art history

Time Period: 450-1050 Merovingian Art (France) Hiberno-Saxon Art (British Isles) Mass migrations across Europe  "Dark Ages" desperation; stability achieved  Monasteries centers of learning  Manuscripts; scribes important in society; illustrators; freedom of expression  Decoration of manuscript art: codices  Painted by monks or nuns Books covered in bindings of wood and leather; gold leaf  Portable; animals in designs  Fibula: clasp to fasten garments Merovingian: internal struggles, civil wars  rulers exploited kingdom's wealth, lived lavishly  personal jewelry items popular, such as brooches, discs, pins, earrings, and bracelets  objects inlaid with harsh stones such as garnets  Hiberno-Saxon Art:  exceptional handling of color and form  specialized in illuminated manuscripts  relies on complicated patterns; ornamented 

Time Period: 1872-1880 Painters worked in plein-air; artificial atmosphere inhibited artistic expression; artists moved out to capture the effects of atmosphere and light  Relied on the transient, the quick, and the fleeting  Impressionist brushstrokes seek to capture the effects of light  Times of day and seasons affect the appearance of objects  Spectacular color range; stark contrasts to subtle harmonies  Concentrate on landscape and still life painting  Influence of Japanese art; imitated flatness; compositional qualities Anti academic and antibourgeois  Monet most important figure

Art Period: 1789-1848 The French Revolution, European revolts.  Freedom in France inspired other revolutions as well Romantics espoused social independence, freedom, individual thought, expression  Opposes Enlightenment: based on emotion rather than reason  Pleasure seeking, audaciousness; extremes of human behaviors Delacroix and Goya most important figures  Romantics enjoyed a state of melancholy; depressed mindset Development of photography; new art form; no academies, formal teachings  Photographs rejected as works of art; marginalized populations used cameras as they were accessible; First instance of equal opportunity in the arts Architecture: Architecture characterized by a revival of nearly every style of the past; modern living corrupted by the Industrial Revolution; nostalgic of medieval times  Medieval art revived, as well as Egyptian, Islamic and Baroque  Bath homes in England done in Islamic style; Opera houses in Paris a...

Rococo: 1700-1750 Neoclassicism: 1750-1815 Period of European conquest Armies became too expensive European settlers built Baroque and Rococo inspired homes and imported Rococo fashions and garments in the new world Death of Louis XIV in France: less power in the hands of the king and more in the nobility  Rococo departs from the Baroque interest in royalty; aristocratic; Paris became the "hub" instead of Versailles  Industrial Revolution brought machinery work and inhumane working conditions; mass production and technological innovation  Population boomed  The Enlightenment; ideas based on logic rather than spirituality  Transformational movements in European politics  Rome became a location of inspiration and tradition, but not of progress Historical paintings and portraits were most important  Rococo: Shift of power to the aristocrats paralleled in Baroque and Rococo. French Royal Academy set the taste for art in Paris Strong...

Villa Savoye. Poissy‐sur‐Seine, France. Le Corbusier (architect). 1929 C.E. Steel and reinforced concrete. The Villa Savoye at Poissy, designed by Le Corbusier in 1929, represents the culmination of a decade during which the architect worked to articulate the essence of modern architecture. Throughout the 1920s, Le Corbusier considered the nature of modern life and architecture’s role in the new machine age.  Located just outside Paris, the Villa Savoye offered an escape from the crowded city for its wealthy patrons.  Its location on a large unrestricted site allowed Le Corbusier total creative freedom. The delicate floating box that he designed is both functional house and modernist sculpture, elegantly melding form and function. Le Corbusier lavished praise on the totems of modernity—race cars, airplanes, and factories—marveling at the beauty of their efficiency.  During the 1920s, Le Corbusier designed a series of houses which allowed him to develop his ...

Goldfish. Henri Matisse. 1912 C.E. Oil on canvas. Goldfish became a recurring subject in the work of Henri Matisse. Goldfish, 1912 belongs to a series that Matisse produced between spring and early summer 1912. However, unlike the others, the focus here centers on the fish themselves.  The goldfish immediately attract our attention due to their color. The bright orange strongly contrasts with the more subtle pinks and greens that surround the fish bowl and the blue-green background. Blue and orange, as well as green and red, are complementary colors and, when placed next to one another, appear even brighter.  Although he subsequently softened his palette, the bold orange is reminiscent of Matisse’s fauvist years, which continued to influence his use of color throughout his career. But why was Henri Matisse so interested in goldfish? One clue may be found in his visit to Tangier, Morocco; he noted how the local population would day-dream for hours, gazing into gol...

