art history

Chairman Mao en Route to Anyuan . Artist unknown; based on an oil painting by Liu Chunhua. c. 1969 C.E. Color lithograph.  Striding atop a mountain peak wearing a look of determination on his face, Chairman Mao en Route to Anyuan shows a young Mao Zedong  Chinese Communist revolutionary, founding father of the People's Republic of China, and leader of China from 1949-76 Liu Chunhua celebrated Chairman Mao and his longstanding commitment to Communist Party ideals. Painted in 1967 at the dawn of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, this work uses socialist realism to portray Chairman Mao as a revolutionary leader committed to championing the common people. During the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), artists focused on creating portraits of Mao, or “Mao paintings,” which represented Mao’s effort to regain his hold after bitter political struggles within the party. the movement aimed to quell criticisms of Mao in drama, literature, and the visual arts. More broad...

Rebecca and Eliezer at the Well and Jacob Wrestling the Angel, from the Vienna Genesis. Early Byzantine Europe. Early sixth century C.E. Illuminated manuscript (tempera, gold, and silver on purple vellum). OLDEST WELL PRESERVED MANUSCRIPT CONTAINING BIBLICAL SCENES  IMPORTANT IN BYZANTINE ERA, BEGINNING OF ICON PAINTING  WORK OF A CONSTANTINOPOLITAN/SYRIAN WORKSHOP; SHOWS STORY OF REBECCA AND ELIEZER FLATTENED AND WEIGHTLESS FIGURES EARLY BIBLE STORY MADE OF ANIMAL SKIN MADE BY HAND WRITTEN IN SILVER 

The Tête à Tête , from Marriage à la Mode . William Hogarth. c. 1743 C.E. Oil on canvas. BEST KNOWN FOR PRINTS, NOT PAINTINGS; MADE PAINTING TO SHOWCASE HIS PRINTS; BEGINNINGS OF INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION IN ENGLAND AND FRANCE; PART OF SET OF SIX PAINTINGS WIDENING MIDDLE CLASS FOCUSED ON ART; ART BECAME A COMMODITY; MERCHANT CLASS BECOMING POWERFUL; ART PREVIOUSLY SERVED THE ARISTOCRACY, PRINCES, MONARCHS, THE CHURCH; APPEALS TO MIDDLE CLASS, MAKES FUN OF ARISTOCRACY 18TH CENTURY MARRIAGES WERE OFTEN ARRANGED FOR ECONOMICAL/SOCIAL BENEFIT RATHER THAN LOVE; EXCHANGE OF TITLE AND WEALTH; TELL STORY OF ARISTOCRATIC FAMILY HUSBAND HAS COME FROM A NIGHT OF PARTYING, DRINKING, WOMANIZING; WOMAN’S BONNET IN HIS POCKET; WIFE HAS HAD FUN OF HER WHILE HE WAS GONE; HER BODICE IS UNDONE, LOVER HAS JUST LEFT  LOVEMAKING HAS TAKEN PLACE, CHAIR FALLEN OVER; MUSIC WAS A TRADITIONAL SYMBOL OF PLEASURE PAINTINGS OF SAINTS AND ANGELS; HOGARTH JUDGES HER; MAN CAN’T CONVINCE THEM TO TAKE ...

The Bay. Helen Frankenthaler. 1963 C.E. Acrylic on canvas. Heaving, atmospheric painting; we see an imposing fluid blue promontory suspended in front of us. Its colors ranging from violet to indigo run into one another; Frankenthaler’s approach here was to use a soak-stain method with diluted acrylic paint. Acrylics gave her more flexibility with viscosity and movement than oils, and allowed her more control; as a substitute for the action of the brush, Frankenthaler would lift the canvas and tilt it at various angles so that the paint would flow across the surface.  She had to account for gravity and the ebb and flow of a liquid across a flat surface, so a fascinating aspect of Frankenthaler’s method is the blend of the artist’s control paired with the unpredictability of the forces of nature. Frankenthaler was inspired by the drip method of Jackson Pollock who began painting on the floor in the late 1940s, but she knew she wanted to work differently.  The color...

