe caused a storm of controversy. The man in the picture was considered brutish and frightening by Parisian bourgeoisie. The Industrial Revolution had caused a steady exodus from French farms, and Man with a Hoe was interpreted as a socialist protest about the peasant's plight. Though his paintings were judged in political terms, Millet declared that he was neither a socialist nor an agitator. A religious fatalist, Millet believed that man was condemned to bear his burdens. This farmer is Everyman. His face is lit, yet composed of blots of color that give him no individuality. He is big and dirty and utterly exhausted by the backbreaking work of turning this rocky, thistle-ridden earth into a productive field like the one being worked in the distance. A tribute to dignity and courage in the face of a life of unremitting exertion, Man with a Hoe was long considered a symbol of the laboring class. Jean Francois MilletMan with a Hoe
Two milliners sit at a dramatically angled worktable, their bodies partly obscured by the shadowed hat stands that crowd their work space. Seen as little more than a silhouette, the figure at right works carefully on a hat. Her attentiveness is not shared by her older counterpart who, though grasping a swath of pink fabric, appears lost in thought, gazing beyond the frame with a disquieting expression. The brightly colored ribbons--pink, yellow, orange, and green--draw attention to the drabness of the room and its inhabitants. His voyeuristic yet empathetic portrait of the milliner's private world focuses on the physical hardship of their work. The woman at the left embodies the painter's concern; even at rest, her wiry body and pallid skin registers a life of hard work and meager reward. Edgar Degas The Milliners
Portrait of the Marquise de Miramon, née, Thérèse Feuillant (Joseph Tissot) Costumed in the latest style and surrounded by fashionable decorative objects, the Marquise de Miramon wears a rose colored, ruffled peignoir, or dressing gown. Around her neck are a black lace scarf and a silver cross. Reflecting the new European fascination with Japanese art, behind her is a Japanese screen depicting cranes on a gold ground, and on the mantelpiece are several pieces of Japanese ceramics. The needlework on the Louis XVI stool indicates that the subject is a noble woman of leisure, and the eighteenth-century terracotta bust suggests her husband's aristocratic heritage. Thérèse -Stephanie-Sophie Feuillant (1836-1912) was from a wealthy bourgeois family. She inherited a fortune from her father and in 1860 she married Réne de Cassagnes de Beaufort, Marquis de Miramon. She stands in the Château de Paulhac, Auvergne, her husband's family seat. Tissot painted many fashionable women during his career, but he held this work in particularly high regard. In 1866, he wrote to request, and received, permission to borrow the painting and submit it to the Paris World Fair, where it was seen in public for the first time.
Belgian, Ostend, 1888 Oil on canvas 99 1/2 x 169 1/2 in. 87.PA.96 James Ensor took on religion, politics, and art in this scene of Christ entering contemporary Brussels in a Mardi Gras parade. In response to the French pointillist style, Ensor used palette knives, spatulas, and both ends of his brush to put down patches of colors with expressive freedom. He made several preparatory drawings for the painting, including one in the J. Paul Getty Museum's collection. Ensor's society is a mob, threatening to trample the viewer--a crude, ugly, chaotic, dehumanized sea of masks, frauds, clowns, and caricatures. Public, historical, and allegorical figures along with the artist's family and friends made up the crowd. The haloed Christ at the center of the turbulence is in part a self-portrait: mostly ignored, a precarious, isolated visionary amidst the herdlike masses of modern society. Ensor's Christ functioned as a political spokesman for the poor and oppressed--a humble leader of the true religion, in opposition to the atheist social reformer Emile Littré, shown in bishop's garb holding a drum major's baton leading on the eager, mindless crowd. After rejection by Les XX, the artists' association that Ensor had helped to found, the painting was not exhibited publicly until 1929. Ensor displayed Christ's Entry prominently in his home and studio throughout his life. With its aggressive, painterly style and merging of the public with the deeply personal, Christ's Entry was a forerunner of twentieth-century Expressionism.
French, 1892 Oil on canvas 44 x 61 7/8 in. 88.PA.58 Henri Rousseau commemorated the one-hundredth anniversary of the proclamation of the first French Republic in 1792. Peasants dance the farandole, a popular southern French dance, around three liberty trees and two female figures representing the First and Third Republics. Rousseau copied the dancers from a French magazine illustration but added waving banners, the liberty poles, and the allegorical figures. A wagon in the background is full of costumed musicians, reminiscent of parades the artist had seen. He used brilliant colors and solid forms to express the happiness of the scene symbolizing good government. To the right, the erect posture of the dignified republican leaders signals the solidity of the French Republic.
Joseph Mallord William TurnerVan Tromp, Going About to Please His Masters
English, 1844 Oil on canvas 36 x 48 in. 93.PA.32 In this narrative history painting, Joseph Mallord William Turner expressed the power of nature and the heroism of man through the eyes of a Romantic painter. Turner used quick, slanting brushstrokes to describe the stormy sky. The application of scumbled white paint suggests churning, turbulent seas and the heavy spray of waves hitting the ship's bow. Tones of brown paint near the bottom of the canvas give a sense of the sea's violent power. On the foredeck of a ship that strains against the waves, a man stands in a white uniform and waves with confidence. While scholars are uncertain of the exact historical event Turner described, one probable interpretation is that the man depicted here is Dutch naval officer Cornelis Van Tromp, who was dismissed from naval service in 1666 after failing to follow orders. Van Tromp was reinstated in service and reconciled with his navy superiors in 1673. In perhaps a symbolic overture signaling his submission to authority, Tromp is shown, in Turner's words, "going about to please his Masters."
French, 1818 Oil on canvas 34 1/2 x 40 1/2 in. 87.PA.27 Fixing the viewer with a dreamy gaze, the fair-haired Telemachus grasps Eucharis's thigh with his right hand while holding his sword upright with the other. In the 1699 French novel Les Aventures de Télémaque, loosely based on characters from the Odyssey, the author Fénelon describes how Telemachus, the son of Odysseus, fell passionately in love with the beautiful nymph Eucharis. His duty as a son, however, required that he end their romance and depart in search of his missing father. The ill-fated lovers say farewell in a grotto on Calypso's island. Facing towards us, Telemachus's blue tunic falls open to reveal his naked torso. Eucharis, seen in profile, encircles Telemachus's neck and gently rests her head upon his shoulder in resignation. In this way, Jacques-Louis David contrasts masculine rectitude with female emotion. David painted The Farewell of Telemachus and Eucharis during his exile in Brussels. The use of saturated reds and blues contrasted with flesh-tones and combined with a clarity of line and form typifies the Neoclassical style, which is characteristic of David's late history paintings.