Les Demoiselles d’Avignon . Pablo Picasso. 1907 C.E. Oil on canvas. A street associated with prostitution; a brothel Cubism is a radical break from the traditions of the Renaissance; chiaroscuro, linear perspective, manipulation of light are irrelevant Picasso was in love with illusionism, here he destroys it Ideas about sexuality, confrontational painting Women look at us directly, engage the viewer No stylistic coherence; many styles Figures are really close to us; no space behind or between some shadow, some highlighting; deconstruction of three dimensional form.  Can art be raw, ugly?  African masks represent danger France’s colonialism; France had large possessions from Africa; a rtists knew very little of the cultures these works came from Expresses flatness; visual language to represent modern culture.  First cubist work; no alluring poses; dichotomy in painting; others lightly painted, others roughly; multiple views expressed at the same time;...

Mont Sainte Victoire . Paul Cézanne. 1902–1904 C.E. Oil on canvas. Impressionist paintings usually done on-site, rapidly, in the moment Artist died two years after it was completed; feels unfinished; trees half formed, white canvas visible; mountain seems to be in the process of forming  We can see clouds, trees, skies, farmland, mountains; if we look closely, they all fall apart. Creates a sense of optical movement and change. Does not create believable space; defies high finish, brush strokes very much visible.  Intimacy; man has seen the mountain so many times.  Geometric shapes, artist important figure in Cubism; denies illusionism present in Western painting beginning in the Renaissance.  Cezanne treats every part of the canvas the same way; delineates distance by color; brings one color into another; does not capture transitory effect of light and atmosphere; no confrontation, permanence.  It can be difficult to estimate, by eye, just how f...

Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? Paul Gauguin. 1897–1898 C.E. Oil on canvas. A huge, brilliantly colored but enigmatic work.  It contains numerous human, animal, and symbolic figures arranged across an island landscape; the sea and Tahiti’s volcanic mountains are visible in the background.  Represents the artist’s painted manifesto created while he was living on the island of Tahiti.  The French artist  transitioned from being a “Sunday painter” (someone who paints for his or her own enjoyment) to becoming a professional after his career as a stockbroker failed.  Completed quickly, within a month; claimed to go to the mountains to commit suicide.  Gauguin was master of self-promotion and highly conscious of his image as a vanguard artist. Painting’s themes of life, death, poetry, and symbolic meaning. Gauguin suggests that the figures have mysterious symbolic meanings and that they might answer the questions p...

The Coiffure. Mary Cassatt. 1890–1891 C.E. Dry point and aquatint. The École des Beaux-Arts (School of Fine Arts) in Paris showcased an exhibition of Japanese woodblock prints. These ukiyo-e images, “pictures of the floating world,” were comprised mostly of scenes of urban bourgeois pleasure—geishas, beautiful women, sumo wrestlers, kabuki actors—and pictures of the natural beauty around Edo, such as the mists of Mount Fuji, cherry blossoms, rain showers, and surging waves along the port of Kanagawa. Ever since imperial Japan was available for Western trade in 1853, Europe had become fascinated with Japanese culture. Artists like Claude Monet and Vincent van Gogh were among the many who incorporated elements of Japanese design into their work.  A woman adjusting her hair is one of the hundreds that Mary Cassatt made in her in-home studio; La Coiffure also has its art historical roots in Old Master paintings of women bathing; becomes a tightly crafted exercise in form and ...

The Burghers of Calais . Auguste Rodin. 1884–1895 C.E. Bronze. Emotions of abandonment, loneliness, devastation.  Rodin was commissioned by the French city of Calais to create a sculpture that commemorated the heroism of Eustache de Saint-Pierre during the dreadful Hundred Years’ War between England and France.  We see six men covered only in simple layers of tattered sackcloth; their bodies appearing thin and malnourished with bones and joints clearly visible.  Each man is a burgher, or city councilmen, of Calais, and each has their own stance and identifiable features.  None of them are making eye contact with the men beside them. Some figures have their heads bowed or their faces obscured by raised hands, while others try to stand tall with their eyes gazing into the distance.  They are drawn together not through physical or verbal contact, but by their slumped shoulders, bare feet, and an expression of utter anguish. King Edward III made a deal ...