Woman, I. Willem de Kooning. 1950–1952 C.E. Oil on canvas. Took a number of years; surface consists of layers and layers; many textures; drippy/thin, thick/matte; his objective was not a finished product; process; quick brushstrokes; brushwork calligraphic, muscular, tough; garish colors; brilliant oranges, pinks, yellows; olive green feels really dissonant; artist is one of the central abstract expressionists Sacred art brought back to the 20th century, made profane; takes eroticized/sexualized images of women; overwhelming in size, fills canvas; artist had been trained in a traditional way; aggressive and energetic; bulging eyes, bared teeth; improvisation.  Great fierce teeth, huge eyes; blank stare, frozen grin; ambiguous environment; thick and thin black lines dominate; influenced by all kinds of female nudes Large bulbous breasts; satire on women; slashing of paint onto canvas; jagged lines create an overpowering image 

Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in the Alameda Park . Diego Rivera. 1947–1948 C.E. Fresco. In Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Central Park, hundreds of characters from 400 years of Mexican history gather for a stroll through Mexico City’s largest park.  A confrontation between an indigenous family and a police officer; a man shooting into the face of someone being trampled by a horse in the midst of a skirmish; a sinister skeleton smiling at the viewer.  A scene composed of disparate historical personages, including Hernán Cortés (the Spanish conqueror who initiated the fall of the Aztec Empire), Sor Juana (a seventeenth-century nun and one of Mexico’s most notable writers), and Porfirio Díaz (whose dictatorship at the turn of the twentieth century inspired the Mexican Revolution).  Perhaps the most striking grouping is a central quartet featuring Rivera, the artist Frida Kahlo, the printmaker and draughtsman José Guadalupe Posada, and La Catrina.  Chin...

The Jungle. Wifredo Lam. 1943 C.E. Gouache on paper mounted on canvas. 1934 C.E. Wifredo Lam remains the most renowned painter from Cuba and The Jungle remains his best known work and an important painting in the history of Latin American art and the history twentieth-century modernism more broadly. Lam’s consciousness of Cuba’s socio-economic realities; his artistic formation in Europe under the influence of Surrealism; and his re-acquaintance with Afro-Caribbean culture. This remarkable collision resulted in the artist’s most notable work, The Jungle. The Jungle, currently on display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, has an undeniable presence within the gallery: the cluster of enigmatic faces, limbs, and sugarcane crowd a canvas that is nearly an 8 foot square. Plays with perception. The artist haphazardly constructs the figures from a collection of distinct forms—crescent-shaped faces; prominent, rounded backsides; willowy arms and legs; and flat, cloddish hands...

The Two Fridas . Frida Kahlo. 1939 C.E. Oil on canvas. Facial hair indelibly marks the self portraits of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo.  In an era when women still wore elaborate hairstyles, hosiery, and attire, Kahlo was a rebellious loner, often dressed in indigenous clothing. Kahlo flouted both conventions of beauty and social expectations in her self-portraits.  These powerful and unflinching self images explore complex and difficult topics including her culturally mixed heritage, the harsh reality of her medical conditions, and the repression of women. The double self portrait The Two Fridas, 1939 features two seated figures holding hands and sharing a bench in front of a stormy sky.  She painted this canvas she was divorced from Diego Rivera, the acclaimed Mexican muralist. Before she married Rivera in 1929, she wore the modern European dress of the era, evident in her first self portrait where she dons a red velvet dress with gold embroidery.  With Ri...

Composition with Red, Blue and Yellow . Piet Mondrian. 1930 C.E. Oil on canvas The canvas is small and uses only the simplest of colors: red, blue, yellow, white and black. The composition is similarly reduced to the simplest of rectilinear forms, squares and rectangles defined by vertical and horizontal lines.  Mondrian called his style Neo-Plasticism; he uses it to refer to the plastic arts—media such as sculpture, that molds three-dimensional form, or, in Mondrian’s case, painting on canvas. For centuries, European painters had attempted to render three-dimensional forms in believable spaces—creating convincing illusions of reality. In contrast, Mondrian and other modernists wanted to move painting beyond naturalistic depiction to focus instead on the material properties of paint and its unique ability to express ideas abstractly using formal elements such as line and color. Mondrian believed his abstraction could serve as a universal pictorial language represent...

Self Portrait as a Soldier . Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. 1915 C.E. Oil on canvas. A masterpiece of psychological drama.  The painting shows Kirchner dressed in a uniform; he is standing in his studio with an amputated, bloody arm and a nude model behind him. It is in this contrast between the artist’s clothing and studio space that we can read a complicated coming of age for an idealistic young artist.  Group of artists from Germany; the Brücke artists set about creating an entirely new way of being artists; created art that looked to the past and the future at once; influence on the Die Brücke artists was so-called “primitive” art (non-western, Asian and African cultures); there was also interest in the “folk art” of Europe.  This art was perceived to be more honest and direct.  It is important to note that Germany remained a major colonial power in Africa through the First World War; The Brücke artists were inspired to adopt the “natural” state that they p...

