art history

Time Periods: Post-Impressionism (1880-1890) Symbolism (1890s) Art Nouveau (1890s-1914) Post-Impressionism: While the Impressionists stressed light, shading, and color, the Post-Impressionists wanted to move towards abstraction and explore underlying structure, while preserving traditional elements such as perspective.  Symbolism:  Symbolists embraced a mystical philosophy in which the dreams and inner experiences of an artist's life became a source of inspiration.  Art Nouveau:  Developed mostly in Europe: Brussels, Barcelona, Paris, and Vienna  Seeks to eliminate the seperation among various artistic medias and combine them into one unified experience  Buildings usually designed, furnished and decorated by one artist or group of artists Relies on vegetal and floral patterns; complexity of designs; undulating surfaces Curvilinear; enjoyed use of iron

Narcissus Garden. Yayoi Kusama. Original installation and performance. 1966. Mirror balls. Kusama is a self-taught artist who now chooses to live in a private Tokyo mental health facility, while prolifically producing art in various media in her studio nearby.  Her highly constructed persona and self-proclaimed life-long history of insanity have been the subject of scrutiny and critiques for decades. The tightly arranged 1,500 shimmering balls constructed an infinite reflective field in which the images of the artist, the visitors, the architecture, and the landscape were repeated, distorted, and projected by the convex mirror surfaces that produced virtual images appearing closer and smaller than reality.  When gazing into it, the viewer only saw his/her own reflection staring back, forcing a confrontation with one's own vanity and ego. Originally intended as the media for an interactive performance between the artist and the viewer, the objects are now regarded ...

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...