The Saint Lazare Station . Claude Monet. 1877 C.E.Oil on canvas. Part of a series of more than a dozen Train station in Paris; Monet has been living in the city, suburban dweller; epitome of the modern, the new, the industrial.  We associate Monet with waterlilies, pastoral landscapes. Chimneys, modern railway bridges; completely embracing modernism.  Typically, in his paintings trees frame the canvas; here, it’s the modern architecture, the diagonal lines which recede and carry our eye back.  Play of light and color; entrapped space; steam plays against the sunlight above; no line or contours; we see everything dissipating; everything becomes pure light, color.  Monet chose to make an ugly location luminous, an extraordinary expression of the beauty of urban modern life. Example of impressionism.  Deep sea of steam and smoke that envelops the canvas A component in larger project of a dozen canvases which attempts to portray all facets of the Ga...

Olympia . Édouard Manet. 1863 C. E. Oil on canvas. Female nude; erotic, sensual Female nudes clothed by mythology or sheer beauty; Manet draws on ancient Greek traditions of modesty; does something radically modern Model for Monet was Titian’s Venus de Urbino; strips away that veil of mythology; great art based upon the Renaissance, Manet challenged this.  Model isn’t a venus; resembles a real woman in a real apartment in Paris; her features aren’t idealised, like the Venus’s.  Asymmetrical lips, lips too thin.  Other nudes depicted Venus in a coy way; she’s looking directly at us. She’s sentient and confronting us.  This woman is likely a prostitute based on her name, Olympia.  Olympia’s servant handing her flowers from her patrons/customers; we, the viewer, must have entered abruptly, disturbing/frightening the cat.  Higher class prostitute, not lower.  Manet outlined her in black, barely any shadows or depth. One would expect m...

Nadar Raising Photography to the Height of Art . Honoré Daumier. 1862 C.E. Lithograph. Nadar famous for taking aerial photos of Paris in the 1850s Wackiness; almost falls out of balloon, hat flying away Mocks the claims that photography can be a "high art"; irony implied in the title

The Stone Breakers. Gustave Courbet. 1849 C.E. (destroyed in 1945). Oil on canvas. Courbet depicts figures who wear ripped and tattered clothing.  Courbet's painting are set against a low hill of the sort common in the rural French town of Ornans, where the artist had been raised and continued to spend a much of his time. The effect is to isolate these laborers, and to suggest that they are physically and economically trapped. he has depicted a man that seems too old and a boy that seems still too young for such back-breaking labor.  An accurate account of the abuse and deprivation that was a common feature of mid-century French rural life. There is a close affiliation between the narrative and the formal choices made by the painter, meaning elements such as brushwork, composition, line, and color.  Courbet's brushwork is rough—this suggests that the way the artist painted his canvas was in part a conscious rejection of the highly polished, refined Neoc...

Eugène Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People , oil on canvas, September - December, 1830. Musee du Louvre, Paris, France. Romanticism; large canvases usually reserved for history painting, according to the rules of the Academy.  Contemporary; Parisians experienced this. Revolution against King Charles X and installed Louis Philippe.  Fighting on the streets of Paris, towers of Notre Dame; symbol of the monarchy.  Tricolor is the flag of the revolutionaries.  Liberty is an allegorical figure; symbolic. Personification of an idea.  Breasts resemble those of Greek/Roman sculptures; the birth of democracy.  Paris was a medieval city with narrow, winding streets; Liberty calls to move across the barrier, to move forward, move aggressively.  Liberty turns around to call the rebels; perfect classical profile reflects Greek and Roman sculpture.  People of all classes coming together; people in worn, ugly clothing; others in more form...