Improvisation 28 (second version) . Vassily Kandinsky. 1912 C.E. Oil on canvas. Name of a musical composition; he is composing in form.  Rooted to stories of the bible/history Associating painting with music; painting was signify something non concrete See music, hear color, synesthesia; crossing of the senses; wanted us to hear something; Influenced by many composers/musicians; atonal; chaotic, cacophony; brilliant color, hazy atmosphere, black diagonal lines that crisscross with each other Resembles war, drawn years before first World War; Russian pieces focus on this; verge of abstraction; artist believed that if things were drawn as they are, it would ruin our interpretation of them Close off our emotional ability to response to the true color/form of a piece; heavenly jerusalem; heavily influenced by religious imagery; resembles pieces related to Christian stories; representation of an apocalypse; great flood Cannons are being fired; atmospheric effect; smoke o...

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...

The Kiss . Gustav Klimt. 1907–1908 C.E. Oil and gold leaf on canvas. Most famous Klimt So much gold, hard to think of it as a non religious; suggested a sense of transcendence Tile, patterning; halo; linear patterns on male form contrast with those of the woman’s whose are curvilinear Figures seem lost in the intensity/eternity of this kiss; abstraction of a universal experience; fulfillment and perfection Bodies not present, cloaked; woman is leaning, represents her passivity, receiving that kiss; deep interior feeling, her eyes closed; her fingers are delicately touching his Sense of male’s physical power; strength of his neck, intensity of his desire; aestheticized  Little of human form; richly designed patterning; all consuming love; passion; gold leaf reminiscent of Byzantine mosaics 

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...

The Scream. Edvard Munch. 1893 C.E. Tempera and pastels on cardboard. E dvard Munch’s The Scream may be the most iconic human figure in the history of Western art. Its androgynous, skull-shaped head, elongated hands, wide eyes, flaring nostrils and ovoid mouth have been ingrained in our collective cultural consciousness.  Swirling blue landscape and fiery orange and yellow sky. The various renditions show the artist’s creativity and his interest in experimenting with the possibilities to be obtained across an array of media, while the work’s subject matter fits with Munch’s interest at the time in themes of relationships, life, death, and dread.  The Scream is in fact a surprisingly simple work, in which the artist utilized a minimum of forms to achieve maximum expressiveness.  The bridge, a landscape of shoreline/lake, and the sky, which is activated with curving lines in tones of orange, yellow, red, and blue-green.  Foreground and background blend int...

The Starry Night. Vincent van Gogh. 1889 C.E. Oil on canvas. The curving, swirling lines of hills, mountains, and sky, the brilliantly contrasting blues and yellows, the large, flame-like cypress trees, and the thickly layered brushstrokes of Vincent van Gogh’s The Starry Night are ingrained in the minds of many as an expression of the artist’s turbulent state-of-mind. His favored subjects were irises, sunflowers, or wheat fields; night landscapes are rare.  Van Gogh had had the subject of a blue night sky dotted with yellow stars in mind for many months before he painted The Starry Night; It presented a few technical challenges he wished to confront—namely the use of contrasting color and the complications of painting outdoors at night.  He was hospitalized in an asylum; mentally ill; painted from his window, it is assumed that Van Gogh composed The Starry Night using elements of a few previously completed works still stored in his studio, as well as aspects...

The Valley of Mexico from the Hillside of Santa Isabel (El Valle de México desde el Cerro de Santa Isabel) . Jose María Velasco. 1905 C.E. Oil on canvas. This important school fostered Romantic and Neoclassical aesthetics Students emerging from the new school at the Academy began to illustrate local vistas of the Valley of Mexico.  This imagery offered an opportunity to highlight symbols of patriotism valuable to a newly independent society.  After the 1821 war of independence (from Spain), Mexico sought to establish its identity through artistic endeavors. United ancient and contemporary Roman historical subjects.  The development of the practice of national landscape painting was part of the dictator López de Santa Anna’s efforts to re-establish the art academy after decades of neglect following the formation of Mexico as an independent nation.  Artist had an Italian Mentor: Eugenio Landesio. Trainer in landscape/nature painting.  Towards t...

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...

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...