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, La Grande Odalisque , 1814, Oil on canvas, Musee de Louvre, Paris, France Commissioned by sister of Napoleon; by the time it was complete, they were gone as a result of the revolution.  Caused a scandal; female nude, not Venus or Eve.  Odalisque is a woman in a harem. Muslim.  Western ideal of what a harem would be was completely inaccurate.  19th century French construction of what they imagined that experience to be. France was colonising this part of the world.  Voluptuous and sensuous expression of the human body.  Ingres was a student of David; he came out of Neoclassicism and became a bridge to Romanticism.  Ignored rules of anatomy for sensuality: longer back, impossible leg positions.  Icy, aloof and distant look: not inviting. Distance and conflict.   Ingres actually returned to Neoclassicism after having first rejected the lessons of his teacher David.  He could even be said to ...

Élisabeth Louise Vigée-LeBrun, Self-Portrait , 1790, oil on canvas, 100 x 81 cm (Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence) Élisabeth Louise Vigée-LeBrun was a celebrated French artist known especially for her lavish portraits of Marie-Antoinette and other European monarchs and nobles as well as for her many self-portraits. The artist who created this opulent showpiece became famous and wealthy as Queen Marie-Antoinette’s official court painter.  It is a late example of the Rococo style. Rococo epitomized a fashionable ideal, characterized by sexual gratification and freedom; she was more conservative.  This particular self-portrait was painted in Rome. The artist sits in a relaxed pose at her easel and is positioned slightly off center.  Her belt is a wide red ribbon.  Vigée-LeBrun holds a brush to a partially finished work.  The subject is probably Marie-Antoinette—perhaps intended as a tribute to her favorite sitter. Slightly used brushes are at the...

Jacques-Louis David, Oath of the Horatii , oil on canvas, 1784 (Musée du Louvre) REAL PLACE IN THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD IN FRANCE COMPLICATED STORY OF WARFARE BETWEEN ROME AND ALBA SMALL BATTLE WOULD WIN THE WAR HORATII BROTHERS TOGETHER; OATH TO FIGHT TO THE DEATH TO PROTECT THE CITY RELATIVES MOURN COMING BATTLE ARISTOCRACY BENEFITING WHILE NATION IS BANKRUPT PAINTING MADE IN ROME, DAVID DECIDED TO LOOK BACK AT ANTIQUITY FOR INSP BIRTH OF NEOCLASSICISM FRIEZE OF FIGURES THAT LOOK LIKE THEY COME FROM A GREEK VASE, LINEAR, SIMPLE SPACE DIVIDED IN THREE BY ROMAN ARCHES OF DORIC ORDER; SHALLOW SPACE CREATED BY THE USE OF LINEAR PERSPECTIVE FIRM CONTOURS, INTEREST IN HUMAN ANATOMY DRAPERY REVEALS BODIES’ FORM LIGHT PASSES ACROSS THE SURFACE OF THE CANVAS; MAKES A TREMENDOUSLY SHARP CONTRAST GEOMETRIC AND RATIONAL SPACE VANISHING POINT WHERE HANDS AND SWORDS MEET MEN IN STIFF, ANGULAR POSITIONS; WOMEN DOMINATED BY CURVILINEAR SOFT FORMS FRAMED BY DRAPERY COMMISSION B...

Jean-Honoré Fragonard, The Swing , oil on canvas, 1767 HER LOVER HIDDEN IN THE BUSHES PLAYFUL, MISCHIEVOUS COMPOSITION OLDER MAN PUSHING HER IS UNAWARE OF LOVER ANGEL SCULPTURE SHUSHING, “IT’S A SECRET” BEHIND A VILLA OR PALACE; YOU CAN MAKE OUT ARCHITECTURE IN THE DISTANCE LUSH GARDEN, OVERGROWN; FERTILE; CONTRIBUTES TO SEXUAL, SENSUAL ENERGY DREAMLIKE, MISTY CUPID ANGELS ON BEEHIVE SIGNIFY THE STING OF LOVE DIVERSE TREES, SOME LEAFLESS, INDICATE PASSION DOG REPRESENTS FIDELITY, IRONIC; DOG IS ANGRY COUPLE DECADES BEFORE THE REVOLUTION INDULGENCE AND PLEASURE THAT CHARACTERISE THE ARISTOCRACY AND THE RULING CLASS OF FRANCE FIGURES ARE SMALL IN A DOMINANT GARDEN LIKE SETTING  PUFFY CLOUDS, RICH VEGETATION; ABUNDANT FLOWERS  YOUNG LADY SWINGS FLIRTATIOUSLY, BOLDLY KICKING HER SHOE AT CUPID SCULPTURE